Siege of Shigisan

What Happened

The siege of Shigisan castle lasted five days, from 14 November to 19 November 1577. The castle stood on Mount Shigi, a height in the Kansai region at coordinates roughly 34.6° north, 135.7° east, between the Yamato plain and the road approaches to the capital. The attacking force was led by Oda Nobutada, the eldest son and field commander of Oda Nobunaga. The defender was Matsunaga Danjo Hisahide, a veteran warlord who had held the mountain stronghold.

The castle fell. Matsunaga Hisahide killed himself, and his son Kojirō died with him. According to the accounts that survive, Kojirō followed his father in death by leaping from the castle walls with his father's severed head in one hand and his own sword driven through his throat. Hisahide, who was a celebrated master of tea ceremony, is said to have smashed his favourite tea bowl before dying so that it would not fall into the hands of his enemies.

The victory belonged to the Oda. The castle was taken, and one of the most persistent survivors of the Sengoku period's endless realignments was removed from the board.

Background

The siege belongs to the Azuchi–Momoyama period, the era of Oda Nobunaga's drive to consolidate power over central Japan. In the Japanese era name of the time, the year was Tenshō 天正 (てんしょう) 5 — Tenshō being the nengo, or era name, a reign-style dating system in which years are counted anew from the start of each era. The broader setting was the Sengoku period, the "Warring States" age of near-continuous regional warfare that ran through the sixteenth century.

Matsunaga Hisahide had built a long career out of shifting allegiance. He had served, betrayed, and fought alongside the major powers of the Kansai region in turn, and by the 1570s he was a nominal subordinate of Nobunaga whose loyalty was never secure. Shigisan castle, on its mountain, was his base of operations in Yamato province.

Nobunaga's campaigns of the 1570s were designed to convert nominal submission into actual control. When Hisahide rose against him, the response was a direct assault on his stronghold. Nobunaga did not lead the attack in person; he sent his son Nobutada, who was by this stage one of his principal commanders in the field.

Why It Mattered

The fall of Shigisan removed a warlord whose value to any overlord lay precisely in his willingness to change sides. Hisahide had survived decades of shifting alliances because he was useful to whoever held power at a given moment. By 1577 Nobunaga had decided that the usefulness had run out, and the five-day siege ended both the man and his house.

The deaths of Hisahide and his son Kojirō closed the line. The manner of those deaths — suicide by seppuku, the son following the father, the destruction of the tea bowl — became the part of the story that later generations remembered. The tea bowl in particular attached itself to Hisahide's reputation as a tea master: the object that could not be allowed to survive its owner.

For the Oda, the siege was one more step in the consolidation of the Kansai region. Nobutada's role is significant in its own right. He was being groomed as his father's heir and given independent command of operations of this kind. The campaign against Shigisan was part of that preparation.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name of the event is 信貴山城の戦い. It is read しぎさんじょうのたたかい in kana, and romanised as Shigisan-jō no tatakai. The shorter form 信貴山の合戦, read しぎさんの かっせん and romanised Shigisan no kassen, is also used; 合戦 (かっせん, kassen) means "battle" or "engagement".

Broken down character by character:

• 信 — read しぎ here, as part of the place name. The character's ordinary meanings are "trust", "faith", "believe". In place names it usually carries a phonetic value rather than its everyday sense.
• 貴 — read ぎ here, again as part of the place name. Its ordinary meanings are "precious", "noble", "high-ranking".
• 山 — read さん here. Meaning: "mountain". This is the element that tells the reader the name refers to a mountain, and it is the reason the reading shifts from the usual やま to さん in this compound.
• 城 — read じょう. Meaning: "castle". A 城 (しろ, shiro) in this period was a fortified compound, typically sited on a hill or mountain for defence, not the decorative white-walled keeps of the later Edo period.
• の — read の. A possessive or linking particle, equivalent to "'s" or "of". It joins the castle name to the word that follows.
• 戦 — read たたかい here, in the kun reading of the character. Meaning: "battle", "war", "fight". The same character appears in 戦国 (せんごく, sengoku), the name of the Warring States period.

So the whole name parses as "the battle of Shigisan castle": a mountain called Shigi, a castle on it, and the fight for it.

Key Figures

Oda Nobutada commanded the attacking force. He was the eldest son of Oda Nobunaga and one of his father's principal field commanders during the campaigns to unify the Kansai region. The siege of Shigisan was one of the operations entrusted to him as heir.

Matsunaga Danjo Hisahide held Shigisan castle. He was a warlord of the Kansai region with a long record of shifting allegiance among the major powers of the Sengoku period, and a noted master of tea ceremony. He killed himself when the castle fell.

Matsunaga Kojirō, Hisahide's son, died in the fall of the castle. The accounts describe him leaping from the walls with his father's head in his hand and his sword through his own throat.

Akechi Mitsuhide is associated with the conflict in the records of the campaign. He was one of Nobunaga's senior commanders in the region during this period.