Okabe Motonobu

Who They Were

Okabe Motonobu (岡部元信, おかべ もとのぶ) was a samurai and military commander of the Muromachi period, the long stretch of Japanese history running from 1336 to 1573. He was born in 1505, in the second year of the Eishō era (永正, えいしょう), and died on 25 April 1581. He served the Imagawa clan as a senior retainer, then transferred his loyalty to the Takeda clan after the Imagawa collapse, and ended his life defending Takatenjin Castle against the forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu.

His family name was Okabe, and his given name Motonobu. He was the second son of Okabe Chikatsuna, and he followed his father into the service of the Imagawa house. He had at least two children: a son, Okabe Sanetaka (岡部真堯), and a daughter.

Life and Career

Motonobu's career spanned the most violent decades of the Sengoku period, the era of "warring states" in which regional lords fought continuously for territory and survival. As a senior retainer of the Imagawa clan, he belonged to one of the great houses of central Japan, based in Suruga Province and led by Imagawa Yoshimoto.

In 1560, Imagawa Yoshimoto was killed at the Battle of Okehazama, ambushed by the forces of Oda Nobunaga. The death of a lord in battle usually shattered his army. Motonobu kept fighting, and he retrieved his lord's corpse from the field — an act that carried enormous weight in a warrior culture that treated the recovery of a dead master's body as a binding duty.

The Imagawa clan did not recover from Okehazama. As its territories were carved up by neighbours, Motonobu switched his allegiance to the Takeda clan, the house of Takeda Shingen and later Takeda Katsuyori, and took up the defence of Takatenjin Castle.

He died there on 25 April 1581, during the Second Siege of Takatenjin. The castle was attacked by the forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Motonobu was killed in the fighting, along with his troops. The Tokugawa commander most closely associated with the action was Honda Tadakatsu.

Why They Matter

Motonobu's importance rests on two things: what he did at Okehazama, and what his death at Takatenjin cost.

At Okehazama he did what almost no retainer in his position managed to do. When Imagawa Yoshimoto fell, Motonobu not only continued the fight but recovered the body of his dead lord. In the value system of the samurai, loyalty to one's lord extended past death, and the retrieval of a master's remains was among the most honourable acts a retainer could perform. His conduct at Okehazama became the act for which he is remembered.

His death at Takatenjin in 1581 belongs to a larger story. The siege of Takatenjin was one of the campaigns by which Tokugawa Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga's forces broke the Takeda clan's hold on their frontier castles. Motonobu was one of the Takeda defenders who died holding the castle for Takeda Katsuyori. Within three years of his death, the Takeda clan itself was destroyed. His career therefore traces the whole arc of the period: service to a great house, its sudden collapse, transfer of loyalty to its successor, and death in the final unravelling of that successor as well.

The Name in Japanese

The full name is written 岡部元信.

Reading: おかべ もとのぶ (okabe motonobu)

Romaji: Okabe Motonobu

Broken down character by character:

岡 — read oka here. The kanji means "hill" or "ridge." It is the first element of the family name.

部 — read be here. It originally referred to a division, section, or occupational group under the ancient Japanese state, and it became one of the most common endings for family names. Together, 岡部 (Okabe) is a surname borne by several unrelated lineages; the Okabe of this page were retainers of the Imagawa.

元 — read moto here. It means "origin," "source," or "beginning." It is a very common element in male given names of the period, and it appears in the names of many samurai of the Sengoku era.

信 — read nobu here. It means "trust," "faith," or "belief." It was one of the most frequent closing characters in warrior names of this era, used by Oda Nobunaga (織田信長) and countless others. The choice of 信 in a given name often signalled a bond with a lord or a lineage that also used the character.

So the name as a whole reads as a standard warrior name of its period: a two-character surname of ancient origin, followed by a two-character given name built from a "beginning" character and a "faith" character.

Legacy

Motonobu is remembered chiefly for the recovery of Imagawa Yoshimoto's body at Okehazama in 1560, an act that fixed his reputation as a retainer who served his lord beyond death. His second claim on memory is his death on 25 April 1581 at the Second Siege of Takatenjin, fighting for the Takeda against Tokugawa Ieyasu's forces.

His line continued through his son, Okabe Sanetaka, and a daughter. The Okabe name itself outlived him by centuries, carried by descendants and by other families who shared the surname. For students of the Sengoku period, Motonobu is a useful figure precisely because his career is so representative: a senior retainer of a major house, a survivor of its catastrophic defeat, a man who changed masters when the political map changed, and a defender who died in a castle that his side could not hold.