Takeda Shingen

Biography

Shingen deposed his own father to take control of Kai Province and built the most feared cavalry force in Japan, fighting the rival warlord Uesugi Kenshin to an inconclusive standstill across five separate battles at Kawanakajima that became legendary for their scale and near-mythic single combat between the two commanders. His famous banner, reading *fūrinkazan* — wind, forest, fire, mountain — described a doctrine of alternating speed and immovability that made his armies extraordinarily difficult to predict. In late 1572 he finally marched west, ostensibly toward Kyoto, and shattered Tokugawa Ieyasu's army at Mikatagahara so completely that Ieyasu barely escaped with his life. It was the clearest evidence in the entire unification era that the Oda-Tokugawa alliance was not invincible, and had Shingen lived, the subsequent history of Japan might have gone very differently. He died of illness on campaign only months later, in the spring of 1573, and his death was concealed by his retainers for three years to prevent the Takeda domain from collapsing immediately. His son Katsuyori inherited the same fearsome cavalry and, without his father's caution, threw it directly at massed Oda gunfire at Nagashino two years later, destroying in an afternoon what Shingen had spent a lifetime building.

Key Battles