Nagashino Falls: Gunpowder Unifies Japan Under Nobunaga

Three thousand soldiers armed with matchlock rifles crouched behind wooden palisades and waited for the most feared cavalry in Japan to charge straight into their guns. At the Battle of Nagashino on June 29, 1575, Oda Nobunaga deployed massed firearms in a defensive formation that destroyed the mounted samurai of the Takeda clan, demonstrating that gunpowder weapons could neutralize even the most elite traditional warriors. The Takeda clan under Katsuyori, son of the legendary Takeda Shingen, had besieged Nagashino Castle in Mikawa Province to expand their territory at the expense of Nobunaga’s ally, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Nobunaga marched to relieve the siege with approximately 30,000 troops, including a contingent of 3,000 ashigaru armed with arquebuses. He chose a position behind the Shidaragahara, a narrow plain crossed by streams and marshland, and ordered the construction of wooden stockades to protect his gunners. Katsuyori, commanding roughly 15,000 troops including his elite cavalry, ordered a series of frontal charges against the stockades. The traditional account holds that Nobunaga arranged his gunners in rotating volleys, with each rank firing while the others reloaded, maintaining continuous fire. Whether this rotation system was actually used is debated by historians, but the result is not: Takeda’s cavalry was shredded by concentrated gunfire as they attempted to cross the open ground. Successive charges broke against the palisades, and the Takeda lost an estimated 10,000 men, including eight of Katsuyori’s senior generals. Nagashino did not introduce firearms to Japanese warfare, as guns had been present since Portuguese traders brought them in 1543. But the battle demonstrated their decisive potential when used in large numbers with proper tactical coordination. The Takeda clan never recovered from the defeat, and Katsuyori was destroyed by a combined Oda-Tokugawa campaign seven years later. Nobunaga’s integration of firepower with disciplined infantry became the template for the armies that would complete Japan’s unification.