
That’s probably because Nobunaga killed the “wrong” people. None of them are called “Demon Kings” nowadays, though. Uesugi Kenshin, another Nobunaga rival, was personally responsible for the destruction and slaughter of more than one town. These are all facts, and they’re terrifying, but was this out of the ordinary for the Sengoku (Warring States) period? Takeda Shingen, one of Nobunaga’s greatest enemies, also burned castles with families inside. In 1574, he trapped a confederation of his enemies and their families in forts at Nakae and Yanagashima, and set them on fire, burning 20,000 people alive.

Another time, after his trusted retainer Araki Murashige was accused of siding with Nobunaga’s enemies, Nobunaga crucified 122 ladies of his household. Hiei, killing 20,000 monks and peasants in the process. The evilest one still talked about is true: Nobunaga attacked the Enryaku-ji temple complex on Mt. History shows that Oda Nobunaga did terrible deeds. Takezo – Sword Of Clarity March 22, 2021 He was also reborn as a literal demon in the 1989 anime Yotoden, the Inindo: Way of the Ninja game, and many other releases by Koei Tecmo Games.ģ Lessons from Japans most famous feudal ruler That’s why, in the Samurai Deeper Kyo comic and animated series, Nobunaga exists as a demonic soul that takes over people’s bodies so that he can live forever and conquer the world. Anime, manga, and video games, on the other hand, tend to take the “Demon King” thing even further and more literally.

That is the angle that the new Netflix series Age of Samurai went with, focusing on all the atrocities committed by Nobunaga. But it illustrates how history tends to look at Oda Nobunaga: a fearsome, bloodthirsty figure, unlike Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who completed his conquest of Japan and whose answers to the same cuckoo question were “Make it” and “Wait.” That probably explains why they now enjoy less psychotic portrayals in Japanese culture than Nobunaga who is still widely known as “The Demon King.” Courtesy of Cream Productions Now, it’s certain that this story never happened because no one had time during Japan’s civil war period to run around asking feudal lords about their bird-training techniques. The (Literal) Demonization of Nobunaga in Fiction There is a poem about the Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534 – 1582) where he is asked what he’d do about a cuckoo that won’t sing, and his answer is that he’d kill it.
