Narrow Road To The Deep North 18

There were still three enemies close enough to frustrate his designs. The Ishiyama Honganji stronghold of Osaka were as formidable as before Nagashino, and drew support from the other two clans sympathetic to its cause. 
 A fearsome samurai warrior named Kenshin led the Uesugi clan. For a brief time, the ‘Dragon of Echigo’ had maintained a wary alliance with Nobunaga against the Takeda, but tensions rose after Nagashino, for two reasons. First, Nobunaga was expanding into Uesugi territory; second, ground was broken at Azuchi Castle in the spring of 1576, strategically sited to control Uesegi influence, and Nobunaga planned to make his new capital the grandest fortress ever built. This culminated in the Battle of Tedorigawa the following year. After Kenshin had lured Nobunaga into a nighttime frontal assault across the Tedori River, Kenshin opened the river’s floodgates. 
The Oda, pushed into the river, unable use their arquebus and cannons, and defeated, lost a thousand men in a forced retreat. Emboldened, Kenshin returned to Echigo to plan his march on Kyoto and the destruction of Nobunaga in the following spring. 
The third obstacle to Nobunaga’s total control of the country, was the one that ultimately undid him. The Môri of Western Honshu were impressive, both because large tracts of lands under their rule, and because of the founder, Mōri Motonari, The Lord of Koriyama, was one of the greatest warlords of the mid-16th Century, and the source of the apocryphal ‘Lesson of the Three Arrows.’ In this parable that is still taught to Japanese schoolchildren today, Motonari gives each of his three sons an arrow to break. He then gives them three arrows bundled, and points out that while one may be broken easily, not so three united as one. There is no ‘I’ in team. When Motonari was poisoned in 1571, his son, Terumoto, carried on his father’s budding opposition to Nobunaga. He recognized that the Ishiyama Honganji in Osaka, primary fortress of the Ikkō-ikki, was the ideal place to oppose him.
In June 1576, Nobunaga dispatched Harada Naomasa with an army to attack the Honganji mobs of warrior monks, priests, and farmers, an effort that ended in failure and the death of Harada. Nobunaga responded by personally leading a follow-up attack that took quite a few heads, but saw him wounded in the course of the fighting. Realizing the futility of a direct assault on the heavily defended fortress, Nobunaga changed tactics, reducing and crushing and weakening the Honganji's satellite monasteries, and diverting the naval forces of Kûki Yoshitaka to the waters off Settsu in a direct naval blockade against the fleets of the Ikkō-ikki's allies, who sought to supply the fortress and break the siege. Terumoto responded by mobilizing his first rate navy, commanded by the Murakami family, men who, like the Kûki, had cut their teeth in piracy. Sailing east, the Môri defeated Kûki Yoshitaka's ships in the First Battle of Kizugawaguchi, breaking the blockade and supplying the fortress.
But 1578 was a banner year for Nobunaga.  In February, the Imperial court appointed him Daijo daijin, or Grand Minister of State, the highest post that could be bestowed; but if the Emperor hoped that such an exalted title would subdue Nobunaga, he was wrong.
On 13 April, time deserted Kenshin, just as it had Shingen, at the height of his power and in the perfect position to thwart Nobunaga's ambitions. The cause of Kenshin's death was not completely clear. Perhaps he was assassinated by a ninja with a short spear, waiting in the cesspool beneath the camp latrine. Perhaps it was the consummation of a lifetime of heavy drinking in the form of stomach cancer or cerebral hemorrhage. The theories are not mutually exclusive. The assassin, if he existed, may have simply killed a dying man. Upon hearing of Kenshin's death, Nobunaga was said to have remarked, ‘Now the land is mine.’ Over the next four years his forces would pick away at the bones of the Uesugi, until they were at the borders of Echigo.
In August, Nobunaga reengaged the Ishiyama Honganji, in the Second Battle of Kizugawaguchi. He had tasked Kûki Yoshitaka with desiging and building naval vessels that could offset the Môri's numerical superiority of 600 ships. Against convention, Yoshitaka unveiled six massive, heavily armed and armour-plated ō-atakebune wooden floating fortresses, covered in gun and bow emplacements. These first ironclads formed the core of a fleet that sailed back into the Inland Sea. However, during the battle an interesting flaw was discovered in the ō-adakebune warship design. As Mōri samurai rushed to board the large ship, all the defending warriors ran to that side of the deck, to defend themselves, and the ship capsized as its center of gravity shifted. Despite this several Mōri vessels were burned and sunk, and Oda's fleet drove off the defenders, and was victorious. The supply lines were broken, and after an 11-year siege, the Honganji stronghold at Ishiyama came to terms, and threw open their gates. Surprisingly, all of the surviving defenders were spared.
Nobunaga finished his Azuchi Castle on the shores of Lake Biwa, the greatest ever built in the history of Japan, lavishly decorated and immensely expensive. It was covered with gold and statues on the outside, and Kanō Eitoku’s interior standing screens, sliding doors, walls, and ceiling images, painted in monumental taiga bold, rapid brushstrokes, with a foreground emphasis on large motifs.
In March of 1581, the Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano came to Kyoto, accompanied by a black African servant from Mozambique. Yasuke caused such a sensation in the capital that several people were crushed to death while clamoring to get a look at him. Nobunaga expressed a desire to see him and, suspecting his pigmentation to be paint, stripped him from the waist up and made him scrub his skin. 

   ‘On March 23, 1581, a kuro-bōzu black page came from the Christian 
    countries. He looked about 26 or 27 years old; his entire body was 
    black like that of an ox. The man was healthy and good-looking. 
    Moreover, his strength was greater than that of 10 men... His name 
    was Yasuke. His height was 6 ft. 2 in. He was black, and his skin 
    was like charcoal.’

Yasuke’s tall stature would have been very imposing to the Japanese and Nobunaga was impressed by his strength. Yasuke spoke some Japanese, so Nobunaga enjoyed talking with him. His nephew gave him money, and Nobunaga provided him with his own house and a short katana, assigned him the duty of Dōgumochi porter of his straight-headed yari spear, and a position as a shikan samurai.