Narrow Road To The Deep North 14

On 30 July 1570, Nobunaga moved on the Asai stronghold at Odani Castle with a sizable additional contingent of Tokugawa men, 28,000 soldiers in all. Asai Nagamasa and Asakura Kagetake marched out to meet them on the Anegawa River, with their combined force of 20,000 men army. The Asai and Asakura were tenacious opponents. Their army along the coast of Lake Biwa and defeated an Oda army near Otsu, killing one of Nobunaga's younger brothers, Nobuharu. Nobunaga’s 500 arquebusiers created chaos, and clouds of smoke and dust. In the confused mingled fighting the continuous decapitation of soldiers resulted in 3,170 heads collected by the Oda camp alone. The Battle of Anegawa was a victory for Nobunaga and Ieyasu, but by no means decisive.
Nobunaga's position was slowly becoming more difficult. Now actively arrayed against him were the Asai, Asakura, and Miyoshi clans, supported by Ikkō-ikki and warrior monks from the Honganji, Negoroji, Nagashima, and Enryakuji of Mt. Hiei.  The Honganji proved the most formidable and fanatical, destined to hold out for a decade. At the same time, Shogun Yoshiaki was busy conspiring against his former patron, sending out letters to the Môri of Western Japan, and to the Takeda, Uesugi, and Hôjô of Eastern Japan. Nobunaga’s greatest threat was the powerful Takeda Shingen of Kai, who was already pressing his ally, Tokugawa Ieyasu.
But the Battle of Anegawa had bought Nobunaga enough breathing room to avenge the death of another young brother. In 1569, Nobuoki, under attack by rioting Ise Ikkō-ikki, had been forced to commit seppuku, after climbing to the upper level keep of Ogie castle. Two years later, Nobunaga's troops surrounded Mt. Hiei and, working their way up the mountainside, killing any and all found in their path. By the next day, the once sprawling Enryakuji monastery, a significant centuries old cultural symbol, was reduced to ashes and all four thousand sōhei warrior Buddhist monks, women and children lay dead, in an act of brutality so unusual that even his own generals were shocked when they heard of the devastation. 
The rebuilt complex is still a notorious place. On April 4, 2006, Enryakuji performed a ceremony for a hundred high level Yamaguchi-gumi leaders, from the largest Yakuza organized crime syndicate in Japan, rejecting the request of the Shiga Prefectural Police not to.