#saitou toshimune

[odaclan]

Mitsuhide possibly “postponed” his rebellion in order to be able to target Nobunaga and Nobutada both

About 2 years ago, news broke that Mitsuhide was not actually present in Honnouji during the night of the attack. A relatively obscure source was uncovered to have recorded that he only commanded his vassals to lead the attack, while he himself was positioned elsewhere. 

The source is a text called Itsuya no Kakimono 乙夜之書物. The contents of the narrative was supposedly relayed by Saitou Toshimune, the son of Mitsuhide’s vassal Saitou Toshimitsu, to his nephew. It was written much later, but as long as it’s a genuine recording and not fabricated by the one writing it down, then it’s considered a valuable source because Toshimune was present at Honnouji.

At the time, it didn’t occur to me to look further to see if this new source also described other things related to this rebellion, as all the headlines were just about this one single point about Mitsuhide’s presence.

This document however made news again last year, with additional details revealed.

The text described that when Mitsuhide gathered his senior officers to declare the rebellion and make an oath by blood, Toshimitsu commented to Mitsuhide that “This rebellion has been postponed until now”, and then offered himself to lead the vanguard. If this is true, then it meant that at the very least Toshimitsu has been aware of Mitsuhide having the intention to rebel for a while, but the plot was delayed/postponed for various reasons. 

[link]

The article’s writer posits that the reason for the postponement was because it would be difficult to achieve their goals without nabbing both Nobunaga and Nobutada. I’m not able to find more details about the text yet, so I don’t know if the Itsuya document has more details about Mitsuhide’s motivation (the new theory is published as a book, so they would want me to buy the book to find out!).

I do think that this line of thought is reasonable. At the time Nobutada was already officially the head of the Oda. Were he still alive, killing Nobunaga would not have done much good. If this text is not fabricated or tampered with, this also supports the theory that whatever it was Mitsuhide intended, it wasn’t just personal grudge. Otherwise he would have just gone after Nobunaga alone and not wait for this chance to get two of them in one strike.