#akechi route

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I’m not sure if the game intended this to be a mystery or not. In the actual Honnouji scene, the narration and Hideyoshi and Mitsuhide’s reaction strongly implies that Nobunaga really was dead, even though it didn’t explicitly show that he dropped dead. 

Still, "Nobunaga’s corpse was never found” was a saying that’s bandied about a lot online, leading to conspiracy theories about how he might have escaped or if someone secretly removed his body.

However, some experts claim that the corpse is not missing. It’s just “unidentifiable”. There are so many dead in Honnouji, and not to mention that the building burned down. It’s only logical to assume that nobody could identify which among the piles of dead bodies was supposed to be Nobunaga. Even in modern day, with all its high-end forensic technology, it’s still not easy to identify burnt corpses. 

The account by Luis Frois also assumed as such, and he said that Nobunaga’s remains was burnt up and nothing of him is left. He wasn’t there in the Honnouji premises to actually poke around the ashes, but he was in the church in Kyoto, which was close enough for him to have witnessed the fire.

I think there is the flimsiest chance that Nobunaga could really have just pretended to be dead, and then ran off into the sunset to live the rest of his life in peace. With so many people running around in Honnouji that night, who’s to say that he did not mingle with the escaping servants, and slip out? If you really want to play conspiracy games, might as well just say he’s not dead and just vanished.

There’s no reason to conspire overly-complicated explanations about how “he did die, but the body had been taken” or some such, though. Fire just burn things up, and without technology, burnt bodies are just simply unidentifiable.

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This situation is obviously exaggerated for drama, so that Mitsuhide’s rebellion didn’t seem like it’s out of nowhere. In reality, Nobunaga doesn’t go this far with Honganji. After he petitioned the court to have Kennyo ousted and all the monks of Honganji evicted, he just left them alone. Kennyo went to retire to a different location, and Nobunaga didn’t bother hunting down every single one of the Honganji temples or believers. 

Surprisingly enough, the one who kind of did this is actually Ieyasu. After the Ikko Ikki of Mikawa rioted, eating up even half of the Tokugawa vassals in 1564, Ieyasu banned the Honganji sect from Mikawa altogether. All the Honganji-affiliated temples in Mikawa had to change into a different denomination or else they’d be punished or even eradicated. This ban on Honganji faith is not lifted until 1583.

Also, this is a mistake that I myself also made previously, but the Honganji sect is not the sole representative of the Jodo Shinshuu faith. As it turns out the Jodo Shinshu had split into at least 3 branches before Kennyo, with Honganji being actually one of the lesser branches at first. In time they grew in prominence and became the biggest one, causing misunderstanding that they’re the sole inheritor of Shinran’s Jodo Shinshuu teachings. 

Realistically speaking, throwing out Honganji doesn’t necessarily mean throwing out the Shinshuu faith entirely. Nobunaga had himself given clemency to some Shinshuu temples in his territories, after they swore that they’re not associated in any way to Honganji or the Ikko Ikki.

The branches don’t even like each other. The Takada branch of the Shinshuu and Honganji had multiple disputes with each other through history, from civil disputes like fighting over whose abbot gets to be awarded the post of the Most Reverend, to even proxy wars through samurai clans. Whichever side’s championed clan rules the land will run the other sect out of the territory and demands those who remained to convert into the other sect.

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I'm quite sure this is a reference to Hideyoshi giving Mitsuhide a warning in Act 1. It could be incidental, but since she specifically said Hideyoshi and not the others, I think it might be purposeful.

Unfortunately, when I first read the Act 1, the translation was in error and what Hideyoshi says is completely different in English. I haven’t replayed the Act 1 again to see if the translation has been changed since (hopefully it has), but I don’t have the screenshots of that scene anyway, so I will just provide the context here with quotes from the Japanese text.

In the final or epilogue chapter of Mitsuhide’s Act 1, after they dealt with Nagamasa’s betrayal, Hideyoshi dropped by and said this:

[自分は下賤の出から取りたててもらった恩があるから、信長様を裏切るようなら]

I’m indebted (to Nobunaga) because I’ve been raised (in rank) from my humble origins, so if anyone betrays Nobunaga-sama…

[光秀さんでも容赦しませんよ]

… I will not forgive them, even if it’s you, Mitsuhide-san.

Not history-related, just a call back to the previous route

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In terms of the story, this is why I said in my previous post the narration sounds like it was intended to mean that Nobunaga is dead. 

However, the part that says “he walks further into the fire” technically only means he just went deeper in to the temple (away from the door Mitsuhide came in from). Based on how Japanese architecture works, as long as the fire doesn’t block off all the outer walls of the temple, I personally think there is still a possibility for escape. Perhaps the crumbling rubble only obstructed Nobunaga from Hideyoshi and Mitsuhide’s view, and he just headed towards a different part of the temple and escaped from that other side.

Conspiracies aside, let’s talk about the fire itself.

The Shinchoukouki document described that Nobunaga set the place on fire, and some interpreted that it’s precisely so that his body would be destroyed and that Mitsuhide would not be able to desecrate it.

It’s a common practice for samurai to cut off the enemy’s head and put them on display as a mark of their achievement. Lords and commanders who dread this fate might request their vassals to bury or hide their bodies after they commit seppuku. 

Shinchoukouki also described that Nobunaga’s heir had requested exactly that of his vassals. After he committed seppuku, his remains was immediately buried in the mansion he was holding fort at, and was also never found.

There’s a lot of novels, movies, and dramas where Nobunaga specifically asked Ranmaru to light the fire, but I think it’s just drama flavouring (in line with the popular trope that Ranmaru was Nobunaga’s personal assistant of sorts). I don’t know if such a thing was ever explicitly documented in any historical account.

There is another record, purportedly a written transcription of the narration of one of the Akechi soldiers, that said that fire broke out from the kitchens. This implies a completely accidental fire.

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I messed up and posted the aftermath of the Honganji from Mitsuhide’s route before this one...

I’m honestly just assuming that this particular writer went over the top with the Honganji drama because this is a difficult situation where you need to make Honnouji happen without making Mitsuhide look bad. And in this case, since it’s from Mitsuhide’s perspective, it’s (kind of?) fine to make Nobunaga look like he’s gone utterly insane. 

The only reason I somewhat object to the Honganji portrayal is because it reinforces a misunderstanding that people often had: That Nobunaga burnt down and destroyed Honganji. 

That’s not actually true. As I’ve mentioned multiple times here, Honganji was forced to surrender through persuasion from imperial court intermediaries. And Kennyo, seeing that he is cornered, agreed to surrender. He was a man of his word, and followed through with all the terms of surrender. Everyone left the premises just fine, and it was a peaceful surrender. A generally-considered reliable account "Tamon’in Diary” 多聞院日記 recorded that the monks themselves set the temple on fire after the surrender agreements and procedures was completed (though of course it’s not 100% for certain).

Kennyo retired, and then wrote this ridiculously long letter addressed to the head priests and Honganji-Shinshuu faithfuls explaining the surrender, and that this is for the good of their sect’s future. He also gave implicit advice to not support his son (the new Honganji abbot), who was still determined to fight the Oda. 

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This is of course part of the otome game sweet talking, but coincidentally, in Mitsuhide’s case, it actually is true to life. Mitsuhide really did only have one wife, and no concubines (who, as a reminder, are at the time considered legal “secondary wives” and not mistresses). He’s not the only samurai to have only one wife and no concubines, but it’s still a rather rare case in the time period.

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You’ll notice that Nobunaga doesn’t actually answer why he’s raising arms against Honganji again, and the story doesn’t really give an explanation for why there’s suddenly war again out no nowhere.

And that’s because most people don’t know either. If there’s paperwork or letters explaining the situation better, it looks like either it’s still not been found yet or its documentation is obscure. The Shinchoukouki was unfortunately sparse with the details here, and I haven’t been able to find any other material that give me the answer.

Here’s the chronology that I managed to find, based on diaries and letters that I could look at:

- Around November of 1575, the peace was brokered. Kennyo sent Nobunaga some prized paintings and tea jar as tokens of sincerity, and Nobunaga sent a letter to Honganji acknowledging this peace. - Around February of 1576, Mitsuhide was informed that Honganji had surrendered (the above November treaty). - April 1576, Nobunaga expresses concerns about the Osaka area to his son, but the document doesn’t say why - May 1576, Nobunaga gave orders to evacuate the people of Osaka, and Mitsuhide was sent out to prepare for war. 

Apparently something happened between February and April of 1576, but I don’t know what. I suppose neither did the writer, because if they did know they would’ve likely used it in the story.

A tangent on Ikemen Sengoku (apologies if you don’t understand), since we’re on the subject. They adapted this matter of Oda and Honganji peace suddenly falling apart with a very bizarre plot involving man-Kichou manipulating the treaty for the same reason. There’s no answers here, and they don’t want to make either Nobunaga or Kennyo look bad, so they dumped the blame on a third party. 

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More general commentary than history, but when I first saw this scene, I thought Hideyoshi’s reaction indicated that there was something significant about his own younger brother (Hidenaga) and that this moment reminded him of it.  

However, even after I waited for years, there was nothing. It was not in Hideyoshi’s sequel, it was not in any of the events. Hidenaga just... never showed up, and there was no explanation that’s ever given even in all these years. I ended up just resigned to conclude that the very brief flashback we were shown in Hideyoshi’s route was supposed to subtly hint that Hidenaga had passed away before Nobunaga found Hideyoshi, and that maybe I was just too dense to realise it this whole time.