Oda Nobuhide

In the turbulent rice fields of sixteenth-century Japan, where warlords rose and fell like seasonal storms, one man forged a dynasty from the mud of obscurity: Oda Nobunaga's father, Oda Nobuhide. This book is the first full-length English biography to strip away the myth and restore the flesh-and-blood strategist who turned a minor Owari fief into the springboard for the unification of Japan. Begin with the boy born in 1510 amid the paddies of lower Owari, learning to read the wind before he could read a scroll. Follow him as he weds into the Saito clan under the shadow of Nagoya's crane banner, only to inherit command when his elder brother falls in 1538. Watch him storm Iwakura Castle in 1540, taste bitter defeat at Anjo against the Imagawa juggernaut, then shatter Yoshimoto's vanguard at Azukizaka in 1542—a victory that announced the Oda name to the world. The narrative never pauses. Raids into Mino pit him against the Viper, Saito Dosan; fragile alliances flicker and die; Moriyama burns in 1547. By 1549 he seals peace with his daughter's marriage, then spends the decade raising stone walls and an unruly heir—Nobunaga—whose genius will eclipse his own