The battle of Nagashino consisted of two phases. The first phase was the siege of Nagashino castle that began on 17 June 1575. The second, and much more decisive phase, was the engagement between the Takeda main army (15,000 men) and the combined forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga (38,000). This engagement took place in the valley of Shidarahara through which flows the Rengo River (Rengogawa). The Rengogawa provided an obstacle for the Takeda forces as they moved across the valley to attack the Oda/Tokugawa forces.

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The picture of the battlemap (photo 01 below) shows the disposition of the forces during the battle, with the Oda/Tokugawa forces in red and the Takeda in blue. As the Takeda army was famous for its cavalry the Oda/Tokugawa position was protected by a wooden fence that had been erected along a 2,000-metre frontage. This would break up the impact of a Takeda cavalry charge and channel the Takeda forces into the defenders’ killing grounds through a series of defended gates. Oda Nobunaga’s troops, including 3,000 musketeers, held the left end of the line while Tokugawa Ieyasu held the centre and right flank. The bulk of the fighting was concentrated on the centre and left of the Oda/Tokugawa position. The battle which lasted for around eight hours ended in a catastrophic defeat for Takeda Katsuyori.

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Today the battlefield is one of the few unbuilt-on battlefields in Japan. There are a few buildings along the edges of the Shidarahara valley, but they do not impact the area over which this battle was fought. One can walk along the length of the valley, following the course of the Rengogawa, and appreciate the lay of the land and get a sense of what it must have been like. In the area where the main battle was fought, a section of wooden fencing has been erected to show what the barrier was like that faced the attacking Takeda forces. There is also a reproduction of the Nagashino screen that depicts the battle in its entirety.

 

A new museum has been built on the heights overlooking the battlefield, near a site of one of the Takeda lookout points. The museum has an excellent collection of artifacts relating to the battle. On the roof of the building there is a representation of the battlefield showing the positions of the different forces involved.