Editing Horizon:Volume 9B Preface (section)

==Installation==
[[Image:Horizon_9B_allcover-002_001.jpg|thumb]]
Oda Nobunaga


Such a major daimyo that I doubt anyone hasn’t heard of him.

Probably because Hideyoshi and Ieyasu worked for him and because he’s often seen as the leader of Japan’s unification.

A reformer. His ambitions were unfulfilled due to betrayal. A figure skater. Okay, not that last one.

But historically, you can see opinions about him changing frequently. Opinions on Nobunaga began immediately after the Warring States period, at the beginning of the Edo period. At that time, he was seen as the warlord who Hideyoshi and Ieyasu worked for. (The modern unification of terminology and language didn’t exist back then, so opinions were more story-like.) He was seen as a skilled person, but because he was betrayed for granting favors, there was a tendency in the Edo period to avoid granting favors to the powerful.

But in the middle Edo period and after, people had higher opinions of Hideyoshi and Ieyasu for actually unifying Japan, so their opinion of Nobunaga dropped comparatively.

This began to change when he was spoken highly of by the emperor-led Meiji government because Nobunaga had protected the imperial court and he began to be worshiped at a shrine as an imperial supporter.

That said, Hideyoshi was also an imperial supporter and Ieyasu was kept at a bit more of a distance, so Hideyoshi became really popular.

At the same time, Nobunaga was seen as careless for letting himself be assassinated in an uprising and he had prevented Shingen or Kenshin from unifying Japan instead, so opinions of him trended downwards.

After World War Two, history was consumed as entertainment in the form of movies and novels and research into Nobunaga was advanced along with research of Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, gradually revealing that he had been anything but simple and had been a reformer.

When it was learned he wasn’t just a hired imperial loyalist and had heavily influenced Hideyoshi and the others, he went through a revival like with Shiba Ryotaro’s Kunitori Monogatari and Nobunaga’s Ambition, leading to the creation of the modern image of Nobunaga. (Now, Shiba’s novels had such a profound influence on people’s image of the daimyo and warriors of that time that I think you can divide the general image of them into a pre-Shiba and post-Shiba era. He was like the Hajime Katoki for designing the modern image of the Warring States period.)

Views of history and historical figures change from era to era, but the interesting thing in Nobunaga’s case is how early Edo opinions and modern opinions are so similar. Mainly that he was skilled and gathered a lot of great people, but his more severe aspects made him do some regrettable things. I think he was skilled and an optimist and he trusted his own people to a fault. He allowed an uprising, but he also never forgave incompetence. That suggests that he believed he could change a treacherous heart but he couldn’t fix incompetence. Stopping a traitor requires charisma, but since he also used the “profits” of his reforms and ambitions to that end, his followers must have really adored him.

I think that may be why Hideyoshi and Ieyasu mimicked him after his death.



For the design, I flipped things around by having Nobunaga mimic the designs of Toori and Horizon, who are Motonobu’s successors. Wearing her hair up is about the only thing I did to fit my vision of Nobunaga and she otherwise has a lot of Toori influence. The decorative chains form a circle over her head to give her a holy look.

(Kawakami Minoru)

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