Battle of Okehazama: How Nobunaga Beat an Army 10x Larger | Explained

In 1560, Imagawa Yoshimoto marched into Owari with an army perhaps ten times larger than the force a young Oda Nobunaga could lead against him. By that afternoon Yoshimoto was dead. Was the Battle of Okehazama a brilliant surprise attack, a lucky storm, or a legend that got the story wrong? This documentary follows Okehazama hour by hour through the Shinchō Kōki of Ōta Gyūichi: the Imagawa of Suruga, Tōtōmi and Mikawa; the border castles of Narumi and Ōtaka and the Oda forts of Marune, Washizu, Tange, Zenshōji and Nakajima; young Matsudaira Motoyasu, the future Tokugawa Ieyasu; Nobunaga's dawn dance from Atsumori at Kiyosu Castle and his halt at Atsuta Shrine; the sudden storm of rain and hail; the fall of Yoshimoto at the hands of Hattori Koheita and Mōri Shinsuke; and how Oze Hoan's Shinchōki, the 1899 Army General Staff study and historian Fujimoto Masayuki shaped and challenged the famous "detour and surprise attack." In this video: Why Imagawa Yoshimoto marched west (probably not to take Kyoto) What happened on the morning of the nineteenth, step by step How a sudden storm turned the battle Why many historians now doubt the famous "detour and surprise attack" Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:25 The Giant and the Fool 05:07 Morning of the Nineteenth 08:14 Storm at Okehazama 11:30 Myth and History Next episode: Samurai vs. European knight — what was really different? Sources Battle of Okehazama (Wikipedia) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_... Okehazama no Tatakai (Kotobank, Nihon Daihyakka Zensho / Britannica, Japanese) — https://kotobank.jp/word/桶狭間の戦い-40263 Nihon Senshi: Okehazama-eki, Army General Staff, 1899 (CiNii Books record) — https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BN15021713 Imagawa Yoshimoto (Kotobank, Japanese) — https://kotobank.jp/word/今川義元-31975 Shinchoki by Oze Hoan (Kotobank, Japanese) — https://kotobank.jp/word/信長記 PRESIDENT Online: the Okehazama surprise-attack legend and the 1899 General Staff study (Japanese) — https://president.jp/articles/-/108161 Historical artworks (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons): Kanō Sōshū (attributed), portrait of Oda Nobunaga (1583) — Chōkōji, Toyota Kanō Eitoku, Rakuchū rakugai zu (Scenes in and around Kyoto), Uesugi screens (16th century) Portrait of Imagawa Yoshimoto (Edo period) Migita Toshihide, "Imagawa Yoshimoto, Okehazama Daikassen no Zu" (Meiji period) "Bishū Okehazama-gassen" (Battle of Okehazama in Owari Province), woodblock print (19th century) Okehazama old battlefield, from Owari Meisho Zue (1844) Maps drawn from Natural Earth data (public domain). Music and sound effects: YouTube Audio Library. About this video: the narration and most illustrations were produced with AI tools; music is from the YouTube Audio Library. The script was researched and fact-checked against the sources above. AI illustrations are artistic reconstructions, not historical images or portraits. Maps: Natural Earth (public domain). Subscribe for a new documentary about samurai-era Japan every day. #Okehazama #OdaNobunaga #Samurai