YODOGOMI
One of the three daughters of Asai Nagamasa afterwards became the concubine of Hideyoshi and bore to him a son, Hideyori, who, by her advice, subsequently acted in defiance of Ieyasu, thus involving the fall of the house of Hideyoshi and unconsciously avenging the fate of Nobunaga.
NOBUTAKA
Nobunaga's son, Nobutaka, who had been allied with Katsuiye, escaped, at first, to Owari on the latter's downfall, but ultimately followed Katsuiye's example by committing suicide. As for Samboshi, Nobunaga's grandson and nominal heir, he attained his majority at this time, but proving to be a man of marked incompetence, the eminent position for which he had been destined was withheld. He took the name of Oda Hidenobu, and with an income of three hundred thousand koku settled down contentedly as Hideyoshi's vassal.
OSAKA CASTLE
Hideyoshi left behind him a striking monument of his greatness of thought and power of execution. At Osaka where in 1532 the priests of the Hongwan-ji temple had built a castle which Nobunaga captured in 1580 only after a long and severe siege, Hideyoshi built what is called The Castle of Osaka. It is a colossal fortress, which is still used as military headquarters for garrison and arsenal, and the dimensions of which are still a wonder, though only a portion of the building survives. Materials for the work were requisitioned from thirty provinces, their principal components being immense granite rocks, many of which measured fourteen feet in length and breadth, and some were forty feet long and ten feet wide. These huge stones had to be carried by water from a distance of several miles. The outlying protection of this great castle consisted of triple moats and escarpments. The moats were twenty feet deep, with six to ten feet of water. The total enclosed space was about one hundred acres, but only one-eighth of this was the hominaru, or keep, inside the third moat.
It will be seen that the plan of the castle was to have it divided into spaces separately defensible, so that an enemy had to establish his footing by a series of repeated efforts.
And the second respect in which it was a novelty in Japanese defensive warfare was that the castle donjon was heavily built and armoured after a fashion. The three-storey donjon was framed in huge timbers, quite unlike the flimsy structure of most Japanese buildings, and the timbers were protected against fire by a heavy coat of plaster. Roof and gates were covered with a sort of armor-plate, for there was a copper covering to the roof and the gates were faced with iron sheets and studs. In earlier "castles" there had been a thin covering of plaster which a musket ball could easily penetrate; and stone had been used only in building foundations.
THE KOMAKI WAR
After the suicide of his brother, Nobutaka, and when he saw that his nephew, Samboshi (Hidenobu), was relegated to the place of a vassal of Hideyoshi, Nobukatsu seems to have concluded that the time had come to strike a final blow in assertion of the administrative supremacy of the Oda family. He began, therefore, to plot with that object. Hideyoshi, who was well served by spies, soon learned of these plots, and thinking to persuade Nobukatsu of their hopelessness, he established close relations with the latter's three most trusted retainers. No sooner did this come to the cognizance of Nobukatsu than he caused these three retainers to be assassinated, and applied to Ieyasu for assistance, Ieyasu consented. This action on the part of the Tokugawa baron has been much commented on and variously interpreted by historians, but it has always to be remembered that Ieyasu had been Oda Nobunaga's ally; that the two had fought more than once side by side, and that had the Tokugawa leader rejected Nobukatsu's appeal, he would not only have suffered in public estimation, but would also have virtually accepted a position inferior to that evidently claimed by Hideyoshi.