Takeda Shingen

Takeda Shingen
""Men with discrimination will be viewed as schemers; second, men with deep far-sightedness will be seen as cowards; and third, men with rough behavior will be mistaken for real warriors. These are great errors.""

- Takeda Shingen Takeda Shingen (née Harunobu) was the nineteenth head of the Takeda clan of Kai Province. He earned military prestige in the late Azuchi-Momoyama Period. He was especially famous for his feuds with another warlord, Uesugi Kenshin with the two battling at Kawanakajima five times from 1553-1564. He was one of the only daimyo strong enough to oppose Oda Nobunaga's quest to reunify the war-torn nation. It was said that he perished from wounds, pneumonia or assassinated by a sniper when he tried to attack Nobunaga again in 1573.

He introduced a new tactic with kiba gundan (騎馬軍団), 'mounted army,' or simply the cavalry charge which he first used at the Battle of Mikatagahara against Tokugawa Ieyasu. He adopted the use of firearms in 1567 stating that, "''Hereafter, the guns will be the most important arms, therefore decrease the number of spears per unit, and have your most capable men carry guns." He was an avid reader of Sun Tzu's The Art of War'', where he gained most of his tactics and famous battle standard, Furinkazan.

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