Battle of Yamazaki
1582 battle between the forces of Akechi Mitsuhide and Toyotomi Hideyoshi
The Battle of Yamazaki (山崎の戦い, Yamazaki no tatakai) was fought in 1582 in Yamazaki, Japan, located in current-day Kyoto Prefecture. This battle is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Mt. Tennō (天王山の戦い Tennō-zan no tatakai).
In the Honnō-ji Incident, Akechi Mitsuhide, a retainer of Oda Nobunaga, attacked Nobunaga as he rested in Honnō-ji, and forced him to commit seppuku. Mitsuhide then took over Nobunaga's power and authority around the Kyoto area. Thirteen days later, Oda's forces under Toyotomi Hideyoshi met Mitsuhide at Yamazaki and defeated him, avenging his lord (Nobunaga) and taking Nobunaga's authority and power for himself.
Background
Honnō-ji Incident
When Nobunaga died, Hideyoshi was busy fighting the Mōri clan in the Siege of Takamatsu. After betraying and defeating Nobunaga at Honnō-ji, Mitsuhide sent a letter to the Mōri. The letter contained a request for an alliance to crush Hideyoshi, but the letter's messenger was intercepted by Hideyoshi's forces and the plot was revealed.
Great Chugoku retreat
Upon hearing news that Nobunaga had been killed, and that Akechi Mitsuhide had not taken command of his possessions, Hashiba Hideyoshi immediately negotiated a peace treaty with the Mōri by demanding the seppuku of Shimizu Muneharu from Takamatsu, and remained careful to keep Nobunaga's death a secret.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Battle of Yamazaki” is 1582 battle between the forces of Akechi Mitsuhide and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Battle, Yamazaki and battle, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1582 battle between the forces of Akechi Mitsuhide and Toyotomi Hideyoshi” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q39040. The Library of Congress control number is sh85148968. Authority coordinates are 34.907, 135.691. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1582.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Battle of Yamazaki”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Battle of Yamazaki primary sources, Battle of Yamazaki archive and Battle research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Battle of Yamazaki”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Yamazaki” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.