Hisahide Matsunaga

Hisahide Matsunaga was a retainer of the Miyoshi clan and later the Oda clan. Infamous for his cruelty, violent nature and cunning, he was said to have defied Nobunaga for his own ambition. He is famous for defying his foe until his end, allegedly smashing the tea pots that Nobunaga so desired. In the Japanese dub for Kessen III, he is voiced by Hisao Egawa.

Samurai Warriors
Hisahide only appears as a Fire Ninja bodyguard in Samurai Warriors 2 and can be equipped by the player to help him/her during battles.

Kessen
In Kessen III, Matsunaga appears as an elderly and feudal lord who occasionally defies and belittles Nobunaga. In the Japanese script, he speaks in a sleazy and mocking Kyoto accent. Though reputed as a betrayer, villain and an odd lover of tea pots, Nobunaga spares him after his first rebellion and allows Matsunaga to join the shogunate army. He eventually defects and rebels the same time as Murashige Araki. Prior to the Siege of Shigesan Castle, Nobunaga tries to negotiate for Matsunaga's surrender but he refuses. After his final defeat, he states that he is impressed with Nobunaga before he blows himself up in one of his castle's towers.

Quotes

 * "Master Nobunaga, you must know, people are petty little things with petty little concerns. You have to be careful who you trust, you know. That's just something you've never learned."


 * Addressing Nobunaga, Kessen III

Historical Information
Matsunaga Hisahide (松永 久秀 1510 – November 19, 1577) was a daimyo of Japan following the Sengoku period of the 16th century.

A companion of Miyoshi Chokei, he was a retainer of Miyoshi Masanaga from the 1540s. He directed the conquest of the province of Yamato in the 1560s and by 1564 had build a sufficient power-base to be effectively independent. It is believed that he was conspiring against Chokei during this period, from 1561 to 1563 three of Chokei's brothers died and his son Yoshioki. This left Miyoshi Yoshitsugu the adopted heir when Chokei died in 1564, too young to rule. Three men shared his guardianship - Miyoshi Nagayuki, Miyoshi Masayasu, and Iwanari Tomomichi.

In 1565, the guardians and Hisahide worked together and dispatched an army to capture Ashikaga Yoshiteru, the shogun, who was then either murdered or forced to commit suicide. His brother Ashikaga Yoshiaki fled and the shogun was replaced by his young cousin, Yoshihide.

In 1566, fighting started between Hisahide and the Miyoshi. Initially the forces of Hisahide were unsuccessful and his apparent destruction of the Buddhist Tōdai-ji in Nara was considered an act of infamy.

In 1568 Oda Nobunaga, with the figurehead Yoshiaki, attacked Hisahide. Nobunaga captured Kyoto in November and Hisahide was forced to surrender. Yoshiaki was made shogun, a post he held only until 1573 when he attempted to remove himself from Nobunaga's power. Hisahide kept control of the Yamato and served Nobunaga in his extended campaigns against the Miyoshi and others, for a while. In 1573 Hisahide briefly allied with the Miyoshi, but when the hoped for successes were not achieved he returned to Nobunaga to fight the Miyoshi. In 1577 he split with Nobunaga again, this time Nobunaga turned on him and besieged him at Shigisan Castle. Defeated but defiant Hisahide committed suicide, he ordered his head destroyed to prevent it becoming a trophy (in which his son, Matsunaga Kojiro grabbed Matsunaga's head and jumped off the castle wall with his sword through his throat) and also destroyed a priceless tea kettle (Hiragumo) that Nobunaga coveted before he died. His son, Hisamichi, also committed suicide in siege.

Hisahide often appears as a shriveled and scheming old man in fiction but this is a fictitious image from his assassinations and the possible destruction of Tōdai-ji. In truth, he was a tall handsome educated man and a patron of arts.