Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Battle of Mikatagahara was fought in 1572 in Japan. Takeda Shingen was headed for Tokugawa Ieyasu's castle at Hamamatsu. Among his men were Yamagata Masakage and Baba Nobuharu. Ieyasu took about 11,000 men (3,000 of them Oda Nobunaga's troops) out to meet Shingen in battle. Shingen had as many as 30,000 men. Shingen defeated Ieyasu but bad weather and Tokugawa cunning prevented him from following up on the victory. The cunning part is this: Ieyasu managed to retreat into his castle, but ordered the gates left open and bonfires lit, to help his scattered troops to find their way back. Sakai Tadatsugu, in the castle, even went so far as to beat on a drum. In addition to helping morale, these efforts convinced Masakage and Nobuharu -- pursuing the retreating Tokugawa forces -- that there must be some trick. Instead of attacking the wide open castle, they camped outside for the night. The following day, the Takeda army left. The article is originally from OpenHistory. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.