The Real History
Behind Nioh 3

The word "Sengoku" literally means "Warring States" — 戦国時代. If you know your Chinese history, that name is borrowed directly from China's own Warring States period, the Zhanguo Shidai. Same characters. Same chaos.

It starts with the Onin War in 1467 応仁の乱 — a succession dispute in Kyoto 京都 that spirals into a decade of urban warfare. By the time the fighting stops, central authority in Japan has completely collapsed. The shogun is a figurehead. The old feudal order is shattered. Hundreds of regional warlords — the daimyo 大名 — carve out domains through war, alliance, and betrayal.

This is the world where three men emerge as Japan's "Great Unifiers."

The entire Nioh series is built on this arc. Each game covers a different phase of Japan's unification:

Nioh 3 shows what happens after Sekigahara — the fragile peace, the succession crisis, and the echoes of war that refuse to die. Here are the key dates that shape everything:

The person who saved Takechiyo's future? His wet nurse — Kasuga no Tsubone 春日局. In the game, she appears as Saito Fuku 斎藤福, your Onmyo magic mentor. In real life, she traveled to Ieyasu's retirement residence in Sunpu 駿府 and made the case directly to the old shogun.

Saito Fuku 斎藤福 / Kasuga no Tsubone 春日局

The game takes a real succession crisis and turns it into a supernatural epic. The names, the relationships, the stakes — all grounded in history. The yokai are the fiction. The family drama is the truth.

He was called the Tiger of Kai — 甲斐の虎. His rivalry with Uesugi Kenshin 上杉謙信, the Dragon of Echigo 越後の龍, produced five legendary battles at Kawanakajima 川中島. But for the Nioh 3 story, it's his campaign against Tokugawa Ieyasu that matters.

Shingen didn't ride alone. His inner circle — the Takeda Four Heavenly Kings 武田四天王 — were legends in their own right. In Nioh 3, all four appear as boss encounters. That's a level of historical completeness most action games don't even attempt.

Yamagata Masakage (Nioh 3) · Yamagata Masakage

Yamagata Masakage — Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1848 (MFA Boston, public domain)

Baba Nobuharu (Nioh 3)

Baba Nobuharu — Utagawa Kuniyoshi (National Diet Library Japan, public domain)

Naitō Masatoyo (Nioh 3)

Naitō Masatoyo — Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1853 (Bibliothèque municipale de Rouen, via Gallica BnF, public domain)

Kōsaka Masanobu (Nioh 3)

Kōsaka Masanobu — Utagawa Kuniyoshi (public domain)

Masakage's Crimson Army was so feared that after Nagashino, Tokugawa Ieyasu adopted the red armour scheme for his own elite cavalry — wearing the identity of a defeated enemy as a trophy.

Baba fought in over 70 battles and was never once wounded — the exact same legend as Honda Tadakatsu on the opposite side. Nioh 3 quietly pits these two "invincible warriors" against each other through you. The designers knew exactly what they were doing.

At Nagashino in 1575, Baba stayed behind as rear guard, buying Katsuyori time to escape. Then he turned his horse around, rode back into the Oda army alone, and died fighting. The Immortal's streak ended — but only because he chose to end it himself.

Naitō Masatoyo was the cavalry commander who shattered Honda Tadakatsu's right flank at Mikatagahara — the strike that began the collapse. At Nagashino, he led one of the doomed charges directly into Nobunaga's gunfire and was killed. He reportedly knew it was suicide but charged anyway, because Katsuyori had given the order.

Kōsaka Masanobu earned the nickname Nige Danjō — "the Fleeing Danjō" — not for cowardice, but for masterful tactical retreats that preserved Takeda forces when others would have lost them. He's also credited as the original author of the Kōyō Gunkan 甲陽軍鑑 — the very military chronicle that records much of what we know about every battle in this chapter.

The stage was set. All four Heavenly Kings had swept through Tōtōmi Province ahead of Shingen's main force. Masakage's Crimson Army seized Yoshida and Futamata Castles. Ieyasu had 8,000 men at Hamamatsu and 3,000 Oda reinforcements. Against the advice of every single one of his generals, he chose to fight.

At four in the afternoon, with snow already falling, the Takeda formed up in gyorin 魚鱗 — the fish-scale formation, lines stacked deep. Ieyasu deployed in kakuyoku 鶴翼, the crane wing — a formation built to envelop a smaller enemy. He had the smaller force. Against thirty thousand Takeda, against Shingen's veteran cavalry and the Four Heavenly Kings, it was a textbook mistake. Within the hour, Naitō Masatoyo's cavalry tore through Honda Tadakatsu's right flank. The line buckled. By dusk, the Tokugawa army was broken and Ieyasu was riding for Hamamatsu with five men beside him.

What he did when he got there is the reason he's remembered. Instead of barring the gates, he ordered them thrown wide open. Fires lit along the walls. Sakai Tadatsugu 酒井忠次 climbed the gatehouse tower and beat a war drum loud enough to carry across the field. Hattori Hanzo 服部半蔵 slipped out into the dark with a small band and raided the Takeda camp. Baba Nobuharu, leading the Takeda vanguard, looked at the open castle and the burning torches and called it a trap. The Takeda pulled back. The most famous bluff in Sengoku history — pulled by a man who had lost his army that afternoon.

Takeda Shingen in Nioh 3 — Koei Tecmo

Battle of Mikatagahara — tactical map (1935)

Ieyasu after Mikatagahara — painted as a reminder

Modern historians debate whether Ieyasu actually commissioned it — the painting may be from the Edo period, and some scholars question whether it depicts Ieyasu at all. But the story itself tells you everything about how Japan remembers this man. After Mikatagahara, he became the most patient, most cautious leader in Japan. He outlived Shingen, outlived Nobunaga, outlived Hideyoshi — and at Sekigahara in 1600, he won the battle that gave him the country. The man who escaped with five soldiers became the founder of a dynasty that lasted 265 years. Sometimes the worst defeat of your life is the one that makes everything after it possible.