Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) was the first of the three unifiers of Japan at the end of the Warring States period. Nobunaga was of middling status in the feudal hierarchy of the day, his father being daimyo of a fief with its castle at Nagoya on the Tokaido highway. Nobunaga gradually came to control about a third of Japan before a retainer murdered him. He developed new methods of controlling the economy of his domains, systems which his successors benefited from greatly.
