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The story
Over on 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G board, a thread kicked off with the question “Who’s Japan’s strongest warlord — Kusunoki Masashige or Maeda Keiji?” and quickly exploded into a full-blown debate ranking historical warlords by strength. The discussion spread fast, with some backing Tokugawa Ieyasu for unifying the country and building a regime that lasted over 260 years, while others championed figures famous for personal battle prowess, like Minamoto no Tametomo, Kamiizumi Nobutsuna, and Tsukahara Bokuden. The sticking point was how to measure “strength” in the first place — those who judged by achievements and leadership never quite saw eye to eye with those who judged by individual combat ability, and the argument never really got resolved.
What people said
There's no way some loser who couldn't even unify Japan counts as "strong"
One-on-one, that fat Tokugawa guy would be weak as hell
This Tokugawa clan are the historical villains who brought Japan's progress to a halt
Minamoto no Tametomo (old script: 源爲朝) was a warrior of the late Heian period. The eighth son of Minamoto no Tameyoshi. His mother was a courtesan from Eguchi in Settsu Province (present-day Eguchi, Higashiyodogawa Ward, Osaka). He was the uncle of the brothers Minamoto no Yoritomo and Yoshitsune.
Being the uncle of Yoritomo and Yoshitsune, I guess he does sound pretty strong
He's basically the front-line equivalent of Shigeru Mizuki (the manga artist famous for his own semi-legendary war stories)
Shingen did corner Ieyasu though
Yorimitsu actually has basically no real track record as a warrior
He's not a warlord
This guy looks like he could beat him (source: Wikipedia)
I always pictured him more as… a berserker type lol
He's the only man who ever defended and won at both Uji and Seta
Then what about Kitabatake Akiie, who crushed him once?
There are no weak troops under a great general, so the two amount to the same thing
He also handled command of large armies without a hitch under the Toyotomi regime
At the end of the day his Leadership stat is only in the 70s (game stat talk)
Based on documented achievements in books
Maybe it's the "too fine for Ieyasu — the Tang-style crest, and Honda Heihachi" saying, plus his stand at the Battle of Hitokotozaka?
Yeah, he was a total swordsmanship nerd
He's a ninja
Samurai are stronger than ninja
Source: Koga Ninpocho (the ninja novel)
You see it later on in the Sengoku period too
He's actually the one who created the whole "just build a castle and hole up inside" template lol
Though after he took down the Rokuhara (the Kamakura shogunate's Kyoto headquarters), he doesn't really stand out
Even in Koei's games he's the only one treated as being on a whole different level
Tsukahara Bokuden with his "Rasetsu" technique is pretty broken too
Even with a Might stat of 115, I bet present-day me wouldn't have much trouble with him…
Both Taiko Risshiden IV and V give him massive stat boosts
He gets treated just like Lü Bu in Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms games
What's that? That's badass
It's not that big a deal
It just drains your own HP to max out your morale 🥺
I'll go ahead and say much obliged to that
Background and Key Points of the Debate
In threads like this, the argument is baked in from the start because there’s no agreed definition of a “strong warlord.” Figures like Kusunoki Masashige and Maeda Keiji, who are discussed in terms of personal valor and anecdotes, are being measured on a completely different scale from someone like Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose case rests on unifying the country and building a regime that lasted over 260 years. Part of why Kamiizumi Nobutsuna and Tsukahara Bokuden get hyped up in these threads owes a lot to Koei’s historical simulation games, which have long given them absurdly high stats — that’s more a product of later pop-culture image-building than the historical record. The same goes for Maeda Keiji: his portrayal in fiction like the manga Hana no Keiji looms large, and it’s fair to point out that his actual documented military achievements are fairly limited. Meanwhile, figures like Minamoto no Tametomo and Minamoto no Yorimitsu (famed for slaying the demon Shuten-doji) straddle the line between history and legend. Ultimately, this is the kind of argument that can’t be settled until everyone agrees on what “strength” even means — individual combat prowess or a commander’s leadership.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread「Is Japan’s strongest warlord Kusunoki Masashige or Maeda Keiji?」.
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