Sengoku Period
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50 free Sengoku Period trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For well over a century Japan had no ruler strong enough to hold it together. The age the Japanese call the Sengoku jidai was a contest between clans: great houses such as the Oda, Takeda, Uesugi, Mori and Tokugawa, and dozens of smaller families that fought, married and betrayed one another for land and survival. This quiz covers the Sengoku period clans from every angle: the warlords who led them, their home provinces and strongholds, the family crests on their banners, the famous battles and sieges, and the three unifiers who finally brought the fighting to an end. There are questions on foreign arrivals, new weapons and the vocabulary of the age as well. It is written for fans of samurai history, players of strategy games set in the period, and students who want to check what they know about feudal Japan. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up a story or two even from the questions you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which animal's name did Oda Nobunaga give as a nickname to his slightly built general Toyotomi Hideyoshi?
Monkey
Monkey, or Saru, was Nobunaga's unflattering name for the low-born retainer who would finish his master's work and rule all Japan.
Q 02In a saying about Japan's three unifiers, which bird does the patient Tokugawa Ieyasu wait to hear sing?
Cuckoo
Cuckoo is the bird in all three versions: Oda Nobunaga kills it for staying silent, Toyotomi Hideyoshi makes it sing, and Ieyasu simply waits.
Q 03Which man of African origin reached Japan with an Italian Jesuit in 1579 and went on to serve Oda Nobunaga?
Yasuke
Yasuke was given a sword, a house and a stipend, and he fought beside his lord's heir on the day Nobunaga died in 1582.
Q 04Which general turned on Oda Nobunaga at Honno-ji temple in 1582, only to fall at Yamazaki days later?
Akechi Mitsuhide
Akechi Mitsuhide held power for less than two weeks, and why he betrayed his lord remains one of Japanese history's great mysteries.
Q 05Which battle of 1600 turned when Kobayakawa Hideaki switched sides, opening Tokugawa Ieyasu's path to rule Japan?
Sekigahara
Sekigahara was decided in a single day, and within three years its winner was shogun, founding a line that ruled Japan for two and a half centuries.
Q 06Travellers from which European country, driven ashore on Tanegashima in 1543, brought Japan the matchlock gun?
Portugal
Portugal's guns were quickly copied by a local swordsmith, and Japanese matchlocks took the island's name: tanegashima.
Q 07Which Chinese classic gave Takeda Shingen the wind, forest, fire and mountain motto flown on his war banner?
The Art of War
The Art of War tells an army to march like the wind, stand like a forest, raid like fire and hold like a mountain. The banner cut that to four characters.
Q 08Which commodity is Uesugi Kenshin said to have sent his landlocked rival Takeda Shingen during a trade blockade?
Salt
Salt reached Kai from Echigo after another clan blocked the supply, and Kenshin is credited with saying he fought with the sword, not with salt.
Q 09Which castle's fall in 1615 wiped out the Toyotomi clan and removed the last rival to Tokugawa rule?
Osaka
Osaka Castle was begun by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1583 on the site of a fortified temple, and it took two Tokugawa campaigns to bring it down.
Q 10Which one-eyed northern warlord wore a helmet topped with a huge crescent moon and founded the city of Sendai?
Date Masamune
Date Masamune lost the sight of his right eye to smallpox as a child and became known as the One-Eyed Dragon.
Q 11Which country did Toyotomi Hideyoshi invade in 1592 and again in 1597 as a first step towards conquering China?
Korea
Korea was meant to be a stepping stone to the Ming empire, but the armies were ordered home after Hideyoshi died in 1598.
Q 12Which 1980 Akira Kurosawa film follows a thief trained to impersonate the dying warlord Takeda Shingen?
Kagemusha
Kagemusha means 'shadow warrior', a political decoy, and the film shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes with All That Jazz.
Q 13Which retainer, credited with saving Tokugawa Ieyasu's life, shares his name with the swordsmith in Kill Bill?
Hattori Hanzo
Hattori Hanzo led men from Iga, the ninja heartland, and a gate of Tokyo's Imperial Palace still carries his name.
Q 21Which port did the lord Omura Sumitada open to European ships in 1571 and later hand over to the Jesuits?
Nagasaki
Nagasaki was run by the Jesuits for a few years after 1580, until Toyotomi Hideyoshi reached Kyushu and put the port under his direct control.
Q 22On which island shrine, famed for its 'floating' torii gate, did Mori Motonari crush a rival army in 1555?
Itsukushima
Itsukushima, also called Miyajima, is held so sacred that the shrine and island were ritually purified after the fighting.
Q 23Which objects is Mori Motonari said to have handed his three sons to show that a united family cannot be broken?
Arrows
Arrows snap easily one at a time but not as a bundle of three, the lesson went, though it probably never took place.
Q 14Which settlement in the Kanto did Tokugawa Ieyasu make his base in 1590 after giving up his home provinces?
Edo
Edo was barely a town when he arrived, but as the seat of his shogunate it grew into a great city and was renamed Tokyo in 1868.
Q 15Which colour of lacquered armour marked out the elite troops led by Tokugawa Ieyasu's general Ii Naomasa?
Red
Red lacquer covered the armour of the akazonae, elite troops who had served the Takeda clan before passing to Ii Naomasa's command.
Q 16Which gilded, portable structure did Toyotomi Hideyoshi have carried to Kyoto's palace to host Emperor Ogimachi?
A tea room
A tea room covered in gold travelled wherever Hideyoshi went, and even its kettle and bowls were made of gold.
Q 17Which clan, based at Odawara Castle, bore a three-triangle crest that resembles the Triforce of the Zelda games?
Hojo
Hojo lords borrowed their name and scale crest from an earlier ruling family, and held the Kanto until Toyotomi Hideyoshi's siege of 1590.
Q 18Which civil war of 1467 to 1477 left Kyoto in ruins and is taken as the start of the Sengoku period?
Onin War
The Onin War grew out of succession quarrels among the great houses, and the shogun spent it planning his Silver Pavilion while the capital burned.
Q 19Which clan's shogunate ended in 1573 when Oda Nobunaga drove its last shogun, Yoshiaki, out of Kyoto?
Ashikaga
Ashikaga shoguns had held the title since 1338, yet Yoshiaki owed his office to Nobunaga, who had installed him as a puppet.
Q 20On which mountain near Kyoto did Oda Nobunaga destroy the warrior monks' great monastery of Enryaku-ji in 1571?
Mount Hiei
Mount Hiei had been a seat of armed Buddhist power for centuries, and Nobunaga's troops are said to have killed monks, women and children alike.
Q 24Oda Nobunaga reportedly signed a letter to Takeda Shingen with which fearsome title 'of the Sixth Heaven'?
Demon King
Demon King is said to have been Nobunaga's mocking reply to a rival who had signed himself as a head priest, and video games still cast him as a demon lord.
Q 25Which class did Toyotomi Hideyoshi's sword hunt of 1588 disarm, with the metal promised for a Great Buddha hall?
Peasants
Peasants lost their swords, spears and guns, which drew a hard line between those who worked the land and those who fought.
Q 26At which 1575 battle did Oda and Tokugawa gunners behind wooden fences break Takeda Katsuyori's cavalry?
Nagashino
Nagashino is remembered for massed matchlock fire, and within seven years of the defeat the once-feared Takeda clan had been wiped out.
Q 27At which battle of 1560 did Oda Nobunaga's outnumbered force use a thunderstorm to surprise an army of 25,000?
Okehazama
Okehazama turned a little-regarded regional lord into one of Japan's front-running warlords in a single afternoon.
Q 28On which plain in Shinano did Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin fight five battles without a decisive winner?
Kawanakajima
Kawanakajima's fiercest clash came in 1561, when Kenshin is said to have burst into Shingen's headquarters and been parried with a signalling fan.
Q 29Which clan of Satsuma had almost conquered all of Kyushu when Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded in 1587?
Shimazu
Shimazu lords kept Satsuma after submitting, and nearly three centuries later their domain played a leading part in toppling the Tokugawa.
Q 30Tokugawa Ieyasu spent much of his boyhood as a hostage of which powerful clan of Suruga Province?
Imagawa
Imagawa power crumbled after its lord fell in battle in 1560, when many of the clan's officers defected to its neighbours.