In 2022, the Shingen Museum held “Takeda Shingen Deified” as part of the special exhibition “Takeda Shingen and Yamamoto Kansuke,” exhibiting portraits of Takeda Shingen, and the Kōyō Gunkan. The purpose of the exhibition was to explore why Takeda Shingen was posthumously worshipped as a god.

The Kōyō Gunkan is a record of the military exploits of the Takeda clan, based largely on the account of the Takeda vassal, Kasuga Toratsuna, also known as Kōsaka Masanobu (1527-1578). It is a large work of 20 volumes that contains anecdotes about Shingen, his battles, his military and criminal law, etc., and is considered absolutely indispensable to the study of Shingen’s legacy. Furthermore, the term Bushidō, the famous samurai code of chivalry, appears in text for the first time in the Kōyō Gunkan. Moreover, during the Edo period (1603 to 1868), the Tokugawa shogunate officially recognized the Kōshū School of military science, a science based on Shingen’s military organization, thus, the Kōyō Gunkan became popular among samurai as a text to be studied.

The Kōyō Gunkan contains detailed descriptions and statistics of Shingen’s politics, military strategies, and warfare. But there are also many anecdotes about Shingen’s daily life and relationships with his retainers that cannot be found elsewhere. It compares Shingen to the ideal lord, and contrasts him to his son, Katsuyori, whose poor leadership hastened the downfall of the clan. The image of Shingen as the charismatic warlord, and Katsuyori, the foolish general who destroyed the Takeda clan, is based largely on the Kōyō Gunkan.

According to the Kōyō Gunkan, Shingen had a wooden statue of Fudo Myo-o made in his own image. Fudo Myo-o was worshipped as a Buddhist guardian deity to protect the country from plague and foreign invaders. Holding a treasured sword in his right hand and a rope snare in his left, he was represented as a terrifying figure with a wrathful expression on his face. Recent research has revealed that the “Takeda Fudo Myo-o” statue enshrined at Shingen’s family temple, Erin-ji, was created in April 1572, one year before Shingen’s death, by the Kyōto-based Buddhist priest, Kouju. As a result, many of Shingen’s posthumous portraits show the characteristics of Fudo Myo-o, including having one eye half-opened and fangs for teeth.

Although there are no reliable historical records that indicate a relationship between Shingen and Fudo Myo-o, “Fudo Hall” is shown at the northeast corner of the Takeda residence in an illustrated map said to depict the Takeda residence during Shingen’s reign. One can imagine that Shingen must have prayed there regularly.

At Shingen’s funeral, the priest, Kaisen Kokushi, who had had a close friendship with Shingen, stated that the Fudo Myo-o was inseparably linked to Shingen. The abbot of Enkoin Temple, the family temple of Shingen’s wife, Lady Sanjyō, also understood that Shingen had a statue of Fudo Myo-o made in his own image to rule the country with the treasured sword of the state.

Speaking of the deification of warlords, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who became the ruler of Japan after Oda Nobunaga, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was the first of 15 Tokugawa shoguns from 1603 to 1868, both willed that they be enshrined as gods after their deaths.

Did Shingen want to protect his territory like Fudo Myo-o? We don’t know whether the people of the time equated Shingen with Fudo Myo-o or not. However, many portraits of Takeda Shingen painted during the Edo period clearly make a connection between Fudo Myo-o and Shingen. Today, Takeda Shingen is enshrined at Takeda Shrine, which is visited by many people from within and outside the prefecture.