Who Is Hattori Koheita (Hattori Kazutada)?
The samurai who struck first at Imagawa Yoshimoto
Hattori Koheita was a warrior in Oda Nobunaga's umamawari (the elite guards who fought close to their lord) and the first man to attack Imagawa Yoshimoto at the Battle of Okehazama. His given name is said to have been Kazutada.
At Okehazama in 1560, Nobunaga's troops strike the Imagawa main camp after a violent rain. When the guards around Yoshimoto have dwindled from three hundred horsemen to fifty, Koheita goes straight for Yoshimoto, but his knee is slashed and he falls. Moments later, Mori Shinsuke cuts Yoshimoto down and takes his head. The chief glory belongs to Shinsuke, but without Koheita's attack, the fight might have gone differently.
He later served Toyotomi Hideyoshi and became a daimyo, but he is said to have been forced to commit seppuku in 1595 after being implicated in the Toyotomi Hidetsugu affair. He was one of the warriors who survived the Warring States era by moving from Nobunaga's service to Hideyoshi's.
