Legend & Butterfly (Film, 2023)

Legend & Butterfly — The Aesthetics of "Tenka Fubu" Embodied Through Oda Nobunaga and Nōhime's "Sword and Butterfly"

Legend & Butterfly (released January 27, 2023; Toei 70th anniversary commemorative film; directed by Otomo Keishi; screenplay by Furusawa Yoshita) is a major historical drama film starring Kimura Takuya (Oda Nobunaga) and Ayase Haruka (Nōhime/Kicho), depicting the story of a political marriage between Nobunaga and his principal wife Nōhime in which "two people initially attempting to outwit each other become bound by a strong bond." With a total production cost of 2 billion yen and cumulative attendance exceeding 1.8 million, the film achieved one of the largest box office successes among Toei's jidaigeki films in recent years. The work merits particular mention from the perspective of Japanese sword culture because "Tenka Fubu (ruling the realm through arms)" — Nobunaga's philosophy — is embodied as the cultural practice of "sword collecting," demonstrating an important case of how this sword philosophy is reinterpreted in contemporary cinema.

### Oda Nobunaga's Sword Aesthetics — "Tenka Fubu" and a Collection of Over 500 Swords

Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) is most famously known as the Sengoku daimyo who used the seal of "Tenka Fubu," but he is also a prominent figure in the dimension of "the greatest sword collector of the Sengoku period." Nobunaga's sword collection, said to comprise over 500 blades, embodies three aspects: "expression of political authority," "pursuit of beauty," and "accumulation of practical weapons," thereby embodying the Sengoku logic that "those who pursue rule of the realm accumulate swords."

Among Nobunaga's representative beloved swords are the following. "Heshikiri Hasebe" — a blade forged by Hasebe Kunishige, named from the anecdote in which Nobunaga "pressed through" (heshikiru) a shelf together with a rude tea attendant. Currently preserved as a National Treasure at the Fukuoka City Museum. "Sozan Samonji / Yoshimoto Samonji" — a celebrated blade forged by a master smith of the Chikuzen Samonji tradition, which passed through Miyoshi Masanaga, Takeda Nobutoyo, and Imagawa Yoshimoto before coming into Nobunaga's possession as a war trophy from the Battle of Okehazama (1560). Nobunaga inlaid the tang with a gold inscription reading "Eoroku 3, 5th month, 19th day — Yoshimoto defeated — blade carried by Oda Owari-no-kami Nobunaga," literally carving his path to unification upon the blade. "Daihannya Nagamitsu" — a great sword forged by Bizen Nagamitsu, named as possessing "the value of 600 volumes of the Daihannya Sutra," a symbolic blade of Nobunaga's collection.

### Nōhime (Kicho) and Swords — The Cultural Significance at the Intersection of "Butterfly" and "Sword"

The film's heroine, Nōhime (Kicho; dates of birth and death unknown), is a historically enigmatic figure. Though it is certain that she was the daughter of Saito Dosan and married Oda Nobunaga, her subsequent life is subject to various accounts. The film creatively fills this historical gap, depicting "Nōhime as actively involved in Nobunaga's campaign for national unification" — a new interpretation. The film's title "Legend (Nobunaga) & Butterfly (Nōhime)" is a combination of "the legendary warrior (symbol of sword and military power)" and "the butterfly (symbol of transformation, beauty, and freedom)"; the opposition and fusion of "the world of the sword (military power, authority, masculinity)" and "the world of the butterfly (beauty, transformation, femininity)" form the work's core theme. Historically, Nōhime's father, Saito Dosan, earned the epithet "Viper Dosan" and was a typical exemplar of gekokujo (overthrowing superiors), rising "from oil merchant to daimyo." The swords of Mino (Mino-mono; blades forged by smiths of Mino Province during the era when Dosan ruled Mino, present-day Gifu Prefecture) were among the most important production centers for practical swords of the Sengoku period, making Nōhime's cultural background from Mino inseparably linked with "Mino sword culture."

### The Battle of Okehazama and "Swords of Fate"

The "Battle of Okehazama (1560)," the narrative turning point of this film, is known as the greatest upset of the Sengoku period, in which Nobunaga devastated Imagawa Yoshimoto's vastly larger army through surprise attack. The fact that Nobunaga defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto in this battle and obtained "Sozan Samonji (Yoshimoto Samonji)" as a war trophy exemplifies the typical function of Japanese sword culture in which "blades bear witness to historical turning points." Nobunaga's act of inlaying the tang with a gold inscription recording "Tenka Unification Determination" represents the political and cultural function of the Japanese sword, in which swords transcend mere weapons to function as "witnesses to history and vessels of authority declaration," thereby embodying the broader cultural significance of the blade.

### Yoshita Furusawa's Screenplay and the "Contemporary Reinterpretation of Sword and Butterfly"

Yoshita Furusawa, the screenwriter (who also wrote Do-suru Ieyasu), is known for "the fusion of comedy and seriousness" and "the intersection of contemporary values with historical settings," and in this work employs the method of "depicting the relationship between Nobunaga and Nōhime as a modern couple," thereby offering a contemporary reinterpretation of the historical narrative. This approach — "reinterpreting historical tales of swords and generals through a contemporary perspective" — functions as a cultural bridge enabling contemporary Japanese sword enthusiasts and collectors to connect "swords of history" with "themselves today," embodying the role that large-scale historical cinema plays in the propagation of sword culture.

### The Perspective of Sword Collectors

Legend & Butterfly is, from four perspectives—"the historically authentic celebrated swords Heshikiri Hasebe and Sozan Samonji possessed by Oda Nobunaga," "the political and cultural coordination between the philosophy of Tenka Fubu and sword collecting," "Mino sword culture as mediated through the enigmatic figure of Nōhime," and "the Battle of Okehazama as a paradigmatic case of 'swords bearing witness to historical turning points'"—an important work for Japanese sword collectors and enthusiasts, functioning as a site where "Sengoku-period sword culture and contemporary cinema intersect," enabling them to experience "Nobunaga's sword culture" visually and emotionally.