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I was interested to read recently that at 4th Kawanakajima Uesegi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen had the following encounter:
Takeda Shingen sat in his headquarters, sending commands to his troops via his tsukai-ban (messenger corps), who were identified by a sashimono (banner) which bore the device of a running centipede. Although under pressure, the Takeda samurai were fighting well, but some of Uesegi's warriors managed to get close to the Takeda headquarters and engaged Takeda Shingen's bodyguard in combat.
As they did so, a single masked samurai wearing a white cowl and a green surcoat over his armour burst in and attacked Shingen with his sword. It was Uesugi Kenshin who had come to fight his opponent, man-to-man. Shingen could not draw his sword and so he blocked his opponents blows with his heavy war fan. He took three blows on his armour and seven on the fan until one of his retainers, Hara Osumi-no-kami, attacked Uesugi with his spear. The spear slid off Uesugi's armour and hit his horse making it rear up. The pause in the proceedings gave Shingen's personal guards time to intervene to save their lord and Uesugi Kenshin away.
(From Hugh Cook's Samurai: The Story of a Warrior Tradition)
Anyone know of any similar stories of a commander actually hunting out their opponents in battle?
P.S. After the battle Takeda Shingen had a head viewing ceremony of 3117 enemy heads, surely that could've made it into Shogun?!
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Just read this in Robert Graves' I Claudius:
{My father's} ambition was to perform a feat only twice performed in Roman history, namely, as general to kill the opposing general with his own hands and strip him of his arms. He was many times very close to success but his prey always escaped him. Either the fellow galloped off the field or surrendered instead of fighting, or some officious soldier got the blow in first. Veterans telling me stories of my father have often chuckled admiringly: "Oh, Sir, it used to do our hearts good to see your father on his black horse playing hide-and-seek with one of those German chieftans. He'd be forced to cut down nine or ten of the bodyguard sometimes, tough men too, before he got near the standard and then the wily bird would be flown."
Fictional but still amusing, from now on whenever the enemy daimyo is on the battlefield mine engages him, man to man!
