Magara Jurōzaemon Naotaka was a vassal of Asakura Yoshikage from the province of Echizen, and very little is known about his life, including even the exact year of his birth. Magara gained his renown through his heroic death at the Battle of Anegawa in 1570. In this battle, the combined forces of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu confronted the armies of Asai and Asakura, with Ieyasu taking command of the left flank and fighting against the Asakura forces. After crossing the shallow Anegawa River, which separated the two armies, Tokugawa’s finest generals — Honda Tadakatsu and Sakakibara Yasumasa — launched an assault on the headquarters of Asakura Kagetake, the commander-in-chief of the Echizen army. The attack by Honda Tadakatsu was so swift that Kagetake found himself almost completely surrounded by enemy troops.
At this critical moment, one of the samurai volunteered to cover the retreat of the Asakura forces. Nobunaga-ki, a chronicle of Oda Nobunaga’s deeds written during the Edo period based on the memoirs of Ota Ushikazu, a vassal of Nobunaga, recounts the event as follows: “In the heat of battle, a lone warrior from the Asakura camp named Magara Jurōzaemon spurred his horse forward and, spinning above his head a sword nearly as long as he was tall, as if it were the wheel of a watermill, charged straight into the center of the enemy ranks, shouting: ‘Those among you who have the courage, step forward and face me one-on-one!’” In this way he challenged any Tokugawa samurai willing to confront him. This bold maneuver not only ensured that his feat would be remembered, but also bought precious time for his comrades to withdraw.
The first to accept his challenge was a vassal of the Ogasawara clan named Nagatada, whom Naotaka killed after a brief clash. Soon afterward, his son, Magara Jūrōsaburō Naomoto, joined him, and together they retreated alongside the withdrawing Asakura forces, covering each other and repelling the fierce attacks of the Tokugawa warriors. At one point, four opponents struck at father and son simultaneously: the three Kosaka brothers — Shikibu, Gorōjirō, and Rokurōgorō — and a samurai named Yamada Muneroku. With a single powerful strike of his massive sword, Magara Jurōzaemon wounded Kosaka Shikibu in the thigh; with a second swing, he knocked off Shikibu’s helmet, cutting through the cords that held it in place, and finally he even sliced through Shikibu’s spear. The younger brother, Gorōjirō, rushed to help but was struck in the side. Yamada Muneroku, a sixty-year-old veteran, also joined the fight, but his spear too was cut in half. The third brother, armed with a jumonjū-yari — a spear with a cross-shaped blade — managed to strike Magara Naotaka and knock him from his horse. Before he could recover from the blow, Jurōzaemon was killed and beheaded. His son Naomoto attempted to break through to the retreating Asakura troops, but he was intercepted by a samurai who called himself Aoki Jōzaemon, and after a fierce duel he was also killed.
Nevertheless, the sacrifice of the Magara father and son was not in vain. Their desperate resistance allowed Asakura Kagetake to gather the scattered troops and bring them home in relatively good order. However, Asakura Yoshikage himself managed to remain in power for only three more years before suffering final defeat.
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