Prince Akechi Mitsuhide's death, July 2, 1582

Fleeing with a few retainers from the battlefield at Yamazaki to his castle at Sakamoto, Mitsuhide crosses a bamboo forest. A band of marauding peasants, hoping for booty on the edge of the battle, attacks them. Mitsuhide is fatally shot in the side by a peasant's bamboo lance.
In truth, it is not known how Mitsuhide actually perished. A defeated lord had sepukku to commit on the battlefield. By imputing to him an escape and death by the lance of a peasant, one belittles the hated usurpartor. Regardless, the legend of his death in the bamboo grove has become deeply embedded in the collective memory of the Japanese.

Akechi Mitsuhide, 1528 July 2, 1582),[1] first called Jubei from his clan and later Koreto Hyuga no Kami from his title, was a Japanese samurai general of the Sengoku period best known as the assassin of Oda Nobunaga.