Uesugi Kenshin - Uesugi Kenshin's Death

Uesugi Kenshin's Death

The cause of Kenshin's death has been questioned throughout the years. The theory accepted by most Japanese scholars is that a lifetime of heavy drinking and perhaps stomach cancer spelled the end for the great warlord.

Other sources hold that he was assassinated by a ninja who had been waiting in the cess pool beneath the latrine at Kenshin's camp with a short spear. (Note that the theories are not mutually exclusive — the assassin, if he existed, might simply have fatally wounded an already-dying man.) It is said that upon hearing of Kenshin's death, Oda Nobunaga remarked, "Now the empire is mine."