Shinchō-Kō ki, the work translated here into English under the title "The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga," is the most important source on the career of one of the best known figures in all of Japanese history--Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), the first of the "Three Heroes" who unified Japan after a century of fragmentation and internecine bloodshed. The other two of the triad, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616),...