Imai Sōkyū

Is a marchant living in the city of Sakai. his company is the same one Nobuna buys her arquebus from and he is a promanent business rival of Tsuda Sougyu.

Personality
He is quite friendly towards others but when it comes to business he can be quite ruthless. He warned Yoshiharu, when the latter told him that his goal would be to invent a whole new flavour of Takoyaki, his product, as a means of winning over Sakai's merchants and raising the money the Oda clan needed, that he was likely to backstab him hence forth. Indeed he did pretend not to notice Tsuda Sougyu's cheating to make Juubei the winner of their challenge, essentially meaning that he sold Yoshiharu out, and did so specifically to buy the new flavour of takoyaki from Yoshiharu and maintain control over the market.

Regardless of the above he is quite an honest person, as he truly believes in Yoshiharu, enough to risk his manopoly on Takoyaki, his main selling product, on Yoshiharu's words. He is also confident in Nobuna's ability to achieve her dream and considers it a risky but wise investment.

He is very cunning as merely by allowing Tsuda Sougyu to cheat he was able to land himself in a better long term position than the man, this is because while Sougyu wanted to take the seat of representative of the merchants of Sakai from him, he completely allowed it for the sake of buying Yoshiharu's new fried Takoyaki and investing in Nobuna, justifying it as he can just take back the seat of representative later down the line.

Background
He met Nobuhide and his daughter, Nobuna, ten years ago when they first visited Sakai for business. He knows Nobuna rather well, and though he can't seem to understand her dream he does understand that it's because she is not a fool. He has such insight into the matter that he knew the major difference between her and Mitsuhide: Nobuna's mother dislikes her and considers her a fool while Mitsuhide's mother is smart enough to recognise her daughter's qualities for what they really are and nurtures them.

He has been business rivals with Tsuda Sougyu for many years.

Kyoto Arc

 * Main Article: Kyoto Arc