Hōjō Nagaudji was one of the prominent military commanders of the late Muromachi period. Thanks to a successful marriage alliance and skillful use of political intrigue, he managed to concentrate full power over the provinces of Suruga, Izu, and Sagami in his own hands. His origins remain unclear, but there is a possibility that he was connected to the Heiji clan of Ise Province, since early in his life he bore the name Ise Shinkurō.
In time, he arranged the marriage of his son Ujitsuna to a woman from the ancient and noble Hōjō family and himself adopted this surname—primarily to enhance his prestige, and possibly also to declare his political ambitions. The line he founded became known in history as the Go-Hōjō, that is, the “Later Hōjō.”
During the Ōnin disturbances, around 1475, Hōjō Nagaudji left his native lands and fled to Suruga Province, where he entered the service of the Imagawa clan under the protection of his relative Imagawa Yoshitada. After Yoshitada’s death in 1476, when a fierce internal conflict erupted within the clan, Shinkurō supported his nephew Yoshitaka. In gratitude for this assistance, Yoshitaka granted him Kokokuji Castle, a detachment of samurai, and the right to use a character from his own name. From that moment, the former novice Shinkurō became a close associate of one of the most powerful feudal lords of his time and the commander of a castle, now known as Ise Nagaudji.
Another opportunity to rise even higher appeared in 1490, when Ashikaga Tadamaro, the son of the daimyō of the neighboring province of Izu, murdered his father, mother, and younger brother, who had been named the heir. Without hesitation, Nagaudji surrounded the patricide with his troops in Horigoe Castle, where the latter soon took his own life. The vassals of the Ashikaga clan, without much regret, went over to Nagaudji’s side, and he thus took control of the entire province and adopted the ancient samurai surname Hōjō. After this, his attention was drawn to Odawara Castle, located nearby in Sagami Province.
Odawara was exceptionally well situated from a strategic standpoint and made it possible to control the entire Kantō Plain. The castle was owned by the young lord Ōmori Fujiyori. Having gained his trust, Nagaudji invited the lord on a deer hunt in 1495 and killed him there. Thus, in 1495, the Hōjō clan also took possession of Sagami Province.
Skillful diplomacy and a well-trained army enabled Nagaudji’s descendants to defeat the powerful Uesugi clan, which had ruled Kantō for two hundred years, and by the middle of the sixteenth century to expand their domains to eight provinces.
Nagaudji himself did not live to see this. In his old age, he took monastic vows and became known by his final name, Sōun, which means “Swift Cloud.” He died in 1519, leaving his son a remarkable set of family precepts known as the “Twenty-One Rules of Hōjō Sōun.”
These twenty-one rules were written shortly after Hōjō Sōun became a monk and reflected the entirety of his accumulated life experience. They established standards of behavior and a way of life for the ordinary warrior and show that their author was well acquainted with the daily life of the lower social strata. The range of advice contained in the rules is extraordinarily broad: from exhortations to study poetry, to master the art of horseback riding, and prohibitions against playing chess and go, to instructions on how best to defend one’s home and maintain order within it. All of the precepts are permeated by a spirit of self-confidence, which was both a result of Hōjō Sōun’s characteristic attention to detail and a reflection of his life path, through which he reached the heights of power.
Having achieved the pinnacle of power by the sword and stepping over the bodies of others, Sōun nevertheless did not become hardened. He governed his domains simply and wisely, reducing taxes to the necessary minimum, resolving disputes among his subjects fairly, and caring more about the welfare of his vassals than about his own wealth. Seeking to attract as many samurai as possible to Odawara, he reduced the tax burden from one-half of the harvest to two-fifths and, in general, took care of the people’s well-being.
Hōjō Sōun, like Asakura Toshikage, did not enjoy special esteem among historians. The reason for this was his ruthlessness and cruelty, with which he expanded his lands as a typical bloodthirsty gekokujō daimyō, opening the Age of the Warring Provinces. His contemporaries, on the contrary, highly valued his outstanding talent as a military commander and a capable administrator.
See also
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Hirano Nagayasu
From an early age, Hirano Nagayasu was in the service of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, since Nagayasu’s father, Nagaharu, had faithfully served Hideyoshi during Hideyoshi’s own childhood. Thus, the connection between the Hirano family and the Toyotomi house was established long before Hideyoshi’s rise to power and took the form of hereditary vassal loyalty.
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Hattori Hanzo
Hattori Hanzō, also known by the name Hattori Masanari, was the third son of Hattori Yasunaga, a samurai who served the Matsudaira clan. In his childhood he was called Tigachi Hanzō. His father held the highest rank in the shinobi hierarchy, that of jōnin, and Hanzō followed in his father’s footsteps, choosing the same path.
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Hatano Hideharu
Hatano Hideharu was the eldest son of Hatano Harumichi, the head of the Hatano clan. However, in childhood he was adopted by his uncle, Hatano Motohide, and was therefore formally regarded as Motohide’s heir. From the time of Hideharu’s grandfather, Hatano Tanemichi, the Hatano clan had been a vassal of the powerful Miyoshi house, which exerted considerable influence over the Ashikaga shoguns and effectively shaped the political situation in the region. Early in his career, Hideharu served Miyoshi Nagayoshi and, judging by surviving records, held a fairly high position within his lord’s hierarchy, as he was among the select group invited to the enthronement ceremony of Emperor Ōgimachi in 1557.
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Fukushima Masanori
Fukushima Masanori, a samurai from Owari Province, served Toyotomi Hideyoshi and took part in the Battle of Shizugatake, where he distinguished himself so conspicuously that he was awarded the honorary title of one of the “Seven Spears of Shizugatake,” meaning the warriors who had shown the greatest valor in the battle. As a reward for his courage and martial prowess, he was granted land producing an income of 5,000 koku of rice.
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Uemura Masakatsu
Masakatsu was a member of the Uemura clan and the son of Uemura Masatada; from an early age he served Tokugawa Ieyasu. During the Ikkō-ikki uprising in Mikawa Province in 1563, having converted from the Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist sect to the Jōdoshū sect, he took part in suppressing the rebels. After these events, Masakatsu was appointed a military governor and was granted land holdings. According to a number of sources, he was one of the so-called “Three Governors of Mikawa” (Mikawa sanbugyō), together with Amano Yasukage (1537–1613) and Koriki Kiyonaga (1530–1608).
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Tomoe Gozen
Gozen is regarded as one of the few historically documented examples of true female warriors of feudal Japan, known as onna-musha or onna-bugeisha. Although Japanese history records countless women who at various times were forced to take up arms—for example, in defense of their castles—Tomoe Gozen was, without any doubt, a genuinely skilled and accomplished fighter. She was the wife of Kiso (Minamoto) Yoshinaka, although The Tale of the Heike describes her more as a female vassal. Yoshinaka rose in rebellion against the Taira clan and, in 1184, captured Kyoto after his victory at the Battle of Kurikawa. After the Taira were driven into the western provinces, Yoshinaka began insistently asserting that he alone was worthy of assuming leadership of the Minamoto clan and taking on the mantle of its head.
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Tachibana Muneshige
Tachibana Muneshige was born the eldest son of Takahashi Shigetane, one of the principal retainers of the Ōtomo clan and commander of Iwaya Castle. In childhood, he bore the name Senkumamaru. His early years coincided with a period of intense military confrontation between the Ōtomo clan and other powerful warrior houses of Kyūshū—namely the Shimazu, Akizuki, and Ryūzōji clans.
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Tachibana Dosetsu
Tachibana Dōsetsu is the name by which Hetsugi Akitsura is more widely known; the name of this lineage is also found read as Hekki or Bekki. For a long period, Akitsura served the Ōtomo clan, the daimyō of Bungo Province, and took part in wars against the Ōuchi family, the principal enemies of the Ōtomo in northwestern Kyushu. In the 1560s, Akitsura seized the castle of the Tachibana clan, which had rebelled against the Ōtomo, and thereafter adopted the surname Tachibana. Around the same time, he took Buddhist vows and assumed the name Dōsetsu, which means “Snowy Road.”
