Hosokawa Fujitaka

Hosokawa Fujitaka ( Japanese 細 川 藤 孝 , also Hosokawa Yūsai , 細 川 幽 斎 ; * June 3, 1534 - October 6, 1610 ) was a Japanese prince , poet and founder of the Higo Hosokawa lineage.

Life

Hosokawa was initially in service at the court of the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiteru . There he emerged as a poet in collaboration with the renga master Satomura Joha . After Yoshiteru's death in 1565, he joined his younger brother Ashikaga Yoshiaki . When this was used by Oda Nobunaga as a Shogun, he followed him to Kyoto. After Oda Nobunaga had expelled Yoshiaki in 1573, Hosokawa joined this and received a fiefdom in the province of Tango in 1580 .

When Oda was killed by his former follower Akechi Mitsuhide in 1582 , Hosokawa refused to follow him, although he was related to Akechi through his eldest son Hosokawa Tadaoki , Akechi's son-in-law. He became a Buddhist monk and took the name Yūsai. He passed the title of daimyo to his son Tadaoki.

Nevertheless, Hosokawa remained politically active, initially as an advisor to General Toyotomi Hideyoshi , whom he accompanied in several battles, and later to the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu . In 1600, with a crew of 500, he managed to hold Tanabe Castle, his ancestral seat in the Tango province, against 15,000 besiegers of the samurai Ishida Mitsunari , which was not least due to the fact that they fired their cannons without bullets at the castle walls out of respect for Hosokawa . Only after a decree of the Emperor Go-Yōzei did he open the castle gates to the besiegers on October 19, which came too late for them to take part in the Battle of Sekigahara .

In addition to Waka poems, Hosokawa also wrote literary and historical writings. He owned a large number of historical writings and was considered an outstanding expert on the history of the city of Kyoto.

swell

• House of Japan - Hosokawa Fujitaka
• Samurai Archives - Hosokawa Fujitaka
• Louis Frédéric : Japan Encyclopedia . Harvard University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-674-00770-0 , pp. 358 (English, limited preview in the Google book search - French: Japon, dictionnaire et civilization . Translated by Käthe Roth).

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Hosokawa is the family name, Fujitaka the first name.