The Hiroshima Castle Forfeit: In 1619, Why Was the Greatest Toyotomi-Loyal Daimyō Struck Down?

In June 1619 (Genna 5), at Edo Castle. The Tokugawa bakufu officially decided the forfeit of Fukushima Masanori from Hiroshima Castle.

It is a substantial reduction to one-tenth — the transfer from Aki and Bingo, two provinces at 498,000 koku, to Shinano Province Takaino at 45,000 koku.

The reason was Masanori's violation of the Buke Shohatto (Laws for the Military Houses) — the previous year he had repaired the stonework of Hiroshima Castle without the bakufu's permission.

But the essence was the policy of culling Toyotomi-loyal daimyō in the peacetime after the Ōsaka Campaigns (1615).

In June 1615, right after the destruction of the Toyotomi house, the Tokugawa bakufu promulgated the thirteen articles of the 'Buke Shohatto.

' Article 6 stipulated: 'The repair of residences and castles of the provinces must be reported; how much more so the new-scale construction, which is strictly forbidden.

' It codified that repair of castles required the bakufu's permission. In 1618, Masanori repaired the stonework of Hiroshima Castle without permission.

In March 1619, when the bakufu reproached him, Masanori apologized and was ordered to demolish the repaired portion, but was again pursued for insufficient demolition, and finally received the forfeit disposition.

In modern research, the unauthorized repair of Hiroshima Castle is interpreted as merely the formal reason for the forfeit, with the essence being the policy of culling Toyotomi-loyal daimyō by the Tokugawa bakufu.

After the complete destruction of the Toyotomi house at the Ōsaka Campaigns of 1615, the bakufu took the policy of stepwise reduction and forfeit of Toyotomi-loyal tozama daimyō.

The Kumamoto forfeit of Katō Kiyomasa's son Tadahiro (1632) and the Aizu forfeit of Katō Yoshiaki's son Akinari (1643) — the forfeits of famous Toyotomi-loyal houses continued after Masanori as well.

Masanori's Hiroshima forfeit became the earliest representative case of this policy.

In August 1619, Masanori was transferred to Takaino in Shinano Province (modern Takayama Village, Kami-Takai District, Nagano Prefecture).

He was fifty-eight. The man who had once been a daimyō of 490,000 koku spent his final five years in a small mountain-valley domain of 45,000 koku.

In July 1624 (Kan'ei 1), he died at Takaino. He was sixty-four. The successive deaths of same-generation Toyotomi-loyal warriors — Katō Kiyomasa (illness 1611, aged 50), Kuroda Nagamasa (illness 1623, aged 56) — symbolized the generational succession of the men who had fought the end of the Sengoku.

Masanori's grave still exists at Takayama Village in Nagano Prefecture, and visitors did not cease throughout the Edo period.

As a figure who embodied both the glory as a Toyotomi-Hideyoshi-raised warrior and the fall as a tozama daimyō under the Tokugawa regime, he was long remembered in Edo-period warrior society.