The Seven Spears of Shizugatake: In 1583, the Twenty-Two-Year-Old Masanori Made His Name

On April 21, 1583 (Tenshō 11), at Shizugatake in Ōmi Province (modern Nagahama City, Shiga Prefecture).

The day of the decisive battle between the Shibata Katsuie army and the Hashiba Hideyoshi army.

Among the vanguard of the Hideyoshi army was the still-young Fukushima Masanori.

He was twenty-two — his first great battle as Hideyoshi's retainer. On this day Masanori took the head of the enemy commander Haigō Ieyoshi, and together with Katō Kiyomasa, Wakisaka Yasuharu, Hirano Nagayasu, Kasuya Takenori, Katagiri Katsumoto, and Katō Yoshiaki, came to be called 'the seven men of the first spear.

After Nobunaga's death at Honnō-ji in June 1582, the conflict between Hashiba Hideyoshi and Shibata Katsuie within the Oda house intensified rapidly.

In April 1583, the two finally clashed at Shizugatake. The Hideyoshi army marched day and night from Ōgaki in Mino to northern Ōmi and struck the flank of the Katsuie army.

As the vanguard of this surprise-march engagement, young Hideyoshi-raised warriors including Fukushima Masanori were sent in.

Their youth and valor became the decisive blow that broke the Katsuie army.

The designation 'Seven Spears of Shizugatake' itself is not from immediately after Shizugatake, but a later-formed literary evaluation.

The warriors who actually achieved the feat of first-spear on the day were around nine, but in later narrative-making were organized down to seven.

Fukushima Masanori, Katō Kiyomasa, Wakisaka Yasuharu, Hirano Nagayasu, Kasuya Takenori, Katagiri Katsumoto, Katō Yoshiaki.

All seven were young Hideyoshi-raised men, and would go on to fill important positions as principal warriors of the subsequent Hideyoshi regime.

The 'Seven Spears' was transmitted to later generations as a watershed event in the formation of Hideyoshi's retainer body.

By the feat of Shizugatake, Masanori was granted 5,000 koku by Hideyoshi, and thereafter was rapidly increased.

In 1585, Iyo Imabari at 110,000 koku; in 1595, Owari Kiyosu at 200,000 koku. From a mere retainer at only around twenty, he rose in a little over ten years to become a daimyō of 200,000 koku.

The starting point of his glory as a Hideyoshi-raised warrior lay in the first-spear of Shizugatake on April 21, 1583.

For the next thirty-six years, Masanori's life would be pierced by the fate of being a Hideyoshi-loyal warrior — until the final Hiroshima forfeit.