The Five Senior Rōnin of Osaka Castle: Why Hideyori Recruited Veterans

In Keichō 19 (1614), in preparation for the coming Winter Siege of Osaka, Toyotomi Hideyori issued a general call and assembled a large body of rōnin into Osaka Castle. The total force exceeded a hundred thousand, drawn almost entirely from the survivors and descendants of the former Western Army daimyō houses destroyed after Sekigahara (1600). At the operational core of this army stood five figures — Gotō Matabei, Sanada Yukimura (Nobushige), Mōri Katsunaga, Akashi Takenori, and Chōsokabe Morichika — collectively known as the Five Senior Rōnin of Osaka.

Why Rōnin

Hideyori recruited rōnin because in the fourteen years after Sekigahara there were essentially no remaining daimyō allies. Ieyasu's post-Sekigahara settlement had eliminated or reduced the Western Army daimyō and redistributed their territories to Eastern Army daimyō and Tokugawa-line houses. By 1614, almost no daimyō with significant resources could afford to align with the 650,000-koku Toyotomi remnant. To assemble combat capability, the only option was to re-recruit retainers and family members of the destroyed Western Army houses, and individuals who had been stateless rōnin for the intervening decade-plus.

Backgrounds of the Five

Each of the five had reached Osaka through hardship after Sekigahara. Sanada Yukimura had been confined at Kudoyama for fourteen years after the Western Army defeat. Gotō Matabei had left the Kuroda in 1611 and spent a decade as a rōnin. Mōri Katsunaga's father Yoshinari had died at Sekigahara on the Western side and the family had been reduced; the son had lived quietly in Tosa. Akashi Takenori, of the destroyed Ukita house, had gone into hiding as a Christian after the abolition. Chōsokabe Morichika had inherited the Chōsokabe headship after his father's death only to lose everything at Sekigahara as a Western Army member; abolished, he had been running a small private school in Kyoto.

Five Deaths and One Disappearance

In the Winter Siege of 1614 the Five Senior Rōnin formed the operational core of the Osaka defense, with Sanada Yukimura's defense of the southern Sanada Maru against the Tokugawa earning particular renown. In the Summer Siege of 1615 the fates of the five diverged sharply. Gotō Matabei was killed at Dōmyōji on May 6. Sanada Yukimura was killed at Tennōji on May 7. Mōri Katsunaga was killed on the same day, May 7. Akashi Takenori disappeared around the same time (a tradition has it that Christian congregants sheltered him). Chōsokabe Morichika fled until May 15, was captured, and was executed. The hundred-thousand-strong rōnin army was destroyed in the two days of the main battle.

What the End of the Rōnin Class Meant

The deaths of the Five Senior Rōnin and the fall of Osaka Castle marked the institutional end of the Sengoku period. The social stratum of post-Sekigahara rōnin — masterless warriors produced in volume by the post-1600 settlement — essentially ceased to exist after Osaka. The Tokugawa bakufu, with this battle behind it, reorganized the Buke Shohatto to suppress the further generation of rōnin, and so secured the social base of the two-and-a-half-century Tokugawa peace. The names of the Five have been carried by Edo-period storytelling and kabuki as 'the last generation of the warrior class,' and modern historical fiction has continued to return to them as a standing theme.

"We five gather for the sake of the House of Toyotomi."