Fukushima Masanori

Born in 1561 (Eiroku 4) at Futatsudera Village in Kaitō District, Owari Province (the modern Ama City, Aichi Prefecture) as the son of a barrel-maker.

Because his mother was a cousin of Hideyoshi's mother Ōmandokoro, he served Hashiba Hideyoshi from his youth. At the Battle of Shizugatake in 1583 (Tenshō 11), together with Katō Kiyomasa (this site's id 18) and six others, he achieved the feat of first-spear and was counted at the head of the 'Seven Spears of Shizugatake.

' From then on he took part in nearly all of Hideyoshi's major campaigns. In 1585 he was given Iyo Imabari at 110,000 koku, and in 1595 Owari Kiyosu at 200,000 koku.

At the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 (Keichō 5), he sided with the Eastern Army under Tokugawa Ieyasu and played a decisive role in the preemptive attack on the Western Army.

His fierce personal antagonism with Ishida Mitsunari created the current that drew many Toyotomi-loyal daimyō to the Eastern Army.

After the battle, he was transferred by Ieyasu to Aki-Hiroshima at 498,000 koku. But in 1619 (Genna 5), on the grounds of repairing Hiroshima Castle without the shogunate's permission, he was stripped of his fief by the bakufu and transferred to Shinano Province Takaino at 45,000 koku.

It became the representative case of the forfeiture of a Toyotomi-loyal daimyō in the Edo period. He died at Takaino in 1624 (Kan'ei 1).

He was sixty-four.

“The Taikō's favor shall not be forgotten. But the times have changed.”

Masanori's life symbolizes the process by which Hideyoshi-raised warriors were culled with the arrival of the Tokugawa regime.

The glory that began with his youthful feat at Shizugatake in 1583 ended with the forfeiture at Hiroshima in 1619. The Tokugawa bakufu's judgment to forfeit a 500,000-koku-class Toyotomi-loyal daimyō in peacetime, in the period of peace after the Ōsaka Campaigns, became a precedent for the control of tozama daimyō thereafter.

The reason for the Hiroshima Castle stonework repair was the formal violation of the Buke Shohatto (Laws for the Military Houses), but is substantially evaluated as part of the policy of reducing and forfeiting Toyotomi-loyal daimyō.

The lonely death at Takaino in 1624, together with the ends of same-generation Toyotomi-loyal warriors — Kiyomasa (illness 1611), Kuroda Nagamasa (illness 1623) — marked one juncture in the end of the Sengoku and the consolidation of Tokugawa rule.

Remains of Masanori survive in the main bailey of Hiroshima Castle, and Masanori's grave still exists in Takayama Village (former Takaino), Nagano Prefecture.