Chōsokabe Motochika

Born in 1539 (Tenbun 8) as the eldest son of Chōsokabe Kunichika, lord of Oko Castle in Tosa Province. In childhood he was mocked as 'the little princess-boy' for being fair-skinned and quiet, but at his first battle, the Battle of Nagahama in 1560 (Eiroku 3), at the age of twenty-two, he showed valor that reversed all expectations and astonished those around him.

Thereafter, leading the half-farmer, half-soldier vassal band called 'ichiryō-gusoku,' he unified Tosa. He then extended his domain into Awa, Sanuki, and Iyo, and by around 1585 (Tenshō 13) had taken most of Shikoku.

But that same year, subjected to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's (this site's id 2) conquest of Shikoku, he surrendered and was allowed to keep only the single province of Tosa.

In 1586 (Tenshō 14), at the Battle of the Hetsugi River, in which he took part in Hideyoshi's conquest of Kyushu, he lost his eldest son Nobuchika in the fighting against the Shimazu army.

The death of his beloved son at twenty-two changed Motochika deeply; thereafter he became suspicious, and left the seed of a purge over the succession within his house.

In 1597 he enacted the house law 'The Hundred Articles of Chōsokabe Motochika.' In the fifth month of 1599 (Keichō 4), he died of illness at Fushimi.

He was sixty-one. It was the year before Sekigahara. His fourth son Morichika succeeded him, but sided with the Western army at Sekigahara and was dispossessed, and the Chōsokabe house perished as a daimyō house.

“With Nobuchika lost, my Shikoku and my heart are half dead. There is nothing left now that I would grudge to give.”

Chōsokabe Motochika rose from a single lord of Tosa and, in a single generation, achieved one of the foremost expansions of domain in the Sengoku, taking most of Shikoku.

Its driving force lay in the mobility of the half-farmer, half-soldier vassal band called 'ichiryō-gusoku' — farmers in peacetime, soldiers in war.

But Motochika's glory did not last long. Before the ruler of the realm, Hideyoshi, the dream of unifying Shikoku was shrunk to the single province of Tosa, and further, the loss of his eldest son Nobuchika at the Hetsugi River cast a deep shadow over the second half of his life.

The grief of losing his beloved son changed Motochika into a suspicious man and brought on conflict and purge over the succession within his house.

This lingering trouble became a remote cause of the dispossession of his fourth son Morichika, who sided with the Western army at Sekigahara after Motochika's death, and the Chōsokabe house perished as a daimyō house.

Even so, the house law 'The Hundred Articles of Chōsokabe Motochika' he enacted, and the spirit of the ichiryō-gusoku rooted in Tosa, were inherited by the later gōshi (rural samurai) class of the Tosa domain.

It became one of the soils that produced the Bakumatsu figures Sakamoto Ryōma (this site's id 8) and Takechi Hanpeita (this site's id 67).

The Oko Castle ruins in Nankoku City, Kōchi Prefecture, convey the traces of Motochika's base to the present.