THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL INSTITUTE THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

#146
146. MILITARY SERVICE, 1576 AND c. 1578

THE great house of Ito, led by its valiant lord Yoshisuke (1513-1585), had already established its
control over a large part of north Hiuga and at Obi. Its conflict with the Shimadzu had hitherto
been on the main indirect, but now they came into a violent clash under the shadow of Mts.
Kirishima. Between this system of volcanic elevations and the range that separates Hiuga from
Higo, there lies a strip of verdant lowland through which flow the rivers Iwase and upper Sendai,
the one to the east and the other to the west and south. It is here that the forces of the three kuni
led personally by the chiefs of the rival houses met for sanguinary struggles. We need not tarry to
narrate the battle of Kizaki-hara, of June 1572, in which the Ito lost many of their best warriors;
the fierce fighting avout Taka-baru, east of Mt. Kirishima, in October 1576;² and Yoshisuke's final
defeat at No-zhiri, To-zaki, and Kamiya, in January 1578. He fled almost a solitary fugitive to
Bungo, and appealed to the lord Otomo for revenge.
In the campaign of 1576, Shimadzu Yoshihisa together with his brothers Yoshihiro and Iehisa,
brought into the field a huge army raised from the whole of Satsuma and Osumi, as well as from
Sho-nai in Hiuga, the original-Shimaszu sho; and men of the Shibuya fellowed Iehisa. They
probably served also in the battles of the next year, when Yoshihisa came with more than six
thousand knights. The following document A is a somewhat later copy of the import of the general
order for the special military service issued in preparation of the expedition of 1576.
Having already put under the yoke of vassalage all the rivals, old and new, who had resisted the
rule of his house, and having subdued Kimotsuki, the only remaining foe in Osumi, and now de-
cisively broken the power of the Ito, Shimadzu Yoshihisa had become the acknowledged suzerain
of the major part of south Kyu-shu. The scene had been cleared for greater events, and these now
followed with dramatic swiftness. The historic Otomo family, in Bungo of central Kyu-shu, which
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was then aspiring for the control of the island, found its advance northward checked by the newly
risen powers of the Ryu-zo-zhi and others; at this juncture, Ito Yoshisuke came from the south, and
pleaded for his rehabilitation at Sadowara, Hiuga. Crushing the Tsuchimochi, in northern Hiuga,
where they had been established for seven hundred years,⁴ Otomo So-Rin threw upon the plains of
this coastal region a fundred thousand, some say more, men raised in his wide dominion. Then
followed the heroic defense of Taka-zho by a thousand warriors against the vast hordes of the
enemy; the succor of the Shimadzu lords with an even greater army; and the terrific contest. on
10 December 1578, in which the Otomo lost a half of thier hosts, either drowned in the river
Omaru or strewn dead over the ground for miles between the fortress and Mimigawa.⁵ So-Rin fied,
vowing an unending vengeance; Sadowara was permanently annexed by the Shimadzu.
Men of Iriki again followed the shu-go into the field. The document B is probably a note of the
general order for the military service in this campaign.

#146-A
A
(SK,2nd series, VI.)
"APPORTIONMENT of men(shu mori) at the time of the attack upon the
fortress of Taka-baru, Ten-sho 4th year [1576].
"Assignment [of service] for the expedition:
"Those [holding] one cho⁶ of ta: one man per cho, [meaning] two men, master
and follower; providing their own rice for food. Besides, one attendant laborer (tsume-
fu) shall be provided by the churches and temples; 3 draught hourses shall be assessed
upon churches and temples.
"Next, the implements to be carried:
"1 te-kabushi,⁷ height 3 1/2 shaku, width 2 1/2 shaku; 1 log, 6 shaku long;
1 hoe(kuwa); 1 broad-axe(yoki); 1 sickle(kama);
1 saw(noko); 1 chisel(nomi); 1 adze(nada)
1 dirt-carrier(mokko);⁸ 1 coil of rope.
"Those [holding more than] 2 cho: one man per cho, [meaning] three men,
master and followers; providing their own rice for food. 2 draught horses shall be
assessed upon churches and temples, as well as windows.
"The aforesaid implements for work(fu-shin) shall be carried into the camps at the
rate stated above for each cho of ta.
"Up to 100 cho and 1,000 cho, the assessments shall be [the proportionate mul-
tiples of that for] one cho of ta.
"Those who have no land(mu-ashi shu) shall provide between two of them one
attendant laborer(tsume-fu)⁹ being assessed [also?] upon churches and temples, and
widows; rice for food to be their own provision. 3 draught horses shall be provided
likewise by churches and temples.
"For thirty days during the expedition the rice for food shall be self-support;
beyond thirty days, it will be provided by the authorities.¹⁰ Those [holding ta] be-
tween five and mine tan shall proide their own rice for food; those between one and
four tan shall receive rice for food from the authorities.¹⁰
"Ten-sho 4 y. 8 m. 1 d. [24 August 1576]."

[Notes in red added during the Tokugawa period quote opinions estimationg the equivalents of a cho
in terms of koku or rice: two say that the average of one cho of all grades of ta would be 35 koku,
another gives 14 koku, and still another says]:-
"The taka of 8,000 cho was 240,000 koku. At this rate, 1,000 cho were 30,000 koku; 100 cho,
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3,000 koku; 10 cho, 300 koku; 1 cho, 30 koku. According to the record office, the assessment of
taka followed from former times was as stated above; that is, at those times one cho was computed
at 30 koku . . ."

¹Shimadzu koku-shi, xviii, 10-11; Nisshu hei-ji ki, by the priest Bun-Shi (1607).
²Shimadzu k. s., xviii, 20-21; Nisshu h. j. k. ³Shimadzu k. s., xviii, 23; Nisshu h. j. k.
⁴En-ryo sei-kan; etc.
⁵Shimadzu koku-shi, xviii, 26-27; Nisshu h. j. k.
⁶Meaning more than one cho and less than two.
⁷Not clear; literally, "hand cover."
⁸Small rope-net with loops at the ends through which a pole may be thrust in for carrying on
two men's shoulders. See E. S. Morse, Japan day by day, 1917. I, 117.
⁹This would remind one of Charlemagne's capitularies ordering the poorer subjects to combine
themselves in groups, so that each group should be able to equip and send one of the men in hostem.
¹⁰Ko-gi. For the word ko, see No. 142, n. 2; gi, as in the many phrases of this and later ages
in which this character is used, cannot be said to mean anything more than "matter" or "fact,"
and hardly adds anything to the general meaning of the phrase or clause in which it occurs. Ko-gi
here, which has been translated as "authorities," refers to the Shimadzu lord's council.
¹¹See n. 6; the following numbers from 2 to 10 cho should be considered similarly.
¹²This is a probable sense of the clause: zhin-tai wa zhin-yaku taru beki koto. The phrase zhin-
tai, literally, personal body, seems peculiar to the Shimadzu barony, and was used in varied mean-
ings; here, as in No. 150B, it appears to refer to the principal person mentioned, that, is, in this con-
nection, the master(shu). The second zhin(hito), if it is not a miscopy of some other word, also
means person; here, the probable significance is that service by proxy should be excluded. The
clause must apply to all the holders here classified.

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