was a Japanese war lord Daimyo

Daimyo

is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...

 of the Azuchi–Momoyama period through early Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 who in his youth was famed as one of the Seven Spears of Shizugatake

Seven Spears of Shizugatake

The ' were mounted bodyguards for Toyotomi Hideyoshi at the battle of Shizugatake in 1583. At the decisive moment in the battle, Hideyoshi ordered them to leave the position and charge at the opposing army of Katsuie Shibata...

. (The battle took place in May 1583).

Katsumoto hailed from an ancient samurai clan with a long and distinguished history. In the early Middle Ages, Clan Katagiri served the Minamoto family, traditional head of the samurais that supplied early Shiguns and their government, and ruled the southern most part of Shinano region for nearly 500 years.

Despite of his linage and the promising start at Shizugatake, Katsumoto's rise under Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Toyotomi Hideyoshi

was a daimyo warrior, general and politician of the Sengoku period. He unified the political factions of Japan. He succeeded his former liege lord, Oda Nobunaga, and brought an end to the Sengoku period. The period of his rule is often called the Momoyama period, named after Hideyoshi's castle...

 was relatively slow, compared to his fellow "seven spears" which included Kato Kiyomasa

Kato Kiyomasa

was a Japanese daimyō of the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo period.-Origins and early career:Kiyomasa was born in Owari Province to Katō Kiyotada. Kiyotada's wife, Ito, was a cousin of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's mother. Kiyotada died while his son was still young...

 and Fukushima Masanori

Fukushima Masanori

was a Japanese daimyo of the late Sengoku Period to early Edo Period who served as lord of the Hiroshima Domain. A retainer of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he fought in the battle of Shizugatake in 1583, and soon became known as one of Seven Spears of Shizugatake which also included Katō Kiyomasa and...

. More of a court samurai rather than a warrior as Kato and Fukushima certainly were, Katsumoto was kept in Osaka

Osaka

is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

 region, the de-fact capital of Japan under the Toyotomi family, and his holdings were in Ibaraki area in the north. (where today stands a small bronze statue).

After the battle of Sekigahara　(1600) which followed Hideyoshi's death, Katsumoto was appointed the chamberlain of the Toyotomi household whose fortune, with infant Hideyori, only son of Hideyoshi, as the head of the dynasty, became increasingly precarious before the over-mighty and ambitious Tokugawa Ieyasu

Tokugawa Ieyasu

 was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan , which ruled from the Battle of Sekigahara  in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu seized power in 1600, received appointment as shogun in 1603, abdicated from office in 1605, but...

.

The ensuing 15 years, Katsumoto sought to negotiate a compromise between ruthless Ieyasu who had already decided to destroy his former master's dynasty once and for all and was only waiting for the right time to pounce on one hand, and stubborn and haughty Yodo-dono

Yodo-Dono

or was a prominently-placed figure in late-Sengoku period. She was a concubine and second wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was then the most powerful man in Japan. She also became the mother of his son and successor, Hideyori. She was also known as Lady Chacha...

, mother of young Hideyori, who was hopelessly out of touch with the new Tokugawa rule on the other.

Increasingly suspicious of Katsumoto's loyalty, Yodo-dono finally banished Tatsumoto from Osaka castle which directly resulted in the siege of Osaka

Siege of Osaka

The was a series of battles undertaken by the Tokugawa shogunate against the Toyotomi clan, and ending in that clan's destruction. Divided into two stages , and lasting from 1614 to 1615, the siege put an end to the last major armed opposition to the shogunate's establishment...

(1614-5) by Ieyasu's 200,000 strong army. The following summer, the Toyotomi family was annihilated with mother and son committed suicide within the burning castle.

Katsumoto's precise role in all of this saga is unclear. However, his understandable anguish was later dramatised in Kabuki

Kabuki

is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...

 theatre where Katsumoto cut a tragic figure in Hamlet's mould. In Tsubouchi Shoyo

Tsubouchi Shoyo

__NoTOC__ was a Japanese author, critic, playwright, translator, editor, educator, and professor at Waseda University. He was born Tsubouchi Yūzō , in Gifu prefecture...

's play "Kiri-hitoha", which describes the fall of the house of Toyotomi, Katsumoto, the main character, is a faithful servant with good intentions and keen sense of reality but rendered powerless caught in the whirlwind of dynastic struggle. At the climax of the play, Katsumoto famously deplores that the fate finally caught up with the house of Toyotomi. The play, which may well be the best modern Kabuki piece written by arguably the best playwright of modern Japan (published 1894-5, first staged in 1904), made "Katagiri Katsumoto" a household name and remains one of the best and most popular modern Kabuki plays.

Katsumoto died only 20 days after the fall of the Osaka castle for unknown reasons, though the rumour of seppuku

Seppuku

is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies , or as a form of capital punishment...

 was rife. Although his own linage died out later in the seventeenth century, Katsumoto's younger brother and his family maintained Katagiri's name and its standing as a Daimyo. The descendants of which were ennobled in 1884 and retained the title of Viscounts until 1946 when the system was abolished.

As to the history of Katagiri family as Daimyo and their ancestors Clan Katagiri that lasted from around 1100 to 1582 in Shinano region,see the link below (Japanese)

External links

• Biographical information (in Japanese)

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