Date · Date
Date Masamune
“The One-Eyed Dragon”
Heir of Date Terumune, lord of Yonezawa Castle. He lost his right eye to smallpox as a child and was called "the One-Eyed Dragon." Succeeding at eighteen, he cut his way out of the encirclement at Hitotoribashi, and at Suriagehara in Tenshō 17 destroyed the great Ashina house in a single day, took Aizu and became master of southern Ōshū. But the following year he answered Toyotomi Hideyoshi's summons to Odawara dressed in white, submitted, and saw his dream of expansion cut short by the ban on private war. He sided with the Tokugawa at Sekigahara and Osaka and laid the foundation of the Sendai domain, 620,000 koku. A lover of display whose name gave Japanese the word "date" for a dandy, he was also a man of refinement and enterprise who sent an embassy to Europe. He left the Chinese poem that begins "On horseback the years of youth passed."
- Epithet
- “The One-Eyed Dragon”
- Rank / office
- Governor of Mutsu / First Lord of Sendai
- Domain / base
- Dewa and Mutsu (Yonezawa → Iwadeyama → Sendai)
- Banner / crest
- Sparrow in bamboo
- Side
- Date
- Lived
- 1567–1636 (aged 70)
On horseback the years of youth passed; the world is at peace and my hair is white.
Date Masamune, "Verses Spoken in Drink"
Life
- Eiroku 10 Birth: Bontenmaru Born the heir of Date Terumune, lord of Yonezawa Castle. He lost his right eye to smallpox as a child.
- Tenshō 13 The Crisis at Hitotoribashi Just after his succession he was surrounded by the great Satake–Ashina army and barely cut his way out.
- Tenshō 17 Victory at Suriagehara Beat Ashina Yoshihiro at Suriagehara, seized Aizu and became master of southern Ōshū.
- Tenshō 18 Submission to Hideyoshi Came to Odawara dressed in white, submitted to the Toyotomi and lost Aizu.
- Keichō 6 Founding Sendai After Sekigahara he built a castle town at Sendai and laid the foundation of a domain of 620,000 koku.
Battles in this archive1 battles
Related sites
- Sendai Castle ruins, Aoba Castle (Sendai, Miyagi)
- Zuihōden (Sendai, Miyagi)
- Ōsaki Hachiman Shrine (Sendai, Miyagi)