Is it the end of a tragedy or Masamune's conspiracy?... The life of Date Masamune's father, Terumune [Fukushima Prefecture]

Yuto Ono
2025.01.16
Last updated: 2025.04.1

table of contents

1 The birth of Date Terumune
2 Feud with his father, Harumune
3 Restored the power of the Date clan
4 Retirement
5 Shot dead on the Abukuma River
6 summary

Many people who have a connection to Yonezawa or Sendai are familiar with the military commander and feudal lord Date Masamune, even if they are not particularly interested in history.
But what about
Masamune's father, Of course, without Terumune Masamune would not have been born, and it can also be said that Terumune built the foundation for Masamune's expansion of power.
However, Terumune's end was, at the very least, tragic, and it is even thought that it may have been the result of Masamune's conspiracy.

The birth of Date Terumune

Date Terumune was born
in 1544 (Tenbun 13) Nishiyama Castle, Date County as the second son of Date Harumune His childhood name was Hikotaro, and he later became Sojiro.
Although he was the second son, his older brother, the eldest son, was already set to be adopted by his maternal grandfather, so Sojiro was quickly chosen as the successor to the Date family.

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[Fukushima Prefecture] Is Kuwaori Town, the northern town, the birthplace of the Date family?

https://jp.neft.asia/archives/17958

Date Gunkoori Town, Date District, Fukushima Prefecture is a town located in the northern part of the Nakadori region (central part) of Fukushima Prefecture. "Former Date County Office" designated as an important cultural property of the country The Tosando Road, which connected Mutsu Province (Mutsu Province) and Dewa Province (Dewanokuchi Province), ran through it. Since the Edo period, Tosando has been called Oshu Kaido, and Kuwaori was the junction with Ushu Kaido, which heads towards Akita, so it developed greatly as a post town, Kuwaori-juku. ..

As a quick aside, it was not uncommon for military commanders to have many children in this era (such as Oda Nobunaga and his father Nobuhide, Hojo Ujiyasu, and Tokugawa Ieyasu).
However, Date Terumune's father, Harumune, is known for having many children with his wife, Princess Kubo.
is said to have given birth to 11 children (6 boys and 5 girls), including Terumune Matsu (Hoshun'in).
was a time when the number of children born to one woman was higher than it is today, but even so, this is an astonishing number.

Incidentally, when Terumune was born, the Date clan was in the midst of the Tenbun
Rebellion , a six-year internal conflict between the head of the Date clan at the time, Tanemune, and his eldest son, Harumune.
It is said that this rebellion caused the Date clan's power to decline.

The rebellion ended in 1548 with the victory of Harumune's side, and Harumune became the head of the Date clan.
When Harumune moved his castle to Yonezawa Castle (Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture), Terumune also moved to Yonezawa Castle with his mother and siblings.

Yonezawa Castle Ruins
on Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30467021

In 1555, Sojiro came of age at the age of 12.
He received a character from his name from Ashikaga Yoshiteru, the 13th shogun of the Muromachi shogunate, and took the name
Date Terumune Ten years later, around 1565, he became the 16th head of the Date clan upon the retirement of his father, Harumune.
In 1567, his eldest son, Bontenmaru, who would later become Date Masamune, was born.

Feud with his father, Harumune

,
"Portrait of Date Terumune,"
Sendai City Museum, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9724931

When Date Terumune became head of the family, real power within the family was held by Harumune and the powerful father and son, Nakano Munetoki and Makino Hisanaka.
Terumune therefore increased his allies outside the family by marrying his sister to Morioki, the eldest son of Ashina Moriuji of Aizu, and marrying Yoshihime, the daughter of Mogami Yoshimori of Yamagata.

In 1570, he suppressed a rebellion by the Nakano father and son, exiling them and also punishing vassals who were uncooperative with Terumune. He also engaged in
diplomacy with powerful daimyo in distant lands, such as sending hawks to Oda Nobunaga.
In December 1578 (January 1578), his father, Harumune, died, and real power within the household was concentrated under Terumune in both name and reality.
Just like his father, Harumune, Terumune also clashed with his father and eventually defeated him.

Restored the power of the Date clan

After gaining control of the clan, Terumune intensified his offensive against the Soma clan, whose base was in what is now Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture, and gained control of the entire Igu District (southern Miyagi Prefecture).
By 1584, he had almost completely regained the sphere of influence of the Date clan from the time of his grandfather, Tanemune, and was now in a position to exert great influence over the entire southern Oshu region

By this time, Hashiba Hideyoshi (later Toyotomi Hideyoshi) had firmly established himself as the successor to the hegemonic feats of Oda Nobunaga, who had been defeated in the Honnoji Incident.
Terumune had expressed his intention that if Hideyoshi's influence were to extend to Oshu, the feudal lords of the region would cooperate to oppose Hideyoshi.
That is how great Terumune's influence and influence were.

Retirement

In October 1584, Moritaka (adopted son of Moriuji), head of the Ashina clan, an ally of the Date clan, was murdered by a retainer, resulting in one-month-old Kameomaru becoming head of the Ashina clan.
Terumune became Kameomaru's guardian, and this led to him handing over the headship of the Date clan to Masamune
(there are various theories as to why he handed over the family headship, but it does not appear to be as simple as "I handed it over because Masamune was a great guy").

Terumune, who made Tateyama Castle (Yonezawa City) his new castle, intended to oppose Uesugi Kagekatsu of Echigo together with the Ashina and Mogami clans, but Masamune, who became the head of the family, made peace with the Uesugi clan. It
is not difficult to imagine that the differences in foreign policy between Terumune and Masamune led to a feud between father and son.
Following his grandfather Tanemune and his father Harumune, Terumune also experienced conflict with his son.

Shot dead on the Abukuma River

Masamune's change in diplomatic policy began to disrupt the diplomatic order in southern Oshu.
As the fighting escalated, Nihonmatsu (Hatayama) Yoshitsugu , came under attack from the Date clan.
In October 1585 (Tensho 13), he offered to surrender to Masamune.
Terumune and Date Sanemoto (son of Date Sanemune, Terumune's uncle) acted as mediators in the surrender.

So, on October 8th, Yoshitsugu visited Terumune, who was staying at Miyamori Castle (Nihonmatsu City), on the pretext of "expressing gratitude for the mediation."
However, after the meeting, as Terumune was about to see Yoshitsugu off at the entrance , he was captured by Yoshitsugu and his retainers .
Yoshitsugu kidnapped Terumune and held him hostage, and tried to return to Nihonmatsu Castle.

Nihonmatsu Castle
baku13 – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.1 jp,
by https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11354374

According to official records of the Date clan, Date Masazane (son of Shigezane and Sanemoto) and Rusu Masakage (Terumune's younger brother), who were present at the meeting between Terumune and Yoshitsugu, led their troops in pursuit of Terumune and Yoshitsugu from a distance, but when they reached Takadahara on the banks of the Abukuma River, which marks the border with the Nihonmatsu domain, Terumune shouted for them to shoot him, and the Date forces opened fire all at once .
Terumune, Yoshitsugu, and the rest of the Nihonmatsu forces were defeated, and by the time Masamune, who was in the middle of falconry, arrived at the scene, it was already over.

However, this is merely the official record, and there are various theories about Terumune's final moments. One
Yoshitsugu, realizing he could no longer escape, . Another theory is that Masamune had already arrived at the scene and personally shot Terumune and Yoshitsugu

There is also a theory that
this was a plot by Masamune to get rid of Terumune , as Masamune disliked him In the records left by Date Masamune, it is written that Date Masamune's subordinates, who were supposed to have rushed to the site from falconry, were for some reason fully armed, which is one piece of evidence that this was a plot by Masamune.

In any case, even though the world was in a state of constant war, the end of Date Terumune was tragic, sudden, and far too early for someone who could be called a hero and who built the foundation for the prosperity of the Date clan.
He died at the age of 42.

Regardless of the extent to which Masamune was responsible for this incident, he was seen as the man who killed his father
(in fact, even now, some 440 years later, some people still say he may have murdered his father).
With the loss of Terumune, a skilled diplomat, relations between the Date clan and neighboring powers suddenly deteriorated, and Masamune was forced into difficult battles for the next few years.

summary

Setting aside whether or not there was any conflict between him and Masamune, Terumune was very enthusiastic about the education of his eldest son, Masamune. He
invited many renowned scholars and monks to educate Masamune, and even had Katakura Kagetsuna (Kojuro), the second son of a Shinto priest, serve Masamune from an early age.
Another great achievement of Terumune was restoring the power of the Date clan, which had been on the decline.
Without Terumune, the first lord of the Sendai domain, Date Masamune, as he was in historical fact, would never have existed.

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