Matsunaga Hisahide


Matsunaga Danjō Hisahide was a Japanese samurai and daimyō and head of the Yamato Matsunaga clan in Japan during the Sengoku period of the 16th century.
He has historical reputation as one of Japan's Three Great Villains, a nickname which he shared with Ukita Naoie and Saitō Dōsan, due to their ambitious and treasonous personality, along with the habit to resort into underhanded tactics and assassinations to eliminate the oppositions.

Biography

He was a retainer of Miyoshi Nagayoshi from the 1540s. He directed the conquest of the province of Yamato in the 1560s and by 1564 had built a sufficient power base to be effectively independent. It is believed that he was conspiring against Nagayoshi during this period; from 1561 to 1563 three of Nagayoshi's brothers and his son, Yoshiaki, died. This left Miyoshi Yoshitsugu the adopted heir when Nagayoshi died in 1564, too young to rule. Three men shared his guardianship – Miyoshi Nagayuki, Miyoshi Masayasu, and Iwanari Tomomichi.
In 1565, he then invaded the shōgun Ashikaga Yoshiteru's palace, who then committed suicide. Yoshiteru's brother, Ashikaga Yoshiaki, fled and the shōgun was replaced by his younger cousin, Yoshihide.
In 1566, fighting started between Hisahide and Miyoshi. Initially, the forces of Hisahide were unsuccessful and his apparent destruction of the Buddhist Tōdai-ji in Nara was considered an act of infamy.
In 1568, Oda Nobunaga, with the figurehead Yoshiaki, attacked Hisahide. Nobunaga captured Kyoto in November and Hisahide was forced to submit.
Yoshiaki was made shōgun, a post he held only until 1573 when he attempted to remove himself from Nobunaga's power. Hisahide kept control of the Yamato and served Nobunaga in his extended campaigns against the Miyoshi and others, for a while.
In 1573, Hisahide briefly allied with the Miyoshi clan, but when the hope for success was not achieved he returned to Nobunaga to fight the Miyoshi.
In 1577, Nobunaga besieged him at Shigisan Castle. Defeated but defiant, Hisahide committed suicide. A noted tea master, he destroyed his tea bowl, denying it to his enemies.
He ordered his head destroyed to prevent it from becoming a trophy, so his son, Matsunaga Kojiro, grabbed Hisahide's head and jumped off the castle wall with his sword through his throat. His son, Hisamichi, also committed suicide in the siege.
Hisahide often appears as a shriveled and scheming old man.

Honours

  • Senior Fourth Rank, Lower Grade

In popular culture

See People of the Sengoku period in popular culture.