Starvation Siege of Tottori Castle

From summer through autumn of Tenshō 9 (1581), Tottori Castle in Inaba Province (present-day Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture) became the site of what is regarded as the most horrific starvation siege of the Sengoku period. This blockade, later called the "Tottori Starvation Massacre" (Tottori no katae-goroshi), left a deep mark on Japanese history through the strategic genius of Hashiba Hideyoshi (later Toyotomi Hideyoshi) and the tragic self-sacrifice of the castle commander Kikkawa Tsuneie. The contrast between Hideyoshi's cleverness in taking the castle without drawing his sword and Tsuneie's way of the warrior in completing the surrender by placing his blade at his abdomen illuminates the essence of warfare in the late Sengoku period.

**Strategic Importance of Tottori Castle: The Struggle for Control of Inaba**

During the Tenshō era (1570s–1580s), Oda Nobunaga was preparing for a decisive battle against the Mōri clan in the Chūgoku region as the final stage of his unification of Japan. Nobunaga dispatched Hashiba Hideyoshi to the west as commander-in-chief of the Chūgoku campaign, assigning him the task of successively conquering the provinces of the San'in and San'yō regions controlled by the Mōri.

Tottori Castle in Inaba Province (present-day Tottori City) was a strategic stronghold controlling the eastern San'in region. Yamana Toyokuni, the lord of Inaba Province, initially considered submitting to Hideyoshi by reading the winds of change. However, under strong pressure from the Mōri clan, by Tenshō 9 (1581) Kikkawa Tsuneie, the younger brother of Kikkawa Motoharu, entered the castle as a reinforcing commander on the Mōri side and assumed responsibility for its defense.

Kikkawa Tsuneie came from a distinguished family—he was the younger brother of Kikkawa Motoharu, known as "the undefeated general of his lifetime." His elder brother's martial reputation echoed throughout San'in and San'yō, and Tsuneie, educated under his influence, embodied loyal service to the Mōri house. The deployment of Tsuneie signaled that the Mōri leadership was serious about defending Tottori Castle.

**Hideyoshi's Plot: An Innovative Strategy of Purchasing Grain**

The tactics Hideyoshi employed to take Tottori Castle went beyond the conventions of warfare of the time and were truly innovative.

Before the blockade began in Tenshō 9, Hideyoshi dispatched merchants into Inaba Province with orders to purchase all available grain—rice, barley, beans, and other foodstuffs—at prices more than double the normal market rate. Peasants and merchants leapt at the high prices and sold their stores, leaving the market drained before provisions could be stockpiled within the castle. This was a precursor to what might be called "economic warfare" and "information warfare," a victory of strategy that transcended mere military superiority.

In June of Tenshō 9 (1581), Hideyoshi led an army of some thirty to forty thousand to surround Tottori Castle. An enormous siege network—later also known as the "Thousand-Dwelling Encampment," a temporary siege fortification—encircled the mountainous terrain and sealed off all entry and exit to the castle. Furthermore, to cut off supplies via sea routes in the San'in region, he imposed a naval blockade against the Mōri fleet. The complete encirclement, sealing off both land and sea routes, was complete.

Approximately four thousand people—garrison soldiers and peasants and townspeople who had fled into the castle—were sheltered within, but through Hideyoshi's prior grain-purchase strategy, provisions were nearly nonexistent. At the moment fighting began, the conditions for defeat were already in place.

**The Reality of the Starvation Massacre: Famine as Warfare**

As the siege dragged on, conditions within the castle grew increasingly dire.

Within a month of the siege's start, ordinary provisions were exhausted. The garrison soldiers slaughtered horses, dogs, cats, and other animals; then they consumed grasses, tree bark, leather goods, and leather armor. When these too ran out, the bodies of the starved dead began to accumulate within the castle.

Later historical sources such as the "Taikōki" and other military chronicles record that "conditions of cannibalism existed within the castle." There are various theories as to whether this was historical fact, but it is certain that many died of starvation and that their bodies piled up faster than they could be disposed of. In the summer heat, bodies accumulated; disease spread; people driven mad by hunger——Tottori Castle had become a vision of hell.

Even amid such horror, the castle commander Kikkawa Tsuneie did not lose his discipline and pride as a general. Tsuneie shared his own provisions with his soldiers and worked to maintain order within the castle. He waited in faith for relief forces from the Mōri main family, but the reinforcements under Mōri Terumoto and Motoharu could not break through Hideyoshi's encirclement.

**The Sword at Kikkawa Tsuneie's Side: The Mōri Sword Culture**

The sword that Kikkawa Tsuneie wore at his side within Tottori Castle's desperate conditions held meaning beyond that of a mere weapon.

As a chief retainer of the Mōri clan, the Kikkawa house was deeply connected to the sword culture that flourished across the Chūgoku region. The Chūgoku territories ruled by the Mōri included major sword-making centers such as Bizen (present-day Okayama Prefecture), Bitchū (the same), and Suō (the eastern part of present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture). In particular, the longswords of the "Bizen tradition" produced by the swordsmiths of Bizen Osafune possessed both the elegant chōji-midare hamon (clove-blossom pattern) and practical cutting power, and were prized by the warrior commanders of the Mōri and Kikkawa houses.

The story that Kikkawa Motoharu, Tsuneie's uncle, had "favored fine Bizen-tradition blades" testifies to the Kikkawa house's deep understanding of swords. Tsuneie, too, grew up within this sword culture of the Kikkawa house and is presumed to have worn a celebrated blade connected to the Mōri house.

As starvation deepened within the castle, Tsuneie's sword could not be converted into provisions. Yet it remained at his side as the embodiment of his final identity as a warrior. And ultimately, that blade would fulfill one last role: the enactment of samurai honor through ritual suicide.

**Kikkawa Tsuneie's Suicide and the Castle's Fall: A Warrior's Death Saves Lives**

In October of Tenshō 9 (1581), after four months of siege, the survivors within the castle could scarcely stand, so ravaged were they by starvation and disease. The castle commander Kikkawa Tsuneie judged that further resistance would mean the complete annihilation of those sheltering within, and resolved to enter surrender negotiations.

Hideyoshi's condition for surrender was "the commander's head." The lives of the garrison and the people would be spared——but the commander must die. This was the condition Hideyoshi set forth.

Kikkawa Tsuneie accepted this condition. On the 25th of October (according to some accounts the 28th) of Tenshō 9, Tsuneie composed his death poem:

"Thoughts I hold—no words upon my lips—as now I go; the path before me holds no confusion—I surrender to what must be."

At the age of thirty-five, Kikkawa Tsuneie took his own life by ritual suicide.

Through Tsuneie's suicide, the surviving garrison and people within the castle were spared. Hideyoshi kept his word and did not massacre them. Those who had lived through the four months of horrific siege emerged from the castle as walking skeletons, wasted to the bone. It is said that even some of Hideyoshi's own soldiers wept at the sight of their suffering.

Kikkawa Tsuneie's death has been passed down to later generations as the purest embodiment of the samurai ideal: a commander sacrificing his own life in exchange for the safety of those in his charge. Tsuneie's death poem, composed at the young age of thirty-four in a foreign castle where he cut open his belly, became one of the most celebrated verses in Japanese samurai literature.

**Hideyoshi's Chūgoku Campaign and the Genius of Starvation Siege: Warfare Without the Sword**

The starvation siege of Tottori Castle is known as one of the "Three Extraordinary Stratagems" of Hideyoshi's Chūgoku campaign.

The one-night castle at Sunomata (a hastily constructed fortification during the conquest of Mino), the water attack on Takamatsu Castle in Bitchū (Tenshō 10, 1582), and the starvation siege of Tottori Castle——all three share Hideyoshi's strategic philosophy: "Avoid direct combat with swords and spears; neutralize the enemy through strategy, logistics, and engineering." Though Hideyoshi may have been surpassed by the fiercest warriors of his age in personal prowess, his strategic genius secured his place in history as one of the Sengoku period's military minds.

From the perspective of sword-culture history, the starvation siege of Tottori Castle holds a unique place as "a battle fought without drawing the sword." The samurai within possessed blades. Yet those blades could produce no grain, could not break the siege, and could not fill hungry bellies. During the transitional moment when Sengoku warfare shifted from the "age of martial valor" (swords, spears, bows) to the "age of logistics, intelligence, and engineering," the Tottori starvation siege was the defining event that demonstrated the absolute supremacy of the latter.

Yet Tsuneie's end reveals that "the sword is something more than a weapon." As the formal enactment of surrender, as the instrument of death, as the symbol of the samurai way——the blade Kikkawa Tsuneie used for his final act functioned not as a mere weapon but as something "cultural and spiritual," the embodiment of samurai honor and ethics.

The contrast between Hideyoshi's brilliance in taking the castle without drawing his sword and Tsuneie's way of the warrior in completing surrender through the blade at his belly illuminates two aspects of the sword in the late Sengoku period: the sword as physical weapon and the sword as spiritual and cultural symbol.

Today, stone walls remain at the Tottori Castle site in Tottori City, and from the ruins of the castle tower one can overlook the cityscape spread below. Kikkawa Tsuneie's death poem endures as the legacy of a tragic hero of the Sengoku period and remains a vital part of Tottori's history and culture.