Imagawa Ujizane

Imagawa Ujizane (1538-1615) was born as the eldest son of Imagawa Yoshimoto and succeeded as the 12th head of the Imagawa clan, a Sengoku daimyo. After his father, Yoshimoto, was killed by Oda Nobunaga in the Battle of Okehazama (1560), he inherited the Imagawa domains, but the daimyo power of the Imagawa family rapidly collapsed due to the invasion of Suruga by Takeda Shingen and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

In 1569, he opened the gates of Kakegawa Castle and surrendered to Tokugawa Ieyasu. Thereafter, although he lost his position as a daimyo, he survived as a cultural figure under the protection of the Hōjō clan, his wife's family, and then of Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was skilled at kemari (court football), and the Shinchō Kōki (Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga) records that in 1575, at Shōkoku-ji temple in Kyoto, he performed kemari with courtiers and others in response to a request from Oda Nobunaga. He was also accomplished at waka poetry, and in Kyoto, where he lived in his later years, he frequently took part in the monthly waka gatherings of the Reizei family, among others.

In swordsmanship, he is said to have studied the Shintō-ryū under Tsukahara Bokuden. Although he had lost his daimyo power, he lived to the age of 77, dying in 1615, and sustained the Imagawa bloodline into the Edo period. Later evaluations often portray him as a "loser of the Sengoku period," but recent research has reassessed his adaptability in both political and cultural spheres.