Kusunoki Masasue

Kusunoki Masasue (birth year unknown – died 4 July 1336 (Engen 1/Kenmu 3, 5/25)) was a warrior of the Nanbokuchō period and the younger brother of Kusunoki Masashige. Together with his brother he served Emperor Go-Daigo (the Southern Court), and he is remembered for the heroic death he met at the Battle of Minatogawa.

Fighting Alongside Masashige

From the Genkō War of 1331 (Genkō 1) onward, Masasue campaigned in many places under his elder brother Masashige. In the 1333 (Genkō 3) siege of the Kusunoki main castle (Upper Akasaka Castle), he served as second-in-command under Hirano Shōgen Nyūdō and resisted the great army of the Kamakura shogunate. After the Kenmu Restoration (from 1334), he took part in fighting across the Kinai region to defend Emperor Go-Daigo's government.

The Battle of Minatogawa and His Death

In the fifth month of Engen 1 (1336), Ashikaga Takauji launched a counteroffensive from Kyushu at the head of a large army, and the brothers Masashige and Masasue met him at Minatogawa in Settsu Province (present-day Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture). Badly outnumbered, the two fought hard but were overwhelmed. According to the Taiheiki, when Masashige asked at the end what he wished for, Masasue answered that he wished to be reborn as the same man seven times over and destroy the enemies of the court (shichishō metsuzoku), and the brothers then took their own lives by stabbing each other. His age at death is unknown.

Legacy

These words of shichishō metsuzoku were handed down as a symbol of the absolute loyalty of the brothers Masashige and Masasue, and from the end of the Meiji period (around 1904) they were celebrated under the phrase shichishō hōkoku ("seven lives to repay the nation") as a model of loyalty to the emperor and love of country. Few records concern Masasue alone, yet rather than remaining in his brother's shadow, he is regarded as an embodiment of the samurai spirit: the loyal younger brother who met his end at his brother's side.