Maeno Nagayasu

Maeno Nagayasu was a warrior said to come from Maeno village in Niwa District, Owari, who served Oda Nobunaga and later Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He held the court rank of Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade, and the title Tajima no kami. He was born in 1528 and died on 22 September 1595.

By the account of the Bukō Yawa he was the second son of Maeno Muneyasu, a military magistrate of the Iwakura Oda, but that work shows modern vocabulary and its reliability is unproven. The conventional view makes him a son of Tsubouchi Katsusada, though the small age gap casts doubt on a true father-son tie. He fought for Iwakura at Ukino in 1558 and is said to have been noticed by Nobunaga for his horsemanship.

In 1564 he took part in the capture of Unuma and Ikiyama castles, and in 1566 he is said to have been involved in building Sunomata. At Kanegasaki in 1570 he reportedly commanded the rearguard. At Shizugatake in 1583 he led the fourth unit and in the intercalary eighth month was raised to 53,000 koku at Izushi in Tajima. In the Bunroku campaign (1592) he crossed to Korea with 2,000 men and is said to have been increased to 110,000 koku.

Nobunaga is said to have called him and Hachisuka Masakatsu "potato-digging samurai" after the Unuma campaign. At Kanegasaki he is said to have fought with the butt of a broken single-hook spear before switching to his sword. He studied tea under Sen no Rikyu and liked Chinese poetry.

He used a 2 shaku 5 sun field sword (nodachi), also reported to be a Magoroku Kanemoto, and favored the single-hook spear.

In 1595 he was implicated in the Toyotomi Hidetsugu affair, was confined at Nakamura Kazuuji's Fushimi residence, and after his heir Kagesada was ordered to kill himself, he committed seppuku at Rikkan-ji in Fushimi. He was skilled at castle building and served as magistrate for the Hōkō-ji Great Buddha Hall. He is considered calm and valiant, though novels often depict him as hot-tempered.