Oda Ujiharu

Oda Ujiharu was a Sengoku daimyo of Hitachi Province and head of the Oda clan. His birth year is given as 1534 or 1531; he died on 6 January 1602 (13th day of the intercalary 11th month, Keicho 6).

He succeeded his father Oda Masaharu in 1548. His first battle was at Karagasaki in 1546, where the Oda were defeated. In 1556 (Ebigashima, debated) he lost Oda Castle to the combined forces of Yuki Masakatsu and the Hojo and withdrew to Tsuchiura, but returned in the eighth month. In 1561 he joined Uesugi Kenshin's Odawara campaign, and in 1563 he defeated Daijo Sadakuni at Mimura.

At Sanno-do (1564, debated) he was routed by Kenshin and escaped to Fujisawa Castle, yet retook Oda Castle in December 1565 by defeating Satake Yoshikado. In May 1569 he beat Satake Yoshishige, but the defeat at Tebasaka later that year, at the hands of Ota Sukemasa and others, marked a turning point and cost him the castle. Tsuchiura Castle and the fight for Teko-u Castle followed.

In 1590 he was stripped of his lands for failing to join the Odawara campaign and rising against the Satake, ending the Oda as a daimyo house. The next year he apologized through Asano Nagamasa at Aizu and is said to have received 300 koku as a guest retainer of Yuki Hideyasu.

He is nicknamed the Phoenix of Hitachi for losing his castle nine times and retaking it eight. He is often ranked the weakest of the Sengoku lords, yet his rival Satake Yoshiaki wrote to Uesugi Kenshin praising his ability and his many hereditary retainers. A portrait said to have been painted in his lifetime, kept at Horyu-ji in Tsuchiura, is a prefectural cultural property of Ibaraki and shows a cat.