Ryūzōji Takanobu

Ryūzōji Takanobu (1529-1584) was a Sengoku-period daimyo who swept across northern Kyushu, a formidable warrior feared under the epithet "the Bear of Hizen." Born into the family of a minor lord in Hizen (Saga), he rose through indomitable will and military strategy to become one of the three great powers of Kyushu, alongside Ōtomo and Shimazu.

Takanobu's rise came only after he overcame many hardships. After being ordained as a monk at a young age, his grandfather and father were assassinated by a senior retainer of the main house, the Shōni clan, and by the dying wish of his great-grandfather, Ryūzōji Iekane, he returned to lay life and succeeded to the family headship. Later, he was driven out of Hizen by a retainer in league with the Ōtomo clan, and his first half of life was turbulent. However, with unbending fighting spirit he recovered his power, and in Tenshō 6 (1578) he nearly unified Hizen. After that, he expanded his territory into Chikuzen, Chikugo, Buzen, and Higo.

But at the Battle of Okitanawate in 1584, while leading a large army, he was lured into a narrow pass by the combined forces of Shimazu and Arima, pincered, and cut down by Kawakami Tadakata, a retainer of the Shimazu house. After Takanobu's death, the Ryūzōji house was stripped of real power by his retainer Nabeshima Naoshige, and it eventually continued into the early modern era as the Nabeshima (Saga) Domain. Takanobu's unconventional life, in which he built one of the three great powers of Kyushu within a single generation, symbolizes the rise and fall of Sengoku warlords.