Takeda Katsuyori

Takeda Katsuyori (1546-1582) was a warlord of the Sengoku period and the 20th head of the Takeda clan of Kai. Born as the fourth son of the renowned general Takeda Shingen, he succeeded to the Takeda family headship after Shingen's death and lived through the chaos of the Sengoku era. Japanese history remembers him as a tragic warlord.

Although Katsuyori was Shingen's fourth son, his mother was Lady Suwa (Suwa Goryōnin), a member of the Suwa clan, so he first succeeded to the Suwa family name and called himself Suwa Shirō Katsuyori. After Shingen's heir, Yoshinobu, was disinherited and took his own life, Katsuyori emerged as the de facto successor. He inherited the Takeda family headship when Shingen died in 1573.

Carrying on Shingen's policy of expanding his domains, Katsuyori launched active military campaigns immediately after taking office. The Battle of Nagashino in 1575 was an engagement that greatly determined Katsuyori's reputation as a commander. In the struggle over Nagashino Castle in Mikawa, Katsuyori trusted in the strength of the mounted army his father Shingen had built and launched a frontal charge. He was crushed in a catastrophic defeat by the palisades that the allied forces of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu had erected at Shitaragahara, and by the volley fire of large numbers of matchlock guns. Many of the strongest veteran commanders of Takeda, including Yamagata Masakage, Naitō Masatoyo and Baba Nobuharu, died in this battle, and the Takeda army effectively lost its main strength.

Even after the defeat at Nagashino, however, Katsuyori did not give in. He concluded the Kō-Etsu Alliance with Uesugi Kagekatsu and the Kō-Sa Alliance with the Satake clan, and moved his base by building Shinpu Castle (Nirasaki), working to restore his position in both domestic administration and military affairs.

In 1582, the Takeda house rapidly collapsed under a pincer attack by Tokugawa and Oda forces. Katsuyori met his end at Tano at the foot of Tenmokuzan (present-day Yamato-chō, Kōshū City, Yamanashi Prefecture), protected by the desperate fighting of his retainer Tsuchiya Masatsune. He died aged 37. Constantly compared with the enormous shadow of his father Shingen, Katsuyori kept confronting the chaos of his age, and his tragedy has left a deep impression on people in later generations.