Battle of Kizaki

What Happened

On the fourth day of the fifth month of Genki 3 — 14 June 1572 — a Shimazu army of roughly 300 warriors met an Itō army of as many as 3,000 on the plain of Kizaki, in the district of Masaki-in on the border between Ōsumi and Hyūga provinces. The Shimazu force was commanded by Shimazu Yoshihiro; the far larger Itō force was led by Itō Sukeyasu. Outnumbered by about ten to one, the Shimazu took up a defensive position and waited.

The battle turned on a feigned retreat, a manoeuvre the Shimazu were already known for. Falling back drew the Itō ranks forward and out of formation, and the Shimazu then turned on them and broke the army apart. The defeat was so complete, and so disproportionate to the numbers engaged, that the engagement became known as "the Okehazama of Kyushu" — a reference to Oda Nobunaga's shock victory over Imagawa Yoshimoto in 1560.

Background

The Itō clan had taken Obi Castle and used it to strengthen its hold on southern Hyūga. From that base the Itō began pushing into territory belonging to the Shimazu. Itō Yoshisuke wanted to expand into Ōsumi, the Shimazu heartland, and to that end he backed other clans that were already in conflict with the Shimazu.

The Shimazu nevertheless kept control of Ōsumi. In 1572 they offered battle to Yoshisuke on the plain of Kizaki, at the boundary between the two provinces — a site that put the Shimazu close to home ground and the Itō at the end of their supply line. The disparity in numbers was extreme: 300 Shimazu against as many as 3,000 Itō.

Why It Mattered

The scale of the loss did serious damage to the Itō clan's forces, and it left the Shimazu free to expand northward into southern Hyūga. Four years later the Shimazu finished the job: they captured Takabaru, and Itō Yoshisuke was forced to flee into the lands of the Ōtomo. The victory at Kizaki therefore marks the point at which the Shimazu moved from defending Ōsumi to taking the offensive in Kyushu.

The Name in Japanese

The battle is written 木崎原の戦い.

• Kana: きざきばるのたたかい
• Romaji: Kizakibaru no tatakai

Note that the place name is read Kizakibaru, not Kizakihara: the final 原 takes the reading baru here, a common sound change in Kyushu place names. The particle の links the place to the noun that follows.

Character by character:

木 — read ki in this word. Meaning: tree, wood. It is one of the most basic kanji in the language.

崎 — read zaki in this word (a voiced form of saki). Meaning: cape, promontory, small peninsula. It appears in countless Japanese place names, usually at the end, as in 長崎 Nagasaki.

原 — read baru in this word (a voiced form of haru). Meaning: plain, field, moor, open uncultivated ground. This is the element that tells you the battle was fought on open flatland rather than at a castle or a river crossing.

の — read no. The possessive/linking particle, written in kana rather than kanji. It connects 木崎原 to 戦い, giving "the battle of Kizakibaru".

戦 — read tatakai in this word, the kun reading of the character. Meaning: war, battle, fight. It is the same character used in 戦国 Sengoku, the "Warring States" period, and in 戦争 sensō, war.

い — read i, written in kana. It completes the kun reading tatakai, the noun form of the verb 戦う tatakau, "to fight".

So the whole name parses as "the battle of the plain at Kizaki". A reader who knows only the three place-name kanji can already locate the engagement on a map of Kyushu.

Key Figures

Shimazu Yoshihiro (島津義弘) commanded the Shimazu force at Kizaki. He held the field with about 300 warriors against an army many times the size of his own, and the victory is credited to his use of the feigned retreat.

Itō Sukeyasu (伊藤祐康) led the Itō army of as many as 3,000 at Kizaki. His force was broken in the fighting.

Itō Yoshisuke (伊藤義祐) was the head of the Itō clan, whose push into Ōsumi and support for clans hostile to the Shimazu brought the two houses to battle in 1572. After the Shimazu took Takabaru four years later, he fled into Ōtomo territory.