Amago Okihisa

Who They Were

Amago Okihisa (塩冶興久, えんや おきひさ, En'ya Okihisa) was a samurai and daimyō of the Muromachi period, born in 1497 and dead in 1534. He was the third son of Amago Tsunehisa, the lord who built the Amago clan into the dominant power of western Japan. Okihisa is remembered less for what he governed than for what he did to his own family: he raised a revolt against his father, split the Amago clan into two armed camps, and ended his life by his own hand.

His childhood name was Hikoshirō (彦四郎). He is called both Amago Okihisa and En'ya Okihisa, because he took the name of the territory he ruled in eastern Izumo Province. The two names belong to the same man.

Life and Career

Okihisa was born in 1497, in the sixth year of the Meiō era (明応, めいおう), deep in the Muromachi period — the stretch of Japanese history running from 1336 to 1573, when the Ashikaga shoguns ruled from Kyoto and provincial warlords governed their own lands in practice.

As a younger son, he was given a domain rather than the headship of the clan. He received En'ya, in the east of Izumo Province, and built his castle on Mount Yōgai (要害山). Like his elder brother Kunihisa, he was known as a capable commander in the field.

The trouble began over land. Okihisa was not satisfied with the size of his holding. He already drew 3,000 kan — a kan (貫) being a unit of value reckoned in coin — and he demanded another 700 kan on top of it. The request was refused.

In 1532 he rose in revolt against his father. His stated reason was suspicion of Kamei Hidetsuna, Tsunehisa's chief advisor, whom he believed was plotting against him. The rebellion did not stay a private quarrel: the Amago clan split into two factions, and Kamei Toshitsuna, the younger brother of the very advisor Okihisa distrusted, died fighting on Okihisa's side.

Okihisa was driven out of En'ya and escaped. Two years later, in 1534, he recognised that he would never be readmitted to the clan. He committed seppuku.

Why They Matter

The Amago were one of the great houses of the Sengoku era, and Okihisa's revolt was a wound the family inflicted on itself at the height of its rise. A clan that had to fight its own sons was a clan spending soldiers and loyalty it could not spare.

The revolt also shows how the Amago house was structured. Tsunehisa parcelled out territory to his sons — Okihisa got En'ya, Kunihisa held another share — and each son then had both a power base and a grievance. Okihisa's demand for 700 additional kan reads as a small thing, but it was a claim about rank within the family, and the family could not satisfy it without weakening the whole.

The split ran through the retainers as well as the bloodline. Kamei Toshitsuna died for Okihisa against his own brother Kamei Hidetsuna, who served Tsunehisa. That is the signature of a succession dispute: the same warrior house divided across both sides, with no clean line between loyalty and betrayal.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 塩冶興久. It is read えんや おきひさ in kana, and romanised as En'ya Okihisa. Note that the kanji and the reading do not match in the ordinary way — this is a place name adopted as a surname, and it has to be learned as a set.

塩 — read en here. The character means "salt." On its own it is normally read shio, and it appears in everyday words such as 塩 (しお, salt). In this name it takes the Chinese-derived reading en.

冶 — read ya here. The character means "smelting" or "casting" — the working of metal. It is the same 冶 found in 冶金 (やきん, metallurgy). Combined with 塩, the two characters 塩冶 form the place name En'ya, in Izumo.

興 — read oki here. The character means "to rise," "to flourish," or "to revive." It is a common element in male given names, and it carries the sense of something being raised up or set in motion.

久 — read hisa here. The character means "long" in the sense of long-lasting or enduring. It appears constantly in samurai names of this period, usually as the closing element, and it signals a wish for the family line to last.

So the full name breaks into a two-character place name, 塩冶, used as a surname, plus a two-character given name, 興久, meaning something like "rising and enduring." The reading えんや おきひさ is the one to memorise; the characters alone will not lead a reader to it.

Legacy

Okihisa's end came in 1534, at the age of thirty-seven by the count of years given here. He left behind a clan that had survived the split but had spent two years and a number of its own men proving that it could.

His story survives chiefly as an episode in the history of the Amago house and of Izumo — a younger son given a castle on Mount Yōgai, a demand for 700 kan, a revolt, and a seppuku when the road back closed. The Kamei brothers, Hidetsuna and Toshitsuna, stand on either side of him in the record, one serving the father and one dying for the son.