Kusunoki Masatsura

Who They Were

Kusunoki Masatsura (楠木正行, くすのき まさつら) was a samurai of the Kusunoki clan, born in 1326 in Kawachi Province. He was the eldest son of Kusunoki Masashige, the famed military strategist who served the Southern Imperial Court, and succeeded his father as head of the family. Masatsura fought alongside his father and his younger brothers Masanori and Masatoki in support of the Southern Court during the Nanbokucho Wars, the mid-fourteenth-century conflict between two rival imperial lines.

His life was short. He died on 4 February 1348, at the age of 22, killed in the Battle of Shijōnawate. His career spanned the final years of the Kamakura period (1185–1333) and the early decades of the wars that followed its collapse.

Life and Career

Masatsura became head of the Kusunoki family after his father's death in 1336. At that point the Southern Court, based at Yoshino, had been reduced to near-total isolation: for three years it had little or no resources, and its strategy was focused narrowly on defending its mountain stronghold rather than on winning allies, land, or income. Masatsura set out to change that.

In 1347 he led an attack on shogunate sympathizers in Kii Province. The campaign drew supporters not only from Kii but also from the neighbouring provinces of Izumi and Settsu. When the Northern Court's shogunate sent Hosokawa Akiuji to stop him, Masatsura met Hosokawa in battle and defeated him at Sakainoura. He followed this with several more campaigns against the bakufu, the military government of the Northern Court.

His run of success ended in the second lunar month of 1348. At the Battle of Shijōnawate, in the Sasara district, Masatsura was killed in combat. Before the battle he composed a death poem on the door of Nyoirin-ji temple in Yoshino, the site of Emperor Go-Daigo's tomb. The poem reads:

帰へらじと 兼ねて思へば 梓弓 亡き数に入る 名をぞとどむる

kaeraji to / kanete omoeba / azusayumi / nakikazu ni iru / na wo zotodomuru

"I could not return, I presume / So I will keep my name / Among those who are dead with bows."

Why They Matter

Masatsura was one of the primary military leaders behind a temporary revival of the Southern Court's fortunes in the 1340s. His victories in Kii, Izumi, and Settsu, and his defeat of Hosokawa Akiuji at Sakainoura, gave the Southern Court a brief period of military initiative after years of near-total passivity. He fought specifically to gain power and support for the Emperor, expanding the Court's reach beyond its defensive base at Yoshino.

In modern memory, however, Masatsura is usually seen in relation to his father. The farewell between Masatsura and Masashige, before the elder Kusunoki set out on his final, doomed campaign, is known as "Sakurai no wakare," or "the parting at Sakurai." A highly idealized depiction of this scene is among the most famous passages in the Taiheiki, the great fourteenth-century war chronicle, and it has shaped how generations of Japanese readers have understood both father and son.

The Name in Japanese

楠木正行

• Kana reading: くすのき まさつら
• Romaji: Kusunoki Masatsura

Character by character:

• 楠 (くす, kusu) — camphor tree. The character carries the sense of the camphor laurel, a tree associated with the Kusunoki clan's home region.
• 木 (き, ki) — tree, wood. Together with 楠 it forms the family name Kusunoki, literally "camphor tree."
• 正 (まさ, masa) — correct, righteous, proper. This character is shared with his father's name, Masashige (正成), and carries the ideal of moral uprightness.
• 行 (つら, tsura) — go, proceed, conduct. In this name it is read with the uncommon reading tsura, suggesting a path or a course of action.

The family name Kusunoki is written with two characters that together mean "camphor tree." The given name Masatsura combines "righteousness" with "proceeding," a fitting pairing for a warrior who saw his duty as following the Southern Court's cause to its end.

Legacy

Masatsura's own exploits have been depicted in literary and dramatic works, as well as in pictorial art. One of the best-known episodes appears in the tale collection Yoshino shūi. It concerns Ben no Naishi, a lady-in-waiting in the Southern Court's palace at Yoshino, said to be the most beautiful woman of her generation. Kō no Moronao, a shogunate general, conspired to have her abducted: he arranged for her to be tricked into going on an outing so his henchmen could seize her. Masatsura happened upon the attempted kidnapping and thwarted it. Emperor Go-Murakami offered him Ben no Naishi's hand in marriage as a reward, but Masatsura declined, saying he was destined for an early death. Alternative versions of the story give different reasons, such as his mother's opposition to the match, and there is also a tradition that Ben no Naishi became a Buddhist nun after Masatsura's death.

The name Kusunoki Masatsura was also invoked in later centuries as a model of loyalty. The nineteenth-century scholar and reformer Yokoi Shōnan was named after him, a sign of how deeply the Kusunoki legacy had entered Japanese culture. Masatsura himself, however, remains overshadowed by his father, whose willingness to sacrifice himself for the Southern Court has inspired readers from the Edo period to the present day as a paragon of bravery and loyalty. Masatsura's own death at Shijōnawate, at 22, cut short a career that might have matched his father's renown.