Nagai Naokatsu

Who They Were

Nagai Naokatsu (永井直勝, ながい なおかつ) was a samurai and daimyō — a territorial lord — whose career spanned one of the most violent and decisive transitions in Japanese history. He was born in 1563, in the sixth year of the Eiroku era (永禄, えいろく), and died on 5 March 1625. His life therefore covered the collapse of the Muromachi shogunate, the wars of unification under Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate.

He is remembered chiefly for two things: his long service to the Tokugawa house, and a single killing on a battlefield in 1584 that made his name. He belonged to the Nagai family and held the rank of daimyō, a lord whose domain was large enough to be assessed in rice yield and who owed military service in return for his land.

Life and Career

Naokatsu entered the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the future shogun, as a retainer of Ieyasu's son Matsudaira Nobuyasu. When Nobuyasu was executed, Naokatsu left Tokugawa service. He later returned, and by 1584 he was fighting in the Tokugawa ranks at the Battle of Nagakute.

Nagakute was one of the engagements of the Komaki–Nagakute campaign, fought between Tokugawa Ieyasu and the forces of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In the fighting there, Naokatsu personally killed the enemy general Ikeda Nobuteru. Killing a commander in single combat was the kind of act that a warrior's reputation could be built on for the rest of his life, and Naokatsu's service at Nagakute was singled out as distinguished.

His rise to territorial lordship came three decades later. In 1615 he took part in the Summer Campaign of the Siege of Osaka — the final defeat of the Toyotomi house and the last great battle of the unification wars. In recognition of that service he received the lordship of the Kasama Domain in Hitachi Province. Seven years later he was transferred to the Koga Domain in Shimōsa Province.

He died in 1625 at the age of 63. He was succeeded as head of the family by his eldest son, Naomasa.

Why They Matter

Naokatsu's significance is that of the warrior who serves across a whole era and survives it. He began as a retainer of a Tokugawa heir who was executed, left service, came back, and then fought in the campaigns that destroyed the Toyotomi and secured Tokugawa rule. His reward — a domain — was the standard mechanism by which the new shogunate converted military loyalty into hereditary landed power.

The killing of Ikeda Nobuteru at Nagakute in 1584 is the deed for which he is named in the record. It places him among the retainers whose individual actions in the field were remembered and rewarded, and it illustrates how the Tokugawa built a body of loyal lords out of men who had proved themselves in specific battles.

His longer importance lies in what happened to his family. The Nagai did not simply hold one domain and disappear. Naokatsu's descendants eventually came to rule the Kanō Domain in Mino Province, and they remained there until the Meiji Restoration — the overthrow of the shogunate in 1868 and the end of the samurai order. A line founded by a man who killed a general at Nagakute in 1584 was still governing a domain two and a half centuries later.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 永井直勝. In kana it is read ながい なおかつ, and in romaji it is Nagai Naokatsu. The family name comes first, as is standard in Japanese.

永 — read なが (naga) here. The character means "eternal," "long-lasting," or "forever." It is a common element in Japanese surnames and carries a sense of endurance.

井 — read い (i) here. It means "well," as in a well for drawing water. Together, 永井 (ながい, Nagai) is a surname found across Japan; the two characters combine the sense of "eternal" with "well."

直 — read なお (nao) here. It means "straight," "honest," "correct," or "direct." It is a frequent element in samurai given names, where it often signals uprightness or rectitude.

勝 — read かつ (katsu) here. It means "victory," "to win," or "to excel." It appears constantly in the personal names of warriors of this period, for obvious reasons.

The given name 直勝 (なおかつ, Naokatsu) therefore reads roughly as "straight victory" or "upright and victorious." Note that the kanji 直 has several possible readings depending on context — なお, ちょく, じき among them — and 勝 likewise — かつ, しょう. In this name the readings are なお and かつ. The full name is thus four characters, two for the family and two for the given name, which is the ordinary pattern for a samurai of his rank.

Legacy

Naokatsu's direct legacy was the Nagai house he left to his son Naomasa in 1625. Through that line the family's fortunes continued well beyond the domain he himself was granted, ending with the lordship of the Kanō Domain in Mino Province, which the Nagai held until the Meiji Restoration brought the domain system itself to an end.

For readers of Japanese, his name is a compact lesson in how samurai names were built: a two-character surname, a two-character given name, and a given name whose second element — 勝, "victory" — announces exactly what a man of his class was expected to do.