Sakuma Morishige

Who They Were

Sakuma Morishige (佐久間盛重) was a samurai of the Sengoku period, the long era of civil war that ran from the mid-fifteenth to the early seventeenth century. He served Oda Nobunaga, the lord of Owari Province, the region that corresponds to the western half of modern Aichi Prefecture. Morishige is also known by the name Daigaku.

His life is documented mainly through his death. On June 11, 1560, he was killed by gunfire while defending a small fortress called Marune, and he is believed to be the first general in Japan to die from a bullet. The date falls in the third year of the Eiroku era (永禄, えいろく), a reign-name period spanning 1558 to 1570, within the Muromachi period.

Life and Career

Morishige belonged to the Sakuma clan, a warrior family whose name he carried. His service to Oda Nobunaga placed him inside the violent politics of the Oda household, where Nobunaga fought for control of his own province against rivals inside his family.

In 1556, Morishige fought at the Battle of Ino, a clash between Nobunaga and his brother Oda Nobuyuki. Before the fighting, Nobunaga built Fort Nazuka in what is now Nishi-ku, Nazuka, in Nagoya City, and put Morishige in charge of it. During the battle Morishige took the head of Hashimoto Juzo, a general serving under Nobuyuki. Taking an enemy commander's head was the standard proof of a kill on the Japanese battlefield, and the feat earned Morishige substantial rewards from his lord.

Four years later the threat came from outside Owari. Imagawa Yoshimoto, the powerful lord of the neighbouring province of Suruga, invaded Owari in 1560, marching toward what became the Battle of Okehazama. Nobunaga assigned Morishige to hold Marune, a fortress on the border of the province, as part of the chain of outposts meant to slow the Imagawa advance.

Marune came under attack by Matsudaira Motoyasu, the man later known as Tokugawa Ieyasu. Motoyasu pressed the assault with concentrated arquebus fire — volleys from matchlock guns, the firearms that Portuguese traders had introduced to Japan in 1543. A bullet struck and killed Morishige, and the fortress fell to the Imagawa forces.

Why They Matter

Morishige's death marks a turning point in how Japanese warfare killed men. Firearms had reached Japan only seventeen years before Marune, and commanders were still working out how to use them. At Marune, Motoyasu demonstrated the answer: massed, directed gunfire against a fixed position. The defending commander was shot dead, and the fort was lost.

That makes Morishige, by the traditional account, the first general in Japan killed by gunfire. His death is a compact illustration of a larger shift. The Sengoku period's wars were increasingly decided by ashigaru, foot soldiers armed with matchlocks, rather than by the mounted archery duels that had defined earlier samurai combat. Marune belongs to the opening phase of that transformation, and Morishige stands at its first recorded cost.

His career also shows how the Oda house worked from the inside. Nobunaga trusted him with a fortress during a family civil war in 1556, and rewarded him for a battlefield kill. Four years later, with the Imagawa invasion, Nobunaga again placed him at a frontier post. Morishige was a reliable retainer given the jobs that required holding ground.

The Name in Japanese

The full name is written 佐久間盛重. In kana it reads さくま もりしげ, and in romaji, Sakuma Morishige. The family name comes first, as is standard in Japanese.

佐久間 (さくま, Sakuma) — the surname, written with three kanji.

• 佐 (さ, sa): "assist" or "help." It appears in titles and names connected to aiding a ruler.
• 久 (く, ku): "long time" or "long-lasting."
• 間 (ま, ma): "interval," "space between," or "room." In surnames it often refers to a physical place or a relationship between things.

盛重 (もりしげ, Morishige) — the given name, written with two kanji.

• 盛 (もり, mori): "prosper," "thrive," or "abundant." It was a common element in warrior names of the period.
• 重 (しげ, shige): "heavy," "weighty," or "layered." Used in names, it carries a sense of seriousness or accumulation.

The reading しげ for 重 is a name-specific reading, not the everyday one. On its own the character is usually read おもい (omoi, "heavy") or じゅう (jū) in compounds. Japanese names frequently assign readings that differ from a character's common pronunciation, which is why a dictionary alone will not tell a learner how to say a person's name.

Morishige also bore the alternate name Daigaku. The element 盛 (mori) in his given name links him to a broader pattern in Sakuma clan naming, where the same character recurs across generations.

Legacy

Morishige's legacy rests on a single fact recorded at his death: he was killed by a bullet at Marune on June 11, 1560, and is believed to be the first general in Japan to die that way. The siege itself ended in an Imagawa victory, but the wider campaign did not. The Imagawa march toward Okehazama ended in Yoshimoto's defeat and death at Nobunaga's hands, one of the decisive reversals of the Sengoku period.

The man who killed Morishige, Matsudaira Motoyasu, went on to rename himself Tokugawa Ieyasu and to found the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603, ruling a unified Japan. The tactical use of concentrated arquebus fire that took Marune became a hallmark of the warfare that carried him there. Morishige's name survives chiefly as the first entry in that story — the defender on the wrong side of the first bullet to kill a Japanese commander.