Shimazu Toyohisa

Who They Were

Shimazu Toyohisa (島津豊久, しまづ とよひさ) was a samurai of the Shimazu clan, born in 1570 and killed in battle on 21 October 1600. He was the son of Shimazu Iehisa and the nephew of Shimazu Yoshihiro, one of the most celebrated commanders in the clan's history. He held Sadowara Castle as its lord, and he died at twenty-nine or thirty years of age, in the final hours of the Sengoku period's decisive campaign.

His life sits at the hinge between two eras. He was born in the Genki era (元亀, げんき), the first year of that nengō, when the Shimazu were still fighting to dominate the island of Kyushu. He died in 1600, the year of the Battle of Sekigahara, when Japan's long civil wars were resolving into the Tokugawa order that would last two and a half centuries.

Life and Career

Toyohisa was born into the Satsuma Shimazu, the branch of the clan based in the far south of Kyushu. His father, Shimazu Iehisa, was a brother of Shimazu Yoshihiro and of Shimazu Yoshihisa, the clan head. That made Toyohisa a first cousin of the next generation of Shimazu leaders and placed him close to the centre of clan decision-making from birth.

He is recorded as the castle lord in command of Sadowara Castle, a stronghold in what is now Miyazaki Prefecture. Holding a castle at his age was a mark of standing within the clan rather than a purely ceremonial post; Sadowara sat in territory the Shimazu had fought hard to control.

In 1587 he served under his uncle Yoshihiro in the fighting on Kyushu against the forces of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The Shimazu had spent the early 1580s conquering most of Kyushu, and Hideyoshi's campaign was the counterstroke that forced them back to their home provinces. Toyohisa fought in that campaign. During the fighting he charged forward and was cut off when he pushed ahead of the main body, and Yoshihiro pulled him out of the ambush. The episode is the one most often attached to his name: a young commander whose aggression had to be rescued by his uncle.

He married a daughter of Shimazu Tadanaga, a cousin of Toyohisa's father's generation who served as karō (家老, かろう) — a senior clan retainer and counsellor — to Shimazu Yoshihisa. The marriage bound Toyohisa more tightly to the clan's inner circle.

In 1600 the Shimazu committed forces to the western army under Ishida Mitsunari. Toyohisa marched with them to Sekigahara. When the western coalition collapsed, he covered the retreat of his uncle Yoshihiro, and he was killed on 21 October 1600. The Shimazu contingent's escape through enemy territory became one of the famous episodes of the battle; Toyohisa did not survive it.

Why They Matter

Toyohisa's importance rests on two things. The first is his death. The Shimazu retreat from Sekigahara, in which a small body of men cut its way through hostile country back toward Satsuma, is remembered as one of the great feats of the campaign, and Toyohisa's sacrifice in covering it is part of that memory. He is a standard example of the retainer who buys his lord's life with his own.

The second is what his family became. The Shimazu survived Sekigahara as lords of Satsuma, and their domain went on to play an outsized role in the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868. Toyohisa himself did not live to see any of that, but he belongs to the generation that kept the clan intact through its most dangerous moment.

He also illustrates a structural feature of Sengoku warfare: command was a family business. Toyohisa fought under his uncle, married into a senior retainer's household, and held a castle because of his birth. His career was short and entirely defined by kinship.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 島津豊久. It is read しまづ とよひさ in kana, and rendered in romaji as Shimazu Toyohisa. Note that the surname is read Shimazu, not Shimadzu or Shimazu with a voiced d — the kana しまづ uses づ, the voiced form of つ.

The surname, 島津, breaks down as follows:

• 島 (しま, shima) — "island." The character shows a bird over a mountain, an old way of depicting land in the sea.
• 津 (づ, zu) — "harbour," "port," or "crossing." It appears in many place names and surnames along the coast.

Together 島津 means something like "island harbour," and it is the name of both the clan and the region in southern Kyushu from which they came.

The given name, 豊久, breaks down as follows:

• 豊 (とよ, toyo) — "abundant," "rich," "bountiful." It is a common element in male given names of the period and carries a sense of prosperity and plenty.
• 久 (ひさ, hisa) — "long," "lasting," "of long duration." It is frequently used in names with the wish that the bearer live long or that the family line endure.

So 豊久 carries a meaning along the lines of "abundant and enduring." The combination of 豊 and 久 was a conventional samurai naming pattern: two auspicious characters, each read with a native Japanese reading rather than a Sino-Japanese one. The name is sometimes recorded as Shimazu Tadatoyo, an alternative reading of the same characters using the Sino-Japanese tada and toyo.

Legacy

Toyohisa's memory is bound up with the Shimazu retreat from Sekigahara. He is remembered as the young lord of Sadowara Castle who died covering his uncle's escape, and the story is retold in Shimazu clan histories and in the popular literature and drama that draw on the Sekigahara campaign.

His name also survives in the modern cultural imagination. He appears as a character in games and fiction that mine the Sengoku period for material, usually depicted as a fiercely loyal and somewhat reckless young warrior — a portrayal that follows the outline of the 1587 ambush episode and his death in 1600.

Within the Shimazu lineage, he is a junior line rather than a main one. His father Iehisa and his uncle Yoshihiro are the figures who dominate the clan's history; Toyohisa is the nephew who died young, at the right hand of the men who built the domain that lasted into the nineteenth century.