Uesugi Tomooki

Who They Were

Uesugi Tomooki (上杉朝興, うえすぎ ともおき) was a samurai lord of the Muromachi period (1336 – 1573), born in 1488 and dead on 4 June 1537. He held the rank of daimyo (大名, だいみょう — a territorial lord commanding a province-scale domain) and is remembered above all as the lord of Edo Castle and an enemy of the Hōjō clan.

His father was Uesugi Tomoyoshi (上杉朝寧), among the first men to oppose the Hōjō as they rose to power in the Kantō region. Tomooki inherited both the castle and the feud.

The Uesugi name carried enormous weight in the Muromachi order. Branches of the family held the office of Kantō kanrei (関東管領, かんとうかんれい — the shogun's deputy for the eastern provinces), and Tomooki's own line, the Ōgigayatsu Uesugi, was one of the two great rival branches that fought for control of the Kantō plain.

Life and Career

Tomooki was born in 1488, in the second year of the Chōkyō era (長享, ちょうきょう). He grew up inside a family that was already at war on two fronts: against the rival Yamanouchi branch of the Uesugi, and against the Hōjō, a warrior house rising out of Izu under Hōjō Sōun.

Edo Castle was the seat of his power. It stood on the ground that would later become the centre of Tokyo, and in the early sixteenth century it was a fortified strongpoint controlling the approaches to the Kantō plain. Holding it made Tomooki a major obstacle to Hōjō expansion northward.

That obstacle did not hold. In 1524 the Hōjō seized Edo Castle. The loss stripped Tomooki of his principal base and pushed his line into a long rearguard struggle. He appears in the record as a participant in the Siege of Edo, the action in which the castle changed hands.

He fought on afterward. The Siege of Arai is named among the conflicts attached to his career, part of the same grinding contest between the Uesugi branches and the Hōjō for the Kantō. He died on 4 June 1537, still a daimyo, still at war with the Hōjō.

He left three children: Uesugi Tomosada, Uesugi no kata, and Uesugi Norikatsu. Tomosada succeeded him as head of the line and continued the fight against the Hōjō; Uesugi no kata became a wife of Hōjō Ujitsuna, marrying into the very house her father had spent his life resisting.

Why They Matter

Tomooki's career marks the moment the Kantō changed hands. When he lost Edo Castle in 1524, the Hōjō took possession of the site that would grow into the political capital of Japan. Every later chapter of Edo's history — the Tokugawa shogunate, the city of Tokyo — rests on that transfer.

He also stands for a pattern that defined the sixteenth-century Kantō: the Uesugi, divided against themselves, losing ground to a disciplined newcomer. Tomooki fought the Hōjō, and his daughter married into them. That combination of war and intermarriage is how power actually moved in the Muromachi period.

His son Uesugi Tomosada inherited the quarrel, which means Tomooki's defeat was not the end of the story but the opening of a longer one. The Ōgigayatsu Uesugi kept fighting the Hōjō for another generation.

The Name in Japanese

The full name is written 上杉朝興. It is read うえすぎ ともおき in kana, and romanised as Uesugi Tomooki. The family name comes first, as is standard in Japanese.

上杉 (うえすぎ, Uesugi) — the surname, written with two kanji.

• 上 — read ue here. It means "above" or "upper." It is one of the most common kanji in Japanese and appears in words like 上手 (じょうず, skillful).
• 杉 — read sugi. It means "cedar," the tall conifer that grows throughout Japan. Together, 上杉 is a place-derived surname; the family took its name from a location, as most Japanese warrior surnames do.

朝興 (ともおき, Tomooki) — the given name, also two kanji. Both are read with their kun reading (the native Japanese reading) rather than the Sino-Japanese one, which is typical for samurai given names of this period.

• 朝 — read tomo in this name. Its usual meanings are "morning" and "dynasty" or "court." In names it often carries the sense of serving or belonging to a ruling house. Note that the same kanji is read asa when it means "morning" on its own, and chō in Sino-Japanese compounds — the reading tomo is specific to names.
• 興 — read oki here. It means "to rise," "to flourish," or "to revive." It is a common element in warrior names because of that connotation of ascent.

A useful detail for learners: the first kanji of Tomooki's given name, 朝, is the same character used in the name of his father, Uesugi Tomoyoshi (朝寧). Passing one kanji from father to son was a standard practice among samurai families, marking the line of descent in the name itself. Tomooki in turn passed the 朝 of his own name to his son Tomosada (朝定). Three generations carry the same character.

Legacy

Tomooki's direct legacy is his son Uesugi Tomosada, who took over the headship of the Ōgigayatsu Uesugi in 1537 and carried on the war against the Hōjō. The line did not recover Edo Castle.

His daughter's marriage into the Hōjō outlasted the feud. Uesugi no kata entered the household of Hōjō Ujitsuna, tying the defeated family to the victors by blood — the standard resolution of Kantō politics in this era.

The ground he lost became the ground on which Japan's early modern state was built. Edo Castle, taken from Tomooki in 1524, passed through Hōjō hands to the Tokugawa, and the castle town around it became Tokyo. Tomooki is remembered as the man who held that site before the Hōjō, and lost it.