Wada Yoshimori

Who They Were

Wada Yoshimori (和田義盛, わだ よしもり) was a samurai lord of the late Heian period, born in 1147, the third year of the Kyūan era (久安, きゅうあん). He was a member of the Wada clan and the son of Sugimoto Yoshimune. He fought through the Genpei War, the conflict that ended with the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate, and became the first director of the Board of Retainers, the office that governed the shogunate's warrior vassals. He died on May 24, 1213, at Yuigahama, killed in the Wada Rebellion he had launched against the shogunate's regent.

Life and Career

Yoshimori's career spanned the most violent decades of Japan's transition from imperial rule to warrior government. He fought in the Genpei War (1180–1185), the struggle between the Minamoto and Taira clans, and in the Battle of Ōshū, the campaign that destroyed the northern Fujiwara holdout. He also took part in the Hiki Yoshikazu's Rebellion and in Hatakeyama Shigetada's Rebellion, two of the internal purges through which the early shogunate eliminated its own founding families.

His reward was office. The Kamakura shogunate created the Board of Retainers (侍所, さむらいどころ, samurai-dokoro) to police and command its vassals, and Yoshimori became its first director, or bettō (別当, べっとう). The post made him responsible for the military and disciplinary affairs of the shogun's following, and it placed him at the centre of the regime's power structure.

That structure shifted under him. Hōjō Tokimasa, and after him Hōjō Yoshitoki, concentrated authority in the office of regent, pushing aside the great warrior houses that had won the Genpei War. Yoshimori's Wada clan was one of them. The tension broke in 1213, when Yoshimori rose against the Hōjō in what became the Wada Rebellion. He was defeated and killed at Yuigahama on May 24, 1213.

Why They Matter

Yoshimori's rebellion was the last serious armed challenge by an old warrior house to Hōjō control of the Kamakura shogunate. After the Wada clan was destroyed, no comparable rival remained inside the regime, and the Hōjō regents governed without further challenge from the families that had founded the shogunate alongside them. The outcome at Yuigahama settled the question of who would run warrior Japan for the next century.

His office outlasted him. The Board of Retainers he was first to head became a permanent institution of the shogunate, and later warrior governments kept versions of it. Yoshimori is remembered less for the battles he won than for the office he first held and the rebellion he lost.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 和田義盛 and read わだ よしもり (wada yoshimori).

和田 (わだ, wada) — the family name, two characters:

• 和, read わ here. The character means "harmony," "peace," or "Japanese." It is the same 和 that appears in 和語 (わご, native Japanese words) and in the older name for Japan, 大和 (やまと, Yamato).
• 田, read だ here. It means "rice field" or "paddy." It is one of the most common elements in Japanese surnames, because land and rice were the basis of wealth and status for the warrior class.

義盛 (よしもり, yoshimori) — the given name, two characters:

• 義, read よし. It means "righteousness," "justice," or "duty." This character was extremely common in samurai given names of the Kamakura period, often granted by a lord to a retainer as a mark of favour.
• 盛, read もり. It means "prosper," "flourish," or "abundant." It appears constantly in names of the era, including that of his contemporary Wada Yoshimori's Hōjō rivals.

Read as a whole, the name carries the sense of a prosperous and upright house rooted in the rice fields — an ordinary kind of meaning for a warrior name, but a useful illustration of how Japanese names of this period were built: a place-based surname plus a two-character given name drawn from a small pool of auspicious, lord-granted kanji.

Legacy

Yoshimori's children carried the Wada name and its branches forward in the record: Asahina Yoshihide, Wada Yoshinao, Wada Yoshinobu, Wada Tsunemori, Wada Hideshige, and Wada Yoshishige. His line is traced through his father Sugimoto Yoshimune, and he is referenced in connection with his descendants Asahina Yoshihide and Wada Yoshiuji.

The Wada Rebellion of 1213 is the event most closely tied to his name, and it is the reason he appears in accounts of the Kamakura shogunate's consolidation. He is also listed among the participants in the Genpei War, the Battle of Ōshū, Hiki Yoshikazu's Rebellion, and Hatakeyama Shigetada's Rebellion — a career that runs through nearly every major conflict of the shogunate's first thirty years.