(1566 – April 5, 1637) was a Japanese

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

of the

Azuchi–Momoyama period The was the final phase of the in Japanese history from 1568 to 1600. After the outbreak of the Ōnin War in 1467, the power of the Ashikaga Shogunate effectively collapsed, marking the start of the chaotic Sengoku period. In 1568, Oda Nob ...

through early

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

, who served the

Tokugawa clan The is a Japanese dynasty which produced the Tokugawa shoguns who ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868 during the Edo period. It was formerly a powerful ''daimyō'' family. They nominally descended from Emperor Seiwa (850–880) and were a branch of ...

. He later became a ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and no ...

'', and one of the first

rōjū The , usually translated as ''Elder (administrative title), Elder'', was one of the highest-ranking government posts under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan. The term refers either to individual Elders, or to the Council of Elders as a wh ...

of the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

. Masazumi was born in 1565; he was the eldest son of

Honda Masanobu was a commander and ''daimyō'' in the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu in Japan during the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods. In 1563, when an uprising against Ieyasu occurred in Mikawa Province, Masanobu took the side of the peasants against Ieyasu ...

. Father and son served

Tokugawa Ieyasu Tokugawa Ieyasu (born Matsudaira Takechiyo; 31 January 1543 – 1 June 1616) was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was the third of the three "Gr ...

together. Masazumi was in the main force at Sekigahara; after the battle, Masazumi was entrusted with the guardianship of the defeated

Ishida Mitsunari was a Japanese samurai and military commander of the late Sengoku period of Japan. He is probably best remembered as the commander of the Western army in the Battle of Sekigahara following the Azuchi–Momoyama period of the 16th century. He ...

. Masazumi was made a daimyo in 1608, with an income of 33,000

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

. Ieyasu trusted Honda sufficiently to have relied on him as an intermediary for diplomatic initiatives with China.Miauno Norihito (2003)
''China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China,'' p. 109.
citing Fujii Jōji (藤井譲二). (1994). "Junana seiki no Nihon: buke no kokka no keisei" (十七世紀の日本：武家の国家の形成), in ''Iwanami kōza Nihon tsūshi'' (岩波講座日本通史), Vol. 12, pp. 40–41. Later, Masazumi served at the

siege of Osaka A siege () . is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition, or by well-prepared assault. Siege warfare (also called siegecrafts or poliorcetics) is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict charact ...

; in 1616, he became a ''toshiyori''; this was the position that would soon after be renamed as ''rōjū''. In this role, he worked closely with the now-retired second shōgun, Hidetada. During this period, his income was increased to 53,000 ''koku'', then to 155,000 in 1619. However, in 1622 he fought with Kamehime (Ieyasu's first daughter), fell into disfavor with Hidetada, and was exiled to Yokote, in the Kubota Domain. Masazumi died in Yokote in 1637 at age 73.

Notes

References

"Honda Masazumi no retsuden"
(22 February 2008) * Mizuno, Norihito. (2003)
''China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China'', p. 109.
excerpt from ''Japan and Its East Asian Neighbors: Japan's Perception of China and Korea and the Making of Foreign Policy from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century'', Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004, as cited in Tsutsui, William M. (2009)
''A Companion to Japanese History'', p. 83.

External links

Images of correspondence by Honda Masazumi
, - Samurai 1566 births 1637 deaths Honda clan Rōjū Fudai daimyo {{daimyo-stub