, also known as Asakura Kageakira, 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 ...

warrior of the later

Sengoku period The was the period in History of Japan, Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or (1493) are generally chosen as th ...

. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)
"Asakura Kageaki"
in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 50. In 1573, after

Asakura Yoshikage was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the Sengoku period (1467–1603) who ruled a part of Echizen Province in present-day Fukui Prefecture. He was a regent of Ashikaga Shogunate. Yoshikage's conflicts with Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) resulted in his de ...

was defeated by

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods. He was the and regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. He is sometimes referred as the "Demon Daimyō" and "Demo ...

at Battle of Tonezaka, Yoshikage fled to Ichijodani castle with only his own troops and, upon the urging of Kageaki, went to the Ono district. Later, at the Rokubō-kenshō monastery proposed by Kageaki as a temporary place to stay, Yoshikage was thoroughly surrounded by 200 troops under Kageaki who betrayed his lord. As the attendants fought and died, Yoshikage suddenly killed himself. Kageaki then brought Yoshikage’s head, along with Yoshikage’s mother (Kōtokuin), wife and children as hostages, and surrendered to Nobunaga. As a condition of the surrender, the lives were spared of very close relatives of Yoshikage including his infant son and designated heir (Aiōmaru) and cherished consort (Koshōshō). Some of Yoshikage’s attendants did not martyr themselves and survived the battle. Efforts were made by Kageaki to negotiate for their lives and future status but the dependents of Yoshikage were executed by the Oda army while in transit.

References

Samurai 1529 births 1574 deaths Kageaki {{samurai-stub