was the 8th head of the

Asakura clan The is a Japanese samurai kin group.Edmond Papinot, Papinot, Jacques Edmond Joseph. (1906). ''Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie du Japon''; Papinot, (2003)"Asakura", ''Nobiliare du Japon'', p. 3 DF 7 of 80/nowiki> retrieved 2013-5-4. ...

during the period of the Ashikaga shogunate. His rule also coincided with the period of the

Ōnin War The , also known as the Upheaval of Ōnin and Ōnin-Bunmei war, was a civil war that lasted from 1467 to 1477, during the Muromachi period in Japan. ''Ōnin'' refers to the Japanese era name, Japanese era during which the war started; the war ende ...

(1467-1477) and the early years of the

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 ...

Feudal Japan The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to the Paleolithic, around 38–39,000 years ago. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC whe ...

. He is remembered as an excellent swordsman, since with the famous katana ''Kotegiri''

Masamune was a medieval Japanese blacksmith widely acclaimed as Japan's greatest swordsmith. He created swords and daggers, known in Japanese as ''tachi'' and ''tantō'', in the Japanese sword#Classification by School, ''Sōshū'' school. However, many ...

in his hands, he managed to cut through the gauntlet of an enemy samurai in battle, cutting off his arm.

References

Daimyo Samurai 1449 births 1486 deaths Ujikage {{daimyo-stub