The 1569 Battle of Tatarahama was part of the struggles between the Ōtomo and Mōri samurai clans during Japan's

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 ...

, for control of the island of

Kyūshū is the third-largest island of Japan's four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa and the other Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regio ...

Battle

The battle took place in the aftermath of a successful siege by the Mōri of the Ōtomo's

Tachibana castle was a Japanese castle in Chikuzen Province, in the north of Kyūshū. It was at the peak of Mount Tachibana, extending in part into the Higashi-ku in Fukuoka. The castle is also known as Rikka-jō, Tachibana-jō, or Rikkasan-jō. History The ...

, which sat just outside the boundaries of today's

Fukuoka City is the sixth-largest city in Japan and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center of international commerce since ancient times. The area has long been considered the ...

. The two armies met on the shores of

Hakata Bay is a bay in the northwestern part of Fukuoka city, on the Japanese island of Kyūshū. It faces the Tsushima Strait, and features beaches and a port, though parts of the bay have been reclaimed in the expansion of the city of Fukuoka. The ba ...

, at Tatarahama, but were evenly matched, and both retreated. In order to end the deadlock, the Ōtomo made an alliance with the

Amago clan The , descended from the Emperor Uda (868–897) by the Kyogoku clan, descending from the Sasaki clan (Uda Genji). Kyogoku Takahisa in the 14th century, lived in Amako-go (Izumo Province), and took the name 'Amago'. The family crest is also t ...

. The Mōri clan's battles with this larger allied force occupied it to such an extent that

Yamanaka Yukimori , also known as Yamanaka Shikanosuke (山中鹿の介) or Shikasuke (鹿の介), was a Japanese samurai of the Sengoku period. He served the Amago clan of Izumo Province. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"Yamanaka Shikanosuke"in ''Japan Encyc ...

and

Amago Katsuhisa was a remnant of the Amago clan, a powerful feudal clan in the Chūgoku region of Japan, backed up by Yamanaka Yukimori, a vassal of the clan. He was born to Amago Masahisa in 1553. In the following year, Katsuhisa's father and grandfather were ...

, as part of their arrangement with the Ōtomo, were able to take

Izumo province was an Old provinces of Japan, old province of Japan which today consists of the eastern part of Shimane Prefecture. It was sometimes called . The province is in the Chūgoku region. History During the early Kofun period (3rd century) this reg ...

, some distance away on

Honshū , historically known as , is the largest of the four main islands of Japan. It lies between the Pacific Ocean (east) and the Sea of Japan (west). It is the seventh-largest island in the world, and the second-most populous after the Indonesian ...

, and that the Mōri became pressured into abandoning Tachibana.

References

*''This article's content is derived largely from that on the corresponding article on the Japanese Wikipedia.''

Battle

References

See also