Shigashi (志賀氏) (-d.1587) was a Japanese noble lady and Japanese warrior from 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 ...

. Shigashi means the lady from Shiga clan and her real name is unknown. She was the wife of

Bekki Shigetsura , better known mononymously as , is a Japanese entertainer signed to GATE. Since 2009, she has recorded music under the stage name Becky♪♯. Biography Becky was born in Kanagawa Prefecture to a Japanese mother and an English father, Simon Rab ...

(戸次鎮連) the retainer of

Ōtomo clan The was a Japanese samurai family whose power stretched from the Kamakura period through the Sengoku period, spanning over 400 years. The clan's hereditary lands lay in Kyūshū. Origins The first family head, Ōtomo Yoshinao (1172–1223), ...

, the nephew and the son-in-law of famed samurai Bekki Akitsura a.k.a. Tachibana Dōsetsu. She is best known for her role during conflicts between the

Shimazu clan The were the ''daimyō'' of the Satsuma han, which spread over Satsuma, Ōsumi and Hyūga provinces in Japan. The Shimazu were identified as one of the '' tozama'' or outsider ''daimyō'' familiesAppert, Georges ''et al.'' (1888). in contr ...

and the Ōtomo clan in

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's Japanese archipelago, four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa Island, Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Ryukyu Islands, Islands ...

Biography

Shigashi is documented in by Satō Kuratarō(佐藤蔵太郎) in 1927 based on various documents and stories about Tsuruga Castle. Satō selected episodes that he considered historically correct and described the list of documents he cited but did not provied detailed source of quotation of each part.鶴谷,preface Shigashi was the daughter of the Ōtomo retainer Shiga Chikamori(志賀親守).鶴谷,139 Her husband, Shigetsura was the Bekki clan head after his father-in-low Bekki Akitsura once retired. Later, Akitsura inherited the headship of Tachibana clan as Tachibana Dōsetsu. Shigashi was the sister of Shiga Chikatsugu, a retainer of the Otomo clan. When the army of

approached Ōtomo land during the

Kyushu campaign is the third-largest island of Japan's Japanese archipelago, four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa Island, Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Ryukyu Islands, Islands ...

, Shigetsura and some retainers betrayed Ōtomo clan and draw the enemy into their castles. Ōtomo clan ran into difficulty because the enemy's base suddenly appeared in own land. Unlike her husband, Shigashi and her son, Bekki Munetsune(戸次統常) was still loyal to Ōtomo clan. Shigashi was said to be skilled military commander and dispatched troops to the betrayed retainer's castles and defeated them. One night, she encouraged her son to clear Bekki's name with defeating Shimazu army. She has another two young siblings sleeping by the side of her. She stabbed them to death with her short katana, because she had a fear that Munetsune will worry about his family during the battle. Then she suddenly departed for the Shimazu base. After killing many soldiers, she fired the castle and committed suicide. Touched by his mother's bravely, Munetsune fought valiantly and killed by Shimazu defending Tsuruga Castle (鶴賀城) during the

Battle of Hetsugigawa The was the last battle before the Toyotomi main army's arrival on Kyūshū during Japan's Sengoku period. In 1586 at Hetsugigawa (present Ōnogawa) in Bungo province Toyotomi's vanguard divisions under Chōsokabe Motochika and Sengoku Hidehis ...

at the age 22.鶴谷,139-140

References

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Shigashi Women of the Sengoku period 16th-century Japanese nobility Women in 16th-century warfare 16th-century Japanese women 1587 deaths

Biography

See also

References

Sources