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, He called 'Saemon no kami'. he was a third son of

Shimazu Takahisa , a son of Shimazu Tadayoshi, was a ''daimyō'' during Japan's Sengoku period. He was the fifteenth head of the Shimazu clan. Biography In 1514, he is said to have been born in Izaku Castle. On 1526, Takahisa was adopted as the successor to ...

, who served as a general officer and senior retainer of 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 ...

Satsuma Province was an old province of Japan that is now the western half of Kagoshima Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Satsuma" in . Its abbreviation was . History Satsuma's provincial capital was Satsumasendai. Dur ...

. Toshihisa was known as a rare "Resourceful General", He was in a key position to determine the policies of Shimazu's army as a general officer responsible for war strategies. He was fought in the

Siege of Takabaru The siege of Takabaru occurred in October 1576 when the forces of Shimazu Yoshihisa besieged and took the fortress of Takabaru, which belonged to the Itō clan. The Shimazu family had by the 1570s started its rise as the dominant power in Kyūs ...

(1576), Battle of Mimigawa (1578),

Siege of Minamata Castle The siege of Minamata Castle was a short siege of the castle of Minamata. Minamata was the entry point for the Ōtomo lands in Higo province, the castle was guarded by Sagara Yoshihi with 700 soldiers. When Shimazu Toshihisa and Shimazu Iehisa, ...

(1581) during

campaign to conquer

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 ...

and also the commander of Shimazu clan against

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods and regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: ...

, when Hideyoshi invaded Kyushu (1587). He didn't surrender to Hideyoshi and kept on fighting even after his brother Yoshihisa surrendered. Later in 1592, at the time of uprising against Hideyoshi, the incident at Taihei-ji Temple was raised as an issue; this led Hideyoshi to issue an order to track down and kill Toshihisa which made him commit suicide by

seppuku , also known as , is a form of Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honor, but was also practiced by other Japanese people during the Shōwa era (particularly officers near ...

at Ryugamizu. After his death, a legitimate son of his adopted son, Shimazu Tadachika, Tsunehisa, inherited his position.

References

Samurai 1537 births 1592 deaths Shimazu clan Deified Japanese men People from Hioki, Kagoshima {{samurai-stub