The siege of Tanabe in 1600 was one of a number of battles which took place in parallel to the more influential

Sekigahara Campaign The Sekigahara Campaign was a series of battles in Japan fought between the Eastern Army aligned with Tokugawa Ieyasu and the Western Army loyal to Ishida Mitsunari, culminating in the decisive Battle of Sekigahara. The conflict was sparked by a ...

, which led to the unification of

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

under

Tokugawa Ieyasu Tokugawa Ieyasu (born Matsudaira Takechiyo; 31 January 1543 – 1 June 1616) was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was the third of the three "Gr ...

History

The command of Tanabe Castle was held by

Hosokawa Tadaoki was a Japanese samurai lord and daimyo of the late Sengoku period and early Edo period. He was the son of Hosokawa Fujitaka and Numata Jakō, and the husband of the famous Christian convert Hosokawa Gracia. For most of his life, he went b ...

. However, Tadaoki accompanied Ieyasu to Sekigahara, as part of the Tokugawa vanguard. Tadaoki's father

Hosokawa Fujitaka , also known as , was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and prominent samurai lord of the Sengoku period. A former senior retainer of Ashikaga Yoshiaki, the fifteenth and final Ashikaga shōgun, Fujitaka later aligned with Oda Nobunaga. As a reward fo ...

and his mother

Numata Jakō Numata Jakō (沼田麝香, 1544 – September 4, 1618) also known as Hosokawa Maria (細川マリア) was a Japanese noble lady of the Sengoku period. She was the wife of Hosokawa Fujitaka and mother of Hosokawa Tadaoki. She was best known for f ...

defended the castle walls against

Ikoma Chikamasa Ikoma Chikamasa (生駒親正, 1526 – March 25, 1603) was a Japanese ''daimyō'' during the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods around the turn of the 17th century. His father was Ikoma Chikashige. Chikamasa was appointed one of the san-''chūr� ...

's western forces under Onoki Shigekatsu. It is believed that, due to the respect they held for Hosokawa, the besieging army was somewhat slower and less effective than they might have been otherwise, and in the end the battle served to tie up these Western Army (anti-Tokugawa) contingents, preventing them from participating in the battle at Sekigahara.

References

*Turnbull, Stephen (1998). 'The Samurai Sourcebook'. London: Cassell & Co. p252. *Bryant, Anthony J (1995). 'Sekigahara 1600 - The final struggle for power', London: Osprey Publishing. Sekigahara campaign Sieges of the Sengoku period Attacks on castles in Japan Tango Province Maizuru Military history of Kyoto Prefecture {{Japan-battle-stub