DateDate
Date Masamune
伊達政宗
“The One-Eyed Dragon”
1567–1636 (aged 70)
- Rank / office
- Governor of Mutsu / First Lord of Sendai
- Domain / base
- Dewa and Mutsu (Yonezawa → Iwadeyama → Sendai)
- Banner / crest
- Sparrow in bamboo
- Battles in 3D
- 3 battles
Portrait · Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
On horseback the years of youth passed; the world is at peace and my hair is white.
Date Masamune, "Verses Spoken in Drink"
Heir of Date Terumune, lord of Yonezawa Castle. He lost his right eye to smallpox as a child and was called "the One-Eyed Dragon." Succeeding at eighteen, he cut his way out of the encirclement at Hitotoribashi, and at Suriagehara in Tenshō 17 destroyed the great Ashina house in a single day, took Aizu and became master of southern Ōshū. But the following year he answered Toyotomi Hideyoshi's summons to Odawara dressed in white, submitted, and saw his dream of expansion cut short by the ban on private war. He sided with the Tokugawa at Sekigahara and Osaka and laid the foundation of the Sendai domain, 620,000 koku. A lover of display whose name gave Japanese the word "date" for a dandy, he was also a man of refinement and enterprise who sent an embassy to Europe. He left the Chinese poem that begins "On horseback the years of youth passed."
Life and battlesGold dots mark battles you can watch in 3D
- 1567Eiroku 10
Birth: Bontenmaru
Born the heir of Date Terumune, lord of Yonezawa Castle. He lost his right eye to smallpox as a child.
- 1585Tenshō 13
The Crisis at Hitotoribashi
Just after his succession he was surrounded by the great Satake–Ashina army and barely cut his way out.
- 1589Tenshō 17
Victory at Suriagehara
Beat Ashina Yoshihiro at Suriagehara, seized Aizu and became master of southern Ōshū.
Battle of Suriagehara Commander-in-chief 8,000 troops Watch in 3D › The One-Eyed Dragon of Ōshū, aged 23. He drove into Aizu on the strength of Inawashiro Morikuni's defection and, the instant the wind turned east, threw his whole army forward. - 1590Tenshō 18
Submission to Hideyoshi
Came to Odawara dressed in white, submitted to the Toyotomi and lost Aizu.
- 1590
Siege of Odawara
The master of Ōshū. Late in answering Hideyoshi's summons, he is said to have come to Odawara in the 6th month in the white robes of a man prepared to die. His life was spared, but Aizu and other lands were taken from him.
Odawara, Sagami Province 1,000 troops Watch in 3D › - 1600
Battle of Hasedō
The "Sekigahara of the North," fought in the same month. Naoe Kanetsugu's 20,000 Uesugi besiege Mogami Yoshiaki's Hasedō Castle, until news of the defeat at Sekigahara turns everything around. The fighting retreat, with Maeda Keiji in the rear guard, was hailed as the finest withdrawal in the north.
Hasedō, Dewa Province Watch in 3D › - 1601Keichō 6
Founding Sendai
After Sekigahara he built a castle town at Sendai and laid the foundation of a domain of 620,000 koku.
