Ashikaga Ujihime (足利氏姫, 1574 – June 6, 1620), or Ashikaga no Ujihimekotobank.jp
/ref>, Ashikaga Ujinohime was the de facto Koga kubō in

Sengoku period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

. She was the daughter of 5th Koga kubō Ashikaga Yoshiuji and Jōkō-in (a daughter of

Hōjō Ujiyasu was a ''daimyō'' (warlord) and third head of the Odawara Hōjō clan. Known as the "Lion of Sagami", he was revered as a fearsome warrior and a cunning man. He is famous for his strategies of breaking the siege from Takeda Shingen and Uesugi K ...

). She was a woman trained in martial arts and received education from the highest court. In 1583 when Yoshiuji died without a male heir, Ujihime succeeded her father at the young age of nine, she took the title Koga kubō (title equivalent to

shōgun , officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakur ...

Kantō region The is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. Slight ...

) and inherited an area equivalent the

Koga domain file:Koga castle kannonjikuruwa dorui.jpg, alt=, Site of Koga Castle, administrative headquarters of Koga Domain was a Han (Japan), feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan. It is located in Shimōsa Province, Honshū. The d ...

Life

She was de facto the Koga Kubo and the castellan in

Koga Castle was a Japanese castle located in Koga, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. During the Muromachi period, Koga was the seat of the Kantō kubō, under the Ashikaga clan. At the end of the Edo period, Koga Castle was the administrative center of Koga Do ...

. Even the Ashikaga shogunate lost its sovereignty, Ujinohime was vital to the administration of the Kantō region, she worked together with the Later Hōjō clan and had her lands protected by her uncle Hōjō Ujimasa. In 1590,

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

initiated a campaign to eliminate the Hōjō clan, the last obstacle for Japan to be unified under the name of Hideyoshi. The Toyotomi clan wins in the siege of Odawara and the Hōjō clan has been banished, Ujimasa is ordered to commit

seppuku , sometimes referred to as hara-kiri (, , a native Japanese kun reading), is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honour but was also practised by other Japanese people ...

along with his brother

Hōjō Ujiteru (1540? – August 10, 1590) was a Japanese samurai, who was the son of Hōjō Ujiyasu and lord of Hachiōji Castle in what is now Tokyo. In 1568, Ujiteru defended Takiyama castle from Takeda Shingen. Later in 1569, Ujiteru and his brother ...

. The area was awarded to

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fellow ...

after the defeat of the Hōjō at the siege of Odawara. After this in the same year, Ujinohime was moved to in currently

Ibaraki Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Ibaraki Prefecture has a population of 2,871,199 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Ibaraki Prefecture borders Fukushima Prefecture to the north, ...

and she became the owner of the palace. In 1591

ordered her married to Ashikaga Kunitomo. When Kunitomo died in 1593, she was then married to his younger brother Ashikaga Yoriuji (Later known as Kitsuregawa Yoriuji) and give birth to a son. The marriage between Ujinohime and Yoriuji began the formation of a new clan, the Kitsuregawa clan. Yoriuji received a new domain, but Ujinohime declined to change domain. So she continued commanding the Konosu palace and Yoriuji went to another castle. She and Yoriuji ran the Kitsuregawa clan until the day of her death on June 6, 1620. The clan Ujinohime founded prospered for years and became a fudai daimyo in the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

References

People of Sengoku-period Japan Women of medieval Japan 1574 births 1620 deaths Samurai Government of feudal Japan Kantō kubō Ujinohime 16th-century Japanese people 16th-century Japanese women 17th-century Japanese women 16th-century women rulers 17th-century women rulers 16th-century women politicians 17th-century women politicians People of Edo-period Japan {{Japan-mil-bio-stub

Life

See also

References