was a

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

and

military strategist A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

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 characte ...

Japan. He was born in Fushimi in

Yamashiro Province was a province of Japan, located in Kinai. It overlaps the southern part of modern Kyoto Prefecture on Honshū. Aliases include , the rare , and . It is classified as an upper province in the ''Engishiki''. Yamashiro Province included Kyoto i ...

(present-day Fushimi-ku, Kyoto). Among the works he wrote in his late years was the widely circulated , an introduction to warrior ethics that was influential among middle- and lower-class

. It has been translated into English by

Arthur Lindsay Sadler Arthur Lindsay Sadler (1882–1970) was Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Sydney. Joyce AckroydSadler, Arthur Lindsay (1882–1970) ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', adb.anu.edu.au. Retrieved 30 November 2020. Life and care ...

as ''The Code of the Samurai'' (1941; 1988), William Scott Wilson as ''Budoshoshinshu: The Warrior's Primer'' and by Thomas Cleary.''The Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke'', translated by Thomas Cleary. . Yūzan was the son of Daidōji Shigehisa (大道寺繁久), the grandson of Daidōji Naoshige ( 大道寺直繁) and the great-grandson of Daidōji Masashige ( 大道寺政繁), an important advisor to the

Later Hōjō clan The was one of the most powerful samurai families in Japan in the Sengoku period and held domains primarily in the Kantō region. Their last name was simply Hōjō (北条) but in order to differentiate between the earlier Hōjō clan with the s ...

. Shigehisa had been a samurai in the service of

Matsudaira Tadateru was a ''daimyō'' during the Edo period of Japan. He was the sixth son of Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was born in Edo Castle during the year of the dragon (''tatsu''), and as a child his name was Tatsuchiyo (辰千代). His mother was , a concubine of I ...

, ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominal ...

'' of the

Echigo was an old province in north-central Japan, on the shores of the Sea of Japan. It bordered on Uzen, Iwashiro, Kōzuke, Shinano, and Etchū Provinces. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Echigo''" in . It corresponds today to Niigata ...

Takada

fief A fief (; la, feudum) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form ...

, but became a ''

rōnin A ''rōnin'' ( ; ja, 浪人, , meaning 'drifter' or 'wanderer') was a samurai without a lord or master during the feudal period of Japan (1185–1868). A samurai became masterless upon the death of his master or after the loss of his master ...

'' in 1619 when Tadateru was dismissed from service. Yūzan studied the arts of war in Edo under Obata Kagenori, Hōjō Ujinaga ( 北条氏長), Yamaga Sokō and others. He then lectured on the subject as a guest of the Asano at the Hiroshima fief, the

Matsudaira clan The was a Japanese samurai clan that descended from the Minamoto clan. It originated in and took its name from Matsudaira village, in Mikawa Province (modern-day Aichi Prefecture). During the Sengoku period, the chieftain of the main line of t ...

at the Aizu fief, the Matsudaira clan at the Fukui fief, and elsewhere in Japan. Yūzan's son Daidōji Shigetaka (大道寺重高) became a retainer of the Fukui fief with a stipend of 300 '' koku''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Daidoji, Yuzan 1639 births 1730 deaths Samurai Military strategists People of Edo-period Japan