(1566 – April 5, 1637) was a Japanese

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 ...

of the

Azuchi–Momoyama period The was the final phase of the in Japanese history from 1568 to 1600. After the outbreak of the Ōnin War in 1467, the power of the Ashikaga Shogunate effectively collapsed, marking the start of the chaotic Sengoku period. In 1568, Oda Nobuna ...

through early

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 ...

, who served the

Tokugawa clan The is a Japanese dynasty that was formerly a powerful ''daimyō'' family. They nominally descended from Emperor Seiwa (850–880) and were a branch of the Minamoto clan (Seiwa Genji) through the Matsudaira clan. The early history of this clan r ...

. He later became a ''

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

'', and one of the first

rōjū The , usually translated as '' Elder'', was one of the highest-ranking government posts under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan. The term refers either to individual Elders, or to the Council of Elders as a whole; under the first two ''sh� ...

of the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

. Masazumi was born in 1565; he was the eldest son of

Honda Masanobu was a commander and ''daimyō'' in the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu in Japan during the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods. In 1563, when an uprising against Ieyasu occurred in Mikawa Province, Masanobu took the side of the peasants against Ieyasu ...

. Father and son served

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 ...

together. Masazumi was in the main force at Sekigahara; after the battle, Masazumi was entrusted with the guardianship of the defeated

Ishida Mitsunari Ishida Mitsunari (, 1559 – November 6, 1600) was a Japanese samurai and military commander of the late Sengoku period of Japan. He is probably best remembered as the commander of the Western army in the Battle of Sekigahara following the A ...

. Masazumi was made a daimyo in 1608, with an income of 33,000

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. 1 koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about . It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1000 gō. One ''gō'' is the volume of the "rice cup", the plastic measuring cup that is supplied ...

. Ieyasu trusted Honda sufficiently to have relied on him as an intermediary for diplomatic initiatives with China.Miauno Norihito (2003)
''China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China,'' p. 109.
citing Fujii Jōji (藤井譲二). (1994). "Junana seiki no Nihon: buke no kokka no keisei" (十七世紀の日本：武家の国家の形成), in ''Iwanami kōza Nihon tsūshi'' (岩波講座日本通史), Vol. 12, pp. 40–41. Later, Masazumi served at the

siege of Osaka The was a series of battles undertaken by the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate against the Toyotomi clan, and ending in that clan's destruction. Divided into two stages (winter campaign and summer campaign), and lasting from 1614 to 1615, the siege ...

; in 1616, he became a ''toshiyori''; this was the position that would soon after be renamed as ''rōjū''. In this role, he worked closely with the now-retired second shōgun,

Hidetada was the second ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa dynasty, who ruled from 1605 until his abdication in 1623. He was the third son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate. Early life (1579–1593) Tokugawa Hidetada was bo ...

. During this period, his income was increased to 53,000 ''koku'', then to 155,000 in 1619. However, in 1622 he fought with

Kamehime Kamehime (, 27 July 1560 – 1 August 1625) was a Japanese woman from the Sengoku period. She was the eldest daughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu with his first wife, Lady Tsukiyama. She married Okudaira Nobumasa. The marriage was arranged as a reward fo ...

(Ieyasu's first daughter), fell into disfavor with Hidetada, and was exiled to Yokote, in the

Kubota Domain was a feudal domain in Edo period Japan, located in Dewa Province (modern-day Akita Prefecture), Japan. It was centered on Kubota Castle in what is now the city of Akita and was thus also known as the . It was governed for the whole of its histo ...

. Masazumi died in Yokote in 1637, at age 73.

Notes

References

"Honda Masazumi no retsuden"
(22 February 2008) * Mizuno, Norihito. (2003)
''China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China'', p. 109.
excerpt from ''Japan and Its East Asian Neighbors: Japan's Perception of China and Korea and the Making of Foreign Policy from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century'', Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004, as cited in Tsutsui, William M. (2009)
''A Companion to Japanese History'', p. 83.

External links

Images of correspondence by Honda Masazumi
, - Samurai 1566 births 1637 deaths Honda clan Rōjū Fudai daimyo {{daimyo-stub