was a Japanese ''

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 ...

'' of the 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 ...

. His childhood name was Rokumaru (六丸).

Family

* Father:

Hosokawa Tadatoshi was a Japanese samurai ''daimyō'' of the early Edo period. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"Hosokawa Tadatoshi"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 359 細川忠利at ''Nihon jinmei daijiten''; retrieved 2013-5-29. He was the head of Kumamoto Domain ...

* Mother: Chiyohime (1597–1649) * Wife: Shojōin, daughter of Karasuma Mitsukata * Concubines: ** Seitai-in ** Shimizu-dono * Children: ** Hosokawa Tsunatoshi (1643–1714) by Seitai-in ** Hosokawa Toshishige (1647–1687) by Seitai-in

Biography

Mitsunao was born in 1619, and was the eldest son of

. In 1637, he joined his father in the effort to subdue the

Shimabara Rebellion The , also known as the or , was an uprising that occurred in the Shimabara Domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan from 17 December 1637 to 15 April 1638. Matsukura Katsuie, the ''daimyō'' of the Shimabara Domain, enforced unpopular polic ...

, and fought with distinction. Succeeding his father in 1641, he became ''daimyō'' of the

Kumamoto Domain The , also known as , was a Japanese domain of the Edo period. It was associated with Higo Province in modern-day Kumamoto Prefecture.

. Mitsunao's suppression of the Abe family's revolt in 1642 is famous, due to its fictionalization by

Mori Ōgai Lieutenant-General , known by his pen name , was a Japanese Army Surgeon general officer, translator, novelist, poet and father of famed author Mari Mori. He obtained his medical license at a very young age and introduced translated German lan ...

Ancestry

References

List of Kumamoto lords on "Edo 300 HTML"
(8 October 2007) Daimyo 1619 births 1650 deaths Higo-Hosokawa clan {{daimyo-stub