, also known as Jirō (次郎) or by his court title, Yamato no Kami (大和守), was a Japanese samurai of the

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 ...

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 ...

. He served the

Date clan The is a Japanese samurai kin group. Papinot, Jacques Edmond Joseph. (1906). ''Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japon''; Papinot, (2003)"Date", ''Nobiliare du Japon'', p. 5 retrieved 2013-5-5. History The Date family was founded ...

Sendai han The , also known as the , was a domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1871. The Sendai Domain was based at Aoba Castle in Mutsu Province, in the modern city of Sendai, located in the Tōhoku region of the i ...

during the tenure of its lord

Masamune , was a medieval Japanese blacksmith widely acclaimed as Japan's greatest swordsmith. He created swords and daggers, known in Japanese as ''tachi'' and ''tantō'', in the ''Sōshū'' school. However, many of his forged ''tachi'' were made into ...

. Akimitsu was born in 1550, the fourth son of

Date Harumune was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the Sengoku period.Rusu Masakage was a Japanese samurai of the Sengoku period through Azuchi-Momoyama period. Served as a retainer of the Date clan Masakage was the uncle of the famous Date Masamune.

and

Date Terumune was a Japanese samurai clan leader of the Sengoku period. Turnbull, Stephen. (2012) ''Samurai Commanders: 1577-1638,'' Vol, 2, p. 52 He had close relationship with Oda Nobunaga, one of the leading figures of the period. Terumune was the father o ...

's father. After the destruction of the

Ashina clan Ashina may refer to: *Ashina tribe, a ruling dynasty of the Turkic Khaganate *Ashina clan (Japan), one of the Japanese clans *Ashina District, Hiroshima, a former Japanese district *Empress Ashina (551–582), empress of the Chinese/Xianbei dynasty ...

in Tenshō 17 (1589), he came under

's command. In Masamune's service, Akimitsu was acknowledged as chief among the heads of the Date clan's cadet branches, or ''ichimon-hittō'' (一門衆筆頭). He served in the

Korean campaign Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

, as well as the

Osaka campaign 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 1598, Akimitsu was entrusted with Kakuda Castle, which came with a stipend of 10,000 ''koku''.

References

1550 births 1622 deaths Samurai {{samurai-stub