was the common name of the head of the Japanese

Katakura clan The is a Japanese family which claims its descent from Fujiwara no Toshihito by way of Katō Kagekado. The family entered Mutsu Province in the 14th century as subordinates of the Ōsaki clan. However, in 1532, they became retainers of the Da ...

, who served as senior retainers to 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 ...

. Following the Date clan's move into

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 ...

, they were granted holdings at

Shiroishi Castle is a flatland-style Japanese castle in what is now the city of Shiroishi, Miyagi. During the Edo period, it was the castle of the Katakura clan, who were hereditary retainers of the Date clan of Sendai Domain. During the Boshin War, it was also t ...

(12,000 ''

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 ...

'' in total), which they held through the start of the

Meiji Era The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...

. A chronologically arranged list of the generations of Edo-era Katakura Kojūrō (listed by their formal name) follows:

Edo-era Katakura family heads

# Kagetsuna (1557–1615) # Shigenaga (1585–1659) # Kagenaga (1630–1681) # Muranaga (1667–1691) # Murayasu (1683-?) # Muranobu # Murasada (1676–1744) # Murakiyo # Muratsune (1757–1822) # Kagesada # Munekage # Kuninori (1818–1886) # Kagenori (1838–1902) # Kagemitsu

Katakura family heads since 1868

# Kenkichi #

Nobumitsu Nobumitsu (written: 信光) is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese playwright *, Japanese samurai and writer *, Japanese golfer {{given name Japanese masculine given names ...

# Shigenobu Kagetsuna, the first Katakura Kojūrō, was arguably the most famous, having served alongside

Date Masamune was a regional ruler of Japan's Azuchi–Momoyama period through early Edo period. Heir to a long line of powerful ''daimyō'' in the Tōhoku region, he went on to found the modern-day city of Sendai. An outstanding tactician, he was made all ...

. The clan came to prominence yet again in the

Boshin War The , sometimes known as the Japanese Revolution or Japanese Civil War, was a civil war in Japan fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and a clique seeking to seize political power in the name of the Imperi ...

, when Shiroishi Castle was used as the headquarters of the Ouetsu Reppan Domei. After the war, the 12th Kojūrō, Katakura Kuninori, sold the castle and relocated to

Hokkaidō is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The la ...

. The castle was then given to the

Nanbu clan The was a Japanese samurai clan who ruled most of northeastern Honshū in the Tōhoku region of Japan for over 700 years, from the Kamakura period through the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The Nanbu claimed descent from the Seiwa Genji of Kai Pr ...

Morioka is the capital city of Iwate Prefecture located in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan. On 1 February 2021, the city had an estimated population of 290,700 in 132,719 households, and a population density of . The total area of the city is . ...

, before the domain system was finally ended in the early 1870s. The current head of the family, Shigenobu (who would have been the 17th Kojūrō), is the chief priest of

Aoba Shrine is the memorial shrine of Date Masamune, located in Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, near the site of the former Aoba Castle. The shrine was built in 1873 by petition of former retainers of the Date clan of former Sendai Domain to ...

, in

Sendai is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Miyagi Prefecture, the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,091,407 in 525,828 households, and is one of Japan's 20 Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, desig ...

.ˆÉ’B??@‚ÌŽq‘·
/ref>

Katakura Kojūrō in fiction

In the Sony PlayStation Video Game

Sengoku Basara is a series of video games developed and published by Capcom, and a bigger media franchise based on it, including four anime shows, an anime movie, a live action show, a magazine series, a trading card game, and numerous drama CDs, light nove ...

and the anime adaptation of it he was depicted as Masamune Date's loyal right-hand and right-eye man. He was using wakizashi and katana as his main weapon.

References

External links

Family tree of the Katakura clan
(in Japanese)

(in Japanese) Samurai Meiji Restoration {{samurai-stub