was the 3rd ''

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

Yonezawa Domain was a feudal domain in Edo period Japan, located in Dewa Province (modern-day Yamagata Prefecture), Japan. It was centered at Yonezawa castle in what is now the city of Yamagata, and its territory extended over the Okitama District of Dewa Pro ...

Dewa Province was a province of Japan comprising modern-day Yamagata Prefecture and Akita Prefecture, except for the city of Kazuno and the town of Kosaka. Dewa bordered on Mutsu and Echigō Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . History Early per ...

during the

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 ...

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 ...

of Japan, and 19th hereditary chieftain of the

Uesugi clan The is a Japanese samurai clan which was at its peak one of the most powerful during the Muromachi and Sengoku periods (14th to 17th centuries). Appert, Georges. (1888) ''Ancien Japon,'' p. 79./ref> At its height, the clan had three main branch ...

. His courtesy title was ''Harima-no-kami''.

Biography

Uesugi Tsunakatsu was they son of Uesugi Sadakatsu, the 2nd ''daimyō'' of Yonezawa. He was initially named "Uesugi Sanekatsu", but received a

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

from Shogun

Tokugawa Ietsuna was the fourth ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa dynasty of Japan who was in office from 1651 to 1680. He is considered the eldest son of Tokugawa Iemitsu, which makes him the grandson of Tokugawa Hidetada and the great-grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. E ...

as a mark of special favor and changed his name to "Tsunakatsu". He became ''daimyō'' on the death of his father in 1645. However, in 1649 the domain was assigned the herculean task of repairing the stone walls on the moats of Edo Castle, which bankrupted the domain's finances. Although he attempted to improve on the domain's ability to raise taxes by a new land survey, the results were only minor. In 1651, he received confirmation of his court rank of Lower Fourth Rank, Junior grade, and the additional courtesy title of ''Jijū''. The domain also came under increasing criticism from the shogunate for being lukewarm on enforcement of anti-''

Kirishitan The Japanese term , from Portuguese ''cristão'' (cf. Kristang), meaning "Christian", referred to Catholic Christians in Japanese and is used in Japanese texts as a historiographic term for Catholics in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries. ...

'' edicts, which cumulated with an order by the council of

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 ''shō ...

that the cadet branch of the Uesugi clan headed by Yamaura Mitsunori be put to death on suspicion of being ''Kirishitan''. In 1654, Tsunakatsu married

Haruhime was the daughter of Hoshina Masayuki, granddaughter of Tokugawa Hidetada and great-granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu. In 1654, she married Uesugi Tsunakatsu, the third head of the Yonezawa Domain. They had no children, so they adopted a son of Ts ...

, the daughter of Hoshina Masayuki. She died in 1659 at the age of 19 and it was widely suspected that she had been poisoned by her mother-in-law, Shoko-in (1620–1691). Tsunakatsu died in 1664 without heir and also under highly suspect circumstances. Normally, this would be cause for

attainder In English criminal law, attainder or attinctura was the metaphorical "stain" or "corruption of blood" which arose from being condemned for a serious capital crime (felony or treason). It entailed losing not only one's life, property and hereditar ...

of the domain. However, Hoshina Masayuki worked out a posthumous adoption. Tsukakatsu had a younger sister who was married to

Kira Yoshinaka was a ''kōke'' (master of ceremonies). His court title was '' Kōzuke no suke (上野介)''. He is famous as the adversary of Asano Naganori in the events of the Forty-seven rōnin. Although his name (義央) has been long pronounced as "Yoshi ...

. Their eldest son (and thus Tsunakatsu's nephew) was adopted to carry on the Uesugi family line, becoming Uesugi Tsunanori. While this was not unusual in itself, Tsunakatsu had fallen ill on the night after he visited his sister and had dinner with Kira Yoshinaka. Although official histories indicate that he had a

perforated ulcer A perforated ulcer is a condition in which an untreated ulcer has burned through the mucosal wall in a segment of the gastrointestinal tract (e.g., the stomach or colon) allowing gastric contents to leak into the abdominal cavity. Signs and symp ...

, for the seven days before he died he exhibited all of the symptoms of having been poisoned. As popular opinion held Kira Yoshinaka to be an arch-villain due to the events of the '' Chushingura'', it was no stretch to imagine that he was behind the poisoning of Uesugi Tsunakatsu, and various publications and dramas promoting this conspiracy had begun to circulate even by the mid-

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 ...

. Furthermore, Yonezawa Domain was reduced in '' kokudaka'' from 300,000 ''koku'' to 150,000 ''koku'' on Tsunakatsu's death. The 150,000 ''koku'' lost consisted of the territories of Shinobu in

Mutsu Province was an old province of Japan in the area of Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Aomori Prefectures and the municipalities of Kazuno and Kosaka in Akita Prefecture. Mutsu Province is also known as or . The term is often used to refer to the comb ...

and portions of Okitama in Dewa Province, which were given to Hoshina Masayuki to administer

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Uesugi, Tsunakatsu 1637 births 1664 deaths Uesugi clan Tozama daimyo