Watanabe Moritsuna

(1542–1620) 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

Watanabe Watanabe ( and other variantsSee #Miscellaneous) is a Japanese surname derived from the noble and samurai Watanabe clan, a branch of the Minamoto clan, descending from the Emperor Saga (786-842), the 52nd Emperor of Japan, and refers to a loca ...

clan, 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 ...

. Born in

Mikawa Province was an old province in the area that today forms the eastern half of Aichi Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Mikawa''" in . Its abbreviated form name was . Mikawa bordered on Owari, Mino, Shinano, and Tōtōmi Provinces. Mik ...

. He joined

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 f ...

in 1557 and fought in such famous battles as the Battles of Anegawa (1570), Mikatagahara (1573) and Nagashino (1575). He was nicknamed Yari no Hanzo (Spear Hanzo) because of his skill with the spear, but it was also to distinguish him from the Tokugawa samurai

Hattori Hanzō or ''Second Hanzō'', nicknamed , was a famous Ninja of the Sengoku era, who served the Tokugawa clan as a ninja, credited with saving the life of Tokugawa Ieyasu and then helping him to become the ruler of united Japan. He is often a subjec ...

who was called ''Oni no Hanzō'' he was a great hero. Shukouji4

Karō Samurai 1542 births 1620 deaths People from Okazaki, Aichi {{samurai-stub