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 ...

who ruled the

Tatebayashi Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Kōzuke Province (modern-day Gunma Prefecture), Japan. It was centered on Tatebayashi Castle in what is now the city of Tatebayashi, Gunma. History Following the ...

. His court title was '' Tōtōmi no kami''. Yasukatsu was the third son of

Sakakibara Yasumasa was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the late Sengoku period through early Edo period, who served the Tokugawa clan. As one of the Tokugawa family's foremost military commanders, he was considered one of its "Four Guardian Kings" (''shitennō'' 四� ...

, who was one of the four chief generals of

Tokugawa 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 fellow ...

. As Yasumasa's eldest son Tadamasa was given in adoption to the Osuga family, and the second son Tadanaga died young, Yasukatsu inherited his father's fief and became lord of Tatebayashi, which was rated at 100,000 ''

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 size. He took part in the winter

Siege of Osaka 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 ...

, assisting the hard-pressed forces of

Satake Yoshinobu was a ''daimyō'' in Sengoku period and early Edo period Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate and the 19th head of the Satake clan and 1st ''daimyō'' of Kubota Domain in Dewa Province. His courtesy title was '' Sakonoeshōshō'', later '' Ukyō ...

. In the summer siege the following year, he was defeated in

Sanada Yukimura , also known as , was a Japanese samurai warrior of the Sengoku period. He was especially known as the leading general on the defending side of the Siege of Osaka. Yukimura was called "A Hero who may appear once in a hundred years", "Crimson D ...

's counterattack. Soon after the siege, Yasukatsu died at 26 of a bad case of

hemorrhoids Hemorrhoids (or haemorrhoids), also known as piles, are vascular structures in the anal canal. In their normal state, they are cushions that help with stool control. They become a disease when swollen or inflamed; the unqualified term ''hemo ...

. After Yasukatsu's death his son Tadatsugu succeeded him; Tadatsugu's only son Katsumasa became a

hatamoto A was a high ranking samurai in the direct service of the Tokugawa shogunate of feudal Japan. While all three of the shogunates in Japanese history had official retainers, in the two preceding ones, they were referred to as ''gokenin.'' However ...

. Both Yasukatsu and his father Yasumasa are playable characters from the Eastern Army in the original ''

Kessen is a real-time tactics video game produced by Koei and published by Electronic Arts. It was a launch game for the PlayStation 2 in Japan and North America. It was initially the only real-time wargame game available for the PlayStation 2. It is a ...

''.

References

*Naramoto, Tatsuya (1992). ''Nihon no kassen: Monoshiri jiten''. Tokyo: Shūfu-to-seikatsusha.
"Tatebayashi-han" on Edo 300 HTML
(accessed 16 Oct. 2008) *Turnbull, Stephen (2006). ''Osaka 1614–15: The Last Battle of the Samurai''. (Oxford: Osprey Publishing), p. 38. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sakakibara, Yasukatsu 1590 births 1615 deaths Fudai daimyo Sakakibara clan