was the common name of the head of the Japanese Katakura clan, who served as senior retainers to the

Date clan The is a Japanese samurai kin group.Edmond Papinot, 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 fam ...

. Following the Date clan's move into Sendai han, they were granted holdings at Shiroishi Castle (12,000 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

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

Meiji Era The was an Japanese era name, era of History of Japan, 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 feu ...

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

Date Masamune was a Japanese ''daimyō'' during the Azuchi–Momoyama period through the early Edo period. Heir to a long line of powerful feudal lords in the Tōhoku region, he went on to found the modern-day city of Sendai. An outstanding tactician, he w ...

. 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 coalition seeking to seize political power in the name of the Impe ...

, 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 the second-largest island of Japan 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 railway via the Seikan Tunnel. The ...

. The castle was then given to the

Nanbu clan The was a Japanese clan, 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 Ge ...

of Morioka, 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, in

Sendai is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Miyagi Prefecture and the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,098,335 in 539,698 households, making it the List of cities in Japan, twelfth most populated city in Japan. ...

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 three anime shows, an anime movie, a live action show, and numerous drama CDs, light novels, manga, and stage plays. Its story ...

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