Many historians consider Hojo Soun to be the quintessential warlord of Sengoku Japan. Japanese popular culture once claimed he began life as a destitute ronin (an unemployed samurai) who came to be lord of multiple provinces in eastern Japan. Historians now know he was not a rags-to-riches story. He was a member of the famous Ise clan, which directly served the Ashikaga shogunate. He also benefited from his connection to the powerful Imagawa clan, which he married into. Nevertheless, his meteoric rise from shogunal civil servant to formidable warlord defines the Sengoku era. While his career is less incredible than it was once thought, his rise to power is still interesting as a case study of how the period generated its warlords.
Hojo Soun never used that name in his lifetime; it was a posthumous application by his son and successor, Ujitsuna, after his death. Soun was really Ise Moritoki (but he will be referred to as Soun for this article). Much of his early life is shrouded in mystery and debate. He was born around 1432 to the Ise clan, which served the Ashikaga shogunate as instructors in etiquette. One of its notable members was Ise Sadachika, a tutor to the eighth Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimasa, and was briefly the power behind the scenes of the shogunate. Soun’s father, Ise Morisada, also worked in Kyoto for the Ashikaga.
This was how Morisada met Imagawa Yoshitada, the head of the Imagawa clan, official governors of Suruga Province. Soun would marry Yoshitada’s daughter and start working himself as a shogunal bureaucrat in 1483. In the meantime, Yoshitada died in battle in 1476 fighting the Shiba clan in battles related to the Onin War. A succession crisis erupted among the Imagawa between supporters of Yoshitada’s infant son, Tatsuomaru, and followers of Yoshitada’s cousin, Oshika Norimitsu. Soun, as Yoshitada’s son-in-law, stepped in to mediate.
In 1479 Ashikaga Yoshimasa had nominally retired as shogun, but like many of his predecessors, he continued to rule from retirement. He directed Soun to reward the Imagawa clan leadership position to Tatsuomaru, but to permit Oshika Norimitsu to rule in his place until Tatsuomaru came of age. In 1487 Oshika Norimitsu rebelled, refusing to step down as clan head. Soun formed an army, invaded Suruga Province, and killed Norimitsu. When Tatsuomaru came of age a few years later, he took the name Ujichika and granted Soun permission to take the character “uji” for his own name. Ise Moritoki then took the name Ise Nagauji and received his own castle.
The Kanto region of Japan lies in the southeast of Japan’s main island, Honshu, and is one of the few flat plains ideal for farming on an archipelago famous for its many mountains. The Kanto had fallen into war in 1449, when Ashikaga Shigeuji, the representative of the shogun in the region, had declared his independence and killed one of his deputies, Uesugi Noritada. The shogun ordered one of his brothers, Masatomo, out of monastic retirement to lead an army against Shigeuji, but Masatomo’s forces were not able to make much progress. Masatomo had to set up camp in Izu Province instead. Masatomo was meant to take over Shigeuji’s position as shogunal representative for the entire Kanto, but a peace treaty mediated in 1483 between Shigeuji and the Uesugi meant Masatomo was left with only Izu Province as his domain. Masaotomo died and one of his sons, Chachamaru, seized power in 1491, murdering his father’s widow as well as his brothers.
One of Chachamaru’s brothers, however, was residing in Kyoto as a monk. In 1493, this brother became shogun in a coup against the former shogun, Ashikaga Yoshitane, orchestrated by a shogunal minister, Hosokawa Masatomo. The new shogun, taking the name Yoshizumi, promised to revenge his mother and brothers by removing Chachamaru in Izu. To this he turned to the Imagawa clan in neighboring Suruga. As an Imagawa retainer, Soun led an army into Izu with the intention of defeating Chachamaru, but also with the objective of obtaining his own base of operations. He did not fully defeat Chachamaru and his allies until 1497, during which time he captured numerous castles, including Odawara, the future stronghold of his clan. Soun continued to act as a commander of the Imagawa forces, going west and fighting the Matsudaira clan of Mikawa Province on their behalf around 1506.
After that, however, Soun gradually severed ties with the Imagawa, setting out to become head of his own clan. He returned to Sagami Province where he made war on the various branches of the Uesugi clan, who had long dominated major shogunal ositions in the Kanto. Fortunately for him, in northern Echigo Province, one of the Uesugi vassals, Nagao Tamekage (father of Nagao Kagetora, later known as Uesugi Kenshin), had risen in rebellion. As the Uesugi were distracted, this freed Soun up to go on the attack in the Kanto, and by 1516 he was in control of all of Sagami Province. Two years later he retired, appointing his son Ujitsuna as the head of the clan. In 1519 Soun himself died in Nirayama Castle, his primary castle in Izu Province.
Around 1523, Ujitsuna first started using the family name Hojo in place of Ise, invoking a prestigious clan from earlier in Japanese history who had controlled the government as regents. Hence the clan of Hojo Soun is sometimes referred to by historians as the “Late Hojo” or “Odawara Hojo.” The clan would go on to acquire Musashi Province and would dominate the Kanto for decades.
Since he took power through military force rather than the authority of the Ashikaga shogunate, Soun is one of (if not the) first “Sengoku daimyo.” His 1493 seizure of power in Izu is sometimes referred to as the beginning of the Sengoku period, although this is not really accurate, since he was acting under orders of the Ashikaga shogun at the time, while the Sengoku period is defined by a lack of respect for shogunal authority. His 1516 capture of Sagami Province is much more typical of Sengoku conflicts, as Soun had no real legitimate reason to make war on the Uesugi of the Kanto, who had a much more traditional claim to govern the area. Soun’s interventions in succession disputes to advance his own career is also much more in keeping with “Sengoku daimyo” behavior.
Even though it was Soun’s son Hojo Ujitsuna who invented the Hojo lineage, it was also customary practice for Sengoku clan leaders to invent genealogies that gave them more prestige than they had. For those who were privileged and fortunate, social mobility and political power could come virtually overnight, and therefore it became necessary to “spruce up” their claims to power and respect, even if it meant engaging in historical fiction. Tokugawa Ieyasu, for example, made up his clan’s descent from the Minamoto clan, while Oda Nobunaga had no basis for claiming descent from the Taira clan; these were simply the most famous clans of ancient Japan, related to the Imperial family, and they enhanced a clan’s prestige as it ascended from regional power to potential unifier.
Soun’s descendants would enjoy hegemony over the Kanto region from their castle in Odawara until 1590 when they would submit to another warlord from humble beginnings, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the son of peasants and a former sandal bearer. His siege of Odawara castle was one of the high water marks of his career, as he would die in 1598 and his clan usurped as national overlords by Tokugawa Ieyasu. While the Toyotomi clan’s supremacy over Japan would only last a single generation, the Hojo clan’s dominance of the Kanto region has lasted five generations.
References
Aikawa, Tsukasa. Sengoku Hojo Ichizoku: Kanto Seiha No Eiko to Zasetsu. Tokyo: Shinkigensha, 2009.
“Hojo Soun,” Samurai Archives SamuraiWiki, May 14, 2011. https://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Hojo_Soun
Kuroda, Motoki. Sengoku Hojo Ichizoku. Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Oraisha, 2005.
Turnbull, Stephen. The Samurai Sourcebook. New York: Arms and Armour Press, 1998.
Turnbull, Stephen. War in Japan: 1467–1615. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002.
Tenka Fubu 