The Last Lord of Ota Castle

The Devil of Hitachi

Long before the first train lines scored the land, the hills of Hitachi belonged to the Satake clan. From their fortress at Ota, perched over the landscape, they had commanded the province for centuries, a lineage stretching back to the great Minamoto warriors. By the turbulent 16th century, the era of warring states, the lord of Ota Castle was Satake Yoshishige, a man whose ferocity in battle earned him a name whispered with a mix of terror and awe: *Oni Yoshishige*—the Devil Yoshishige. Yoshishige was a man forged by his time. He slept on a thin mat, scorning the comfort of a futon, as if to keep the hardened edge of a perpetual campaigner. And he needed it. To the south, the powerful Hojo clan were a rising tide, their ambition threatening to swallow the whole of the Kanto region. Yoshishige met them head-on. At the Battle of Numajiri, his 20,000 soldiers faced a Hojo army four times their size. But the Satake had a surprise: more than 8,000 matchlock guns, a shocking concentration of modern firepower that helped win the day. Through shrewd alliances and brutal force, Yoshishige consolidated his grip on Hitachi, unifying the fractious local clans under his family’s five-boned fan crest. In 1589, he passed official leadership to his eldest son, Yoshinobu, a young man who had grown up in a world defined by his father’s wars. A year later, the great unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi laid siege to the Hojo at Odawara, and the Satake clan pledged their loyalty. For his service, Yoshinobu was confirmed as master of Hitachi, his domain assessed at a massive 545,000 *koku*—a measure of wealth and power that placed the Satake among the most important clans in the land. From the walls of Ota Castle, it must have seemed their ascent was unstoppable.