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The date was May 4, 1572, the third year of Motokame,at Hyuga Kuni-sanshoin Kisakihara (Local Hara, Imano City, Miyazaki Prefecture).
Ito Yoshisuke, the daimyō of the sengoku daimyō in the southern part of the Japanese empire, sent an army led by Ito Yu'an to attack Kakuto Castle in the south of the same country, but was defeated by the Shimazu garrison led by Yoshihiro Shimazu, with less than 500 men, known in history as the Battle of Kisakihara.
Kakuto Castle was the domain of the Toyoshu Shimazu clan of the Satsuma Shimazu clan, and the Makoto Basin, where the land was located, was the border of the three kingdoms of Higo, Hyuga, and Satsuma, so the Toyoshu Shimazu family, the Ito family, and the Sagara family of the Higo Kingdom's Suoma (Bulbophylla) County, together with the Lords of the Osumi and Satsuma borders such as Ryoki, Kazufu, and Shinna, took the opportunity to rebel against the Shimazu family, resulting in various forces vying for control of the Makoto Basin, which began at the end of the Muromachi period and continued until the beginning of the Sengoku period. The protagonist of this battle, Yoshihiro Shimazu, was the adopted son of the Toyosu family at the time.
Therefore, in a narrow sense, the Battle of Kisakihara itself was indeed a war between the Ito and Shimazu families to decide who belonged to the Makoto Basin, but broadly speaking, and in terms of results, the Battle of Kisakihara was an important war that ended the sasaki- and Japanese disputes centered on the Makoto Basin for nearly a hundred years. Not only that, but it was also the battle that laid the foundation for the Shimazu family to control the hegemony of southern Kyushu, and even opened an important battle in which the Shimazu family swept Kyushu.
Therefore, the Battle of Kisakihara is particularly important in the historical position of the Shimazu family, and is even more special than the later Battles of Ogawa, Okita, and Tojigawa. In addition, due to this battle is the father of the Shimazu Ieyasu of the clan. Yoshihiro Shimazu (then known as "Shimazu Tadahira") performed personally, so this war was a perfect example of the samurai power of the clan in the Edo period, and provided a suitable example for deifying Shimazu Yoshihiro.
Of course, with such a strong political motivation, it also had a great influence on the depiction of the Battle of Kisakihara in later generations, especially since most of the records of the war are recorded by the Shimazu family, and very little on the Ito family. Although there are some high credibility in the Shimazu family's information, as the times have passed, the description of the Battle of Kisakihara has become more and more watery, and the actual situation of the war itself has become more and more difficult to understand. Let's take a look at it.
According to the only historical data at that time, when the Ito Army came to attack Kakuto Castle, there were only a few hundred city soldiers, including Yoshihiro, and the number of soldiers of the Ito Army that came to attack could not be fully confirmed, and the historical data of the Shimazu side generally referred to the range of 3,000 to 2,700. In the war, nearly two hundred and fifty people were killed in the Ito Army alone, according to this calculation, the strength of about three thousand people is very reasonable, of course, in the war at that time, the real combatants generally accounted for only one-third of the army, the rest are logistics and civilians, not real combat strength.
The question is why did it strike so devastatingly? In other words, why was Yoshihiro Shimazu, who was completely inferior in strength, able to successfully counterattack the Jedi? Let's talk a little bit about it.
As mentioned above, most of the relevant historical materials have a lot of water, fortunately, one of the parties, Yoshihiro himself, left a record, which allows us to speculate on the war situation at that time relatively close to the scene. Of course, this record is also the memory of Yoshihiro's elders, and it is difficult to prove whether the content is absolutely correct, but based on his presence as the leader of one side in this war, his testimony has its own important reference value.
When Yoshihiro learned that the Ito army was coming, he described Kakuto Castle as having been set on fire by the Ito army, and the castle had been surrounded, "the battlefield was thick with smoke, almost covering the sky", at this time Yoshihiro was afraid that there would be an internal response in Kakuto Castle, so that the castle would quickly fall. So he ventured to lead his own guard of fifty men, plus miscellaneous soldiers, to inspect the situation in Kakuto Castle under the cover of thick smoke. Yoshihiro himself described the move as "worse than a mantis arm blocking a car".
Just when Yoshihiro was thinking about how to deal with it, the Ito Army had already discovered the Yoshihiro team, and from the encirclement, sent a squad to attack Yoshihiro, many of Yoshihiro's team had been scattered by the enemy army, and Yoshihiro himself had to draw his sword and fight, leading his elite guards to fight with the Ito Army. The attacking army of the siege also temporarily retreated to rest, and after receiving Yoshihiro's attack on the periphery, it also hurried to deal with it.
Yoshihiro recalled that at that time, he himself "knew that his life was in danger, and he already had the consciousness of dying in battle", so he just fought with all his strength and killed as many enemy troops as possible from all sides. Perhaps because of the consciousness of death, the widowed Yoshihiro team slowly reversed the disadvantage, broke through the attack of the Ito Army, and launched an attack on the headquarters of the Ito Army stationed outside the city, during which two soldiers of the Ito Army killed Yoshihiro, but in the end they were all bladed by Yoshihiro.
Yoshihiro records that his sudden attack caused the Ito Army to begin to waver, and even panic. However, Yoshihiro did not explain the situation in detail, saying only that after the Ito army was shaken, it caused a chain reaction and fled one after another, so the defenders of Kakuto Castle also attacked together to chase and defeat the Departing Ito Army. Thus "on the plain between The Three Mountains and Iino, the bodies of the (Ito Army) soldiers who were killed were scattered."
In addition, Yoshihiro reported to Shimazu's family four months after the war:
"This place is surrounded by mountains, and now you can see countless corpses there, and I hope you can see it immediately."
After reviewing the Battle of Kizakihara, Yoshihiro lamented at the end:
"It was unprecedented for a country's fierce army to be wiped out by an army of two or three hundred men, and the fate of the Ito family was so desperate since then."
From the above first-hand historical data, it can be seen that the original image of the Battle of Kisakihara was not as vigorous as depicted in later generations, for example, Yoshihiro's wife also joined the battle, and even claimed that Yoshihiro used the so-called "fishing field ambush" tactic to lure the Ito Army and carry out the siege and annihilation of Yunyun, which was only a whitewash and rendering added by the Satsuma Clan in the Edo period to the basic historical facts of the war, which is not very credible.
In any case, the last history is always written by the victors, and of course there are some exaggerated and subjective elements in the above materials, so what is the summary of the defeated Itojia? The editor believes that in the face of the humiliating defeat in the family history, it is difficult to be vague in the ito family's record, writing that the Ito army at that time was "lightly attacked by the victory", so it did not abide by the military law and attacked without authorization. In addition, more than half of the army were young generals, and the newborn calves were young and vigorous, and each of them attacked hard until they were exhausted, and under the heat of the heat, they decided to retreat to Kawauchi Kawahara under the castle to drink water and rest. Unexpectedly, he was attacked by Yoshihiro, who learned of the situation, and eventually the position was chaotic, and the soldiers were defeated.
Many of them saw their relatives killed or in danger because they were relatives and clans, so they looked back to rescue them, but they both died in battle, causing such heavy casualties.
The Battle of Kisakihara was a disaster in the history of the Ito family, because nearly two hundred and fifty people were killed at the rank of generals, including twenty-five members of the Ito family, which can be said to be a battle of destruction that emptied the main combat strength of the Ito family, and more than half of the generals killed in the battle were young cadres, in other words, the Battle of Kizakihara suddenly caused a major gap in the center of the Ito family's combat strength and military strength. Five years after the Battle of Kisakihara, the Ito family, which had been fighting with the Shimazu family for nearly a hundred years, completely succumbed to the Shimazu army, and the impact of the Battle of Kisakihara was beyond words.