Honda Masazumi

Honda Masazumi (本多 正純) (1566 – April 5, 1637) was a Japanese samurai of the Azuchi–Momoyama period through early Edo period, who served the Tokugawa clan. He later became a daimyo, and one of the first rōjū of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Masazumi was born in 1565; he was the eldest son of Honda Masanobu. Father and son served Tokugawa Ieyasu together. Masazumi was in the main force at Sekigahara; after the battle, Masazumi was entrusted with the guardianship of the defeated Ishida Mitsunari. Masazumi was made a daimyo in 1608, with an income of 33,000 koku.

Ieyasu trusted Honda sufficiently to have relied on him as an intermediary for diplomatic initiatives with China.^[1]

Later, Masazumi served at the Siege of Osaka; in 1616, he became a toshiyori; this was the position that would soon after be renamed as rōjū. In this role, he worked closely with the now-retired second shogun, Hidetada. During this period, his income was increased to 53,000 koku; then to 155,000 in 1619. However, in 1622 he fell into disfavor with Hidetada, and was exiled to Yokote, in the Kubota Domain. Masazumi died in Yokote in 1637, at age 73.

Notes

1. Miauno Norihito (2003). China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China, p. 109. citing Fujii Jōji (藤井譲二). (1994). "Junana seiki no Nihon: buke no kokka no keisei" (十七世紀の日本：武家の国家の形成), in Iwanami kōza Nihon tsūshi (岩波講座日本通史), Vol. 12, pp. 40-41.

References

• (Japanese) "Honda Masazumi no retsuden" (22 Feb. 2008)
• Mizuno, Norihito. (2003). China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China, p. 109. excerpt from Japan and Its East Asian Neighbors: Japan's Perception of China and Korea and the Making of Foreign Policy from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century, Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004, as cited in Tsutsui, William M. (2009). A Companion to Japanese History, p. 83.

External links

• (Japanese) Images of correspondence by Honda Masazumi