Kusunoki Masashige

Kusunoki Masashige is the model of the loyal samurai in Japanese tradition, chiefly because he obeyed an order he knew would kill him. He was a provincial warrior of modest standing who joined Emperor Go-Daigo's rising against the Kamakura shogunate in 1331. His reputation was made as a defender of hill forts, at Akasaka and then at Chihaya, where he held a small mountain position against a vastly larger shogunal army using ambushes, boiling water, logs rolled down slopes and dummies dressed as soldiers to draw volleys. Tying down that army for months allowed rebellion to spread elsewhere and the shogunate fell in 1333. He was rewarded with governorships in the Kenmu Restoration, which collapsed within three years as Ashikaga Takauji turned against the emperor. In 1336 Takauji advanced on Kyoto with far superior forces. Kusunoki advised abandoning the capital and fighting a war of attrition from the hills, which was sound and was rejected as dishonourable. Ordered instead to meet Takauji in the open at Minatogawa, he went, was surrounded, and committed suicide with his brother; the words attributed to them, a wish to be reborn seven times to serve the emperor, became a slogan. He was rehabilitated as a national hero in the nineteenth century, and that slogan was used on the uniforms of kamikaze pilots six centuries after his death. An equestrian statue of him stands outside the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, erected in 1900. His defence of Chihaya is still studied as an example of how a small force can make itself too expensive to ignore, and his advice before Minatogawa is studied as an example of good counsel refused.

• Lived: 1294 CE – 1336 CE
• Nationality: Japanese
• Roles: military