Yamamoto Kansuke

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Yamamoto Kansuke fighting a giant boar, in a woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

For the 20th century surrealist, see Yamamoto Kansuke (artist).

Yamamoto Kansuke (山本勘助, Yamamoto Kansuke^?)(1501-1561) was one of Takeda Shingen's most trusted Twenty-Four Generals. He was a brilliant strategist, and is particularly known for his plan which led to victory in the fourth battle of Kawanakajima against Uesugi Kenshin. However, Yamamoto never lived to see his plan succeed; thinking it to have failed, he charged headlong into the enemy ranks, dying valiantly in battle.

Legend says that Kansuke was blind in one eye and lame, but a fierce warrior nevertheless. In various works of art, he is depicted holding a naginata as a support for his weak leg.

The Heihō Okugisho, a treatise on strategy and tactics attributed to Yamamoto, is included in the Takeda family chronicle, the Kōyō Gunkan.^[1] In it, he focuses particularly on the strategic behavior of individual warriors.

[edit] Popular culture

The 2007 NHK Taiga drama Fuu-Rin-Ka-Zan (風林火山^[2]) will feature Yamamoto Kansuke as the main character. It is based on the novel by Yasushi Inoue.

He is also featured as one of the generals in the strategy game Civilization 4 - Warlords

Kansuke's direct descendant was the famed Bakumatsu-era woman warrior, Yamamoto Yaeko of Aizu.

[edit] Reference

^ http://www2.harimaya.com/sengoku/html/yama_kan.html
^ The characters for wind, forest, fire and mountain, respectively. A reference to Sun Tsu's Art of War advocating being as quick as wind, quiet as a forest, aggressive as fire and as immovable as a mountain.