Obu Toramasa
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Obu Toramasa (飯富虎昌? 1504 - November 11, 1565) was a Japanese samurai of the Sengoku period, who served the Takeda clan. Toramasa supported Takeda Nobukado as a retainer of distinction. With Nobukado's death and the succession of his son, Shingen, Toramasa became a man well recognized for advisorship; and as resolution to this ability, Toramasa was appointed as one of the Takeda's Twenty-Four Generals and made the personal tutor of the clan's designated heir: Yoshinobu. Most justifiably receiving these privileges by being the elder brother to the reputed warrior of Takeda, Yamagata Masakage, Toramasa was granted Uchiyama castle of Shinano Province, where he, solely with 800 soldiers, somehow managed to repel Uesugi Kenshin's 8,000, scoring for himself an intense level of praise and respect, but at the same time, a justifiable level of distrust. Following the Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima in 1561, Yoshinobu began to reprimand his father for his reckless choices of action, going to the extent of attempting to gain populace consention against Shingen's name -- which directly linked to Toramasa as a suspect of this scheming. And thus, by the year of 1565, Toramasa--who was supposedly one of the leading figures that encouraged Yoshinobu's resolution--was ordered to commit suicide after Shingen received additional knowledge of the plot by means of Masakage. With Toramasa thus dead, he was still widely recognized for distinguishing his soldiers with scarlet-red armor, which he adopted from his younger brother, and encouraged, in length, by Ii Naomasa.
[edit] References
- Obu Toramasa - SamuraiWiki. (Samurai Archives) FWSeal & CEWest, 2005
