Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu
{{Short description|Japanese samurai}}
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Image:Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu.jpg
File:4hana hishi03.svg of the Yanagisawa clan]]
{{nihongo|Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu|柳沢 吉保||December 31, 1658 – December 8, 1714|lead=yes}} was a Japanese samurai of the Edo period. He was an official in the Tokugawa shogunate and a favourite of the fifth shōgun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. His second concubine was Ogimachi Machiko, a writer and scholar from the noble court who wrote monogatari.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu" in {{Google books|p2QnPijAEmEC|Japan Encyclopedia, p. 1048|page=1048}}; n.b., Louis-Frédéric is pseudonym of Louis-Frédéric Nussbaum, see [http://dispatch.opac.ddb.de/DB=4.1/PPN?PPN=128842709 Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Authority File] {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120524174828/http://dispatch.opac.ddb.de/DB=4.1/PPN?PPN=128842709 |date=2012-05-24 }}.
Career
The Yanagisawa house traced descent to the "Kai-Genji," the branch of the Minamoto clan which had been enfeoffed with the province of Kai in the eleventh century.
Yoshiyasu served Tsunayoshi from an early age, becoming his Wakashū and eventually rose to the position of soba yōnin.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}} He was the daimyō of the Kawagoe han, and later of the Kōfu han in Kai Province, a signature honour as it has been the fief held by Tsunayoshi before becoming shōgun, and of Ienobu, his heir apparent, as well as having an historic familial connection; he retired in 1709.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}} Having previously been named Yasuakira, he received a kanji from the name of the shōgun, and came to call himself Yoshiyasu.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}} He built Rikugien Garden, a traditional Japanese garden, in 1695. He had an adopted son named Yanagisawa Yoshisato by Tokugawa Tsunayoshi with Yoshiyasu's concubine, Sumeko.{{clarify|reason=Who did what in this sentence?|date=January 2017}}
Yanagisawa played a pivotal role in the matter of the forty-seven rōnin.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}}
Cultural references
Yanagisawa is the subject the diary memoir of his concubine Ōgimachi Machiko (正親町町子, 1675 - 1724), Matsukage no nikki ('In the Shelter of the Pine'), which gives a detailed account of Yoshiyasu's glory during the period 1685-1709 modelled on the Eiga Monogatari and in a writing style inspired by The Tale of Genji. More than 36 hand-copied manuscripts survive to the present day. An English translation appeared in 2021.
Yanagisawa appears as a character in most of the novels by American mystery writer Laura Joh Rowland set in Genroku-era Japan as the antagonist to the books' main character Sano Ichiro.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}} Rowland's chronology differs from history by having Yanagisawa exiled in disgrace in 1694 and being replaced by Sano as Tsunayoshi's chief advisor, only to return from exile later in the series.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}} Other details of Yanagisawa's life, however, are portrayed fairly accurately, including his relationship to the shōgun.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}}
See also
Notes
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References
- Bodart-Bailey, Beatrice. (1980). Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu: a Reappraisal. Canberra: Australian National University. [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/222149819 OCLC 222149819]
- Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005). Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-674-01753-5}}; [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/48943301/editions?editionsView=true&referer=br OCLC 48943301]
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{{succession box | title=1st Lord of Kawagoe
(Yanagisawa) | before=Matsudaira Nobuteru | after=Akimoto Takatomo | years=1694–1704}}
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{{succession box |title=1st Lord of Kōfu
(Yanagisawa) | before=Tokugawa Tsunatoyo | after=Yanagisawa Yoshisato | years=1704–1709}}
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Category:Japanese military engineers