Tadatsune was the third son of Shimazu Yoshihiro. Since his elder brother Shimazu Yoshihisa did not have a son and his other elder brother Shimazu Hisakazu died of illness in Korea, he was deemed successor to their uncle and he later took the name of Iehisa (家久).
Like his father and uncle, he was known for bravery on the battlefield, and during the latter half of Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea, fighting beside his father, he helped drive off the Ming army of over 100,000 men with only 8000 men. As head of the Shimazu clan, he sought to remove corrupt or disloyal counselors, and to reform the clan leadership. To this end, in 1599, he killed a long-time retainer and karō, Ijuin Tadamune as well as his son Ijuin Tadazane when they tried to part with the Shimazu clan.
In 1602, he became the head of his clan but his father held real power until 1619. In 1609, Tadatsune led an expeditionary force to the Ryūkyū Kingdom, subjugating it and using it to effect trade with China. The Ryūkyūs were allowed to remain semi-independent, and would not be formally annexed by Japan until after the Meiji Restoration (1868); if China knew that the Ryūkyūs were controlled by the Japanese, trade would have come to an end. Thus, Tadatsune forced this unusual status upon the Kingdom.
References
- Sansom, George (1961). A History of Japan: 1334-1615, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
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Last updated on Sunday June 29, 2008 at 03:45:48 PDT (GMT -0700)
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