The essay is the first of a projected series of essays collectively entitled ‘The Uesugi: a study of a Japanese warrior family’s political and military involvement in eastern Japan, 1252-1455’. It examines the Uesugi family’s early history from around the time of its establishment to early 1336, the year war broke out between the Ashikaga and the…[Read more]

Uesugi Kenshin (1530-78) was born in Echigo (present-day Niigata Prefecture) in north-western Japan as the son of Nagao Tamekage, a high-ranking local official of the Muromachi shogunate, and he came to rule over the province at a time when the military conflicts that had ravaged the country, locally and regionally, since the middle of the…[Read more]