KANETSUGU

In the spring of 1600, the most powerful man in Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu, ordered the Uesugi clan to explain why they were building castles and gathering weapons. The reply he received was long, sharp, and almost insulting. Within weeks, Ieyasu was marching north to punish them — the first step on the road to the Battle of Sekigahara.

The man who wrote the reply was Naoe Kanetsugu. On his helmet he wore a single character: 愛, "love."

He grew up as the companion of Uesugi Kagekatsu, adopted heir of the great warlord Uesugi Kenshin, and served him for fifty years. He helped him win a bitter war of succession, married the widow of a murdered retainer to keep a family name alive, impressed Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and became lord of Yonezawa. In 1600, he attacked the Mogami at Hasedō and led a famous retreat when news came that his side had lost at Sekigahara. Then, when the Uesugi lost three-quarters of their lands, he refused to throw their people out. He led them all into a poor mountain basin and spent the rest of his life making it able to feed them.

Told as a narrative history from beginning to end, with a cast of characters, a map, and a travel guide to the places you can still visit today, this book says plainly what the records show, what historians still debate, and which famous stories are only legends — including the famous letter itself.

Inside, you'll find:

- Two boys in a snowy valley, and the great warlord Uesugi Kenshin
- The war between Kenshin's two adopted sons
- A murder, a marriage, and the name Naoe
- The helmet with the character "love," and what it really meant
- Hideyoshi's honors, and the move to Aizu
- The defiant letter to Ieyasu, and the question of who wrote it
- The siege of Hasedō and the retreat after Sekigahara
- The price of defeat, and the decision to keep everyone
- Dikes, fields, and books: rebuilding Yonezawa
- A guide to visiting the places in this story today, from Sakato and Kasugayama to Aizu, Yonezawa, and Hasedō

If you want a hero who never lost, this is not your book. If you want the real story of a man who lost, and then refused to abandon the people who had lost with him, turn the page and meet the real Kanetsugu.