YUKIMURA

Around 1612, in a mountain village where he had lived in exile for twelve years, a man in his forties wrote to his family that his teeth were falling out and his beard was turning white. He asked them to send money, and shōchū.

Three years later, he was the most famous warrior in Japan.

His name was Sanada Nobushige. The second son of a slippery, brilliant lord in the mountains of Shinano, he spent his youth as a hostage, first of the Uesugi and then of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In 1600, his family split — his brother with Tokugawa Ieyasu, he and his father against — and they held Ueda Castle against Ieyasu's son and lost the war anyway. Then, at the siege of Osaka Castle in 1614 and 1615, he built a fort the Tokugawa could not take, and in his last battle charged so deep into the enemy that Ieyasu's own standard fell.

Today he is known by a name he probably never used: Sanada Yukimura.

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 ten braves and the name itself.

Inside, you'll find:

A slippery father, and the fall of the Takeda
A hostage among the Uesugi, and at Hideyoshi's court
Two brothers, two marriages, and the parting at Inubushi
Ueda Castle and the Tokugawa heir who came too late
Fourteen years of exile, poverty, and shōchū
The call from Osaka, and the escape from Kudoyama
The Sanada-maru, and the filling of the moats
The last charge, and the fall of Ieyasu's standard
His daughter's new life, and how Nobushige became "Yukimura"
A guide to visiting the places in this story today, from Ueda and Matsushiro to Kudoyama and Osaka
If you want the ninja and the master strategist, this is not your book. If you want the real story of the forgotten second son who became the finest warrior in Japan, turn the page and meet the real Yukimura.