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菊池一族とは

2024年07月31日

The Kikuchi Clan

The Kikuchi clan was an influential samurai group that played a prominent political role in Kyushu throughout Japan’s medieval period. At one point the Kikuchi rose to hold sway over events with countrywide consequences. The clan’s headquarters was the castle town of Waifu, today the city of Kikuchi, where the legacy of their 500-year history remains evident even now, centuries after the Kikuchi were vanquished by rival warlords.


Where did the Kikuchi come from?

Many details of how and when the Kikuchi clan was established have been lost to history, but its founding has traditionally been dated to 1070. In that year, Noritaka, a high-ranking court official who held a post at Dazaifu, the administrative center of Kyushu near the present-day city of Fukuoka, is thought to have arrived in what is now the Kikuchi district. Noritaka adopted the surname of Kikuchi and built a fortified compound on the river that was later given the same name, laying the foundations for the castle town of Waifu.

The Kikuchi district was a remote but thriving agricultural region, where rice cultivation flourished. Noritaka and his descendants acquired great wealth by monopolizing trade on the Kikuchi River and selling crops grown on the surrounding plains, which they developed into some of the most productive farmland in the country.


Out of favor

In the late twelfth century, some 100 years after Noritaka’s time, the Kikuchi were drawn into a conflict that ushered in a new era in Japanese history. In the Genpei War (1180–1185), the Taira and Minamoto warrior clans, which had long vied for dominance over the imperial court, fought for control over Japan. Samurai families throughout the country were compelled to choose sides. The Kikuchi initially favored the Minamoto, but in the final stages of the war allied themselves with the beleaguered Taira, whose forces were composed mainly of warriors from Kyushu.

The Genpei War was won by the Minamoto, who subsequently established the Kamakura shogunate, the first warrior-controlled government to rule Japan. Based in the eastern part of the country and backed by forces from the same area, the new shogunate regarded the Kikuchi and other Kyushu-based clans, its former enemies, with suspicion.

The distrust between the Kikuchi and the shogunate lingered, and was exacerbated in the late thirteenth century. After subjugating Korea, the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan launched invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281. The samurai set factional loyalties aside to repel the attackers, and the Kikuchi fought for the shogunate in several battles that helped the Japanese defeat the Mongols. Kikuchi Takefusa (1245–1285), the head of the clan at the time, was recognized for his battlefield heroics. After their victory over the invaders, the Kikuchi felt slighted by the shogunate’s failure to reward them with the spoils of war, something expected by warriors who had served with distinction.


Into the spotlight

In the early fourteenth century, the Kamakura shogunate’s hold on the country grew tenuous. While the shogunate expended resources on defending Japan against foreign foes, it faced difficulties controlling local warlords and the court. The most serious challenge to the shogunate came from the latter, as Emperor Godaigo (1288–1339) sensed an opportunity to wrest power from the warrior class.

Godaigo allied himself with warrior families discontented with Kamakura, including the Kikuchi, and in 1331 initiated a rebellion against the shogunate. In 1333, the Kikuchi banded together with several other Kyushu-based warrior groups to attack Hakata (present-day Fukuoka), the shogunate’s main stronghold on the island. Just as the assault was to go ahead, however, the Kikuchi were betrayed by local warriors in the alliance. Outnumbered and facing certain death, the clan’s leader, Kikuchi Taketoki (1292–1333), ordered his son Takeshige (1307–1341) to return to Kikuchi before staging a desperate charge on the shogunate’s forces.

Taketoki and his men were killed, but their cause prevailed. Mere months after the failed Kikuchi attack on Hakata, Kamakura fell to forces loyal to Godaigo and the shogunate was abolished. The victorious emperor rewarded the Kikuchi for their loyal service by making Takeshige governor (shugo) of Higo Province (present-day Kumamoto Prefecture), a prestigious post the Kikuchi would hold for nearly two centuries.


Loyalists of the Southern Court

Emperor Godaigo’s efforts to restore direct rule by the court proved short-lived. His reforms sought a return to the aristocratic social and political system of the pre-Kamakura period, but this policy antagonized large swathes of the warrior class. In 1336, only three years after the fall of the Kamakura shogunate, former Kamakura general and one-time Godaigo ally Ashikaga Takauji (1305–1358) seized Kyoto and founded a warrior government of his own, the Ashikaga shogunate.

Takauji installed a new emperor to do his bidding and Godaigo fled the capital, setting up a rival court in Yoshino near present-day Nara, south of Kyoto. These events initiated the Nanbokucho or Northern and Southern Courts period, when the rival courts fought for control of the country.

The Kikuchi clan, like many other warrior families in Kyushu, remained loyal to the Southern Court. Emperor Godaigo viewed his supporters in Kyushu as key to retaking the country, and sent his young son, Prince Kanenaga (1329–1383; known as Kaneyoshi outside of Kikuchi), to the island to strengthen existing alliances and cultivate new ones.

Kanenaga arrived in Waifu in 1348 and met with the castle lord, Kikuchi Takemitsu (1319-1373). Their encounter marked the beginning of a partnership that ushered in the Kikuchi clan’s greatest period of prosperity. Over the following decade, Kanenaga and Takemitsu built up a formidable alliance of Kyushu-based warrior families that pushed back Northern Court loyalists throughout the island. These gains culminated in the famous Battle of Chikugo River in 1359, in which the Kikuchi decisively defeated a larger Northern force. By the end of the next year, Southern Court supporters led by the Kikuchi controlled all of Kyushu, and the alliance’s headquarters was moved to Dazaifu, from where the Kikuchi patriarch Noritaka had set out some 300 years earlier.

In the years following their victory, the Kikuchi set out to fortify their positions; however, a request from the Southern Court that the victorious Kyushu samurai visit the emperor in Yoshino ended in disaster. A fleet commanded by Kikuchi Takemitsu set sail from Kyushu but was intercepted and routed by a Northern force, forcing Takemitsu to retreat to Dazaifu. The Ashikaga shogunate then dispatched a new general, the renowned strategist Imagawa Ryoshun (1326–1420), to deal with the threat in Kyushu.

Ryoshun drove the Kikuchi-led Southern force out of Dazaifu in 1372, and Takemitsu’s death the following year dealt the Kikuchi another blow. Left without its greatest general, the Southern force led by Prince Kanenaga was pushed ever deeper into Kyushu. Kanenaga’s death in 1383 ended their resistance for good, and the Kikuchi were again confined to ancestral lands around Waifu.


A cultural turn

The struggling Southern Court was defeated for good in 1392. Confident in victory, the Ashikaga shogunate allowed the weakened Kikuchi to retain control of Higo Province, but the clan’s days of conquest and glory were over.

The lords of Waifu managed to improve their relationship with the shogunate, at one point winning favor to the extent that the head of the Kikuchi clan was appointed governor of both Higo and the adjacent Chikugo Province (the southern part of today’s Fukuoka Prefecture). But rather than harbor any political ambitions, the Kikuchi turned their attention to cultural goals. Kikuchi Tamekuni (1430–1488), the twentieth head of the clan, and his son Shigetomo (1449–1493) expanded educational opportunities for samurai and townspeople and encouraged their intellectual and spiritual pursuits. Under their leadership, Kikuchi became a regional center for Buddhist and Confucian scholarship.


Decline and fall

The Kikuchi clan’s peaceful pursuits were upended by the country’s slide into widespread regional conflict among rival warlords. By the late fifteenth century the Ashikaga shogunate, weakened by the rise of local warlord-led families, was losing control. The same dynamic, albeit on a smaller scale, was at work in Kikuchi. Retainer families that had long served the Kikuchi clan outgrew their masters and challenged their authority.

In 1504, these rebellious samurai overthrew the Kikuchi lord and replaced him with the head of one of the retainer families. In the mid-1500s, the Kikuchi lost their remaining lands to the rival Otomo clan. In 1554, the death of Kikuchi Yoshitake, the last head of the clan, ended the Kikuchi lineage.


New appreciation

In the 1800s, rising interest in local history and past glories returned the Kikuchi clan to the spotlight. Merchants, landowners, and other wealthy residents of Kikuchi financed the restoration and rebuilding of monuments and tombs with a connection to the clan.

New appreciation of the Kikuchi legacy on a national scale followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which returned political control to the emperor, ending almost seven centuries of warrior rule. The new government under Emperor Meiji (1852–1912) maintained that the emperors of the fourteenth-century Southern Court had been the legitimate holders of the court titles, and the Kikuchi clan, allies of the Southern Court, were held up as an example of the kind of loyalty to the sovereign expected under the new regime. Prominent Kikuchi lords were enshrined as deities at the newly established Kikuchi Shrine, built on the site of the clan’s castle in Waifu.


菊池一族とは

 菊池一族は今から1,000年ほど前の平安時代後期から室町時代にかけ、500年にわたって現在の菊池市を中心に活躍した武士の一族です。

 菊池氏の始まりには諸説ありますが、延久2年(1070年)初代則隆が深川に館(北宮館)を構え、菊池を名乗ったことに始まるといわれています。

 則隆やその子孫は菊池川を利用した海外貿易で財を成し、一族を繁栄へ導きました。令和元年に行われた遺跡の確認調査では、交易に用いられたと考えられる船着場跡が見つかっています。

 源平合戦(1180-1185)の頃、6代隆直の代になると、菊池氏は肥後国最大の勢力を持つようになります。隆直は九州を勢力下に置こうする平氏と敵対し、実質的な肥後国司として近隣の豪族を糾合して平氏に対抗しました(養和の内乱)。しかし最後には降伏し、平家方となった後、壇ノ浦の戦いで討取られました。

 鎌倉幕府が開かれると、源氏と敵対していた菊池氏も御家人として幕府と関りを持つようになります。得宗権力(執権北条氏)と結びついた菊池氏は肥後国の御家人を統率し、九州における地位も高かったと考えられます。蒙古襲来(1274年文永の役・1281年弘安の役)では10代武房が活躍し、蒙古襲来絵詞にもその姿を見ることができます。

 鎌倉時代の末期に幕府の支配力が弱まると、天皇による政治の復活を望んだ後醍醐天皇の働きかけにより、菊池氏は九州の他の有力御家人とともに幕府打倒の兵をあげます。

 元弘3年(1333年)、12代武時は博多(現在の福岡)にあった幕府の出先機関「鎮西探題」の襲撃を計画し、少弐氏・大友氏とともに討ち入りますが、土壇場で幕府側へ寝返った少弐氏・大友氏によって窮地に追い込まれます。袖ヶ浦で反撃の態勢を整える武時は嫡男武重を呼び寄せて菊池へ帰るように命じると(袖ヶ浦の別れ)、鎮西探題へ突撃し全員が討ち死にしてしまいました。その数ヶ月後鎌倉幕府は倒され、倒幕後の論功行賞により13代武重は肥後守に任じられます。これ以後菊池氏は200年あまり肥後守護の地位を守り続けました。

 後醍醐天皇による政治(建武の新政)は長く続かず、かつてともに鎌倉幕府を倒した足利尊氏が室町幕府を開き、自分の正当性を主張するためにもう一つの王朝を立てると、後醍醐天皇は奈良県の吉野に逃れました。二つの王朝が並び立つこの時代を、南北朝時代といいます。

 南北朝時代、菊池一族は一貫して南朝に味方し続けました。15代武光は後醍醐天皇が九州に派遣した懐良親王を隈府に迎え、各地で北朝方と戦いを繰り広げます。正平14年(1359年)筑後川の戦いでは、南朝軍4万騎に対し北朝軍6万騎の圧倒的に不利な状況で勝利を収め、正平16年(1361年)には大宰府を制圧します。その後博多を落とした武光は正平18年(1363年)豊後大友氏を降参させ、九州制覇を成し遂げました。

 一方、大宰府を奪われた北朝方は南朝方に対抗するため、今川了俊を九州探題に任命します。了俊は豊後大友氏、肥前松浦党、中国地方の豪族などとともに大宰府を攻撃し、文中元年(1372年)ついに大宰府は陥落してしまいました。ここで11年間に及ぶ征西府の大宰府統治は終焉を迎えます。

 武光はこの頃死去したと考えられており、征西将軍懐良親王も天授元年(1375年)に征西将軍職を甥の良成親王へと譲り、奥八女へ隠退しました。懐良親王は現在の八女市星野にある玉水山大円寺にて戦で亡くなった人々の菩提を弔いながら余生を過ごし、弘和3年(1383年)3月に55歳で亡くなったと伝わっています。

 武光の跡を継いだ16代武政もその後すぐに亡くなり、息子の武朝がわずか12歳で菊池氏17代当主の座につきました。武朝は良成親王とともに南朝の勢力を盛り返すため奮戦し、天授元年(1375年)水島の戦いでは今川勢の内紛に乗じて大勝を収め、天授4年(1378年)託麻原の戦いでも数に勝る北朝方を打ち破りました。しかし菊池一族を取り巻く情勢は次第に悪くなり、弘和元年(1381年)ついに本拠地守山城が陥落、良成親王は武朝とともに宇土城、八代、高田御所、大杣(筑後矢部)と転戦します。しかしとうとう南北朝合一まで菊池氏の本拠が回復することはありませんでした。

 元中9年(明徳3年・1392年)、南朝の後亀山天皇が北朝の後小松天皇に譲位し、南北朝合一がなされると、武朝は改めて肥後守護に任じられます。これ以後、菊池氏は16世紀初期まで肥後国守護職を保持し、隈府は肥後国の守護所として発展していきました。

 その後20代為邦の頃になると筑後所領を失うなど徐々に菊池氏の勢いに陰りが見られるようになりますが、その一方で、為邦と息子の21代重朝の代は、菊池で文教の高揚がみられる時期でもありました。為邦は重朝に代を譲った後、亀尾城下に隠棲し、日夜碧巌集の研究に励んだと伝わっており、15世紀中頃編纂された『投贈和答等諸詩小序』には、為邦の文才を褒め称える話がみられます。為邦の跡を継いだ重朝も学問を重んじ、菊池を訪れた桂庵玄樹に教えを乞うほか、文明4年(1472年)には孔子堂を建て、多くの家臣を集めて儒学の学習を行っています。また、文明13年(1481年)には一日一万句を詠む連歌の会を催し、そこで詠まれた句は「菊池万句」と呼ばれました。

 19代持朝から21代重朝の代は菊池一族内の争いが次々と起こったうえ、南北朝合一後も争いを続けていた阿蘇氏同士の争いに加担した際の敗戦などで、菊池一族の権威が衰え始めます。重朝の子、22代能運の代には相良氏との争い、宇土為光(為邦の弟)による隈府城の占拠などが起こり、永正元年(1504年)病床の能運が没すると、菊池氏正統は途絶えてしまいます。

 跡を継いだ23代政隆は20代為邦の弟為安の孫にあたり、能運の遺言によって菊池本家を相続し、肥後守護となりました。しかしこのころ九州で勢力を拡大していた大友氏の働きにより、肥後守護の地位はすぐに阿蘇惟長へ移ります。菊池家重臣84名の連判誓書により菊池家へ入った惟長は菊池武経と名を改め、復興の機を窺う政隆を退けますが、次第に菊池家家臣との仲が悪くなり、永正8年(1511年)阿蘇家へ戻ります。

 武経が菊池を去った後、菊池家の重臣達は菊池家支流の詫磨武安の子武包を迎えることとし、武包は菊池氏系統最後の肥後守護となりました。しかし菊池氏の力は衰退しきっており、大友家当主となった義鑑の弟重治によって武包は守護の座を追われ、重治が肥後守護となります。重治は菊池義宗(後に義武)と改名し当主となるも、菊池家家臣と折り合いが悪く、天文3年(1534年)八代へ逃れた果てに甥の大友義鎮(後の宗麟)に討たれ、ここで菊池氏系統は消えてしまいました。

 江戸時代1800年代になると、地元の歴史への関心が高まり、裕福な商人によって菊池氏ゆかりの碑や墓が整備されたり、学者によって菊池氏の業績が書き記されたり、菊池氏が再び脚光を浴びるようになります。明治維新を迎えると南朝に貢献した菊池氏は忠臣として高く評価されるようになり、本拠地守山城跡には菊池一族を祭神とする菊池神社が建てられました。

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