Timeline of the Sanada clan: Yukitaka, the brother split, and Matsushiro to 1871

This page is the Sanada house in order of years. Yukitaka under the Takeda, Masayuki at Ueda, the 1600 split between sons, Osaka in 1615, then Matsushiro. The man popular culture calls Sanada Yukimura is the second son, Nobushige. His life, battles, and later legend sit on the companion pages. Here the question is what the clan was before him and what the name still governed after he died. Era frame: Sengoku period, then the Tokugawa peace.

Dated phases: what each era changed

Use the table as a spine. A row earns its place when the house's job changes: village family, Takeda retainer, independent Shinano lord, split inheritance, or Tokugawa domain holder at a new castle.

The Unno row stops you treating "Sanada" as a name invented for a 1615 movie. English references put the family in Sanada village, Chiisagata District, Shinano, as a branch of the Unno, claiming Seiwa Genji descent. The clan article credits Unno Yukiyoshi, early in the 1500s, with putting the six-coin crest (rokumonsen) on the banner. The ferryman-of-the-dead story attached to those coins is later folklore. On this calendar the crest is a family mark that already existed before Osaka.

Yukitaka's row is the practical start of a Sengoku house. He lived 1512-1574, son of Unno Munetsuna. SamuraiWiki has him in Takeda Shingen's service from about 1544. The clan page lists him with sons Nobutsuna, Masateru, and Masayuki among Takeda commanders. What changed is status. A Chiisagata family became a named retainer line whose men died, and inherited, inside Kai's wars.

The 1574-1582 row is an inheritance crash, then a roof collapsing. Yukitaka died in 1574 with Nobutsuna already head. At Nagashino in 1575 both older brothers were killed, and Masayuki (born 1547, the third son, childhood name Gengoro) came back from Kai service to take the house. Katsuyori accepted him. In 1582 Oda and Tokugawa forces destroyed the Takeda, and Katsuyori died at Tenmokuzan. Masayuki yielded to Nobunaga and was placed under Takigawa Kazumasu. The Sanada were still on the map. They no longer had a Takeda lord above them.

The 1582-1585 row is where Masayuki stops looking like a leftover retainer. After Nobunaga's death he moved among Uesugi, Hojo, and Tokugawa while those three grabbed at old Takeda land. He took Numata back and started Ueda Castle and its town in 1583. In 1585 he shifted the main base from the Sanada residence to Ueda, refused Tokugawa pressure to hand Numata to the Hojo, sent Nobushige as a hostage to Uesugi Kagekatsu, and held Ueda against a Tokugawa force. The Masayuki article gives that attacking column as about 7,000 against roughly 1,200 defenders, with about 1,300 Tokugawa casualties. Those are the published popular counts. The house result is sturdier than the arithmetic: after that summer, Masayuki was treated as his own daimyo, and Ueda was the castle people meant by the Sanada.

The Hideyoshi row ties the family into national submission. In 1587 Masayuki was received by Hideyoshi and became a Toyotomi vassal. The clan page says Nobushige had been sent as a hostage to the Toyotomi that year, and in 1594 married Chikurin-in, Hideyoshi's adopted daughter. Nobuyuki married Komatsuhime in 1587. She was Honda Tadakatsu's daughter and an adopted daughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu, so the elder son was formally in the Tokugawa family web while the father served Hideyoshi. In 1589 Hideyoshi assigned Sanada lands east of the Tone, including Numata, to the Hojo. A Hojo retainer, Inomata Kuninori, then seized Nagurumi Castle west of the river. The Masayuki article treats that breach of Hideyoshi's ban on private war as a cause of the 1590 Odawara campaign. The Sanada, already submitted, appear on the campaign lists rather than inside Odawara's walls as defenders.

The 1600 row is the decision that lets the rest of this page exist. Father and younger son declared for the west and sat in Ueda in the path of Tokugawa Hidetada. Elder son Nobuyuki stayed with the eastern army. Detail of the Ueda fight belongs on sanada-yukimura-battles and the Sekigahara page. For the house: the west lost the main battle, Masayuki and Nobushige were spared execution because Nobuyuki had been on the winning side, and they were exiled to Kudoyama in Kii Province, at the foot of Mount Koya. Nobuyuki inherited the clan.

The 1600-1615 row separates two deaths. Masayuki died of illness at Kudoyama in 1611. English pages disagree on the day (13 June in one box, 13 July in the lead). The year and the place agree. Nobushige left exile for ToyotomiHideyori's Osaka stand and died in the summer campaign, commonly dated 3 June 1615. His son Yukimasa, also called Daisuke, died the same year. Nobuyuki, who fought on the Tokugawa side in the Osaka years, could not buy his brother out of that campaign. The daimyo house did not change hands because of that battlefield.

The last row is the one beginners skip. In 1622 Nobuyuki was transferred to Matsushiro. Ten Sanada lords held it until Japan abolished domains in 1871. Yukimura's death is a chapter. Matsushiro is the remaining two and a half centuries of the name as a government.

Unno roots and Yukitaka in Takeda service

Shinano in the early 1500s was a province of local houses squeezed between Kai and Echigo. The Sanada place-name is a village in Chiisagata, not a Kyoto title. Calling Yukitaka "founder" matches the English clan infobox (founding century: the 16th; founder: Yukitaka). It does not mean nobody used the name before him. The family heads list on that page starts with an Unno-linked Yukiyoshi, then Yukitaka. Bloodline charts that run the Sanada back to Seiwa Genji are a claim the house made. You do not need that genealogy to follow the war.

What you do need is the Takeda generation. Yukitaka and his sons fought in Shingen's Shinano project, the long argument with the Uesugi over the same northern valleys where Matsushiro's castle, then called Kaizu, already mattered. Masayuki was sent to Kai as a hostage in 1553, at about seven, joined Shingen's close attendants, and for a time took the name Muto Kihei as foster son of the Muto. He married Yamanote-dono, a daughter of Uda Yoritada, and that marriage produced Nobuyuki (1566) and Nobushige (1567). He was back in the Sanada succession only because Nagashino emptied it.

Masayuki, Numata, and Ueda Castle

Masayuki's reputation in later tellings is the slippery alliances. The 1582 record supports the reputation without needing a speech. That summer and autumn, with Nobunaga dead and the old Takeda provinces unowned, he moved from the Uesugi side toward the Hojo, took Numata by sending his uncle Yazawa Yoritsuna, parked Nobuyuki at Iwabitsu, then cooperated with Tokugawa orders against Hojo men around Komoro. A beginner timeline should keep the pattern and drop any urge to narrate every week. The pattern is a small house buying months.

Ueda is the physical result. Construction of the castle and castle town starts in 1583, on the junction of roads later readers know as the Nakasendo and the Hokkoku highway. In 1585 it replaces the old Sanada residence as the main bastion. The first Tokugawa siege that year, remembered alongside the fight at the Kami River, is the battle that made the name nationally loud. Nobuyuki fought in it beside his father.

• Before 1583 the Sanada base in Chiisagata is a residence and mountain-castle habit, not Ueda town.
• After 1585 Ueda is the headquarters enemies have to plan for, and Numata is the eastern holding they argue over.

Hideyoshi's peace with Ieyasu almost sent another Tokugawa attack onto Ueda in 1586, because Masayuki had not yet handed over hostages. Masayuki asked Uesugi Kagekatsu to mediate, Hideyoshi called the invasion off, and Masayuki went to Kyoto to submit in person. From then until Hideyoshi's death in 1598, the Sanada are a Toyotomi daimyo house of modest size parked between larger neighbors. They are no longer free to invent a private foreign policy every summer.

1600: two sons, two armies

After Hideyoshi died, the next national break is the Sekigahara campaign. Masayuki and both elder sons were in Ieyasu's march against Uesugi Kagekatsu in Aizu. Ishida Mitsunari's call reached them in Shimotsuke in the 7th month. SamuraiWiki names the province and the month. Later retellings place the council at Inubushi, in that same province. Accounts that stage a long night argument are storytelling on top of a real fork. The fork itself is in the campaign record.

1. The three Sanada were traveling with Ieyasu's side, headed toward the Uesugi fight.
2. Mitsunari's western call arrived while they were still in Shimotsuke.
3. Masayuki and Nobushige turned back, held Ueda, and declared for the west.
4. Nobuyuki stayed with the eastern army. That was the bet that kept a Sanada daimyo if Ieyasu won.

Ueda in September 1600 stalled Hidetada's column on the Nakasendo. English pages repeat 38,000 Tokugawa men against about 2,000 Sanada. Treat the headcount as the usual published round number. What changed for the war is that Hidetada missed the main field. What changed for the house is smaller and more lasting: the west lost anyway, so the Ueda stand did not buy a western Japan. It bought, through Nobuyuki's presence on the winning side, exile rather than death for Masayuki and Nobushige. Kudoyama in Kii, under Mount Koya, is where they went. Nobuyuki received Ueda.

Kokudaka figures for that grant do not match across English pages. The clan article says Ueda Domain plus Numata Domain at 65,000 koku. The Matsushiro Domain article says Nobuyuki was confirmed at Ueda assessed at 95,000 koku. Either way, 1600 left a Sanada lord in Shinano who answered to Ieyasu, and two Sanada men in Kudoyama who did not.

Osaka 1615 on a house calendar

Kudoyama was confinement with a stipend and with money from Nobuyuki, not a dungeon romance. The Masayuki article notes support from the Kii lord Asano Nagaakira and letters in which Masayuki tried to reach Ieyasu for a pardon through Honda Masanobu. He died there in 1611 still unpardoned. Nobushige stayed on until the Osaka crisis.

In 1614-1615 Hideyori's castle became the last Toyotomi war. Nobushige left Kudoyama and joined that side. Nobuyuki was on the shogunate side. The winter fort, the Sanada-maru, and the summer field are the subject of the biographyand the battles page. On a clan timeline you only need the outcome. Nobushige was killed in the summer campaign. Yukimasa died the same year. The Tokugawa settlement of Osaka did not strip Nobuyuki of his position. Wikipedia's Nobuyuki page says the shogunate held him in high regard afterward.

Another son of Nobushige, Morinobu (also called Daihachi, 1612-1671), appears in the clan's notable list with a death date long after Osaka. He is not the next Matsushiro lord. Succession runs Nobuyuki, then Nobuyuki's son Nobumasa. If you want the red armor, the six coins as a legend, and the Edo plays, use sanada-yukimura-legacy. The house those plays were written under was already a Matsushiro government.

What continued after the famous death

The second table starts where hero stories stop. Each row is a change in who held land under the Sanada name, and where.

The 1600 row changes the penalty. Ieyasu could have executed Masayuki and Nobushige. Nobuyuki's eastern service, and pleas on their behalf, produced Kudoyama instead. Ueda stayed in Sanada hands. The heir was the son who had picked the winner, which is why later Matsushiro lords trace to Nobuyuki even though Masayuki is the man readers remember for strategy.

Masayuki's death in 1611 changes who can bargain. The exile lord who still wrote for a pardon is gone. Nobuyuki has been head since the post-Sekigahara settlement. The younger brother is still alive in Kudoyama, and still not the heir.

1615 changes the legend and the junior line's military role. Nobushige dies with the Toyotomi cause. Popular histories rename him Yukimura and stop. For land, nothing new is confiscated from Nobuyuki because of that death. He is the Tokugawa-side Sanada, and the shogunate keeps him.

1622 changes the castle and the province's map inside Shinano. Nobuyuki leaves Ueda. The Nobuyuki succession box names Sengoku Tadamasa as the next Ueda lord. Matsushiro, in the north of the province on the old Kaizu site by the Kawanakajima plain, had just been vacated by Sakai Tadakatsu, who was moved to Shonai. Before Sakai, Matsudaira Tadamasa held it from 1616 to 1619. The Japanese Matsushiro article treats "Matsushiro Domain" in ordinary speech as the Sanada domain that began with this 1622 entry, even though earlier lords had governed the Kawanakajima districts under related names. Nobuyuki lived until 12 November 1658 and retired in 1656, so his son Nobumasa was lord for only about two years before dying the same year as his father. Komatsuhime had already died in 1620. She did not live at Matsushiro as the lord's wife.

The koku row is where reference books argue, so the change is worth stating in the terms they actually use. The English clan article says the 1622 transfer was to a 100,000-koku Matsushiro. The English Matsushiro article says the move raised Nobuyuki from a 95,000-koku Ueda holding to 120,000 koku. The Japanese Matsushiro article says he entered from Ueda at 130,000 koku in 1622, and that when the third lord, Yukimichi, succeeded in 1658 the separate Numata holding of 30,000 koku was split off (attainder dated there to 1680). After that split, Matsushiro runs at 100,000 koku, the highest assessment among Shinano domains, through the end of the period. SamuraiWiki dates the Numata confiscation to 1681. The figure that covers the long Sanada decades is 100,000 koku. The entry-year number differs from page to page in English.

The 1869-1871 row is the end of Sanada domain government, in two steps. Yukimoto, adopted from Date Munenari of Uwajima because the ninth lord Yukinori was childless, became daimyo in 1866. The Japanese lord list ends his tenure in 1869 with the return of land registers (hanseki hokan). He stayed on as imperial governor. In July 1871 the abolition of domains (haihan chiken) turned Matsushiro Domain into Matsushiro Prefecture, soon merged into Nagano Prefecture. English pages sometimes say the family "remained until the Meiji Restoration in 1868." That date is the political break and the Boshin War, when Matsushiro sided with the imperial army and fought at Hokuetsu and Aizu. The domain's legal end is 1871. In 1884 the former lord's house received a viscount's title, later raised to count. A cadet head was made a baron. On the clan infobox, "Dissolution: still extant" names the family. The domain had already ended.

Matsushiro as a Tokugawa domain

Ten lords, from the Japanese list: Nobuyuki (1622-1656), Nobumasa (1656-1658), Yukimichi (1658-1727), Nobuhiro (1727-1736), Nobuyasu (1737-1752), Yukihiro (1752-1798), Yukitaka written 幸専 (1798-1823, a different man from the Sengoku Yukitaka), Yukitsura (1823-1852), Yukinori (1852-1866), Yukimoto (1866-1869 as daimyo). They ranked as tozama, outside lords, with a fudai-style seat in the teikan-no-ma. The Japanese article ties that seat to Komatsuhime's adoption into the Tokugawa family, and to the eighth lord Yukitsura, biological son of Matsudaira Sadanobu and great-grandson of shogun Yoshimune. Yukitsura was a senior councillor (roju) from 1841 to 1844. He also employed Sakuma Shozan, the Dutch-studies scholar later killed in Kyoto in 1864.

The domain's middle decades are local government. A fire hit the castle town in 1717. The Inu no Mansui flood of 1742 drove Chikuma River work and fresh debt. In 1744 the domain saw a rare ashigaru strike during pay cuts, and in 1751 the Tamura disturbance, a peasant rising tied to a harsh finance officer. Those are the years a timeline should not skip if the point is that the name still collected tax. Late in the period the bills got worse again: repair after the 1847 Zenkoji earthquake, coastal guard duty after Perry, and the costs of the Boshin campaigns. In 1870 the Matsushiro disturbance broke out over taxes, officials, and prices. Then 1871 closed the books.

How to read this timeline against the hero story

Four habits keep the calendar honest. Keep Nobushige and Nobuyuki as brothers with different patrons after 1600, not as one "Sanada policy." Keep Ueda (Chiisagata, eastern Shinano, the Sengoku castle) distinct from Matsushiro (northern Shinano, the Edo castle). Keep 1615 as a death in the family, and 1871 as the end of the domain. Keep the six-coin banner as a mark already used by the Unno-Sanada in the early 1500s, so it is not a logo designed for the Osaka winter.

Where to go next is already on this site. One man's life: sanada-yukimura and the biography. The fights: battles. What Edo and modern audiences did with him: legacy. The opponent who employed the surviving brother: Tokugawa Ieyasu.

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