Imagawa Yoshimoto - Early Life and Succession

Early Life and Succession

Yoshimoto was born in 1519, the third son of Imagawa Ujichika. of the Imagawa clan-which claimed descent from Emperor Seiwa (850-880). {It was a branch of the Minamoto clan by the Ashikaga clan.} As he was not the eldest son, he was ineligible to inherit the family headship directly from his father. As a result, the young boy was sent to a temple where his name was changed to Baigaku Shōhō (梅岳承芳?). Unrest broke out when his older brother Ujiteru died suddenly in 1536. His elder half-brother, Genkō Etan (玄広恵探?), tried to seize the heirship but the clan split into two factions. Yoshimoto's faction demanded that since Yoshimoto's mother was the consort of Ujichika, he was the rightful heir. Genkō Etan's faction demanded that since he was older, he was the rightful heir. Genkō Etan's mother was a concubine and a member of the Kushima family, but they were defeated and killed in the Hanagura Disturbance (花倉の乱, Hanagura-no-ran?). Baigaku Shōhō changed his name to Yoshimoto at this point and succeeded the clan.

Read more about this topic:  Imagawa Yoshimoto

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or succession:

    Early education can only promise to help make the third and fourth and fifth years of life good ones. It cannot insure without fail that any tomorrow will be successful. Nothing “fixes” a child for life, no matter what happens next. But exciting, pleasing early experiences are seldom sloughed off. They go with the child, on into first grade, on into the child’s long life ahead.
    James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)

    I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the “hot bread and sweet cakes;” and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)