太田道灌

Ōta Dōkan (1432–1486) was the quintessential warrior-poet of late Muromachi Japan, a man of profound literary cultivation who could hold his own with the finest renga masters of the age, and simultaneously one of the most gifted military commanders in the Kantō region. In 1457 he built Edo Castle — the fortress that Tokugawa Ieyasu would expand into the seat of the shogunate 150 years later, making Tokyo what it is today. A celebrated anecdote has him humbled by a peasant girl who wordlessly offered a yamabuki branch, quoting an ancient poem about poverty; shamed by her sophistication, Dōkan devoted himself thereafter to poetry. As military manager for the Ōgigayatsu Uesugi clan he suppressed the Nagao Kageharu Rebellion (1476) and secured Kantō supremacy through tactical brilliance. In 1486, fearing his growing power, his own lord Uesugi Sadamasa had him assassinated while bathing — whereupon Dōkan reportedly cried 'Our side is finished!' foreseeing the clan's collapse without him.