立花宗茂

Tachibana Muneshige, nicknamed 'Seikou Musō' (Peerless in Western Japan), was one of the most celebrated warriors of the late Sengoku period and the only daimyō stripped of his domain after the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) who later regained his original lands. Born in 1567, he was adopted by the legendary warrior Tachibana Dōsetsu and inherited both the domain and Dōsetsu's famed sword Raikiri (Lightning Cutter) — said to have been used to slash a thunderbolt. Muneshige fought brilliantly in the Korean campaigns of the 1590s and was praised by Toyotomi Hideyoshi as a peerless general. After years of wandering following Sekigahara, he regained his 320,000-koku domain of Yanagawa in 1620 through his service in the Siege of Osaka and the trust of successive Tokugawa shoguns — a feat unique in Japanese history.