This talk will discuss the memoirs of the samurai and refugee, Fukutomi Han’emon (1576-1656), which he wrote and completed in the mid-1620’s. The memoir centers on his participation in warfare including Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea, the Battle of Sekigahara, and the sieges of Osaka castle in 1614 and 1615. Additionally it includes descriptions of his killing other retainers at the command of his superiors, and a desperate escape with relatives from a command to kill him by his own lord. He lived many years under an assumed name wandering and looking for secure employment, which he finally found in 1624. The extraordinary level of warfare and violence in the civil wars of late sixteenth century Japan produced numberless refugees and Han’emon’s record provides insights into this common aspect of samurai life in this era.
Luke S. Roberts is a professor of Japanese history in the Department of History at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Raised in West Virginia and educated at Oberlin College, Tokyo University and then Princeton University, where he studied under Marius Jansen, he specializes in methodologies of regional history and micro-history of Edo period Japan, doing most of his research on Tosa domain in southwest Japan. He is the author of Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain (Cambridge University Press 1998), Performing the Great Peace (University of Hawai'i Press, 2012), a co-authored book with Sharon Takeda, Japanese Fishermen's Coats from Awaji Island (UCLA Fowler Museum 2002) and numerous articles and chapters on life and political culture in the Edo period. In recent years his research has focused mostly on gender and household in the samurai class.
Image: clip taken from: The Summer Battle of Osaka Castle. Panel screen (partial) 日本語: 「大坂夏の陣図屏風」右隻（部分), 17th century, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Siege_of_Osaka_Castle.jpg
