The Ouchi family was very powerfully situated. Descended from a
Korean Crown Prince who migrated to Japan early in the seventh
century, its representative, Yoshioki (1477-1528), controlled the
southern provinces of the main island--Iwami, Aki, Suwo, and
Nagato--as well as the two northern provinces of Kyushu--Chikuzen and
Buzen. This was the chieftain who, in 1508, marched to Kyoto at the
head of a great army, and restored the Ashikaga shogun Yoshitane,
himself receiving the office of kwanryo. Eleven years later, on his
return to the south, he was followed by many nobles from Kyoto, and
his chief provincial town, Yamaguchi, on the Shimonoseki Strait,
prospered greatly. But his son Yoshitaka proved a weakling, and being
defeated by his vassal, Suye Harukata--called also Zenkyo--he
committed suicide, having conjured another vassal, Mori Motonari, to
avenge him.

ENGRAVING: MORI MOTONARI

The Mori family* had for ancestor the great statesman and legislator
of Yoritomo's time, Oye Hiromoto, and its representative, Motonari
(1497-1571), had two sons scarcely inferior to himself in strategical
ability, Kikkawa Motoharu and Kohayakawa Takakage. A commission
having been obtained from Kyoto, Motonari took the field in 1555, and
with only three thousand men succeeded, by a daring feat, in
shattering Harukata with twenty thousand. Thus far, Mori Motonari had
obeyed the behest of his late chief. But thereafter he made no
attempt to restore the Ouchi family. On the contrary, he relentlessly
prosecuted the campaign against Suye Harukata, with whom was
associated Ouchi Yoshinaga, representing the Ouchi house by adoption,
until ultimately Yoshinaga committed suicide and, the Ouchi family
becoming extinct, Motonari succeeded to all its domains.

*Now represented by Prince Mori.

At that time the province of Izumo, which is conterminous with Iwami
along its western frontier, was under the control of the high
constable, Amako Tsunehisa (1458-1540), who, profiting by the fall of
the great Yamana sept, had obtained possession of the provinces Bingo
and Hoki as well as of the Oki Islands. This daimyo was a puissant
rival of the Ouchi family, and on the downfall of the latter he soon
came into collision with Mori Motonari. Tsunehisa's grandson,
Yoshihisa (1545-1610), inherited this feud, which ended with the
extinction of the Amako family and the absorption of its domains by
the Mori, the latter thus becoming supreme in no less than th