-Kagekatsu Uesugi-

(1555–1623). Daimyo of the Azuchi-Momoyama (1568–1600) and early Edo (1600–1868) periods. Kagekatsu, the son of Nagao Masakage (d 1564), a provincial baron of Echigo (now Niigata Prefecture), was adopted by Uesugi Kenshin, the great daimyo of that region. After Kenshin's death, he fought for the succession with another adopted son, Kagetora, driving him to suicide in 1579. Much of Kagekatsu's early lordship was spent in a struggle to check Oda Nobunaga; after Nobunaga's death he allied himself with Toyotomi Hideyoshi and in 1586 was confirmed by him in a vast domain of 550,000 koku (see kokudaka) centered on Echigo. Kagekatsu participated in Hideyoshi's Odawara Campaign (1590) and invasion of Korea (1592) and was appointed to the position of great elder (tairo) in 1597; in 1598 he was transferred to a 1,200,000-koku domain at Wakamatsu in Mutsu Province (now the city of Aizu Wakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture), becoming Japan's fourth greatest daimyo. In the conflict that led to the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), he ranged himself against Tokugawa Ieyasu and after Ieyasu's victory was in 1601 transferred to a much diminished estate in Yonezawa.