Successor After Okehazama — The Mediocre Son Who Failed to Avenge His Father and Lost the Imagawa
Imagawa Ujizane became Imagawa head after his father Yoshimoto was killed at Okehazama (1560), but proved unable to provide effective leadership. In 1568, when Takeda Shingen and Tokugawa Ieyasu launched a coordinated attack on Imagawa territory (ending the Tripartite Alliance), Ujizane could barely resist and kept fleeing, surrendering to Ieyasu at Kakegawa Castle in 1569. The roughly 150-year Imagawa control thus effectively ended. Yet Ujizane was a renowned master of kemari (court football) and lived into the early Edo period, reportedly dying at age 80. Branded as incompetent by the Sengoku's meritocratic standards, he nonetheless possessed genuine talent as a cultural figure.