Born in 1567 as the eldest son of Takahashi Joun, lord of Iwaya Castle in Chikugo. Recognized by the renowned Bungo commander Tachibana Dosetsu, he was adopted as Dosetsu's heir, married Dosetsu's daughter Gin'chiyo, and succeeded to the Tachibana house. In 1586, while the news of his father Joun's last stand at Iwaya Castle—where he and 764 soldiers died to the last man against the Shimazu—reached him, Muneshige held Tachibana-yama Castle firm. When Hideyoshi's Kyushu campaign forced the Shimazu to surrender, Hideyoshi acclaimed Muneshige "the greatest samurai captain in the western provinces." In Korea (1592), he routed Ming forces at the Battle of Byeokjegwan and made his name feared across the continent. At Sekigahara in 1600 he fought for the Western coalition and was defeated by Kuroda and Nabeshima forces; stripped of his domain, he became a ronin. After serving as a hatamoto with 20,000 koku, he received the remarkable return of his original Yanagawa domain at 109,000 koku from the Tokugawa in 1620—the only daimyo in Japanese history to recover a confiscated domain. He died in 1643 at age 77.