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Takanobu's son and successor, who was named Masaiye, being still a boy, advantage was taken of the fact by Otomo Yoshishige, who invaded Hizen, so that Masaiye had to apply to the Shimazu family for succour.
As for the Buddhist priests who had sacrificed their honour to their interests, those that had acted as guides to the invading army were subsequently crucified by order of the Satsuma baron, and the Shin sect, to which they belonged, was interdicted throughout the whole of the Shimazu fief.
They are chiefly noteworthy for their gallant defence of the cause of the Southern Court. After many vicissitudes the family disappeared from history in the middle of the sixteenth century. The ancestor of the Shimazu family was Tadahisa, an illegitimate son of Minamoto Yoritomo.
This mandate was treated with contempt. Shimazu Yoshihisa threw the document on the ground, declaring that his family had ruled in Satsuma for fourteen generations; that only one man in Japan, namely Prince Konoe, had competence to issue such an injunction, and that the head of the house of Shimazu would never kneel to a monkey-faced upstart.
Both were hereditarily hostile to the Tokugawa, but were mutually separated by a difference of opinion in the matter of foreign policy, so that when the above two cabals were organized in Kyoto, the Choshu men attached themselves to the extremists, the Satsuma to the moderates. The latter contrived to have an Imperial rescript sent to Yedo by the hands of the Satsuma feudatory, Shimazu Hisamitsu.
In other words, a man whose son had been adopted into another family might claim to be regarded as the head of that family in the event of the death of the foster-father. It is certain, however, that other and stronger reasons influenced the Bakufu prime minister. His most intimate friends were the shogun's father-in-law, Shimazu Ei-O, and Ikeda Isshinsai.
Shimazu of Satsuma, at the head of a handful of samurai, cut his way through the lines of Ieyasu, and reaching Osaka, embarked hastily for Kyushu. Ishida Katsushige lay concealed in a cave for a few days, but was ultimately seized and beheaded, in company with Konishi Yukinaga and Ankokuji Ekei, at the execution ground in Kyoto. This one battle ended the struggle: there was no rally.
It was generally supposed that Iehisa would never return from this mission, but would remain in the camp of Shimazu. He did return, however, his word of honour being of more importance in his estimation than the opportunity of recovering his liberty.
Iehisa, of course, refused, and to Hideyoshi's credit it stands on record that he did not press the matter with any violence. This difficulty of invading an unknown country without any maps or any guides, a country celebrated for its topographical perplexities, was ultimately overcome by sending Buddhist priests to act as spies in the dominions of Shimazu.
When the fighting ended, the Satsuma baron had pushed into Bungo and taken sixteen forts there, so that fully one-half of Kyushu was now under the sway of the Shimazu.
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