
Moromasa Wakizaka (1545-) was a Japanese samurai in the service of the Oda clan during the Sengoku period.
Biography[]

Wakizaka in 1568
Moromasa Wakizaka was born in Japan in 1545, the child of a minor samurai family with no Minamoto or Taira descent, large landholdings, or imperial offices. He was raised in a castle of the land as a daimyo's attendant, and he grew to be an armed retainer as a young man. In 1568, at the age of 23, Wakizaka decided to strike out on his own as an adventurer, travelling to Sakai, the chief port of the Inland Sea and the capital of Izumo Province, in the Kinai region of central Kansai. He arrived on 22 March 1568, and, while in Sakai, he slew the elderly bandit Tamekatsu Iwakura after Iwakura attempted to ambush him. Shortly after, the merchant Jiro Hashimoto ran up to him and requested that they speak at Jiro's house. There, Hashimoto said that, despite trying to steer clear of the samurai and their plots, he had lost his brother Minemaru to the samurai, and that his older brother Horenbo had gone missing while investigating Minemaru's murder. Hashimoto then asked Wakizaka to gather a small band and rescue Horenbo, and Wakizaka agreed. Hashimoto then gave Wakizaka 100 yen to raise a band of at least five men to take on the samurai.