Minamoto no Mitsushige (源光重)

MINAMOTO no Mitsushige (year of birth and death unknown) was a Samurai in the end of the Heian period. He was the child of MINAMOTO no Mitsunobu (or MINAMOTO no Motokuni). He was an adopted son of MINAMOTO no Nakamasa. His brothers-in-law included MINAMOTO no Yorimasa, MINAMOTO no Yoriyuki and MINAMOTO no Yasumasa, and his children included Shigekiyo, Shigetaka, Yoshishige HORI, Mitsusada, Nakashige and Yasutsuna. His kemyo (assumed name) (common name) was Saburo. He was the founder of the Fukasu clan.

When his father-in-law, Nakamasa went down to Togoku (the eastern part of Japan, particularly Kanto region) as Kokushi (provincial governors), he followed Nakamasa with his elder brothers and obtained Shoryo (territory) locally, where he started living in. The location of the Shoryo is said to have been in Shimousa Province or Shimotsuke Province, but not clear. In "Heiji Monogatari" (The tale of the Heiji), he appeared as a person to receive MINAMOTO no Yoshitsune when his child, Yorishige invited Yoshitsune from Kyoto to Shoryo of the Fukasu family in Togoku. Although "Sonpi Bunmyaku" (a text compiled in the fourteenth century that records the lineages of the aristocracy) described that Mitsushige called himself 'Hatano Onzoshi (son of a distinguished family), the details of which is unknown.

According to "Azuma Kagami" (The Mirror of the East), Shoryo in his base, Fukasu was inherited by descendants of his fifth son, Nakashige through successive generations and his family continued as Gokenin (an immediate vassal of the shogunate in the Kamakura and Muromachi through Edo periods) also after the Kamakura period.

[Original Japanese]