Nikaidō

The Nikaido were a bureaucratic warrior house of both Kamakura and Muromachi shogunates, Fujiwara descendants through the Kudo clan. Founder Kudo Yukimasa served Yoritomo as civil official and took the name Nikaido from his mansion beside Eifuku-ji's two-story hall, built in 1192. His son Yukimitsu became shitsuji, chief Mandokoro administrator, a post the house made its own; the family peaked in the mid-thirteenth century.

It split into Shinano and Oki lines staffing top secretariats under the Kamakura, Kenmu and Muromachi regimes, several purged in the 1285 Shimotsuki incident and after 1333. The Kyoto line held the Mandokoro shitsuji post into the sixteenth century.

The family's most famous martial branch began around 1444: Tameuji moved from Kamakura to Sukagawa in Mutsu, seized its castle and became a Sengoku daimyo. Drawn into the Date civil war of 1542 and hard pressed by the Ashina, the Sukagawa Nikaido lost their last castle to Date Masamune in 1589, after his aunt, dowager Anan no Kata, refused to surrender. Another branch settled in Satsuma as Shimazu retainers.