Ōkura

The Ōkura of Bungo were a warrior house of Hita district on Kyushu who claimed descent from the immigrant Ōkura clan of the Yamatonoaya. Replacing the Kusakabe as district chiefs, they ruled the basin for some four hundred years from the late eleventh century and became gokenin after backing the Minamoto.

Their most famous son was Ōkura no Nagasue, born in 1056, a sumo champion who appeared ten times unbeaten in the court sumo festivals of Kyoto. He was enshrined at Hita Shrine as a god of wrestling.

In 1444 a succession feud ended in the lord Nagakane's murder by a retainer and the extinction of the original line. An adopted heir from the Ōtomo revived the house as the Ōtomo-Hita, but that line died out in 1548, after which eight elders of Ōkura stock governed Hita under the Ōtomo.