Uesugi

The Uesugi claim descent from the ninth-century Fujiwara minister Fujiwara no Yoshikado. At the close of the 1200s his descendant Kanjuju Shigefusa received the Uesugi manor in Tango and took its name; his daughter Kiyoko mothered Ashikaga Takauji, tying the family to Muromachi rule.

Through the 1300s and 1400s Uesugi heads served as provincial governors and Kanto kanrei, the shogun's eastern deputies, and in 1449 drove out their lord Ashikaga Shigeuji to dominate the Kanto. The clan split into the Yamanouchi, Ogigayatsu and Inukake branches, which fought a quarter-century of infighting ending around 1477 with the Inukake line extinct; the Later Hojo eroded their hold, taking Kawagoe in 1537 and slaying the last Ogigayatsu head in 1545.

Yamanouchi lord Norimasa adopted retainer Nagao Kagetora, who became Uesugi Kenshin (1530—1578), a celebrated Sengoku general famed for rivalling Takeda Shingen. His heir Kagekatsu backed the losing side at Sekigahara in 1600 and was moved to remote Yonezawa, where the family ruled as outer daimyo through the Edo period, praised for Harunori's reforms after the 1750s famines.