Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Yamamoto Tsunetomo was born in 1659 in the Saga domain and from the age of nine served its lord, Nabeshima Mitsushige, as a close attendant for more than thirty years. When Mitsushige died in 1700, custom would have required him to follow his lord in death, but both the shogunate and the domain had forbidden it, so he shaved his head, became a monk and withdrew to a hermitage in the hills outside Saga. From 1710 a young samurai, Tashiro Tsuramoto, visited him and over seven years recorded his conversations, which became the Hagakure.