Inoue Masashige

• Japanese: 井上 政重 (Inoue Masashige)

Inoue Masashige was an early Edo period daimyô of Takaoka han and Ômetsuke in service to the Tokugawa shogunate. In 1640, he was the first to be appointed to the newly-created position of shûmon kaiyaku, overseeing the shogunate's ban on Christianity.

According to some sources, Masashige was a Christian himself early in life, but turned from the religion around 1620. He is said to have been close with the shogunal heir, Tokugawa Iemitsu, who then became shogun in 1623. Iemitsu granted Masashige the 10,000 koku fief of Takaoka. Masashige then also gradually rose through the ranks of shogunate bureaucracy, eventually to the position of ômetsuke ("Inspector"), one of the heads of the shogunate's information networks. In that position, he visited Nagasaki on at least three occasions, including in 1640-1641, when he helped oversee the relocation of the Dutch East India Company's operations and residences to Dejima.

References

• Timon Screech, "Rethinking the Visual Revolution in Edo," in Nozoite bikkuri Edo kaiga: The Scientific Eye and Visual Wonders in Edo のぞいてびっくり江戸絵画, Tokyo: Suntory Museum of Art (2014), 14-20.