Background
Soma Yoshitane was born in 1548 in Nakamura. He was a son of Moritane, Lord of the Nakamura Clan in Iwaki Province.
相馬 義胤
Soma Yoshitane was born in 1548 in Nakamura. He was a son of Moritane, Lord of the Nakamura Clan in Iwaki Province.
In 1578 Soma succeeded his father and served Hideyoshi Toyotomi. In the Korean campaign of 1592, he served at Hideyoshi's headquarters at Nagoya Kyushu. After the Sekigahara Battle (1600), Ieyasu Tokugawa confiscated Yoshitane's territory and transferred him to Mihara (Fukushima Prefecture) for his suspected friendliness toward the Toyotomis. Yoshitane pleaded in vain that this was not true. He was defended by Masamune Date, Lord of Sendai, who was grateful to Yoshitane for having enabled him to return safely to Sendai from Tokyo via his territory. Yoshitane was pardoned on the occasion of the birth of Iemitsu, Ieyasu's grandson and was reinstated as Lord of Nakamura.
In 1559, the clan was approached by Date Tanemune and was offered a matrimonial alliance. Yoshitane was wed to Tanemune’s younger daughter, Kosugō Gozen the following year. However, following the death of Tanemune in 1565, the ancient enmity between the Sōma and Date clans flared up again in a border dispute, and Yoshitane divorced Kosugō Gozen and sent her back to the Date clan.