Arima Mochiie (有馬持家)
Mochiie ARIMA (1396? - 1450?) was a warrior in the middle of the Muromachi period. His given name at first was Norizane. His common name was Hyobu shoyu. Apart from Arima, he also had the family name of Akamatsu. His father was Yoshisuke ARIMA, the son of Norisuke AKAMATSU. The Settsu-Arima clan governing Arima County in Settsu Province, served as an attendant of the seii taishogun (literally, "great general who subdues the barbarians"), and directly belonged to the Muromachi shogunate independent of the Akamatsu clan, their head family.
Around 1429, Mochiie became otomoshu (a vassal accompanying the shogun) of Yoshinori ASHIKAGA, the then shogun. So, in the wake of the Kakitsu War, Mochiie seems not to have sided with Mitsusuke AKAMATSU, his head family leader, but to have sided with the punitive force of the Muromachi shogunate led by Mochitoyo YAMANA against the Akamatsu forces. After that, however, when Mochiie's cousin Mitsumasa AKAMATSU raised an army against the Yamana clan which additionally held the military governor of Harima Province, Mochiie cooperated with Mitsumasa. But Mochiie was defeated, and it is said that he went into retirement after that. Mochiie served as an attendant of the shogun Yoshimasa ASHIKAGA and became its favorite vassal. Along with Yoshimasa's wet nurse Imamairi no tsubone (also called Oima) and the cousin of Yoshimasa's mother Suketo KARASUMA, Mochiie was known as an influential aide to Yoshimasa, and these three were called 'Sanma' (three 'ma') because their names, Oima, Karasuma and Arima, all include the syllable of 'ma' in them. "Gaun nikken roku," the diary written by Shuho ZUIKEI of Shokoku-ji Temple, says under the date of February 1, 1455, that the politics of the shogunate originated from Sanma. However, different from the other two, Mochiie had no record of arbitrary behavior, so his name might have been picked up just because he was an aide to Yoshimasa having the syllable of 'ma' in his name; a theory says Mochiie passed away in 1450, and if it is right, Yoshimasa's reign as the shogun does not match with Yoshimasa's life.