From Sawayama to Hikone: How the Foundation for the Ii Family's 250 Years Was Built

When Ii Naomasa died in February 1602 of the gunshot wound taken at Sekigahara, the Ii house was a young daimyō house of Ōmi Sawayama at 180,000 koku.

From then until the bakumatsu period 250 years later, the Ii house continued as the foremost of the fudai daimyō and a great-elder-producing house, bearing the core of the Tokugawa bakufu.

The course by which the foundation-building of a single Sengoku warrior made the center of the political structure of early modern Japan, traced.

The Ōmi Sawayama at 180,000 koku Naomasa was granted in the post-Sekigahara awards was the former territory of Ishida Mitsunari of the Western Army and was located at the strategic point of Kyoto, Ōmi, and the kinai.

It was a strategically important point for the Tokugawa bakufu to monitor and check the movements of western daimyō, and the disposition Ieyasu gave Naomasa was at the upper end among the Four Heavenly Kings.

Sawayama Castle was a sturdy mountain castle built by Ishida Mitsunari, but the development of the castle town was limited.

When Naomasa died in 1602, his eldest son Naokatsu was young at thirteen. In the unstable period just after the establishment of the Tokugawa bakufu, to prevent the weakening of the house from young-age succession, Ieyasu allowed Naokatsu's succession to the headship while strengthening the bakufu's involvement in the management of the Ii house.

In 1615 (Genna 1), with Naokatsu's younger brother Naotaka distinguishing himself in the summer campaign at Ōsaka, the headship was transferred from Naokatsu to Naotaka.

Naokatsu established a separate house with an allotted share.

The relocation of the Ii base was decided in Naokatsu's period in 1606, and a new castle was to be built on Mount Hikone, about three kilometers northwest of Sawayama.

Construction of Hikone Castle began in 1604, and with the completion of the keep in 1622 and the development of the castle town reached a settled stage.

The construction was advanced as a tenka-bushin (national construction) of the Tokugawa bakufu, with the assistance of surrounding daimyō, and became an enterprise that showed the special position of the Ii house.

Placing the keep, the main bailey, and the second bailey on the independent small Mount Hikone, and arranging the castle town in order at its foot, it became one of the representative examples of an early modern castle town.

The 180,000 koku of Sawayama in Naomasa's time, through increases in Naotaka's generation, reached 300,000 koku (later 350,000 koku).

It was the largest scale of koku among the fudai daimyō, and the Ii house established its position as the foremost of the fudai daimyō.

The lord of the Hikone domain held senior posts in the Edo bakufu, and especially several lords took the office of great elder.

The custom of 'great elder from the Ii house' was maintained through the Edo period, and the political centrality of the Ii house was institutionalized.

The most dramatic historical phase of the Ii house came in the time of the thirteenth-generation head, Ii Naosuke (1815-1860, this site's id 27).

In 1858 (Ansei 5), Naosuke took the post of great elder and led the signing of the U.

S.-Japan Treaty of Amity and Commerce, the Tokugawa Iesada succession problem, and the Ansei Purge (the suppression of the imperial-loyalist faction).

On March 3, 1860, he was assassinated outside Sakuradamon Gate by rōnin of the Mito domain and others.

Counting from Naomasa, 258 years later, it was the symbolic event of the closing phase of the Ii-family lineage.

After the Meiji Restoration, the Ii family survived as kazoku (count rank). Hikone Castle escaped demolition under the Meiji-period castle-abolition order, and remains today as one of the five national-treasure castles.

The Hikone Castle Museum holds Ii-family armor (including Naomasa's Red Devils), documents, weapons, and paintings, and one can survey the history of the Ii house from the late Sengoku through the Edo period and the modern age.

The foundation Naomasa built in a single lifetime gave rise to a continuity of history of over four hundred years.

Ii Naomasa, as one of the Tokugawa Four Heavenly Kings and as the founder of the 250-year Ii family, occupies an important position in Japanese history.

Naomasa's personal life was short at forty-two, but the 'Ii Red Devils' and the Sawayama domain he established in that time were completed as the Hikone domain in the generations of his sons and grandsons, and the house became a lineage bearing the core of the Edo bakufu's ruling structure.

Among the four houses of the Tokugawa Four Heavenly Kings (Sakai, Honda, Sakakibara, Ii), the Ii house was the lineage that most clearly displayed the character of 'fudai core supporting the Tokugawa bakufu.