The Ii Red Devils: How the Takeda Elite Became the Tokugawa's Strongest Unit

The 'Ii Red Devils' (Ii no Akazonae) is known as the symbolic elite force of the Tokugawa army in the combat scenes of the late Sengoku and early Edo periods.

Ii Naomasa's unit, which appeared on the battlefield in equipment unified in vermilion throughout, left a strong impression on friend and foe through its visual impact and combat power.

But this unit was not generation-old to the Ii house — it was a 'transplanted elite' that Naomasa inherited after the destruction of the Takeda house.

The prototype of the 'Red Devils' lay in the unit commanded by Takeda Shingen's retainer Yamagata Masakage (1529-1575).

Yamagata was one of Shingen's senior retainers, one of the five great retainers and one of the Twenty-Four Takeda Generals, and his elite were a force that fought in equipment unified in vermilion throughout.

The vermilion equipment was expensive in dye (cinnabar / mercuric sulfide) and signified a special military body even among Sengoku-period daimyō.

At the Battle of Nagashino in 1575, Yamagata charged the three-rank gun line of the Oda-Tokugawa allied army and fell; the Takeda Red Devils effectively ceased to exist.

In March 1582 (Tenshō 10), Takeda Katsuyori took his own life and the Takeda house was destroyed.

Oda Nobunaga distributed the former Takeda territory to Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hōjō Ujimasa, Kiso Yoshimasa, and others, and the Tokugawa house took Suruga Province and part of Kai Province.

Ieyasu took care in his disposition of former Takeda retainers, adopting the policy of incorporating capable retainers into the Tokugawa army.

Ii Naomasa was selected, in this reorganization, to inherit the elite force and the equipment of the Takeda house.

Naomasa was twenty-two — a striking elevation in the seventh year of his Tokugawa service.

Several reasons are inferred for why Ieyasu gave the Red Devils to Naomasa. First, Naomasa's youth and rising momentum.

The foremost of the Four Heavenly Kings at the time, Honda Tadakatsu and others, already had their own military bodies, and as a counterpart to whom a newly organized elite could be entrusted, the young Naomasa was best suited.

Second, the possibility that, given Naomasa's background of having fled to a temple at the destruction of the Imagawa house, the flexibility to take in former Takeda retainers was expected of him.

Third, the Ii house was itself small, with little constraint within the in-house body, and there was room to incorporate former Takeda retainers and form a new unit.

Naomasa is held to have been selected by the combination of these factors.

Naomasa took in the Takeda retainers directly, maintained the vermilion unification of the equipment, and basically inherited the tactics as well — the Takeda style.

As an independent elite unit within the Tokugawa army, in combat it took charge of the vanguard and the charge.

The vermilion equipment was costly to maintain and became a financial burden for the Ii house, but Ieyasu is recorded as having publicly supported it.

The strength of the unit varied by period, but is estimated at around 1,000 to 3,000.

The Ii Red Devils took part in the major engagements: Komaki-Nagakute in 1584, Odawara in 1590, Sekigahara in 1600.

At Sekigahara in particular, as the eastern vanguard they took charge of the opening charge and played a role decisive for the flow of the combat.

'Ii's Red Force' was known as a presence that gave fear to the enemy camps, and remained in the late-Sengoku battlefield history as a symbolic unit combining visibility and combat power.

After Naomasa's death (1602), the Red Devils were inherited by his son Naotaka and maintained through the Edo period as the symbol of the Hikone domain.

The opportunity for actual combat was lost, but the Red Devils as ceremonial equipment was inherited as the house style of the Ii, and several Red Devil armors are held by the Hikone Castle Museum today.

The lineage of inheritance from the Takeda to the Tokugawa, from the Tokugawa to the Ii, and from the Ii to the modern museum shows a rare continuity of material culture from the Sengoku period to the present.

Today, the 'Ii Red Devils' is repeatedly depicted as the symbolic military equipment of the late Sengoku period in historical fiction, drama, and games (Nobunaga's Ambition, Sengoku Basara, and others).

The actual Red Devil armor can be seen at the Hikone Castle Museum, and events such as the annual 'Lord Ii Naomasa Red Devil Procession Reenactment' are held.

It is a case in which inherited equipment given to a single young warrior has continued to be remembered as the symbol of the late Sengoku period for over four hundred years.