Ii Naotora

Year of birth unknown. Born into the Ii house of Ii-no-ya in Tōtōmi Province (the modern Kita Ward of Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture); taken as the sole daughter of Ii Naomori.

Her father Naomori fell at the Battle of Okehazama in 1560; his successor Ii Naochika (her cousin) was killed by Imagawa Ujizane in 1562, and the male line of the Ii house was cut off.

According to the Ii Family Records, Naotora — who had taken vows under the name Jirō-hōshi — was set up as head of the Ii house and ruled Ii-no-ya.

But since around 2016, source-critical research has raised the possibility that the person called Jirō-hōshi was in fact Sekiguchi Ujitsune, a male of the Imagawa house, and the traditional 'female castellan Naotora' image has come under reexamination.

From 1568 she entered the protection of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and protected and raised Ii Toramatsu — the orphaned heir of the Ii house, later Ii Naomasa (this site's id 48).

She is said to have died in 1582. The foundation for Toramatsu's Tokugawa service, the restoration of the Ii house, and eventually the Edo-period Hikone domain of 300,000 koku was built in this period.

The very existence of Naotora has become an object of reexamination in recent years, but the 'female castellan' image transmitted by the Ii Family Records took deep root in the Ii house's consciousness of house honor from the Edo period on, and was handed down through generations as Hikone domain tradition.

Through the 2017 NHK taiga drama 'Lady Warlord Naotora,' the story came to be known overseas as well. At Ryōtan-ji in Ii-no-ya, a site said to be Naotora's grave is transmitted, and is still visited by pilgrims today.

As background to the restoration of the Ii house and the Tokugawa service of Naomasa (this site's id 48), the story of the female lord of Ii-no-ya holds a position in Japanese cultural history that outruns the question of its literal truth.