Introduction

The city of Hagi was born out of circumstances of bitter political rivalry and bloody battle, involving duplicity and intrigue at the highest levels of government. The new town was to be constructed in a domain only one quarter the size of its pre-1600 territory, with a commensurate reduction in domain income. The site was neither auspicious in terms of geomantic considerations nor appropriate for the rapid construction of a major town. Few cities in modern Japan escaped the effects of the rapid changes in the country from 1868, and the impact and reconstruction following the Pacific War left negligible areas of Japanese cities untouched. Hagi is the former capital of one of the most illustrious families in Japanese history, whose name is intimately associated with the nation’s history in the fifteenth, sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The choice of Hagi-Ura as the site for domain capital was a means of minimising the potential threat posed by family to the Tokugawa.