About Iga-mono in Edo Era (summary)
Lecturer: Naoya Inoue
Iga-mono under Tokugawa Shogunate was separated into two groups. One was Hanzo Masanari Hattori's group and the other one was Naka Yasutsugu Hattori's group. Both groups joined several wars from the "Tensho Jingo no ran" (10th year of Tensho) until the "Oosaka Natsu no jin" (1615 / 1st year of Genna).
The "Iga-mono Yuisho", written in the late Edo period, mentions that Iga-mono was called "Shinobi no mono" or "Iga no mono" and did their "Shinobi Goyo (Business as Shinobi)" in the early Edo period. The Iga-mono in the late Edo Period recognized that their ancestors were Ninja. Some other historical material also points out that Iga-mono actually spied on the enemy during those wars. After Ieyasu moved to Edo, each Iga-mono in both groups was given his own Chigyo-chi (fief). The Iga-mono under the Naka group requested to change their fiefs with the new one due to the poor crop, but they deprived of their fiefs and were given rice as their salary. Since the Oosaka no jin (the Siege of Osaka) Iga-mono were also incorporated into the job classification of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Some of them could secure a position in the Samurai society, such as Hiroshiki Iga-mono and Akeyashiki ban Iga-mono.
At this lecture, we have explained the Family Tree of Hanzo Hattori and then the theory that Masatsugu, father of Masanari, and Yasunaga were not same person. We also introduced an episode about a document in which Akeyashiki ban Iga-mono requested to change his easy job to any active job, and another episode about the Kyoto Okuban Iga-shu, who investigated Chotei in the early Edo period. As the last story of this lecture, we were also able to explain how the Iga-mono found their new jobs at the Meiji government and at the Shizuoka Tokugawa clan.