History
Today, much of the history of Iga province can be viewed at various sightseeing locations scattered throughout Mie. The castle town of Ueno was the location of Iga-Ueno Castle.
The Iga Province is particularly famous for its clan of ninja, its most notable member being a samurai, Hattori Hanzō. Both the Iga and Kōka provinces are considered the birthplace of ninjutsu. It was also the birthplace of haiku poet Matsuo Bashō.
During the early Muromachi Period the Iga Province became effectively independent from their feudal rulers and established a form of republic. The Iga Republic was called Iga Sokoku Ikki (伊賀惣国一揆) in Japanese.
In 1581, two years after a failed invasion led by his son, the warlord Oda Nobunaga launched a massive invasion of Iga, attacking from six directions with a force of 40,000 to 60,000 men. After ruthlessly slaughtering great numbers of the inhabitants of the Iga region, Oda Nobunaga then declared a cease-fire which allowed some of the Iga ninja to escape. It was, however, the end of the independent Iga Republic.
Read more about this topic: Iga Province
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)