Ikkō-ikki of Kaga

Also called: Kaga Rebellion, Chōkyō Uprising, Ikkō-ikki

True Pure Land (Ikkō) believers and local warriors in Kaga rose up and drove the governor Togashi Masachika to suicide. For about ninety years thereafter the believers’ league ruled the province.

After Rennyo of the Hongan-ji set up his base at Yoshizaki in Echizen in 1471 and spread the faith with simple pastoral letters, True Pure Land believers multiplied across Hokuriku. Togashi Masachika, the shugo (governor) of Kaga, had once relied on their help, but he soon turned on them and burdened them with military levies. In 1488 a great host of believers and local warriors (kokujin) surrounded his Takao Castle, and Masachika took his own life.

The league set up his kinsman Togashi Yasutaka as a figurehead governor, while Hongan-ji temples and congregations actually ran the province — hence Kaga was called “a province held by the peasants”. It became a classic example of gekokujō, and the Hongan-ji, centred later on Ishiyama (Osaka), grew into a power to rival the daimyo. The Kaga league fell in 1580 when Oda Nobunaga’s general Shibata Katsuie took the Oyama Gobō at Kanazawa.