page_title: Ii Naosuke
section_title: Death and consequences
hierarchical_section_title: Ii Naosuke / Death and consequences
context_page_description: Ii Naosuke was daimyō of Hikone and also Tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan, a position he held from April 23, 1858, until his death, assassinated in the Sakuradamon Incident on March 24, 1860. He is most famous for signing the Harris Treaty with the United States, granting access to ports for trade to American merchants and seamen and extraterritoriality to American citizens. He was also an enthusiastic and accomplished practitioner of the Japanese tea ceremony, in the Sekishūryū style, and his writings include at least two works on the tea ceremony.
  Under Ii Naosuke’s guidance, the Tokugawa shogunate navigated past a particularly difficult conflict over the succession to the ailing and childless Tokugawa Iesada. Ii Naosuke managed to coerce the Tokugawa shogunate to the last brief resurgence of its power and position in Japanese society before the start of the Meiji period. Ii was assassinated in the Sakuradamon incident by a group of 17 Mito and 1 Satsuma samurai on March 24, 1860.
context_section_description: Although Ii's Ansei purge was very effective in silencing the officials and his high ranking opponents, it did not have the same effect on lower-ranking samurai. Ii Naosuke's 20-month dictatorial reign as tairō came to an abrupt end in the third month of Ansei 7 (March 24, 1860).
  In the Sakuradamon incident, Ii was attacked by a band of 17 young samurai loyalists from the Mito Province and cut down just in front of one of the gates of the shōgun's Edo castle entering to meet with the shōgun. The assassination of Ii Naosuke, who was seen as the symbol of the bakufu's power and authority, was construed as crushing any hopes for the resurrection of the shogunate's power. His assassins additionally left a note accusing him of building heretical Buddhist temples in Japan; this in fact referred to his allowing Christianity to return to the region, building on earlier Japanese heresiological discourse.
  The death of Tairō Ii Naosuke started a wave of loyalist terrorism across Japan, the poet Tsunada Tadayuki even wrote a poem praising Ii's assassins.  Soon attempts were being made on the lives of other members of the bakufu and their informants. The wave of popular dissent also turned against officials with a connection to Ii Naosuke, no matter how distant it was. Shimada Sakon, retainer of the Kujō, (one of the Sekke families; the 5 regent houses, and among the most powerful in the court), Imperial regent, was killed by dissidents for supporting the Harris treaty and helping Ii’s confidant, Nagano Shuzen, expose members of the court who were targeted during the Ansei purge.
  The shōgun and the Bakufu were astounded and taken completely unaware by the death of Ii Naosuke. They didn't even announce his death until several months after the assassination took place. Instead, during this time the shōgun and the bakufu first pretended that Ii was still alive and rendering service to the shōgun. Then they faked an illness and had him render his resignation to the shōgun before announcing his death. In this way Ii continued to serve the shōgun, even after death. Ii's assassins were later granted a general amnesty by the bakufu, a precedent later used by Yamagata Aritomo, a key member of the Meiji restoration and a main architect of the military and political foundations of early modern Japan and Japanese militarism, to show that any action can be forgiven if it is performed for the betterment of the emperor.
  Accounts of the dramatic event were sent via ship across the Pacific to San Francisco and then sped by Pony Express across the American West.  On June 12, The New York Times reported that Japan's first diplomatic mission to the West received the news about what had happened in Edo.
caption: Edo Castle's Sakurada Gate (Sakurada-mon) – the location chosen by Ii Naosuke's assassins for their attack in Ansei 7 (March 1860)
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