Hatakeyama clan
The area around present-day Hodogaya has been inhabited for thousands of years. Archaeologists have found stone tools from the Japanese Paleolithic period and ceramic shards from the Jōmon period at numerous locations in the area. Under the Nara period Ritsuryō system, it became part of Tachibana District and Tsutsuki District in Musashi Province. By the Heian period it was part of a huge "shōen" controlled by Ise Shrine and administered by the Hangaya clan, a subsidiary of the Hatakeyama clan. By the Kamakura period, the Hatakeyama clan ruled as local warlords until their territories were seized by the Later Hōjō clan from Odawara in the late Muromachi period. After the defeat of the Hōjō at the Battle of Odawara, the territory came under the control of Tokugawa Ieyasu. It was administered as "tenryō" territory controlled directly by the Tokugawa shogunate, but administered through various "hatamoto". The area prospered in the Edo period as Hodogaya-juku, a post station on the Tōkaidō connecting Edo with Kyoto.