page_title: Ii Naosuke
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Ii Naosuke / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Gōtoku-ji,Setagaya, Tokyo,Japan 日本語: 豪徳寺（東京都世田谷区）
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: After his death, Ii Naosuke was quickly both vilified and defended. Even his enemies would admit that, along with Tokugawa Nariaki, Ii was one of the most important political figures of the late Edo period of Japanese history. Due to the often-tyrannical means Ii used to maintain his power, he was the subject of extremely negative press and was portrayed as a villain in much of the literature from his time, for example in the poems of Tsunada Tadayuki. Historians such as Miyauchi and Beasley consider that Ii was nonetheless a patriot who carried out all of his acts in the belief that they were for the good of Japan and the Emperor. They base this theory upon Ii's 1853 proposal concerning the Japanese negotiations with Commodore Perry, where Ii realized that Japan could not stand up to the Western powers and therefore suggested a policy of placation while the Japanese built up their armed forces (which was the policy chosen by the Meiji government). Ii's successors could not overturn his policy decisions, and his attitude towards the foreigners became the cornerstone of Japanese policy well into the Meiji period.
  After Ii Naosuke's death, the Ii family was disgraced for many years; recently, however, Ii's actions have been looked at in a more favorable light and Ii Naosuke has taken his place as one of the most important political figures of Japanese history.  On October 7, 2009, Ii Naotake, a family descendant of Naosuke, attended a memorial ceremony with the people of Fukui in reconciliation over the execution of Hashimoto Sanai in the Ansei Purge.
  Ii is buried in the temple of Gōtoku-ji, in Setagaya, Tokyo.
caption: Gōtoku-ji, burial place
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "CA3C0017", "Image Make": "KDDI-CA", "Image Model": "W63CA", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "306", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 0, 10, 0, 1, 0, 18, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "32100", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6660", "EXIF ExposureTime": "77/20000", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:01:18 12:38:15", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:01:18 12:38:15", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF Flash": "No flash function", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1280", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "960", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "31952", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "51/46", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}