The shadow of Ise Soun

If Sengoku politics is read only as a story of seizure and conflict, Ise Soun becomes hard to see. What he saw was the reality of people exploited, hungry, and sold away. The institutional changes that began there became part of the thought that supported later Hojo strength.

Soun had originally been a shogunal official in Kyoto. He entered Suruga as a supporter of the Imagawa and saw local society directly. Farmers suffered under taxes. Even when rain or drought reduced harvests, they were told to pay the same amount. The formal principle was six to the public, four to the people. But if a year produced only five parts and six still had to be paid, life collapsed.

The shift to four-to-six

Soun concluded that a system did not need such heavy dues to survive. He changed the norm from six-to-four to four-to-six: not six parts paid out, but four. Nor was this simply a fixed tax cut. In years of drought or heavy rain, he looked at the actual damage and adjusted according to real yield. It was politics based on inspection and reality.

Under such a system, people could avoid starving. In Izu, with little flat land suited to rice farming, this was especially urgent. Voices reportedly wished for such a person to come. Rule could become not only something imposed, but something welcomed.

That property and life may be calm

The phrase often used to express Soun's character is Rokuju-Oon, carved on the tiger seal: a wish that property and life may be calm. This is different from expanding a country by force alone. It is a logic of governance: if the people do not prosper, the country cannot become strong.

Some must have opposed this thought. For those who profited under the old order, four-to-six taxation was inconvenient. Yet Soun's method spread because stable tax income and the ability of people to keep living ultimately strengthened the country.

The Hojo name came later

Soun himself did not live under the famous name Hojo Soun. He was a man of the Ise name. In the later move toward calling the family Hojo, he came to be remembered as the first of the five Hojo generations. More important than the name is that his politics was handed down as Hojo thought.

The discussion behind this site also notes that many later Tokugawa policies show Hojo influence, including ways of thinking about Edo Castle. Many people study the Hojo because their strength came not only from skill in war, but from institutions that let people prosper.

A line reaching Ujikuni

Hojo Ujikuni of Hachigata Castle lived generations after Soun. Yet when Ujikuni kept petitioning Hideyoshi to spare soldiers and civilians during the Odawara campaign, his conduct looks like an extension of Hojo thought. If people do not prosper, the country is not strong. If people are not protected, rule does not remain. That idea reaches the bloodless surrender of Hachigata Castle.