governor in 1488.
Kanazawa Gobo and the Peasant�s Kingdom
For the next hundred years, Kaga was ruled by the Ikko peasants, who created a kind of republic known by history as The Peasant�s Kingdom. Their principle stronghold was the basilica of Kanazawa Gobo, on the tip of the Kodatsuno ridge. Backed by high hills and flanked on two sides by rivers, it was a natural fortress, and the eventual home of the Maeda lords. Around the basilica, in what is now the second and third baileys, the first proper town grew, with priestly residences and other religious buildings as its core, and around them came the merchant areas. Many of these districts have survived to the present day, in name if nothing else. This type of town, peculiar to the Warring States Period, was a fortified temple town, and in its basic structure bears a great deal of resemblance to mediaeval European towns, with the temple or church in the centre and the entire town enclosed in some form of fortification, usually a high wall surrounded by a moat, often dry.
End of the Peasants Kingdom
In the year 1580, a general under Oda Nobunaga named Sakuma Morimasa attacked the Peasants Kingdom, and succeeded in overthrowing Kanazawa Gobo. Granted an income of 50,000 koku from Nobunaga, Sakuma proceeded to recreate the town as a military base. However his reign was short-lived: in 1583 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, with Lord Maeda Toshiie as his advance guard, invaded, and Toshiie was granted the fief of Kaga in addition to the Noto peninsula which he already possessed.
Maeda Toshiie and Kanazawa
Maeda Toshiie was born in 1537, in the village of Arako in Owari Province (present-day Nagoya), the son of Maeda Toshiharu, the lord of Arako Castle. In the same year, in the same province, Toyotomi Hideyoshi was born, and three years before that, Oda Nobunaga. And five years later in neighboring Mikawa Province, Tokugawa Ieyasu was born. These men would go on to become
