Ise Moritoki, Crossing to Odawara Beyond the Mountain

人物史

More than three centuries after Yoritomo's time, at the dawn of the Sengoku period, a warrior named Ise Moritoki appeared — the man later known as Hojo Soun. He began as a minor guest retainer who had been granted Kokokuji Castle in Suruga province for intervening in a succession dispute within the Imagawa clan, but he went on to bring Izu province under his control and set his sights on Odawara, in Sagami, beyond the Hakone mountains. Odawara was then held by Omori Fujiyori, and sometime around 1495 (scholars still disagree on the exact year), Soun took the castle from him. A famous story claims he won the Omori lord's trust with gifts, then used a deer hunt as a pretext to move troops into the mountains and launch a surprise attack — but this account was compiled generations later, and some historians instead see Soun's advance as one that took advantage of internal discord within the Omori clan. What is certain, in any case, is that Odawara — reached by crossing the Hakone mountains — became the base from which the Later Hojo clan would rule the Kanto region for five generations, roughly a hundred years. Soun himself is buried here at Soun-ji, alongside the graves of the four lords who followed him: Ujitsuna, Ujiyasu, Ujimasa, and Ujinao.

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Mount Hakone

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