During the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Kinoshita Nobutoshi was active in the Eastern Army from the start of the campaign, and after the war, Tokugawa Ieyasu awarded him a domain with a kokudaka of 30,000 koku in Hayami District, Bungo Province.

Furthermore, his father Iesada was also given a separate territory from Nobutoshi and established Ashimori Domain in Bitchū Province (25,000 koku).

Furthermore, since the daimyō of Hiji and Ashimori clans were close relatives of Kōdai-in, they were allowed to continue to use the surname "Toyotomi" even after the defeat of the Toyotomi clan at the Siege of Osaka in 1615 Kinoshita Toshiharu, son of Nobutoshi and the second daimyō distributed a territory of 5,000 koku to his younger brother Nobuyoshi to establish a cadet branch of the clan, so the territory of Hiji Domain was reduced to 25,000 koku.

Throughout the Edo period, the Kinoshita clan continued to rule Hiji for 16 generations, without any transfer or further reduction of territory.

As with most domains in the han system, Hiji Domain consisted of several discontinuous territories calculated to provide the assigned kokudaka, based on periodic cadastral surveys and projected agricultural yields, g.[4][5]