[1][2][3] During the Muromachi period, the area around Himeji was part of the vast holdings of the Akamatsu clan, the shugo of Harima Province; however, by the Sengoku period, the greatly weakened Akamatsu were defeated by the forces of Oda Nobunaga under his general Hashiba Hideyoshi and the early Himeji Castle was surrendered by Kuroda Yoshitaka.

After the Battle of Sekigahara, Tokugawa Ieyasu relocated Kinoshita to Bitchu Province in 1600 and assigned Himeji to his general and son-in-law Ikeda Terumasa.

This gave the Ikeda clan a total kokudaka of over one million koku and funded a massive reconstruction project to rebuild Himeji Castle.

Sakai Tadatoshi was a rōjū and at the start of the Boshin War was in the retinue of Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu at Osaka Castle.

During the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, he fled Osaka by ship back to Edo with the shogun, and the Meiji government declared Himeji to be an "enemy of the throne".