Iga Province

Surrounded by mountains, historically, Iga Province was rather inaccessible due to extremely poor road conditions.

However, the area is now relatively easy to access from nearby Nara and Kyoto, as well as the larger cities of Osaka and Nagoya.

This serves that basis of its claim, along with Kōka in what is now Shiga Prefecture, to be one of the birthplaces of the ninja clans and ninjutsu.

With the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, Iga was briefly (1600–1608) under the control of Iga-Ueno Domain, a 200,000-koku han during the rule of Tsutsui Sadatsugu, a former retainer of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Notable Edo-period people from Iga included the famous samurai Hattori Hanzō and the haiku poet Matsuo Bashō.