Hijikata Katsuuji was a Sengoku period samurai in the service of Oda Nobunaga and subsequently Toyotomi Hideyoshi and held fiefs with a kokudaka of 10,000 koku in Komono, Ise Province.
However, in 1599 he was accused of complicity in a plot to assassinate Tokugawa Ieyasu, and was dispossessed and exiled to Hitachi-Ōta.
He was pardoned before the Battle of Sekigahara, where he distinguished himself in combat, and was reinstated to his former domains, with a 2000 koku increase.
His successor, Hijikata Katsutaka, built a jin'ya from which to rule the domain, laid out the foundations for the castle town and invited merchants to populate it.
However, the domain's finances were always precarious, and with large expenses due to duties at Osaka and Kyoto imposed by the shogunate, coupled with poor harvests, the situation became critical by the time of Hijikata Yoshitane, the 9th daimyō, who implemented Sumptuary laws, irrigation work, and speculation on rice futures in order to achieve financial reconstruction.