Hachisuka Shigeyoshi was an eighteenth-century Japanese daimyō who became the tenth lord of Tokushima Domain in Awa province in 1754. Adopted into the Hachisuka house, he inherited a domain facing fiscal and administrative problems.
Shigeyoshi attempted reforms that included restraints on luxury and changes to domain administration, but opposition and political difficulties brought the programme to an end. In 1769 the Tokugawa shogunate ordered him to retire from rule; he later devoted attention to cultural pursuits including tea and ceramics.
Eiji Yoshikawa’s Awa cycle makes Shigeyoshi’s domain the political centre of a conspiracy whose agents try to keep outsiders from discovering what is being prepared inside Tokushima. The Kamigata Scroll begins with an attempt to penetrate the closed domain, while The Edo Scroll shows the conspiracy maintaining captives and operatives inside the shogunate’s capital. The Funaji Scroll brings the pursuit to the sea routes into Awa, and The Tsurugisan Scroll takes Gennojō and Otsuna into the domain itself, where retainers guard the secret around Mount Tsurugi. In The Naruto Scroll, the plot attributed to Awa’s leadership reaches its final crisis as the investigators race to expose it before rebellion can spread.
