H KAMON NO KAMI NAOSUKE, Oe-ee kah-mOnO no kii-mee, nah-w5-soo-kEe, the Japanese statesman who succeeded in open ing Japan to foreign trade and residence; b. 30 Nov. 1815; d. 24 March 1860. Descended from ancestors (987-1011), who served the Mikado in subduing the Ainu aborigines. At 27, Ii was made the 14th lord of Ii-dam (valley of Ii), whose predecessors occupied a castle in the fief assigned Iyeyasu (q.v.). On 25 Dec. 1850, he was given the title of lord of Hokone, and on 4 June 1858, when the American envoy Townsend Harris (q.v.) was pressing the Yedo government for a commercial treaty, at a time when internal politics were in turmoil, the shogun, a boy, and the Yedo and feudal sys tems decadent, Ii was made premier. Although the Mikado Kornei, and the Imperial Court at Kioto violently opposed the idea, the Lord Ii, with the example of India and China before him—the French and British fleets being then in the neighboring Chinese waters took the responsibility and signed the American treaty, which was soon followed by others, with Europeans. With an iron hand, wielding the jailer's and the execu tioner's sword and without regard to name or rank, Ii overcame his most active opponents.
He dispatched an embassy to the United States in the United States steamship Powitatan which, after arrival, made the tour of the American cities, being everywhere warmly welcomed and sumptuously entertained. On 4 March 1860, while on his way to the castle in a snow storm, a band of 18 ronin (q.v.) attacked his train. In the bloody battle that ensued, Baron Ii was beheaded and 29 men were killed or wounded. After a generation of obloquy and misrepre sentation, Ii's name came to be held in universal popular reverence. The intensely strong op position of the devotees of ultramikadoism long prevented a proper memorial to Ii from being reared in Tokio, where it should be; but in Yokohama a noble monument has been reared in his honor. His son was educated in Brooklyn, N. Y. Consult Alcock 'Capital of the Tycoon) (1863); Satoh, 'Agitated Japan: The Life of Baron (1896); Griffis, 'Town send Harris) (1906), and, in fiction, Maclay, 'Mite Yashiki> (1889).