The growth of Wakayama, situated in west-central Honshu at the mouth of the Kino River, on the Kii Peninsula, and lying along the Kii Strait, which leads from the Pacific Ocean into the Inland Sea, begins in 1585 with the construction of a castle there ordered by Hideyoshi.

Fifteen thousand Toyotomi troops are meanwhile being delayed by five hundred troops under Hosokawa Fujitaka at Tanabe Castle on the Kii Peninsula in Wakayama Prefecture.

Some among the fifteen thousand troops respect Hosokawa so much they intentionally slow their pace.

Both these incidents result in a large number of Tokugawa and Toyotomi troops coming late to the battlefield of Sekigahara.

The Great Nankaidō earthquakes and tsunamis kill eighty thousand people in Japan on from November 4 to 7, 1854.

The 1854 Nankai earthquake follows on December 24, 1854, killing over ten thousand people from the Tōkai region down to Kyushu.