The Kaga Ikko-ikki was a 'province held by peasants' built when Honganji adherents overthrew the provincial governor; under Kennyo, the 11th head of Honganji, it allied with Ishiyama Honganji and long opposed Oda Nobunaga. Even after Kennyo made peace with Nobunaga in 1580, the Kaga faithful fought on, but the fall of Torigoe Castle and the ensuing hunt for survivors ended their century of self-rule.

Shibata Katsuie, commanding Nobunaga's Hokuriku army, captured the Kanazawa Gobo in 1580 to subdue Kaga and then advanced into the Haku foothills. Hindered by leagues who used the Tedori River terrain as a shield, he lured and murdered their leaders and took Torigoe Castle. Katsuie's pacification of Kaga was a capstone of Nobunaga's policy of annihilating the Ikko-ikki.

Nobunaga regarded the Ikko-ikki across the country as his gravest enemy and, after Nagashima and Echizen, ordered Shibata Katsuie to annihilate the Kaga leagues. With the fall of Torigoe Castle and the thorough hunt for survivors in 1582, the roughly century-long self-rule of the Kaga Ikko-ikki ended and Hokuriku was pacified as Oda territory.