was the 10th and final ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominall ...

'' of

Odawara Domain 250px, Odawara Castle, Headquarters of the Odawara Domain was a Japanese domain of the Edo period, located primarily in western Sagami Province (modern-day Kanagawa Prefecture). It was centered on Odawara Castle in what is now the city of Odaw ...

Sagami Province was a province of Japan located in what is today the central and western Kanagawa Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Kanagawa''" at . Sagami Province bordered the provinces of Izu, Musashi, and Suruga. It had access to the Pac ...

, (modern-day

Kanagawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kana ...

) in

Bakumatsu period was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government. ...

Japan. Before the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were r ...

, his courtesy title was '' Kaga no Kami.''

Biography

Ōkubo Tadayoshi was born as the eldest son of

Ōkubo Noriyoshi , also Okubo, Ohkubo and Ookubo, is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Ōkubo clan ** Ōkubo Tadayo (1532–1594), Japanese daimyō of the Sengoku period ** Ōkubo Tadasuke (1537–1613), Japanese daimyō of the Sengoku ...

, daimyō of Ogino-Yamanaka Domain, a cadet house of the Odawara Domain, at the domain's residence in

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

. The former daimyō of Odawara, Ōkubo Tadanori, was forced into retirement in 1868 due to his opposition to the

, Tadayoshi became 12th head of the Odawara

Ōkubo clan The were a ''samurai'' kin group which rose to prominence in the Sengoku period and the Edo periods.Meyer, Eva-Maria"Gouverneure von Kyôto in der Edo-Zeit."Universität Tübingen (in German) Under the Tokugawa shogunate, the Ōkubo, as heredita ...

and by default, the 10th daimyō of Odawara Domain. However, the

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji ...

reduced his revenues from 113,000 '' koku'' to 75,000 ''koku'', given the Ōkubo clan's lack of support to the imperial cause during the Boshin War. Tadayoshi was appointed domain governor on June 22, 1868, holding that post to the

abolition of the han system The in the Empire of Japan and its replacement by a system of prefectures in 1871 was the culmination of the Meiji Restoration begun in 1868, the starting year of the Meiji period. Under the reform, all daimyos (, ''daimyō'', feudal lords) ...

in 1871. Citing ill health, he retired from public life in 1875, and returned the leadership of the Ōkubo clan to Ōkubo Tadanori. However, in 1877, Tadayoshi participated in the

Satsuma Rebellion The Satsuma Rebellion, also known as the was a revolt of disaffected samurai against the new imperial government, nine years into the Meiji Era. Its name comes from the Satsuma Domain, which had been influential in the Restoration and be ...

, and was killed in combat in

Kumamoto Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. Kumamoto Prefecture has a population of 1,748,134 () and has a geographic area of . Kumamoto Prefecture borders Fukuoka Prefecture to the north, Ōita Prefecture to the northeast, Miyaza ...

on March 29, 1877. His grave is at the clan temple of Saisho-ji in

Setagaya, Tokyo is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is also the name of a neighborhood and administrative district within the ward. The ward calls itself Setagaya City in English. Its official bird is the azure-winged magpie, its flower is the fringed orc ...

References

* Papinot, Edmund. (1906) ''Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie du japon.'' Tokyo: Librarie Sansaish
..Click link for digitized 1906 ''Nobiliaire du japon'' (2003)
* ''The content of much of this article was derived from that of the corresponding article on Japanese Wikipedia.'' Fudai daimyo Tadayoshi 1857 births 1877 deaths People killed in the Satsuma Rebellion {{daimyo-stub