was a Japanese

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

of the late

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

. The 15th head of the Watari-Date family, Kuninari served as a retainer of

Sendai han The , also known as the , was a domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1871. The Sendai Domain was based at Aoba Castle in Mutsu Province, in the modern city of Sendai, located in the Tōhoku region of ...

. Following the defeat of the Sendai domain during the

Boshin War The , sometimes known as the Japanese Revolution or Japanese Civil War, was a civil war in Japan fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and a coalition seeking to seize political power in the name of the Impe ...

, he assisted in helping the daimyō of Sendai, Date Munemoto, in declaring allegiance to the new government.Record of Date Clan Members
/ref> Kuninari requested permission from 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 ...

to settle in

Hokkaido is the list of islands of Japan by area, second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefectures of Japan, prefecture, making up its own list of regions of Japan, region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō fr ...

and assist in land reclamation; this was granted in January 1870 (Meiji 3). Kuninari led his retainers north and settled in the , succeeding in reclamation at the new , which through mergers became the current Date City.

Notes

References

*Howell, David L. (1983). "Early 'shizoku' colonization of Hokkaidō". ''Journal of Asian History''. 17: 40–67 .

External links

Official site of Date City, Hokkaido
1841 births 1904 deaths Meiji Restoration Samurai Kunishige People from Miyagi Prefecture People from Date, Hokkaido People of the Edo period People of the Meiji era {{samurai-stub

See also

Notes

References

External links