was a feudal domain under the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in ...

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional ''daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

Japan, located in

Kazusa Province was a province of Japan in the area of modern Chiba Prefecture. The province was located in the middle of the Bōsō Peninsula, whose name takes its first ''kanji'' from the name of Awa Province and its second from Kazusa and Shimōsa provinc ...

(modern-day central

Chiba Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Chiba Prefecture has a population of 6,278,060 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Chiba Prefecture borders Ibaraki Prefecture to the north, Saitama Prefecture to the n ...

), Japan. It was centered on

Kururi Castle is a Japanese castle located in Kimitsu, southern Chiba Prefecture, Japan. At the end of the Edo period, Kururi Castle was home to a branch of the Kuroda clan, '' daimyō'' of Kururi Domain. The castle was also known as , after a legend that ...

in what is now the city of Kimitsu, Chiba.

History

The original Kururi Castle was a mountain-top fortification built during the

Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by ...

by Takeda Nobunaga (1401–1477), and was ruled by his descendants, the Mariya clan, from 1540. With the expansion of the Satomi clan from Awa Province in the

Sengoku period The was a period in Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the feudal system of Japan under the Ashikaga shogunate. Variou ...

, the castle was taken over by Satomi Yoshitaka, who used it as his base of operations against the

Hōjō clan The was a Japanese samurai family who controlled the hereditary title of ''shikken'' (regent) of the Kamakura shogunate between 1203 and 1333. Despite the title, in practice the family wielded actual political power in Japan during this period ...

, based at

Odawara Castle is a landmark in the city of Odawara in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. History Odawara was a stronghold of the Doi clan during the Kamakura period, and a fortified residence built by their collateral branch, the Kobayakawa clan, stood on t ...

. The Hōjō attempted to take Kururi unsuccessfully on a few occasions, and finally seized it in 1564. They lost it just three years later in 1567, when the Satomi regained control. Following the Battle of Odawara,

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and '' daimyō'' ( feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the C ...

punished the Satomi clan for their lukewarm support of his campaigns by depriving them of their territories in

. With the entry of

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fel ...

into the Kantō region, he assigned the fortifications at Kururi to one of his retainers, Matsudaira (Osuga) Tadamasa, the son of one of his Four Generals, Sakakibara Yasumasa, and appointed him as ''

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 the newly created 30,000 '' koku'' Kururi Domain. Osuga Tadamasa built most of the current fortifications of Kururi Castle, and established a

castle town A castle town is a settlement built adjacent to or surrounding a castle. Castle towns were common in Medieval Europe. Some examples include small towns like Alnwick and Arundel, which are still dominated by their castles. In Western Europe, ...

at its base. Following the

Battle of Sekigahara The Battle of Sekigahara ( Shinjitai: ; Kyūjitai: , Hepburn romanization: ''Sekigahara no Tatakai'') was a decisive battle on October 21, 1600 ( Keichō 5, 15th day of the 9th month) in what is now Gifu prefecture, Japan, at the end of ...

, the Osuga clan was transferred to Yokosuka Castle in

Suruga Province was an old province in the area that is today the central part of Shizuoka Prefecture. Suruga bordered on Izu, Kai, Sagami, Shinano, and Tōtōmi provinces; and was bordered by the Pacific Ocean through Suruga Bay to the south. Its abbrev ...

, and were replaced by the

Tsuchiya clan is a Japanese samurai kin group. Papinot, Jacques Edmond Joseph. (1906). ''Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japon''; Papinot, (2003)"Yūki," ''Nobiliare du Japon'', p. 66 retrieved 2013-5-17. History The Tsuchiya clan descend from ...

with a reduction in revenues to 20,000 ''koku'' from 1601-1679. The domain was suppressed in 1679 when Tsuchiya Naoki was declared unfit to rule due to insanity, and his son was demoted to a 3000 ''koku'' ''

hatamoto A was a high ranking samurai in the direct service of the Tokugawa shogunate of feudal Japan. While all three of the shogunates in Japanese history had official retainers, in the two preceding ones, they were referred to as ''gokenin.'' Howev ...

''. Kururi was administered as ''

tenryō The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedi ...

'' territory directly under the control of the

until 1742. In July 1742, Kuroda Naozumi, daimyō of Numata Domain in Kozuke Province was transferred to Kururi, and the han was revived. His descendants continued to rule Kururi until 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 ...

. The final daimyo of Kururi Domain, Kuroda Naotaka, initially served as a guard for the pro-Tokugawa forces at the

Battle of Ueno The was a battle of the Boshin War, which occurred on July 4, 1868 (''Meiji 1, 15th day of the 5th month''), between the troops of the Shōgitai under Shibusawa Seiichirō and Amano Hachirō, and Imperial "Kangun" troops. Prelude Though the ...

in the Boshin War, but then changed his allegiance to the new

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 ...

two months later. He was appointed domain governor under the new administration, until 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 July 1871. Kururi Domain became “Kururi Prefecture”, which merged with the short lived “Kisarazu Prefecture” in November 1871, which later became part of Chiba Prefecture. The domain had a population of 1189

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of History of Japan#Medieval Japan (1185–1573/1600), medieval and Edo period, early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retai ...

in 253 households, 143 '' ashigaru'' in 74 households, and 20,766 commoners in 4465 households per an 1869 census. The domain maintained its primary residence (''kamiyashiki'') in Edo at Hiro-koji, in Shitaya.

Holdings at the end of the Edo period

As with most domains in the

han system ( ja, 藩, "domain") is a Japanese historical term for the estate of a daimyo in the Edo period (1603–1868) and early Meiji period (1868–1912). Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"Han"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 283. or (daimyo domain) ...

, Kururi Domain consisted of several discontinuous territories calculated to provide the assigned ''

kokudaka refers to a system for determining land value for taxation purposes under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo-period Japan, and expressing this value in terms of '' koku'' of rice. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"Koku"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. ...

'', based on periodic

cadastral A cadastre or cadaster is a comprehensive recording of the real estate or real property's metes and bounds, metes-and-bounds of a country.Jo Henssen, ''Basic Principles of the Main Cadastral Systems in the World,'/ref> Often it is represented gra ...

surveys and projected agricultural yields.Elison, George and Bardwell L. Smith (1987)
''Warlords, Artists, & Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century,'' p. 18
In the case of Kururi Domain, these territories were scattered over a wide area of

Musashi Province was a province of Japan, which today comprises Tokyo Metropolis, most of Saitama Prefecture and part of Kanagawa Prefecture. It was sometimes called . The province encompassed Kawasaki and Yokohama. Musashi bordered on Kai, Kōzuke, Sagami ...

and

. *

**7 villages in Saitama District **4 villages in Hiki District **1 village in Koma District **2 villages in Irima District **4 villages in Hiki District **2 villages in Kodama District **6 villages in Kami District **4 villages in Hara District *

**39 villages in Mouda District **27 villages in Ichihara District **1 village in Kamihabu District

List of daimyō

References

External links

Kururi Domain on "Edo 300 HTML"

Notes

{{Authority control Domains of Japan 1590 establishments in Japan States and territories established in 1590 1871 disestablishments in Japan States and territories disestablished in 1871 Kazusa Province History of Chiba Prefecture