Maeda Shigehiro (前田重煕; August 18, 1729 – May 10, 1753) was an

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 ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

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 ...

, and the 7th ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and no ...

'' of

Kaga Domain The , also known as the , was a domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1583 to 1871.Hokuriku region The is located in the northwestern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan. It lies along the Sea of Japan and is part of the larger Chūbu region. It is almost equivalent to the former Koshi Province (Japan), Koshi Province and Hokurikudō are ...

of Japan. He was the 8th hereditary chieftain of the Kanazawa

Maeda clan The was a Japanese samurai clan who occupied most of the Hokuriku region of central Honshū from the end of the Sengoku period through the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The Maeda claimed descent from the Sugawara clan through Sugawara no Kiyotom ...

. Shigehiro was born in

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

as the second son of

Maeda Yoshinori was a Japanese samurai during the Edo period, and the 5th ''daimyō'' of Kaga Domain in the Hokuriku region. He was the 6th hereditary chieftain of the Kanazawa Maeda clan. Yoshinori was the third son of Maeda Tsunanori. His mother was a com ...

. His mother was a concubine, Shinkyo-in. From 1743, he was given the childhood name of Matsudaira Kamejirō (亀次郎). In 1746, on the unexpected death of his elder brother, Maeda Munetoki, he became ''daimyō'' and was renamed Maeda Toshiyasu (); however, upon being received in formal audience by ''

Shōgun , officially , was the title of the military rulers of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, except during parts of the Kamak ...

Tokugawa Ieshige Tokugawa Ieshige; 徳川家重 (28 January 1712 – 13 July 1761) was the ninth ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. The first son of Tokugawa Yoshimune, his mother was the daughter of Ōkubo Tadanao, known as Osuma no kata. His moth ...

, he was granted a ''

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

'' from Ieshige's name, becoming Maeda Shigehiro. Early in his tenure, the former ''

ashigaru were peasant infantry employed by the warlords of Japan to supplement the samurai in their armies. The first known reference to ''ashigaru'' was in the 14th century, but it was during the Ashikaga shogunate (Muromachi period) that the use of ' ...

'' councillor, Ōtsuki Denzō, who had risen to considerable influence and power under

was exiled to remote

Gokayama is an area within the city of Nanto in Toyama Prefecture, Japan. It has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List due to its traditional '' gasshō-zukuri'' houses, alongside nearby Shirakawa-gō in Gifu Prefecture. The survival of this ...

. However, this precipated an ''

O-Ie Sōdō O-Ie Sōdō (, "house strife") were noble family disputes within the samurai and aristocratic classes of Japan, particularly during the early Edo period (17th century). The most famous is the ''Date Sōdō'', which broke out among the Date family in ...

'' known as the “Kaga Sōdō”. Shigehiro's

wet nurse A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeding, breastfeeds and cares for another's child. Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, if she is unable to nurse the child herself sufficiently or chooses not to do so. Wet-nursed children may be known a ...

and the mother of Maeda Munetoki, Jōshuin, was poisoned and killed in an attempt of Shigehiro's life by one of Maeda Yoshinori's other concubines, Shinyō-in. This Shinyo-in was a supporter of Ōtsuki Denzō and incriminating letters were found in her possession. In 1748, Ōtsuki Denzō was forced to commit suicide. Kaga Domain remained in a state of turmoil when Shigehiro himself died only a couple of years later in 1753 at the age of 23 without heir. At that time he was betrothed with Matsudaira Chohime, Matsudaira Yoritaka's daughter.Kohei Murakawa, "The specific details and basic characteristics of the Matsudaira clan's grants," Theory of the Samurai Government in Early Modern Japan, pp. 189-190. Kaga Domain passed to his younger brother Shigenobu.

References

External links

Kaga Domain on "Edo 300 HTML"
(3 November 2007) {{DEFAULTSORT:Maeda, Shigehiro 1729 births 1753 deaths People of the Edo period Maeda clan Tozama daimyo