270px, Rakusan-en Konmei Pond, part of the surviving gardens of the ''jin'ya'' of Obata Domain was a feudal domain under the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

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 ...

Japan, located in

Kōzuke Province was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today Gunma Prefecture. Kōzuke bordered Echigo Province, Echigo, Shinano Province, Shinano, Musashi Province, Musashi and Shimotsuke Province, Shimotsuke Provinces. Its abb ...

(modern-day

Gunma Prefecture is a landlocked Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Gunma Prefecture has a population of 1,937,626 (1 October 2019) and has a geographic area of . Gunma Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture and Fuk ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. It was centered on Obata ''

jin'ya A was a type of administrative headquarters in the Tokugawa Shogunate during the Edo period of Japanese history. ''Jin'ya'' served as the seat of the administration for a small domain, a province, or additional parcels of land. ''Jin'ya'' ho ...

'' in what is now part of the town of Kanra, Gunma. Obata was ruled through part of its history by the

Oda clan The is a Japanese samurai family who were daimyo and an important political force in the unification of Japan in the mid-16th century. Though they reached the peak of their power under Oda Nobunaga and fell soon after, several branches of the ...

, descendants of

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods. He was the and regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. He is sometimes referred as the "Demon Daimyō" and "Demo ...

History

Obata Domain was originally created in 1590 as a 30,000 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

'' holding for

Okudaira Nobumasa , also called Okudaira Sadamasa (奥平貞昌), was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the Sengoku and early Edo periods. Nobumasa's family considered their origins to have been associated with Mikawa Province. The clan was descended through the Akam ...

, a son-in-law of

Tokugawa Ieyasu Tokugawa Ieyasu (born Matsudaira Takechiyo; 31 January 1543 – 1 June 1616) was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was the third of the three "Gr ...

. After the

Battle of Sekigahara The Battle of Sekigahara (Shinjitai: ; Kyūjitai: , Hepburn romanization: ''Sekigahara no Tatakai'') was an important battle in Japan which occurred on October 21, 1600 (Keichō 5, 15th day of the 9th month) in what is now Gifu Prefecture, ...

in 1601, he was promoted to the 100,000 ''koku'' holding of Kanō in

Mino province was a province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today southern Gifu Prefecture. Mino was bordered by Ōmi to the west, Echizen and Hida to the north, Shinano to the east, and Ise, Mikawa, and Owari to the south. Its abbreviated fo ...

and Obata was reduced to 10,000 ''koku'' and given to Mizuno Tadakiyo, a son of

Mizuno Tadashige was a retainer of the Tokugawa clan following the later years of the Azuchi-Momoyama period of the 16th century. Biography Tadashige was the son of Mizuno Tadamasa and the brother of Mizuno Nobumoto. He participated in the Battle of Mikataga ...

. For his efforts at the

Siege of Osaka A siege () . is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition, or by well-prepared assault. Siege warfare (also called siegecrafts or poliorcetics) is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict charact ...

, he was transferred to the 20,000 ''koku''

Kariya Domain was a Han system, feudal domain of the Edo period Tokugawa shogunate located in Mikawa Province (modern-day Aichi Prefecture), Japan, what is now part of the modern-day cities of Kariya, Aichi, Kariya and Anjō, Aichi, Anjō. It was centered on ...

in Mikawa Province in 1615.

Nagai Naokatsu was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the Azuchi–Momoyama period to early Edo period. He was a retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, first serving under Ieyasu's son Tokugawa Nobuyasu, Nobuyasu. After Nobuyasu's execution, Naokatsu left Tokugawa service, but la ...

, another of Ieyasu’s generals noted for his actions at the Siege of Osaka then briefly ruled from 1616-1617. In 1617, the domain was awarded to Oda Nobuyoshi, the grandson of

, and fourth son of

Oda Nobukatsu also known as Kitabatake Tomotoyo was a Japanese samurai of the Azuchi–Momoyama period. He was the second son of Oda Nobunaga. He was adopted as the head of the Kitabatake clan from Ise Province. He survived the decline of the Oda clan ...

, ''daimyō'' of Uda-Matsuyama Domain in

Yamato Province was a province of Japan, located in Kinai, corresponding to present-day Nara Prefecture in Honshū. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric (2005). "Yamato" in . It was also called . Yamato consists of two characters, 大 "great", and 和 " Wa". At first, th ...

. The Oda clan continued to rule Obata over the next seven generations until 1764, when they were transferred to Takahata Domain in

Dewa Province was a province of Japan comprising modern-day Yamagata Prefecture and Akita Prefecture, except for the city of Kazuno and the town of Kosaka. Dewa bordered on Mutsu and Echigō Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . History Early per ...

. Obata was then awarded to the Okudaira-branch of the

Matsudaira clan The was a Japanese samurai clan that descended from the Minamoto clan. It originated in and took its name from Matsudaira village, in Mikawa Province (modern-day Aichi Prefecture). During the Sengoku period, the chieftain of the main line of the ...

, who ruled until the end of the Edo period. During the

Bakumatsu period were the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, under foreign diplomatic and military pressure, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunat ...

, the last ''daimyō'', Matsudaira Tadayuki had served as ''

Sōshaban were officials of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo period Japan. Conventional interpretations have construed this Japanese title as "master of ceremonies" Created in 1632, this ''bakufu'' title identified an official selected from the ranks of the ...

'' and as ''

Jisha-bugyō was a position within the system for the administration of religion that existed from the Muromachi period to the Edo period in Japan. Appointments to this prominent office were always ''fudai daimyōs'', the lowest-ranking of the shogunate office ...

'', positions which gave him insight into the weakness of the shogunate. Although he donated 500 ''

ryō The was a gold currency unit in the shakkanhō system in pre- Meiji Japan. It was eventually replaced with a system based on the '' yen''. Origins The ''ryō'' was originally a unit of weight from China, the ''tael.'' It came into use in Ja ...

'' to support the shogunal military forces, he also made contact with the pro-imperial forces and many of his close advisers were from the radical

Mito Domain was a Japanese domain of the Edo period. It was associated with Hitachi Province in modern-day Ibaraki Prefecture.Japanese sword A is one of several types of traditionally made swords from Japan. Bronze swords were made as early as the Yayoi period (1,000 BC – 300 AD), though most people generally refer to the curved blades made from the Heian period (794–1185) to the ...

to purchase modern rifles. He was quick to join the imperial side in 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 ...

. After the end of the conflict, with 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, Obata Domain became “Obata Prefecture”, which later became part of Gunma Prefecture. The domain had a population of 889 samurai in 238 households per a census in the Anei period (1772-1780).

Holdings at the end of the Edo period

Unlike most domains in the

han system (, "domain") is a Japanese historical term for the Estate (land), estate of a daimyo in the Edo period (1603–1868) and early Meiji (era), Meiji period (1868–1912).Louis Frédéric, Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"Han"in ''Japan Encycloped ...

, which 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. 5 ...

'', 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 represente ...

surveys and projected agricultural yields,Elison, George and Bardwell L. Smith (1987)
''Warlords, Artists, & Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century,'' p. 18
Obata was a relatively compact territory. *

**1 village in Usui District **34 villages in Kanra District **3 villages in Tago District

List of daimyō

References

External links

Obata on "Edo 300 HTML"

Notes