was a

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

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 ...

until 1871; since then, it has been a part of

Niigata Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture in the Chūbu region of Honshu of Japan. Niigata Prefecture has a population of 2,131,009 (1 July 2023) and is the List of Japanese prefectures by area, fifth-largest prefecture of Japan by geographic area ...

. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Sado''" in . It was sometimes called or . It lies on the eponymous

Sado Island is an island located in the eastern part of the Sea of Japan, under the jurisdiction of Sado City, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, with a coastline of . In October 2017, Sado Island had a population of 55,212 people. Sado Island covers an area of ...

, off the coast of Niigata Prefecture (or in the past,

Echigo Province was an old provinces of Japan, old province in north-central Japan, on the shores of the Sea of Japan. It bordered on Uzen Province, Uzen, Iwashiro Province, Iwashiro, Kōzuke Province, Kōzuke, Shinano Province, Shinano, and Etchū Province, ...

). Sado was famous for the silver and gold mined on the island. In the

Kamakura Period The is a period of History of Japan, Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the G ...

, the province was granted to the Honma clan from Honshū, and they continued to dominate Sado until 1589, when

Uesugi Kagekatsu was a Japanese samurai ''daimyō'' during the Sengoku and Edo periods. He was the adopted son of Uesugi Kenshin and Uesugi Kagetora’s brother in law. Early life and rise Kagekatsu was the son of Nagao Masakage, the head of the Ueda Naga ...

took over the island. The Tokugawa shōguns later made Sado a personal fief after Sekigahara, and assumed direct control of its mines. Since 2004 Sado city has comprised the entire island.

History

Historical districts

** Hamochi District (羽茂郡) - merged with Kamo and Sawata Districts to become Sado District (佐渡郡) on April 1, 1896 ** Kamo District (賀茂郡) - merged with Hamochi and Sawata Districts to become Sado District on April 1, 1896 ** Sawata District (雑太郡) - merged with Hamochi and Kamo Districts to become Sado District on April 1, 1896

Notes

References

* Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005)
''Japan encyclopedia.''
Cambridge:

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

.
OCLC 58053128

External links

Hokuriku region States and territories disestablished in 1871 1871 disestablishments in Japan History of Niigata Prefecture {{Niigata-geo-stub