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 Shimōsa Province (modern-day

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 Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the no ...

. It was centered on Sakura Castle in what is now the city of

Sakura, Chiba is a city located in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 173,740 in 78,483 households and a population density of 1700 people per km2. The total area of the city is . Geography Sakura is located in northeastern C ...

. It was ruled for most of its history by the Hotta clan.

History

Sakura Domain was originally created for

Takeda Tadateru is a Japanese family name.1990 Census Name Files

, the fifth son of Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1593, near the site of an ancient castle of the

Chiba clan The Chiba clan (千葉氏 ''Chiba-shi'') was a Japanese '' gōzoku'' and samurai family descending from the Taira clan. The clan was founded by Chiba Tsunetane, the son of Taira no Tadatsune. The Chiba governed in Shimōsa Province, and the ...

, which had fallen into ruins in the early

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 domain subsequently passed through a bewildering number of hands during the 1600s, before coming under the control of the Hotta clan in the mid-18th century. During the Bakumatsu period,

Hotta Masayoshi was the 5th Hotta ''daimyō'' of the Sakura Domain in the Japanese Edo period, who served as chief ''rōjū'' in the Bakumatsu period Tokugawa shogunate, where he played an important role in the negotiations of the Ansei Treaties with various fo ...

was one of the major proponents of'' rangaku'' and an ending to the country’s national isolation policy. He was one of the signers of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States. His son, Hotta Masatomo was a key supporter of the

in the early stages of the Boshin War. After the Meiji Restoration, he was pardoned, and eventually made a count (''hakushaku'') in the '' kazoku'' peerage.

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) ...

, Sakura 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. 54 ...

'', based on periodic cadastral surveys and projected agricultural yields.Elison, George and Bardwell L. Smith (1987)
''Warlords, Artists, & Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century,'' p. 18
* Shimōsa Province **31 villages in Chiba District **146 villages in Imba District ** 26 villages in Shimohabu District **3 villages in Katori District **3 villages in Sōsa District **2 villages in Kaijō District **8 villages in Sōma District * Dewa Province ( Uzen) **45 villages in Murayama District * Hitachi Province **3 villages in Tsukuba District **3 villages in Makabe District * Shimotsuke Province **16 villages in Tsuga District **10 villages in Shioya District *

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, S ...

** 3 villages in Saitama District **1 village in Koma District **2 villages in Iruma District **14 villages in Yokomi District * Sagami Province **5 villages in Kōza District **10 villages in Ōsumi District **2 villages in Aiko District

List of daimyō

References

* *Bolitho, Harold (1974). ''Treasures among men; the fudai daimyo in Tokugawa Japan''. New Haven: Yale University Press. *Kodama Kōta 児玉幸多, Kitajima Masamoto 北島正元 (1966). ''Kantō no shohan'' 関東の諸藩. Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha.

External links

Genealogy of the lords of Sakura

Notes

{{Authority control Domains of Japan 1593 establishments in Japan States and territories established in 1593 1871 disestablishments in Japan States and territories disestablished in 1871 Shimōsa Province History of Chiba Prefecture Hotta clan Inaba clan Matsudaira clan Nagasawa-Matsudaira clan Ogasawara clan Ogyū-Matsudaira clan Ōkubo clan Takeda clan