was a province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today

Tochigi Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Tochigi Prefecture has a population of 1,943,886 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 6,408 km2 (2,474 sq mi). Tochigi Prefecture borders Fukushima Prefecture to the nort ...

. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''SHimotsuke''" in . Shimotsuke was bordered by Kōzuke,

Hitachi () is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Ni ...

, Mutsu and Shimōsa Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . Under the ''

Engishiki The is a Japanese book about laws and customs. The major part of the writing was completed in 927. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Engi-shiki''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 178. History In 905, Emperor Daigo ordered the compilation of th ...

'' classification system, Shimotsuke was ranked as one of the 13 "great countries" (大国) in terms of importance, and one of the 30 "far countries" (遠国) in terms of distance from the capital. The provincial capital is located in what is now the city of Tochigi. The Ichinomiya of the province is the Futarasan jinja located in what is now the city of

Utsunomiya is the prefectural capital city of Tochigi Prefecture in the northern Kantō region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 519,223, and a population density of . The total area of the city is . Utsunomiya is famous for its ''gyoza'' ...

The Famous Scenes of the Sixty States 27 Shimotsuke

History

During the 4th century AD, ( Kofun period) the area of modern Gunma and southern Tochigi prefectures were known as . At some unknown point in the 5th century, the area was divided at the Kinugawa River into and . Per the

Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara, Nara, Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remai ...

Taihō Code The was an administrative reorganisation enacted in 703 in Japan, at the end of the Asuka period. It was historically one of the . It was compiled at the direction of Prince Osakabe, Fujiwara no Fuhito and Awata no Mahito. Nussbaum, Louis ...

, these provinces became and . In 713, with the standardization of province names into two ''

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subse ...

'', these names became and . The area of Shimotsuke is mentioned frequently in the

'' Rikkokushi'', including the '' Nihon Shoki'' and had strong connections with the Yamato court since the Kofun period. A large Buddhist temple complex, the Shimotsuke Yakushi-ji, located in what is now the city of Tochigi, dates from the Nara period. From the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese ...

, the area was dominated by a number of samurai bands, including the Utsunomiya clan, and the Nasu clan. A branch of the

Minamoto clan was one of the surnames bestowed by the Emperors of Japan upon members of the imperial family who were excluded from the line of succession and demoted into the ranks of the nobility from 1192 to 1333. The practice was most prevalent during th ...

, the Ashikaga rose to prominence during the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first '' shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

from their ''

shōen A was a field or manor in Japan. The Japanese term comes from the Tang dynasty Chinese term "莊園" (Mandarin: ''zhuāngyuán'', Cantonese: ''zong1 jyun4''). Shōen, from about the 8th to the late 15th century, describes any of the privat ...

'' at what is now Ashikaga, and went on to create the

Ashikaga shogunate The , also known as the , was the feudal military government of Japan during the Muromachi period from 1336 to 1573.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Muromachi-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 669. The Ashikaga shogunate was establis ...

of 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 ...

. During 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 ...

, Shimotsuke was contested between the later Hōjō clan, the Takeda and the Uesugi clans. After the establishment of 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 ...

, much of the province was assigned to several feudal domains.

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 ...

and

Tokugawa Iemitsu Tokugawa Iemitsu (徳川家光, August 12, 1604 – June 8, 1651) was the third '' shōgun'' of the Tokugawa dynasty. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Hidetada with Oeyo, and the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Lady Kasuga was his wet nurse, ...

chose the sacred site of Nikkō to be the location of their tombs, and thus the area prospered as a site of pilgrimage through the end of the

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 ...

. The Nikkō Kaidō and the Ōshū Kaidō highways passed through the province, and numerous post stations were established. Following 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 various domains became prefectures 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 1871. These various prefectures merged to form Tochigi Prefecture in 1873.

Historical districts

** Ashikaga District (足利郡) - absorbed Yamada District on April 1, 1896; later dissolved **

Aso District is a district located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. As of the Aso and Yamato mergers (but with 2003 population data), the district has an estimated population of 40,841 and a density of 58.1 persons per square kilometer. The total area is ...

(安蘇郡)- dissolved ** Haga District (芳賀郡) ** Kawachi District (河内郡) ** Nasu District (那須郡) ** Samukawa District (寒川郡) - merged into Shimotsuga District on April 1, 1889 ** Shioya District (塩谷郡) ** Tsuga District (都賀郡) *** Kamitsuga District (上都賀郡) - dissolved *** Shimotsuga District (下都賀郡) - absorbed Samukawa District on April 1, 1889 ** Yamada District (梁田郡) - merged into Ashikaga District on April 1, 1896

Bakumatsu period domains

Notes

References

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

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...

. ; * Papinot, Edmond. (1910). ''Historical and Geographic Dictionary of Japan.'' Tokyo: Librarie Sansaisha.
Shimotsuke on "Edo 300 HTML"

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shimotsuke Province Former provinces of Japan History of Tochigi Prefecture 1871 disestablishments in Japan States and territories disestablished in 1871