270px, Kinoshita Toshiyasu, last ruler of Ashimori Domain 270px, Remnants of the gardens of Ashimori ''jin'ya'' was a

feudal domain A demesne ( ) or domain was all the land retained and managed by a lord of the manor under the feudal system for his own use, occupation, or support. This distinguished it from land sub-enfeoffed by him to others as sub-tenants. The concept or ...

under the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

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 characteriz ...

Japan, in what is now central

Okayama Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Okayama Prefecture has a population of 1,906,464 (1 February 2018) and has a geographic area of 7,114 Square kilometre, km2 (2,746 sq mi). Okayama Prefectur ...

. It controlled a small portion of eastern

Bitchū Province was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan on the Seto Inland Sea, Inland Sea side of western Honshū, in what is today western Okayama Prefecture. It was sometimes called , with Bizen Province, Bizen and Bingo Province, Bingo Provinces; those t ...

and was centered around Ashimori ''

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'' hou ...

'' in what is now

Kita-ku, Okayama is one of four wards of Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, Japan. The ward has an area of 451.03 km² and a population of 295,312. The population density is 655 per square kilometer. The name means "North Ward." The wards of Okayama were establi ...

. It was ruled for most its history by a branch of the . It was dissolved in 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 and is now part of Okayama Prefecture. ''

Rangaku ''Rangaku'' (Kyūjitai: /Shinjitai: , literally "Dutch learning", and by extension "Western learning") is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Wester ...

'' scholar

Ogata Kōan was a Japanese physician and rangaku scholar in late Edo period Japan, noted for establishing an academy which later developed into Osaka University. Many of his students subsequently played important roles in the Meiji Restoration and the weste ...

, who founded

Tekijuku Tekijuku (適塾) was a school established in , Osaka, the main trading route between Nagasaki and Edo in 1838 during the Tenpō era of the late Edo period. Its founder was Ogata Kōan, a doctor and scholar of Dutch studies (Rangaku). The forei ...

academy, the predecessor of

Osaka University , abbreviated as , is a public research university located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. It is one of Japan's former Imperial Universities and a Designated National University listed as a "Top Type" university in the Top Global University Project. ...

was from Ashimori Domain.

History

Kinoshita Iesada was a samurai of the Sengoku through early Edo periods. He was the son of . Born Sugihara Magobei (杉原孫兵衛), he later took the new family name Kinoshita ("under the tree"), possibly to show his support for his brother-in-law, the general ...

, the older brother of

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Cour ...

's wife

Kita no Mandokoro was the chief governing body of an important family or monastic complex in ancient Japan. This name was borrowed for the administrative department of the Shogunate in feudal times. History The earliest usage of the term was found in the Hei ...

, and the lord of

Himeji Castle is a hilltop Japanese castle complex situated in the city of Himeji which is located in the Hyōgo Prefecture of Japan. The castle is regarded as the finest surviving example of prototypical Japanese castle architecture, comprising a network of ...

Harima Province or Banshū (播州) was a province of Japan in the part of Honshū that is the southwestern part of present-day Hyōgo Prefecture. Harima bordered on Tajima, Tanba, Settsu, Bizen, and Mimasaka Provinces. Its capital was Himeji. During the ...

, was transferred to Ashimori after the

Battle of Sekigahara The Battle of Sekigahara (Shinjitai: ; Kyūjitai: , Hepburn romanization: ''Sekigahara no Tatakai'') was a decisive battle on October 21, 1600 (Keichō 5, 15th day of the 9th month) in what is now Gifu prefecture, Japan, at the end of ...

and was confirmed in his previous ''

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 ...

'' of 25,000 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. 1 koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about . It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1000 gō. One ''gō'' is the volume of the "rice cup", the plastic measuring cup that is supplied ...

''. When he died in 1608, the Tokugawa shogunate instructed that he domain be divided between his sons Katsutoshi and Toshifusa, but Katsutoshi monopolized the estate, so the shogunate ruled that it was a violation of the shogun's orders and in 1609 Kinoshita Katsutoshi was dispossessed. In 1610, Asano Nagaakira, the second son of

Asano Nagamasa was the brother-in-law of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and one of his chief advisors. Asano also fought for Oda Nobunaga and Hideyoshi in a number of campaigns during the Sengoku period of the 16th century of Japan. He was sent to Korea as one of the Thr ...

was assigned Ashimori, but when his older brother

Asano Yoshinaga was a Japanese samurai and feudal lord of the late Sengoku and early Edo periods. His father served as one of the '' Go-Bugyō'' in the late Azuchi–Momoyama period. Asano Yoshinaga was born at Odani, in the Asai district of Ōmi Province, in ...

died in 1613, he inherited the clan's main estates in Wakayama, and later became ''

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 n ...

'' of

Hiroshima Domain The was a domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1601 to 1871. The Hiroshima Domain was based at Hiroshima Castle in Aki Province, in the modern city of Hiroshima, located in the Chūgoku region of the island of Ho ...

. In 1615, Kinoshita Toshifusa, who had distinguished himself at the

Siege of Osaka The was a series of battles undertaken by the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate against the Toyotomi clan, and ending in that clan's destruction. Divided into two stages (winter campaign and summer campaign), and lasting from 1614 to 1615, the siege ...

recovered Ashimori Domain from the shogunate. The Kinoshita clan ruled Ashimori for 256 years over 12 generations until the end of the Edo period. However, in 1799, about 22,000 ''koku'' of the fief owned by the 9th ''daimyō'', Kinoshita Toshihisa, was transferred to Date and Shinobu counties in

Mutsu Province was an old province of Japan in the area of Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Aomori Prefectures and the municipalities of Kazuno and Kosaka in Akita Prefecture. Mutsu Province is also known as or . The term is often used to refer to the comb ...

(now part of

Fukushima Prefecture Fukushima Prefecture (; ja, 福島県, Fukushima-ken, ) is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Fukushima Prefecture has a population of 1,810,286 () and has a geographic area of . Fukushima Prefecture borders Miya ...

). This made the domain very difficult to govern, and the finances of the clan, which was by no means rich, fell into dire straits. In 1831, per the petitions of the 11th ''daimyō'' Kinoshita Toshichika, about half of the relocated land was changed back to lands in Bitchū Province, but it was not until 1870, after 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 ...

, that all of the domain's the former territories in Bitchū were restored.The domain sided with the imperial government 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 clique seeking to seize political power in the name of the Imperi ...

and forces led by Kinoshita Toshiyasu helped occupy pro-Tokugawa

Bitchū-Matsuyama Domain 270px, Itakura Katukiyo was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, in what is now western Okayama Prefecture. It controlled most of central Bitchū Province and was centered around Bitchū Matsuyama Castle. It was r ...

. In 1871, with the

, Ashimori was incorporated into Okayama prefecture. The ruins of the ''jin'ya'' are located northwest of the current Ashimori Elementary School, and are now a park. The building no longer exists, but the moat and portions of the stone walls remain and are an Okayama City Historic Site, while its gardens are an Okaya Prefectural Place of Scenic Beauty.

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) s ...

, Ashimori Domain consisted of several discontinuous territories calculated to provide the assigned ''

'', based on periodic

cadastral A cadastre or cadaster is a comprehensive recording of the real estate or real property's metes-and-bounds of a country.Jo Henssen, ''Basic Principles of the Main Cadastral Systems in the World,'/ref> Often it is represented graphically in a cad ...

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

**34 villages in Kaya District *

**11 villages in Shinobu District

List of daimyō

References

{{Authority control Domains of Japan History of Okayama Prefecture Bitchū Province Chūgoku region

History

Holdings at the end of the Edo period

List of daimyō

See also

References