''Daikan'' (代官) was an

official An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their ...

in Japan that acted on behalf of a ruling

monarch A monarch is a head of stateWebster's II New College DictionarMonarch Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. Life tenure, for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest authority ...

or a

lord Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or ar ...

at the post they had been appointed to. Since the Middle Ages, ''daikan'' were in charge of their territory and territorial tax collection. In 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 characteriz ...

, ''daikan'' were local governors in charge of the government and security of

domain Domain may refer to: Mathematics *Domain of a function, the set of input values for which the (total) function is defined **Domain of definition of a partial function **Natural domain of a partial function **Domain of holomorphy of a function * Do ...

and

shogunate , officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakur ...

territories.

History

In the Middle Ages, ''azukaridokoro'' and ''ukesho'' referred to ''daikan'' of a feudal lord, and ''shugo-dai'' and ''jitō-dai'' referred to ''daikan'' of ''

shugo , commonly translated as “(military) governor,” “protector,” or “constable,” was a title given to certain officials in feudal Japan. They were each appointed by the ''shōgun'' to oversee one or more of the provinces of Japan. The pos ...

'' and ''

jitō were medieval territory stewards in Japan, especially in the Kamakura and Muromachi shogunates. Appointed by the ''shōgun'', ''jitō'' managed manors including national holdings governed by the provincial governor ( kokushi). There were also ...

'' governors, respectively. In the Azuchi-Momoyama period, territorial rulers in charge of local tax collection were called ''daikan''. In the

, high-ranking ''

hatamoto A was a high ranking samurai in the direct service of the Tokugawa shogunate of feudal Japan. While all three of the shogunates in Japanese history had official retainers, in the two preceding ones, they were referred to as ''gokenin.'' However ...

'' retainers of the

shogun , officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakur ...

were appointed ''daikan'' to govern the shogunal demesne across Japan and were given a 50,000-100,000 ''

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 ...

'' territory. The ''daikan'' worked from their administrative headquarters (''

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 ...

'') at their territory or their mansion in Edo, under the Commissioner of Finance ('' kanjō bugyō''), and had a dozen of ''tetsuki'' and ''tedai'' officials under their service. Hereditary succession of the position was common. In 1867, at the end of the Edo period, there were 37 ''daikan''. In the latter half of the Edo period, the feudal domains followed the example and appointed their own ''daikan'', district

magistrate The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judici ...

s, who were called ''gun-dai'' or ''kōri bugyō''.

References

{{Reflist Government of feudal Japan Officials of the Tokugawa shogunate