(February 10, 1856 – September 14, 1921) was a Japanese ''

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 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 ...

, who served as the last lord of the

Shimotsuma Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Hitachi Province (modern-day Ibaraki Prefecture), Japan. It was centered on Shimotsuma ''Jin'ya'' in what is now the city of Shimotsuma, Ibaraki. It was ruled for m ...

. His court title was '' Iyo no kami''. Under his leadership, Shimotsuma fought on the side of

Aizu is the westernmost of the three regions of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, the other two regions being Nakadōri in the central area of the prefecture and Hamadōri in the east. As of October 1, 2010, it had a population of 291,838. The princip ...

during 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 ...

. Masaoto was created ''shishaku'' (

viscount A viscount ( , for male) or viscountess (, for female) is a title used in certain European countries for a noble of varying status. In many countries a viscount, and its historical equivalents, was a non-hereditary, administrative or judicial ...

) in the Meiji-era

kazoku The was the hereditary peerage of the Empire of Japan, which existed between 1869 and 1947. They succeeded the feudal lords () and court nobles (), but were abolished with the 1947 constitution. Kazoku ( 華族) should not be confused with ' ...

nobility.

References

"Shimotsuma-han" on ''Edo 300 HTML''
(5 June 2008) Daimyo Kazoku People of the Boshin War 1856 births 1921 deaths {{daimyo-stub