A was a type of administrative headquarters in 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 ...

during 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 ...

Japanese history The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to prehistoric times around 30,000 BC. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC when new inventi ...

. ''Jin'ya'' served as the seat of the administration for a small

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 ...

, a

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

, or additional parcels of land. ''Jin'ya'' housed the residence of the head of administration and the associated

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legum ...

storehouse for the ''

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 ...

'' system. ''Jin'ya'' were equivalent in function to

Japanese castle are fortresses constructed primarily of wood and stone. They evolved from the wooden stockades of earlier centuries, and came into their best-known form in the 16th century. Castles in Japan were built to guard important or strategic sites, such ...

s (城, ''shiro''), typically used as the administrative seats of larger domains. Generally, domains assessed at 30,000 ''

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 ...

'' or less had a ''jin'ya'' instead of a castle. Additionally, ''jin'ya'' were found on shogunal lands and those headed by ''

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 ...

'', and within larger domains served as district headquarters (''gun daikan-sho'') and in geographical

exclave An enclave is a territory (or a small territory apart of a larger one) that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state or entity. Enclaves may also exist within territorial waters. ''Enclave'' is sometimes used improperly to deno ...

s. Some ''jin'ya'' were

fortified A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

, such as the Komono Jin'ya in

Komono 260px, Gozaisho Ropeway and Komono in distance is a town located in Mie Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 41,542 in 16883 households and a population density of 390 persons per km². The total area of the town was . G ...

Mie Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Mie Prefecture has a population of 1,781,948 () and has a geographic area of . Mie Prefecture is bordered by Gifu Prefecture to the north, Shiga Prefecture and Kyoto Prefecture to ...

, which featured a

watchtower A watchtower or watch tower is a type of fortification used in many parts of the world. It differs from a regular tower in that its primary use is military and from a turret in that it is usually a freestanding structure. Its main purpose is to ...

(''yagura'') mimicking the

donjon A keep (from the Middle English ''kype'') is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in ...

of a castle. Others ''jin'ya'' had

moat A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that is dug and surrounds a castle, fortification, building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive ...

s or earthen walls, in some cases left over from an earlier castle on the site. The "three great ''jin'ya''" were at the Iino, Tokuyama and

Tsuruga Domain was a '' fudai'' feudal domain of Edo period Japan. It is located in Echizen Province, in the Hokuriku region of Honshū. The domain was centered at Tsuruga '' jin'ya'', located in the center of what is now the city of Tsuruga in Fukui Prefec ...

Sources

*This article incorporates material from 陣屋 (''Jin'ya'') in the Japanese Wikipedia, retrieved on February 24, 2008.

External links

The Herbert Offen Research Collection of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum
and th
Phillips Library Catalog
Edo period Government of feudal Japan {{Japan-hist-stub

Sources

See also

External links