Maeda Shigehiro (前田重煕; August 18, 1729 – May 10, 1753) was an

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 Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

, and the 7th ''

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

Kaga Domain The , also known as the , was a domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1583 to 1871.

in the

Hokuriku region The was located in the northwestern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan. It lay along the Sea of Japan within the Chūbu region, which it is currently a part of. It is almost equivalent to Koshi Province and Hokurikudō area in pre-modern ...

of Japan. He was the 8th hereditary chieftain of the Kanazawa

Maeda clan was a Japanese samurai clan who occupied most of the Hokuriku region of central Honshū from the end of the Sengoku period through the Meiji restoration of 1868. The Maeda claimed descent from the Sugawara clan of Sugawara no Kiyotomo and Suga ...

. Shigehiro was born in

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

as the second son of

Maeda Yoshinori was an Edo period Japanese samurai, and the 5th ''daimyō'' of Kaga Domain in the Hokuriku region of Japan. He was the 6th hereditary chieftain of the Kanazawa Maeda clan. Yoshinori was the third son of Maeda Tsunanori. His mother was a common ...

. His mother was a concubine, Shinkyo-in. From 1743, he was given the childhood name of Matsudaira Kamejirō (亀次郎). In 1746, on the unexpected death of his elder brother, Maeda Munetoki, he became ''daimyō'' and was renamed Maeda Toshiyasu (); however, upon being received in formal audience by ''

Shōgun , 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 ...

Tokugawa Ieshige Tokugawa Ieshige; 徳川家重 (January 28, 1712 – July 13, 1761) was the ninth ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. The first son of Tokugawa Yoshimune, his mother was the daughter of Ōkubo Tadanao, known as Osuma no kata. ...

, he was granted a ''

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

'' from Ieshige's name, becoming Maeda Shigehiro. Early in his tenure, the former ''

ashigaru were infantry employed by the samurai class of feudal Japan. The first known reference to ''ashigaru'' was in the 14th century, but it was during the Ashikaga shogunate (Muromachi period) that the use of ''ashigaru'' became prevalent by various ...

'' councillor, Ōtsuki Denzō, who had risen to considerable influence and power under

was exiled to remote

Gokayama is an area within the city of Nanto, Toyama, Nanto in Toyama Prefecture, Japan. It has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List due to its traditional ''gasshō-zukuri'' houses, alongside nearby Shirakawa, Gifu (village), Shirakawa-gō i ...

. However, this precipated an ''

O-Ie Sōdō O-Ie Sōdō (, "house strife") were noble family disputes within the samurai and aristocratic classes of Japan, particularly during the early Edo period (17th century). The most famous is the ''Date Sōdō'', which broke out among the Date family in ...

'' known as the “Kaga Sōdō”. Shigehiro's

wet nurse A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds and cares for another's child. Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, or if she is unable or chooses not to nurse the child herself. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some cu ...

and the mother of Maeda Munetoki, Jōshuin, was poisoned and killed in an attempt of Shigehiro's life by one of Maeda Yoshinori's other concubines, Shinyō-in. This Shinyo-in was a supporter of Ōtsuki Denzō and incriminating letters were found in her possession. In 1748, Ōtsuki Denzō was forced to commit suicide. Kaga Domain remained in a state of turmoil when Shigehiro himself died only a couple of years later in 1753 at the age of 23 without heir. At that time he was betrothed with Matsudaira Chohime, Matsudaira Yoritaka's daughter. Kaga Domain passed to his younger brother Shigenobu.

References

* Papinot, Edmond. (1948). ''Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan''. New York: Overbeck Co.

External links

Kaga Domain on "Edo 300 HTML"
(3 November 2007) {{DEFAULTSORT:Maeda, Shigehiro 1729 births 1753 deaths People of Edo-period Japan Maeda clan Tozama daimyo