was a Japanese domain of the Edo period. It was associated with Bungo Province in modern-day Ōita Prefecture on the island of

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...

. In the han system, Mori was a political and economic abstraction based on periodic cadastral surveys and projected agricultural yields. In other words, the domain was defined in terms of ''

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 ...

'', not land area.Elison, George and Bardwell L. Smith (1987)
''Warlords, Artists, & Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century,'' p. 18
This was different from the feudalism of the West.

History

The Kurushima family, which ruled Mori during the Edo period, were the descendants of the Kurushima who formed part of the Murakami pirates of the

Inland Sea An inland sea (also known as an epeiric sea or an epicontinental sea) is a continental body of water which is very large and is either completely surrounded by dry land or connected to an ocean by a river, strait, or "arm of the sea". An inland se ...

, during the Sengoku period. Kurushima Nagachika (later called Yasuchika) held 14,000 ''

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 ...

'' of territory at Kijima in Iyo Province. In 1600, he sided with the western army; however, as his wife's uncle was Fukushima Masanori, Honda Masanobu was able to arrange for a special disposition allowing Nagachika's domain and family to remain unmolested. The family was moved to the Mori region of Bungo Province in 1601, and granted the same 14,000 ''

'' of landholding. The Kurushima family remained as lords of Mori until the Meiji Restoration. 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 ...

they supported the Kyoto government, and were assigned to guard the abandoned daikansho at Hita (日田). The domain was abolished in 1871, first becoming Mori Prefecture, before being absorbed into Ōita Prefecture, where it remains today. In 1884, the Mori family became ''shishaku'' (子爵, viscounts) in the new kazoku nobility system. The fairy-tale writer Kurushima Takehiko is a descendant of the Kurushima daimyō family.

List of ''daimyōs''

The hereditary '' daimyōs'' were head of the clan and head of the domain. * Kurushima family, 1601–1871 ('' tozama''; 14,000 → 12,500 ''

'') # Kurushima Yasuchika # Kurushima Michiharu # Kurushima Michikiyo # Kurushima Michimasa # Kurushima Terumichi # Kurushima Michisuke # Kurushima Michitomo # Kurushima Michihiro # Kurushima Michikata # Kurushima Michiaki # Kurushima Michitane # Kurushima Michiyasu

References

External links

Mori Domain entry on "Edo 300 HTML"
(16 Sept. 2007) {{Authority control Domains of Japan

History

List of ''daimyōs''

See also

References

External links