was a mid-

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 10th ''

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

Morioka Domain 300px, Ruins of Morioka Castle was a '' tozama'' feudal domain of Edo period Japan. It was ruled throughout its history by the Nanbu clan. It was called during the early part of its history. It was located in northern Mutsu Province, Honshū, ...

in northern Japan. He was the 36th hereditary chieftain of the

Nanbu clan The was a Japanese samurai clan who ruled most of northeastern Honshū in the Tōhoku region of Japan for over 700 years, from the Kamakura period through the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The Nanbu claimed descent from the Seiwa Genji of Kai Pr ...

. His

courtesy title A courtesy title is a title that does not have legal significance but rather is used through custom or courtesy, particularly, in the context of nobility, the titles used by children of members of the nobility (cf. substantive title). In some co ...

was ''Daizen-no-daifu'', and his Court rank was Junior 4th Rank, Lower Grade. Toshitaka was the younger son of Nanbu Toshimasa, the 9th ''daimyō'' of Morioka Domain, and became ''daimyō'' on the death of his father on 17 July 1784. As he was only two years old at the time, there were concerns that 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 ...

would use this as an excuse to dissolve Morioka Domain, so his official birthdate was changed from 1782 to 1779. He was not 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 Ienari Tokugawa Ienari ( ja, 徳川家斉, November 18, 1773 – March 22, 1841) was the eleventh and longest-serving ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan who held office from 1787 to 1837.Hall, John Whitney ''et al.'' (1991) ''Early Modern J ...

until 15 February 1795, and first entered his domains on 13 April of the same year. Due to his youth, the domain was rife with political factionalism, and suffered greatly from the effects of the

Great Tenmei famine The Great Tenmei famine (天明の大飢饉, ''Tenmei no daikikin'') was a famine which affected Japan during the Edo period. It is considered to have begun in 1782, and lasted until 1788. It was named after the Tenmei era (1781–1789), during th ...

. In 1817, the domain was officially renamed from "Nanbu Domain" to "Morioka Domain". On 18 December 1818, he was promoted to the honorary title of ''Jijū'' (Chamberlain), and Morioka Domain was assigned an area in southern

Ezo (also spelled Yezo or Yeso) is the Japanese term historically used to refer to the lands to the north of the Japanese island of Honshu. It included the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, which changed its name from "Ezo" to "Hokkaidō" in 18 ...

to police on behalf of the Shogunate. 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 ...

'' of Morioka Domain was officially doubled to 200,000 ''

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 ...

''. The same year, Toshitaka promulgated an reformed version of the domain's internal laws. In 1818, he raised one of the ''

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 ...

'' branch lines of the clan to the status of a subsidiary domain,

Shichinohe Domain was a '' tozama'' feudal domain of Edo period Japan, located in Mutsu Province, Honshū. It was centered at Shichinohe Castle in what is now the modern town of Shichinohe, Aomori in the Kamikita District of Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku ...

, and permitted some of his senior retainers to take the Nanbu surname as their own. Nanbu Toshitaka was noted for promoting is retainers based on ability, regardless of family backgrounds; however, this created much ill-will among the older established retainer houses. After his death in 1820, the domain again suffered from much political in-fighting and factionalism.

References

* Papinot, Edmond. (1948). ''Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan''. New York: Overbeck Co. *三百藩藩主人名事典 (1986)

External links

Morioka Domain on "Edo 300 HTML"

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nanbu, Toshitaka 1782 births 1820 deaths Tozama daimyo Nanbu clan People of Edo-period Japan