Count was a Japanese

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 ...

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 late

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 ...

. He was the head of

Kokura Domain , also known as or then , was a Japanese domain of the Edo period. It was associated with Buzen Province in modern-day Fukuoka Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. In the han system, Kokura was a political and economic abstraction based on perio ...

Edmond Papinot Jacques Edmond-Joseph Papinot (1860–1942) was a French Roman Catholic priest and missionary who was also known in Japan as . He was an architect, academic, historian, editor, Japanologist. Papinot is best known for creating an ''Historical and G ...

. (1906). ''Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japon''
digitized 1906 ''Nobiliaire du japon'' (2003)
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Ogasawara clan genealogy

Tadanobu was part of the senior branch of the

Ogasawara clan The was a Japanese samurai clan descended from the Seiwa Genji.Papinot, Jacques. (2003)''Nobiliare du Japon'' – Ogasawara, pp. 44–45 Papinot, Jacques Edmond Joseph. (1906). ''Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japon.'' (in Fren ...

. Appert, Georges (1888)
''Ancien Japon''
Kokobunsha. p. 75. Tadanobu's branch of the clan were ''daimyō'' at

(150,000 ''koku'') in Buzen Province. He was a () in the ''

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 system. This was because the head of this clan line and his heirs were ennobled in 1884.

Events of Tadanobu's life

During Tadanobu's tenure as clan head, the Kokura domain took part in the shogunate's Chōshū Expeditions, and also destroyed Kokura Castle in 1866 during its retreat to

Kawara is a town located in Tagawa District, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. As of 2016, the town has an estimated population of 10,712 and a density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. Th ...

. He was assisted in day-to-day affairs by his two ''

karō were top-ranking samurai officials and advisors in service to the ''daimyōs'' of feudal Japan. Overview In the Edo period, the policy of ''sankin-kōtai'' (alternate attendance) required each ''daimyō'' to place a ''karō'' in Edo and anoth ...

'', and . Komiya was the one who took charge of the burning of Kokura Castle and, as the castle was built by the clan's ancestor

Ogasawara Tadazane was a Japanese samurai ''daimyō'' of the early Edo period. Early life Tadazane was the son of (1569–1615) with Toku-hime, daughter of Matsudaira Nobuyasu and granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu. He married Kamehime, daughter of Honda Tadamasa ...

, he committed

seppuku , sometimes referred to as hara-kiri (, , a native Japanese kun reading), is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honour but was also practised by other Japanese people ...

in atonement. For his deployment of troops on the Imperial side 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 ...

of 1868, Tadanobu received a personal stipend of 5,000

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 ...

from the court.Ogasawara Tadanobu, notes (in Japanese).
upp.so-net.ne.jp In the Meiji era, Tadanobu spent a few years studying in

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

, returning in 1878. He held junior 3rd court rank ().

Ancestry

References

Ogasawara clan genealogy

Events of Tadanobu's life

Ancestry

References

Further reading

See also