was a late-

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

Japanese

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

, and the 5th ''

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 no ...

'' of Iwakitaira Domain in the

Tōhoku region The , Northeast region, , or consists of the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This traditional region consists of six prefectures (): Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, and Yamagata. Tōhoku retains ...

of Japan, and the 10th hereditary chieftain of the Andō clan. He was the eldest son of Andō Nobuyori and his mother was a daughter of Matsudaira Nobuakira of Yoshida Domain. His childhood names were Kinnoshin and Kinnosuke and he was known most of his life as Andō Nobuyuki, taking the name of Nobumasa only after he became a '' rōjū.''

Biography

Nobumasa was born at the domain's Edo residence, and was received in formal audience by

Shōgun , officially , was the title of the military rulers 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, except during parts of the Kamak ...

Tokugawa Ienari in 1835. He became daimyō in 1847 on the death of his father. In 1848, he was promoted to the post of '' sōshaban'' within the shogunal administration. In 1858, he rose to the post of '' jisha-bugyō'', and subsequently was appointed a '' wakadoshiyori'' under the '' Tairō'' Ii Naosuke. In 1860 he was appointed a '' rōjū,'' and placed in charge of foreign affairs. Ii Naosuke was assassinated in the Sakuradamon Incident in 1860 and Andō Nobumasa became a leading councilor of state together with Kuze Hirochika.Harootunian, ''Toward Restoration'', p. 276. Among the many problems he faced in foreign affairs during this Bakumatsu period, was them the conclusion of a commercial treaty with Prussia, the assassination of Henry Heusken, and the appearance of a Russian warship claiming Tsushima Island for the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. Andō was also a supporter of the '' kobu-gattai'' policy to strengthen relations between the imperial court and the shogunate. He was instrumental in arranging for Kazunomiya, the younger sister of

Emperor Kōmei Osahito (22 July 1831 – 30 January 1867), posthumously honored as Emperor Kōmei, was the 121st emperor of Japan, according to the List of Emperors of Japan, traditional order of succession.Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'')孝明天皇 ...

, to marry

Tokugawa Iemochi (17 July 1846 – 29 August 1866) was the 14th '' shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, who held office from 1858 to 1866. During his reign there was much internal turmoil as a result of the "re-opening" of Japan to western nations. I ...

. All of these actions aroused the enmity of pro-'' Sonnō jōi'' samurai, and Andō himself was the target of an assassination attempt in 1862 by six former Mito Domain samurai outside the Sakashita Gate of Edo Castle also called the Sakashita Gate Incident. British counsul-general Rutherford Alcock remarked on meeting the heavily-bandaged Andō shortly afterwards and was favourably impressed with his fortitude, stating that his injuries lent credence to claims by the shogunate that the opening of the country to foreign trade had to proceed slowly due to strong domestic opposition. However, Andō was forced from office soon afterwards by his political enemies, who accused him of improper conduct in arranging for an heir to succeed Ii Naosuke and due to allegations that he had accepted bribes from American consul Townsend Harris. The '' kokudaka'' of Iwakitaira Domain was also reduced by 20,000 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

''. He officially retired in 1863; however as his son and heir Andō Nobutami was still underage, he continued to rule the domain from behind-the-scenes. Andō Nobutami died in 1863 and was replaced by an adopted heir, Andō Nobutake. In 1868, during the Boshin War, Nobumasa took the domain into the Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei over the objections of Nobutake. The domain was overrun and Iwakitaira Castle was burned during the Battle of Iwakitaira, and the victorious

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji ...

placed Nobumasa under permanent

house arrest House arrest (also called home confinement, or nowadays electronic monitoring) is a legal measure where a person is required to remain at their residence under supervision, typically as an alternative to imprisonment. The person is confined b ...

in 1868. He was released in 1869 and died in 1871 at the age of 52 years.

References

* Papinot, Edmond. (1948). ''Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan''. New York: Overbeck Co. * Harootunian, Harry D. (1970). ''Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan''. Berkeley: University of California Press. , . . * Totman, Conrad D. (1980). ''The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–1868''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. .

External links

Kaga Domain on "Edo 300 HTML"
(3 November 2007) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ando, Nobumasa 1819 births 1871 deaths Fudai daimyo Meiji Restoration Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei People of the Boshin War Rōjū Wakadoshiyori People of the Edo period Andō clan