Shimpan daimyo

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As Shimpan daimyō ( Japanese. 親 藩 大名 ) or Shimpan ( 親 wurde ), the most reliable class of daimyō from the perspective of the Tokugawa was designated in the Edo period in Japan .

After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, which began the Edo period, Tokugawa Ieyasu carried out a fundamental reform of the clans and their territories.

Ieyasu divided the daimyo into three classes, depending on how close they were to the ruling Tokugawa family. Ieyasu's 23 relatives (including secondary lines) among the daimyō received the highest classification as shimpan , the 140 Fudai , who had already joined the Tokugawa before Sekigahara and were considered allies, followed as the third group, the Tozama -Daimyō who had been on the losing side.

The influential positions in the military government ( Bakufu ) were only awarded to the Fudai daimyō, whose fiefs ( han ), on the other hand, were mostly relatively small and in central Japan near the capital and thus also a kind of buffer zone to the Tozama, which was considered unreliable Daimyō formed.

In order to secure the succession, Tokugawa Ieyasu appointed the three youngest of his sons to be heads of three branch lines, the Gosanke . In fact, these subsidiary lines had to step in several times when the main line became extinct. Those were:

There were also the Matsudaira in the fiefs of Aizu , Fukui and Tsuyama and their sub-lines.