Tozama daimyo

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Date Masamune , a major Tozama daimyo

As tozama daimyo ( jap. 外様大名 ) was a group of daimyo (feudal princes) during the Edo period referred that no traditional allies, or even former opponents of the Tokugawa - shoguns were. So they stood in contrast to the other two large groups, the Shimpan daimyo and Fudai daimyo .

The daimyo who became vassals of Tokugawa Ieyasu only after the Battle of Sekigahara were classified as Tozama . Many of the big Han , which were located in the north, south or east of Japan and were ruled by influential, long -established families, were among them. The largest Tozama fiefdom, with just over a million koku , was Kaga in what is now Ishikawa Prefecture on the Sea of ​​Japan . The Mōri , the Date , the Hachisuka and the Uesugi were also part of it. Many of the Tozama had traditional roles as rulers of areas on the "fringes" of Japan, and thus duties in foreign trade, such as the Shimazu in Satsuma , who controlled Okinawa, the Sō on Tsushima , who controlled Korean trade, and the Matsumae , Ezo , then only inhabited by Ainu, was part of their dominion .

After Tokugawa Ieyasu had gained supremacy in Japan, he tried to secure the sympathies of the Tozama daimyo, but his grandson Tokugawa Iemitsu took several measures to strengthen the power of the shogunate government at the expense of the daimyo, especially the Tozama. At the beginning of the Edo period, the Tozama daimyo were punished for minor offenses with the loss of rights and property.

Many daimyo in the south profited from foreign trade, not only with nearby China but also with the emerging European seafaring nations. Iemitsu interrupted this so-called Nanban trade by closing off Japan ( Sakoku ). At the same time he had Christianity suppressed, which especially weakened the daimyo who had converted to Christianity.

By the Sankin-kōtai system, the daimyō were forced from 1635 to maintain expensive residences in Edo . For the Tozama daimyo in the distant provinces the cost of the annual trip to or from Edo was added. After all, he posted over a hundred loyal but less powerful families as so-called Fudai daimyo on smaller but strategically important lands.

The Tozama were typically not promoted to advisory posts within the shogunate government. It was not until the end of the Edo period, in the Bakumatsu era, that some Tozama rose in the political hierarchy. One, Matsumae Takahiro , even became a rōjū . At the same time it was the Tozama daimyō who organized the resistance against the shogunate, especially the Shimazu Nariakira in Satsuma and the Mōri in Chōshū . This eventually led to the Boshin War , the abolition of the Han, and the Meiji Restoration . Many samurai from Satsuma and Chōshū became important figures in the new government as part of the Meiji oligarchy .

Tozama daimyo with an income of more than 200,000 koku

literature

  • Herman Ooms: Charismatic Bureaucrat . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1975