Kawagoe Domain

Building inside Kawagoe Castle

The Kawagoe Domain (川越藩 Kawagoe-han) was a feudal domain of Japan during the Momoyama and Edo periods of the history of Japan. It was located in Iruma District, now part of Saitama Prefecture, in Musashi Province (Bushū). The domain had its headquarters at Kawagoe Castle in the present-day city of Kawagoe.

In the han system, Kawagoe was a political and economic abstraction based on periodic cadastral surveys and projected agricultural yields.^[1] In other words, the domain was defined in terms of kokudaka, not land area.^[2] This was different from the feudalism of the West.

History

The domain had its beginning in 1590, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi defeated the Late Hōjō clan in the Siege of Odawara. Hideyoshi awarded vast Hōjō holdings to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who enfoeffed Sakai Shigetada at Kawagoe with a rating of 10,000 koku. Shigetada was transferred in 1601, and the next daimyo was appointed in 1609. At its peak, under a branch family of the Matsudaira of Echizen, the domain had a rating of 170,000 koku.

Daimyo

The following list shows the daimyo who headed the domain, together with their years in office.

• Sakai clan (Fudai; 10,000 koku)

1. Sakai Shigetada (1590–1601)

• Sakai clan (Fudai; 20,000->37,000->80,000->100,000 koku)

1. Sakai Tadatoshi (1609–1627)
2. Sakai Tadakatsu (1627–1634)

• Hotta clan (Fudai; 35,000 koku)

1. Hotta Masamori (1635–1638)

• Matsudaira clan (Nagasawa/Ōkōchi) (Fudai; 60,000->75,000->70,000 koku)

1. Matsudaira Nobutsuna (1639–1662)
2. Matsudaira Terutsuna (1662–1672)
3. Matsudaira Nobuteru (1672–1694)

• Yanagisawa clan (Fudai; 72,000->112,000 koku)

1. Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu (1694–1704)

• Akimoto clan (Fudai; 50,000->60,000 koku)

1. Akimoto Takatomo (1704–1714)
2. Akimoto Takafusa (1714–1738)
3. Akimoto Takamoto (1738–1742)
4. Akimoto Suketomo (1742–1767)

• Matsudaira clan (Echizen) (Shinpan; 150,000->170,000 koku)

1. Matsudaira Tomonori (1767–1768)
2. Matsudaira Naotsune (1768–1810)
3. Matsudaira Naonobu (1810–1816)
4. Matsudaira Naritsune (1816–1850)
5. Matsudaira Tsunenori (1850–1854)
6. Matsudaira Naoyoshi (1854–1861)
7. Matsudaira Naokatsu (1861–1867)

• Matsui-Matsudaira clan (Fudai 80,000 koku)

1. Matsudaira Yasuteru (1866–1869)
2. Matsudaira Yasutoshi (1869–1871)

References

1. Mass, Jeffrey P. and William B. Hauser. (1987). The Bakufu in Japanese History, p. 150.
2. Elison, George and Bardwell L. Smith (1987). Warlords, Artists, & Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century, p. 18.