Han system
Han (
Meiji period (1868–1912).[1] Han or Bakufu-han (daimyo domain)[2] served as a system of de facto administrative divisions of Japan alongside the de jure provinces
until they were abolished in the 1870s.
History
Pre-Edo period
The concept of han originated as the personal
Ashikaga Shogunate (1336–1573). Han became increasingly important as de facto administrative divisions as subsequent Shoguns stripped the Imperial provinces
(kuni) and their officials of their legal powers.
Edo period
Sengoku daimyō around the first year of the Genki era
(1570 AD).Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603. The han belonged to daimyo, the powerful samurai feudal lords, who governed them as personal property with autonomy as a vassal of the Tokugawa Shogun. Ieyasu's successors further refined the system by introducing methods that ensured control of the daimyo and the imperial court. For instance, relatives and retainers were placed in politically and militarily strategic districts while potentially hostile daimyo were transferred to unimportant geographic locations or their estates confiscated.[4] They were also occupied with public works that kept them financially drained as the daimyo paid for the bakufu projects.[4]
Unlike
Japanologists such as Georges Appert and Edmond Papinot made a point of highlighting the annual koku yields which were allocated for the Shimazu clan at Satsuma Domain since the 12th century.[8] The Shogunal han and the Imperial provinces served as complementary systems which often worked in tandem for administration. When the Shogun ordered the daimyos to make a census of their people or to make maps, the work was organized along the borders of the provinces.[9] As a result, a han could overlap multiple provinces which themselves contained sections of multiple han. In 1690, the richest han was the Kaga Domain, located in the provinces of Kaga, Etchū and Noto, with slightly over 1 million koku.[10]
Meiji period
In 1868, the Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown in the
modernization and Westernization in Japan. From 1869 to 1871, the new Meiji government sought to abolish feudalism in Japan, and the title of daimyo in the han system was altered to han-chiji (藩知事) or chihanji (知藩事).[11] In 1871, almost all of the domains were disbanded and replaced with a new Meiji system of prefectures which were directly subordinate to the national government in Tokyo.[1]
However, in 1872, the Meiji government created the Ryukyu Domain after Japan formally annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom, a vassal state of the Shimazu clan of Satsuma since 1609.[12] The Ryūkyū Domain was governed as a han headed by the Ryukyuan monarchy until it was finally abolished and became Okinawa Prefecture in March 1879.
See also
- List of Han
- Han school
- Shōen
- Fanzhen
- Demesne
Notes
- ^ a b Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Han" in Japan Encyclopedia, p. 283.
- ISBN 978-1-317-87085-2.
- ^ Mass, Jeffrey P. and William B. Hauser. (1987). The Bakufu in Japanese History, p. 150.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-533126-4.
- ^ Elison, George and Bardwell L. Smith (1987). Warlords, Artists, & Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century, p. 17.
- ISBN 978-0-520-08629-6.
- ISBN 978-3-03910-782-7.
- ^ Appert, Georges. (1888). "Shimazu" in Ancien Japon, pp. 77; compare Papinot, Jacques Edmond Joseph. (1906). Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japon; Papinot, (2003). Nobiliare du Japon, p. 55; retrieved 23 March 2013.
- ^ Roberts, Luke S. (2002). Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: the merchant origins of economic nationalism in 18th-century Tosa, p. 6
- ^ Totman, Conrad (1993). Early Modern Japan, p. 119.
- ^ Lebra, Takie S. (1995). Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility, p. 29
- ^ Matsumura, Wendy. (2007). Becoming Okinawan: Japanese Capitalism and Changing Representations of Okinawa, p. 38.
References
- ISBN 9780520080263; OCLC 246872663
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