Matsumae clan
Matsumae clan 松前 | |
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mon) of the Matsumae clan, from the collection of Heinrich von Siebold (Weltmuseum Wien) | |
Home province | Matsumae, Hokkaido |
Parent house | |
Titles |
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Founding year | 1590 |
The Matsumae clan (松前氏, Matsumae-shi) was a Japanese aristocratic family who were
History
The clan, originally known as the Kakizaki clan (蠣崎氏), had settled in Kakizaki, Kawauchi, Mutsu on the Shimokita Peninsula. Claiming descent from the Takeda clan of Wakasa Province, the family later took the name Matsumae.
They were given the area around present-day
Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the family was appointed Viscount in the new kazoku peerage.[1]
Relations with the Ainu and Russia
Due to their location, and their role as border defenders, the Matsumae were the first Japanese to negotiate with Russia in any way. They may well have been the first Japanese to meet Russians at all within Japanese territory. In 1778, a merchant from Yakutsk by the name of Pavel Lebedev-Lastochkin arrived in Hokkaidō with a small expedition. He offered gifts and politely asked to trade. The Matsumae official tried to explain that he had no authority to agree to trade on behalf of the shōgun and suggested that the Russians come back the following year. The following September, the Russians did just that. According to some accounts, they had misinterpreted what had been said and expected to trade. Instead their gifts were returned to them, they were forbidden to return to the island, and they were advised that foreign trade was allowed only at Nagasaki, a port on the southernmost of Japan's home islands.
In 1779, a massive earthquake struck Hokkaidō, and a forty-two-foot tsunami lifted the Russian ship[clarification needed] out of the sea, depositing it a quarter-mile inland.[citation needed] The merchant Lebedev then gave up on Hokkaidō.
The Matsumae clan's fief had extensive contacts with the
In 1790, Kakizaki Hakyō painted the Ishūretsuzō, a series of portraits of Ainu chiefs, in order to prove to the Japanese populace that the Matsumae were capable of controlling the northern borders and the Ainu[citation needed]. The 12 paintings of Ainu chiefs were displayed in 1791 in Kyoto.
At roughly the same time, in 1789, a Finnish professor, Erik Laxmann, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, came across several Japanese castaways in Irkutsk. Like several other Japanese before them, they had been found in the Aleutians, off the coast of Alaska, by Russian sailors and had asked to be brought back to Japan. Like those before them, these castaways had been transported instead across Siberia on their way to St. Petersburg. Laxman saw their plight as an opportunity to work towards the opening of Japan, and suggested this to Catherine the Great, who agreed. In 1791, she appointed the professor's son, Lt. Adam Laxman, to command a voyage to return these castaways to Japan, and to open discussions towards a trade agreement.
The expedition reached Hokkaidō in October 1792, and found the Japanese surprisingly hospitable. The Russians were allowed to spend the winter, and documents about them were sent to the
Since the Matsumae land was a march or borderland, the remainder of Hokkaidō, then called Ezo, essentially became an Ainu reservation. Although Japanese influence and control over the Ainu gradually grew stronger over the centuries, at that time they were mostly left to their own devices and the shogunate did not consider their lands to be Japanese territory. It was only during the Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century that the march was dissolved and Hokkaidō was formally annexed, and renamed, by Japan.
Kakizaki Family Heads
- Kakizaki Sueshige (蠣崎季繁), lord of Hanazawa-date; adoptive father of Takeda Nobuhiro, his general during Koshamain's War; by rallying the local leaders and heading the cause, he helped lay the foundations for the later Matsumae Domain.[2]
- Kakizaki Mitsuhiro (蠣崎光広)[3]
- Kakizaki Yoshihiro (蠣崎義広)[3]
- Kakizaki Suehiro (蠣崎季広)[3] (father of Matsumae Yoshihiro)
Matsumae Domain Lords
The fourteen
- Matsumae Yoshihiro (–1616) (son of Kakizaki Suehiro)
- Matsumae Kinhiro (松前公広)
- Matsumae Ujihiro (松前氏広)
- Matsumae Takahiro (松前高広)
- Matsumae Norihiro (松前矩広)
- Matsumae Kunihiro (松前邦広)
- Matsumae Sukehiro (松前資広)
- Matsumae Michihiro (松前道広)
- Matsumae Akihiro (松前章広)
- Matsumae Yoshiro (松前良広)
- Matsumae Masahiro (松前昌広)
- Matsumae Takahiro (1849–1865)
- Matsumae Norihiro (松前徳広)
- Matsumae Nagahiro (松前修広)
See also
- Takeda Nobuhiro (1431–1494) (ancestor of the Matsumae clan)
- Empire of Japan–Russian Empire relations
- Matsuura Takeshirō
References
- OCLC 65474403.
- ^ 函館市史 通説編第1巻 [Prevailing Views of the History of Hakodate City] (in Japanese). Vol. 1. Hakodate City. 1980. pp. 334 f.
- ^ Shōgakukan. 1994.
Further reading
- Howell, David (2005). Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan. University of California Press.
- McDougall, Walter (1993). Let the Sea Make a Noise: Four Hundred Years of Cataclysm, Conquest, War and Folly in the North Pacific. New York: Avon Books.
- First volume of The House Record of Matsumae, in Japanese[permanent dead link]
- List of the generations of Matsumae daimyō