The daimyo (大å, daimyÅ, pronounced  dai-myoh ) were the powerful feudal lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings. In the term, "dai" (大) literally means "large", and "myÅ" stands for myÅden (åç"°?), meaning private land.
Subordinate only to the shogun, daimyo were the most powerful feudal rulers from the 10th century to the middle 19th century in Japan. From the shugo of the Muromachi period through the Sengoku to the daimyo of the Edo period, the rank had a long and varied history.
The term "daimyo" is also sometimes used to refer to the leading figures of such clans, also called "lord". It was usually, though not exclusively, from these warlords that a shogun arose or a regent was chosen. Daimyo often hired samurai to guard their land and they paid the samurai in land or food. Relatively few daimyo could afford to pay samurai in money. The daimyo era came to an end soon after the Meiji restoration when Japan adopted the prefecture system in 1871.
Shugo-daimyo
The shugo daimyo (守è·å¤§å, shugo-daimyÅ) were the first group of men to hold the title "daimyo". They arose from among the shugo during the Muromachi period. The shugo daimyo held not only military and police powers, but also economic power within a province. They accumulated these powers throughout the first decades of the Muromachi period.
Major shugo daimyo came from the Shiba, Hatakeyama, and Hosokawa clans, as well as the tozama clans of Yamana, ÅŒuchi, and Akamatsu. The greatest ruled multiple provinces.
The Ashikaga shogunate required the shugo daimyo to reside in Kyoto, so they appointed relatives or retainers, called shugodai, to represent them in their home provinces. Eventually some of these in turn came to reside in Kyoto, appointing deputies in the provinces.
The ÅŒnin War was a major uprising in which shugo daimyo fought each other. During this and other wars of the time, kuni ikki, or provincial uprisings, took place as locally powerful warriors sought independence from the shugo daimyo. The deputies of the shugo daimyo, living in the provinces, seized the opportunity to strengthen their position. At the end of the fifteenth century, those shugo daimyo who succeeded remained in power. Those who had failed to exert control over their deputies fell from power and were replaced by a new class, the "sengoku daimyo", who arose from the ranks of the shugodai'K and Ji-samurai.
Sengoku-daimyÅ
Among the sengoku daimyo (戦国大å, sengoku-daimyÅ) were many who had been shugo daimyo, such as the Satake, Imagawa, Takeda, Toki, Rokkaku, ÅŒuchi, and Shimazu. New to the ranks of daimyo were the Asakura, Amago, Nagao, Miyoshi, ChÅsokabe, JimbÅ, Hatano, Oda, and Matsunaga. These came from the ranks of the shugodai and their deputies. Additional sengoku daimyo such as the MÅri, Tamura, and RyÅ«zÅji arose from the ji-samurai. The lower officials of the shogunate and ronin (Late HÅjÅ, SaitÅ), provincial officials (Kitabatake), and kuge (Tosa IchijÅ) also gave rise to sengoku daimyo.
Daimyo in the Edo period
After the Battle of Sekigahara in the year 1600 that marked the beginning of the Edo period, shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu reorganized roughly 200 daimyo and their territories, into the han, and rated them based on their production of rice from rice paddies. Daimyo were those who headed han assessed at 10,000 koku (50,000 bushels) or more. Ieyasu also categorized the daimyo according to how close they were to the ruling Tokugawa family: the shinpan were related to the Tokugawa; the fudai had been vassals of the Tokugawa or allies in battle; and the tozama had not allied with the Tokugawa before the battle (did not necessarily fight against the Tokugawa).
The shinpan were collaterals of Ieyasu, such as the Matsudaira, or descendants of Ieyasu other than in the main line of succession. Several shinpan, including the Tokugawa of Owari (Nagoya), Kii (Wakayama) and Mito, as well as the Matsudaira of Fukui and Aizu, held large han.
A few fudai daimyo, such as the Ii of Hikone, held large han, but many were small. The shogunate placed many fudai at strategic locations to guard the trade routes and the approaches to Edo. Also, many fudai daimyo took positions in the Edo shogunate, some rising to the position of rÅjÅ«. The fact that fudai daimyo could hold government positions while tozama, in general, could not was a main difference between the two.
Tozama daimyo held large fiefs, with the Kaga han of Ishikawa Prefecture, headed by the Maeda clan, assessed at 1,000,000 koku. Other famous tozama clans included the Mori of ChÅshÅ«, the Shimazu of Satsuma, the Date of Sendai, the Uesugi of Yonezawa, and the Hachisuka of Awa. Initially, the Tokugawa regarded them as potentially rebellious, but for most of the Edo period, marriages between the Tokugawa and the tozama, as well as control policies such as sankin kÅtai, resulted in peaceful relations.
Sankin-kÅtai
Sankin-kÅtai ("alternate attendance") was the system whereby the Tokugawa forced all daimyo to spend every other year at the Tokugawa court in Edo, and maintain their family members in Edo when they returned to their han. This increased political and fiscal control over the daimyo by Edo. As time went on in the Tokugawa period, many other systems of controlling the daimyo were put into place, such as mandatory contributions to public works such as road building. In addition, daimyo were forbidden to build ships and castles, and other shows of military power were often tightly controlled.
Upset by these controls, and often in bad economic situations because of things like sankin-kÅtai, forced support of public works, and extravagant spending, several daimyo sided against the Tokugawa Shogunate during the Meiji Restoration.
After the Meiji Restoration
In 1869, the year after the Meiji Restoration, the daimyo, together with the kuge, formed a new aristocracy, the kazoku. In 1871, the han were abolished and prefectures were established, thus effectively ending the daimyo era in Japan. In the wake of this change, many daimyo remained in control of their lands, being appointed as prefectural governors; however, they were soon relieved of this duty and called en masse to Tokyo, thereby cutting off any independent base of power from which to potentially rebel. Despite this, members of former daimyo families remained prominent in government and society, and in some cases continue to remain prominent to the present day. (For example, Morihiro Hosokawa, the former prime minister, is a descendant of the daimyo of Kumamoto, but these cases are very few now.)
