Daimyo

Daimyo were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominally to the emperor and the kuge. In the term, dai means 'large', and myō stands for 名田, meaning 'private land'. 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 backgrounds of daimyo also varied considerably; while some daimyo clans, notably the Mōri, Shimazu and Hosokawa, were cadet branches of the Imperial family or were descended from the kuge, other daimyo were promoted from the ranks of the samurai, notably during the Edo period. Daimyo often hired samurai to guard their land, and they paid the samurai in land or food as relatively few could afford to pay samurai in money. The daimyo era ended soon after the Meiji Restoration with the adoption of the prefecture system in 1871. The shugo daimyo were the first group of men to hold the title daimyo. They arose from among the shugo during the Muromachi period (approximately 1336 – 1573). 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, Ōuchi, Takeda 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 Ōnin 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.