The Bakufu Domain?

[Nerroth]

Hello.

Apologies in advance if this is a case of me missing something all too obvious; but I was trying to get a sense of which provinces were considered part of the bakufu's own domain, as opposed to those allocated to the various han (such as Satsuma).

On the one hand, it is relatively straightforward to point to where the Shimazu clan held sway; but which territories were considered to be directly under Tokugawa control?

(And by "Tokugawa", I refer specifically to the ruling family; as opposed to the cadet branches offered their own domains, such as the Hoshina-Matsudaira of Aizu Domain.)


Or am I mis-reading the nature of the bakufu itself? Was there no explicit "Tokugawa" domain the way there was for the Shimazu and others, leaving the shogunate to rely on the branch families' domains to provide the bulk of their power?
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[Tatsunoshi]

The Tokugawa (the Shogunate branch, not the gosanke of Owari, Kii, and Mito) had huge holdings, the largest in Japan, most notably in the Kanto area. I'll try to list them when I get home this morning.

[Tatsunoshi]

The domains of the Shogunate were all over Japan, and were called Bakufu Chokkatsuchi. By the end of the Edo period they totaled over 5,000,000 koku...by contrast, the daimyo next in line (like the Maeda in Kaga) would have been around 1,000,000. Listing all of the Shogunate's holdings would take quite a while, but they included a lot of cherry picked spots-the city of Osaka, Kyoto, Nagasaki, Sakai, the Edo area (where there were also the three Gosankyo Tokugawa branches living in Edo castle), Sunpu, the Izu peninsula, Kai province, and the Sado mines. I think I have a historical atlas somewhere that shows them on a map-if I can find it, I'll scan a copy and put it up.

[Nerroth]

So it was more a patchwork of territories than one contiguous domain, then; thanks for the info, and thanks also in advance for looking into the map!
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[lordameth]

Thinking of it as being a "domain" under the power of a single clan (the Tokugawa) in a sense akin to that of the other domains could be a useful alternate way to approach it, which might provide interesting insights.

However, for the most part, I think these territories tend to get categorized as non-domains, i.e. as a different type of territory. Places like Edo, Kyoto, Osaka, and the port of Nagasaki were under direct shogunate control in a bureaucratic way, administered by the shogunal government through appointed agents such as the Nagasaki bugyô 長崎奉行 and Kyoto shoshidai 京都所司代, who oversaw the maintenance of order, the smooth flow of commerce, etc. These cities were too important to entrust to any of the clans, perhaps not entirely unlike the way that Washington DC does not belong to any of the US states, or the way it has been proposed that Jerusalem ought to be (have been) an international city, outside the control of any one national government.

In short, while there may have been territories under the control of the shogunate which operated more like a "normal" domain, spread out over a considerable geographic area and valued by its agricultural production in koku 石, the main ones we tend to hear about, or think about, function very differently. They are small places - individual cities, or sites like the Sado gold mines - with immense economic and/or political power, which are administered both in order to ensure the shogunate's power, and also to keep such sites out of the hands of any one daimyo. Or, that's the impression I have.
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My blog on Japanese art & history: http://chaari.wordpress.com

紫水晶殿 - The Amethyst Lord

[Nerroth]

That makes it sound akin to the sub-national exclaves in countries like Spain (as listed on this page); where the various autonomous communities often host one or more enclaves belonging to another regional government (which, itself, is inherited from the patchwork nature of the old feudal domains in the pre-modern Spanish kingdom).

For example, in the autonomous community of Euskadi (the Basque Country; not to be confused with the wider "Basque Country" region, Euskal Herria), two of the three constituent provinces (Biscay and Álava) each hosts an enclave from another autonomous community; Valla de Villaverde, politically part of Cantabria, is surrounded by Biscay, while Condado de Treviño, an exclave of Burgos (a province of the autonomous community of Castile and León) is surrounded by Álava.


So, in a sense, the Tokugawa bakufu would be almost akin to a han, but one which retained the right to claim certain key strategic sites as exclaves.


(I'm sort of seeing the Tokugawa bakufu as being somewhat akin to how Austria as a realm used to dominate the Holy Roman Empire and later German Confederation; and interestingly enough, the same era which saw the Meiji Restoration take place had Prussia lead the shift towards the German Empire, in no small part by driving the Hapsburgs out of a position of power in the north German states.)
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[lordameth]

I think that rather than thinking of these places as enclaves within someone else's territory, or as the bakufu being/having a han itself, instead I have always thought of the bakufu's territory as being *outside* of the han. Again, I think Washington DC serves as a good comparison. Outside of the territory of any of the states, directly administered by the federal government.

Remember that the Imperial family, temples, shrines, and (perhaps? I can't necessarily think of any) a few other types of power-holders also held lands which they governed themselves, gathered taxes for, and did not pay taxes to a daimyo. These, for the most part, consisted of very small territories geographically located within domains, but not subject to the administration or taxation of the daimyo, e.g. temples, shrines, Imperial palaces.
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My blog on Japanese art & history: http://chaari.wordpress.com

紫水晶殿 - The Amethyst Lord

[Tatsunoshi]

[Tatsunoshi]

Whaddya know-it was in the first place I looked. Sweet! It would have been nice if the map had used higher contrast colors, but anyway, the main branch Tokugawa are in tan/yellow, Fudai daimyo olive, and the no-good Tozama in purple/pink:



A few things I would question-looks like a few of the 'Shogunal domains' like Kai were attributed to the Fudai instead, but overall it gives a good sense of just how large and widespread the Tokugawa holdings were (even without the holdings of the 3 Gosanke families included).

[Nerroth]

Thanks for the scan; what work is it originally from?

One thing I noticed is the size of Wajinchi in Ezo; it looks somewhat different than the area shown on the map in this book. (Look at pages 4-5 on the Google preview.)

Ezo aside, did any of the territories change much during the Edo period, or is that map a good indicator of how things were in the pre-bakumatsu era too?
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[Tatsunoshi]

[shikisoku]

Bukufu's territory was called Tenryo 天領.
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[Tatsunoshi]

[lordameth]

Wajinchi grew and shrank over the course of the Edo period - as I think may have been mentioned on another thread somewhere, particularly in the early years of the 19th century, in response to Russian encroachments, there were great efforts to expand Wajinchi, assimilating Ainu people and lands, so as to "claim" them in a sense, away from possible Russian encroachments upon those lands. There was also a period when the bakufu claimed much of that land for itself, but then shortly afterwards returned authority over Ezo/Wajinchi to the Matsumae clan.
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My blog on Japanese art & history: http://chaari.wordpress.com

紫水晶殿 - The Amethyst Lord