In 1623, Kuroda Nagamasa's third son, Kuroda Nagaoki, was assigned estates with a kokudaka of 50,000 koku, and allowed to establish a cadet branch of the Kuroda clan, partly as "insurance" to ensure the survival of the parent domain in the event that succession of the main lineage fail. Although the domain has a jin'ya fortified residence as its headquarters, it was permitted the prestige of a "castle-holding domain" by the Tokugawa shogunate as it was built on the site of Akizuki Castle. Haruhime, the daughter of the fourth daimyō, Kuroda Nagasada married into the Akizuki clan of Takanabe Domain, the former masters of this area. Her second son was adopted into the Yonezawa Domain and became the famous Uesugi Yozan.
The borders between Akizuki Domain and Fukuoka Domain were complicated. Fukuoka Domain refused to cede Amagi-juku, a key post town adjacent to the Akizuki jin'ya, due to its strategic importance.
With the abolition of the han system in 1871, Akizuki Domain briefly became "Akizuki Prefecture" and was later incorporated into Fukuoka Prefecture. The Akizuki Kuroda family was granted the title of viscounts in the 1884 kazoku peerage system. Although the jin'ya was sold off in the Meiji period, the site is now home to a Shinto shrine dedicated to Kuroda Nagaoki, and the moat, stone walls, Kuromon (former main gate) and Nagayamon (former back gate) all survive. The site is designated a Fukuoka Prefectural Historic Site and the two gates are Fukuoka Prefectural Designated Tangible Cultural Properties.[4][5]
In 1876, the area was the site of the Akizuki rebellion, in which former samurai of the domain, disillusioned with the policies of the Meiji government and with the loss of their prestige and stipends attacked local police before being suppressed by the Imperial Japanese Army.
Holdings at the end of the Edo period
As with most domains in the han system, Akizuki Domain consisted of several discontinuous territories calculated to provide the assigned kokudaka, based on periodic cadastral surveys and projected agricultural yields.[6][7]
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