The Kaga Domain (加賀藩, Kaga-han), also known as the Kanazawa Domain (金沢藩, Kanazawa-han), was a domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1583 to 1871.[1]
Maeda Toshiie was a distinguished military commander, a retainer of Oda Nobunaga and a close friend of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. A member of the Council of Five Elders who ruled Japan during the Sengoku period, he was granted the Kaga Domain in 1583.[1] His eldest son, Maeda Toshinaga, supported Tokugawa Ieyasu in his rise to power and was rewarded by an increase in his lands to 1.25 million koku.
Toshinaga was succeeded by his brother Maeda Toshitsune, who created two cadet branches of the clan:
Toyama Domain (100,000 koku), headed by descendants of Toshitsune's second son Toshitsugu (1617–1674)
Daishōji Domain (100,000 koku), headed by descendants of Toshitsune's fourth son Toshiaki (1638–1692)
A third cadet line was founded by Toshitsune's brother Maeda Toshitaka for his services during the Siege of Osaka. This branch held the Nanokaichi Domain, rated at the minimum of 10,000 koku.
The Maeda clan ruled the Kaga Domain for the entirety of its existence until the abolition of the domains in 1871 after the Meiji Restoration and the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The location of the main Edo residence of the Kaga Domain's daimyō is now the site of the Hongō campus of the University of Tokyo.
Holdings
As with most domains in the han system, the Kaga Domain consisted of discontinuous territories calculated to provide the assigned kokudaka, based on periodic cadastral surveys and projected agricultural yields.[3][4] At the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, the Kaga Domain consisted of the following holdings:
Brown, Philip C. (1993). Central authority and local autonomy in the formation of early modern Japan: the case of Kaga domain. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
