Shimōsa Province (下総国, Shimōsa no Kuni) was a province of Japan in the area of modern Chiba Prefecture and Ibaraki Prefecture as well as the bordering parts of Saitama Prefecture and Tokyo (the parts that used to be located east of the lower reaches of the old Tone River prior to the river's eastward diversion, i.e. the parts of the former Katsushika District of Shimōsa that have been transferred to North Katsushika District of Saitama Prefecture and Sumida, Kōtō, Edogawa, and Katsushika wards of Tokyo).[1] It lies to the north of the Bōsō Peninsula (房総半島), whose name takes its first kanji from the name of Awa Province and its second from Kazusa and Shimōsa Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was Sōshū (総州) or Hokusō (北総).
Shimōsa was originally part of a larger territory known as Fusa Province (総国, occasionally 捄国, Fusa-no-kuni), which was divided into "upper" and "lower" portions (i.e. Kazusa and Shimōsa) during the reign of Emperor Kōtoku (645–654). It was well-known to the Imperial Court in Nara periodJapan for its fertile lands, and is mentioned in Nara period records as having supplied hemp to the Court. Shimōsa was divided into 11 (later 12) counties. The exact location of the capital of Shimōsa is not precisely known, but is believed to have been somewhere within the borders of the modern city of Ichikawa, Chiba, near Kōnodai Station where the ruins of the Kokubun-ji have been located. However, the Ichinomiya of Shimōsa Province is the Katori Jingū in what is now the city of Katori, Chiba, on the opposite coast of the province.
Following the installation of Tokugawa Ieyasu in Edo, after the Battle of Odawara, he created eleven han within the borders of Shimōsa to reward his followers, with the remaining area retained as tenryō territory owned directly by the shōgun and administered by various hatamoto. The entire province had an assessed revenue of 681,062 koku.
Following the Meiji Restoration, these various domains and tenryō territories were transformed into short-lived prefectures in July 1871 by the abolition of the han system. Most of Shimōsa Province became part of the new Chiba Prefecture on June 15, 1873, with four districts (Yūki, Toyoda, Sashima, Okada) going to the new Ibaraki Prefecture and the portion to the west of the Edogawa River going to the new Saitama Prefecture.
The area of former Shimōsa Province was organized into twelve districts by the Meiji cadastral reforms: Chiba, Inba, Katori, Kaijō, Shimohabu. Sōsa, Okada, Sashima, Toyoda, Yūki, Sōma and Katsushika.
