Machi doshiyori

• Japanese: 町年寄 (machi doshiyori)

The machi doshiyori were assistants to the machi bugyô (city magistrates) during the Edo period. They were the highest-ranking townsmen (non-samurai commoners) in the city's official administrative ranks.

Neighborhood headmen (nanushi) of areas within Edo answered to the machi doshiyori, and oversaw the goningumi (five-person collective responsibility groups), and guardhouses and gatehouses within their respective neighborhoods.

The positions of machidoshiyori were dominated since the 1610s by three families: the Naraya, Kitamura, and Taruya families. The Naraya and Teruya families had served Tokugawa Ieyasu on the battlefield during the Sengoku period, but gave up samurai status when they settled in Edo. The Kitamura, meanwhile, were dealers in herbal medicines who had previously served the Maeda clan of Kanazawa prior to settling in Edo.

References

• Arai Hakuseki, Joyce Ackroyd (trans.), Told Round a Brushwood Fire, University of Tokyo Press (1979), 321.