Daimyo yashiki

A model of an Edo daimyô yashiki, on display at the Edo-Tokyo Museum.

• Japanese: 大名屋敷 (daimyou yashiki)

Daimyô yashiki were Edo period mansions maintained in Edo, Kyoto, and other major cities by the daimyô. As part of the sankin kôtai system, daimyô had to spend a considerable amount of time in Edo once every few years, and to maintain a household with their wives and children as hostages in Edo. Mansions were also maintained in Kyoto, Osaka, and elsewhere, serving as bases of operations for the daimyô's political and economic activities in those cities, and housing the daimyô and his retinue as they passed through on their way to/from Edo on their sankin kôtai journeys.

Originally, the Tokugawa shogunate provided mansions to the tozama daimyô, in which their wives and children would live in Edo, as hostages, as part of the sankin kôtai "alternate attendance" system. Following the extension of sankin kôtai obligations to all daimyô in 1635, the daimyô practice of maintaining a mansion in Edo became much more common, and certain aspects of their layout, design, or locations in the city became somewhat standardized. After the 1657 Meireki Fire in particular, when the city was rebuilt, daimyô rebuilt multiple mansions in different parts of the city. A given daimyô's "upper mansion" might be located within the walls or moats (Marunouchi), below the Nishi-no-maru, or in neighborhoods such as Atagoshita or Sotosakurada; his "middle mansion" might be located just inside the outermost walls of Edo castle; and his "lower mansion" would be somewhere in the outskirts of the city.

Edo boasted more than six hundred daimyô yashiki compounds, many of which hosted considerable populations. The roughly 250-300,000 people resident in these compounds in the 18th to early 19th centuries comprised roughly 20-30% of the total population of the city, though a large portion of these individuals, roughly 1/3 to 1/2, were only temporary residents, coming and going with their daimyô. To cite some examples, the Tosa han mansions in Edo were home to 4,500 people in 1694; in 1697, the lord arrived in the city on his sankin kôtai mission with 2,800 people, adding considerably to that figure. The lord of Kaga han, meanwhile, typically arrived in Edo with an entourage of 8,000, leaving roughly 4,000 behind afterwards to help manage his estates. The Edo mansions of Kaga han are believed to have had, regularly, as many as 30,000 inhabitants, and to have covered roughly 267 acres, filled with warehouses, barracks, residences, gardens, and schools.

A 1690 law required daimyô to organize and manage the defenses of their own Kyoto mansions.

The shogunate continued, in some cases, to allocate mansions to the daimyô, but daimyô also often seized lands from peasants to build their mansions.

Many of the most prominent daimyô's mansions have since become the sites of universities, public gardens, or the like. To name some examples, Dôshisha University is based on the former site of the Satsuma han mansion in Kyoto; Tokyo University's main campus was formerly the mansion of the lords of Kaga han; the Akasaka Detached Palace was built on the former site of the mansion of the Kishû Tokugawa; and the garden of Tokugawa Yorifusa of Mito han, Kôrakuen, continues to be maintained today as a historic site & garden open to the public.

References

• Plaques on-site at the former location of the Satsuma mansion in Kyoto.
• "Daimyô yashiki." Sekai daihyakka jiten 世界大百科事典. Hitachi Solutions, 2012.