Tokushima han

• Territory: Awa province + Awaji Island
• Castle: Tokushima castle
• Lords: Hachisuka clan
• Kokudaka: 258,000
• Japanese: 徳島藩 (Tokushima han)

Tokushima was a 258,000 koku tozama domain located on Shikoku. The domain, based at Tokushima castle and ruled by the Hachisuka clan, controlled most of Awa province, along with Awaji Island. The domain has been characterized as possessing a highly commercialized economy, specializing in particular in the production & export of indigo, and a relatively small samurai population compared to many other domains.

Hachisuka Yoshishige was the first Edo period lord of Tokushima, being granted the domain by Tokugawa Ieyasu following his loyal service at the Battle of Sekigahara. He was later given Awaji Island as part of his domain.

During the reign of the third lord of Tokushima, Hachisuka Tadateru, misconduct on the part of one of the karô led to a succession dispute known as the Amabe Dispute; another incident known as the Inada Dispute occurred in the Bakumatsu period, throwing the governance of the domain into chaos.

Tokushima came to focus on indigo as a specialty export, much as many other domains did, seeking a monopolistic control over the market in that one good in order to maintain a strong domainal economy. Tokushima managed this by encouraging a notion that Tokushima indigo was of particularly high quality, and thus blocking out any competitors, whose products thus came to be seen as inferior. The domain faced challenges with this approach, however, as Osaka merchants formed cartels in the mid-1700s to exert their power as consumers over the market, in order to drive prices down. The domain fought back in the 1760s, instituting a short-lived system in which Osaka merchants had to bid against one another to buy Tokushima indigo; this did succeed in raising the prices, but was shut down by the shogunate before long. The domain then responded by upping its use of cartels of suppliers, in order to combat the power of the Osaka merchants' purchasing cartels.

Bakumatsu & Meiji

Pro-Imperial loyalism in Tokushima was largely espoused only by the Inada clan separatists and their followers, many of whom went on to fight in the Boshin War.

References

• Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan, Stanford University Press, 1999.