Gosekke

• Japanese: 五摂家 (gosekke)

The Gosekke, or "Five Regent Houses," were the top five families of kuge (court nobility). All traced their descent from the Fujiwara clan.

The five families were the Konoe, Ichijô, Nijô, Kujô, and Takatsukasa. In the Edo period, if not earlier, certain high-ranking positions such as kanpaku rotated regularly between the five families.

References

• Cecilia Segawa Seigle, "Shinanomiya Tsuneko: Portrait of a Court Lady," in Anne Walthall (ed.), The Human Tradition in Modern Japan, Scholarly Resources, Inc. (2002), 6.