Chōshū Domain

Overview

The Chōshū Domain (長州藩, Chōshū-han) was a han (藩, domain) of the Tokugawa Shogunate, established in 1600 and dissolved on 29 August 1871. It was also known as the Hagi Domain (萩藩, Hagi-han). Its rulers were the tozama daimyō (外様大名, "outside lords" — daimyo who had submitted to Tokugawa Ieyasu only after the Battle of Sekigahara) of the Mōri family, who held it for the domain's entire existence. Assessed under the kokudaka (石高, rice-yield) system, Chōshū reached a peak value of 369,000 koku.

The domain lay in Nagato Province, in the Chūgoku region of Honshu, and was headquartered at Hagi Castle, in what is now the city of Hagi. It was the most prominent anti-Tokugawa domain in Japan. During the Meiji Restoration it formed the Satchō Alliance (薩長同盟, Satchō Dōmei) with its old rival Satsuma Domain, and men of Chōshū became central to the establishment of the Empire of Japan and to the Meiji oligarchy that governed it.

History

Chōshū was founded in 1600, in the fifth year of the Keichō era (慶長, Keichō), at the very start of the Edo period. The Mōri had fought against Tokugawa Ieyasu at Sekigahara in 1600 and lost; the domain granted to them was a reduced inheritance, and their status as tozama — outside lords, excluded from the shogunate's inner councils — defined Chōshū's politics for two and a half centuries. Branches of the Mōri also ruled the neighbouring Chōfu and Kiyosue domains.

The domain's confrontation with the shogunate came to a head in the 1860s. Chōshū forces were involved in the Kinmon Incident (禁門の変, Kinmon no Hen) of 1864, an armed clash at the imperial palace in Kyoto. The shogunate responded with the Chōshū Expeditions (長州征討, Chōshū Seitō), military campaigns intended to punish and subdue the domain. Chōshū also fought the Shimonoseki Campaign (下関戦争, Shimonoseki Sensō), a series of engagements against Western naval forces.

Out of this conflict came the realignment that changed Japanese history: the Satchō Alliance, concluded between Chōshū and Satsuma. The two domains, long rivals, combined to overthrow the Tokugawa order and to carry through the Meiji Restoration. Chōshū was dissolved on 29 August 1871, when the Meiji government abolished the han system; its territory was absorbed into Yamaguchi Prefecture.

Territory and Influence

Chōshū's territory lay in Nagato and Suō provinces, at the western end of Honshu. Its capital was Hagi, seat of Hagi Castle; Yamaguchi Castle was a second headquarters location. The domain's assessed value of 369,000 koku placed it among the largest domains in Japan, and its wealth and distance from Edo gave it room to act independently of the shogunate.

That independence produced a remarkable generation of political and military figures. Chōshū was the birthplace of Utsumi Tadakatsu, Nashiba Tokioki, Endō Kinsuke, Hirosawa Saneomi, Maebara Issei and Sufu Kōhei, and the employer of Yamao Yōzō, Inoue Masaru, Ōmura Masujirō, Katori Motohiko, Oda Kaisen and Unkoku Tōteki. Men trained in the domain's service went on to staff the new imperial state, and Chōshū, together with Satsuma, supplied the core of the Meiji oligarchy.

The Name in Japanese

The domain's name is written 長州藩. Its kana reading is ちょうしゅうはん, and its romaji is Chōshū-han. The alternative name, Hagi Domain, is 萩藩 (はぎはん, Hagi-han), after the castle town of Hagi.

Character by character:

• 長 — read here as ちょう (chō). Meaning "long" or "chief". In this word it is the first element of the place name Chōshū.
• 州 — read here as しゅう (shū). Meaning "province", "state" or "region" — originally a sandbank or land mass in a river, hence a tract of land. Together, 長州 (Chōshū) is the name by which Nagato Province was known.
• 藩 — read here as はん (han). Meaning "domain" or "fief": the territory of a daimyo under the Tokugawa order. The same character appears in 藩主 (hanshu, lord of a domain) and in 廃藩置県 (haihan chiken, the 1871 abolition of domains and establishment of prefectures).

The name is thus transparent in Japanese in a way it is not in English: Chōshū is the province, and han marks the political unit. The domain was named after Nagato Province, whose alternative name was Chōshū.

Legacy

Chōshū's afterlife is visible in the map of modern Japan: its territory became Yamaguchi Prefecture, and the prefecture's political culture still carries the domain's imprint. The Satchō Alliance it built with Satsuma became the template for domain-based politics in the Meiji state, and the men it produced and employed filled the early imperial bureaucracy and army.

The domain's final date, 29 August 1871, marks the end of the han as a political unit and the beginning of the prefectural system that Japan still uses. Hagi Castle and Yamaguchi Castle remain the physical reference points of the domain's history, and the name Chōshū survives chiefly in the phrase Satchō (薩長), the pairing of Satsuma and Chōshū that stands for the driving force of the Meiji Restoration.