Daimyo

"Daimio" redirects here. For the skipper butterfly genus, see Daimio (butterfly).
A map of the territories of the Sengoku daimyo around the first year of the Genki era (1570 AD)

Daimyo (大名, daimyō, Japanese pronunciation: [daimʲoː] ⓘ) were powerful Japanese magnates,[1] feudal lords[2] who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominally to the emperor and the kuge (an aristocratic class). In the term, dai (大) means 'large', and myō stands for myōden (名田), meaning 'private land'.[3]

From the shugo of the Muromachi period through the Sengoku period to the daimyo of the Edo period, the rank had a long and varied history. The backgrounds of daimyo also varied considerably; while some daimyo clans, notably the Mōri, Shimazu and Hosokawa, were cadet branches of the Imperial family or were descended from the kuge, other daimyo were promoted from the ranks of the samurai, notably during the Edo period.

Daimyo often hired samurai to guard their land, and paid them in land or food, as relatively few could afford to pay them in money. The daimyo era ended soon after the Meiji Restoration, with the adoption of the prefecture system in 1871.

  1. ^ Daimyo. Britanica
  2. ^ Katsuro, Hara (2009). An Introduction to the History of Japan. BiblioBazaar, LLC. p. 291. ISBN 978-1-110-78785-2.
  3. ^ Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, entry for "daimyo"