Kyoto Shoshidai

Matsudaira Sadaaki in Western uniform during the Bakumatsu period as the last Kyoto Shoshidai from 1864 to 1867

The Kyoto Shoshidai (京都所司代, Kyōto Shoshidai) was an important administrative and political office in the Tokugawa shogunate.[1] The office was the personal representative of the military dictators Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi in Kyoto, the seat of the Japanese Emperor, and was adopted by the Tokugawa shōguns.[2] The significance and effectiveness of the office is credited to the third Tokugawa shōgun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, who developed these initial creations as bureaucratic elements in a consistent and coherent whole.[3]

The office was similar to the Rokuhara Tandai of the 13th- and 14th-century Kamakura shogunate. Tandai was the name given to governors or chief magistrates of important cities under the Kamakura shogunate. The office became very important under the Hōjō regents and was always held by a trusted member of the family.[4]

  1. ^ Ito, Shinsho. "Hideyoshi's Inauguration to Kampaku and the Foundation of Shoshidai," Journal of Japanese history (日本史研究). Vol.419(19970000) pp. 1-19.
  2. ^ Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric. (2005). "Kyōto-shosidai" in Japan Encyclopedia, p. 587, p. 587, at Google Books.
  3. ^ Brinkley, Frank. (1915). A History of the Japanese People from the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era, p. 632.
  4. ^ Murdoch, James. (1996). A History of Japan, p. 10 n1.