Maeda Harunaga

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Maeda Harunaga (前田 治脩, February 4, 1745 – February 10, 1810) was an Edo period Japanese samurai, and the 10th daimyō of Kaga Domain in the Hokuriku region of Japan. He was the 11th hereditary chieftain of the Kanazawa Maeda clan.

Harunaga was born in Kanazawa as Tokijiro (時次郎), the tenth son of Maeda Yoshinori. His mother was a concubine and he was initially destined for the Jōdo Shinshū priesthood, and was ordained as a priest at the temple of Shōkō-ji in Toyama in 1746; however, with so many of his brothers dying untimely deaths during the O-Ie Sōdō known as the “Kaga Sōdō” he returned to secular life in 1768 under the name of Maeda Toshiari (利有). In 1771, his brother Maeda Shigemichi officially retired, and he became daimyō. He was received in formal audience by Shōgun Tokugawa Ieharu the same year, and was granted a kanji from Ieharu's name, becoming Maeda Harunaga.

In 1792, he established the Kaga Domain's han school, Meirin-dō, and is also noted for restoring the famed Kenroku-en gardens.

Shigemichi had a son, Maeda Naritaka, after he retired, whom Harunaga adopted in 1791; however, he died in 1795. Harunaga then adopted Shigemichi's second son, Maeda Narinaga. Although Harunaga married a daughter of Maeda Toshimichi and had his own son, Toshinobu in 1800, when he retired, he turned the domain over to Shigemichi's son, Narinaga. Narinaga then adopted Toshinobu as heir, but Toshinobu died in 1805. Harunaga lived to 1810.