Yonezawa Domain

Yonezawa Domain (米沢藩, Yonezawa-han) was a feudal domain in Edo period Japan, located in Dewa Province (modern-day Yamagata Prefecture), Japan. It was centered at Yonezawa castle in what is now the city of Yonezawa, and its territory extended over the Okitama District of Dewa Province, in what is today southeastern Yamagata Prefecture. It was ruled throughout its history by the Uesugi clan, as tozama daimyō, with an initial income of 300,000 koku, which later fell to 150,000–180,000. The Uesugi were ranked as a province-holding daimyō (国持ち大名, kunimochi daimyō) and as such, had the privilege of shogunal audiences in the Great Hall (Ōhiroma) of Edo Castle.^[1]

The domain shifted from a poor, indebted, and corruptly led domain to a very prosperous one in only a few decades in the 1760s–80s. Yonezawa was declared in 1830 by the shogunate to be the paragon of a well-managed domain. Scholar Mark Ravina used Yonezawa as a case study^[2] in analysing the political status and conceptions of statehood and identity in the feudal domains of the Edo period (1603–1868).