Kazoku
Template:Short description Template:For Template:Italic title
The Template:Nihongo3 was the hereditary peerage of the Empire of Japan, which existed between 1869 and 1947. It was formed by merging the feudal lords (daimyō) and court nobles (kuge) into one system modelled after the British peerage. Distinguished military officers, politicians, and scholars were occasionally ennobled until the country's defeat in the Second World War in 1945 (Template:Langx).<ref name="britannica">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The system was abolished with the 1947 constitution, which prohibited any form of aristocracy under it, but kazoku descendants still form the core of the traditional upper class in the country's society, distinct from the nouveau riche.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Template:Nihongo should not be confused with Template:Nihongo, which is pronounced the same in Japanese, but written with different characters, meaning "immediate family" (as in the film Kazoku above).
OriginsEdit
Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the ancient court nobility of Kyoto, the Template:Nihongo, regained some of its lost status. Several members of the Template:Transliteration, such as Iwakura Tomomi and Nakayama Tadayasu, played a crucial role in the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp and the early Meiji government nominated Template:Transliteration to head all seven of the newly established administrative departments.
The Meiji oligarchs, as part of their Westernizing reforms, merged the Template:Transliteration with the former Template:Nihongo3 into an expanded aristocratic class on 25 July 1869, to recognize that the Template:Transliteration and former Template:Transliteration were a social class distinct from the other designated social classes of Template:Nihongo3 and Template:Nihongo3. They lost their territorial privileges.<ref name="britannica"/> Itō Hirobumi, one of the principal authors of the Meiji constitution, intended the new Template:Transliteration peerage to serve as a political and social bulwark for the "restored" emperor and the Japanese imperial institution. At the time, the Template:Transliteration (142 families) and former Template:Transliteration (285 families) consisted of a group of total 427 families.
All members of the Template:Transliteration without an official government appointment in the provinces were initially obliged to reside in Tokyo. By the end of 1869, a pension system was adopted, which gradually displaced the Template:Transliteration from their posts as provincial governors and as government leaders. The stipends promised by the government were eventually replaced by government bonds.
DevelopmentEdit
In 1884 the Template:Transliteration were reorganized and the old feudal titles were replaced with:<ref name="britannica"/>
There were several categories within the Template:Transliteration. The initial rank distribution for Template:Transliteration houses of Template:Transliteration descent depended on the highest possible office to which its ancestors had been entitled in the imperial court. Thus, the heirs of the Template:Nihongo of the Fujiwara dynasty (Konoe, Takatsukasa, Kujō, Ichijō and Nijō) all became princes, the equivalent of a European duke, upon the establishment of the Template:Transliteration in 1884.
The heads of eight other families (Daigo, Hirohata, Kikutei, Koga, Saionji, Tokudaiji, Ōinomikado and Kasannoin) all with the rank of seiga, the second rank in the Template:Transliteration, became marquesses at the same time. Those family heads in the third tier of the Template:Transliteration and with the rank of daijin became counts. Heads of families in the lowest three tiers (those in the ranks of urin, mei and han) typically became viscounts, but could also be ennobled as counts.
Other appointments to the two highest ranks in the Template:Transliteration—prince and marquess—from among the Template:Transliteration were also made to reward certain Template:Transliteration families for their roles in the Meiji Restoration, for taking a prominent role in national affairs or for their close degree of relationship to the Imperial family. Thus the head of the Template:Transliteration-ranked Template:Ill house became a prince in 1884. The heads of the Tokudaiji and the Saionji houses were advanced to the rank of prince from the rank of marquess in 1911 and 1920, respectively.
In recognition of his father's role in the Meiji Restoration, Iwakura Tomosada, the heir of noble Iwakura Tomomi and whose family had been in the fourth tier of Template:Transliteration nobility, with the rank of Template:Transliteration, was ennobled as a prince in 1884. Nakayama Tadayasu, the Meiji Emperor's maternal grandfather and also from an Template:Transliteration-ranked family, was ennobled as a marquess. The head of the Shō family, the former royal family of the Ryūkyū Kingdom (Okinawa), was given the title of marquess. When the Korean Empire was annexed in 1910, the House of Yi was mediatized as an incorporated and therefore Template:Nihongo. Some Korean princes were also made Japanese Template:Nihongo.
Excluding the Tokugawas, the initial Template:Transliteration rank distribution for the former Template:Transliteration lords depended on rice revenue: those with 150,000 Template:Transliteration or more became marquesses, those with 50,000 Template:Transliteration or more become counts, and those with holdings rated below 50,000 Template:Transliteration became viscounts. The head of the Tokugawa clan, Tokugawa Iesato, became a prince, the heads of primary Tokugawa branch houses (Template:Transliteration) became marquesses, the heads of the secondary branches became counts and the heads of more distant branches became viscounts. The head of the Matsudaira (Fukui Domain) branch was raised to the rank of marquess from the rank of count in 1888. In 1902, the former Template:Transliteration Tokugawa Yoshinobu was created a prince, and the head of the Mito Template:Transliteration house was raised to the same rank, prince, in 1929.
Of the other former Template:Transliteration clans, the heads of the Mōri (Chōshū Domain) and Shimazu (Satsuma Domain) clans were both ennobled as princes in 1884 for their role in the Meiji Restoration; the Yamauchi (Tosa Domain) clan was given the rank of marquess. The heads of the main Asano (Hiroshima Domain), Ikeda (Okayama and Tottori Domains), Kuroda (Fukuoka Domain), Satake (Kubota Domain), Nabeshima (Saga Domain), Hachisuka (Tokushima Domain), Hosokawa (Kumamoto Domain) and Maeda (Kaga Domain) clans became marquesses in 1884.
Notably, the head of the main family line of the Date clan, which had formerly ruled the extensive Sendai Domain, was only ennobled as a count and was thus denied a hereditary seat in the House of Peers; this was likely due to the domain's prominent role as the leader of a coalition against the Imperial forces during the Boshin War. In 1891, the head of the Date-Uwajima family (Uwajima Domain), a cadet branch of the clan which had remained loyal to the Emperor during the conflict, was raised to the rank of marquess, having been ennobled as a count in 1884.
Many of those who had significant roles in the Meiji Restoration, or their heirs, were ennobled. Ito Hirobumi and Yamagata Aritomo were ennobled as counts in 1884, promoted to marquesses in 1895 and finally became princes in 1907. The heirs of Okubo Toshimichi and Kido Takayoshi, two of the three great nobles of the Meiji Restoration, were ennobled as marquesses in 1884, followed by the heirs of samurai general-politician Saigō Takamori in 1902.
Succession and numbersEdit
As in the British peerage, only the actual holder of a title and his consort were considered members of the Template:Transliteration. The holders of the top two ranks, prince and marquess, automatically became members of the House of Peers in the Diet of Japan upon their succession or upon majority (in the case of peers who were minors). Counts, viscounts and barons elected up to 150 representatives from their ranks to sit in the House of Peers.
Under the Peerage Act of 7 July 1884, pushed through by Home Minister and future first Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi after visiting Europe, the Meiji government expanded the hereditary peerage with the award of Template:Transliteration status to persons regarded as having performed distinguished public services to the nation.<ref name="britannica"/> The government also divided the Template:Transliteration into five ranks explicitly based on the British peerage, but with titles deriving from the ancient Chinese nobility.
Usually, though not always, titles and hereditary financial stipends passed according to primogeniture. Unlike in European peerage systems, but following traditional Japanese custom, illegitimate sons could succeed to titles and estates. To prevent their lineages from dying out, heads of Template:Transliteration houses could (and frequently did) adopt sons from collateral branches of their own houses, whether in the male or female lines of descent, and from other Template:Transliteration houses whether related or not.
Unlike European custom, the adopted heir of a peer could succeed to a title ahead of a more senior heir in terms of primogeniture. A 1904 amendment to the 1889 Imperial Household Law allowed minor princes (Template:Transliteration) of the imperial family to renounce their imperial status and become peers (in their own right) or heirs to childless peers.
Initially there were 11 non-imperial princes, 24 marquesses, 76 counts, 324 viscounts and 74 barons, for a total of 509 peers.<ref>Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan</ref>Template:Rp By 1928, through promotions and new creations, there were a total of 954 peers: 18 non-imperial princes, 40 marquesses, 108 counts, 379 viscounts and 409 barons. The Template:Transliteration reached a peak of 1016 families in 1944.<ref>Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan</ref>Template:Rp
The 1947 Constitution of Japan abolished the Template:Transliteration and ended the use of all titles of nobility or rank outside the immediate Imperial Family. Since the end of the war, many descendants of the Template:Transliteration families continue to occupy prominent roles in Japanese society and industry.<ref name="britannica"/><ref>Lebra, Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility.</ref>
The Template:Nihongo, or Peers' Club, was the association of the high nobility. It had its headquarters in the Template:Transliteration building. After 1947 it was renamed the Template:Nihongo and is located in the Kasumigaseki Building in Kasumigaseki.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
LifeEdit
Although kazoku families were supposed to live in a style that matched their status, living standards varied significantly from family to family. Kuge families, long having been seen as a spent force since the samurai class became the de facto ruling class in the 11th century, tended to be significantly worse off than daimyo families. The Template:Nihongo, consisting of 26 monk families from Kofukuji, who descended from kuge families (22 of which belonged to the Fujiwara clan), were all made barons under the kazoku system. They were regarded as the poorest and received extra stipends to support their living.<ref>刑部芳則. "幕末・維新の青年群像 (第 3 回) 奈良華族の苦しい立場." 青少年問題 60.春季 (2013): 52-57.</ref> A 1915 survey found that a kazoku family had around 13 servants on average, while the grandest families had hundreds.<ref>小田部雄次『華族 近代日本貴族の虚像と実像』中央公論新社〈中公新書1836〉、2006年（平成18年）ISBN 978-4121018366, p. 65.</ref>
Almost all kazoku heirs raised in Japan attended Gakushuin for their primary and secondary education. For higher education, the most preferred institutions included the University of Tokyo (called Tokyo Imperial University 1897-1947) (e.g., Prince Iemasa Tokugawa, Count Yoriyasu Arima) and the naval and army academies (e.g., Viscount Naganari Ogasawara, Marquess Toshinari Maeda).<ref>サトウユウキ, and 佐藤雄基. "卒業論文題目からみた近代歴史学の歩み: 東京帝国大学国史学科 1905-1944 の事例報告." 立教大学日本学研究所年報 20 (2021): 49-30.</ref> Some opted to be educated overseas, such as at Eton College (e.g., Prince Iesato Tokugawa) and Cambridge University (e.g., Marquess Masauji Hachisuka, Baron Koayata Iwasaki). After completing their education, they pursued varied careers such as statesmen at the House of Peers, diplomats (e.g., Prince Iemasa Tokugawa, Marquess Naohiro Nabeshima), and scholars (e.g., Marquess Yoshichika Tokugawa, Prince Tomohide Iwakura). Those who followed rather unusual career paths included Marquess Hijikata Yoshi, who became a communist and fled to Soviet Russia, and Meiho Ogasawara, an heir to a viscountcy who pursued his passion for films and was disinherited in 1935.<ref>入倉友紀. "松竹蒲田撮影所における女性の映画製作への参画――女優兼脚本家, 松井千枝子の活動を通して." 映像学 108 (2022): 144-163.</ref>
Kazoku usually married within their class. The Imperial Household Law of 1889 prohibited Imperial Princes from marrying commoners, hence their options were limited to Princesses and daughters of kazoku families. Kazoku daughters who married into the Imperial family include Kikuko, Princess Takamatsu (née Tokugawa), Yuriko, Princess Mikasa (née Takagi), and Setsuko, Princess Chichibu (née Matsudaira).
- Seiyokan (Nabeshima residence in Tokyo).jpg
Tokyo house of Marquess Naohiro Nabeshima
- Hofu Mouri Residence and Museum.JPG
Country house of Viscount Mototoshi Mori (now Mori Museum)
- Former Maeda Estate 2009.jpg
Former residence of Marquess Toshinari Maeda (now Komaba Park)
- View of Murin-an garden from main house.jpg
Former Kyoto House of Prince Aritomo Yamagata
- Kazoku-Jogakko.JPG
Kazoku Girls' School (Gakushuin Girls' School) in 1889
- Kaimei kizokuhyō by Shinsai.jpg
Woodblock print of "Enlightened Nobles", depicting prominent noble politicians and military commanders of the Meiji era, 1877
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Itsuko, Princess of Nashimoto (née Nabeshima)
- Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) and Tsuneo Matsudaira aboard Battleship Musashi - 24 June 1943.jpg
- Tokugawa Yoshichika 01.jpg
Marquess Yoshichika Tokugawa with a tiger he hunted in Malaya
- Princess Mikasa 2012-1-2.jpg
Yuriko, Princess Mikasa, one of the last members of the Imperial family who were born as kazoku
- Kijūrō Shidehara, Tomosaburō Katō and Iesato Tokugawa.jpg
Baron Kijuro Shidehara (later Prime Minister), Viscount Tomosaburo Kato and Prince Iesato Tokugawa at Washington Naval Conference
See alsoEdit
NotesEdit
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External linksEdit
Template:Empire of Japan Template:Nobility by nation Template:Authority control