Akashi Domain

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Akashi Domain was a feudal domain in Edo-period Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate. It was in Harima Province, in what is now southern Hyōgo Prefecture, centered on Akashi Castle in the city of Akashi. At the start of the period the area was part of Ikeda holdings in Himeji Domain. In 1617, Ikeda Mitsumasa was moved, and Ogasawara Tadazane, the son-in-law of Matsudaira Nobuyasu, received a 100,000 koku domain that included Akashi and he built a castle. Akashi Castle guarded the San’yōdō highway and the coast near Awaji Island, making it an important defense point for the Kansai region. The Ogasawara were moved in 1632, and the domain was then given to trusted fudai cadet branches—the Toda-Matsudaira, Okubo, Fujii-Matsudaira, and Honda clans. After Honda Masatoshi was demoted in 1682, Echizen-Matsudaira (a shinpan branch) ran Akashi until the Meiji era. The 8th lord, Matsudaira Narikoto, was a son of the Shogun, and the domain’s kokudaka rose from 60,000 to 80,000, plus 20,000 tenryō lands, though debts remained high. In Bakumatsu, the domain built twelve coastal batteries and supplied troops for Edo defenses and the Chōshū expeditions. At the start of the Boshin War its leader Yoshinori defected to the Meiji government. In 1871 the han system ended and Akashi became part of Hyōgo Prefecture; the Echizen-Matsudaira family became viscounts in 1884. Unlike many domains, Akashi Domain was a single continuous territory.