Chōsokabe clan
noble family
Chōsokabe clan (Japanese: 長宗我部氏, Hepburn: Chōsokabe-shi), also known as Chōsokame (長宗我部), was a Japanese samurai kin group. Over time, they were known for serving the Hosokawa clan, then the Miyoshi clan and then the Ichijō clan.
Origin
The clan claims descent from the ancient immigrant (Toraijin) clan called the Hata clan. The Hata clan, while originating from Korea; specifically from Paekche according to the Nihon Shoki (720), its lineage differs depending on the source. According to the Shinsen Shōjiroku (815), the Hata clan claims descent from Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty. However, modern Japanese historians state that the clan most likely originated from the kingdom of Silla, another ancient kingdom of Korea. Hence making the Chōsokabe clan, a branch of the aforementioned Hata clan, also of Korean (Silla) descent.
However, in recent times, the self-proclamation of their Hata clan heritage is heavily scrutinized, with the general consensus within the Japanese academic circles labelling the clan's realistic origin as "Unknown".
History
The clan is associated with Tosa Province in modern-day Kōchi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. Chōsokabe Motochika, who unified Shikoku, was the twenty-first daimyō (or head) of the clan.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chōsokabe clan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.