Mōri clan
samurai clan
The Mōri clan (毛利氏, Mōri-shi; Japanese pronunciation: [moꜜː.ɾʲi, moː.ɾʲiꜜ.ɕi]) was a Japanese samurai clan descended from Ōe no Hiromoto. Ōe no Hiromoto was descended from the Fujiwara clan. The family's most illustrious member, Mōri Motonari, greatly expanded the clan's power in Aki Province. During the Edo period his descendants became daimyō of the Chōshū Domain under the Tokugawa shogunate. After the Meiji Restoration with the abolition of the han system and daimyō, the Mōri clan became part of the new nobility.
Origins
The founder of the clan, Mōri Suemitsu, was the fourth son of Ōe no Hiromoto. He founded the clan when he took the name from his shōen named "Mōri" in Aikō District, Sagami Province. After the Jōkyū War, Suemitsu was appointed to the jitō office of a shōen in Aki Province. He was defeated by Hōjō Tokiyori in 1247 and committed suicide (seppuku) at Minamoto no Yoritomo's shrine (hokkedō) along with his Miura clan allies. The lineage of the Mori clan is well verified because it matches up from several different sources such as the Mōri Family Tree (毛利系図), Sonpi Bunmyaku and Ōe Family Tree (大江氏系図).
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q914637. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1247.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mōri 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.