Shimazu clan
noble family
The Shimazu clan (島津氏, Shimazu-shi; Japanese pronunciation: [ɕí.mä̀.(d͡)zɨ̀, ɕì.mä́.(d͡)zɨ́.ɕì]) were the daimyō of the Satsuma han, which spread over Satsuma, Ōsumi and Hyūga provinces in Japan.
The Shimazu were identified as one of the tozama or outsider daimyō families in contrast with the fudai or insider clans which were hereditary vassals or allies of the Tokugawa clan.
History
The Shimazu were descendants of the Seiwa Genji branch of the Minamoto. The Shimazu would become one of the families of Edo period daimyō to have held their territory continuously since the Kamakura period, and would also become, at their peak, the wealthiest and most powerful Tozama daimyō family with an income in excess of 700,000 koku.
The founder, Shimazu Tadahisa (d. 1227), was a son of Shōgun Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147–1199) with the sister of Hiki Yoshikazu. Tadahisa's wife was a daughter of Koremune Hironobu, a descendant of the Hata clan, whose name Tadahisa took at first. He received the domain of Shioda in Shinano Province in 1186 and was then named shugo of Satsuma Province. He sent Honda Sadachika to take possession of the province in his name and accompanied Yoritomo in his expedition to Mutsu in 1189. He went to Satsuma in 1196, subdued the Hyūga and Ōsumi provinces, and built a castle in the Hyūga Province as part of the Shimazu Estate, whose name he also adopted.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shimazu 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.