Suwa Domain
Open-knowledge reference entry

Suwa Domain (諏訪藩, Suwa-han) was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan. It was located in Shinano Province, Honshū. The domain was centered at Takashima Castle, located in what is now part of the town of Suwa in Nagano Prefecture. It was also known as Takashima Domain (高島藩, Takashima-han).
History
The Suwa clan had ruled the area around Lake Suwa in Shinano Province since ancient times. The clan was defeated by Takeda Shingen in 1542. The final Suwa ruler, Suwa Yorishige was forced to commit seppuku; however, his nephew, Suwa Yoritada was spared as hereditary kannushi of Suwa Shrine. After the Takeda clan was destroyed by an alliance of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu, Suwa Yoritada went into the service of the Tokugawa. Following the Siege of Odawara (1590), he was elevated to the status of daimyō with Sōja Domain, a 10,000 koku holding in Kōzuke Province. This was subsequently raised to 27,000 koku.
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This entry incorporates text from “Suwa Domain” 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.