Japanese clans

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a list of Japanese clans. The old clans (gōzoku) mentioned in the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki lost their political power before the Heian period, during which new aristocracies and families, kuge, emerged in their place. After the Heian period, the samurai warrior clans gradually increased in importance and power until they came to dominate the country after the founding of the first shogunate.

Japan traditionally practiced cognatic primogeniture, or male-line inheritance in regard to passing down titles and estates. By allowing adult adoption, or for men to take their wife's name and be adopted into her family served as a means to pass down an estate to a family without any sons, Japan has managed to retain continuous family leadership for many of the below clans, the imperial family, and even ordinary family businesses.[1][2]

The ability for Japanese families to track their lineage over successive generations plays a far more important role than simply having the same name as another family, as many commoners did not use a family name prior to the Meiji Restoration, and many simply adopted (名字, myōji) the name of the lord of their village, or the name of their domain, and may not necessarily have been a retainer to the clan. Other clan names are based on common geographic features or other arbitrary words that didn't necessarily indicate clan membership.[3]

Map showing the territories of major daimyō families around 1570

Many families also adopted sons from other families or married their daughters into other families to cement ties with a larger kin group outside of those with the same name as the main family line, called keibatsu (閨閥, lit. bedroom clique), a clan or family relationship built around both blood and maternal relations. Tokugawa Ieyasu himself had adopted two dozen children of allies in addition to his 16 acknowledged children.[4]

The Meiji Restoration sought to dismantle the clan structure, giving clan leaders titles of nobility to inspire loyalty to the emperor rather than individual clans. However those familial relationships built over multiple generations still maintained their ties, first as monbatsu, then with industrialization, evolved into the pre-war zaibatsu, which were formed by these same inter-clan relationships. With the abolishment of the kazoku in 1947, they reverted to their unofficial keibatsu, and elements of which can be seen today in political families such as the Satō–Kishi–Abe family, with family ties to Marquess Inoue Kaoru, Viscount Ōshima Yoshimasa, and pre-war Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, all descendants of lower ranking Chōshū samurai families who benefited from the clan's outsized influence in the Meiji era government, and effectively created their own new clan, despite the lack of official title.[1][5][6]

Ancient clan names

There are ancient-era clan names called Uji-na (氏名) or Honsei (本姓).

Imperial House

Mon of the Imperial House of Japan

Four noble clans

Gempeitōkitsu (源平藤橘), 4 noble clans of Japan:

Mon of the Minamoto clan
Mon of the Taira clan
Mon of the Fujiwara clan
Mon of the Tachibana clan

Noble clans

Aristocratic family names

From the late ancient era onward, the family name (Myōji/苗字 or 名字) had been commonly used by samurai to denote their family line instead of the name of the ancient clan that the family line belongs to (uji-na/氏名 or honsei/本姓), which was used only in the official records in the Imperial court. Kuge families also had used their family name (Kamei/家名) for the same purpose. Each of samurai families is called "[family name] clan (氏)" as follows and they must not be confused with ancient clan names. The list below is a list of various aristocratic families whose families served as Shugo, Shugodai, Jitō, and Daimyo

Mon of the Akita clan
Mon of the Asano clan
Mon of the Ashikaga clan
Mon of the Hōjō clan
Mon of the Honda clan
Mon of the Hosokawa clan
Mon of the (Mino) Ikeda clan
Mon of the Inaba clan
Mon of the Inoue clan
Mon of the Itō clan
Mon of the Kikuchi clan
Mon of the Maeda clan
Banner with the Mon of the Matsumae clan
Mon of the Mori clan (森氏)
Mon of the Miyoshi clan
Mon of the Mōri clan
Mon of the Shimazu clan
Mon of the Suwa clan
Mon of the Takeda clan
Mon of the Toki clan
Mon of the Tokugawa clan
Mon of the Uesugi clan
Mon 'Mitsuboshi ni ichimonji' of the Watanabe clan
Mon of the Yanagizawa clan
Mon of the Yūki clan

Zaibatsu

Zaibatsu were the industrial and financial vertically integrated business conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed control over significant parts of the Japanese economy from the Meiji period until the end of World War II.

Sacerdotal clans

Ryukyu

Ryukyuan people are not Yamato people, but the Ryukyu Islands have been part of Japan since 1879.

Mon of the Ryukyu Kingdom

Ryukyuan dynasties:

Immigrant clans

Main articles: Toraijin and Shinsen Shōjiroku

Toraijin is used to describe migrants in many contexts, from the original migration of a Yamato peoples to more recent migrants. According to the book Shinsen Shōjiroku compiled in 815, a total 326 out of 1,182 families in the Kinai area on Honshū were regarded as people with foreign genealogy. The book specifically encompasses immigrants from ancient Korea and China and that these families are considered notable, although not inherently noble.[13][14]

Despite the book being highly regarded by many, there are certain claims that are under scrutiny by modern historians, and some corrections and revisions have been made over the recent years with certain clans of specific origins being classified differently.

Paekche (Korea)

Crown of Baekje found in the Tomb of King Muryeong
Mon of Akizuki clan
    • Haruda clan (原田氏) – cadet branch of Yamatonoaya clan.
    • Inoue clan (井上氏) – cadet branch of Yamatonoaya clan. Not to be confused with the Seiwa Genji Inoue clan.
    • Kawachinoaya clan (西漢氏) – cadet branch of Yamatonoaya clan.
    • Ōkura clan (大蔵氏) – cadet branch of Yamatonoaya clan.
    • Sakanoue clan (坂上氏) – cadet branch of Yamatonoaya clan.
    • Nishiki clan (錦氏) – cadet branch of Yamatonoaya clan.
    • Nishikibe clan (錦部氏) – cadet branch of Yamatonoaya clan.
    • Takamuko clan (高向氏) – cadet branch of Yamatonoaya clan; famous for Takamuko no Kuromaro. Not to be confused with a different Takamuko clan of the same name that descends from Takenouchi no Sukune.
    • Tamura clan (田村氏) – cadet branch of Yamatonoaya clan.
  • Yamatonofumi clan (東文氏) – descended from the scholar Wani. Related to the Kawachinofumi clan.

Goguryeo (Korea)

Crown of Goguryeo

Silla (Korea)

Crown of Silla
Mon of Chōsokabe clan
Mon of Kawakatsu clan

Kaya (Korea)

Crown of Kaya

China

Mianguan of China
  • Asatsuma clan (朝妻氏) – descended from Tsuru no Omi (都留使主) of the Karakuni no Hito (韓国人) family. Due to the family name "Karakuni no Hito" meaning "Korean people", it may be under the wrong category.
  • Mamuta clan (茨田氏) – descended from Sun Hao.
  • Nishigori clan (錦織氏) – descended from Hanoji (波努志) of the Karakuni no Hito (韓国人) family. Due to the family name "Karakuni no Hito" meaning "Korean people", it may be under the wrong category.
  • Wakae clan (若江氏) – descended from Emperor Ling of Han; originally have come from Paekche.
  • Yako clan (陽侯氏) – descended from Emperor Yang of Sui.

See also

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Notes

References

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