Kakegawa Domain (1/2)13 houses rule

The Kakegawa domain was a domain that existed in Kakegawa City, Shizuoka Prefecture. Kakegawa is a key location along the Tokaido Road, and during the Sengoku period, three ruling families, the Imagawa clan, the Tokugawa clan, and the Takeda clan, fought fiercely for control.

In the end, it was Tokugawa Ieyasu who acquired the land of Kakegawa, and he appointed his senior vassals, Ienari Ishikawa and Yasumichi Ishikawa, father and son, as the castle owners. After establishing the Edo Shogunate, he appointed his half-brother Sadakatsu Matsudaira as the first lord of the Kakegawa domain.

However, many feudal lord families ruled the Kakegawa domain other than the parent domain.
Let's unravel the history of the Kakegawa clan.

History of the Kakegawa domain before the Ota family ruled it

The Kakegawa domain was ruled by 13 clans from the time it was established until the end of the Edo period.
During the Edo period, there was a system for feudal lords known as Kokugeki, which is similar to modern-day transfers, so it was not uncommon for multiple feudal lords to rule one domain.
However, it is rare for a domain to be ruled by as many as 13 families.

The first lord of the Kakegawa domain was Sadakatsu Matsudaira, Ieyasu's half-brother.
Sadakatsu Matsudaira was appointed as the lord of the Kakegawa domain in 1601, but 16 years later he became the lord of the Ise-Kuwana domain, which was worth 110,000 koku.
Although he has no particular track record as a castle lord, he was highly trusted by the second shogun, Hidetada Tokugawa, and after the death of his half-brother, Ieyasu Tokugawa, he served as an advisor to the second and third shoguns.

The second lord of the domain, Sadayuki Matsudaira, was the second son of Sadakatsu Matsudaira, the first lord of the domain.
He became the lord of the domain in 1607, while his father Sadakatsu Matsudaira was still alive.
In 1635, by order of Iemitsu, he was transferred to the Iyo Matsuyama domain with an additional 40,000 koku.
Thus, the period of the Matsudaira family as lords ended, and Naotsugu Ando served as lord for only two years.

When Ando Naotsugu followed Tokugawa Ieyasu's tenth son, Tokugawa Yorinobu, to the Kishu domain, Matsudaira Sadatsuna became the lord, but he too was transferred to the Yodo domain in Yamashiro Province after a short term of five years.

After that, the Kakegawa domain changed hands rapidly, from Nobumasa Asakura to Yukinari Aoyama to the Matsudaira Sakurai family.
However, all of them were transferred to other domains in their first generation (only the Sakurai Matsudaira family was in their second generation), so they had almost no notable achievements.

Finally, the Ii family, which continued from Naoyoshi Ii, continued to be the lord for four generations.
The year was Manji 2 (1659), 55 years after the establishment of the Kakegawa domain.

However, the second generation, Ii Naotake, was so incompetent in politics that he was described in history books as a ``stupid person,'' and the third generation, Ii Naotomo, was judged by the shogunate to be ``mad'' and was forcibly deposed. Masu.

Naonori Ii, who became the fourth lord of the domain, moved to Echigo the following year.

After that, the lord's house was returned to the Sakurai-Matsudaira family for one generation, and then transferred to the Ogasawara family.
The first lord of the domain, Nagahiro Ogasawara, took actions befitting a domain lord for the first time, such as carrying out flood control work on the Oigawa and Tenryu rivers in 1722.

However, the second lord, Nagayoshi Ogasawara, died at the age of 23, and the third lord, Nagayasu Ogasawara, was transferred to the Mutsu Tanakura domain two years after becoming the lord.

In addition, Ogasawara Nagayasu is one of Kabuki's ``Shiranami Gonin Otoko'' and a model for Nippon Daemon, and there is an episode in which a thief who calls himself Nippon Zaemon is stopped from working in Kakegawa, his former territory, for committing banditry. is being conveyed.

The era of the Ota family as lords

In 1746, Moketoshi Ota became the lord of the Kakegawa domain.
The Ota family would rule the Kakegawa domain until the end of the Edo period.