Daimyo (Japanese, "great holders of private land")

Feudal lords who dominated Japan from the 12th to the 19th century. They arose as leaders of the samurai (warrior) class, who during the peaceful Heian period (790-1185) administered provincial estates for the civil nobility residing in the capital Kyoto.

In 1192 a member of this class, Minamoto Yoritomo, established a military dictatorship as shogun. He and his successors, the Hojo and the Ashikaga shoguns, rewarded followers with lucrative administrative rights (shiki) over noble estates, creating the daimyo families. All were potential rivals for power unless checked by central authority. When this collapsed in the 15th and 16th centuries, the great daimyo destroyed each other and were replaced by sengoku (Warring State) daimyo, who feuded constantly and actually owned their lands, which they ruled from castles.

Unity was finally restored by the daimyo leader Oda Nobunaga and his successors Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603. Under the Tokugawa there were between 200 and 300 daimyo families, all virtually autonomous within their own estates but subordinated to the shogun and obliged to leave their families as hostages in Edo (Tokyo) and to attend him regularly there. The daimyo were officially defined as lords whose lands yielded over 10,000 koku (1,800,000 litres) of rice annually. The daimyo class was abolished in 1871, after the fall of the shogunate, and its members absorbed into a new pensioned nobility.