Tsugaru Yasuchika

Tsugaru Yasuchika (津軽 寧親, March 8, 1765 – July 30, 1833) was the 9th daimyō of Hirosaki Domain in northern Mutsu Province, Honshū, Japan (modern-day Aomori Prefecture). His courtesy title, initially Dewa-no-kami, was later raised to Saikyo Daiyu.

Biography

Tsugaru Yasuchika was the eldest son of Tsugaru Akitaka, the 5th lord of Kurosaki, a 4000 koku hatamoto holding created for the second son of Tsugaru Nobuhira. When Tsugaru Nobuakira, the 8th daimyō of Tsugaru Domain died without heir, he was posthumously adopted to maintain the Tsugaru bloodline, turning the Kurosaki holding over to his own eldest son. Yasuchika implemented many of the reforms initiated by Nobuakira to restore prosperity to the disaster-prone domain, including having many of his samurai turn to part-time farming to maintain their revenues.

In 1805, the Tokugawa shogunate charged Tsugaru Domain with the responsibility of maintaining the security of Ezo, an area considered loosely at the time to encompass present-day Hokkaidō, Karafuto and the southern Kurile Islands. In return, the revenues of the domain were increased from 70,000 to 100,000 koku, and Kuroishi was raised to a full han status. However, the increase in revenue was far less than the expense of dispatching troops and maintaining garrisons in the wide expanses of the northern islands, and increases in local taxation led to widespread peasant revolts by 1813. Growing dissatisfaction with his rule cumulated in the Soma Daisaku Incident of 1821, an assassination attempt. In 1825, Yasuchika turned rule of the domain over to his second son and went into retirement. He died at the domain’s Edo residence in 1833.

See also

• Tsugaru clan

References

• (Japanese) "Hirosaki-jō" (17 Feb. 2008)
• (Japanese) "Tsugaru-han" on Edo 300 HTML (17 Feb. 2008)
• Koyasu Nobushige (1880). Buke kazoku meiyoden 武家家族名誉伝 Volume 1. Tokyo: Koyasu Nobushige. (Accessed from National Diet Library, 17 July 2008)
• Kurotaki, Jūjirō (1984). Tsugaru-han no hanzai to keibatsu 津軽藩の犯罪と刑罰. Hirosaki: Hoppō shinsha.
• Narita, Suegorō (1975). Tsugaru Tamenobu: shidan 津軽為信: 史談. Aomori: Tōō Nippōsha.
• Tsugaru Tsuguakira Kō Den kankōkai (1976). Tsugaru Tsuguakira kō-den 津輕承昭公傳. Tokyo: Rekishi Toshosha

• The content of much of this article was derived from that of the corresponding article on Japanese Wikipedia.