Uesugi Clan - Edo Period

Edo Period

Uesugi Kagekatsu was given the tozama domain of Yonezawa (300,000 koku) in Dewa province, in Honshū's Tōhoku (Northeast) Region.

Much research has been done on the economics of Yonezawa in the Edo period, particularly by Mark Ravina among others, and it is taken as fairly representative of a tozama (outsider) domain. Yonezawa was far from the capital, with far less direct political control from the shogunate, and also less trade and urbanization. Yonezawa was largely an agricultural domain, making it again a good representation of agricultural and social developments among the peasantry in this period.

Despite agricultural advances and generally high growth in the 17th century, Yonezawa, like most parts of the country, experienced a considerable drop in growth after 1700; it may in fact have entered stagnation or decline. The official koku revenue of the Uesugi daimyo was cut in half in 1664, but the clan continued to expend as before, maintaining the same lordly standard of living. Yonezawa, again representative of many other domains, entered debt, and was especially hard-struck by famines in the 1750s. The situation became so bad that in 1767, daimyo Uesugi Shigesada considered giving the territory back to the shogunate. Instead, he allowed his adopted son Uesugi Harunori to take over as daimyo; through agricultural and moral reforms, and series of other strict policies, Harunori turned the domain around. In 1830, less than ten years after Harunori's death, the shogunate officially praised Yonezawa as an examplar of good governance.

The Meiji Restoration in 1868 brought the abolition of the han system, that is, the end of the domains, the feudal lords, and the samurai class.