Han (藩, "domain") is a Japanese historical term for the estate of a daimyo in the Edo period (1603–1868) and early Meiji era (1868–1912).Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Han" in Japan Encyclopedia, p. 283. Han or Bakufu-han (daimyo domain) served as a system of de facto administrative divisions of Japan alongside the de jure provinces until they were abolished in the 1870s.
Unlike Western world feudalism, the value of a Japanese feudal domain was now defined in terms of projected annual income rather than geographic size. Han were valued for taxation using the Kokudaka system which determined value based on output of rice in koku, a Japanese unit of volume considered enough rice to feed one person for one year.Elison, George and Bardwell L. Smith (1987). Warlords, Artists, & Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century, p. 17. A daimyo was determined by the Tokugawa as a lord heading a han assessed at 10,000 koku (50,000 ) or more, and the output of their han contributed to their prestige or how their wealth were assessed. Early such as Georges Appert and Edmond Papinot made a point of highlighting the annual koku yields which were allocated for the Shimazu clan at Satsuma Domain since the 12th century.Georges Appert. (1888). "Shimazu" in Ancien Japon, pp. 77; compare Edmond Papinot. (1906). Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japon; Papinot, (2003). Nobiliare du Japon, p. 55; retrieved 23 March 2013. The Shogunal han and the Imperial provinces served as complementary systems which often worked in tandem for administration. When the Shogun ordered the daimyos to make a census of their people or to make , the work was organized along the borders of the provinces.Roberts, Luke S. (2002). Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: the merchant origins of economic nationalism in 18th-century Tosa, p. 6 As a result, a han could overlap multiple provinces which themselves contained sections of multiple han. In 1690, the richest han was the Kaga Domain, located in the provinces of Kaga Province, Etchū and Noto Province, with slightly over 1 million koku.Conrad Totman (1993). Early Modern Japan, p. 119.
However, in 1872, the Meiji government created the Ryukyu Domain after Japan formally Annexation the Ryukyu Kingdom, a vassal state of the Shimazu clan of Satsuma Domain since 1609.Matsumura, Wendy. (2007). Becoming Okinawan: Japanese Capitalism and Changing Representations of Okinawa, p. 38. The Ryūkyū Domain was governed as a han headed by the Ryukyuan monarchy until it was finally abolished and became Okinawa Prefecture in March 1879.
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