ex-feudatories

Updated: May 1, 2025

The total abolition of feudalism may be said to have now come in sight, but the leading progressists adopted all precautions to consummate their programme without disturbance. They resolved to preserve, at the outset, the semblance of the old system, and to that end the ex-feudatories were nominated to the post of governor in the districts where they had formerly exercised autonomic power.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

It being now considered safe to advance to the next stage of the mediatization of the fiefs, the Emperor issued an edict abolishing local autonomy; removing the sometime daimyo from their post of prefectural governor; providing that the local revenues should thereafter be sent into the central treasury; declaring the appointment and dismissal of officials to be among the prerogatives of the Imperial Government; directing that the ex-feudatories should continue to receive one-tenth of their former incomes but that they should make Tokyo* their place of permanent residence, and ordaining that the samurai should be left in continued and undisturbed possession of all their hereditary pensions and allowances.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

*Yedo was now called Tokyo, or "Eastern Capital;" and Kyoto was named Saikyo, or "Western Capital." These changes were not so momentous as might be supposed at first sight. It is true that the ex-feudatories were reduced to the position of private gentlemen without even a patent of nobility.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era