Kyoto Shoshidai

The Kyoto Shoshidai (京都所司代, Kyōto Shoshidai^?) was an important administrative and political office in the early modern government of Japan. However, the significance and effectiveness of the office is credited to the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu, who developed these initial creations as bureaucratic elements in a consistent and coherent whole.

The official was the personal representative of the military dictators Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi; and it was institutionalized as the representative of the Tokugawa shoguns.

The office was similar to the Rokuhara Tandai of the 13th and 14th centuries. Tandai was the name given to governors or chief magistrates of important cities under the Kamakura shogunate. The office became very important under the Hōjō regents and was always held by a trusted member of the family.

The office was expanded and its duties codified as an office in the Tokugawa shogunate. The shoshidai, usually chosen from among the fudai daimyo, was the shogun's deputy in the Kyoto region, and was responsible for maintaining good relations and open communication between the shogunate and the imperial court. No less important, this official was also tasked with controlling the access of the daimyo to the Court. He was appointed to oversee financial measures and the court, and to ensure the emperor's personal security and for guarding the safety of the court. For example, the shoshidai supported the Kyoto magistrate or municipal administrator (the machi-bugyō) in making positive policy about firefighting for the royal palaces. In this context, working with the shoshidai would have been the administrator of the reigning sovereign's court (the kinri-zuki bugyō) and the administrator of the ex-emperor's court (the sendō-zuki bugyō), both of whom would have been shogunate appointees. He would have been at the head of a network of spies whose quiet task was to discover and report any covert sources of sedition, insurrection or other kinds of unrest.

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