Sakura Domain

Sakura Domain (佐倉藩, Sakura-han^?) was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Shimōsa Province (modern-day Chiba Prefecture), Japan. It was centered on Sakura Castle in what is now the city of Sakura, Chiba. It was ruled for most of its history by the Hotta clan.

Sakura Domain was originally created for Takeda Tadateru, the fifth son of Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1593, near the site of an ancient castle of the Chiba clan, which had fallen into ruins in the early Sengoku period. The domain subsequently passed through a bewildering number of hands during the 1600s, before coming under the control of the Hotta clan in the mid-18th century. During the Bakumatsu period, Hotta Masayoshi was one of the major proponents of rangaku and an ending to the country’s national isolation policy. He was one of the signers of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States. His son, Hotta Masatomo was a key supporter of the Tokugawa shogunate in the early stages of the Boshin War. After the Meiji Restoration, he was pardoned, and eventually made a count (hakushaku) in the kazoku peerage.

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