Japanese clans

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This is a list of Japanese clans. The old clans (gōzoku) mentioned in the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki lost their political power before the Heian period, during which new aristocracies and families, kuge, emerged in their place. After the Heian period, the samurai warrior clans gradually increased in importance and power until they came to dominate the country after the founding of the first shogunate.

Japan traditionally practiced cognatic primogeniture, or male-line inheritance in regard to passing down titles and estates. By allowing adult adoption, or for men to take their wife's name and be adopted into her family served as a means to pass down an estate to a family without any sons, Japan has managed to retain continuous family leadership for many of the below clans, the royal family, and even ordinary family businesses.<ref name="Moore">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The ability for Japanese families to track their lineage over successive generations plays a far more important role than simply having the same name as another family, as many commoners did not use a family name prior to the Meiji Restoration, and many simply Template:Nihongo the name of the lord of their village, or the name of their domain, and may not necessarily have been a retainer to the clan. Other clan names are based on common geographic features or other arbitrary words that didn't necessarily indicate clan membership.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

File:Map Japan Genki1-en.svg
Map showing the territories of major daimyō families around 1570

Many families also adopted sons from other families or married their daughters into other families to cement ties with a larger kin group outside of those with the same name as the main family line, called Template:Nihongo, a clan or family relationship built around both blood and maternal relations. Tokugawa Ieyasu himself had adopted two dozen children of allies in addition to his 16 acknowledged children.<ref name="Monbatsu">Template:Cite book</ref>

The Meiji Restoration sought to dismantle the clan structure, giving clan leaders titles of nobility to inspire loyalty to the emperor rather than individual clans. However those familial relationships built over multiple generations still maintained their ties, first as monbatsu, then with industrialization, evolved into the pre-war zaibatsu, which were formed by these same inter-clan relationships. With the abolishment of the kazoku in 1947, they reverted to their unofficial keibatsu, and elements of which can be seen today in political families such as the Satō–Kishi–Abe family, with family ties to Marquess Inoue Kaoru, Viscount Ōshima Yoshimasa, and pre-war Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, all descendants of lower ranking Chōshū samurai families who benefited from the clan's outsized influence in the Meiji era government, and effectively created their own new clan, despite the lack of official title.<ref name="Moore"/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Ancient clan names

There are ancient-era clan names called Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo.

Imperial clan

File:Imperial Seal of Japan.svg
Mon of The Imperial House

Four noble clans

Template:Nihongo, 4 noble clans of Japan:

File:Sasa Rindo.svg
Mon of the Minamoto clan
File:Ageha-cho.svg
Mon of the Taira clan
File:Japanese crest Sagari Fuji.svg
Mon of the Fujiwara clan
File:Japanese crest Tachibana.svg
Mon of the Tachibana clan

Noble clans

Aristocratic family names

From the late ancient era onward, the family name (Myōji/苗字 or 名字) had been commonly used by samurai to denote their family line instead of the name of the ancient clan that the family line belongs to (uji-na/氏名 or honsei/本姓), which was used only in the official records in the Imperial court. Kuge families also had used their family name (Kamei/家名) for the same purpose. Each of samurai families is called "[family name] clan (氏)" as follows and they must not be confused with ancient clan names. The list below is a list of various aristocratic families whose families served as Shugo, Shugodai, Jitō, and Daimyo

File:Mon Akita Ôgi.jpg
Mon of the Akita clan
File:Alex K Hiroshima Asano (color).svg
Mon of the Asano clan
File:Japanese Crest mitu Uroko.svg
Mon of the Hōjō clan
File:Japanese crest Honda Tachi Aoi.svg
Mon of the Honda clan
File:Japanese Crest Bizenn Chou.svg
Mon of the (Mino) Ikeda clan
File:Japanese Crest Iori ni Mokkou.svg
Mon of the Itō clan
File:Japanese crest Kaga Umebachi.svg
Mon of the Maeda clan
File:Maru ni Takedabishi (No background and Black color drawing).svg
Banner with the Mon of the Matsumae clan
File:Japanese crest Turu no maru(White background).svg
Mon of the Mori clan (森氏)
File:Japanese Crest Takeda Hisi.svg
Mon of the Takeda clan
File:Tokikikyo.svg
Mon of the Toki clan
File:Japanese Crest Watanabe Hosi.svg
Mon 'Mitsuboshi ni ichimonji' of the Watanabe clan

Zaibatsu

Zaibatsu were the industrial and financial vertically integrated business conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed control over significant parts of the Japanese economy from the Meiji period until the end of World War II.

Sacerdotal clans

Ryukyu

Ryukyuan people are not Yamato people, but the Ryukyu Islands have been part of Japan since 1879.

File:Hidari gomon.svg
Mon of the Ryukyu Kingdom

Ryukyuan dynasties:

Immigrant clans

Template:Main Toraijin is used to describe migrants in many contexts, from the original migration of a Yamato peoples to more recent migrants. According to the book Shinsen Shōjiroku compiled in 815, a total 326 out of 1,182 families in the Kinai area on Honshū were regarded as people with foreign genealogy. The book specifically encompasses immigrants from ancient Korea and China and that these families are considered notable, although not inherently noble.<ref name="Saeki">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Despite the book being highly regarded by many, there are certain claims that are under scrutiny by modern historians, and some corrections and revisions have been made over the recent years with certain clans of specific origins being classified differently.

Paekche (Korea)

File:무령왕 금제관식.jpg
Crown of Baekje found in the Tomb of King Muryeong

Goguryeo (Korea)

File:Gilt-Bronze Crown of Goguryeo 02.jpg
Crown of Goguryeo

Silla (Korea)

File:Royal Crown of Silla. National Museum of Korea.jpg
Crown of Silla

Kaya (Korea)

File:PressapochistaA.jpg
Crown of Kaya

China

File:Chinese-Imperial-Crown (12 cords).png
Mianguan of China

See also

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Notes

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References

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