Haihan-Chiken: The Day Japan Abolished Its Domains, and the Work That Followed

Two years before the abolition, in the first month of Meiji 2 (1869), a petition was submitted in the names of the lords of Choshu, Satsuma, Hizen and Tosa. It requested hanseki hokan, the return of land and people to the emperor. The two parts of the term refer to land and people.

Other domains followed. In the sixth month, the government accepted the petitions and ordered domains that had not yet submitted one to make the return as well. The basis on which a lord governed his territory was changing.

The former lords did not all immediately leave local administration. The government appointed them anew as chihanji, governors of their former domains. Returning land and people therefore coexisted with continued administration by many of the same people.

Placing this stage before 1871 helps explain why the later abolition was another change. The return altered the relationship between the ruler, territory and central government, while leaving a domain governor and a domain administration in place. The next reform would address that remaining arrangement.

Why did the edict present abolition as necessary? The content provided by the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records describes a wish to secure the people at home and face other countries abroad through unified government commands. That is the purpose adopted here from the institution's record.

The edict refers back to the return of land and people. It treats a gap between names and actual conditions, and divided channels of command, as problems. Its stated aim was to bring the country under a common direction.

A declared purpose and the process of carrying it out are different questions. The central document shows the policy being announced. It cannot by itself explain how each local office subsequently managed its work.

Reading a document of decision alongside instructions for an administrative transfer reveals another part of the reform. The first expresses an overall direction; the second helps explain what had to be arranged on the ground. This comparison follows the Japanese article's interpretation, without inventing conversations behind the policy.

On the fourteenth day of the seventh month in 1871, the domain governors were dismissed and ordered to reside in Tokyo. The government that had appointed former lords as chihanji two years earlier now ended those offices.

A change of administrative name alone could have left the same people governing in the same way. This reform combined a change in territorial organization with a change in personnel and an instruction about where the former governors would live.

Considering these together shows how the link between local administration and the former lords was altered. The residence order belongs to the end of the arrangement under which they continued as governors in their former territories.

Dismissal does not reveal each individual's feelings or subsequent daily life. Those would require separate evidence. The article follows the documented political change without supplying private reactions, departure scenes or conversations for particular former governors.

Immediately after the reform, the country's administrative divisions numbered three fu and 302 ken. The figure describes the prefectural arrangement at that stage. It should not be read as proof that exactly 302 domains had previously existed in an identical form.

Initially replacing domains with prefectures left much of the inherited territorial shape in place. There were many detached parcels of territory, or enclaves. Changing an administrative name and reorganizing the territory it covered were distinct tasks.

After prefectures were established, work continued to bring scattered territories together and revise the arrangement. The decree did not settle every boundary or produce the map familiar to a reader today.

The intermediate map is therefore part of the history. Following its changes allows us to see the reform in progress. The river, road and fields in the conceptual image suggest a regional landscape; they do not draw the actual boundaries of any domain or prefecture.

In the region corresponding to present-day Aichi, twelve prefectures were established following the abolition of domains. Owari, excluding Chita District, was then brought into Nagoya Prefecture. Mikawa and Chita District were brought into Nukata Prefecture.

The Aichi Prefectural Archives explains that Nagoya Prefecture was renamed Aichi in the fourth month of 1872, and Nukata was merged into it in the eleventh month of the same year. These months retain the calendar used at the time.

The familiar name Aichi can conceal the period when Nagoya and Nukata existed alongside each other. The sequence involved both renaming and territorial merger: twelve prefectures, then two, then one. Those are separate steps within the region's history.

The diagram summarizes those steps, with a note separating Owari excluding Chita from Mikawa together with Chita. It is a schematic of the adopted institutional explanation, not a map of measured boundaries. Aichi's sequence illustrates one regional process without making it a national rule.

Prefectural mergers and the development of institutions continued after haihan-chiken. In 1890, regulations for prefectures and districts were promulgated. The National Archives explains their purpose in defining prefectural areas and arranging prefectural assemblies under government-appointed governors.

The path toward the present system extended over further years. The abolition of domains cannot be treated as the birth of every feature of modern local government in a single day. Later institutional arrangements belong to their own stages in that history.

The 1871 change was nevertheless substantial. Domain governors lost their offices, government-appointed regional officials took responsibility for administration, and territorial divisions were reorganized. Names, appointments, areas and transfers of work explain how the domains ceased to exist as governing units.

The day of abolition and the subsequent work belong together. Reading that sequence makes centralization visible through the relationships and procedures that changed, while keeping the people who continued local administration within the account.

Editorial note: Dates for 1869, 1871 and 1872 retain the historical Japanese calendar. Three fu and 73 ken is the ninth-month draft; three fu and 72 ken is the subsequent arrangement. The edict and transfer instructions are used through institutional records and explanations, not new full transcriptions. Aichi is a regional example. Illustrations are conceptual scenes and original explanatory diagrams.