Sankin Kōtai: The Roads and Edo Households Behind a Daimyo’s Journey

Sankin meant a lord attending upon the shogun; kōtai referred to the return to his domain. The year 1635 is often used to explain the system’s formal establishment, through the Buke shohatto, the regulations for military houses. Formal regulation and the earlier practice of attendance need to be distinguished.

The Fukui prefectural history describes 1635 as the formalization of sankin kōtai for tozama daimyo, the category commonly translated as outside lords. It also makes clear that attendance had occurred earlier. Lords did not suddenly begin travelling to Edo in that year without an existing relationship to the shogun.

Earlier periods of residence in Edo and the timing of changes had not necessarily been uniform. The development of the system involved regulating the repetition and duration of an existing practice. The important change concerns the organization of attendance, rather than the invention of movement between two places.

Separating these two developments gives 1635 a more precise meaning. It marks a stage in institutional regulation while leaving room for what preceded it. The journey can then be understood as part of the continuing relationship between shogun and daimyo, with rules that acquired a more defined form.

A daimyo’s journey was not a private trip whose dates he could simply choose for himself. Attendance and return took place within his relationship to the shogun and involved procedures. The road connected two residences, but permission and ceremonial obligations also shaped the movement between them.

The Fukui prefectural history introduces the case of Matsudaira Mitsumichi. After obtaining permission to return to his domain in 1653, he made an inquiry about the timing of his attendance the following year. In 1654, his activities in Edo included an audience with the shogun and the presentation of gifts.

Permission to leave, confirmation of the next attendance and the observances carried out in Edo place departure and arrival in a political setting. These procedures help explain why the journey cannot be understood through distance and transport alone. It also expressed and maintained the relationship between a lord and the shogun.

Mitsumichi’s sequence remains one documented example. Its particular steps and gifts should not be assigned to every domain without further evidence. It nevertheless gives substance to the general point: sankin kōtai regulated travel while also providing occasions on which political obligations were formally acknowledged.

The work of receiving a lord began before the procession reached its destination for the day. Hiratsuka City Museum explains the role of sakibure, an advance notice. Such communications allowed accommodation and the provision of people and horses to be arranged before travellers arrived at the post station.

The museum’s explanation brings the preparation of a honjin into view. A honjin was a lodging used by high-ranking travellers. Receiving them required more than opening the entrance when a procession appeared. Notice and arrangements connected the travelling party to people working at the places where it would stop.

One example introduced by the museum is an 1800 memorandum book from a honjin at Ōiso post station. It records information such as rank and Edo residences. These entries show the practical value of information about arriving guests. They belong to this particular record and its setting.

The Ōiso honjin should not be confused with the transport administration of another post station. Nor does this book establish one preparation period used everywhere. Its relevance lies in making advance work visible: the procession’s arrival depended on arrangements already being made by people along the route.

A lord’s departure for his domain did not mean that his entire household left Edo with him. The Yokohama road office’s explanation discusses the residence of wives in Edo and its hostage function. The return journey thus needs to be considered alongside the continuing presence of family members in the shogun’s city.

An Edo residence was more than an overnight stopping place on a trip. It was a continuing base for household life and the domain’s activities. The family remaining there and the work carried on between journeys help explain why travel and residence were inseparable parts of the same arrangement.

Fukuoka City Museum describes the Fukuoka domain’s multiple Edo residences, including upper, middle and lower residences. It also discusses residences granted to the domain and those it held separately. The case gives a more differentiated picture than the idea of a single house waiting empty for the lord’s return.

Fukuoka’s arrangement cannot supply a standard size or plan for every domain. Where the museum treats an early date as uncertain or estimated, that uncertainty remains. The larger point is that recurring journeys linked households maintained in two places, with life in Edo continuing when the lord was elsewhere.

The rules of attendance changed during the system’s history. From 1722 to 1730, the agemai arrangement combined rice contributions with shorter periods of residence in Edo. Yamaguchi Prefectural Archives explains these measures together, making the change in residence an essential part of understanding the contribution.

A shorter stay could reduce expenses at a domain’s Edo residence. The arrangement therefore needs to be considered from both sides: rice was supplied, while the conditions of attendance changed. It is misleading to discuss the contribution without the accompanying reduction in residence and its effect on household costs.

The Isesaki study adds the question of differing attendance categories, including half-year and alternate-year arrangements. The general policy period and its effect on an individual house are not interchangeable. A date used to describe the system as a whole does not establish every detail of one lord’s movements.

The records also use measures of rice and assessed domain income that require care. Those measures are not converted here into a share of the domain’s entire budget. The change can be explained through contributions, residence and expenditure without making an unsupported financial comparison or a modern currency calculation.

Sankin kōtai organized attendance and residence within the relationship between the shogun and the daimyo. Its recurring journeys joined Edo to the domains, but did so through rules and practices that varied over time. Political obligation provides the framework; individual records show how parts of that framework operated.

A changing procession, workers preparing at a post station and a household continuing in Edo offer different views of the same round trip. The roads also carried couriers, goods and ordinary travellers. The system becomes more concrete when these activities are considered alongside the lord’s departure and return.

No single number can describe every cycle, procession or cost. The examples from Fukui, Hagi, Ōiso, Isesaki and Fukuoka become useful precisely when their dates and local settings remain attached. Their differences do not prevent an explanation of the system; they give that explanation its detail.

The familiar line of travellers can now be seen in a wider frame. Before its arrival, people were preparing transport and accommodation. After its departure, life continued in Edo. Following those connections brings the work sustaining sankin kōtai into view without turning one journey into the experience of every domain.