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Sankin kotai
Japanese: (sankin koutai)
Sankin ktai, or "alternate attendance," was a system of military service which served as a central
piece of the Tokugawa shogunate's systems for controlling the daimy and maintaining power. Daimy
were obligated to alternate their residence between Edo and their domain; the expense of journeys to
and from Edo each other year, with large entourages, combined with the expense of maintaining
mansions in Edo often cost significant portions of the domain's resources, keeping them from
consolidating power within their domains. The process of having so many samurai traveling to and from
the capital, and maintaining residences in the capital, had a profound effect on cultural diffusion
throughout the realm, and contributed significantly to the samurai-heavy demographic character of
Edo.

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Detail from a handscroll painting depicting the sankin ktai procession of the lord of Iyo-Matsuyama han. Date unknown. National
Museum of Japanese History

Initially voluntary, the system was made mandatory for tozama daimy in 1635 in a re-issuance of the
buke shohatto ("various laws for warrior families"); this was expanded to all daimy in 1642. Lords were
obligated to maintain a residence in Edo, where members of their close family would reside as hostages
against the daimy's disobedience or rebellion. As of 1648, each lord's heir was obligated to travel to
Edo as well, and from 1684 onwards, the fudai daimy had to make their sankin journeys every six
months. Though most daimy were obliged to perform this journey regularly, some tozama daimy were
granted exceptions, in most cases due to their great service to the realm in other respects, or after
successfully arguing for the excessiveness of the burden. These included Satsuma han, which was
particularly powerful and had a particularly lengthy journey; Tsushima han which governed relations and
trade with Korea; and Fukuoka and Saga han, which contributed to the defense of the port of
Nagasaki. Some northern domains which contributed to responses to Russian incursions also received
temporary exemptions at times.[1]
The sankin ktai system ensured a reliable flow of considerable numbers of elite travelers across the
country, contributing considerably to both official and private construction of post-stations and inns
(and their surrounding towns), lighthouses and port facilities, maintenance of highways, and expansion
of travel-related services, such as networks of messengers, porters, and horses. Corve labor was
employed to provide a considerable portion of the porters, boatmen, and the like. Barrier checkpoints
called sekisho were established along the highways to regulate travel; among their functions, too, was
to enforce that firearms not be carried into Edo (so as to help prevent rebellion), and that women (who
might be hostage members of daimy families) not be allowed to leave.
Many daimy of western Japan also came to maintain mansions in Osaka and Kyoto as well, where the
daimy and his retinue would stay during their journeys to and from the shogun's capital, thus
contributing to the culture and economy of these cities as well.
In the early Edo period, most daimy of Kyushu, Shikoku, and western Honsh, traveled by ship to
Osaka; sekibune were converted into luxurious gozabune for this portion of the journey, and riverboats
were used to travel up the Yodo River from Osaka to Fushimi, from which the daimy would then
travel overland to Kyoto proper, and then along the Tkaid to Edo. Later on, however, many daimy
switched to traveling overland for as much of the journey as they could, avoiding sea travel. The
Shimazu clan lords of Satsuma han likely had the longest journey; it typically took 40 to 60 days to
travel the 440 ri to Edo. Though they originally sailed to Osaka from Kumisaki (Satsuma Sendai) or
Wakimoto (Akune) on Kyushu's west coast, or from Hososhima in Hyga province on Kyushu's east
coast, they later switched to marching overland across Kyushu to Shimonoseki, and then walking the
San'yd to Osaka.[2]
The financial costs of sankin ktai were among the heaviest burdens upon daimy budgets, leading to
many daimy incurring very significant debts over the course of the period. Despite the expense,
however, daimy often felt obligated to maintain large entourages and lavish traveling conditions in
order to maintain impressions of their power and prestige; not only the number of men in one's
entourage, but the number of spears preceding and following the daimy in procession, the number of
certain types of baskets and baggage, among other elements of performance and display, meant a lot

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in terms of representing one's prestige and power to all those who could see it. For this reason, though
the shogunate repeatedly tried to restrict the allowable size of sankin ktai entourages, daimy
regularly exceeded the official limits. To give one example of the size and extent of the undertaking of
sankin ktai journeys, Tosa domain generally moved 1,500 to 3,000 people and their baggage each year
between Tosa and Edo, a 500 mile journey over mountains, seas, and highway. In 1697, over 2,800
people accompanied the lord. Three years earlier, while the lord was resident in Edo, there were over
4,550 other Tosa people resident there with him. The domain had to pay porters, innkeepers, shippers,
and food suppliers for the journey, and then also suppliers of food and other necessities (and luxuries)
to this large Tosa population in the capital, as well as carpenters and artisans to service the domain
mansion. In 1688, Tosa's total domain budget was 3,953 kan, of which 300 paid for the sankin ktai
journey, 1,422 paid for expenses related to the mansion in Edo, and 1,042 went to paying off loans
from Osaka and Edo merchants. In total, in general, domains spent between 40% and 70% of their
annual budgets on costs related to sankin ktai.[3]
In addition to simply being resident in Edo for a certain period of time, the performance of sankin ktai
involved formal audiences with the shogun, in which the daimy would officially present himself to the
shogun, as performance of military duty, in observance of feudal fealty to his lord. During a daimy's
time in Edo castle, only the daimy himself and a certain number of higher-ranking retainers would
actually enter the castle; the remainder of his retinue, some considerable number of middle- and lowranking samurai, would remain outside the castle, sitting around on the ground, eating, drinking,
chatting, sleeping, etc.
The sankin ktai system came gradually to an end in the Bakumatsu period. Obligations were relaxed in
1862, leading to many daimy abandoning their Edo mansions, or at least severely reducing the number
of retainers they had stationed there. By some estimates, as many as 360,000 people left Edo in the
1860s to return to their home domains, representing too a severe decline in commercial demand for
goods and services, and thus having a dramatic impact on the city's economy as well.[4]
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References
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2.
3.
4.

Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan, Stanford University Press (1999), 152.
Gallery labels, Shkoshseikan, Kagoshima.
Luke Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain, Cambridge University Press (1998), 18.
Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy, University of California Press (1996), 39.

Categories: Stubs Edo Period Terminology Political Institutions

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