Daikan

What a daikan was

A daikan was an official who governed a territory on behalf of its lord. In the Edo period the office existed on shogunal lands and in the fiefs of daimyo and Hatamoto, with responsibility for taxes, disputes and order. The official's house is recorded as a daikan estate.

The Tomita Residence Mokunansha in Aichi Prefecture, built in 1827, is described as the house of a physician who served as daikan at the local Jinya until the end of the shogunate, the former main house of the estate, facing east with a monitor on its Kirizuma-zukuri ridge, the rear slope carried down to a Geya that runs round all four sides, and an interior split between a Doma to the north and raised rooms to the south. The entry says it preserves the look of such an estate. Here a doctor held the office.

The Takigawa Residence gatehouse in Aichi Prefecture, built in 1763, is described as retaining its doorway and Musha-mado, which convey its standing as the estate of a daikan serving a hatamoto.

The office existed in the medieval period too. The Takasu family documents from Yamaguchi Prefecture, spanning the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries and recorded as an Important Cultural Property, show a daikan at the port of Akamagaseki collecting tolls, governing townspeople, supervising trade with Ming China and procuring foreign goods.

Reading the record

A daikan estate combined office and home. As at the Tomita house, the main house of the family that held the office is itself called the estate, and it should be distinguished from a jinya built as a dedicated seat of government.

The word names an office, not a rank. The physician at Tomita shows that local men of standing were often appointed. When writing, say whose daikan the man was, since a shogunal, daimyo or hatamoto appointment implies a different scale of house.

Buildings recorded as daikan estates usually carry the marks of rank, a Nagayamon or a Shikidai among them. The standing of the office shows in the architecture.