Pathway to Japanese Literature

Japan is a country with an extremely large number of surnames.

As many Japanese people imagine, I intend to discuss surnames to prove that what we call the past is not unrelated to the present.

When ten of us gather, there will typically be ten surnames among us; setting aside common ones like Suzuki or Watanabe, it is ordinary for others—when encountering someone sharing their surname while traveling or socializing—to mutually regard it as a rarity.
In other words, the number of Japanese surnames varies so greatly that it is thought to amount to at least one-hundredth to one-eightieth of the total number of households—that is, approximately eighty thousand to one hundred thousand—making Japan a country with an extraordinarily large diversity of surnames.

Why Did So Many Surnames Emerge?

Why did such a multitude of surnames emerge in our nation? For what necessity did the Yamato people—divine descendants of the sun goddess—become divided along such lines of stratification, high and low alike?
Few had considered this until now, yet it constitutes an exceptionally intriguing problem.
While one might claim surnames arose merely to distinguish between multiple individuals named Taro or Kiyoshi, such limited purpose would hardly necessitate devising such peculiar and cumbersome names. It need hardly be said that this system fundamentally differs from crude classifications like labeling someone "First Kiyoshi" or "Second Taro"—a practice akin to tagging footwear in a locker room.

What necessity in daily life led to such surnames being transmitted? This cannot be clearly answered without studying the society of somewhat older times.

The Relationship Between Place Names and Surnames

This may already be common knowledge, but many surnames are identical to place names.
For instance, Kyoto contains numerous place names matching those of former peerage families who migrated from the city.
Even near our hometowns—though not always exact locations—one frequently encounters place names corresponding to surnames.
Consider Kagoshima Prefecture: nine out of ten distinctive surnames among Kagoshima domain samurai prove to be village names from Satsuma, Ōsumi, and Hyūga provinces.
Why then have our surnames become so intertwined with place names?
If surnames derived from geographical designations, why did families adopt names from villages five or ten *ri* away—or even distant regions—rather than their own settlements?
I shall now endeavor to briefly clarify this matter.

Examples of Double Family Names

Though no longer appearing on modern family registers, when names were expressed in archaic fashion at imperial court ceremonies, it became customary to display two family names—such as *Minamoto no Ason* or *Fujiwara no Ason*—alongside ordinary surnames.
This Minamoto or Fujiwara constitutes what we call a *sei* (clan name), which classical scholars have long maintained exists entirely separate from surnames (*myōji*).
Yet upon closer examination, even clan names (*sei*) fundamentally served as a method to distinguish one's household from others, while surnames (*myōji*) functioned as secondary family designations differentiating between houses sharing the same clan name—thus revealing no essential distinction between the two.

The Ancient Custom of Avoiding Personal Names

Regarding explanations of the term "surname" (*myōji*), there had been various theories since Ise Sadataka's time. To compare and critique these would prove tedious; ultimately I believe a surname constitutes a combination of one's given name and courtesy name. In China too, Confucius—whose given name was Qiu and courtesy name Zhongni—demonstrates this principle through the combination forming what we call a surname.

In both Japan and China, personal names were not meant to be casually uttered by others. While declaring one's own name directly might be permissible, for anyone besides parents or superiors to vocalize my name—even with honorifics like "Lord"—remained discourteous. Today this custom has vanished entirely except in preserving His Majesty the Emperor's posthumous name. In contrast, Western tradition never observed such prohibitions—even kings could be addressed plainly as Charles or Wilhelm.

When we see His Majesty the Emperor’s august name rendered in Roman letters in foreign newspapers and such, the indescribable discomfort we feel arises from vestiges of the ancient custom of avoiding personal names still lingering in some corner of our emotions.

A Particular Challenge in Reading Ancient Kana Texts

In China, because historians wielded great authority, once they took up their brushes they did not refrain from recording even noble names.
Consequently, our nation’s Chinese-style histories that emulated this practice did not avoid names.
However, Japanese-style historical records customarily refrained from writing names.
For instance, when examining works like *Ōkagami*, we find Fujiwara no Mototsune recorded as “Lord Tarō.”
Tokihira’s affairs were likewise recorded simply as “Tarō.”
Many individuals were referred to by their official titles.
When people frequently changed official posts, it became unclear whether references denoted the same person—a particular difficulty encountered when reading ancient kana texts.

Naming Customs of the South Sea Islands

The Tarō, Jirō, and Saburō of antiquity were not personal names like their modern counterparts. They simply denoted birth order within families as ordinary common nouns—first son, second son, third son. Upon reflection, the boundary between common and proper nouns proves nearly nonexistent: shared designations functioned as common nouns, while unique instances blurred categorization.

Readers of Bakin’s *Yumiharizuki* may recall Hachijōjima islanders bearing names like Shirōgorō or Saburōchōjo—adaptations of Southern Islands naming customs. This system operated through simple combinations: a father who was his grandfather’s firstborn became Tarō; his third son would then be Tarōsaburō; that son’s fifth child Saburōgorō; while Saburō’s eldest daughter took Saburōchōjo.

*Gonbeisaku* and *Kantasaku*

When I visited Izu Ōshima about eight years ago, I witnessed how islanders there addressed one another not only by their ordinary names but also according to these traditional customs.
Even in mainland Japan, among peasants, when two young men named Sakuzō existed in the same village, it was not uncommon to distinguish them by prefixing their fathers' names—calling them Gonbeisaku or Kantasaku.
In Russia, this has become standard practice among gentlemen.

The Naming Conventions of Russia

Contrary to England and France—where using only a family name conveys respect—in Russia, close acquaintances call one another simply by given names like “Ivan” or “Pyotr.” Yet when expressing deference, they append the parent’s name without titles like “Monsieur” or “Herr.”
For example, if the parent’s name is “Pyotr,” they call him “Ivan Petrovich,” and if it’s a girl, they call her “Anna Petrovna.”

The Same Custom in Europe

In Scandinavia, this bore close resemblance, as the surnames of that nation’s people were largely all derived from parental names.
For example, the “sen” in “Andersen” corresponded to the English word “Son,” meaning “child of Ander.”
Though they now passed down this family designation through generations, there remained a custom from some era of appending “son of so-and-so” after one’s personal name, just as in Russia.
Surnames ending with “son” or “sen” were occasionally encountered among Nordic peoples, as well as among the English and Germans.
Among British people, family names beginning with “Mac” also meant “son,” thus representing the same custom.
The “Fitz” in surnames such as Fitzjames or Fitzgerald similarly meant “child,” and all of these allowed us to immediately recognize their origins through examples like the aforementioned Saburōgorō, Jirōtarō, and Gonbeisaku.

Customs Common to China and Japan

The custom of addressing people by courtesy names based on birth order—a practice not shared with the West—existed in China since ancient times.
In China, even cousins within the same family were assigned numerical designations based on birth order; examples can be observed in works like *Tangshi Xuan*, where one finds titles such as “Seeing Off Wang Shiyi on His Departure to a Certain Place” instead of using personal names.
This “Eleventh” signified that the individual was eleventh in birth order among their clan.
While they were typically called by numbers alone, there were also times when they appended the character *rō*.
The character *rō* means “son.”
Under Empress Wu Zetian’s rule, there was an exceptionally handsome man named Zhang Mou.
There is a story that someone flattered this man by saying, “Saburō resembles a lotus flower,” but another retorted, “No—the lotus flower resembles Saburō.”
This Saburō was indeed that very example.

Ancient Naming Customs in Japan

Japan’s Tarō and Jirō, coinciding with the importation of Tang Dynasty civilization, imitated the Chinese style.
Exactly how they were addressed prior to this remains unclear; however, by observing imperial appellations such as *Wakairatsuko* and *Naka no Ōe*, one can roughly surmise [the naming conventions].
Even after the Sino-Japanese readings for names like *Tarō* and *Jirō* came into use, this custom persisted for women for a long time.
For example, it seems that eldest daughters were called Ōko, second daughters Nakako, third daughters Sanko, and fourth daughters Shiko.
It appears there was particular avoidance of calling women by their personal names.
What did they call the tenth and eleventh daughters?
Though not preserved in today’s documents, they must have called them by something other than names through some method.
If a man had many sons and exceeded Jūrō (Tenth Son), they would be called Jūichirō (Eleventh Son) or Jūjirō (Tenth Next Son), or alternatively Yoichi (Surplus One) or Yōji (Surplus Two).
Nasu no Yoichi and Sanada Yoichi wrote the character 与 (yo), but in reality, this represents yoichi (余一), meaning "eleventh son."
The reason Taira Koremoto, who subdued the demoness at Mount Togakushi, is called Yogo Shogun lies in his adoption by his grandfather Sadamori and his position as fifteenth in birth order.

The Origins of Modern Naming Conventions

The aforementioned customs began eroding around the time of Soga Gorō and Jūrō, gradually coming to resemble today’s common names; nevertheless, people fundamentally maintained the previously described method into the early modern period, as is widely recognized.
However, as populations grew—with village settlements gathering eighty or a hundred households and neighboring villages three or five ri apart beginning to interact—such simplistic methods ultimately proved inadequate to distinguish youths of similar age.
For officials residing in Kyoto—and indeed those from distinguished families—serving rotations in the capital two or three times per generation and returning home with honorary titles naturally allowed self-distinction from others. Yet for humblest commoners, no alternative remained but to prefix fathers’ names in the manner of Hachijōjima or Russia and Norway’s old customs—otherwise they became indistinguishable.
Thus in our country too, names like Jirōsaburō and Shirōgorō gradually emerged.
Moreover, when a father remained robust while his son Tarō came of age to enter society, even established families resorted to names like Kotarō or Shintarō for differentiation, as “Tarōtarō” was untenable.
When that grandson entered society as Magotarō, and when his child in turn came of age—though naturally avoiding confusion with the great-grandfather—they assigned Hikotarō to distinguish him from deceased Tarō, his father’s Magotarō, and his grandfather’s Kotarō.
This constitutes the origin of names borne by many today.

Kyoto Nobles Who Frequently Altered Their Official Titles

To add a bit more about names: when it comes to surnames among Kyoto nobles—since they would be promoted ten or even fifteen times in a single generation without reaching any definitive endpoint in official ranks—their common names underwent frequent alteration.
A person who had been until yesterday a Major General of the Fourth Rank became today a Lord Lieutenant General of the Third Rank.
By the following year they would transfer to civil service and need to be addressed as Lord Chūnagon—leaving us officials unable to discern whether this constituted an actual name or merely resembled honorific titles like “Director” or “Bureau Chief” used when addressing superiors.

Designations of Provincial Warrior Clans

In contrast, provincial warrior clans possessed sufficient actual power to astonish Kyoto officials, yet their official ranks remained pitifully low.
This constituted the central government’s policy for provincial control: unless they demonstrated extraordinary merit, major landowners residing in regions like the Eight Provinces of Kantō had scarcely any prospect of being appointed to offices surpassing those held by their fathers or grandfathers—regardless of how frequently they attended court in Kyoto.
That is to say, each household maintained its pinnacle of honor—what older terminology called their *prospects*—typically realized through appointment to the military officer rank of Jō (尉).
Though positions such as Uemon no Jō (Right Gate Guard Lieutenant) and Saemon no Jō (Left Gate Guard Lieutenant), or Uhyōe no Jō (Right Military Guard Lieutenant) and Sahyōe no Jō (Left Military Guard Lieutenant) were essentially nominal posts, they functioned as the sole honors available to incentivize provincial warriors.
Nevertheless, provincial people’s rustic simplicity drove such fervor to obtain these [honors] that after Yoritomo established his shogunate at Kamakura, he rigorously restricted provincial appointments, decreeing all must undergo shogunal approval before being granted.
Consequently, excepting the main family’s sole heir, even sons from respectable households ultimately spent their lives merely as Jirōsaburō.
When matters reached this pass, even the hollow minor titles of Saemon no Jō and Uemon no Jō grew tearfully precious—so much so that if someone returning home mistakenly addressed Taro-dono, who had attained Saemon no Jō rank, simply as “Taro-dono” rather than “Taro Saemon no Jō,” they would inevitably face a duel challenge.

The Reason for the Abundance of Common Names Such as Saemon and Hyōe

With the above explanations, I believe one can now roughly imagine why common names such as Saemon and Hyōe remain so prevalent among provincial people today.
Though the character for “Jō” was eventually dropped over time, until quite recently it was still appended in formal contexts.
The Tarōsaemon and Saburōbei of the past four or five centuries were, needless to say, not granted by the imperial court.
Since their parent bore that name, they saw no issue in their child doing the same, and if a neighboring village’s landowner had one, people would adopt it themselves—until gradually, they began freely assigning names, resulting in thirty thousand Tarōsaemons and fifty thousand Saburōbeis.

The administrative offices of the Meiji Restoration temporarily prohibited characters implying unauthorized use of official titles in their campaign to rectify naming conventions.
Though the ban was gradually lifted, people in their forties and fifties today bearing common names like Minamoto no Arifumi, Fumie Shigeru, or Nanihei owe these designations entirely to that prohibition—they simply substituted different characters while retaining phonetic values.

Methods for Distinguishing Identical Common Names

While adding Tarō or Jirō before titles like Emon no Jō or Hyōe no Jō sufficed to distinguish individuals in regions with only three or five such titleholders, the passage of years and growth in population—especially when including the deceased—gradually swelled their numbers. Eventually, identical common names proliferated everywhere. For those without official titles—mere Tarōs and Jirōs—parental names alone proved insufficient for differentiation from the outset, necessitating additional distinguishing methods.
Therefore, circling back to one’s family surname—if a first son of the Minamoto clan was called Genta, and a third son of the Taira clan was called Heizō—this too became one method employed.
The name prefixes used today—that is, the common name element “Yoshi”—originate from the Tachibana clan.
Kan refers to the Sugawara clan; Ya to the Ono clan; Kiyo to the Kiyohara clan; Tada to the Nakahara clan; and Fuji, of course, to the Fujiwara clan.

These were all vestiges of the tradition where names like Sugata, Yasan, Tachibanaroku, and Nakashichi had been used to distinguish between numerous Jirōs and Saburōs.
However, those who migrated to settle in a particular region often belonged to the same family and shared a clan name; consequently, when clans proliferated widely, this too became difficult to distinguish.
There, as the fourth method, using one’s place of residence as a designation became an entirely natural progression.
Even today, if two people named Shōbei exist, it remains common practice to refer to them as “Shōbei of Kawabata” or “Shōbei of Kamiyashiki.”
This was by no means a custom that began in modern times; rather, whenever Japanese people formed villages to live together and communities established bonds—if they sought to avoid using each other’s true names—they had no alternative but to follow this very practice.

In the *Nihon Ryōiki*, a text created around the time of the capital’s relocation to Yamashiro, there appears a peasant from Kii Province who went by the appellation Ueda no Saburō.
In contemporary terms, Ueda would constitute a full name; yet this man also possessed a separate, venerated personal name bestowed by his parents. To designate the combination of that personal name with Ueda no Saburō as a surname already constitutes an error, but the practice of employing solely the family designation as the surname must be regarded as an increasingly corrupted distortion.

However, such shifts in the times do not necessarily require a return to the past.
Moreover, in today’s society—where it is prohibited by law to maintain both a common name and personal name—once one’s name becomes registered in family records, even those corresponding to what would have been termed *azana* (secondary names) in former times—such as Saburōbei or Tarōzaemon—or those matching readings of rigid two-character Chinese names are no longer *azana* but true “names.” Given that we have now entered an era where calling people by these names in Western fashion carries no taboo, we must abandon the concept of *azana* in accordance with new customs.
Under these circumstances, there remains no conflict in colloquial speech today when referring to family designations as surnames.

Now, though the preceding section had grown quite lengthy, I had largely concluded my explanation of the variable elements in historical secondary names—that is, common names—which differed from person to person. I now wished to discuss the unchanging elements pertaining to individuals: family designations, or in today’s terms, surnames.

Over time, family designations came to be called surnames.

The original meaning of the term “surname” differed from its modern usage, encompassing both family designations and common names—as I had explained in the previous lecture.
The *Azuma Kagami* is where one can find surnames in this sense most abundantly and with great variety.
The existence of surnames such as Ueda no Saburō could already be seen in the *Nihon Ryōiki* from the early Heian period; however, by the Kamakura period, surnames in this sense had become abundant.
In this era, since the shogunate strictly neither granted nor permitted warriors to receive military titles such as *Saemon no Jō* or *Uemon no Jō* without due cause, even distinguished samurai were all simply Jirō or Saburō, while their family designations uniformly bore the place names of their residences.

In other words, place of residence plus order of birth equaled surname. However, as people came to refer only to the family designation portion as surnames over generations, both clan names and surnames ultimately merged into one entity by the Meiji period's present day.

One cannot assert that differing surnames indicate unrelated families.

Even in antiquity, the system of clan names (*uji*) and hereditary titles (*kabane*) existed distinctly—Minamoto and Fujiwara being clans, while Asomi and Sukune were titles. This system carried paramount significance for every household; even those ordinarily addressed by surnames would include both clan name and hereditary title in formal documents whenever etiquette permitted.

These Japanese clan names and hereditary titles precisely correspond to Chinese designations like Wang, Liu, Chen, and Zhang. However, while China employed these clan identifiers in both casual and formal contexts, Japan—with its simpler social structure and fewer clan distinctions—developed this differentiation out of necessity; daily life utilized only family designations without invoking formal clan titles.

Moreover, these family designations underwent frequent changes, proliferating nearly as abundantly as roof beams or household hearths. Consequently, the modern notion that differing surnames—meaning family designations—signify unrelated lineages contradicts Japan's historical social realities.

As you are well aware, in modern times, due to the tendency to avoid altering family designations as much as possible—particularly because the Civil Code prohibited arbitrary changes—the notion arose that a clan or household’s family designation should be limited to a single one.

In ancient times, a single household’s population reached one hundred.

Originally, Japan’s household system was one in which the population of a single household was exceedingly large, as seen today in rare cases like Hida Shirakawa. This was a complex issue influenced by ancient household registration systems—one I cannot elaborate on here—but when examining Taika-era provincial household registers preserved in Nara’s Shōsōin Repository, we find that even among commoners, it was not uncommon for a single household’s population, including servants and slaves, to reach eighty or ninety to one hundred individuals. And as for whether these clans slept side by side under a single large roof—this is something one can hardly imagine—each individual had to travel two or three kilometers east, west, south, or north to engage in their respective labor of cultivation. As a result, residences became widely scattered across mountains and fields, and even if outsiders used the proper clan names, within families—much like how villages today refer to houses as Nakayashiki or Shinyashiki, or how in the Nihonbashi area relatives might be called “the household of Muromachi” or “the master of Koamichō”—it became necessary to assign names to each separate residence.

The family names of court nobles and peerage families were all place names from Kyoto.

This marked the era of warrior house emergence—specifically around the time of Yawata Tarō when local powerful clans monopolized land reclamation profits. With inheritance disputes compounding these conditions, we can infer that residences belonging to individual families proliferated, suddenly necessitating residential location usage in surnames.

As evidenced by works like *Sonpi Bunmyaku*, this period saw simultaneous proliferation of family designations in both Kyoto and rural areas.

For instance, within the Fujiwara clan until Mototsune and Tokihira’s era, members clearly belonged to the same lineage despite living separately; thereafter they gradually adopted residence locations like Nijō-dono and Kujō-dono as family designations, splitting into distinct houses.

Previously, high-ranking aristocrats were never addressed as “Fujiwara-dono” or “Mototsune-dono” by others.

They used official titles or residence-based common names instead.

Though presumptuous to state, our imperial family’s current condition perpetuates this custom eternally—a hallmark of our nation’s nobility.

Yet even the Fujiwara—second only to royalty in prestige—saw family designations crystallize instantly when property divisions sparked fraternal conflicts over boundaries, making Nijō-dono, Kujō-dono, Ichijō-dono and Konoe-dono feel like separate houses.

Surveying modern court nobles’ family names reveals nearly all derive from Kyoto-area place names.

Clan names remain limited to Minamoto, Taira, Fujiwara and Tachibana—with Fujiwara comprising eighty percent—yet these have branched into today’s multitude.

The Origins of Tono (殿), Kan (館), and Sama (様)

Incidentally, if I may explain the meaning of the character *tono* (殿), it was—as the character itself indicates—an honorific term referring to the buildings of dignitaries. This denoted land associated with family designations. People avoided directly addressing residents by instead referencing these structures through architectural honorifics—what came to be called an honorable residence. This practice eventually underwent a remarkable transformation when *tono* shifted to directly modify personal titles like District Chief-dono or Bureau Director-dono. Examining Nanboku-chō period documents—particularly commendatory letters issued by generals to provincial samurai—reveals early instances where *dono* began appearing appended to common names.

For example, it became customary to refer to them as “Kōno Musashi-no-kami-dono.”
When this spread to the Ōu region, names were written as “such-and-such Hall.”
The term *yakata* for warrior residences was a dialect of the Tohoku region, while in western Japan, warrior houses—having privately modeled themselves after Kyoto—all came to use *dono*.

Compared to this practice, *sama* emerged much later; however, its origin lay in directional terminology.
Terms like Nishi-sama ("West-direction") and Higashi-sama ("East-direction") exemplify this.
People adopted *sama* when addressing others to avoid direct reference—considered impolite—instead vaguely indicating spatial orientation.
This mirrors how we today use expressions like "over there" or "this way."
Thus *dono* and *sama* differ fundamentally from *kimi*, which denotes hierarchical address.
As for conventions like appending "-hyōe" to names—I cannot say who initiated this—they must be called tasteless practices lacking historical foundation.

The Origins of Family Designation Creation

Now let us finally proceed to our main discussion: it may be said that regional military houses created tens of thousands of surnames within a mere century or century and a half through precisely the same process that divided the Fujiwara clan.
Even though Kyoto nobles could be addressed by their official titles or contemporary ranks, they still underwent such divisions.
Moreover, among unranked provincial officials in rural areas—where even the plains of Musashi Province alone contained hundreds of Genta and thousands of Tōji and Heizō—it became utterly impossible to function without establishing an additional layer of distinction.
When parents, children, and siblings lived together within a single walled compound or residence, this was unavoidable; but as families expanded and began establishing branch households in nearby villages or developing new lands, it became far easier to refer to each by their respective place names—allowing family designations to be created without hesitation or concern that doing so might compromise household unity.

Land Reclamation Encouragement Law

To discuss this matter, I had to first briefly explain the circumstances of land reclamation during the dynastic period.
Initially, there was a risk that lands abandoned by peasants fleeing heavy taxes and other burdens would fall into neglect, while the government also needed to increase revenue. Thus emerged the Land Reclamation Encouragement Law, which granted those who cultivated these wastelands or wilderness permanent ownership of the fields as an incentive. Among rural peasants, many lower-class individuals with surplus capital appeared to undertake significant reclamation under this law. However, truth be told, this system offered little reward for reclamation efforts—expanding cultivated land while being taxed as heavily as before provided scant motivation.

Increase in Manors

However, when large shrines, temples, or high-ranking court officials received reclaimed land through special imperial grants—cases in which they were always exempted from all taxes—these lands became far more appealing compared to previous reclamation efforts. Once this system emerged, people ceased to engage in ordinary wasteland reclamation altogether.

This second category of special reclamation, while undeniably fraught with numerous drawbacks, was ostensibly subject to stringent legal restrictions; yet in reality, as years passed, both their scale and privileges expanded, culminating in entities that functioned as states within a state—beyond not only tax collection rights but all administrative authority of local officials.

This is precisely what constituted a manor.
The area of manors varied widely—smaller ones spanned three hundred to five hundred *chō*, while larger ones extended across several counties.

And many of them were troublesome landlords.
If they erected boundary markers, they would surreptitiously shift them; even when restricting acreage, they colluded with local officials to inflate measurements.
In short, they were akin to modern Hokkaido reclamation projects—though somewhat more arbitrary and biased in nature.

Local Powerful Clans and Subcontracted Reclamation of Manors

Now, as for how those granted chartered rights to establish new manors developed them—even nobles and temple administrators, while living comfortably in Kyoto themselves, were often content to reap profits without direct involvement.
Since these estates were essentially acquired at no cost, they readily subcontracted reclamation work to provincial clans despite significant profit-sharing reductions.
That said, even conscientious manor lords wishing to directly oversee cultivation found themselves unable to retain sufficient laborers permanently; lacking modern hiring options, they inevitably had to negotiate with heads of prominent local families.
Moreover, Musashi Province contained such vast stretches of wilderness.
It remained local inhabitants who reported hundreds of *chō* of untilled land in Ueno’s hinterlands.
In extreme cases, many simply borrowed shrine/temple affiliations or aristocratic names, paid minimal fees to the “main estate,” and independently managed reclamation projects.

The Origin of the Village Headman’s Title

Given such circumstances—though the privileges of subcontracted reclaimers varied in scale depending on time and situation—the heads of local clans forming the core of these subcontractors ultimately held their reclaimed lands through advantageous conditions as subcontracted managers, while deducting considerable management fees under their nominal role as manor administrators.

For instance, even when ordinary peasants could be evicted at any time if they displeased the manor lord, these individuals alone had secured hereditary succession for their descendants unless they committed grave crimes.

The annual tax—that is, the rice crop—compared to that of ordinary cultivators, did not reach even a third or fifth of their burden.

Moreover, they undoubtedly selected only areas with the most fertile soil and optimal water access.

In other words, they maintained the Kyoto manor lords as favorable patrons.

These privileges of the subcontracted reclaimers were termed *myōden-shiki* (land stewardship rights), and their lands were called *myōden* (named fields).

This is the origin of today’s term for village headman.

The Meaning of the Term *Na*

The term *na* had become somewhat unclear in its original meaning, but according to my own reasoning, I believe it likely signified demarcated reclamation units.
That is to say, when reclaiming hundreds of *chōbu* of wilderness, they divided it in advance into smaller plots of five or seven *chō* each to facilitate the progress of the project.
This was a common occurrence even in recent new field reclamation: if the area was small enough to complete cultivation within a year, that sufficed; but when it took five or six years, they had to advance reclamation efforts on one front while simultaneously producing food in already cultivated fields on the other.
The reason village sections today often have place names like First Division or Second Division stems from this practice.
When individuals of comparable status engaged in joint reclamation, it became necessary to determine their respective plots.
That these small divisions were termed *na* remains beyond doubt today.
In many cases, reclamationists appeared to have distributed one *na* each to their family members—indicating that the privilege of being a subcontracted reclamationist was not an indivisible right but rather seemed intrinsically tied to the land itself.

Evidence of Women Becoming Village Headmen

The character *na* remains in numerous place names today. In regions of Kyushu such as Hizen’s Kitakagami District, there are areas where every small place name bears the character *na*. In place names of the Eastern Provinces, those that sound peculiar to modern ears—such as Kumon-na—refer to *myōden* lands held by manor clerks. Even within the same wilderness, areas where people frequently gathered firewood or hunted already had established place names, which settlers promptly adopted as their new household designations. That is to say, these were existing local names. However, in regions with sparse populations during earlier times, small divisions of five or seven *chō* often lacked place names altogether. In such irregular cases, they conversely attached the personal names of individuals like Sadatane or Kunitomo to locations. Since these new landowners were ultimately children of the wealthy who did not work the fields themselves—having both children and women in their households—there are instances where childhood names like *Tarōmaru* or *Jirōmaru* were directly applied to place names. The presence of small place names such as *First Daughter* and *Second Daughter* near Nagoya serves as evidence that women became village headmen.

An organization of large landowners referred to as the Seven Parties

In provinces near Kyoto where land was scarce, the benefits of subcontracted reclamation may have held little natural appeal; but when reaching the Kanto region, the ability to freely occupy vast wilderness meant that even those who ingratiated themselves with Kyoto nobles while accepting retainer status could amass substantial wealth and cultivate military power.
In Musashi Province, within the plain between the central Arakawa and Tama Rivers, there existed up to seven organizations of large landowners called the Seven Parties.
Furthermore, in the south were powerful clans like Koyamada and Inage, while in the north stood those such as Chichibu—and when reclamation efforts commenced, they competed to secure subcontracting rights, vigorously establishing branch families through second and third sons.
Thus even today, when holding genealogical records of the Seven Parties in one's right hand and a detailed map in the left while examining them, both the sequence of reclamation and circumstances of branch family formation become remarkably clear.
For example, the Kodama family's main lineage resided in Kodama's principal manor—that is, near Honjo along the Nakasendo—while the Yokoyama clan leader lived in what is now northern Hachioji, with all branch families dwelling in nearby villages.

The Clan of Tawara no Tōta Hidesato

The Fujiwara clan of the Hidesato line—famous across Kanto and Ōshū regions (though I take pride in counting myself among its descendants)—was in fact a family of appointed officials in Shimotsuke who, to advance their privileged reclamation rights, took a young Fujiwara lord as their daughter’s son-in-law. One might even speculate they were “Ainu.”

Hidesato—the restorer of this lineage—lived in Tawara of Yamashiro near Ōmi during his centipede-vanquishing era and was called Tawara no Tōta Hidesato due to his Fujiwara affiliation. As his birthplace was Shimotsuke, most named fields lay in Kanto. His descendants settled in Kōzuke’s Ōta as the Ōta family, in Shimotsuke’s Koyama as the Koyama family, and in Shimousa’s Yūki as the Yūki family—not only that, but they established bases in Sagami: residing in present-day Hatano (tobacco country) as Hatano, crossing mountains to found Matsuda in Matsuda, then reclaiming Kawamura westward to create Kawamura.

Kawamura now lies where Yamakita Station stands—called Yamakita (“north of the mountain”) for its position north of Kawamura Mountain’s estate.

My family’s genealogy—unverified as it may be—claims we diverged from this Kawamura line. Seeing Yanagita Shrine as the tutelary deity in Kokufu Hongō between Ōiso and Ninomiya (once a provincial capital), I often pass by train wondering if a cat’s-forehead-sized named field existed there.

I spare you exhaustive examples, but when these clans united during crises—as when hundreds bearing different surnames simultaneously committed seppuku in Kamakura-era rebellions—it proves surname diversification never undermined family unity.

Moreover, becoming an “ancestor” meant prefixing new designations to surnames—for provincial warriors barred from Kyoto advancement, proliferating these became their sole pride.

This condition persisted until roughly Yoshino Court times, after which circumstances shifted markedly and modern tendencies first emerged.

The Origin of the Early Modern Daikan System

When the Taira clan stood at the zenith of its power, its domains reportedly spanned sixty-six provinces. However, after this clan was branded imperial enemies and utterly destroyed, all their manors became what were termed confiscated lands. The imperial court disposed of these properties accordingly, while simultaneously granting Yoritomo the privilege to appoint land stewards for individual manors through his petition to the court.
These land stewards were none other than manor administrators, newly granted the same status as those who had managed the land under special agreements since the reclamation period.
However, the warriors who followed Yoritomo and achieved merit were primarily residents of the Eastern Provinces. Though it is said the Taira clan’s domains extended nationwide, they were concentrated chiefly in central and western regions; thus, it followed that all new land stewards appointed to western districts had to be dispatched from distant Kantō.
By this period, though termed managers, they did not handle administrative tasks themselves but merely collected steward income while delegating actual duties to subcontractors. Moreover, those significant enough to have been involved in the Genpei War all held at least one or two ancestral domains; thus most could not abandon their homelands to migrate to newly granted lands—naturally relying on proxies even for periodic inspections.
This formed the root of the early modern daikan system; while there may have been cases requiring daikan for ancestral domains when household heads were minors or female, primarily this necessity arose when landholdings were divided across two or more widely separated locations east and west.

The Partial Migration of Kanto Warriors Was a Natural Outcome

The distant territories that had been governed through daikan were before long distributed through inheritance.
Though divided inheritance had been an established custom since the Taihō Code, authorities restricted it as much as possible to uphold the main family's authority.
However, war's necessities requiring military expansion made increasing household numbers imperative.
To this was added newly granted lands and additional benefices; thus parents could freely provide beloved youngest sons with new residences without deferring to main heirs.
Subsequently through Hojo clan machinations, Kamakura-loyal retainers perished one after another, their domains wholly or partially confiscated as state lands.
When domains of court-aligned nobles from the Jōkyū Disturbance were likewise distributed among victors, this gradual emergence of partial Kanto warrior migration became an inevitable historical progression.

A Major Transformation That Must Not Be Overlooked in the History of Domestic Colonization

In such cases—when those who had separated from the main family and migrated to distant regions—what became of their family designations? Generally speaking, they commonly incorporated their destinations' place names into their surnames.

For instance, when the Utsunomiya family of Shimotsuke received newly granted land in Shiroi, Buzen Province, they became the Shiroi clan; when a branch of this family later migrated to Uchikoke in Higo Province, they formed the Uchikoke clan—this being representative of the pattern.

Under contemporary sensibilities—since these migrants held no myoden stewardship over already cultivated lands—adopting such [place names] as family designations may have felt akin to claiming unearned spoils. Alternatively, powerful eastern clans like Utsunomiya and Chiba—whose reputations resonated even in Kyushu's hinterlands—likely deemed it necessary to retain their ancestral designations and bask in their main families' prestige. Thus imperceptibly emerged the practice of migrating while preserving one's family designation.

This marks a major transformation that must not be overlooked in domestic colonization history.

The Mōri, Takeda, and Ogasawara Houses

For example, the clan of Ōe no Hiromoto had their ancestral land in Mōri-no-shō, Aikō District, Sagami Province, and bore the name Mōri.
Within that clan, those who migrated to Sawagata in Uzen were referred to as “Sawagata so-and-so,” but the house that split off to Aki Province continued to be called the Mōri family.
This was likely because the Dewa region was newly developed while the Aki region had already been cultivated.
The Takeda of Kai Province derived their surname from lands along the upper reaches of the Kamanashi River, yet even as some migrated to Kazusa and others settled in Wakasa, they persistently retained the Takeda name.
The Nambu family of this clan gained their house name by ruling Nambu Village in Suruga along the same river’s lower reaches; yet even after migrating to the northern tip of Oshu, they continued to bear the name Nambu.
The Ogasawara family of the same province became the Miyoshi clan upon migrating to Awa, while those who moved to Shinano remained the Ogasawara family indefinitely.

The Kumagai, Kikkawa, and Various Houses of Kyushu

The clan of Rennyo Nyūdō, who resided in Kumagai, Musashi, continued to bear the Kumagai name even after relocating to Aki Province, and their descendants have proliferated remarkably, surviving to this day.
The certain Kumagai who lost his domain after submitting a remonstration during the era of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa was the Kumagai of Ōmi.
The Kikkawa family, who became relatives of the Mōri clan in later times, were originally residents of Ihara District in Suruga Province. Their ancestor was Kogorō Yoshika, who attacked and killed Kajiwara Kagetoki at Kitsunezaki when the latter fled Kamakura westward. I seem to recall they received Aki Province as a reward for this deed.

In Kyushu, there were many other warrior migrants after the Genpei War. Families like Kikuchi and Harada had already been established houses there for generations, adopting Kyushu place names as their family designations. However, the Ōtomo clan originated from Ōtomo in Sagami Province, and the Itō clan from Itō in Izu Province—both being branches of the Kano family alongside the previously mentioned Kikkawa family.
The Chiba family was also numerous in Kyushu; these too were branch families from Shimousa.
Even the Samejima family—whose surname existed only in Satsuma—had carried their family designation all the way from the foothills of Mount Fuji in Suruga.

One Cause Leading to the Carrying of Family Designations to New Territories

The custom of migrating to new territories while retaining family designations gradually increased, ultimately fostering the present state of fixed surnames. One contributing cause appears to lie in the political necessity during the Yoshino Court era: regional disputes between legitimate and collateral heirs exploited this transitional period to align with either imperial or military factions, sparking conflicts over domains. Even those who initially adopted new family designations as part of these struggles found themselves compelled to revert to bearing their main family’s name—a dynamic that significantly reinforced this trend.
From this point onward, there emerged a state of affairs where one could infer a family’s place of origin through their surname—a development that, in one respect, proved remarkably convenient.
However, every family had its original domain, and those who served military houses without duplicity naturally maintained ties to their family designation’s land; thus, until the late Ashikaga period, warriors like the Yamada-dono of Yamada-go existed in great numbers across the nation.

The old families of Tōhoku—Satō, Igarashi, and Honma—

As an example there, we have the Satō family, which succeeded the previously discussed Tawara family.
If current genealogies are to be believed as true, the Satō family spread northward from Shimotsuke with tremendous momentum.
The brothers Shigenobu and Tadanobu—who served Lord Kura with loyalty and met their end in battle—are said to have left traces across various regions, though their precise locations remain unclear. In any case, they belonged to the Satō family, which held territories in southern Ōshū and had already begun colonizing the northeastern regions during the Genpei era.
Even today, among the six prefectures of Ōu, the Satō surname remains the most prevalent among old families, all of whom claim descent from the Hidesato branch of the Fujiwara clan.
A few years ago, while traveling through Yamagata Prefecture, I discovered an intriguing fact.
In the Shōnai region of Dewa, particularly in the coastal area of Nishitagawa District, the Satō and Igarashi families have intermingled from north and south, forming a boundary between them there.
Though I have never seen their genealogy, the Igarashi family is said to have originated in Echigo; from northern Niigata Prefecture, crossing mountains, they attempted migrations both toward Dewa and Aizu—yet in both directions found themselves both checking and being checked by the Satō family’s advance.

The Honma family of Sakata are present-day wealthy individuals; though their family designation has spread widely throughout the Dewa region and stands apart from the two dominant forces of Satō and Igarashi, this family originates from Sado’s Honma.
The Honma and Satō families shared profoundly deep ties, and because they had monopolized an island’s wealth, their surplus resources enabled them to expand effortlessly into lands across the water—thereby unwittingly leaving behind a tripartite confluence, this curious phenomenon, in a corner of Yamagata Prefecture.

The number of family crests was not very numerous.

As the discussion had progressed to this point, it became necessary to briefly touch upon the matter of family crests.
Later-era family crests included those received as grants from lords or newly established by enthusiasts; moreover, unrelated lineages sometimes adopted identical crests, making it impossible to uniformly determine a family’s ancestry from crests alone. Yet when compared to the medieval family system’s distinctive feature—the gradual alteration of family designations due to migration—this phenomenon revealed a far more intriguing cultural dynamic.

Among the various family crest registers, the oldest is *Kenmon Shokamon* found in *Gunsho Ruijū*, though its recorded number remains exceedingly small. The number of crests recorded in the Tokugawa-period *Bukan* and family crest registers also does not exceed five or six hundred. Even today, there are occasionally crests that pose difficulties for dyers, but generally speaking, it is said that one will encounter only seven or ten unfamiliar crest designs in a lifetime. To put it another way: just as the family designation culture of the Genpei era—which had nearly reached its zenith—reversed course due to particular causes and showed a slight tendency toward unification, crests too, having once begun proliferating endlessly, started declining again after reaching a certain point. In eras of frequent warfare, they selected family crests that were extremely conspicuous and uniquely unrefined; however, in modern times—due to factors such as being too difficult to draw, overly crude, excessively prone to staining, or quick to fade—there emerged a tendency to shift toward more commonly encountered designs. My family’s crest originally featured the cursive-script character *dai* enclosed in a circle. However, around fifty or sixty years ago, on grounds that this design was unsuitable for a woman’s crest, it was altered to one combining five *dai* characters arranged in a floral pattern—resulting in near-identical resemblance to the commonly seen pine needle and bellflower crest.

A single object unifies the clan, while individual variations represent each house.

Given these circumstances, while it has become nearly impossible today to infer someone’s family lineage by their outward appearance, we can still discern some measure of significance and cultural interest within this practice.

During the Bakumatsu period, there was a scholar named Kurihara Ryūan (Nobumitsu) who, when five or even seven first-time visitors came calling, would compare their name tags and family crests and correctly identify them with remarks like, “You must be Mr. So-and-so.”

Indeed, just as surnames like Takahashi and Wada are commonplace, crests as ordinary as Japanese lantern plants or quince flowers prove equally unremarkable. However, a crest possessing some distinctive feature in its shape or motif naturally provides material for hypothesizing a family’s origins.

Here I have spoken of shape and motif, but when I once attempted to classify the four to five hundred types of crests found in recent family crest registers, I was struck by their unexpectedly simple variety.
In other words, today’s family crests consist of merely a few dozen motifs transformed in about a dozen variations.
For example, taking the well curb motif: they might render it as a diamond shape, enclose it within a circle, arrange it as interlocking rings, or combine four such elements—thus transforming a single crest into countless variations.
This can be easily imagined by observing how the Tokugawa family’s hollyhock crest—common not only to its main branch families but also to the Sakai and Matsudaira—distinguishes individual houses through variations in shape and arrangement: a single motif unifies the clan, while individual variations represent each house.

Origins and Evolution of Family Crests

The origins of family crests would be better discussed separately, but in short, their beginnings are not particularly ancient. Military houses began using them around the Genpei era as coded identifiers attached to camp curtains and banners to signal headquarters locations on battlefields—a concept originating from Kyoto court nobles marking their carriages with household crests. As for the motifs, they likely derived from patterns on formal court attire, consistent with current theories.

To rephrase: From around the time family designations ceased diversifying, crest differentiation began—and the proliferation of their types halted just as family designations started increasing again in the modern era. Does this not signify a societal necessity to express, through some means, the fundamental relationships defining a family’s identity?

The period when scrutiny of family crests became most rigorous was from the Ashikaga era through the Tokugawa era—a time when the custom of granting half of one’s surname to retainers was practiced. However, as a reaction to this, the increased emphasis on family crests led lords to bestow their house crests upon retainers as rewards—a practice that ultimately resulted in a gradual decrease in the number of crests.

The local samurai, provincial samurai, and rural samurai who troubled the new lords

This reactive assimilation was not limited to family crests but was also linked to the shogunate’s and various daimyo’s strategies for pacifying vassals—a tendency exemplified by the Tokugawa house’s indiscriminate granting of the Matsudaira surname to tozama daimyos or their imposition of forced marriages, which similarly troubled the daimyo domains.
As is well known, the early Tokugawa samurai class—beginning with the shogun himself—consisted almost entirely, eight or nine out of ten, of self-made prominent houses.
Given that they now held stipends more than ten times larger than before, there arose a necessity to employ a great number of samurai.
Even if a lord were to grant excessive stipend increases to hereditary retainers, those retainers would still have had to recruit new followers to fulfill military duties commensurate with their expanded stipends.
Now, this period being after the Sengoku era, masters of old families across the provinces who had lost their new domains and wandered from place to place—that is to say, the so-called ronin were exceedingly numerous. And while some among them obtained remarkably high stipends depending on their capabilities, the net remainder still remained quite substantial; so much so that no matter how many were employed, a great multitude of masterless men without stipends converged upon Edo and Osaka.
They either joined the Osaka Campaign, participated in the Shimabara Rebellion, or colluded in Yui Toji’s revolt—events that largely settled their fates. Yet this alone could hardly account for their total numbers, for across the provinces still existed samurai who retained modest stipends, refrained from seeking new lords, and lay dormant in their original domains—a quantity roughly equal to, if not exceeding, that of the ronin themselves.
These individuals were referred to as provincial samurai (*kunizamurai*), local samurai (*jizamurai*), or rural samurai (*gōshi*).
The pacification measures for local samurai posed the most challenging problem for the new landholders to handle.
Not only did they share generational ties with local peasants, but they were also deeply familiar with the region’s geography and transportation networks. Many based themselves in remote mountain valleys; when openly attacked, they would retreat into the mountains with their families, only to reemerge and resettle once the enemy had withdrawn.
Even those who were typically quite docile would raise various complaints and attempt to avoid paying the new land taxes.
The subordinates of houses like the Chōsokabe of Tosa and the Ukita of Bizen—families that drew their bows against the Tokugawa and were extinguished—were none other than these local and rural samurai who plagued the new lords.

Feudal Lords’ Countermeasures Against Local Samurai

The feudal lords’ countermeasures against local samurai also fell into two categories: forceful and conciliatory.
They would single-mindedly attack and crush them, or if they proved difficult to subdue, deceive them into emerging to be bound and executed; however, as this was by no means an easy task—and in many cases there fortunately arose a need to recruit new retainers—they presented two options: “If you wish to keep wearing your swords as before, come forth and enter our service; if service displeases you, pay taxes like ordinary wealthy peasants.”
In such cases, the local samurai’s attitude was generally uniform.
Due to their unwillingness to discard ancestral spears and swords, one among brothers or between parent and child would step forward to enter service.
Meanwhile, due to their sorrow over abandoning ancestral lands, another would remain to become a farmer—their descendants often becoming village heads or headmen.
In later years when feudal lords faced impoverishment and compelled wealthy farmers to make monetary contributions—having nothing else to offer as reward—they permitted surnames or sword-wearing; the people’s great delight stemmed from profound reasons, for this so-called two-character surname and sword-wearing exemption system restored local samurai privileges that old families had long lost.

The Reason for the Disconnection Between Surnames and Place Names

Among the three hundred feudal lords, there were indeed houses that maintained the same domain for three hundred years; however, the majority experienced domain or castle relocations three or even five times.
In such cases, the clans of local samurai who had emerged from their original domains to serve migrated in all directions—east, west, south, and north—following their lords.
The Maeda family long maintained their domain without relocation; yet when examining their retainers’ surnames, while many naturally bore place names from Kaga, Noto, and Etchū, one also found those who adopted village names from Echizen after being recruited during their service there, as well as migrant families like the Okumura house that had served since the Owari-Arako era.
Not to mention medium-ranked daimyo who were forcibly relocated to places like Tanagura in Ōshu as punishment—their retainers’ nomadic existence was something even Meiji-era military personnel and judges would steer three leagues clear of.
With this, the connection between surnames and land was completely severed, resulting in them becoming mere symbols—like tags—to distinguish the dozens of Taros and Jiros in the modern era.

However, in many cases, they themselves did not forget their native lands. Even when examining the *Bukan* from the late Tokugawa period, just as "Mikawa, native province" is written beneath the names of Edo hatamoto, they never forgot their ancestral domains. Moreover, they maintained correspondence with their ancestral main family in their hometown—from whom they had branched off generations prior—until their blood ties grew exceedingly faint; and as long as neither side fell into decline, they continued to mutually remember the place associated with their surname or their respective places of service.

Origins of the Two-Character Surname Licensing System

Although the history of village farmers has not been recorded in writing, it appears to have endured far longer than one might expect. Even when driven by warfare or struck by natural disasters, they seem to have diligently prioritized returning to their home villages to reclaim wastelands. Today’s new villages are those established through migration from outside regions onto lands that had remained uncultivated since times long past. In contrast, the military houses experienced significant disruption due to several large-scale migrations, resulting in their family designations’ origins becoming obscure, at least from an objective standpoint. However, during the former shogunate era, common peasants were prohibited from publicly using surnames. In medieval times, 'two characters' signified the declaration of a surname. When a samurai became a retainer of a prominent house, they conducted a ceremony in which they would write two characters in a register and present it to their lord, requesting that he call them by their true name without reservation. After this system fell into disuse, publicly adopting a family designation came to be referred to as the "two-character license." Villages maintained two classes—wealthy peasants and poor peasants, or landlords and tenant farmers—with the latter group absolutely forbidden from declaring family designations, both to preserve military house privileges and uphold the dignity of established aristocratic families. Moreover, many among them had long forgotten their family designations or lacked them from the outset, persisting for over a dozen generations under placeholder names like "[Village] So-and-so-bee."

A fishing village in Iyo where the entire community adopted fish names as family designations

In the early years of Meiji when the surname ban was lifted and registration in family registers became mandatory, village offices were thrown into utter chaos.
Hundreds of households lacking family designations were now compelled to adopt surnames.
For those from declined old families or with clear main family status—since they had already been using these surnames—there was no trouble, but multigenerational small-scale farmers faced universal difficulties.
Many traced hereditary connections to receive surnames from households they frequented.
Others adopted surnames known in neighboring villages provided no objections were raised.
Those without such recourse had surnames assigned by village clerks.
Some were ordered to take names like Matsushita ("Under-the-Pine") for pine trees before their homes or Taniguchi ("Valley-Mouth") for mountain entrances—with eccentric clerks even imposing fish names on entire fishing villages along Iyo’s coast.
Neighboring villages reportedly adopted vegetable names en masse.
While piscine and vegetal names proved distinctive enough to avoid confusion, surnames like Matsushita or Taniguchi became indistinguishable from actual families who had served as Matsushita Village’s land stewards or Taniguchi Village’s headmen in earlier eras.
This marked yet a third great upheaval.

In present-day Tokyo—a metropolis of such scale—surnames once considered rare have gathered from all regions to the point where they are nearly indistinguishable; as a result, surnames have diminished in significance in daily life compared to earlier times, and with this, the very concept of 'family' grows ever fainter in people's minds—an inevitable progression indeed.

The Necessity of Investigating the Origins of Family Designations

In China, there have long existed works such as *Wanxing Tongpu* (*Comprehensive Genealogies of Ten Thousand Surnames*), through which one can trace familial histories and indirectly discern trends in domestic colonization over thousands of years. Yet unfortunately, our nation lacks such texts; and having undergone repeated upheavals to this day, the hope of compiling them in the future remains exceedingly scarce.
As a modest hope—even if we cannot trace the origins of family designations adopted as recently as the Meiji era—at least for regional old aristocratic families and the so-called samurai class (whose histories become discernible through considerable effort), I wish to compile an index of these family designations while there is still time.

As source materials, there existed records of old families in regional gazetteers and similar works; moreover, on the samurai side, combining works like the *Kansei Chūshū Shokafu* compiled by the Tokugawa shogunate with service records submitted by households across various domains allowed one to readily obtain the majority of necessary materials.

If such texts had existed, even households neither of samurai lineage nor wealthy farmer status could have naturally learned their family history from those sharing their family designation; provided no contradictory evidence emerged, one could have reasonably inferred their main family by identifying the nearest household with the same designation in their residential area. Once that main family’s history became clear, our genealogical ancestors’ connections to the region—or to former territorial lords—would have been understood, thereby allowing us to discern intersections with national history itself. Consequently, I believe the educational effects for future generations would have been by no means insignificant.

The Origin of the Surname Tokonami

Though brief, this concluded our main discussion on surnames.

As a lighthearted diversion while we were on the subject, I decided to share a few stories about rare surnames we knew.

The surname of the new Vice-Minister of Home Affairs appeared somehow readable as “Tokotsugu,” and people considered it unusual, though that place name likely originated from his hometown region.
The place name “Tokonami” was by no means particularly rare.
As one moved eastward through the country, people might write it as “Tokonami” using the characters 床波, or alternatively as “Tokonabe” (床鍋), “Tokobe” (床辺), or “Tokoname” (常滑).
The term appeared as an archaic word even in *Man’yōshū* poetry, though its meaning remained highly uncertain—some suggested it referred to “river currents,” but according to my conviction, the “nami” in “Tokonami” signified “parallel alignment” as represented by its written character, while “toko” denoted a ritual altar—that is to say, stones.
In ancient times, people erected rocks along roadsides or at village boundaries, or utilized natural boulders to perform ground-purification rituals.
They named these altars either “Kura” or “Toko.”
These stone formations were often two in number.
In Hakone and other provincial border regions existed mountains named Futagoyama; likewise, at village boundaries stood mounds called Futagozuka—all for the same reason: initially serving as altars before eventually being worshipped themselves as deities.
The parallel arrangements of stones could range from two to over a dozen in some cases.
This was precisely what constituted “Tokonami.”
In Kasa District of Harima Province existed a village written with the characters 鎮岩 but pronounced “Tokonabe.”
Considering these examples together, I concluded that the land where Mr. Tokonami’s ancestors had lived must have been newly developed territory bordering the edge of a particular plain.

The Meaning of the Surname Ishiguro

Next, my friend Mr. Ishiguro is from Echigo; however, all Ishiguros in Echigo originated from Ishiguro Manor in Tonami District, Etchū, and the Ishiguro clan of Etchū had already been a renowned family since the time of *The Tale of the Rise and Fall of the Minamoto and Taira*.
Moreover, the “kuro” in Ishiguro cannot be interpreted literally through its kanji within Japanese linguistic conventions.
When I later examined areas like Bizen and Bitchū, I found people referred to mounds as *kuro*. While they sometimes used the character for “ridge” (畔), they more frequently employed the compound character 𡉕 (combining the earth radical 土 with 丸 meaning “circle”).
This earth-and-circle character was a Japanese creation devised through etymological reasoning to denote rounded earthen mounds.
A parallel example exists in place names where the rice radical (米) combines with 丸 to form characters read as “Dango” (rice dumpling).
In Okayama Prefecture, numerous locations bear the name *Ishiguro* (石𡉕), and during my recent travels through Bizen Ōno District’s mountains, I observed earthen walls or stone fortifications called *tsukaguro*.
The term *tsuka* (“mound”) derives from *tsukuru* (“to construct”).
Considering how rice field perimeters were called *kuro* and estate earthworks written as 壟 (read *guro*), we may conclude that Etchū’s Ishiguro—like Tokonami—epitomizes the enduring custom of building stone boundary mounds for ground-purification rites.

The Origin of the Surname Toki

Also among my friends was a man named Mr. Toki.
This family had served as chief retainers to the Tachibana Count household—a warrior house renowned since the Sengoku period for its martial prestige.
Though the meaning of this family designation eludes literal interpretation through its characters, I concluded that the "Toki" in Toki (十時) derived from "tobuki" (戸木), meaning a gateway tree—a sacred arboreal marker erected at territorial boundaries for deity worship.
Just as paired stones representing husband-and-wife or child-bearing motifs exist nationwide, so too did people commonly substitute natural trees for such stone arrangements—an utterly ordinary practice.
Thus, the "to" in "Totoki" signified "distant," making "Tōtobuki" (Distant Gateway Tree) the conceptual counterpart to "Chikatobuki" (Near Gateway Tree).
In early modern terms, these corresponded to main and rear gates; in Kantō, countless shrines honored Tōtogami (Distant Gate Deities) and Chikatogami (Near Gate Deities).
Journeying to Ōu region revealed these transformed into Chikato Forest and Tōto Forest.
The Tōdō family—of comital rank from Ōmi Province—owed its name to "Tōdo," denoting a ritual site for venerating Tōtogami.
From this evidence, I surmised that Mr. Toki—whom I deeply respected—belonged to a lineage whose ancestors, akin to Mr. Tokonami's forebears, had initiated land reclamation alongside garrison troops at strategic border points deemed vital for repelling malignant spirits encroaching from beyond manor boundaries.

The Origin of the Kigoshi Surname

Among my relatives was a family from Kanazawa bearing the designation Kigoshi. This appeared to be a branch lineage of the renowned Togashi family—itself descended from Echizen’s Saito clan—which had taken its name from Kigoshi Village in Kahoku District, Kaga Province where they settled. Like Tsukano Koshi, Sakakigetōge, Dōsojingetōge, and Enokigetōge before them—all place names denoting sacred trees planted at boundaries (*koshi* signifying frontier)—these four families’ ancestral lands shared remarkably similar circumstances across all compass points despite lacking direct kinship. To thus probe place-name meanings when investigating family designation origins reveals stories whose fascination shows no sign of exhaustion.

(“「斯民家庭」”
Meiji 44 (1911), July, September–November)