Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how early modern samurai society understood the “extinction” (zekke) and restoration of a house (Ie) through lineage narratives. Using the Ito family of the Tsu domain, it argues that house continuity depended on both hereditary legitimacy and active service.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how early modern samurai conceptualized the “extinction” (zekke) and restoration of a house (Ie), focusing on the relationship between lineage narratives (yuishogaki) and social practice. While previous scholarship on the Ie has largely assumed continuity and stability, fewer studies have examined houses that experienced rupture, decline, and attempted reconstruction. By shifting attention to moments of crisis, this paper reconsiders what contemporaries understood as the essential conditions for the existence of a samurai house.

The case study is the Ito family, retainers of the Tsu domain (Todo clan). Drawing on the Ito family documents and a series of yuishogaki texts produced from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, the paper traces how narratives of origin and service were repeatedly reconstructed when the family faced loss of status, stipend reduction, or the threat of extinction. Particular attention is paid to the late Edo period, when the seventh-generation head fled the domain, leading his successor, Ito Kuranosuke, to describe the family as having entered a state of "extinction" of the household.

Through close analysis of these documents, the paper demonstrates that “extinction” was not understood merely as the absence of an heir. Rather, it signified the loss of the ability to serve one’s lord as a recognized retainer, especially through the forfeiture of stipend and official post. Conversely, restoration from extinction required not only hereditary legitimacy, expressed through yuishogaki emphasizing past service to the domain founder, but also the demonstrable performance of service and the recovery of material support.

The Ito case reveals that lineage narratives functioned as practical acts of self-legitimation rather than static records of ancestry. They were selectively reproduced and reconfigured in response to political and social circumstances. Ultimately, this paper argues that in late early modern samurai society, the “Ie” was maintained through a dynamic combination of inherited prestige and present achievement, both of which were subject to domainal recognition. Examining "extinction" of the household thus offers a productive lens for understanding the contingent and socially constructed nature of the samurai house.

Keywords: samurai house (Ie), lineage narratives (yuishogaki), extinction (zekke), Edo period