Kazoku

The kazoku, literally the "flowery lineage," was the hereditary peerage of Japan that existed between 1883 and 1947.

The Meiji oligarchs, as part of their Westernizing reforms, merged the kuge (or court nobility) and the daimyo (or feudal lords) into a single aristocratic class. Ito Hirobumi, one of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration and later the principal author of the 1889 Constitution of the Empire of Japan, intended the kazoku to serve a political and social bulwark for the "restored" emperor and the Japanese imperial institution.

In addition to the existing Japanese nobility, the Meiji leadership also awarded kazoku status to those regarded as having performed outstanding service to the country. In 1884, the government took the further step of dividing the kazoku into five ranks explicitly based on the British peerage: (1) prince or duke (kōshaku), (2) marquis (also kōshaku but written with a different Chinese character), (3) count (hakushaku), (4) viscount (shishaku), and (5) baron (danshaku).

As in British peerage, only the actual holder of a title and his consort were considered part of the kazoku. The holders of the top two ranks, prince and marquis, automatically became members of the House of Peers upon their succession their titles or upon majority (in the case of peers who were minors). Counts, viscounts, and barons elected up to 150 representatives from their ranks to the House of Peers.

Titles passed according to primogeniture, although kazoku houses frequently adopted sons from collateral branches of their own houses and other kazoku houses to prevent their lines from dying out. A 1904 amendment to the 1889 Imperial Household Law, allowed minor princes (ō) of the imperial family to renounce their imperial status and become peers (in their own right) or heirs to childless peers. Initially there were 11 non-imperial princes or dukes, 24 marquis, 76 counts, 324 viscount, and 74 barons, for a total of 509 peers. By 1928, through promotions and new creations there were a total of 954 peers: 18 non-imperial princes or dukes, 40 marquis, 108 counts, 379 viscounts, and 409 barons.

The Constitution of Japan abolished the kazoku and ended the use of all titles of nobility or rank, outside the imperial family.