In 713, at the suggestion of
Bizen-no-kami Nanten - and
Bizen-no-suke Kamitsukeno-no-Kenji the Eita, Katsuta, Tomata, Kume, Mashima, and Oba districts of
Bizen Province were separated into a new province, and, and Kamitsukeno-no-Kenji was appointed as the first governor of Mimasaka. This separation was the final stage of the disintegration of the former
Kingdom of Kibi, and was intended to further weaken the
Kibi clan by putting its iron resources directly under the control of the
imperial government. In Mimasaka, there are many place names that are directly linked to people or places in Yamato. The ruins of the
kokufu have been located within what is now the city of Tsuyama. The site is now located under the Tsuyama
Sōja shrine. The
Mimasaka Kokubun-ji and the ruins of the Mimasaka Kokubun-niji as located nearby, The
ichinomiya of the province is the
Nakayama Shrine, also located in Tsuyama. During the
Heian period, the area was part of the holdings of the
Heike clan. In the
Kamakura period,
Kajiwara no Kagetoki followed by
Wada Yoshimori served as
shugo before the province came under the direct control of the
Hōjō clan. In the
Muromachi period, the
Ashikaga clan took over the former Hōjō holdings. No central powerful local clan ever rose to prominence and the province changed hands frequently between warring factions in the
Sengoku period. Control shifted between the
Yamana clan, the
Akamatsu clan, the
Amago clan, the
Urakami clan, and the
Ukita clan. After the
Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, it became united again with Bizen Province under
Kobayakawa Hideaki. After his death without heir only two years later, the
Tokugawa shogunate assigned most of the province to the
Mori clan as
Tsuyama Domain. The Mori moved the capital of the province from the
Innoshō area, to their newly built
jōkamachi at
Tsuyama. In 1697, the Mori clan were replaced by a cadet branch of the Echizen-
Matsudaira clan. The size of the domain was reduced to only 100,000
koku, and later to 50,000
koku. In 1767, another domain,
Katsuyama Domain, with 23,000
koku, was created for the
Miura clan. Mimasaka was the home of the
samurai Miyamoto Musashi, the author of
The Book of Five Rings. In 1871, following the
abolition of the han system, Mimasaka was divided into Tsuyama, Mashima, Kurashiki, Tsuruta, Koromo, Koga, Ikuno, Akashi, Numata, and Tatsuno prefectures, which were merged with Okayama Prefecture inI 1876. Per the early
Meiji period , an official government assessment of the nation's resources, the province had 766 villages, with a total
kokudaka of 263,477
koku. ==Gallery==