Tosa

Tosa

Historic region of the Japanese island of Shikoku. It dates at least to the Heian period, when Ki no Tsurayuki (868?–945?), editor of Japan's first imperially commissioned poetry anthology, wrote a fictional diary drawing on his experiences as governor of Tosa. In 1571 it became a unified domain (han) whose daimyo opposed Tokugawa Ieyasu when he consolidated his control of Japan in the early 17th century; this historical enmity became important at the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868), when samurai from Tosa, like those from Satsuma and Choshu, helped overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. See also Itagaki Taisuke; Tokugawa period.

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tosa

a large dog, usually red in colour, which is a cross between a mastiff and a Great Dane: originally developed for dog-fighting; it is not recognized as a breed by kennel clubs outside Japan

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Tosa 

a province in feudal Japan, in the southeastern part of the island of Shikoku.

Together with the provinces of Satsuma, Choshu, and Hizen, Tosa formed a coalition of southwestern provinces that opposed the house of Tokugawa in the 1860’s. The Tosa samurai entered into an alliance with bourgeois circles and played an important role in the incomplete bourgeois revolution of 1867–68 (seeMEMRESTORATION). In 1871 the province became part of Kochi Prefecture. In the 1870’s and 1880’s, Tosa provided many of the leaders of the liberal movement for the adoption of a constitution, most notably Itagaki.

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Tosa 

a medieval Japanese school of painting that developed the traditions of the yamato-e school. [26—355—4]