Konoe family


Konoe family is a Japanese aristocratic kin group. The family is a branch of Hokke and, by extension, a main branch of the Fujiwara clan.

History

The Konoe claim descent from Konoe Iezane, and the origin of the family name was the residence for the family of Konoe Motozane, which was located on a road in Kyoto named "Konoe-Ōji". Despite Konoe at first being the senior line of the Fujiwara clan, the clan was eventually split up into Five regent houses in Kamakura period, and the head of each five families had rights to become the Sesshō and Kampaku. During the following Nanboku-chō period, a succession dispute of Konoe emerged, between Tsunetada and his cousin Mototsugu - they served in rival courts, the Southern and the Northern Court respectively; later, when the Southern court lost its political influence as of 1392, records about Tsunetada's descendants were lost and incomplete ever since.
There were at least five Imperial Consorts who came from Konoe family, including Konoe Sakiko, who was adopted by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1586. The most recent consort from the Konoe is , who married the 118th Emperor of Japan, Emperor Go-Momozono; they had an only daughter Princess Yoshiko.
As of 1605, since Konoe Nobutada had no male heir, one of his nephews was chosen as his heir and named Konoe Nobuhiro, who later married his daughter. Nobuhiro's patrilineal lineage of the Imperial House descended in the head of the family until 1956, when the eldest son of Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, Fumitaka, died in the Soviet Union without legitimate male heir. As the result, Fumitaka's wife adopted his nephew Tadateru Konoe, second son of Fumitaka's sister, as their heir. Tadateru's patrilineal descent, through his biological father Morisada Hosokawa, comes from the Hosokawa clan, a cadet branch of Seiwa Genji and descended from Emperor Seiwa; he also has an elder brother Morihiro Hosokawa, the Prime Minister of Japan from 1993 to 1994. Tadateru married, in 1966, a granddaughter of Emperor Taishō, Yasuko.

Family Tree

Tokiwai family

The Tokiwai family was founded by a son of Konoe Tadahiro, Gyōki, who was the lead Buddhist monk of Senju-ji, and he took the family name "Tokiwai" since 1872.

Miyagawa family