han, in Japanese history, fief controlled by a daimyo, or territorial lord, during the Tokugawa period (1603–1868).
The han evolved during the 15th century when local daimyo gradually came into military and civil control of their own domains. In the warfare that took place among them at the end of the century, the size of the han gradually increased; many assumed the boundaries of one or more of the old Imperial provinces. Eventually, the Tokugawa family managed to ally the majority of the han on its side, establishing the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603. The Tokugawa han thus came to occupy about one-quarter of Japan, but the remaining three-quarters of the country continued to be divided into 295 other han; by the end of the period, there were still 265. The Tokugawa system of government was called bakuhan, a combination of bakufu, denoting the central government, or shogunate, and han.
Subject to the nominal authority of the central government, the han operated autonomously, even providing their own military forces. Each han was economically self-sufficient and had its own system of transit duties and highway barriers. It was an alliance of han hostile to the Tokugawa that finally overthrew the shogunate and established a new central government under the emperor in 1868.
On March 5, 1869, the restored Imperial government requested the daimyo to surrender their domains to the emperor; the final abolition of the han was proclaimed on Aug. 29, 1871.