Tada Kasuke

Tada Kasuke (多田加助)(date of birth unknown[1]—died January 1, 1687, or in the third year of the Jōkyō[2] era) was a Japanese farmer who led a failed appeal for lowered taxes in Azumidaira, a part of the Matsumoto Domain under the control of the Tokugawa shogunate.

The Tada family homestead[5] was surrounded by moats and mounds, which suggests the power and position they held.

Traditionally the head of the family became the headman of Nakagaya village, and Kasuke took over the position when his father retired.

They decided to appeal to the magistrate’s office in Matsumoto, though they fully understood that they were risking their lives in doing so.

In order to settle the incident, the executives at Matsumoto Castle agreed to grant the farmers their wishes.

At around the same time, a stone pagoda inscribed with Buddhist scripture was erected to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the uprising.

In 1786 the household altar honoring Kasuke and others was renovated to observe the centennial anniversary of the uprising.

A hundred years later in the Meiji period, the altar was moved out of the Tada homestead to a new site nearby and was expanded to a shrine.

Tada Kasuke and the Jōkyō Uprising were buried in oblivion before the Jiyū-Minken Undo (Freedom and People's Rights Movement) raged nationwide in the 1870s and 1880s during the Meiji period.

Matsuzawa Kyūsaku from Azumidaira featured Tada Kasuke in his column in the newspaper, and went on to dramatize the story.

[23] Matsuzawa perceived the Jōkyō Uprising as a model of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement.

The reason for his enshrinement[24] is believed to be that the passage of two hundred years had assuaged the grief and bitterness on the part of the descendants of Kasuke and his followers.

Obviously, the lord consented to the executions of the farmers without the knowledge of the tax rise that had triggered the uprising.

The real culprits were the executives at Matsumoto Castle and the petty officials who were in charge of collecting taxes.

The inscriptions on the two plaques are both in Japanese and English, which clearly shows a global perspective of the founding fathers of the museum.