Karō


Karō were top-ranking samurai officials and advisors in service to the daimyōs of feudal Japan.
In the Edo period, the policy of sankin-kōtai required each daimyō to place a karō in Edo and another in the home han. A karō who was in charge of a castle was called the jōdai karō, while the one in Edo was called the Edo karō. A general term for a domain-based karō is kunigarō.
Some domains referred to this position as bugyō or toshiyori.
An example of events involving a karō comes from one of the most famous of all samurai tales, Kanadehon Chūshingura. The final Asano daimyō of the Ako han was Asano Naganori. While he was in Edo, he was sentenced to commit seppuku for the offense of drawing a sword against Kira Yoshinaka in Edo Castle. When the shogunate abolished the Ako han, all the Ako samurai became rōnin. Ōishi Kuranosuke, the jōdai karō, led 46 other rōnin in a vendetta against Kira. As a result of his leadership in the Forty-seven Ronin affair, Ōishi went down in history as the most famous of all karō.
The shogunate post of rōjū had many similarities to that of karō.