The Hino Family (日野家)
The Hino Family is a court noble having meika, the upper rank of kuge (the status of the house) of the House of the Fujiwara North Line of the Fujiwara clan. It served the Imperial Court over generations in the field of study of Confucius and (the art of) tanka poetry.
Summary
In 822, Iemune HINO, the grandson of FUJIWARA no Manatsu, who was a child of FUJIWARA no Uchimaro, built Houke-ji Temple in Hino, Uji County, Yamashiro Province (the present Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City, Kyoto Prefecture), which was a traditional domain of the family, and worshiped a small statue of Yakushinyorai. The Yakushinyorai was handed down over generations, and the descendant, Sukenari HINO, built Yakushido Hall and Hokai-ji Temple in 1051. This was made the temple of the clan; people started calling the temple Hino Yakushi, and later the place name became the family name, which is how the family started.
Shinran, who was born in 1173 and founded the Jodoshin Shu sect, is considered to be a child of Arinori HINO, who was a member of the family. Shinran married off his daughter Kakushinni to Hirotsuna HINO, of the side line of the same family. The descendant is the Otani Family, which led Hongan-ji Temple. At the end of the Kamakura period, Suketomo HINO and Toshimoto HINO were punished in the Shochu Incident in 1324 and the Genko War in 1332, wherein the Emperor Go-Daigo's plan of conspiracy to overthrow the shogunate was revealed. In the Muromachi period, until the generation of Yoshihisa ASHIKAGA, the House of Hino was related to the House of Ashikaga shogunate by marriage: the House of Hino produced wives of the shogun for four generations, including Nariko HINO and Yasuko HINO (a niece of Nariko), who became wives of the third shogun Yoshimitsu ASHIKAGA of the Muromachi shogunate; Eiko HINO (younger blood sister of Yasuko), who became a wife of the fourth shogun Yoshimochi ASHIKAGA; sisters Muneko HINO and Shigeko HINO, who became wives of the sixth shogun Yoshinori ASHIKAGA, and Tomiko HINO, who became a wife of the eighth shogun Yoshimasa ASHIKAGA.
However, the increase in the House of Hino's influence caused suspicion on the shogunate side, whereby the assassination of Yoshisuke HINO by Yoshinori led to the temporary ruin of the Hino Family, but once Tomiko Hino got married to the eighth shogun Yoshimasa ASHIKAGA, Katsumitsu HINO, Tomiko's elder brother, regained his political influence. Although it was decided that Yoshimi ASHIKAGA, Yoshimasa's brother, would become the next shogun, Tomiko hoped that her biological child Yoshihisa ASHIKAGA would take the position of shogun; moreover, the Hino Family, Tomiko's parents' home, also backed Yoshihisa, and the battle of the succession to (the headship of) the house in the House of Ashikaga shogunate, coupled with the conflict between the Hatakeyama clan and the Shiba clan, became a cause of the Onin War. Yoshihisa became the shogun but died in 1489.
Arimitsu HINO, of the side line of the Hino Family, tied up with Go-Nancho (of the Late Southern Dynasty), which aimed for the restoration of the Southern Dynasty, broke into Kyoto Imperial Palace in 1443 and staged the Kinketsu Incident in order to take part of the three sacred imperial treasures; subsequently, Arimitsu and his group locked themselves into the Kompon-Chudo hall of Enryaku-ji Temple, Mount Hiei, but they were defeated when the Imperial Court issued an order to hunt down and kill them.
The stipend during the Edo period was a little more than 1,100 koku. The descendant is ranked as the Dojo Family, which consists of 12 families from the Hino Family to the House of Hirohashi, the House of Yanagihara (the original forefather is Suketomo HINO), the Karasuma Family, the Takeya Family, the Hinonishi Family, the Kadenokoji Family, the Uramatsu Family, the Toyama Family, the Toyooka Family, the Mimuroto Family and theKitakoji Family. The Otani family (which is the monshu, or the chief priest, of Hongan-ji Temple) is sometimes considered a side line of the House of Hino, although it is not a court noble.