Matsudaira clan

Matsudaira 松平
Mon: Maru ni Mitsuba-aoi
Home province	Mikawa
Parent house	Minamoto clan
Titles	Various
Founder	Matsudaira Chikauji
Final ruler	Tokugawa Yoshinobu
Current head	Iehiro Tokugawa
Founding year	14th century
Dissolution	Still extant as Tokugawa clan
Ruled until	1873 (Abolition of the han system)
Cadet branches	Various

The Matsudaira clan (松平氏, Matsudaira-shi) was a Japanese samurai clan that descended from the Minamoto clan. It originated in and took its name from Matsudaira village, in Mikawa Province (modern-day Aichi Prefecture). During the Sengoku period, the chieftain of the main line of the Matsudaira clan, Matsudaira Motoyasu became a powerful regional daimyo under Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi and changed his name to Tokugawa Ieyasu. He subsequently seized power as the first shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan during the Edo period until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, many cadet branches of the clan retained the Matsudaira surname, and numerous new branches were formed in the decades after Ieyasu. Some of those branches were also of daimyō status.

After the Meiji Restoration and the abolition of the han system, the Tokugawa and Matsudaira clans became part of the new kazoku nobility.^[1]