Gosanke

Direct descendants of Tokugawa Ieyasu's three sons

The Tokugawa Gosanke (徳川御三家), also called simply Gosanke (御三家), or even Sanke (三家), were the most noble three branches of the Tokugawa clan of Japan: Owari, Kii, and Mito, all of which were descended from clan founder Tokugawa Ieyasu's three youngest sons, Yoshinao, Yorinobu, and Yorifusa, and were allowed to provide a shōgun in case of need. In the Edo period the term gosanke could also refer to various other combinations of Tokugawa houses, including (1) the shogunal, Owari and Kii houses and (2) the Owari, Kii, and Suruga houses (all with the court position of dainagon). Later, Gosanke were deprived of their role to provide a shōgun by three other branches that are closer to the shogunal house: the Gosankyō. Even after the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the abolition of the Edo period system of administrative domains (han) the three houses continued to exist in some form, as they do into the 21st century.

After he established his shogunate, Ieyasu proceeded to put members of his family in key positions. Ninth son Yoshinao was nominated daimyō of Nagoya (Owari Province), tenth son Yorinobu daimyō of Wakayama (Kii Province) and eleventh son Yorifusa daimyō of Mito (Hitachi Province). and was the largest of the three. Before the abolition of the shogunate and of the han system, the house was headed successively by 17 men. Its seniority notwithstanding, the Owari were the only one not to provide a shōgun. A Tokyo resident, he commutes to Nagoya during weekends. she owns and operates her own construction company in Ginza, Tokyo. Unlike the other two, the Kii House does not have a museum of its own, and has given its properties of historical value to museums, such as the Wakayama Prefectural Museum. Effectively extinct

In modern Japanese, the word gosanke is used to refer to "the strongest three" or "the most famous three" in various contexts. For example, the Imperial Hotel, Hotel Okura, and Hotel New Otani Tokyo are often referred to as one of the three great hotels (御三家) of Tokyo. The Otani Hotel was built in the Kioi district of Tokyo, where the Tokyo residence of the Kii House was located. The "8 bit gosanke", similarly to the "1977 trinity" in America, refers to the leading Japanese machines in the early home computing era.