domain often had agricultural crises, which resulted in several peasant uprisings throughout the course of its history. It was also beset by an internal o-ie sōdō conflict, the , which was brought on by financial issues. Satake Yoshiatsu (better known by his nom-de-plume Satake Shozan), the 8th generation lord of Kubota, was an accomplished artist. Yoshiatsu painted a number of paintings in the Dutch style, and also produced three treatises on European painting techniques, including the depiction of perspective. He was also a student of Dutch studies (rangaku) scholar Hiraga Gennai, who he had invited up to Akita to advise him on management of the domain's copper mines. It was during Yoshiatsu's lifetime that the of art was born and briefly flourished. The Kubota domain was uncommon in that it contained more than one castle, despite the Tokugawa shogunate's "one castle per domain" rule. The main castle was Kubota Castle, but there were also castles at Yokote and Ōdate, and five fortified estates elsewhere in the domain: Kakudate, Yuzawa, Hiyama, Jūniso, and In'nai. Each of these was given to a senior retainer who ran it as his own small castle town. The senior retainers had personal retainers who resided in these castle towns. Two of the clan elder (karō) families serving the Kubota domain were branches of the Satake family. One was the North Satake family (Satake-hokke), stipended at 10,000 koku; the other the West Satake family (Satake-nishike), stipended at 7200 koku. The North Satake family had its landholdings around Kakunodate, one of the fortified estates mentioned above; the West Satake resided in and had their landholdings around Ōdate. Another karō family unrelated to the Satake was the Tomura, who held Yokote castle. During its rule over Kubota, the Satake clan was ranked as a family, and as such, had the privilege of shogunal audiences in the Great Hall (Ohiroma) of Edo Castle. Though no Satake lord ever held the office of shōgun, the clan (together with many of the other domains of northern Honshū) assisted the shogunate in policing the frontier region of Ezochi (now Hokkaido). Boshin war After the restoration of imperial rule in late 1867, the Boshin War broke out in early 1868, pitting the coalition of southern domains against the forces of the former Tokugawa shogunate. After the city of Edo fell, remnants of the Tokugawa forces retreated northward, and the fighting followed northward. The Satake