Shōnai (庄内藩, Shōnai-han), also known as Tsuruoka-han, was a Japanese domain of the Edo period, located in Dewa Province. Though it was officially named Tsuruoka (鶴岡藩, Tsuruoka-han), it was commonly known as Shōnai. It was famous for being ruled by one of the great fudai daimyō houses, the Sakai, and it achieved great prominence in the late Edo period as a military power. Shōnai had command of the Shinchōgumi, the unit organized for the security of Edo in the 1860s.

The Sakai clan (酒井氏, Sakai-shi), descend from Emperor Seiwa and are a branch of the Minamoto clan by the Nitta clan.

Nitta Yoshisue, 4th son of Nitta Yoshishige (+ 1202), settled at Tokugawa (Kozuke province) and took the name of the place.

Tokugawa Arichika (14th century), descendant of Yoshisue in the 7th generation is the common ancestor of the Sakai clan and the Matsudaira clan. Due to this fact, the Sakai served the Matsudaira as senior vassals throughout the Sengoku Period, and were classified as fudai from before the foundation of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Sakai soon became chief retainers under Tokugawa Ieyasu, and split into many different branches in the subsequent decades.

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