Edo period

After the chaos of the Sengoku period, Japan entered the Edo period (also called the Tokugawa period), which lasted from 1600 or 1603 until 1868. During this time, the country was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate and about 300 regional feudal lords, or daimyo. The era was marked by long-lasting peace and stability, the growth of cities and the economy, a rigid social order, a policy of isolation from the outside world, and a flourishing of popular arts and culture.

The period began when Tokugawa Ieyasu won the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, gaining control over most of Japan. In 1603, Emperor Go-Yōzei named him shogun. Ieyasu stepped down two years later in favor of his son Hidetada, but he kept real power. He defeated his main rival, Toyotomi Hideyori, at the Siege of Osaka in 1615, and died the following year. After that, peace generally held, and samurai became largely unnecessary as warriors. The Tokugawa shogunate enforced Ieyasu’s policies of conformity, including a strict hierarchy of social classes. Starting in 1635, daimyo were required to spend every other year in the capital, Edo, while their families lived there permanently—a system called “alternate attendance” that kept the lords in check. By 1639, all foreigners were expelled under the policy of sakoku, except for Dutch traders confined to the island of Dejima in Nagasaki, beginning a long period of isolation.

During the Edo period, merchants grew very wealthy, laying the groundwork for Japan’s later zaibatsu business conglomerates. Although travel within the country was generally restricted, daimyo processions to and from Edo created a network of roads and inns. A commoner culture emerged in Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto, and art forms like kabuki and ukiyo-e thrived. Japanese scholars developed schools of neo-Confucian philosophy, and samurai, now mostly working as administrators, formalized their bushido code of morality. In 1853, the United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry forced Japan to open to Western trade, beginning the Bakumatsu (“end of the bakufu”) era. The Edo period ended in 1868 with the Meiji Restoration and the Boshin War, which restored imperial rule.

The Tokugawa shogunate was a “centralized feudal” system, as historian Edwin O. Reischauer described it, where samurai became the unchallenged rulers. Tokugawa Ieyasu was the main beneficiary of the achievements of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Already a powerful daimyo, Ieyasu gained the rich Kantō area, with two million koku (about thirty-six hectares of land), a new headquarters at Edo (a strategically placed castle town that would become Tokyo), and an additional two million seven hundred thousand koku of land with thirty-eight vassals. After Hideyoshi’s death, Ieyasu quickly seized control of the Toyotomi clan. His victory at the Battle of Sekigahara on 21 October 1600 gave him control of all Japan. He abolished many enemy daimyo houses, reduced others (including the Toyotomi), and gave the spoils to his family and allies. Though he did not fully control the western daimyo, becoming shogun helped consolidate his alliance. He strengthened his power, installed his son Hidetada as shogun in 1605, and spent the next decade eliminating the Toyotomi threat, destroying their stronghold at Osaka in 1615.

The political system of the period is called bakuhan, combining the terms bakufu (shogunate) and han (domains). The shogun held national authority, while daimyo held regional authority. This created a new unity in the feudal structure, with a large bureaucracy to manage both centralized and decentralized powers. The Tokugawa grew more powerful in their first century: land redistribution gave them nearly seven million koku, control of major cities, and a land assessment system that brought in large revenues. The feudal hierarchy included different classes of daimyo. Closest to the Tokugawa were the shinpan, or “related houses”—twenty-three daimyo on the borders of Tokugawa lands, all directly related to Ieyasu. They held mostly honorary titles and advisory roles. Next were the fudai, or “house daimyo,” given lands near Tokugawa holdings for loyal service; by the 18th century, 145 fudai controlled smaller han, the largest assessed at 250,000 koku. Most major bakufu offices were staffed by fudai. The third group, the tozama (outside vassals), included 97 han of former opponents or new allies, located mostly on the archipelago’s peripheries, collectively controlling nearly ten million koku. Because they were the least trusted, they were carefully managed and generously treated, but excluded from central government positions. The Tokugawa shogunate consolidated control over a reunified Japan and held unprecedented power over the emperor, the court, all daimyo, and religious orders, with the emperor upheld as the ultimate authority.