Tokugawa Shogunate (1603): Ieyasu Founds the Edo Period

The Tokugawa shogunate was the military government of Japan founded when Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed shogun in 1603. Based in the city of Edo, today’s Tokyo, it ruled Japan for about 265 years, a period known as the Edo period. After more than a century of civil war, the Tokugawa built a political order that kept the country largely at peace until the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

Background: the end of the warring states

From the late fifteenth century Japan was divided among rival warlords called daimyo, a period known as the Sengoku or “Warring States” era. The emperor in Kyoto had little practical power, and the Ashikaga shoguns, the earlier military rulers, lost control of the country.

Reunification came through three great leaders. Oda Nobunaga conquered much of central Japan before he was killed in 1582. His general Toyotomi Hideyoshi completed the conquest of the country by 1590. Hideyoshi died in 1598, leaving his young son Hideyori under the care of a council of regents, of whom the most powerful was Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Ieyasu, born in 1543, had been an ally of Nobunaga and a leading vassal of Hideyoshi. In 1590 Hideyoshi moved him to the Kanto plain in eastern Japan, where he made the small castle town of Edo his base. With rich lands and a large army, Ieyasu was the strongest lord in Japan when Hideyoshi died.

Sekigahara and the title of shogun

Rivalry among the regents soon led to war. On 21 October 1600 Ieyasu’s Eastern Army defeated a coalition of western lords at the Battle of Sekigahara, helped by defections from the opposing side. Ieyasu then confiscated or reduced the lands of many defeated lords and rewarded his allies.

On 24 March 1603 Emperor Go-Yozei appointed Ieyasu seii taishogun, “great general who subdues the barbarians”, usually shortened to shogun. The title had been held by earlier military rulers since the twelfth century and gave Ieyasu formal authority to govern in the emperor’s name. His government is known as the bakufu, literally “tent government”, or simply as the shogunate.

In 1605 Ieyasu passed the title to his son Hidetada, showing that the office would remain in the family. He continued to direct affairs from his retirement at Sunpu (now Shizuoka). The one remaining threat was the Toyotomi family in Osaka. In the Siege of Osaka of 1614–1615, Tokugawa forces destroyed Osaka Castle, and Hideyori and his mother died. Ieyasu himself died on 1 June 1616 and was later enshrined as a deity, Tosho Daigongen, at Nikko.

Building the Tokugawa order

The system that the first three shoguns created is often called the bakuhan system, from bakufu (the shogunate) and han (the domains). The shogun ruled directly over about a quarter of the country, including major cities such as Edo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nagasaki and important mines. The rest was divided among around 260 to 270 daimyo, who governed their own domains.

The daimyo were classed by their relationship to the Tokugawa. Shinpan were related branches of the Tokugawa family. Fudai were lords whose families had been Tokugawa vassals before Sekigahara, and they filled the main posts in the government. Tozama, or “outside” lords, had submitted only after 1600; some were very wealthy, but they were watched closely and kept out of central government.

A series of laws strengthened control. In 1615 the shogunate issued the Buke shohatto, the Laws for the Military Houses, which regulated the conduct of daimyo, forbade unauthorised castle building and required permission for marriages between lord families. In the same year, an order limited each domain to a single castle. Another code regulated the emperor and the court nobility in Kyoto.

The third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, completed the structure. In 1635 he formalised sankin-kotai, or alternate attendance. Daimyo had to live in Edo every other year and leave their wives and heirs there permanently. The system acted as a form of hostage-taking and forced lords to spend large sums on travel and residences, but it also helped turn Edo into a vast city and spread goods and culture along Japan’s highways.

Christianity and foreign relations

The shogunate became increasingly hostile to Christianity, which had spread in Japan since the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in 1549. Officials feared that converts might owe loyalty to foreign powers. A nationwide ban and expulsion of missionaries followed in 1614, and persecution intensified in the following decades. After the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–1638, a revolt with many Christian participants, the shogunate expelled the Portuguese.

From the 1630s a series of edicts created what later writers called sakoku, the “closed country” policy. Japanese were forbidden to travel abroad, and European trade was limited to the Dutch on the island of Dejima in Nagasaki. Japan was not completely sealed off, however. Chinese merchants traded at Nagasaki, relations with Korea ran through the Tsushima domain, the Ryukyu Kingdom was controlled through Satsuma, and the Matsumae domain traded with the Ainu in the north.

Key people

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616) spent his youth as a hostage of more powerful clans, then rose through alliances with Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. He was known for patience and caution, waiting until Hideyoshi’s death to make his bid for national power. As founder of the shogunate he set its basic institutions and chose Edo as its seat.

Tokugawa Hidetada (1579–1632), the second shogun, consolidated his father’s work. He enforced the Laws for the Military Houses strictly, confiscating the lands of daimyo who broke them, and tightened the restrictions on Christianity.

Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604–1651), the third shogun, was the first to be born after Sekigahara. Under him the system of alternate attendance and the restrictions on foreign contact took their mature form, and the elaborate shrine to Ieyasu at Nikko was rebuilt.

Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837–1913), the fifteenth and last shogun, held office for only about a year. His decision to return power to the emperor in 1867 helped avoid a longer civil war, and he lived quietly in retirement for more than four decades afterwards.

Society and economy under the Tokugawa

The long peace brought major changes. Japan’s population grew from perhaps 12 to 18 million around 1600 to roughly 30 million by the early eighteenth century, then stayed fairly stable. Agriculture expanded, roads and coastal shipping improved, and a national market developed, centred on Osaka.

Cities flourished. By the eighteenth century Edo had over a million inhabitants, and Osaka and Kyoto each had several hundred thousand. A lively urban culture grew up, with kabuki and puppet theatre, woodblock prints, popular fiction and the poetry of Matsuo Basho. Literacy spread widely through temple schools.

The samurai, now without wars to fight, became largely a class of salaried administrators living in castle towns. The government promoted Neo-Confucian ideas of loyalty and social hierarchy, and an official order placed samurai above farmers, artisans and merchants. In practice many merchants became rich while many samurai fell into debt, a tension that grew over the period.

Decline and fall

By the nineteenth century the shogunate faced financial problems, famines and peasant unrest. The arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry’s American warships in 1853 and the treaties that followed, which opened ports to foreign trade on unequal terms, damaged its prestige. Powerful tozama domains such as Satsuma and Choshu turned against it, rallying around the emperor.

In November 1867 the fifteenth and last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, returned his governing powers to the emperor. On 3 January 1868 his opponents proclaimed the restoration of imperial rule in what became known as the Meiji Restoration. The Boshin War of 1868–1869 ended the last resistance by Tokugawa supporters, and Edo was renamed Tokyo, the new capital.

Myths and facts

Myth: Japan was completely isolated during the Edo period. Trade and diplomacy continued through four controlled channels, and knowledge of Western science entered through Dutch books, a field known as rangaku or “Dutch learning”.

Myth: the four-class system was a rigid legal caste system. Historians now see the ranking of samurai, farmers, artisans and merchants largely as a Confucian ideal. The main legal line ran between samurai and commoners, and there was considerable movement and variation among commoners.

Timeline

• 1543, 31 January: Tokugawa Ieyasu is born at Okazaki.
• 1590: Ieyasu moves to the Kanto region and makes Edo his base.
• 1600, 21 October: Ieyasu wins the Battle of Sekigahara.
• 1603, 24 March: Emperor Go-Yozei appoints Ieyasu shogun.
• 1605: Ieyasu hands the title to his son Hidetada.
• 1615: The Toyotomi are destroyed at Osaka; the Laws for the Military Houses are issued.
• 1616, 1 June: Ieyasu dies.
• 1635: Iemitsu formalises the system of alternate attendance.
• 1853, July: Commodore Perry’s squadron arrives at Uraga.
• 1867, November: Tokugawa Yoshinobu returns his powers to the emperor; imperial rule is proclaimed in January 1868.

Why it matters

The Tokugawa shogunate gave Japan more than two centuries of internal peace, an unusually long stretch in world history. Its cities, markets, schools and culture laid many of the foundations on which Japan’s rapid modernisation after 1868 was built. At the same time, its rigid political structure and its long resistance to outside change help explain why its fall, when it came, was so rapid. Its controlled relations with the outside world also shaped the dramatic encounter between Japan and the Western powers in the nineteenth century.