Edo period

The Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional daimyō.

The Tokugawa shogunate, which governed from Edo (modern Tokyo), presided over a prosperous and peaceful era known as the Edo period (1600–1868).

A revolution took place from the time of the Kamakura shogunate, which existed with the Tennō's court, to the Tokugawa, when the samurai became the unchallenged rulers in what historian Edwin O. Reischauer called a "centralized feudal" form of shogunate.

Samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the 12th century to their abolition in the 1870s.

The period came to an end with the Meiji Restoration on May 3, 1868, after the fall of Edo.

The Restoration led to enormous changes in Japan's political and social structure and spanned both the late Edo period (often called the Bakumatsu) and the beginning of the Meiji period.

The Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional daimyō. Ieyasu's victory over the western daimyō at the Battle of Sekigahara (October 21, 1600, or in the Japanese calendar on the 15th day of the ninth month of the fifth year of the Keichō era) gave him control of all Japan.

From the Shugo of the Muromachi period through the Sengoku to the daimyō of the Edo period, the rank had a long and varied history.

The Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional daimyō. A revolution took place from the time of the Kamakura shogunate, which existed with the Tennō's court, to the Tokugawa, when the samurai became the unchallenged rulers in what historian Edwin O. Reischauer called a "centralized feudal" form of shogunate.

The Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo Castle and the years of the shogunate became known as the Edo period.

The shogunate was officially established in Edo on March 24, 1603, by Tokugawa Ieyasu. He maintained two million koku of land, a new headquarters at Edo, a strategically situated castle town (the future Tokyo), and also had an additional two million koku of land and thirty-eight vassals under his control.

During the Edo period, there were about 100 fires mostly begun by accident and often quickly escalating and spreading through neighborhoods of wooden machiya which were heated with charcoal fires.

In 1615, the Tokugawa army destroyed the Toyotomi stronghold at Osaka. By the mid-18th century, Edo had a population of more than one million, and Osaka and Kyoto each had more than 400,000 inhabitants.

Osaka continued to flourish during the Edo period (1603–1867) and became known as a center of Japanese culture.

He maintained two million koku of land, a new headquarters at Edo, a strategically situated castle town (the future Tokyo), and also had an additional two million koku of land and thirty-eight vassals under his control.

During the subsequent Edo period, Edo grew into one of the largest cities in the world with a population topping one million by the 18th century.

The second class of the hierarchy were the fudai, or "house daimyō", rewarded with lands close to the Tokugawa holdings for their faithful service.

Fudai daimyō was a class of daimyōs who were hereditary vassals of the Tokugawa in Edo-period Japan.

The political system evolved into what historians call bakuhan, a combination of the terms bakufu and han (domains) to describe the government and society of the period.

The han or domain is the Japanese historical term for the estate of a warrior after the 12th century or of a daimyō in the Edo period (1603–1868) and early Meiji period (1868–1912).

The code encompassed private conduct, marriage, dress, types of weapons and numbers of troops allowed; required feudal lords to reside in Edo every other year (the sankin-kōtai system); prohibited the construction of ocean-going ships; proscribed Christianity; restricted castles to one per domain (han) and stipulated that bakufu regulations were the national law.

Sankin-kōtai was a policy of the Tokugawa shogunate during most of the Edo period of Japanese history.

Ninety-seven han formed the third group, the tozama (outside vassals), former opponents or new allies.

The term came into use in the Kamakura period and continued until the end of the Edo period.

The shogunate was officially established in Edo on March 24, 1603, by Tokugawa Ieyasu.

As shōgun, he used his remaining years to create and solidify the Tokugawa shogunate, which ushered in the Edo period, and was the third shogunal government (after the Kamakura (Minamoto) and the Ashikaga).

The beginning of the Edo period coincides with the last decades of the Nanban trade period during which intense interaction with European powers, on the economic and religious plane, took place.

The Nanban trade declined in the early Edo period with the rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate which feared the influence of Christianity in Japan, particularly the Roman Catholicism of the Portuguese.

Ieyasu's victory over the western daimyō at the Battle of Sekigahara (October 21, 1600, or in the Japanese calendar on the 15th day of the ninth month of the fifth year of the Keichō era) gave him control of all Japan.

The shogunate enacted measures including buke shohatto, as a code of conduct to control the autonomous daimyōs; and in 1639 the isolationist sakoku ("closed country") policy that spanned the two and a half centuries of tenuous political unity known as the Edo period (1603–1868).

The Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–38, in which discontented Catholic Christian samurai and peasants rebelled against the bakufu—and Edo called in Dutch ships to bombard the rebel stronghold—marked the end of the Christian movement, although some Catholic Christians survived by going underground, the so-called Kakure Kirishitan.

Kakure Kirishitan is a modern term for a member of the Japanese Catholic Church during the Edo period that went underground after the Shimabara Rebellion in the 1630s.

Already powerful, Ieyasu profited by his transfer to the rich Kantō area.

The heartland of feudal power during the Kamakura period and again in the Edo period, Kanto became the center of modern development.

In 1636, the Dutch were restricted to Dejima, a small artificial island—and thus, not true Japanese soil—in Nagasaki's harbor.

The Dutch were moved to Dejima in 1641 and during most of the Edo period the island was the single place of direct trade and exchange between Japan and the outside world.

Samurai, craftsmen and merchants lived in the cities that were built around daimyō castles, each restricted to their own quarter.

However, many were rebuilt, either later in the Sengoku period, in the Edo period (1603–1867) that followed, or more recently, as national heritage sites or museums.

Samurai, craftsmen and merchants lived in the cities that were built around daimyō castles, each restricted to their own quarter.

These cities did not necessarily form around castles after the Edo period; some are known as Jin'yamachi, cities that have evolved around Jin'ya or government offices that are not intended to provide military services.

Outside the four classes were the so-called eta and hinin, those whose professions broke the taboos of Buddhism.

In the feudal era, the outcaste were called eta (穢多, literally, "an abundance of defilement" or "an abundance of filth"), a term now considered derogatory.

Only a few land samurai remained in the border provinces of the north, or as direct vassals of the shōgun, the 5,000 so-called hatamoto.

While all three of the shogunates in Japanese history had official retainers, in the two preceding ones, they were referred to as gokenin. However, in the Edo period, hatamoto were the upper vassals of the Tokugawa house, and the gokenin were the lower vassals.

He maintained two million koku of land, a new headquarters at Edo, a strategically situated castle town (the future Tokyo), and also had an additional two million koku of land and thirty-eight vassals under his control.

Under the Tokugawa shogunate of the Edo period (1603–1868) of Japanese history, each feudal domain had an assessment of its potential income known as kokudaka which in part determined its order of precedence at the Shogunal court.

The rice was sold at the fudasashi market in Edo.

Rice brokers, which rose to power and significance in Osaka and Edo in the Edo period (1603-1867) of Japanese history, were the forerunners to Japan's banking system.

By the mid-18th century, Edo had a population of more than one million, and Osaka and Kyoto each had more than 400,000 inhabitants.

Throughout the Edo period, the economy of the city flourished as one of three major cities in Japan, the others being Osaka and Edo.