Empire · 1603–1868 · East Asia

Tokugawa Shogunate

Also known as Tokugawa shogunate, Japan (Warring States)

After a century of civil war in the Sengoku, or Warring States, period, Japan was reunited by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. When Hideyoshi died, Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated his rivals at Sekigahara in 1600, and in 1603 the emperor named him shogun.

From Edo, the Tokugawa shoguns ruled through about 260 domain lords, the daimyo, who had to spend alternate years in Edo, while the emperor remained a figurehead in Kyoto. Christianity was banned, and from the 1630s foreign trade was restricted to the Dutch and Chinese at Nagasaki. Two and a half centuries of peace brought growing cities, a wealthy merchant class and arts such as kabuki and woodblock prints. The arrival of Commodore Perry's American warships in 1853 forced Japan open, and in 1867–68 the last shogun surrendered power to the emperor.

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Years

1603–1868

Capital

Edo (Tokyo); the emperor stayed in Kyoto

Greatest extent

1800, about 300,000 km²

Region

East Asia

c.; Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and southern Hokkaido, with the Ryukyu kingdom as a vassal of Satsuma; no scholarly area figure found