For hundreds of years Japan was wracked by rivalry and wars between the daimyo or feudal lords, who had emerged as the dominant force out of the decaying imperial court society centred in Kyoto.
The Shogunate
For hundreds of years Japan was wracked by rivalry and wars between the daimyo or feudal lords, who had emerged as the dominant force out of the decaying imperial court society centred in Kyoto.
In 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated his major rivals in the battle of Sekigahara and in 1603 assumed the title of shogun or supreme military leader. For the next 265 years, the Tokugawa shogunate based in Edo, its vassals, retainers and armies of samurai held political predominance over a unified Japan.
To control foreign trade and to forestall the political threat posed by Christian missionaries and the European powers which stood behind them, a policy of total seclusion was adopted. By the 1640s, foreign trade was restricted to the Dutch and the Chinese through the southern port of Nagasaki. No Japanese was permitted to travel abroad, severely limiting the influence of European ideas, science and culture.
Within Japan, the establishment of peace, initially at least, contributed to significant economic growth. Agricultural improvements and an expansion of land under cultivation led to a doubling of cereal production between 1600 and 1740.
Prosperity and an end to military hostilities greatly enhanced the economic role of the merchant and the growth of commercial houses in Osaka and Edo. Samurai and daimyo, whose income was measured in rice, were dependent on the merchants to convert their share of the crops into money -- the vital commodity for the purchase of a widening range of urban goods.
The wealth of the merchant class was substantial. By 1761, more than 200 commercial houses in Japan had a total capital equivalent in value to the estates of many of the daimyo. The economic rise of the merchant class was paralleled by the rapid growth of the major cities -- particularly Edo, the administrative and political centre of the shogunate. By 1700 the city is estimated to have had a population of one million -- far greater than London or Paris of the day. Osaka and Kyoto each had around 400,000 people.
This shogunate lasted until 1863 when it was overthrown by men such as Takamori Seigo, and the Edo Era ended and the Meiji Era began.
