Tokugawa shogunate

Shogunate Japan was a very structured and influential time in Japan’s history, starting from 1185 to 1603. Japanese society was structured in different layers which resembles a pyramid. The Social and Political structure was essential to Japanese society because it promoted stability. The purpose of this essay is to find how this social hierarchy worked and what each person did to contribute to society. In The Shogunate pyramidal division had a very complex five level class system. Society in…

like during the Tokugawa period, where the Shoguns employed an idea of Sakoku in Japan. But what does Sakoku mean? There is a literal translation of closing down the country, but the foreign relations policy did not follow this word for word translation . Along with the Tokugawa Edict, the Shoguns are marked in history for their impressive political stability, but their stability came from their ability to see past the letter of the law. But did the edict put into place by the Tokugawa family…

The last unifier Tokugawa Ieyasu was born in 1543 to a minor warlord in Okazaki. He grew up in a time of great chaos and disorder in Japan (the Sengoku period, he was forced to spend most of his childhood as a hostage of the Imagawa clan. Ieyasu received military and political training from the Imagawa family and became a military leader. He allied himself with two senior leaders firstly with Oda Nobunaga and later on with Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In 1600 Ieyasu became known as the most powerful…

Hideyoshi was the Shogun of Japan who first started the Shogunate and an end to the fighting. In this Edict it stated “ anyone who does not hinder the teaching of Buddha, whether it be a merchant or not, may not come and go freely from Christian countries to Japan” . The shogun wanted to make all of Japan practice…

Since the Meiji era to our Modern era, Nihonga was changed and Tenmyouya Hisashi created Neo-Nihonga to break out of this rut that Japanese painters have been stuck in and now wants to shake everything up for this new age. Wanting Neo-Hihonga to break free of that structure that Hihonga was given over 120 years ago and create something new and fresh. Tenmyouya Hisashi went as far as to create a whole new style called “BASARA” “which is extravagant as well as extraordinary which embodies a…

Ebisu is a god from Japan, one of few who does not have any influence from other countries such as China or India. Therefore, Ebisu is uniquely Japanese in his realm of influence and stories. He is largely known as the God of Fisherman and one of seven gods of good luck. He is generally portrayed as slightly crippled or having some sort of physical defect as one of his defining stories is his ability to overcome his body at birth, where he was born without bones. He was cast out into the sea as…

strengthen the state, he created a more centralized government under a powerful military leader known as the shogun. The shogun attempted to increase the powers of the central government while reducing rival aristocratic clans to vassals’ status. The shogunate system served as the political system in Japan until the second half of the nineteenth century. The system worked effectively, and it was fortunate that it did, because during the next century, Japan faced the most serious challenge it…

This time period was marked by “the powerful southwestern tozama domains of Chōshū and Satsuma exerted the greatest pressure on the Tokugawa government and brought about the overthrow of the last shogun.” (Encyclopedia Brittanica) A shogun was a military ruler. The government structure was “required the domainal lords, or Daimyo, to maintain households in the Tokugawa administrative capital of Edo.”(Encyclopedia Brittanica) The story of Momotaro is a folktale, which is a characteristically…

Protest activity, prompted by prolonged inequality, arises from the frustrations of men who feel socio-economically disadvantaged and are displeased with the government’s approach towards society’s issues. The Tokugawa and Meiji periods encountered several instances of uprising amongst the peasantry—most notably those led by Oshio Heihachiro, Tanaka Shozo, and Sakura Sogoro. The story of Sakura Sogoro—a protest in which an archetypal heroic peasant martyr appealed directly to the elites in…

A revolution took place in the centuries from the time of the Kamakura shogunate, which existed with the Tenno's court, to the Tokugawa, when the bushi became the unchallenged rulers in what historian Edwin O. Reischauer called a "centralized feudal" form of government. Instrumental in the rise of the new bakufu was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the main beneficiary of the achievements of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Already powerful, Ieyasu profited by his transfer to the rich Kantō area. He…