Tokugawa () formed a dynasty of Shogun S which directed Japan of 1603 to 1867. The first shogun of the dynasty was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the last was Tokugawa Yoshinobu. Their reign is more known under the name of Period Edo, of the name of the city which they chose for capital: Edo (today Tōkyō) in order to move away from Kyōto, the imperial capital.

After the period Sengoku of the “Nations in war”, the central government had been largely restored by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi for the Azuchi-Momoyama period. After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, the central authority fell to the profit from Tokugawa Ieyasu which supplemented the process and accepted the title of shogun in 1603. Its descendants inherited the title of shogun and the load which accompanied it until the 19th century.

The Tokugawa period, unlike the preceding families of shogun, was founded on the strict hierarchy of the classes originally established by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The warlike class of the Samurai S (or Bushi) at the top, was followed farmers, craftsmen and tradesmen. The irony wanted that the extreme rigor of the system of caste ends in the long run up undermining the authority of these classes. The taxation of the farming community consisted of fixed amounts which did not take account of the inflation or any other change of the money value. The result was that the income of the taxes collected by the samurais landowners became increasingly thin with time. That led to many confrontations between the noble ones but impoverishes the easy samurais and peasants.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the emperor in title, supported by an alliance of most powerful the Daimyo ends up making fall the reign of the shogun and recover the capacity after the Guerre of Boshin. Shôguns de Tokugawa died out definitively in 1868, with the abdication of the 15th shôgun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu and the “Restoration” (“ Taisei Hokan ”) of the imperial law.

Government

Shoguns and Han

The “ bakuhan taisei ” was the feudal political system into force for the Edo period in Japan. Baku or “ tries ” is the abbreviation of Bakufu , which means “ government of the tent ” - i.e. the shôgunat. The Han were the fields directed by the daimyo .

The system was feudal. The vassal ones held their grounds by succession, and had with their lords weapons and respect.

Bakuhan Taisei divided the feudal capacity between the shôgunat with Edo and the fields provincial in the remainder of Japan. The provinces exerted a certain sovereignty and were authorized to manage to them han in a way independent in exchange of their honesty in Shogun, which was responsible for the foreign relations and the national security. The shôguns and the lords were both of the daimyo , the feudal lords with their own bureaucracy, their own policy and their territory. Shôgun also managed the most powerful daimyo, the hereditary stronghold of the Tokugawa House. Each level of the government managed its own system of taxation.

The shôguns had the capacity to get rid of the fields, but also to annex them or to transform them. The sankin-kotai , system of alternate residence wanted that each daimyo sends its family of representation and shared her time between the han and its presence with Edo. The enormous expenditure generated by the sankin-kotai allowed the central capacity the noble ones to reinforce alliances and Shôgun to make sure of the honesty of the provinces, whose each family of representation could become a potential hostage.

The descendants of Togukawa made sure then of this honesty by maintaining an insistence dogmatic on honesty on Shôgun. The daimyos fudai were the vassal hereditary ones of Ieyasu, considered as well as their characteristic going down. Tozama or “ the others ”, became the vassal ones of Ieyasu after the battle of Sekigahara. Shimpan or “ the parents ”, were the collateral ones of Hidetada Tokugawa. At the beginning of the Edo era, the shôgunat regarded the tozama as being the least honest; time passing, the marriages strategic and the rooting of the system made tazoma least likely to rebel. With final, it is large the tozama of Satsuma, Choshu and Tosa and to a lesser extent Hizen which made fall the shôgunat. These four states are called the Four clans of the west or Satchotohi in summary.

The number of han (approximately 250) was fluctuating for the Edo period. They were classified by size which was measured with the number of koku produced by the field each year. A koku was the quantity of rice necessary to nourish an adult man during one year. The minimum number for a daimyo was of ten thousand Koku ; most important, except that of the shôgun, the million koku reached.

Shôgun and the Emperor

In spite of the establishment of the shôgunat, the emperor with Kyôto was always the legitimate chief of Japan. The administration of Japan ( taisei ) was a task entrusted to the Tokugawa family by the imperial Court of Kyôto, which was returned to the Court at the time of the Meiji Restoration.

The shôgunat named a liaison officer, the Kyôto Shoshidai , to treat with the emperor, the Court and the nobility.

Shôgun and foreign trade

The foreign affairs and the trade were monopolies of the shôgunat and released from the enormous profits. The foreign trade was also authorized for the strongholds of Satsuma and Tsushima .

The visits of the boats Nanban (literally cruel of the south ) coming from Portugal were at the beginning the principal vectors of commercial exchanges, followed by the Dutchmen, the English and sometimes of the Spanish boats.

As from 1600, Japan started to be interested actively in the foreign trade. In 1615, a mission of embassy and trade under the direction of Hasekura Tsunenaga was sent through the Pacific towards the Nueva Espana on a galleon of Japanese invoice the San Juan Bautista . Until 1635, the Shôgun delivered many licenses for the boats with the red seal , intended for the trade with Asia.

After 1635 and the introduction of the laws of insulation, the departure of the vessels bound for Japan towards the foreigner was prohibited, only the vessels bound for Japan coming from China and of the Netherlands were authorized.

Institutions of Shôgunat

The Rôjû and the Wakadoshiyori

The rôjû was composed by the influential members of the shôgunat. They supervised the ômetsuke , the machibugyô , the ongokubugyô and the other official ones, they supervised the relationships to the imperial court of Kyōto, the Kuge (members of the nobility), the daimyo , the temples and the places holy, but also dealt with the businesses like the division of the strongholds. In normal weather, four or five men were in charge of the function, but only one was of service on the basis of alternation a one month. They discussed the businesses of an particular importance. At the time of the administrative reform of 1867, the function was removed with the profit of a bureaucratic system with ministries for the Interior, finances, the foreign relations, the army and the navy.

In theory, there were two conditions to be named with the rôjû , to be a daimyo fudai (i.e. hereditary) and to have a stronghold estimated at: 50000 koku at least. Nevertheless, there were exceptions to the two criteria. Many the selected candidates came from offices close to Shôgun, like the soba yônin , the shoshidai of Kyôto, and the jôdaï of Osaka.

In an arbitrary way, the shôguns named at the station of tairô (“large old”) a member of the rôjû . The load was reserved to the members of the clans of II , Sakaï , DOI and Hotta , but exceptionally, Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu obtained the statute of tairô . Among the most famous tairô , there was II Naosuke , which was assassinated in 1860 front the door of Sakurada of the castle of Edo.

The wakadoshiyori was located just in lower part of the rojû . This outgrowth was made up of a group of six people ( rokuninshû ) (1633-1649). The office took its true name and its final form in 1662, but then made up of four members. Their principal responsibilities were the management of the businesses of the hamamoto and the gokenin , the vassal direct ones of the shôgun .

Some shôguns indicated a soba yônin . This person was used as connection between the shôgun and the rôjû . The soba yônin took importance for the period of the fifth shôgun of Tsunayoshi Tokugawa, when a member of the wakadoshiyori , Inaba Masayasu , assassinated Hotta Masatoshi , the tairô . Fearing for its life, Tsunayoshi made move the rojû in a more remote wing of the castle. Most famous of the soba yônin were Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu and Tanuma Okitsugu .

Ômetsuke and Metsuke

The ômetsuke and the metsuke were the official in charge ones of the reports/ratios to the rôju and the wakadoshiyori . The five ômetsuke were in load of the monitoring of the businesses of the daimyo , of the members of the nobility and the imperial court. They were to also try to discover the threats of rebellions.

Very early in the Edo era, of the daimyo as Yagyû Munefuyu directed this office. Soon, however, this function returned to the Hatamoto having a classification of: 5000 koku or more. In order to give them the authority necessary in their transactions with the daimyos , they were often classified with: 10000 koku and one gave them the title of kami (an old title, literally meaning the gourvernor of province) example the Bizen-No-kami .

With time, the function of ômetsuke evolved/moved and was one of the transmissions of orders between the shôgunat and the daimyo . It was also in charge of the administration of the ceremonies inside the castle of Edo. The ômetsuke were in charge of new responsibilities like the supervision for the religious affairs and control for the firearms.

The metsuke , submitted reports/ratios with the wakadoshiyori , supervised the businesses of vassal shôgun . They constituted the police force for the thousands of hatamoto and Gokenin which was gathered in Edo. The provincial fields ( han ) had their clean metsuke which ensured in the same way the police force of their samurais.

San-bugyô

The san-bugyô (literally three administrators) were the jisha , the kanjô and the machi bugyô . The jisha bugyô had the most raised position of the three. They supervised the administration of the Buddhist temples ( ji ) and of the holy places Shinto ( sha ), numbers of them had a stronghold. They were also charged to take the complaints of several provinces in-outside eight provinces of the Kanto . The load returned in theory to a daimyo ; Ôoka Tadasuke was an exception.

The kanjô bugyô were close in the statutes. The four holding of this load submitted their report/ratio with the rôjû . They were responsible for finances of the shôgunat.

The machi bugyô were the chiefs of the administrators of the town of Edo. Their roles included that of mayor, of chief of the police force (and later of the department sets fire to), but also that of judge to penal and to the civilian not implying the samurais. Two men (three very briefly), in theory of the hatamoto , dealt with this function, in alternation every month.

Three machi bugyô became famous during the jidaigeki , Ôoka Tadasuke and Toyama Kinshirô like heroes and Torii Yôzô like a scélérat.

All the san-bugyô sat in a council called the hyôjôsho . Among its attributions, the hyôjôsho was responsible for the administration of the tenryô , it supervised the gundai , the daikan and the will kura bugyô , but it was to also consider the businesses implying of the samurais.

Tenryô, Gundai and Daikan

The shôgun directly had grounds one can everywhere in Japan. They were horned like the bakufu chokkatsuchi ; as from the Meiji period, the term of tenryô became a synonym about it. By adding the grounds that Ieyasu had before the Battle of Sekigahara, plus those gained at the time of this battle, with those resulting from the Seats of summer and winter of Osaka, at the end of the 17th century, the shôgunat had reached four million koku . Several big cities like Nagasaki and Osaka as well as mines, in particular the gold mine the Sadomasochistic one, were they also included in tenryô .

Rather than to name a daimyo with the head as of these possessions, the shôgunat gave the responsability with the administrators to manage them. Among the titles of these administrators were the gundai , the daikan , and the ongoku bugyô . This last category included the machi bugyô of Osaka de Kyoto and Sumpu as well as the bugyô of Nagasaki. The designated men were hatamoto .

List of Shoguns

See too

Sources

• This article contains extracts off coming from the Library Congresses Country Studies which are publications made by the Government of the United States in the public domain. - Japan * http://hkuhist2.hku.hk/nakasendo/tokupols.htm

• SengokuDaymio.com Internet site of the Samurai by the author and historian Anthony J. Bryant

Zh-yue: 江戶幕府