The Tokugawa Period: Politics, Society and Culture (1600-1868)

Conrad Totman

- In actuality, shinōkōshō does not accurately describe Tokugawa society. Buddhist and Shinto priests; or court nobles (kuge); and outcast classes including eta and hinin (those sold or sentenced into indentured servitude) were not included in this description of hierarchy. In some cases, a poor samurai could be little better off than a peasant and the lines between the classes could blur, especially between artisans and merchants in urban areas. Still, the theory provided grounds for restricting privileges and responsibilities to different classes and it gave a sense of order to society. In practice, solidified social relationships in general helped create the political stability that defined the Edo period. Early Modern Japan, characterises phase of Japanese history as an age of "integral bureaucracy." Bureaucratised samurai (warrior) aristocracy, in collaboration with emerging mercantile elements, dominated all sphere of society. Mercantile elements maintained symbiotic and conflicting relationships with ruling samurai class, played far greater administrative role within established polity than previously recognised. Four major policies of the Tokugawa Bakufu, sakoku (closed country), sankin-kotai (alternative attendance), urbanisation/proto-capitalism, cstrict class system with little to no movement (modelled on Neo-Confucianism)

Peter Duus

- The Tokugawa government intentionally created a social order called the Four divisions of society (shinōkōshō), that would stabilize the country. This system was based on the ideas of Confucianism that spread to Japan from China. By this system, society was composed of samurai (shi), farming peasants (nō), artisans (kō) and merchants (shō). Samurai were placed at the top of society because they started an order and set a high moral example for others to follow. The system was meant to reinforce their position of power in society by justifying their ruling status. Peasants came second because they produced the most important commodity, food. According to Confucian philosophy, society could not survive without agriculture. Third were artisans because they produced nonessential goods. Merchants were at the bottom of the social order because they generated wealth without producing any goods. As this indicates, the classes were not arranged by wealth or capital but by what philosophers described as their moral purity.

Marius Jansen

Regardless of the political title of the Emperor, the shōguns of the Tokugawa family controlled Japan.

Jansen Marius

Sankin-kōtai ("alternate attendance", a daimyō's alternate-year residence in Edo) was a policy of the Tokugawa shogunate during most of the Edo period of Japanese history. The purpose was to strengthen central control over the daimyōs (major feudal lords).

J. W. Hall and J. L McClain

The Tokugawa (or Edo) period brought 250 years of stability to 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. In the bakuhan, the shōgun had national authority and the daimyōs had regional authority. This represented a new unity in the feudal structure, which featured an increasingly large bureaucracy to administer the mixture of centralized and decentralized authorities. The Tokugawa became more powerful during their first century of rule: land redistribution gave them nearly seven million koku, control of the most important cities, and a land assessment system reaping great revenues.

John W. Hall

The Tokugawa system of "centralized feudalism" and national isolation was in some ways quite successful and laid the groundwork for Japan's subsequent modernization. It gave the Japanese more than 250 years of peace and order during which agriculture, trade, and towns flourished. Despite feudal divisions, a national economy developed around the giant cities of Edo (modern Tokyo) and Osaka. Peasants became attuned to market incentives and some prospered.

Mark Ravina

The era was characterized by multiple sovereignties, tensions between centre and periphery, competing and sometimes conflicting sources of legitimacy, overlapping types of authority, and widely disparate political units. Sees Japan in this period as a "compound state," with each of his domains reflecting the interplay among three types of authority: feudal (the personal bond between lord and retainer), suzerain (the autonomy of the most powerful daimyo in civil affairs), and patrimonial (the heritability of rights and privileges across generations within the context of the ie - home or family). What brought this complex system down was not the intrusion of the "West" per se. It was nationalism, which erupted first in the West, then spread like a contagion, replacing non-national cultures with the modern nation-state. The ruler's dependence upon multiple founts of authority is what distinguishes early modern government from the modern national period.

William G. Beasley

Toyotomi Hideyoshi had earlier established a similar practice of requiring his feudal lords to keep their wives and heirs at Osaka Castle or the nearby vicinity as hostages to ensure their loyalty. Following the Battle of Sekigahara and the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, this practice was continued at the new capital of Edo as a matter of custom. It was made compulsory for the tozama daimyōs in 1635, and for the fudai daimyōs from 1642. Aside from an eight-year period under the rule of Tokugawa Yoshimune, the law remained in force until 1862.

Ronald Toby

foreign trade prospered during this period, and though relations and trade were restricted to certain ports, the country was far from closed. In fact, even as the shogunate expelled the Portuguese, they simultaneously engaged in discussions with Dutch and Korean representatives to ensure that the overall volume of trade did not suffer. Thus, it has become increasingly common in scholarship in recent decades to refer to the foreign relations policy of the period not as sakoku, implying a totally secluded, isolated, and "closed" country, but by the term kaikin ("maritime prohibitions") used in documents at the time, and derived from the similar Chinese concept haijin. Bakufu monopolised foreign trade, directly administering the Nagaskai and other such locations involved in overseas trade