Edo Period

The Edo Period (江戸時代, Edo jidai) takes its name from Edo, the castle town that the Tokugawa shoguns made their seat of government and which was renamed Tokyo in 1868. The era began when Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated rival daimyō at the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) and was appointed shōgun by the emperor in 1603, and it ended with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when imperial rule was formally restored under Emperor Meiji.

Politically, the period is defined by the bakuhan system, in which the Tokugawa bakufu (shogunate) in Edo governed alongside roughly 250 semi-autonomous han (domains) ruled by daimyō. The shogunate enforced control through mechanisms such as sankin-kōtai, the alternate attendance system requiring daimyō to maintain residences in Edo and leave family members there as effective hostages. Society was formally stratified into the four estates of samurai, peasants, artisans, and merchants (shi-nō-kō-shō).

From the 1630s the bakufu issued a series of edicts often grouped under the label sakoku ("closed country"), restricting foreign contact to limited trade with the Dutch at Dejima in Nagasaki, plus the Chinese, Koreans (via Tsushima), and Ryukyuans. Christianity was suppressed after the Shimabara Rebellion (1637–1638).

Despite these restrictions, the Edo Period saw considerable internal development: urbanization (Edo grew to over a million people), a monetized commercial economy, the rise of merchant culture, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, kabuki and bunraku theatre, and intellectual currents including neo-Confucianism, kokugaku (nativist studies), and rangaku (Dutch learning).

The system came under strain in the 19th century from fiscal crises, peasant unrest, and foreign pressure, culminating in Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival in 1853, the unequal treaties that followed, and the Boshin War (1868–1869) that ended Tokugawa rule.