The Tokugawa Period

Hideyoshi was succeeded by a noble named Tokugawa leyasu, who had also served Oda Nobunaga. In 1603, the emperor gave Tokugawa leyasu the title of shogun. For the next 265 years, leaders of the Tokugawa house governed Japan as shogun.

The Tokugawa shogun presided over a delicately balanced system of authority. The shogun directly controlled about 25 percent of the farmland in the country. He also licensed foreign trade, operated gold mines, and ruled the major cities, including Kyoto, Osaka, and the shogun's capital-Edo, which is now Tokyo.

The Tokugawa shogun had to share authority with the daimyo, who controlled the remaining 75 percent of Japan's farmland. The number of daimyo during the Tokugawa period averaged about 270. Each of these daimyo governed his own han (domain). In each han, the daimyo, not the shogun, issued laws and collected taxes. During the Tokugawa era, Japan thus had only a partially centralized government.

By the early 1600's, Japan was also home to five groups of foreigners: the Portuguese, Spanish, English, Dutch, and Chinese. Their presence disturbed the shogun, in part because the Tokugawa did not support Christianity, the religion of most of the outsiders. In addition, the shogun wanted to control Japan's international trade to prevent any daimyo from gaining too much wealth and power through trade with the outsiders.

For these reasons, the Tokugawa had most foreigners expelled from Japan during the 1630's under orders known as seclusion edicts. Only a few Dutch and Chinese traders were allowed to remain in Japan to conduct their business. But they could live only in the distant city of Nagasaki. That town served as Japan's sole window on the European world until the mid-1800's.