![]() During the forty years before the Edo period, the three unifiers, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, evolved a system which proved increasingly capable of ensuring the loyalty and obedience of vassals. This was precisely what had been lacking in the Warring States period, the ability of central authority to enforce peace. ![]() Perhaps the most important role of the shogunate was control of the domains, the han. But even seclusion was an exercise of power which impressed observers and encouraged submission. In line with this, the Tokugawa shogunate restricted diplomatic contact by prohibiting any Europeans except the Dutch from coming to Japan after 1639 this was the policy of national seclusion (sakoku). Foreign trade was also permitted through Satsuma domain to the Ryukyu kingdom (Okinawa) and through Tsushima domain to Korea, but generally speaking diplomatic matters were closely controlled by the Tokugawa.įoreign relations were crucial because control of them made a statement to the political public that the Tokugawa house was in control of all aspects of government it was an additional source of legitimacy. The trade monopoly was important because significant profits were available to the Tokugawa alone. The shogunate held a near monopoly over foreign trade and foreign affairs. As the period wore on, the monopoly was breached, but it is essentially true that the Tokugawa controlled and manipulated the court for its own purposes. Thus, the Tokugawa shogunate established a monopoly on access to the imperial court. Furthermore, Confucianism which was the official ideology of the Tokugawa house during the Edo period focused attention on the emperor. The emperor was the source of legitimacy since the office of shogun was an imperial appointment. The Tokugawa government alone dealt with the imperial court, the imperial nobility and the emperor himself. The Tokugawa shogunate also had responsibilities and concerns which went beyond those of ordinary domains the Tokugawa shoguns were, after all, hegemons presiding over a whole country. In fact, as the Edo period wore on, most domains copied the system of the shogunate. In most domains, the scope of government was similar. As such, it concerned itself with controlling the samurai class, collecting taxes (primarily on agriculture), maintaining civil order, defending the fief, controlling the cities, encouraging commerce and manufacturing which were required by the fief, limiting undesirable types of commerce and so on. The Tokugawa shogunate was very much like any domainal government in that it was responsible first for the administration of a limited territory, the fief of the Tokugawa house. ![]() This was not a federal system or even a centralized hierarchy of political authorities rather, it was a system in which two levels of government existed with a high degree of independence. Since each daimyo was a retainer of the shogun, the bakufu or shogunate had some power across all of Japan. Thus, bakuhan refers to the co-existence of the Tokugawa government with separate, independent governments in each of the fiefs. Han means domain and refers to the 250-plus domains that existed throughout the Edo period. Baku comes from bakufu which was the government the Tokugawa leaders used to administer their private affairs inside their own fief. This political system was called the bakuhan system. It was similar to the European feudal system (pope, emperor or king, feudal barons, and retainers in Europe compared to emperor, the shogun, the daimyo, and samurai retainers in Japan), but it was also very bureaucratic, an attribute not associated with European feudalism. ![]() The Tokugawa political system was perhaps the most complex feudal system ever developed. ![]()
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