Edo periodThe Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional daimyo. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characterized by economic growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies, a stable population, perpetual peace, and popular enjoyment of arts and culture, colloquially referred to as Oedo.
ShogunShogun (ˈʃoʊgʌn ; shōgun, ɕoːɡɯɴ), officially 征夷大将軍, was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, although during part of the Kamakura period, shoguns were themselves figureheads, with real power in the hands of the Shikken of the Hōjō clan. The office of shogun was in practice hereditary, although over the course of the history of Japan several different clans held the position.
Tokugawa IeyasuTokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first shōgun of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fellow Oda subordinate Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The son of a minor daimyo, Ieyasu once lived as a hostage under daimyo Imagawa Yoshimoto on behalf of his father. He later succeeded as daimyo after his father's death, serving as a vassal and general of the Oda clan, and building up his strength under Oda Nobunaga.
EdoEdo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a jōkamachi (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the de facto capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. Edo grew to become one of the largest cities in the world under the Tokugawa. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 the Meiji government renamed Edo as Tokyo (, "Eastern Capital") and relocated the Emperor from the historic capital of Kyoto to the city.
KyotoKyoto (ˈkjoʊtoʊ; Japanese: 京都, Kyōto kjoꜜːto), officially Kyoto City, is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it the ninth most populous city in Japan. The city is the cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Kyoto, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 3.
Sengoku periodThe Sengoku period is the period in Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. Though the Ōnin War (1467) is generally chosen as the Sengoku period's start date, there are many competing historiographies for its end date, ranging from 1568, the date of Oda Nobunaga's march on Kyoto, to the suppression of the Shimabara Rebellion in 1638, deep into what is traditionally considered the Edo period.
Meiji eraThe Meiji era is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization by Western powers to the new paradigm of a modern, industrialized nation state and emergent great power, influenced by Western scientific, technological, philosophical, political, legal, and aesthetic ideas.
Osakais a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan, and one of the three major cities of Japan (Tokyo-Osaka-Nagoya). It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following the special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 million in the 2020 census, it is also the largest component of the Keihanshin Metropolitan Area, which is the second-largest metropolitan area in Japan and the 10th largest urban area in the world with more than 19 million inhabitants.
Nagasakiis the capital and the largest city of the Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region have been recognized and included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Part of Nagasaki was home to a major Imperial Japanese Navy base during the First Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War.
TokyoTokyo ('toʊkioʊ; 東京, Tōkyō, toːkjoː), officially the Tokyo Metropolis (東京都, Tōkyō-to), is the capital and most populous city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area (including neighboring prefectures, ) is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 million residents ; although this number has been gradually decreasing since then, the prefecture itself has a population of 14.09 million people while the city's central 23 special wards have a population of 9.73 million.
Empire of JapanThe Empire of Japan or Japanese Empire, also referred to as Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation-state that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the reformed Constitution of Japan in 1947. From 29 August 1910 until 2 September 1945, it administered the naichi (the Japanese archipelago and post-1943 Karafuto) and the gaichi (Korea, Taiwan, Kwantung Leased Territory, and pre-1943 Karafuto). The South Seas Mandate was a single Japanese dependent territory in the name of the League of Nations.
Emperor of JapanThe emperor of Japan or 天皇, literally "emperor of heaven" or "heavenly sovereign", is the hereditary monarch and head of state of Japan. The emperor is defined by the Constitution of Japan as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, his position deriving from "...the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power." The Imperial Household Law governs the line of imperial succession. Pursuant to his constitutional role as a national symbol, and in accordance with rulings by the Supreme Court of Japan, the emperor is personally immune from prosecution.
JapanJapan (日本, ɲihoɴ, Nippon or Nihon, and formally 日本国, Nihonkoku) is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the five main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa.
Kantō regionThe Kantō region is a geographical region of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba, and Kanagawa. Slightly more than 45 percent of the land area within its boundaries is the Kantō Plain. The rest consists of the hills and mountains that form land borders with other regions of Japan. As the Kantō region contains Tokyo, the capital and largest city of Japan, the region is considered the center of Japan's politics and economy.
