Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had risen from obscurity to become one of Nobunaga's most
trusted generals, avenged his death, managing to outmanoeuvre all rivals with a shrewd
mix of force and diplomacy. Success went to his head, however, and he embarked on
costly excursions into Korea, each time stymied by far smaller forces and the armoured
“turtle ships” of modern-day Korean hero General Yi Sun-shin.
In 1590 another ambitious warlord,
Tokugawa Ieyasu
, established his power base in
Edo, far from the emperor in Kyoto. The same year, Hideyoshi gained control over the
region by defeating the powerful Go-Hōjō family at nearby Odawara castle. Shortly
before his death in 1598, Hideyoshi persuaded Ieyasu, now an ally after a period of
circumspect confrontation, to support the succession of his son Hideyori. The trust was
misplaced: after defeating the remaining western clans at the Battle of Sekigahara in
1600, Ieyasu seized power himself, reuniting the country and taking the title of
shogun
- effectively a military dictator. Though the emperor continued to hold court in Kyoto,
Japan's real centre of power would henceforth lie in Edo, at this point still little more
than a small huddle of buildings at the edge of the Hibiya inlet.
The Edo era
he
Tokugawa
dynasty set about creating a city befitting its new status, initiating
massive construction projects - a trend which has continued to the present day. By
1640, Edo Castle was the most imposing in all Japan, and most probably the largest in
the whole world - a sixteen-kilometre perimeter line of defences complete with a
five-storey central keep, a double moat and a complex, spiralling network of canals.
Drainage work also began on the surrounding marshes, where embankments were
raised to protect the nascent city against flooding.
The shogun required his
daimyō
to split the year between their provincial holdings and
Edo, where their families were kept as virtual hostages. Maintaining two households
with two sets of retainers, travelling long distances and observing prescribed ceremonies
on the way left them neither the time nor money to raise a serious threat.
In exchange for their loyalty,
daimyō
were granted prime land to the west of the castle,
in the area known as
Yamanote
. Artisans, merchants and others at the bottom of the
established order, meanwhile, were confined to
Shitamachi
, a low-lying, overcrowded
region to the east. Though less distinct, this division between the “high” and “low” city
(see p.60) is still apparent today.
Closed Japan
hough the
daimyō
had been cleverly kept in check, the shogan perceived another
threat to state security: Christianity. Despite the fact that Ieyasu's advisers had included
Englishman Will Adams (whose tale was fictionalized in the novel
Shogun
), heavy
restrictions began to be placed on all foreigners residing in Japan; missionaries and
Christian converts found themselves persecuted. A policy of national seclusion was
introduced in 1639; by this time, an estimated 250,000 Japanese Christians had been
executed, imprisoned or forced to apostatize. Thus began the period of
sakoku
, or the
“closed country”
, which lasted more or less continuously until 1853. The only
exceptions to the edicts were Korean diplomats, and a handful of Dutch and Chinese
traders allowed to operate out of Nagasaki, way out to the west.
1467-77
1590
1600
Ōnin wars result in regional
warlords fighting for
dominance
Warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu
establishes power base in Edo
Ieyasu reunites country, and
declares himself shogun
