Tokugawa Japan and Japanese Feudalism

Vocabulary flashcards covering the social structure, key figures, and economic conditions of Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868).

Tokugawa Japan

A period between $1600 ext{ AD} - 1868 ext{ AD}$ characterized by unification, an absence of warfare, and influence from China.

Sengoku period

Known as the “Warring States Period” ($1467 - 1615$), this era before the Tokugawa period was marked by intense domestic conflict.

Samurai

The warrior class that served the Daimyo; during the Tokugawa era, they transitioned from warriors into government bureaucrats.

Daimyo

Lords of various states in Japan who owned castles and were required to live near Edo Castle to ensure the Shogun’s power.

Oda Nobunaga

A leader often called “a magnificent savage” who destroyed Buddhist strongholds and gained control of one-third of Japan before his assassination in $1582$.

Ikko Buddhism

A small sect of Buddhism that possessed rich trade cities and often defied the Daimyo until being overpowered by Oda Nobunaga.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi

A low-born peasant foot soldier who unified Japan by $1591$, took Daimyo hostages as leverage, and launched disastrous invasions of Korea.

Ieyasu Tokugawa

A patient tactician who won the famous Battle of Sekigahara and became the sole power in Japan after the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Shogun

The de facto leader of Japan who lived in Edo and derived his supreme military authority from a grant by the Emperor.

Iemitsu Tokugawa

The grandson of Ieyasu who redistributed $\frac{1}{5}$ of Japan's arable land and mandated the universal alternate attendance of Daimyo at Edo.

Alternate Attendance

A policy forcing Daimyo to maintain a residence in Edo, resulting in them spending $\frac{2}{3}$ of their tax revenue on staffing rather than warfare.

Social Mobility

The ability for an individual's social status to move up or down within society, which was under harsh restriction during the Tokugawa Era.

Geographic Mobility

The ability to move freely within a country or abroad, which was limited by the laws of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Eta

A hereditary group excluded from the class system who performed tasks deemed unclean, such as burials, executions, and handling animal carcasses.

Ainu

A group of approximately $25,000$ hunter-gatherer peoples living in the north of Japan who were excluded from the formal social class system.

Dutch

The one European group that was the exception to the Tokugawa policy of outlawing trade with Westerners who imposed Christianity.

1786 Famine

A severe period of starvation characterized by deserted villages, unburied corpses, and reports of cannibalism.

Infanticide

The practice of abandoning or killing unwanted children, often used by wealthier farmers to prevent a stable homestead from being divided into too many small units.

Proto-industrialization

An economic phase where rural producers diversified into markets like sake, silk, and cotton weaving before being made obsolete by large-scale ventures.

Shinto

The native religion of Japan that later incorporated emperor worship.

Neo-Confucianism

A rationalist movement that stressed the direct reading of ancient Confucian texts and looked at the world rationally rather than theologically.