Page 29 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Tokyo

THE HIST OR Y OF JAP AN  27

defined hereditary classes. To end turf Clavell’s 1975 book Shogun). During this
wars, samurai were forbidden to own land time, the English, Dutch, Portuguese,
and could reside only within cer tain Spanish, and New World governments
quarters of castle towns. Farmers were made overtures to the shogunate on trade.
allotted small plots, which they had to However, the increasingly xenophobic
cultivate. Artisans Tokugawa regime restricted
formed the next class, all foreign shipping to
merchants the bottom. Nagasaki on the island of
Movement between Kyushu from 1635; only
regions was regulated, Chinese, Dutch, Korean,
and families or whole and Southeast Asian
villages could be pun ished for traders were allowed from 1641.
crimes by their kin or neighbors. This heralded 200 years of isolation
The daimyo or lords who from the rest of the world.
governed regions, now subject to Fireman official’s While Kyoto remained the
Tokugawa authority, were shuffled garment in Edo official capital through the Tokugawa
to dif ferent regions if their service period, Edo eclipsed it in size and
was not approved. After 1635, the daimyo was probably the largest city in the world
and their samurai retinue were forced to by around 1700. Edo also hosted an
reside every other year in the city of Edo explosion of arts such as Kabuki and
(Tokyo), the new seat of the shogunate. Bunraku theater (see pp18–19) and the
ukiyo-e works (see p57) of Utamaro,
Isolation and the Rise of Edo Sharaku, Hokusai, and Hiroshige. Patrons
William Adams, an Englishman who included the merchant class and samurai.
reached Japan on a Dutch ship in 1600, In 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry
served Ieyasu in various capacities over the steamed into Edo Bay with four US vessels
next two decades (as por trayed in James to challenge Japan’s refusal to enter into
international rela tions. Weakened
by unrest from within its own and
other ranks, the shogunate could
only accede to Perry’s demands.
Samurai from the Satsuma,
Choshu, and Tosa do mains in
Kyushu, Western Honshu, and
Shikoku became the driving
force behind a successful
restoration of imperial power
and a reorganization of the
Early map of Edo, which outgrew Kyoto under the Tokugawa shogunate government carried out in 1868.

1707 Last 1831 Hokusai’s
eruption 1748 Kabuki drama A Hokusai Thirty-Six Views
of Mount Chushingura debuts, based view of of Mount Fuji
Fuji on the suicide by 47 ronin Mount Fuji published
1725 1750 1775 1800 1825
1782 Tenmei Famine
1703 Suicide 1723 Love suicides (joshi), spurred claims as many as 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry
of the 47 ronin by rigid customs and hierachy 1 million lives anchors in Edo Bay; Kanagawa
during the Edo period, reach a peak Treaty between US and Japan
signed the following year

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