The Tokugawa period was the final period of traditional Japan. It was the last of the shogunates. During this time Tokugawa Ieyasu established a government at Edo (now Tokyo), where Japan’s central government remains today. In the 1630s the shogunate adopted a policy of national seclusion, which forbade Japanese subjects from traveling abroad. This isolation from the rest of the world would have a profound effect on Japan’s future.
Why was the Tokugawa period important?
What happened during the Tokugawa period?
The Tokugawa period was marked by internal peace, political stability, and economic growth. Social order was officially frozen, and mobility between classes (warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants) was forbidden. The samurai warrior class came to be a bureaucratic order in this time of lessened conflict. The shogunate perceived Roman Catholic missionaries as a tool of colonial expansion and a threat to the shogun’s authority and consequently banned Christianity and adopted a policy of national seclusion.
