ABSOLUTISM IN JAPAN The Tokugawa Shogunate

JAPANESE UNIFICATION

By the end of the 1400s, Japan was only an empire in name– instead, there were lots of locally-based governments run by shoguns → feudalism

Frequent warfare

Three unifiers: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu

JAPANESE UNIFICATION:

EUROPEAN ARRIVAL

Portuguese traders arrive in Japan in 1543 → trade firearms for silk

Later ships bring Catholic missionaries (Jesuits!)

Conversion to Catholicism begins on some southern Japanese islands which have initial contact with Jesuits

Initially tolerated by local shoguns

JAPANESE UNIFICATION

Oda Nobunaga → becomes leader of his own local territory in 1560, makes alliances, captures Kyoto

Reputation for brutality → murdered by own generals

Toyotomi Hideyoshi succeeds Oda Nobunaga, conquers majority of feudal Japan by 1590

Invades into Korea

Sword Hunt policy

Outlaws Christianity

TOKUGAWA IEYASU

Granted control of Edo (Tokyo) by Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Consolidated power after Toyotomi’s death in 1598

Became shogun in 1603, establishing the Tokugawa Shogunate

He and his heirs would rule all of Japan for next 250 years

Deeply isolationist → illegal to leave Japan, all foreigners banned from entering EXCEPT the Dutch.