#edocastle

Edo Castle

Edo Castle was a large castle built by the Tokugawa family in 17th-century Japan. It served as their seat of government for more than 260 years. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Edo became the capital of Japan and was renamed Tokyo. Edo Castle became the residence of the imperial family and was renamed the Imperial Palace.

Background

At the end of the 15th century, the central government in Japan collapsed and the country descended into civil war. The period from 1467 until 1573 is referred to as the Sengoku or Warring States period. During the Sengoku period, rival warlords, called sengoku daimyo by modern historians, competed for power and land. In the 1560s, one of these daimyo called Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), managed to reunify large parts of Japan. In 1582, however, he was assassinated, and the task of reunifying the rest of Japan fell to his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598).

In 1590, Hideyoshi launched a campaign against a rival daimyo family called the Go-Hojo whose base was near the modern city of Odawara in eastern Japan. After the campaign was successfully completed, Hideyoshi offered to reward Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), one of his powerful subordinates, with all the land in the Kanto region. In exchange, however, Ieyasu would have to give up the land he already controlled in central Japan. On the one hand, this was a reward because it would give Ieyasu control over more land, but on the other hand, it would weaken his position because the area was further from the capital of Kyoto and he had no traditional ties there. If he refused, it would also mean war with Hideyoshi.