Japan's medieval history was marked by the three shogunate periods of Kamakura, Muromachi, and Tokugawa, and throughout the reign of the Japanese shogunate, the power of the emperor of Japan was hollowed out. Throughout the Shogunate period, the emperor was basically a "mascot" being.
The supreme power of the shogunate was the shogun, also known as the shogun. Most of the shoguns, formally authorized by the emperor, were actually feudal feudal fiefdoms under military rule, overriding the formal literati **centralized institutions**. It can also be said to rule the country in the way of "coercing the Son of Heaven to order the princes".
Let's take a look at the historical evolution of Japan's three shogunates and the important events that took place during their reigns.
Kamakura Shogunate period (1185-1333).
The Kamakura Shogunate was founded in 1185 A.D. as the beginning of the shogunate regime in Japan, and its founder was Minamoto Yorito.
After Minamoto Yoritomo defeated the forces of his cousin Kiso Yoshinaka and eliminated the Taira clan in the same year, he exiled and killed Minamoto Yoshitsune, who had made great achievements in war, and strengthened his control over the protection of the kingdoms and the land.
In 1189, he launched the Oshu War, defeated the forces of the Oshu Fujiwara clan, which had divided the Mutsu region, and unified the whole country. In 1192, Minamoto Yoritomo officially became the shogun of the Shogunate, also known as the shogun. After that, a samurai regime was established under the imperial court. But the actual power of the shogunate was held by the Hojo family, a relative of Genji.
In 1333 A.D., the shogunate sent the Ashikaga clan to quell the rebellion, but the Ashikaga clan defected on the way and captured Kamakura, Hojo committed suicide, and the Kamakura shogunate perished.
Muromachi Shogunate period (1336-1573).
The Muromachi Shogunate was founded in 1336 A.D. as the second generation of the "shogunate" after the Kamakura shogunate, and its founder was the Ashikaga clan who overthrew the Kamakura shogunate.
In 1333, after Emperor Go-Daigo eliminated the Kamakura shogunate, he carried out the first imperial government revival and implemented a new policy, which is known as the Kenmu New Deal in history. The samurai were dissatisfied with the failure of the new policy to meet the demands of the samurai and to reuse only the nobles of Kyoto. Among them, the fallen shogun Ashikaga Takashi was even more dissatisfied, although he was given the name of the emperor, but he intended to open the palace, and then Ashikaga Takashi forced Emperor Go-Daigo to abdicate and established the Emperor of Light under the rule of the Ming Temple. Emperor Koko made him the general of the Seiyi and established the Muromachi shogunate, which was the beginning of the Northern Dynasty.
Then Emperor Daigo was forced to abdicate and managed to escape, holding the three artifacts symbolized by the emperor and retreating to Yamato Yoshino, which was for the Southern Dynasty, so that the Northern and Southern Dynasties were finally formed, and the history books are also called "One Day Two Emperors Southern Beijing".
After many attacks and defenses in the northern and southern dynasties, it was not until the third generation of shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu took power that the two dynasties were unified.
After the Onin Rebellion and Hosokawa Masamoto's coup d'état during the tenure of the eighth shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the Muromachi shogunate weakened by the conquest and annexation of land by the daimyo clans in various parts of Japan, and no longer obeyed the orders of the shogunate. The Onin War began, and Japan entered the Warring States Period, in which the whole country was fighting. In 1573, the fifteenth shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki was expelled from Kyoto by Oda Nobunaga, and the Muromachi period ended.
Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573-1603).
The period from 1573, when Oda Nobunaga expelled Ashikaga Yoshiaki, the last shogun of the Muromachi shogunate, to 1603, when Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate, is known as the Azuchi-Momoyama period.
This era was an important period in the history of Japan, with the Shogunate of Muromachi and the Shogunate of Kaitokugawa below. The names of the Azuchi-Momoyama period** were Oda Nobunaga Castle Azuchi Castle and Toyotomi Hideyoshi Castle Momoyama Castle.
After the Onin Rebellion, daimyo from all over Japan rose one after another, and wars raged, and the people were struggling to make a living. In the middle of the 16th century, a man who was determined to unify Japan by force and end the troubled times appeared: Oda Nobunaga.
In the third year of Eiroku (1560), Oda Nobunaga defeated the 25,000-strong army of Imagawa Yoshimoto with 2,000 men and horses in Tsubakusama, and his reputation grew. In 1567, Saito was eliminated and the capital was moved to Mt. Inaba, the main city, and the name was changed to Gifu.
Later, when Emperor Shokincho and Ashikaga Shogun asked him to help restore their domain and power in Owari, he gained the legal status of unifying the whole country. In September 1568, Oda Nobunaga occupied Kyoto, established Yoshiaki as a general, and took control of the emperor, coercing the Son of Heaven to order the princes, and hastening his efforts to unify the country. After these major steps, he controlled about a third of Japan through large-scale wars. During this period, Nobunaga built the imposing and magnificent Azuchi Castle. For this reason, Nobunaga's era is known as the "Azuchi period".
In 1577, Nobunaga sent his main general, Hideyoshi, to conquer the twelve provinces of Nishihonshu. The war dragged on for a long time, and Hideyoshi frequently asked Oda Nobunaga for help. In 1582, when Nobunaga led an army to support Hideyoshi, he was killed by his military commander Akechi Mitsuhide in Honnoji Temple. This event is known in Japanese history as the "Honnoji Change". In the end, Hideyoshi won the battle for Oda Nobunaga's supremacy, inheriting Oda Nobunaga's hegemony and power, and the Azuchi period ended.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, whose original name was Kinoshita Toyoshiro, was born into a poor peasant family in Kuninaka Village, Owari. Because of his very thin stature and humble background, people disparatively called him "Monkey". In 1555, at the age of 19, Fujiyoshiro was introduced by an acquaintance to Owari and became a domestic servant in Oda's house. Because of his loyalty, intelligence and ability, he was particularly loved by Oda Nobunaga, and he obtained the title of samurai, became a retainer of the Oda family, and became the head of the small infantry under Oda Nobunaga's account.
After Kinoshita Toyoshiro became a retainer of Oda Nobunaga, although he was constantly harassed, bullied and excluded by senior samurai like Shibata Katsuie, but. With his outstanding wisdom and ability, he engaged in a large amount of civil affairs work, and his achievements were very outstanding, and he began to be valued by the people.
"One Night City in Sumamata" is the first comprehensive demonstration of Kinoshita Toyoshiro's courage and superhuman planning and organizational talents. Empress Kanesaki once again demonstrated Kinoshita Toyoshiro's loyalty to Oda Nobunaga and Kinoshita Toyoshiro's military organization skills, and from then on, the monkey was extremely trusted by Oda Nobunaga.
In the tenth year of Tensho (1582), the Honnoji Rebellion broke out, and Nobunaga died. Oda Shigetomi Hashiba Hideyoshi defeated Akechi Mitsuhide and Shibata Katsuie successively and established himself as his successor. After that, Hideyoshi gradually unified Japan through the Shikoku Expedition, the Kyushu Expedition, and the Battle of Odawara, ending the Sengoku period. Later, he was given the surname "Toyotomi" by the emperor and was given the position of "Sekihaku". Since Hideyoshi's center of power was in Momoyama Castle near Kyoto, the Toyotomi Hideyoshi era was called the "Momoyama Period".
After Toyotomi Hideyoshi basically unified Japan, he tried to appease the dissatisfaction of the samurai at home with the uneven division of feudal feuds and weaken the power of the various princes. It was decided to send troops to the outside world in order to acquire more land.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched two wars of aggression against Korea, Bunroku and Keichaga, but under the counterattack of the Ming Dynasty general Li Rusong and Joseon, they did not succeed in occupying Korea, and Hideyoshi himself fell ill and died, and the Momoyama period ended.
Edo Shogunate period (1603-1868).
In 1600 AD, after Hideyoshi's death, the contradictions between Hideyoshi's internal civil and military generals were irreconcilable, and finally the civil officials sent Ishida Mitsunari and the military generals Tokugawa Ieyasu broke out in Sekigahara.
The Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 established the Edo shogunate. In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed by the emperor as the shogun of Seiyi and established a shogunate in Edo.
After the establishment of the Edo shogunate, although the emperor enjoyed high prestige and was nominally the supreme ruler of the country, he did not have real power, and the real power was in the hands of the shogun. The shogun was also the largest feudal lord, directly administering a quarter of the country's land and many important cities, and the rest of the country was divided into more than 200 "feudal domains", large and small, and the head of the feudal domain, the daimyo, enjoyed the hereditary rule of the feudal domain, but had to obey the shogun's orders. Both the shogun and the daimyo kept their own retainers, the samurai, who received fiefs and rokumi from the shogun or daimyo but had to be loyal to the shogun or daimyo, and these samurai were generally professional soldiers with the privilege of swords, and they formed the basis of the shogunate's rule, thus forming a feudal system of rule consisting of the shogunate and the feudal domain, the shogunate system.
In 1614 and 1615, Tokugawa Ieyasu eliminated the Toyotomi clan, the Tokugawa clan's greatest political enemy, through two wars, the "Osaka Winter Battle" and the "Osaka Summer Battle". On July 13, 1615, the year of the end of the Osaka Summer Battle, the Imperial Court announced the change of the Yuan to "Motowa" at the behest of the shogunate, and since then there has been no major war in Japan.
At the same time, during the Tokugawa Ieyasu period, the Daimyo Reform Policy was adopted, and measures such as the "Laws of the Samurai Family" and the "Prohibition of the Laws of the Shogunate and the Public Family" were promulgated, all of which laid a solid foundation for the hegemony of the Edo shogunate for more than 200 years.
In the early Edo period, Tokugawa Ieyasu established a political system under tight control, and through the two generations of shoguns Tokugawa Hidetada and Tokugawa Iemitsu, the shogunate became stable. Political unification and economic development followed, and during the Tokugawa Tsunayoshi period, the Genroku culture flourished among merchants and townspeople. In the middle of the Edo period, the shogunate's finances were in trouble, and after that, the Toho reform, the leniency reform, and the tenpo reform were implemented in an attempt to improve the situation, but the root cause was not resolved. In the first half of the 18th century, the germ of capitalism and the emergence of new modes of production fundamentally shook the foundations of the shogunate's rule.
On December 9, 1867, the Shogunate faction staged a coup d'état and announced the abolition of the shogunate system. The newly established Meiji Emperor** completely overthrew the shogunate after the Boshin War of 1868-1869. At this point, the feudal shogunate politics in Japan came to an end.
These are the three generations of "shogunate" that Japan has experienced, but it is strange that with the power of the "shogunate", it should have been easy to establish themselves as emperors, but they never did soIt is truly incredible that they would rather endure a long battle with the emperor than to think about it once and for all.