Shogunate

The shogunate, or bakufu, was the military government institution that held effective political and administrative power in Japan for most of the period from the late twelfth century to 1868, under the nominal authority of the emperor, who retained ceremonial and religious primacy but was largely excluded from actual governance. The institution took its name from the imperial military title seii taishogun, great general who subdues the barbarians, which came to designate the hereditary military ruler, the shogun, heading the government, and three successive shogunates governed Japan across the period: the Kamakura shogunate, from 1185 to 1333, founded by Minamoto no Yoritomo, the Ashikaga or Muromachi shogunate, from 1336 to 1573, and the Tokugawa shogunate, from 1603 to 1868, founded by Tokugawa Ieyasu following his victory at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Shogunal government rested on the political and military dominance of the samurai warrior class, with regional domains administered by vassal daimyo lords bound to the shogun through feudal obligations of loyalty and military service, and the Tokugawa shogunate in particular imposed an extended period of relative internal peace and near-total isolation from foreign contact, sakoku, that lasted over two centuries. The shogunate system ended with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when the last Tokugawa shogun formally returned governing authority to the emperor, restoring direct imperial rule and beginning Japan's rapid modernization.