Edo period

The Edo period of Japanese history began when Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed shogun in 1603 and set up his government at Edo, now Tokyo, and it ended with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate kept the country at peace for more than two centuries by controlling the daimyo, who had to spend alternate years in Edo, and by enforcing a rigid social order of warriors, farmers, artisans and merchants. From the 1630s the country restricted contact with the outside world, allowing only limited trade through Nagasaki and with a few partners, a policy often called sakoku. Cities grew, a prosperous merchant class developed, and culture flourished in forms such as kabuki, haiku and ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The arrival of American ships under Commodore Perry in 1853 undermined the system and led to its collapse.

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