The Edo Period (1603-1867)
The Edo Period was an extended time of peace, and the richest time in the history of Feudal
Japan. Building on the progress made by his predecassors during the
Azuchi-Momoyama Period,
Tokugawa Ieyasu completed the road to peace by
reestablishing the shogun and the Bakufu. This government soon enacted new laws which
guarded against any type of uprising, and the Feudal Era went into full swing.
The Tokugawa Bakufu made a reshuffle of the daimyo, and raised taxes on those who had been
on the losing side of the Sekigahara War. The money
collected from the losers (mostly in the East) were redistributed among those who had been
allies (mostly in the West). That's the reason why there's a slight but noticeable
difference between the castles built in the West and in the East during this time. There
was a boom in castle building until 1615, when a new
set of laws put restrictions on castle building and repair. Today, the majority of the
castles found in major cities were built or repaired during this term. This period also
saw an increase in complexity in constructing
ishigaki,
yagura, and
tenshu. Examples of the castles built by
Tokugawa Ieyasu are Fushimi castle,
Hikone castle,
Edo castle,
Nagoya castle, and Takada castle, to name a few.
These castles were built by tenkabushin, which was a system requiring subordinate daimyo to
pay for the construction of a castle. Ieyasu used this to his political advantage, and his
main rivals found themselves almost impoverished from financing so many castle projects.
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