shogun

Japanese term for military dictator and abbreviation for ‘seii tai shogun’ – ‘great barbarian-conquering general’. Technically an imperial appointment, the office was treated as hereditary and was held by a series of clans, the Minamoto 1192–1219, the Ashikaga 1336–1573, and the Tokugawa 1603–1868. The shogun held legislative, judicial, and executive power.

The title of shogun was first given in the Nara period (710–94) to generals who had achieved great success in the struggles to suppress the Ezo tribespeople of northern Japan. It is normally associated with the military leaders of the Kamakura and Muromachi periods (1185–1568). The bakufu (shogunate), the administrative structure set up by the first Minamoto shogun, gradually extended its area of operations to all aspects of government. The end of the shogunate came as a result of a series of treaties in the 1850s by which the Tokugawa shoguns allowed foreigners – Americans, British, Russians, and Dutch – to trade with Japan, ending an isolation that had begun in the 1630s. Enemies of the Tokugawa banded together to protest at these treaties, and in a short civil war they forced the last shogun, Yoshinobu, to resign. Power returned to the emperor, Mutsuhito, a youth of 15, and he and his advisers set about a programme of reform.