Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview

of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on,

and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy the episode.

Hello, and welcome to the episode. Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 524, the Tokugawa system.

When Tokugawa Iayasu died in 1616, he left behind a new political, social, and economic order, built on the lessons

learned from a century and a half of civil war. And to avoid burying the lead here, that order

would prove very influential on Japan's future history. The 15 shoguns of the Tokukawa Bakfu,

or shogunate, counting Ieyasu himself, would rule

over the country for two and a half centuries and inaugurate one of the most fascinating

eras in Japan's history, at least for my money. So I think it's worth taking an episode to talk

about the Tokugawa order itself and how it shaped so much of Japan's future.

And as a side note here, over the course of 250 years, the institutions of the shogunate would

obviously evolve and change. I'm not going to focus too much on the institutional history,

and instead provide more of a big picture sketch here. So with all that said, obviously the apex of the Tokugawa Bakfu, at least symbolically,

was the shogun himself.

The successive shoguns were descended from Iayasu, at least indirectly, and were always male.

...