Edo period

The mechanisms were numerous and interlocking.

The Sankin-Kotai system, formalized in the 1630s, required all daimyo to spend alternating years in the shogunal capital at Edo, the city that would eventually become Tokyo, and at their home domains.

When a daimyo returned to his domain, his family remained in Edo.

The system served as both a surveillance mechanism and an enormous economic drain on the daimyo class.

since maintaining two complete households a formal residence in Edo and the expensive processions required for the annual travel consumed resources that might otherwise have funded military ambitions it was a remarkably efficient way to prevent rebellion without having to suppress it and it had the additional side effect of making Edo one of the largest and most economically active cities in the world by the 1800s.

The shogunate also moved decisively against Christianity, which had been spreading through Japan since the mid-1500s, following the arrival of Jesuit missionaries, and had accumulated a significant number of converts, particularly in Kyushu.

Christianity presented a political problem because it created communities with loyalties that existed outside the Tokugawa system, believers who answered to a foreign religious authority and whose network connected Japanese converts to each other and to foreign powers.

There was nothing to fight.

Yeah, that's a great question.

So in the period before 1868, when the city we call Tokyo was known as Edo, it was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shoguns.

And it was a huge metropolis with a population of well over a million people.

by the early 18th century.

There was also what was known as the Tame, and this was, uh, run by, um, a group known as the Hinen, who were a discriminated group of people who existed outside the status system, or they were a part of it, but on the margins.

And they were tasked with caring for homeless people, abandoned children, abandoned elderly people, as well as people people who were disabled and people who were regarded as suffering from some form of what we would now call mental illness.

So they provided care for a heterogeneous population of people on the margins of Edo society.

And then a third publicly funded medical institution was the Ikakukan, which was a shogunally supported medical school.

Yeah, that's a great question.

So in the period before 1868, when the city we call Tokyo was known as Edo, it was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shoguns.

And it was a huge metropolis with a population of well over a million by the early 18th century.

And the authorities in the city, which was, you know, under the control of magistrates who were Tokugawa vassals, was that health was a private concern largely.

There was also what was known as the TAME.

And this was run by a group known as the Hinen who were a discriminated group of people who existed outside the status system or they were a part of it but on the margins and they were tasked with caring for homeless people, abandoned children and abandoned elderly people, as well as people who were disabled and people who were regarded as suffering from some form of what we would now call mental illness.

So they provided care for a heterogeneous population of people on the margins of Edo society.

And then a third publicly funded medical institution was the Ikakukan, which was a shogunally supported medical school.

Yeah, that's a great question.

So in the period before 1868, when the city we call Tokyo was known as Edo, it was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shoguns.

And it was a huge metropolis with a population of well over a million by the early 18th century.

And the authorities in the city, which was, you know, under the control of magistrates who were Tokugawa vassals, was that health was a private concern largely.

And this was run by a group known as the Hinen, who were a discriminated group of people who existed outside the status system, or they were a part of it, but on the margins.

And they were tasked with caring for homeless people, abandoned children, abandoned elderly people, as well as people who were disabled and people who were regarded as suffering from some form of what we would now call mental illness.

So they provided care for a heterogeneous population of people on the margins of Edo society.

And then a third publicly funded medical institution was the Ikakukan, which was a shogunally supported medical school.

Okay.

And the ri was used a lot in the Edo period, but they still use it.

So anyway, I hiked Yudono, and Yudono is famous for a shrine, the Yudono Shrine.

And it's a very special shrine, and here's why.

Okay.

Now,

The Shugendo monks of self-mummification date mostly to the 17th through the 19th centuries in the Edo period, although there were some before that.

And they actually used their own burial as part of the process.

in came through a period of where a lot of history was happening at once like in the case of in england that i'm talking about it was the wars of the roses and in this case in japan it was the which is the warring states period like um obviously history happens at the exact same speed wherever you are whenever you are but you know what I'm talking about right a lot of stuff is happening at once and so often then those kind of periods become the focus of TV and film and books and all of these things and Date Masamune is no exception right

no yeah he lived well interestingly as well for a warlord from that time period he was born kind of later in the Sengoku period and he lived well into the Edo era A lot of the famous warlords from that time, like Oda Nobunaga, who we could do an episode on at some point, who you almost certainly know if you have any interest in Japanese history.

As a matter of fact, if you didn't know Oda Nobunaga, I would disqualify you from having an interest in Japanese history.

Well, they do know about him.