History of Japan, 1615-1868 Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Edo Period

It was in this period that power in Japan left Kyôto once and for all, and became concentrated in the city of Edo, the eastern power base of the Tokugawa family and soon to become the largest city on Earth. The Tokugawa may have eventually fallen but their city, now called Tôkyô, remains the center of Japanese power and one of the great cities of the world.

Answer: Whether or not they had supported Ieyasu at the battle of Sekigahara

Ieyasu himself, though a samurai, did not come from a particularly distinguished family, and certainly had no prejudices against families which had built their way up from obscurity during the civil wars. He had also been very skeptical of the Korean adventure, and stayed firmly in Edo while it was going on.

While he trusted his own blood relatives more than anyone else, Ieyasu placed conspicuous loyalty and trust in the Daimyô who had fought on his side at Sekigahara. Those who had not, on the other hand, entered the new era as official outsiders, in some cases being forced to move from their ancestral lands so that fudai Daimyô could occupy strategic strongpoints around Edo and Kyôto. When the Tokugawa weakened, in the late nineteenth century, the descendants of these Daimyô readily took the leadership of the movement to overthrow them.

Answer: They were not allowed to have any contact with the Court in Kyôto

The sankin kôtai system, by which a tozama Daimyô had to maintain a mansion in Edo as well as the castle in his domain, and spend a fortune making his official progress there every other year, placed a major financial burden on him and prevented him from accumulating threatening amounts of wealth. The laws regarding succession and marriage were designed to allow the Bakufu to prevent potential enemies from gaining control of important domains - and as the richest and strongest landholders in the country, the Tokugawa were well placed to brutally enforce the laws against anyone who tried to disobey.

While suspicious friendships with the aristocrats at the Court were certainly not viewed with indulgence, there were no laws forbidding the Daimyô to have contacts with them. In any case, so powerless were the courtiers during the Edo Period that it would hardly have been worth a rebellious Daimyô's time to plot with them.

Answer: The Netherlands

The French were not a significant presence in Japan at this time. The Portuguese and, to a lesser extent, the Spanish were, but they had aroused the Bakufu's suspicions by seeking to make converts to Christianity in Japan. The Dutch, however, were there only to make money. When their co-religionists rose up in 1637, they leaped at the chance to show the Bakufu that they had no interest in nurturing Japanese Christianity; first, they provided cannons and powder to the Bakufu forces, then actually bombarded the rebel fortress of Hara Castle.

Their cynicism paid off when the Bakufu, reacting to the rebellion by harshly persecuting Christians, banned Portuguese traders from the country but allowed the Dutch to remain.

Answer: The Bakufu's harsh policy towards the rônin

After the battle of Sekigahara, many of the Daimyô who had chosen to support the wrong side were dispossessed. The Bakufu thereby removed them as a threat, and profited by the seizure of their lands. Their retainers became rônin, unemployed samurai. No effort was made to alleviate the hardship into which they were thus thrown, and in fact the Bakufu issued punitive decrees against them, forbidding them to seek new masters. Angry and desperate, the rônin rose up in the Keian rebellion, under the leadership of Yui Shôsetsu, a commoner who had risen to be a military instructor in Edo, and strongly identified with the rônin class.

His rebellion failed, and he committed seppuku. However, the Bakufu took note, and thereafter eased its policy towards the rônin.

Answer: Nagasaki

Dejima had long been a trading station for the Portuguese. After they were expelled following the Shimabara Rebellion, the island was transferred to the Dutch, who were thus the only Europeans with access to Japan during the Edo Period. Nagasaki was thus exposed to Dutch goods and ideas and this, along with its longstanding trade links with China, gave it a cosmopolitanism that is still visible today in, for example, its famous Chinese festivals.

Answer: A fire

The "Meireki no Taika" (great fire of the Meireki era) killed somewhere around 100,000 people and destroyed Edo as it had been known since Ieyasu's day, to the extent of burning down most of the buildings of Edo Castle itself. The reconstruction took two years, and the Bakufu took the opportunity to re-organize the layout of the city, which now took the basic form that central Tôkyô retains today.

Answer: The Dog Shôgun

A very religious man, Tsunayoshi adhered to both the ideals of the samurai and to Confucian morality. He made himself unpopular by attempting to raise the moral standards of the pleasure-loving inhabitants of Edo, banning many of the "frivolous" entertainments that they enjoyed.

In his later years, Tsunayoshi became concerned with the rights of animals, specifically dogs (he himself had been born in the Year of the Dog) and began to issue edicts forbidding people from harming dogs and establishing public dog kennels. The Edo populace, traditionally irreverent, responded by nicknaming him the Inu Kubô - Dog Shôgun.

Answer: Pictures of the floating world

While ukiyo-e pictures are often whimsical, or depict the transience of earthly pleasures, the term literally means "floating world". The "floating world" is the hedonistic society that grew up in Japan's major urban centers during this period, a world of courtesans, kabuki actors, sumô wrestlers, and geisha, although the artists were equally interested in portraying scenes of nature and characters from historical tales.

The "uki" in "ukiyo" is also a pun, sounding like the word for "sorrowful world", a Buddhist term.

Answer: Haiku

Bashô is one of Japan's most famous poets, the author of 'Oku no Hosomichi' ('The Narrow Road of the Interior'), a diary of his travels along the dangerous highways of the countryside. As well as being an account of his journey, it contains some of his most famous haiku.

Answer: Dutch learning

"Ran" meaning "orchid" was chosen to represent Holland purely for phonetic reasons - the Japanization of "Holland" is "O-ran-da".

As the only Europeans permitted to trade in Japan during the Edo Period, the Dutch were also the only ones who, on occasion, exposed their suspicious hosts to the scientific advances that were taking place in Europe. While the Dutch did not necessarily care one way or the other about the level of scientific knowledge in Japan, they were willing to sell books (in particular medical texts) and machines, such as clocks and telescopes, to those scholars in the Bakufu who sought them.

Thanks to these opportunities, Edo Period scholars kept abreast of developments in science and technology, providing a platform for Japan's famously rapid advances after the sakoku policy ended.

Answer: Okinawa

Satsuma, roughly corresponding to modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture in the far south of Kyûshû, was the domain of the Shimazu clan. The Shimazu were tozama, but their strength, and distance from the Bakufu heartlands, gave them a certain amount of independence from the Tokugawa. In 1609, they were allowed to invade and annex the Ryûkyû Kingdom of Okinawa. Okinawa's position outside mainland Japan meant that it was not subject to the restrictions on foreign trade, allowing Satsuma to benefit from the Ryûkyû commerce with China. When the Bakufu weakened in the 1860's, Satsuma was one of the most powerful of the enemies that rose up to overthrow it.

Saipan, Taiwan, and the entirety of the Korean Peninsula came under Japanese control after the fall of the Bakufu, when the sakoku policy had already ended.

Answer: The entry of US ships into Tôkyô Bay

Commodore Matthew Perry of the US Navy sailed into Tôkyô Bay on July 8, 1853 with a letter for the Shôgun from President Millard Fillmore, "requesting" the opening of trade links between Japan and the west. The shock of this incident shook Japan out of her long sleep and launched her on the path of revolution, modernization and, eventually, war.

The "pirate attacks" are a red herring; however, Russian activity in Hokkaidô was certainly a concern to the Bakufu in its final years. It never, though, delivered a decisive shock comparable to Perry's visit and neither did the Opium Wars of the mid-1800's. However, once Perry's visit had alerted them to the threat, the fate of China was a powerful reminder to the Japanese of the price they would pay if they did not manage to rise to the western challenge.

Answer: The Boshin War

The economic strength of Satsuma had enabled its samurai to build up a powerful military force. The firebreathing radicals of Chôshû had instituted a revolutionary new military force in their domain, in which commoners, as well as samurai, were recruited; a force which swiftly defeated a Bakufu invasion in 1866.

This convinced the Satsuma samurai that the Bakufu was no longer fit to lead the country against the foreign threat. They joined forces with Chôshû and, in a series of battles collectively known as the Boshin War (the War of the Year of the Dragon), overthrew the Edo Bakufu, which had ruled Japan unquestioned since Ieyasu's day.

Answer: Meiji

The radical modernizers who now gained control of Japan took as their symbol the long-sidelined Imperial family. The new young Emperor chose as his reign-name the word "Meiji", meaning "enlightened rule". While the Edo Period continues to this day to influence the psychological underpinnings of Japanese society, the economic and political structures of modern Japan represent a radical and decisive break with the Tokugawa era - they were forged by the visionaries of the Meiji Period.