江戸時代edo jidai
Quick definition:The Edo period was an era of Japanese history from the early 1600s to the late 1860s, ruled by the Tokugawa shoguns, and it is a popular setting for samurai and historical stories.
Meaning
The Edo period is the stretch of Japanese history from 1603 to 1868, when the Tokugawa family held power as shoguns, the military rulers of the country. It is named after Edo, the city now known as Tokyo, which served as the seat of government.
It was a time of long internal peace under strict social rules, with samurai, farmers, craftspeople and merchants placed in different classes. Towns grew, trade and popular entertainment flourished, and kabuki theatre and woodblock prints became part of everyday life. Contact with foreign countries was tightly controlled for much of the period.
Anime and manga return to the Edo period constantly. Samurai dramas, ninja adventures, ghost stories and comedies are often set there, and many other series borrow its clothing, streets and customs for fantasy worlds. For fans, recognising the setting helps explain the swords, topknots, inns and festivals that appear in such stories.
Origin:Edo period is the English name for Edo jidai, where jidai means era. Edo was the city that became the shoguns' capital, and it was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Historians use the label for the years of Tokugawa rule, and the period is also called the Tokugawa period or part of Japan's early modern era.
Example:Samurai Champloo is set in Edo-period Japan and follows two swordsmen and a young woman travelling across the country. Its travellers, towns and swordsmen reflect the look of the era, while its modern hip-hop flavour is a deliberate creative choice rather than a historical detail.
Did you know?Under the Tokugawa government, Japan's ports were mostly closed to foreign trade, with limited exceptions such as Dutch and Chinese traders at Nagasaki. The long isolation ended in the mid-1800s, and the shogunate fell not long afterwards.