将軍 Shogun

The history of a title

Shogun

将軍shōgun shoh-goon

For nearly seven hundred years the emperor reigned in Japan, but a shogun governed it. Where the title came from, who held it, how it ended, and the novel and television series that made the word famous.

A shogun was a general. For a few hundred years that was all the word meant: a commander the emperor sent to fight on the northern frontier. Then, in 1192, a warrior who had won a civil war took the title and kept it, and for most of the next seven centuries the real government of Japan was a shogun’s. The emperors stayed in Kyoto, honoured and powerless, until 1868.

This site tells that story in short pages, one for each period. Start with the word itself, or pick a period below.

The history, period by period

  1. 将軍The wordTwo characters that mean “general”, and the longer title they come from.
  2. 794 to 1185The first shogunsGenerals commissioned for one campaign against the Emishi of the north.
  3. 1192 to 1333KamakuraMinamoto no Yoritomo makes the title a government, and the Hōjō rule in its name.
  4. 1338 to 1573AshikagaShoguns in Kyoto, two rival emperors, golden pavilions and a slow decline.
  5. 1467 to 1603The Warring StatesA century of civil war, and the three men who ended it.
  6. 1603 to 1867TokugawaTwo and a half centuries of peace, ruled from Edo.
  7. 1853 to 1868The end of the shogunateBlack ships, unequal treaties, and power handed back to the emperor.
A timeline from 750 to 1900. The Kamakura shogunate runs from 1192 to 1333 with 9 shoguns, the Ashikaga from 1338 to 1573 with 15, and the Tokugawa from 1603 to 1867 with 15. Beneath them are the Heian period from 794, the Warring States from 1467 to 1603, and Meiji from 1868. Marked moments are 794, the first sei-i taishōgun; 1185, the end of the Genpei War; the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281; Sekigahara in 1600; and Perry's arrival in 1853.
The three shogunates in time. The gaps between them are as much a part of the story as the bars.
A map of Japan marking Isawa in the north, a frontier fort against the Emishi built in 802; Edo, now Tokyo, seat of the Tokugawa shoguns; Kamakura, seat of the first shogunate; Uraga, where Perry's ships arrived in 1853; Sekigahara, the Tokugawa victory of 1600; Kyoto, the emperor's city from 794 to 1869 and home of the Ashikaga shoguns; and Nagasaki in the far west, with the Dutch post at Dejima. Hokkaido, then called Ezo, was Ainu land outside the shoguns' direct rule.
Where the shoguns ruled from, and the places where the story turned. Coastline from Natural Earth.

The shogun in fiction

Most people who know the word in English know it from one book.