The Swedes mount a counteroffensive under the…

A struggle arises in Japan in the face of political limitations that the shogun imposes on the entrepreneurial class.

The government ideal of an agrarian society fails to square with the reality of commercial distribution.

A huge government bureaucracy has evolved, which now stagnates because of its discrepancy with a new and evolving social order.

Compounding the situation, the population increases significantly during the first half of the Tokugawa period.

Although the magnitude and growth rates are uncertain, there are at least twenty-six million commoners and about four million members of samurai families and their attendants when the first nationwide census is taken in 1721.

Drought, followed by crop shortages and starvation, results in twenty great famines between 1675 and 1837.

Peasant unrest grows, and by the late eighteenth century, mass protests over taxes and food shortages have become commonplace.

Newly landless families become tenant farmers while the displaced rural poor move into the cities.

As the fortunes of previously well-to-do families decline, others move in to accumulate land, and a new, wealthy farming class emerges.

Those people who benefit are able to diversify production and to hire laborers, while others are left discontented.

Many samurai fall on hard times and are forced into handicraft production and wage jobs for merchants.

Japan's Tokugawa shogunate does not eventually collapse simply because of intrinsic failures: foreign intrusions help to precipitate a complex political struggle between the bakufu and a coalition of its critics.

The continuity of the anti-bakufu movement in the mid-nineteenth century will finally bring down the Tokugawa.

From the outset, the Tokugawa have attempted to restrict families' accumulation of wealth and fostered a "back to the soil" policy, in which the farmer, the ultimate producer, is the ideal person in society.

Despite these efforts to restrict wealth, and partly because of the extraordinary period of peace, the standard of living for urban and rural dwellers alike grows significantly during the Tokugawa period.

Better means of crop production, transportation, housing, food, and entertainment are all available, as is more leisure time, at least for urban dwellers.

The literacy rate is high for a preindustrial society, and cultural values are redefined and widely imparted throughout the samurai and chonin classes.

Despite the reappearance of guilds, economic activities go well beyond the restrictive nature of the guilds, and commerce spreads and a money economy develops.

Although government heavily restricts the merchants and views them as unproductive and usurious members of society, the samurai, who gradually become separated from their rural ties, depend greatly on the merchants and artisans for consumer goods, artistic interests, and loans.

In this way, a subtle subversion of the warrior class by the chonin takes place.

Mitsui Takatoshi (1622–1694) is the fourth son of a shopkeeper who had originally sold miso and run a pawn shop business From his shop, called Echigoya, in Matsusaka, in what is now today's Mie prefecture.

Takatoshi had moved to Edo when he was fourteen years old, and later his older brother had joined him.

Sent back to Matsutaka by his brother, Takatoshi waits for twenty-four years until his older brother dies before he can take over the family shop.

He had opened a new branch of Echigoya in 1673; a large gofukuya (kimono shop) in Nihonbashi, a district in the heart of Edo.

Gofukuyas traditionally provide products made to order; a visit is made to the customer's house (typically a person of high social class or who is successful in business), an order taken, then fulfilled.

The system of accountancy is called "margin transaction".

Mitsui has changed this by producing products first, then selling them directly at his shop for cash.

This is an unfamiliar mode of operation in Japan at this time: cash sales are not yet a widespread business practice, even as the shop begins providing dry goods to the government of the city of Edo.

Edo's government strikes a business deal with Osaka at about this time, in which the city sells crops and other material to pay its land tax.

The money is then sent to Edo, but moving money is dangerous in middle feudal Japan.

The shogunate had granted permission in 1683 for money exchanges (ryōgaeten) to be established in Edo.

The Mitsui "exchange shops" facilitate transfers and mitigate this known risk.

This is the genesis of Mitsui group, today one of the largest corporate conglomerates (keiretsu) in Japan and one of the world’s largest publicly traded companies.

Kira Yoshinaka, born in 1641, was the eldest son of Kira Yoshifuyu.

His mother was a member of the high-ranking Sakai clan.

On the death of his father in 1668, Yoshinaka had become the seventeenth head of the household, inheriting lands valued at forty-two hundred koku.

His wife was from the Uesugi clan, and his eldest son has been adopted by Uesugi Tsunakatsu, the head of the Dewa Yonezawa han, taking the name Tsunanori.

Yoshinaka had named his second son as his heir, but when that heir died, Yoshinaka had adopted Tsunanori's second son, strengthening the connection between the Kira and the Uesugi.

Asano Naganori was born in Edo as the eldest son of Asano Nagatomo.

His family is a branch of the Asano family, whose main lineage is in Hiroshima.

His grandfather Naganao had been appointed to the position of daimyo of Ako with 50 thousand koku.

After Naganao died in 1671, Nagatomo had succeeded to the position but died after three years in 1675.

Naganori had succeeded his father at the age of nine.

He had in 1680 been appointed to the office of Takumi no Kami, the head of carpentry at the imperial court, but this office was nominal, as were other offices granted to samurai at that time, and only had an honorific meaning.

As a daimyo with a small fief, he had been appointed several times to temporary minor offices of the Tokugawa shogunate.

He had first been appointed in 1683 to be one of two officials to host the emissaries from the imperial court to the Shogunate.

It was the first time he met Kira Yoshinaka, the highest-ranking koke, the head of ceremonial matters at the Shogunate, who instructed officials in the manner of hosting noble guests from Kyoto.

He had suffered in 1694, from a serious illness.

He had no children, thus no heir at that time.

When a daimyo dies without a determined heir, his house is abolished by the Shogunate, and his lands confiscated; his retainers become ronin.

To prevent this, he has adopted his younger brother Asano Nagahiro, titled Daigaku, and Nagahiro had been accepted as his heir by the Shogunate.

He is in 1701 appointed for the second time to the same office.

It is said that he was at this time on bad terms with Kira Yoshinaka and tension between them increases.

Kira has been assigned the task of tutoring Asano in matters of protocol in preparation for an upcoming visit by representatives of the Emperor.

According to the stories, Kira was corrupt and demanded bribes for the tutoring, which Asano refused to pay.

Kira then began to publicly insult Asano, calling him an ignorant and unmannered rural boor.

On April 21, the day when the envoys are scheduled to meet the fifth Tokugawa shogun, Tsunayoshi, at Edo Castle in what is now Tokyo, Asano draws his short sword and attempts to kill Kira in the Corridor of the Pines.

He wounds Lira but fails to kill him.

Tsunayoshi on the same day, sentences him to commit seppuku, which he does after writing his death poem.

He is buried in the graveyard of Sengaku-ji.

His retainers become ronin when the Shogunate confiscate his fief.

A group of forty-seven former samurai in his service, now with the status of ronin, begin planning to avenge their master’s death.

Asano's retainers break into Kira's mansion on January 30, 1703, and kill him in revenge.

They then surrender themselves to the shogunate authorities and on March 20 are ordered to commit seppuku for the murder.

The Tokugawa shogunate condemns the grandson of Yoshinaka to death for being incapable of protecting his family like a samurai; the Kira are also dispossessed and loss the rank of koke.

After the death of Uesugi Tsunakatsu, the revenues of the Uesugi are reduced from three hundred thousand koku to one hundred and fifty thousand koku.

On the other hand, the brother of Asano Naganori is reestablished, receiving a revenue of five thousand koku and the rank of hatamoto.

One noted Japanese scholar described the tale of the Forty-seven Ronin as the country's "national legend." ("Kanadehon"; Columbia University.)

It recounts the most famous case involving the samurai code of honor, bushidō.

With much embellishment, this true story will be popularized in Japanese culture as emblematic of the loyalty, sacrifice, persistence, and honor that all good people should preserve in their daily lives.

Fictionalized accounts of these events, written some fifty years after the actual event, are known as Chūshingura.

The popularity of the almost mythical tale will only be enhanced by rapid modernization during the Meiji era of Japanese history, when it is suggested many people in Japan longed for a return to their cultural roots.

Kyōhō, a Japanese era name after Shōtoku and before Gembun, spans the years from July 1716 through April 1736.

The Tokugawa shogunate in 173 had officially recognized the Dojima Rice Market in Osaka; and bakufu supervisors (nengyoji) have been appointed to monitor the market and to collect taxes.

The transactions relating to rice exchanges will develop into securities exchanges, used primarily for transactions in public securities.

The development of improved agriculture production causes the price of rice to fall.

Fire had broken out on August 3, 1730, in Muromachi and three thousand seven hundred and ninety houses were burnt.

Over thirty thousand looms in Nishi-jin were destroyed.

The bakufu had distributed rice.

Swarms of locusts devastate crops in agricultural communities around the inland sea in 1732, resulting in the Kyōhō famine.

The Kyōhō reforms are an array of economic policies introduced by the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1736 Japan.

Instigated by the eighth Tokugawa shogun of Japan, Tokugawa Yoshimune, the reforms, which are to encompass the first twenty years of his shogunate, are aimed at making the shogunate financially solvent.

Because of the tensions between Confucian ideology and the economic reality of Tokugawa Japan (Confucian principles that money is defiling vs. the necessity for a cash economy), Yoshimune finds it necessary to shelve certain Confucian principles that are hampering his reform process.

The Kyoho reforms include an emphasis on frugality, as well as the formation of merchant guilds that allow greater control and taxation.

Alternate attendance (sankin kōtai) rules are relaxed, and the ban on western books (minus those relating or referring to Christianity) is lifted.

Many of Japan's castle towns have grown: Edo has a population of more than one million by the mid-eighteenth century, and ...

Go-Sakuramachi's personal name (imina) before her accession to Japan's Chrysanthemum Throne was Toshiko and her initial pre-accession title was Isa-no-miya and later Ake-no-miya.

She is the second daughter of Emperor Sakuramachi.

Her mother is Nijō Ieko.

Her older sister had died young, and her younger brother is Emperor Momozono.

The empress and her emperor brother are the last lineal descendants of Emperor Nakamikado.

Empress Go-Sakuramachi's Imperial family lives with her in the dairi of the Heian Palace.

Princess Toshiko accedes to the throne when Emperor Momozono abdicates in favor of his sister.

Momozono's son, Prince Hidehito (later to be known as Emperor Go-Momozono) is only five years old at this time.

Hidehito's empress aunt is expected to occupy the throne until her nephew will be able to take on the burden of responsibility.

Famine continues in Japan as three hundred thousand die of starvation.