Azuchi–Momoyama period

The Azuchi–Momoyama period, roughly 1568–1600, was a phase of Japanese history in which Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi advanced political reunification and reshaped warfare, government, and elite culture.

Sengoku period: A prolonged era of civil war in Japan, when rival warlords competed for territory and authority. The fragmented Sengoku order was the political landscape Nobunaga and Hideyoshi sought to overcome.
Akechi Mitsuhide: A Japanese general who rebelled against Oda Nobunaga and forced his suicide in 1582. His sudden revolt created the succession crisis that Hideyoshi exploited.
Daimyo: A powerful Japanese territorial lord who held land and commanded retainers, especially during the medieval and early modern periods. Daimyo were the rival power holders whose submission made nationwide reunification possible.
Azuchi Castle: A castle built by Oda Nobunaga near Lake Biwa between 1576 and 1579. Its scale and decoration made Nobunaga’s political power visible in built form.
Tokugawa shogunate: The military government that ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868 under the Tokugawa family. It inherited a largely unified country and built on political arrangements formed during this period.
Oda Nobunaga: A Japanese warlord who began the military and political unification of Japan in the late sixteenth century. His campaigns and reforms opened the period’s drive toward reunification.
Tokugawa Ieyasu: A Japanese warlord who became shogun in 1603 and founded the Tokugawa shogunate. His victory at Sekigahara turned the period’s unfinished unification into a durable military government.
Ashikaga shogunate: The military government that ruled Japan from 1336 until its collapse in the late sixteenth century. Its weakening authority created the opening for Nobunaga’s rise in Kyoto.
Osaka Castle: A Japanese castle begun by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1583 on the site of the Ishiyama Hongan-ji temple complex. Hideyoshi’s fortress became the chief monument of his regime and the center of later conflict.
Sakoku: A set of policies under the Tokugawa shogunate that restricted foreign contact and Japanese overseas travel. The restricted foreign relations of later Tokugawa rule followed a period of expanding overseas contact.

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