ABSTRACT
In 1691, the Bavarian scientist Engelbert Kaempfer, employed by the Dutch East India Company as its physician in Japan, travelled from the company’s office in Nagasaki to the city of the shogun, Edo. En route he visited Kyoto, the imperial capital (also referred to as Miyako), then boasting a population of over 400,000. In his posthumously published History of Japan, he waxed eloquent about the productions of the metropolis. The war marks the inception of the Sengoku epoch that continued until the reunification of Japan under centralized rule by 1590. Through most of this period, both emperor and shogun held relatively little power vis-à-vis the Sengoku daimyo, although the Ashikaga shoguns maintained their grip on the capital. The warrior–peasant separation policy implemented by Hideyoshi and Ieyasu produced a massive surge in urban construction between 1580 and 1610. As John W. Hall declared, “It would be hard to find a parallel period of urban construction in world history”.
