Shogun

A shogun (将軍 shōgun?, [ɕoːɡu͍ɴ] ( listen), literally "military commander" or "general") was a hereditary military governor in Japan during the shogunate period from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns were the de facto rulers of the country, though officially they were appointed by the emperor.

The modern rank of shōgun is equivalent to a generalissimo. Although the original meaning of shogun is simply a "general", the title was the short form of sei-i taishōgun (征夷大将軍?), the governing individual at various times in the history of Japan, ending when Tokugawa Yoshinobu relinquished the office to the Meiji Emperor in 1867.

A shogun's office or administration is the "shogunate", known in Japanese as the bakufu (幕府?, literally "tent office/government"), which originally referred to house of the general and later also suggested a private government under a shogun.[3] The tent symbolized the field commander but also denoted that such an office was meant to be temporary. The shogun's officials were as a collective the bakufu, and were those who carried out the actual duties of administration while the imperial court retained only nominal authority. In this context, the office of the shōgun was equivalent to that of a viceroy or governor-general, though the shōguns often wielded far greater power than a governor-general would ordinarily have.

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