The daimyЕЌ were high-ranking members of the samurai and, similar to the ShЕЌgun, held most of the real political power in Japan. The daimyЕЌ were samurai feudal lords and fourth on the Tokugawa class hierarchy. Model of the castle and city of Kumamoto in the Edo period. The ShЕЌgun was based in the Tokugawa capital city of Edo, Musashi Province, located 370 kilometres east of Kyoto in the Kanto region, and ruled Japan with his government, the Bakufu. The ShЕЌgun was a hereditary position held by members of the Tokugawa clan who were direct descendants of Tokugawa Ieyasu. In reality, the ShЕЌgun was a military dictator with only a nominal appointment from the Emperor who held the ultimate political power in Japan, controlling foreign policy, the military, and feudal patronage. Officially, the ShЕЌgun was a title for a prominent military general of the samurai class appointed by the Emperor with the task of national administration. The ShЕЌgun was the de facto ruler of Japan and third on the Tokugawa class hierarchy. Similar to the Emperor, the kuge were incredibly prestigious and held significant influence in cultural fields, but wielded very little political power and served functions only for symbolic purposes. The Court nobility, the kuge, were the civil aristocracy of Japan and second on the Tokugawa class hierarchy. The Emperor and his Imperial Court located in Kyoto, the official capital of Japan, were given virtually no political power but their prestige was invincible.

However, the Emperor was only a de jure ruler, functioning as a figurehead held up as the ultimate source of political sanction for the ShЕЌgun's authority. The Emperor of Japan was the official ruler of Japan at the very top of the Tokugawa class hierarchy. Japanese people were assigned a hereditary class based on their profession, which would be directly inherited by their children, and these classes were themselves stratified with their own hierarchies. The Tokugawa introduced a system of strict social stratification, organizing the majority of Japan's social structure into a hierarchy of social classes. The Tokugawa clan sought to eradicate any potential opposition across Japanese society from top-to-bottom to consolidate their rule. However, Ieyasu was especially wary of social mobility given that Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of his peers and a Kampaku (Imperial Regent) whom he replaced, was born into a low caste and rose to become Japan's most powerful political figure of the time. Ieyasu founded the Tokugawa Shogunate as a new feudal government of Japan with himself as the ShЕЌgun. Tokugawa Ieyasu of the Tokugawa clan and his Eastern Army emerged victorious after the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, defeating the Western Army of Toyotomi Hideyori, ending the Sengoku civil wars. The final collapse of the Ashikaga worsened the effects of the Sengoku period (or 'Age of Warring States'), the state of social upheaval and near-constant civil war in Japan since 1467. The Ashikaga Shogunate established a loose class system when it ruled Japan as a feudal shogunate during the Muromachi period from 1338 to 1573. Confucian ideas from China also provided the foundation for a system of strict social prescriptions, along with political twists and turns of the day. Even the ranks themselves, especially military ranks, became more respected if only out of necessity. Nevertheless, frequent warfare and political instability plagued Japan in following centuries, providing countless opportunities to usurp, bend, and mobilize positions within social ranks. The Taika Reforms were the 'legal glue' deemed necessary to thwart future coup d'etat attempts, and the RitsuryЕЌ system led to the formation of castes in Japan. The reforms were following a major and devastating coup d'etat attempt by Soga no Emishi, with the events not only exterminating entire clans, but tearing apart a gaping hole in the Japanese indigenous religion, Ko-ShintЕЌ, paving the way for a Buddhist-Shinto syncretism of religion. Feudalism, social stratification, and explicit fine grained ranking of people existed in Japan long before the Edo period, beginning with attempts as far back as the Taika Reforms in 645 A.D., initiating the RitsuryЕЌ legal system that was modeled from Chinese Tang dynasty legal code.

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