Tōgoku

Tōgoku, the eastern country, is the premodern name for the provinces east of the court's Kinai heartland, lands the Yamato rulers once regarded as a remote frontier. From the Asuka period it meant the Tōkaidō and Tōsandō provinces beyond the Ashigara and Usui passes, a region also called Bandō, while the country farther north was left to the Emishi. Its provinces supplied sakimori border guards, and the Man'yōshū's azuma uta preserve their eastern dialect; Korean peninsula settlers were planted in Musashi from the seventh to ninth centuries.

The east rose with Minamoto no Yoritomo, whose Kamakura shogunate of 1185, Japan's first military government, ruled until 1333. In the Sengoku wars the Later Hōjō held the Kantō from Odawara until 1590, when they surrendered to Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Tokugawa Ieyasu then took the eight Kantō provinces and made Edo his seat. The Tokugawa shogunate of 1603 made Edo, not the old western capitals, the real center of Japanese power.