What was the hereditary military government ruled by Japan’s shoguns called from 1603 to 1868?

The hereditary military government ruled by Japan’s shoguns from 1603 to 1868 was the Tokugawa shogunate.

It began when Tokugawa Ieyasu was granted the title of shogun in 1603, after his victory at Sekigahara had established his dominance. The Tokugawa family and its successors governed through a system in which the emperor remained in Kyoto but the shogun exercised the principal political and military authority.

The shogunate controlled the daimyo through regulations, alliances, and the system of alternate attendance, which required many lords to spend time in Edo. Its rule brought a long period of internal peace, although social classes remained formally ordered and foreign contact was tightly regulated. The Tokugawa shogunate ended during the Meiji Restoration, when political authority was returned to the imperial government in 1868. It is sometimes called the Edo shogunate because its administrative center was Edo, the city now known as Tokyo.