The Tokugawa Shogunate and the Three Imperial Households: Three Hundred Years of Ambition and Power

Among Tokugawa Ieyasu's descendants, the Owari family started from Yoshinao, the Kii family started from Yorinobu, and the Mito family started from Yorifusa. These three families are collectively called the Tokugawa Gosan family. But was the Yusan family only born to assist General Bi's family, or to supplement the general's successors? Historian Atsushi Kawai thinks this view is completely wrong. In this work, Atsushi Kawai reveals the hidden ambitions of the Gosan family and the overt and covert struggles among the shogunate, shoguns and the Gosan family over power and the shogun's successor during the three hundred years of Tokugawa rule.