Issue Tokugawa Iehiro 徳川家広 Children Iehiro Tokugawa Books The Edo Inheritance | Education Gakushuin University Name Tokugawa Tsunenari | |
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Reign 18 February 1963 – present Born 26 February 1940 (age 84) ( 1940-02-26 ) | ||
Tsunenari Tokugawa (徳川 恆孝, Tokugawa Tsunenari) (also 徳川 恒孝; born 26 February 1940) is the present (18th generation) head of the main Tokugawa house. Members of his Tokugawa clan ruled Japan as shoguns from 1603 to 1867. He was son of Ichirō Matsudaira (Ichirō was son of Tsuneo Matsudaira with Nobuko Nabeshima, daughter of Nabeshima Naohiro) and Toyoko Tokugawa (daughter of Iemasa Tokugawa). His great-grandfather by his birth family was the famed Matsudaira Katamori of Aizu and his maternal great-grandfather was Tokugawa Iesato. Tsunenari was active for many years in the shipping company Nippon Yūsen, and at present is the head of the nonprofit Tokugawa Foundation.
His son, Iehiro Tokugawa, is a University of Michigan-educated translator.
In 2007, Tsunenari published a book entitled Edo no idenshi (江戸の遺伝子), released in English in 2009 as The Edo Inheritance, which seeks to counter the common belief among Japanese that the Edo period (throughout which members of his Tokugawa clan ruled Japan as shoguns) was like a dark age, when Japan, cut off from the world, fell behind. On the contrary, he argues, the roughly 250 years of peace and relative prosperity saw great economic reforms, the growth of a sophisticated urban culture, and the development of the most urbanized society on the planet.