The Edo Period (1603-1868) is frequently regarded as a dark, repressive age, when Japan was held in an iron grip by a military government that had closed its borders to the outside world. "The Edo Inheritance" seeks to challenge and correct this slanted image.
The author, Tokugawa Tsunenari, is the 18th head of the Tokugawa family, which set up and ran the shogunate that ruled Japan for over 250 years, until the arrival of the Black Ships and the dismantling of the system.
The age that followed is usually considered one of new enlightenment and emergence from a "feudal" era. The book argues that the grounds for this relatively smooth transition had in fact been prepared by the preceding "265 years of uninterrupted peace."