Message from the President

Tokugawa Tsunenari
President, Tokugawa Memorial Foundation
18th Head of the Tokugawa Shogunal Household

Having entered the fourth year of existence, our recent and upcoming activities are as below.

From February 28 to March 26, 2006, we have carried out a special exhibition “The Tokugawa Shoguns and Samurai Scholarship – The Shoheizaka Academy and the Momijiyama Library” at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Confucian ceremonial ware belonging to the Yushima Seido and various rare edition of Confucian works were put on display.

Currently, we are preparing for the exhibition “The Tokugawa Shogunal Household and the Matsudaira of Aizu”, planned for this September. The display will be such as to show the relationship between Tokugawa Shoguns and the Lords of Aizu from founder Hoshina Masayuki (son of Tokugawa Hidetada, the 2nd Shogun) to the last Lord, Matsudaira Katamori. Some of the historical documents concerning the late Tokugawa/Meiji Restoration period will be made public for the first time. The venue is to be divided between two locations in Aizu Wakamatsu City, the Fukushima Prefectural Museum and Wakamatsu Castle Tower Museum.

As President of the Foundation, I have visited China (November 2005) and Pakistan and Bangladesh (March 2006) to give lectures on Tokugawa Japan. That Japan had the long and peaceful Tokugawa period prior to the Meiji era and that the social and economic development of Japan at the time was among the highest in the contemporary world was apparently news to the audience in these countries, and I was asked many thoughtful questions. Also, through the visit to these countries which had to suffer foreign intervention and colonization, I could not help feeling strongly the good luck we Japanese had in maintaining our independence.