Tsunenari Tokugawa

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. He is the son of Ichirō Matsudaira and Toyoko Tokugawa. His great-grandfather was the famed Matsudaira Katamori of Aizu and his maternal great-grandfather was Tokugawa Iesato. As a great-grandson of Shimazu Tadayoshi, the last lord of Satsuma Domain, he is also a second cousin of the former Emperor, Akihito.

Tsunenari Tokugawa
徳川恆孝
Head of the Tokugawa House
Reign18 February 1963 – present
PredecessorIemasa Tokugawa
Born (1940-02-26) 26 February 1940
IssueIehiro Tokugawa 徳川家広
FatherIchirō Matsudaira
MotherToyoko Tokugawa

Tsunenari was active for many years in the shipping company Nippon Yūsen, retiring in June, 2002, and is the head of the nonprofit Tokugawa Foundation.[1] The nonprofit aims to preserve the remaining cultural treasures of the Tokugawa family, many of which were lost in the Meiji Restoration and World War II U.S. bombings.[1] 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 shōguns) 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.[2]

His son, Iehiro Tokugawa, is an author and translator.[3]

Family

Ancestry

Patrilineal descent

References
  1. Yoshida, Reiji (15 September 2002). "Where are they now?". The Japan Times. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  2. "The Edo Inheritance by Tokugawa Tsunenari". International House of Japan. Retrieved 25 May 2009.
  3. Jeffs, Angela (8 November 2008). "Translating in the spirit of samurai". The Japan Times. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
Preceded by
Tokugawa Iemasa		 Tokugawa family head
1963–present		 Incumbent
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