The sankin kōtai (lit., “alternate attendance”) system was a device of the Tokugawa shogunate, the government of Japan from 1603 to 1868, designed to insure political control by the regime over the daimyo, or territorial lords, who exercised virtually autonomous authority over the more than 260 feudal states into which four-fifths of the country was divided. Under this system most of the daimyo were required to travel biennially [every two years] from their domains to the capital of the Tokugawa at Edo (present day Tokyo) and to spend alternate years in personal attendance at the shogunal court. Each daimyo was also required to maintain residences at the capital where his wife and children were permanently detained. . . . Another important contribution of the operation of the sankin kōtai system to the modernization of Japan was to promote the intellectual and cultural unification of the country. The sankin kōtai served to bring a large part of the leadership elements from the whole country together in one place and to keep a constant stream of leaders and intellectuals moving back and forth between the capital and all parts of the country. This was important in giving Japan the tremendous intellectual unity with which it faced the West in the nineteenth century. It also enabled the people at large to have a stronger sense of national unity than would have been the case had the system not existed. By serving as the vehicle which spread the culture of Edo and Osaka to the countryside, the system influenced the diffusion of a truly national culture. . . . 11. The purpose of the Tokugawa’s sankin kōtai (alternate attendance) system is similar to the purpose of

(1) British suffragettes who demanded Parliament grant women the right to vote

(2) King Louis XIV of France who required nobles to stay at Versailles

(3) Simón Bolívar who expected the indigenous people to rise up against the Spanish

(4) European countries that divided up the African continent