Sankin kōtai

Also known as Sankin-kōtai

thumb|350px| "En masse Attendance of Daimyo at Edo Castle on a Festive Day" from the Tokugawa Seiseiroku, [[National Museum of Japanese History]] Sankin-kōtai (, now commonly written as ) was a policy of the Tokugawa shogunate during most of the Edo period, created to control the daimyo, the feudal lords of Japan, politically, and to keep them from attempting to overthrow the regime. It required most daimyo to alternate between living in their domain and in the shogunate's capital, Edo, every year. This made the daimyo subject to constant surveillance from the shogunate. This also forced the d