In 1615 Tokugawa Hidetada, the second shogun of Japan’s Tokugawa bakufu, or military government, promulgated the Laws Governing Military Households, or Buke Shohatto, a set of instructions or rules for members of Japan’s large military class. The Laws Governing Military Households were meant to maintain peace and regulate all aspects of the behavior of warriors, extending from the lords of domains to the lesser samurai who served them. Although they are correctly interpreted as a set of laws, only a few of the stipulations laid out in the thirteen articles of this document were meant to be enforced in the sense that a law governing the crime of murder or burglary would be. Instead, most of the Laws Governing Military Households were broadly prohibitive or hortatory in nature; they were meant to give general guidelines for behavior rather than proscribe specific acts.