The Unfettered Shogun

The Unfettered Shogun (暴れん坊将軍) (Abarenbō Shōgun) was a Japanese television program on the TV Asahi network. Set in the eighteenth century, it showed fictitious events in the life of Yoshimune, the eighth Tokugawa shōgun.

The program started in 1978 under the title Yoshimune Hyōbanki: Abarenbō Shōgun (Chronicle in Praise of Yoshimune: The Unfettered Shōgun) who went after rogue councilors and daimyō who were abusing their power. After a few seasons, they shortened the first two words and the show ran for two decades under the shorter title until the series ended in 2003; a two-hour special aired in 2004. The earliest scripts occasionally wove stories around historic events such as the establishment of firefighting companies of commoners in Edo, but eventually the series adopted a routine of strictly fiction.

Along with Zenigata Heiji and Mito Kōmon, it ranks among the longest-running series in the jidaigeki genre. Like many other jidaigeki, it falls in the category of kanzen-chōaku, loosely, "rewarding good and punishing evil".