You the neon phoenix, you the dragon flying on thermals of solar wind!
Your businessman-warriors, your salarymen-samurai, your oh-so-perfect merger of industry, philosophy, and war
Your hungry zaibatsu, your cunning ninja, your flashing lights that dye your cities
Your Emperor who hears
but never sees
You have made a merger of honor and profit
Now we shall see if the merger bears fruit
Or if the chrysanthemum shall darken and wither
By the rot that chews it at the root?
---
The Chrysanthemum Shogunate is a nation balanced on a triad of power between three forces: the Emperor, the sole agent of divinity within the mortal realm and leader of all the peoples of the Shogunate; the Shogun, chosen by the Emperor as supreme military and industrial lord of the realm, and protector of the Shogunate; and the Zaibatsu, corporate conglomerates owned by dynastic samurai families, who rule over their given territories in the Emperor's name and balance competition and cooperation with each other to better the realm as a whole.
This at-times-precarious system is balanced in several subtle ways. Each zaibatsu must have at least one of its major subsidiaries headquartered on Edo-Chikyu, the capital and throne world of the Shogunate. Similarly, each of the zaibatsu’s daimyo must spent half of Edo’s year living on Edo-Chikyu, specifically in Kikushi, the Chrysanthemum City. While doing so places them at the center of the Shogunate’s power, only the sitting Shogun is allowed to bring more than a small number of their elite guard with him to Edo-Chikyu, and no weapons other than swords are allowed within Kikushi’s walls, on pain of death by disembowelment. This makes the chance of a coup within the city much more difficult.
Similarly, while the zaibatsu are allowed near-total control over their homeworlds, and they have the option of switching out planets to get the best “deal,” all other planets are nominally controlled by the Emperor. Zaibatsu may buy rights to mine or farm parts of the Emperor’s worlds, but a portion of their koku (takings) from such holdings then goes to the Emperor, and the Emperor may abolish a zaibatsu’s holdings at any time. Economically-speaking, the Emperor could bring any of the zaibatsu to their knees if he chose to. The Shogun may also purchases holdings on Imperial worlds, though for reasons stated below, the Emperor almost never charges the Shogun’s zaibatsu as much as he would charge the others.
Each zaibatsu maintains its own military, independent from and about equal in size to the Imperial Army and Navy, which almost never leaves the Edo System except in times of all-out war with one of the other imperial powers. If one zaibatsu decided to go up against the Chrysanthemum Throne, it would be a pretty even fight. If two of them fought together, the Emperor would be in serious danger. The Emperor himself also does not have a zaibatsu of his own, and while he may own land and resource rights, he is not nearly as engaged in, or capable of manipulating, his nation’s economy as the daimyo are. This is one of the reasons that one of the duties of the Shogun is the act as the Emperor’s personal bodyguard, why the Emperor has a vested interest in keeping on the Shogun’s good side, and why the Shogun has command over the Imperial Army and Navy in addition to his own zaibatsu’s military.
Realistically speaking, the true power in the Shogunate is, unsurprisingly, the Shogun. His zaibatsu can go to war, either economically or militarily, with any of the other zaibatsu, and the gifts of the office of Shogun mean he stands a very good chance of coming out on top. In the event of total war with another nation, the Shogun has complete control of the entire Shogunate military, including the assets of other zaibatsu. This is one of the reasons past Shogun have been infamous as warmongers - it’s a great way to keep their peers in line. The possibility of the other zaibatsu uniting to take the Shogun down certainly exists, and the Emperor could dismiss the Shogun at any time, but the likelihood of these things happening is miniscule so long as the Shogun walks a fine line between control and benevolence.
In short, the zaibatsu and the Emperor need each other, and the Emperor and the Shogun need each other. It is largely the Emperor’s duty to make sure the zaibatsu and the Shogun believe, or at least pretend, that they need each other, even if the reality is quite the opposite.
The current Emperor is Daigo-tenno, is an engaged and charismatic leader, and who is both loved and feared in equal respect by the Shogunate's people. Daigo resents the slow but steady concession of the Emperor's power to the Shogun which has taken place over the centuries, and seeks to reverse it. However, he insists on doing so without resorting to a military engagement of any kind, which bewilders and angers the zaibatsu who would otherwise happily back him in such a conflict. Daigo and his wife, Meiko, have four children, and Daigo has a younger brother, Shinzo; the line if succession is, therefore, well-protected for Daigo's dynasty.
The Najikawa zaibatsu is the current Shogun clan, and the head of that zaibatsu is Najikawa Yadate. The Najikawa have maintained their position as Shogun for seventeen generations, and Yadate sees no reason why that should change, as it has brought his family and conglomerate vast wealth and power. At the same time, the Najikawa have also brought the Shogunate to a state of uneasy peace, exacting harsh punishments on any zaibatsu who engage in warfare which might threaten the Shogunate as a whole. Despite the powers and armies he wields, Najikawa Yadate maintains that he is a peacemaker above all else.
There are currently nine zaibatsu powerful enough to own entire worlds (including the Shogun's zaibatsu), with more than thirty other, smaller zaibatsu and keiretsu. Three of the largest zaibatsu, the Otomo, the Jiiro, and the Toda, each stand poised to take the position of Shogun away from the dominant Najikawa by making them appear weak, and thus unable to continue their duties as protectors and warlords of the realm. At present this conflict exists largely as a four-way corporate war of espionage and buyouts, but it could turn bloody at any moment. The zaibatsu are all engaged in conflict with one another to some degree, but they are also inexorably intertwined with one another as well, thanks to a tangle of corporate and military alliances and joint ventures. This results in such strange situations as the Irawaki and Toda zaibatsu engaged in bloody warfare over a moon in the Shogunate's backwater, while the two zaibatsu stand shoulder-to-shoulder attempting to the Aitobishi stardrive monopoly in the business district of Kikushi.