Tokugawa

“ Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the Tokugawa epoch than the absence of anything like organised rebellion for many generations. Nevertheless at an early period of the epoch there appeared upon the stage a turbulent figure which remained more or less in evidence until modern days. This was the rōnin, or "wave-man," an epithet applied to samurai who, believing themselves charged with a mission to mend the times, refrained from joining the service of any fief, and wandered about, ready to take a part in all adventures that showed a colouring of sentiment. ”

“ It is necessary to note here that, although the feudatories have been frequently referred to in these pages as prominent figures in this or that public drama, the feudal chiefs themselves exercised, in Tokugawa days, very little influence on the current of events. A modern historian speaks justly when he says:
"In this respect the descendants of the great Tokugawa statesman found themselves reduced to a position precisely analogous to that of the emperor in Kyoto. Sovereign and shogun were alike mere abstractions so far as the practical work of the government was concerned. ”

“ Their spies have told the barbarians in their inhospitable regions of the one country where the gods love to dwell. From tens of rude, insolent men, they have increased to hundreds; they are now thousands and will soon be myriads. Tokugawa is no longer a vassal of Tenshi Sama, he is a servant to men scarce better than brutes. Hyogo and Osaka, are in their possession. ”

“ It would be very stupid, however, to surmise that Japan in the Tokugawa period attained to a culture which in its general aspect belonged almost to the same stage as that prevailing in Europe in the early nineteenth century. Art, though an important cultural factor, cannot be made the sole criterion of the civilisation of any nation or people. It is quite indisputable that Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate had many things about which we could not boast. ”

“ But, alas! the Tokugawa samurai is no longer a knight. He has forgotten the existence of the word duty, and has substituted the word pleasure. The country is no longer safe under the guidance of the Tokugawa. It must be taken away from them.”
“And given to Mori?” asked Karassu Maru.
“That may be decided later, my lord,” said Kano calmly. “At present it is not a question of who shall rule with Tenshi Sama’s consent, but if the country shall be safe from the invasion of the barbarians. They may not come in large numbers for some years ”

“ Such youths might have been difficult to find in any numbers prior to Tokugawa times. For throughout the first four centuries of the Military epoch, 1192 to 1590, children's education was greatly neglected. Scarcely any persons were competent to teach the reading of the Chinese classics. Under the Tokugawa, however, a great improvement took place. At first the Government did not adopt any active measures of direct encouragement; it confined itself to allowing elementary school-teachers to live among the samurai, take a family name, and carry a sword. ”

“ The Tokugawa struggled hard to keep the townspeople, now the controllers of the economy, in their place. Merchants were forbidden to build elaborate houses or wear elaborate clothes, and they were expected to defer to the penurious samurai in all things. ”

“ Rich farmers and tradesmen began to pay large sums for having their sons adopted into samurai families, an abuse which continued until the Meiji era, and marriages between the daughters of commoners and the sons of patricians became essentially pecuniary arrangements.
On the other hand, there are abundant proofs that throughout the Tokugawa epoch strenuous efforts were made by the Government to check the growth of luxury. Official zeal differed in degree from time to time, but the general tendency was uniform. It is true that no monopoly of such legislation can be claimed for the Tokugawa. ”

“ It is not for our alien pen to portray the splendors of such a marriage as that of the princess of Satsuma to Iyesada, the thirteenth Shô-gun of the Tokugawa dynasty, when all Yedo was festal and illuminated for a week. Neither shall we describe that of the imperial princess Kazu, the younger sister of the Mikado, who came up from Kioto to wed the young Shô-gun Iyemochi, and thus to unite the sacred blood of twenty-five centuries of imperial succession with that of the Tokugawas, the proud family that ruled Japan, and dictated even to her emperors, for two hundred and fifty years. ”

“ When, at the beginning of the 17th century, administrative supremacy fell into the hands of the Tokugawa, the illustrious founder of that dynasty of shōguns, Iyeyasu, showed himself an earnest promoter of erudition. Education in the pre-Meiji Era. He employed a number of priests to make copies of Chinese and Japanese books; he patronized men of learning and he endowed schools. ”

“ TOKUGAWA YOSHIMUNE THE EIGHTH SHOGUN, YOSHIMUNE By the death of Ietsugu, in 1716, the Hidetada line of the Tokugawa family became extinct, and a successor to the shogunate had to be sought from the Tokugawa of Kii province in the person of Yoshimune, grandson of Yorinobu and great-grandson of Ieyasu. Born in 1677, Yoshimune, the eighth Tokugawa shogun, succeeded to office in 1716, at the age of thirty-nine. The son of a concubine, he had been obliged to subsist on the proceeds of a very small estate, and he therefore well understood the uses of economy and the condition of the people. ”

“ The Tokugawa period, covering the 270 years during which the Government of the Tycoon was installed in Yeddo, was one during which literature made great progress in Japan. Those years were a time of profound peace; the country was cut off from the rest of the world, thrown in upon itself, and accordingly had ample leisure, and possibly much inclination, to develop its artistic side, especially in literature. ”

“ Now Tokugawa lasted as Shogun two hundred and sixty-four years, with fifteen Shoguns; therefore Tokugawa ruled as the Shogunate longer than any other family. In the natural course of events popular imagination had already begun to think, [Pg 200] that the time was approaching for Tokugawa to cease to be the Shogunate.
'Then, again, public opinion and sentiment were fast growing in favour of the restoration of the Imperial authority. It was a perfectly legitimate movement ”

“ Nor must it be forgotten that to the Tokugawas is due the foundation of the great modern city of Yeddo with its vast fortifications and its triumphs of art in the shrines of Shiba and Uyeno. It was at this period too that the matchless shrines of Nikko were reared in memory of the greatness of Iyeyasu and Iyemitsu. The successors of the former, the shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty, fourteen in all, were with one exception buried alternately in the cemeteries of Zozoji and Toyeizan, in the city districts of Shiba and Uyeno. ”

“ The lords of this kind had formerly been the equals of the Tokugawa, when the latter was standing under the protection of Hideyoshi, and it was difficult for the new Shogunate, in a country where the Emperor has ever been the paramount sovereign, to make those lords formally swear the oath of fealty to itself. The nature of the sovereignty, [Pg 294] therefore, of the Tokugawa over the feudatories aforesaid was only that of primus inter pares. The daimyo who stood in this relation to the Shogunate were called tozama. ”

“ During the first one hundred and thirty years of Tokugawa rule the samurai, no longer required to lead the frugal life of camp or barracks, and occupying a position midway between the aristocracy and the people, began to live beyond their incomes. ”

“ Campaigns, battles, and political intrigues do not find a place in these volumes; else there would be much to tell about the events which raised the Tokugawa to supremacy. A pathetic figure lends special interest to the last act of the drama; the figure of the beautiful Yodo, the Taikō's favourite mistress and mother of the lad to whom he vainly bequeathed the fruits of his splendid victories and still more brilliant statesmanship. ”

“ Therefore he was, as custom and tradition now for a long time had required for those holding the office of shōgun, a descendant from the Minamoto family.190 The name Tokugawa, which Ieyasu rendered famous, was derived from a village in the province of Shimotsuke, where his ancestors had lived. His first experiences in war were under Nobunaga, side by side with Hideyoshi. He proved himself not only a capable soldier, prudent and painstaking, but also a good administrator in times of peace. ”

“ The Tokugawa era (1603–1867) , which popularized the drama, had other memorable effects upon Japanese literature. Yedo, the shōgun’s capital, displaced Kiōto as the centre of literary activity. Its population of more than a million, including all sorts and conditions of men—notably wealthy Literature of the Tokugawa Era. merchants and mechanics—constituted a new audience to which authors had to address themselves; and an unparalleled development of mental activity necessitated wholesale drafts upon the Chinese vocabulary. ”

“ Ienari was in his fifteenth year, and, of course, at such a tender age he could not possibly deal with the financial, economic, and administrative problems that presented themselves at this, the darkest period of Tokugawa sway. Fortunately a man of genius was found to grapple with the situation. Matsudaira Sadanobu, son of Tayasu Munetake and grandson of Yoshimune, proved himself one of the most capable administrators Japan had hitherto produced. In 1788, he was appointed prime minister, assisted by a council of State comprising the heads of the three Tokugawa families of Mito, Kii, and Owari. ”

“ And during all that time the House of Tokugawa has continued to exercise their usurped power, and in our day the Shōgun has even gone so far as to call himself 'Tai-kun' and in his own name to conclude treaties with foreign nations without the Mikado's consent. But on account of the progress of the world, times have changed, and it is the wish of our master, Chōshiu, as well as of ourselves, that the governing power should be restored to our real and legitimate Sovereign, the Mikado, while Tokugawa must resign his post of Sei-i-tai Shōgun. ”

“ Blame yourself and acquit others.
To fall short is better than to exceed.
ENGRAVING: SIGNATURE OF ASHIKAGA TAKAUJI ENGRAVING: THEATRICAL PLAY OF OLD JAPAN CHAPTER XXXIX FIRST PERIOD OF THE TOKUGAWA BAKUFU; FROM THE FIRST TOKUGAWA SHOGUN, IEYASU, TO THE FOURTH, IETSUNA (1603-1680) LEGISLATION THE Tokugawa family having brought the whole empire under its sway, Ieyasu applied himself to legislative work with a degree of thoroughness and earnestness that far exceeded anything in the history of his predecessors. ”

“ These elements were very apparent in the character of the Japanese under Tokugawa rule, and were perhaps most conspicuously displayed in the realm of civil law. Very few appeals were made to the official tribunals of justice: men preferred to compound a difference of opinion or even to suffer wrong. Of course, considering the wide interval that separated the "commoner" from the samurai by whom alone justice was administered, it would have been natural that the former should shrink from the presumption of thrusting his private affairs on the latter's attention. ”

“ Late in 1869 the Emperor was joined at Tokio by the young Empress Haruko, who travelled overland by the highroad termed the Tokaido, with an immense retinue, resting on the way at the prescribed honjins or private hotels used by the feudal lords on their former journeys [35] to and from Yedo, when the Shoguns required them to pay periodical visits to the headquarters of the Tokugawa government. ”

“ He offered the Spaniards, Portuguese, English and Dutch a site for a settlement in Yedo, and had they accepted the offer the country might never have been closed. In his time Japan was virtually a free-trade country. Importers had not to pay any duties. It was expected, however, that they should make presents to the feudatory into whose port they carried their goods, and these presents were often very valuable. Naturally the Tokugawa chief desired to attract such a source of wealth to his own domains. ”

“ The Tokugawa collection, of which I have spoken, is remarkably full and costly, for it has been making for hundreds of years in one of the younger branches of a family which for two and a half centuries was possessed of almost imperial power, and lived in more than imperial luxury; but there are few households so poor that they do not from year to year accumulate a little store of toys wherewith to celebrate the feast, and, whether the toys are many or few, the feast is the event of the year in the lives of the little girls of Japan. ”

“ We can not confide our plans to other clans. They would think at once that Choshiu [Pg 123] wishes to succeed Tokugawa. Perhaps it does. All we do know is that Iyeyasu, who humbled the proudest clan, humbly begged Tenshi Sama to appoint him as Shogun. If he had not possessed the imperial authority, not even he could have prevented constant revolts. But he did possess it, and that is why my ancestor advised his lord not to join the insurgents. It may be, however, that the time has come to wipe out the clan’s disgrace, and my ancestor’s death. If so, let Tokugawa look to it! ”

“ More than that: their manners, habits, and customs, must be studied and such as served in any way to strengthen the national life, must be introduced and adapted. But before anything could be done in that direction, the Tokugawa must be laid low. Nothing could possibly be [Pg 213] done so long as a clan so degenerate was foremost in the country.
Ito went to Satzuma, and met OKubo, Saigo, and Terashima. In OKubo and Terashima he met men who felt and thought like he. ”