II Prince Tokugawa Keiki: The Last of the Shoguns
Prior to the Meiji era, which began in 1867, the Shogun (known in foreign countries as the Tycoon), who was the Emperor’s deputy at Yedo, now Tokio, personified the military supremacy of a feudal system which had existed for many centuries, the last occupant of the post being the direct descendant of the founder of the Tokugawa house in which the office of Shogun had been hereditary from the year 1603. Possibly the history of Modern Japan might have taken a different turn but for the recognition by the Shogun Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu, otherwise Tokugawa Keiki, of the necessity of introducing reforms into his country if it were to hold its own against the tendency to deal arbitrarily with the nations of the Orient which was half-a-century since being manifested by some of the powers of the Occident. Prince Keiki placed his resignation in 1868 in the hands of his imperial master and counselled the adherents of the Tokugawa house to unite with those of the Southern clans in efforts for the well-being of the nation at large. That his followers could not be persuaded at once to take his advice can scarcely be regarded as the fault of the Shogun, who had only the year previously succeeded to the honours of the position yet was prompt to relinquish them in order, as he hoped, to avert some of the horrors of civil war. Tokugawa Keiki was chosen by the Mito branch of the family to follow the Shogun Iyemochi in 1866, and he succeeded to power at Yedo castle at a moment when Japan was racked with dissensions between the party which opposed the opening of the ports to foreign trade and that which was in favour of the admission of strangers. The Shogun Iyesada, who in 1854 and subsequent years had entered into the treaties with the representatives of the Occidental nations, had been repudiated by his imperial master, the Emperor Komei, who for a long time refused to ratify these agreements. Even though he eventually signed them the nation remained sharply divided within itself on the question of the introduction of foreign methods. It is almost necessary, in order that the position occupied at this period by the Shogun should be fairly comprehended, to allude briefly to the earlier history of Japan, from about the time of the Emperor Konoye, who was contemporary with King Stephen of England. The rise of the military caste in Japan dates from that era, when the Taira and Minamoto families were contending for the mastery, and it was a period which has been termed not altogether inaptly that of the Japanese “wars of the roses” (the badges worn were really red and white chrysanthemums), inasmuch as the rival clans were intimately related to each other, and strove to place their respective candidates in possession of the real executive power, which was even then becoming gradually acquired by the deputies of the true sovereigns who dwelt at Kioto. Ultimately the Minamoto family prevailed, in the person of the famous warrior Yoritomo, about 1185 A.D., and seven years later, when his authority had been firmly established, he received from the reigning sovereign the title of Sei-I-Tai-Sho-Gun—i.e. Barbarian-vanquishing-Generalissimo, in allusion to the duty of guarding Japan from the inroads of those northern savages who at that period made occasional descents on the coasts of Oshiu. The headquarters of the Shogun’s government were then at Kamakura, a place of great interest to travellers at the present day, and within easy reach of the port of Yokohama. Kamakura as it now stands contains but few traces of its former glories, but the temple dedicated to Hachiman, the Japanese Mars, is of noble proportions and annually attracts thousands of pilgrims who journey thitherward in confident expectation of obtaining relief or benefit from the virtue inherent in this celebrated shrine. In Yoritomo’s day it was a city of 1,000,000 inhabitants, but its yashiki walls, crumbling to powder, are fast disappearing, and its magnificent avenues of cedar ceased to resound to the martial tread of mail-clad warriors centuries ago. Kamakura fell, as Yedo rose, and Yedo castle, some portions of which yet exist, adjoining the Imperial palace, was begun in 1592. It is Kamakura that boasts the possession of the bronze image of Buddha, over fifty feet in height, towering from its high pedestal above the groves of pine that surround the temple, and forming a conspicuous landmark as the village is first seen from a hill on the Fujisawa road. After Yoritomo’s death the Ho-jo family gained an ascendency in the affairs of the nation and practically ruled it until 1333 A.D., for the Shoguns of that epoch were scarcely more than figureheads. But it is to the everlasting credit of the Ho-jo that when Kublai Khan sought to subjugate Japan, in the thirteenth century, the defence of the country was in their hands so complete as to have led to as overwhelming a defeat of the Mongol armada as that which Queen Elizabeth of England inflicted upon the presumptuous Spaniards in 1588. The Mongol invaders had, like the Duke of Medina Sidonia, not only to contend against the very active defenders of the realms which they sought to invade, but also with fierce storms at sea that threw their vessels into confusion and exposed the scattered fragments of Kublai Khan’s immense fleet to separate and disastrous attack from the Japanese vessels manned by resolute samurai.
The armada which had threatened Japan’s independence had no sooner been disposed of than internecine strife began afresh, and rival dynasties of Shoguns kept the land in a ferment until, in 1392, the northern or Ashikaga line proved itself the stronger, and Japan entered into the enjoyment of two centuries of almost uninterrupted peace. Under the Ashikaga administration the country flourished exceedingly, and the epoch is famed in Japanese history as one in which learning and the sciences advanced to a degree of perfection never before known. High art and culture everywhere prevailed.
It was during the supremacy of the Ashikaga Shoguns that the geisha first became popular in Japan, and the musical instrument termed the samisen was introduced from the Loo-Choo islands. The earliest trace to be met with of the use of this species of guitar is contained in a history of events for the year 1558, and it has been suggested that the Loo-Choo people obtained the instrument from the Spaniards who came to the Philippines in 1520, and continued their voyage under Magellan northward as far as Nafa. But this view of the samisen’s origin is not entirely concurred in by Japanese archæologists who hold that it is improbable, for many reasons, that it is merely a bad copy of the guitar. The Loochooans called it the Jamisen, and used it to scare away snakes, because its sound was, as they declared, much like the cry of the mongoose (ichneumon), which is the implacable enemy of the serpent tribe. Possibly this explanation of the purpose which their special instrument of music was made of old to serve may not altogether commend itself to the geisha body to-day, and it would appear to be more probable that snake’s skin was stretched on the drum where ordinarily vellum is employed,—in more recent time cat’s skin has been used,—and that ja = serpent, and mi = body, sen = strings, may be the actual derivation of the name, though as written now in Japan it might mean “three dainty threads.” The geisha’s office was to sing, dance, play the samisen or other musical instrument, to pour out wine for the guests, and generally to infuse gaiety and good humour among the convives, her title of gei = accomplishments, and sha = exponent, sufficiently indicating the nature of the services she was engaged to render. She was, in fact, a professional entertainer, and in the luxurious days of the Ashikaga Shogunate she became fashionable, and has never lost her popularity. Her taste in dress is considered to be unapproachable, her coiffure is a triumph of the hairdresser’s art,—the recognised style being some form or other of the “shimada,” a fashion brought to the capital centuries ago from the town of Shimada, a railway station midway between Tokio and Kioto,—she is entirely her own mistress, and often lives in her own house, though in the majority of cases she dwells with others and has an agent who makes contracts for her. Her attractions may draw patrons and benefit the landlord, as he is quick to perceive, of the restaurant to which she may choose to attach herself, and if she should be summoned to a house or to take part in an entertainment to which she does not care to go, she is at perfect liberty to decline the invitation. Anything less resembling the life of slavery that it is sometimes represented to be it would be difficult to imagine. Her singing and dancing are usually remunerated at a fixed price per half-hour, varying according to her status as an accomplished entertainer, and she is not infrequently called upon to display her abilities to a party composed exclusively of ladies, whose wish it may be, like that of the other sex, to beguile the tedium of a winter evening by her witty conversation and her skill in music. Finally it must be added that a geisha of good repute is more sought after than one whose morality is deemed to be somewhat lax. In any case her character is always known to the police, for it is the rule that she must take out a licence as an entertainer, and the Chief Superintendent of the Section, in handing the document to her, commonly adds some words of fatherly admonition to avoid the many pitfalls that of necessity lie in her path.
The nation once more experienced the miseries of civil strife towards the close of the sixteenth century, this time by reason of the introduction of a religion which differed from that which had been dominant in Japan for twenty-three centuries, and likewise from that Buddhism which had found its way eastward 1000 years before from India. The Portuguese had obtained the right, under the Ashikaga rule, to settle in Japan, and in 1542 they brought with them,—what were altogether strange at that time to the Ten-shi’s people,—firearms, and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic faith. The keen desire manifested by the Jesuits to make proselytes speedily provoked the antagonism of the Buddhist and Shinto priesthoods, but, as was the case in China, the climax seems to have been reached only with the assumption by the new-comers of political power. To such pretensions the ruling house at Yedo could but oppose all its strength, and the patriotism of the country asserted itself in the form of a persecution that left no stone unturned in the effort to rid the land of a direct menace to its existence as an independent monarchy, secure from the influences of the Church of Rome. But the expulsion of the visitors was not accomplished until many years after the supremacy of the Ashikaga line had been successfully challenged by Nobunaga, and to the renowned Hideyoshi,—the Taiko-sama, or Great general,—had succeeded the scarcely less famous Iyeyasu, “the Law-giver,” who founded the Toku-gawa dynasty of Shoguns, and himself to all intents and purposes governed the country, from his accession in 1603 to the post of Sei-I-Tai-Sho-Gun, to his death in 1616, for though nominally he gave way to his third son, Hidetada, in 1605, he really ruled in his son’s name, and retained the executive power in his own hands. His ostensible retirement was due to his desire for leisure to frame his system of laws for the better government of the empire, and he drew up a scheme for the effective subordination of the provincial dai-mios, or feudatories, to the ruling authority at Yedo, which remained in force until the Restoration of direct sovereign rule, in 1868.
The Shogun Iyeyasu was descended from the Minamoto family, and the name Toku-gawa, lit.: stream of blessings, is said to have been taken from a river and village of the same name in the province of Shimo-tsuke, and not far from the celebrated Nikko Shrines. On the banks of the little Tokugawa the Shogun’s ancestors had dwelt, as farmers, for centuries, but the father of Iyeyasu,—Toku-gawa Shiro,—lived in the village of Matsudaira, in the province of Mikawa, which borders on the Pacific, about midway between Kobé and Yokohama. Here the “Law-giver” was born in 1542, the year that the Portuguese voyager, Mendez Pinto, first set foot on the soil of Japan. Iyeyasu fought under Nobunaga, and Hideyoshi, and ultimately succeeded the renowned Tai-ko Sama in the supreme command of the military forces, occupying thereafter the position of Sei-I-Tai-Sho-Gun. Iyeyasu first acquired property in his native province of Mikawa, and all his early associations were with that region, so much so that his opponents in after years were accustomed to allude to him somewhat slightingly as the “man from Mikawa.” When Iyeyasu obtained the position of Shogun in 1603 he elevated his birthplace to a position of honour by conferring its name as an extra title on many of his supporters, and down to the date of the abolition of such territorial distinctions there were not a few prominent dai-mios who thus preserved their connection with the Tokugawa regime from the beginning of its supremacy. The traces were to be found in titles such as “Nabeshima Matsudaira Hizen no Kami”—the baron Nabeshima Matsudaira of Hizen province,—Kuroda Matsudaira the dai-mio of Chikuzen,—and a host of others. In accord with the plans formulated by Tokugawa Iyeyasu every one among the number, some 300 in all, of the provincial barons was personally required to spend a moiety of each year in residence at his Yashiki in Yedo, and to leave his family there for the other six months,—the Yashikis being town mansions dotted about the capital in which a semi-regal state was kept up, and where the barons were surrounded by hundreds of their own retainers, ready to do their chieftain’s bidding on the instant. The remnants of these mansions are still to be found in modern Tokio, but they were in great part utilised, on the Restoration of Imperial rule, as Government offices and barracks for the troops of the army then about to be formed on Western lines. One of the most remarkable of these mansions of Old Yedo was that occupied by the Mito family, and it still retains much of its ancient splendour, inasmuch as it has been converted into a public park, and its magnificent gardens are maintained at the expense of the State, while the buildings and site of the historic residence of the Mito princes have been made over to the military for the purposes of an arsenal. It was part of Iyeyasu’s plan to adequately provide for the preservation of the Tokugawa line in the office of Shogun, and to that end he conferred upon three of his sons dukedoms in Owari, Kishiu, and Mito respectively. These three provinces are somewhat widely separated, for Owari is the region of which the flourishing city of Nagoya is at the present day the centre,—Kishiu is the province that borders the Kî channel at the eastern entrance to the Inland Sea,—and the Mito territory was that which is situated north-east of Tokio, and to the north of the river Toné, where it enters the Pacific near Cape Inuboye. Kishiu is now known as Wakayama Ken or Prefecture, Owari is Aichi Ken, and Mito is now Ibaraki Ken, though the boundaries do not exactly correspond with the ancient frontiers. The tripartite grant of territory to his seventh, eighth, and ninth sons respectively under this arrangement was accompanied by the proviso that in the event of the failure of the direct line the Shogun should be chosen from among the cadets of one or other of these families. In after years it frequently became needful to fall back on the wisely ordained succession thus laid down at the beginning of Iyeyasu’s reign at Yedo, wise in the sense that the extinction of the line was provided against, though it was not always possible to make a selection that met with the approval of all parties, since it sometimes happened that more than one branch of the Tokugawa house was ready with a candidate for the post of honour. It will presently be seen that a difficulty arose in this respect only a few years prior to the abolition of the Shogun’s office altogether, and which was not disposed of without many heart-burnings.
Some idea may be formed of the scale of magnificence on which the feudal system inaugurated during Iyeyasu’s tenure of the Shogunal office was based from the subjoined table of the barons’ revenues. For convenience’ sake I have added the approximate value of the koku of rice, in terms of which the incomes were formerly calculated, at the prices ruling in Japan for that commodity at the present day.
ANNUAL INCOMES OF THE BARONS UNDER THE SHOGUNATE
| The San-ke, descended from the three youngest Sons of the Founder of the Tokugawa house | ||||
| Title | Residence | Income | At present value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| koku | £ | |||
| Owari | Nagoya | 610,000 | = | 762,000 |
| Kii | Wakayama | 559,000 | = | 700,000 |
| Mito | Mito | 350,000 | = | 440,000 |
| (All bore the family arms of the Tokugawa, three heart-shaped leaves in a circle.) | ||||
| Dai-Mio’s Clan | Family Name | Residence | Income | At present value | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| koku | £ | ||||||
| Mostly sprung from the Governors appointed by, or the personal connections or vassals of Tokugawa Iyeyasu, A.D. 1603-16 | |||||||
| Kaga | Mayeda | Kanazawa | 1,027,000 | = | 1,284,000 | ||
| Satsuma | Shimadzu | Kagoshima | 710,000 | = | 887,000 | ||
| Sendai | Date | Sendai | 625,000 | = | 780,000 | ||
| Echizen | Matsudaira | Fukui | 320,000 | = | 400,000 | } | Close Relatives of Iyeyasu |
| Aidzu | Matsudaira | Wakamatsu | 230,000 | = | 280,000 | } | |
| Higo | Hosokawa | Kumamoto | 540,000 | = | 655,000 | ||
| Chikuzen | Kuroda | Fukuoka | 520,000 | = | 650,000 | ||
| Geishiu (Aki) | Asano | Hiroshima | 426,000 | = | 535,000 | ||
| Choshiu & Suwo | Mori | Hagi | 369,000 | = | 462,000 | ||
| Hizen | Nabeshima | Saga | 350,000 | = | 463,000 | ||
| Inaba | Ikeda | Tottori | 350,000 | = | 463,000 | ||
| Bizen | Ikeda | Okayama | 315,000 | = | 419,000 | ||
| Ashiu (Awa) | Hachisuka | Tokushima | 258,000 | = | 323,000 | ||
| Tosa | Yamanouchi | Kochi | 242,000 | = | 304,000 | ||
| Chikugo | Arima | Kurume | 210,000 | = | 267,000 | ||
| Descended from Hachiman Taro | |||||||
| Akita (Ugo) | Sataki | Akita | 206,000 | = | 258,000 | ||
| Nambu (Mutsu) | Nambu | Morioka | 200,000 | = | 250,000 | ||
| Yonezawa (Uzen) | Uyesugi | Yonezawa | 150,000 | = | 188,000 | ||
At the time of Iyeyasu the total revenue of the Empire was calculated to be equal to 28,900,000 koku of rice, out of which he distributed 20,000,000 of koku among those daimios and other dignitaries who were closely attached to the Tokugawa house, and retained 8,900,000 koku for the support of his own household and the maintenance of Government in Yedo. From this immense sum he also had to make, it must be borne in mind, suitable grants to the Court at Kioto, including the privy purse, and it was incumbent on the Shogun at all times to secure to the Emperor ample funds for the support of the imperial dignity and honour. In former years this duty had not invariably been executed on a fitting scale of liberality, the Ashikaga Shoguns in particular having made it a point to keep the Emperors poor. Under the regime of the Tokugawa, however, this had never been a cause of complaint, and in the days of Iyeyasu especially the apportionments of revenue to the service of the Court were made on a satisfactory basis. The repair of roads, and the cost of local administration in general, were matters to which the Daimios were expected to give attention without any allowances beyond those made from headquarters, their own incomes having in the majority of cases been ample for all purposes.
Following these eighteen “kokushiu daimios” ranked the eighteen “Ka-mon” (Members of the family) who were all relatives of the Tokugawa house, and bore the name of Matsudaira, the revenues they enjoyed ranging from 10,000 to 200,000 koku.
Next to the Ka-mon were the “To-sama” (outside lords) with incomes of 10,000 to 100,000 koku. They numbered from 90 to 100. These were representatives of collateral branches of the Kokushiu or greater barons, but were “outside” the Tokugawa.
After the “To-sama” ranked the “Fu-dai” (successive generations) and of these there were 115 families, with revenues ranging from 10,000 to 350,000 koku. The fu-dai were the main support of the Tokugawa house under the Shogunate regime.
It is not surprising to know that the feudal castles of these numerous barons were at one time to be counted by the hundred, or that many are still extant.
Among the Fudai families ranked two which became exceptionally conspicuous in the later days of the Tokugawa Shogunate,—as will presently appear, one for the defection of its chief to the opposing side in the battle of Fushimi in 1868, the other, on the contrary, for the sturdy loyalty which the head of the house exhibited to the engagements which on behalf of the Tokugawa Shogun he, as Regent, had entered into with the nations of the West. The first was Todo, the chieftain of Tsu, in Isé, whose followers went over to the imperialists and turned the scale against the Tokugawas,—the other the famous Ii Kamon-no-kami, who was killed in Tokio by political assassins in 1860. These two barons were the richest of the Fu-dai, each having a rent roll valued at half-a-million sterling.
When Iyeyasu the Law-giver died in 1616 his first resting-place was at the temple of Kunozan, in the province of Suruga, which adjoins his own native province of Mikawa. The mount of Kuno is close to the port of Shimidzu, in Suruga Gulf, and the temple is approached by many flights of stone steps, and looks out immediately on the broad Pacific, the impressive solitude of the spot being broken only by the occasional visits of bands of pilgrims coming from far-distant parts of Japan to pay their respects at the shrine. The wooden structures betray the ravages of time, notwithstanding that the contributions of the faithful are devoted to the preservation of this and like edifices which possess for the Ten-shi’s subjects deep historic interest, and the peculiar sanctity of the fane in Japanese estimation is doubtless heightened by the claim made for it by the attendant priests that it still holds the heart of the great Shogun though the rest of his remains were transferred to Nikko in 1617. Nikko, the incomparable Nikko, lit.: Sun’s Effulgence,—is so well known to Occidental travellers that a lengthy description of its glories would here be superfluous, and it need only be mentioned, perhaps, that the splendid cryptomeria-bordered highways met with on the journey thither were equally with his code of laws a part of “Iyeyasu’s Legacy” to the nation, inasmuch as it was with a wish to afford the millions who in after years might traverse the roads of Niphon that protection from its fierce summer suns which might be derived from spreading shade trees that the founder of the Tokugawa house caused those magnificent avenues to be planted and maintained. The tomb at Nikko to which his body was removed from Kunozan in March 1617 was regularly visited by the occupants, each in his turn, of Yedo Castle, but only the founder’s grandson Iyemitsu, who completed the work of building Nikko, and also of the original Uyeno temples at Yedo, rests beside Iyeyasu in this sacred spot. The other Shoguns of the Tokugawa line were interred in the capital, six at Uyeno, and six at Zozoji in Shiba, and on the “Rock of the Dead,” as the hill at Nikko is named on which these heroes of Old Japan repose, only the mausolea of the First and Third of the Tokugawa Shoguns are to be found. But there is that in the surroundings of the lonely graves on the crest of Hotoké-Iwa that is absent even in the gorgeous edifices which stand within those famous groves of pine and cedar that envelop the base of the mountain, and in the simplicity of the unadorned tombs, with their moss-covered approaches, and the time-worn balustrades which surround the peaceful courtyard, with its few bronze urns and incense-burners, there is grandeur unmistakable, and a dignity which no wealth of embellishment ever could confer. Iyeyasu in his lifetime wielded practically regal sway, and he and his successors of the Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns were de facto rulers in Japan, and obtained their investiture direct from the Ten-shi who was de jure ruler at the ancient capital of Kioto, while they, as vicegerents, held their semi-imperial courts at Yedo.
The rise of the military power dates from the days of Hideyoshi, whose ambition it was to subjugate Korea and add the peninsula to the Empire of Japan. But all his efforts, from one cause and another, were frustrated, and when in 1598 he died, after six years of ineffectual strife, the idea was for a time abandoned, his successor, Iyeyasu, as we have already seen, choosing the path of internal reform as that by which he would seek fame, rather than that of foreign conquest. Hideyoshi had restored order to the land, and it was for his successor in the exalted office to consolidate and strengthen the influence which the Taiko had acquired with the feudatory chiefs, and to carry onward to complete fulfilment the work of centralisation so boldly begun. Hidetada, as the second Shogun, followed in his father’s footsteps, though his tastes lay rather in the direction of art, but it was reserved for Iyemitsu to perfect Iyeyasu’s policy, and it was by Iyemitsu that Japan was closed for the time to foreign intercourse. In 1617 all Japanese ports excepting Hirado and Nagasaki were barred to strangers, and four years later the subjects of the Ten-shi were forbidden to visit foreign lands. In 1624 all foreigners save the Dutch and the English were banished from Japan;—and in 1637 there took place the terrible massacre of Christian converts at Shimabara in Kiushiu. By 1638 aliens of every sort save the Dutch had been expelled, and the Hollanders remained only on promise of faithful compliance with severe restrictive laws, and at the sacrifice in great measure of their personal liberty. Christianity, it was supposed, had been rooted out, but it was found in after years to have survived to some degree, in the vicinity of Nagasaki, the persecution to which its adherents were subjected.
Thus though the Anti-Christian edicts were promulgated during the latter part of Iyeyasu’s life it was by his grandson, who succeeded Hidetada, that the policy of extermination was resolutely carried into effect. How far the action of the Shogunate was prompted at this time by the dread of foreign encroachment is to be gathered from the proclamations issued at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Hideyoshi, moreover, is said to have paid more attention than it deserved to the idle boast of the Portuguese that it was the practice of their monarch to first send missionaries to convert the natives of a country to his own religion and next to send an army which, aided by the converts, contrived to overrun the land and add it to his dominions. Iyemitsu said in reference to this report:—
“If my dynasty perishes in consequence of civil wars, this is a disgrace which falls only on me: but if only an inch of our territory were to fall into foreign hands, the whole nation would have cause to be ashamed.”
Under the Tokugawa regime the influence of the military caste was predominant, and the samurai ranked next to the nobles, but all samurai were not of equal rank, for the spearmen were of higher grade than the men who fought with firearms, and the mounted man ranked above his comrade who fought on foot. Among the retainers of the barons a hatamoto, as he was termed, was a person who had command of as many, in some cases, as thirty foot-soldiers, and held a position akin to that of captain in the modern army. Hatamoto signified “under the flag,” each company having its own distinctive banner inscribed with its number and place of origin. The hatamochi was the actual standard-bearer from Hata, a banner, and Mochi, to hold. The ashi-garu (lit.: light of foot) was the lowest rank of samurai of the feudal times, and the man who carried a gun was less entitled to respect, according to that rigid code of honour which was so jealously guarded by the knighthood of Japan, than the man who met his enemy with the sword,—foot to foot, and hand to hand. It was doubtless to be ascribed to a survival of this feeling that in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 the followers of Marshal Saigo were ever anxious to come to close quarters with their foes, and often threw away their rifles in order the better to wield their treasured swords. The warrior trained in the old school had nothing but contempt for the method of fighting which enabled a man to hurl missiles at an enemy from a comparatively safe distance. The samurai’s principles led him to challenge his adversary to mortal combat in the open field, but were averse to anything which might be construed as seeking an undue advantage. With the military caste uppermost, and the farmers ranking next in order of precedence, then the artisans, and lastly the tradesmen or traffickers in wares of whatever description, with a lower class still of genuine outcasts, distinguished as Eta (the tanners) or Hi-nin (not men) the people of Japan led a more or less contented life of seclusion from the outer world until the arrival on their coasts of Commodore Perry’s ships in 1853, though it would be wrong to imagine that there had not arisen in the land in all those years a spirit of inquiry concerning the mode of life which prevailed among other nations. On the contrary, and more particularly towards the end of the Tokugawa epoch, thoughtful men had come to the front with proposals for enlightened government, earnestly advocating the adoption of some system that should be more in accord with what was dimly conceived to be the age of progress that had dawned in the other hemisphere, vague reports of which had reached the hidden East through various channels.
It was while Iyeyasu virtually ruled Japan, and before his son Hidetada had been invested with the Shogunal authority, that a shipwrecked English mariner, Will Adams of Rotherhithe, won his way to favour by his abilities, mainly in the direction of shipbuilding, and attained to high rank in the service of the Shogunate. The East India Company, a few years later (June, 1613), established a depot at Hirado, in Spex Straits, not far from Nagasaki, where the Dutchmen had been earlier in the field. Adams learned that some of his countrymen were resident at Hirado, and journeyed thither overland at the Shogun Iyeyasu’s command to see them. He found the little colony in charge of Captain John Saris, whose diary has afforded much information concerning the mode of life of the pioneers of British trade in their remote settlement in the then little-known “Zipangu” of Portuguese navigators, and Adams himself left some few written traces of his remarkable career which have been carefully preserved, and are of the utmost value as throwing light on the manners of that period when the feudal system was in full force. On retiring nominally from the control of affairs in favour of Hidetada, in 1605, Iyeyasu had taken up his abode at Shidzuoka, then called Sumpu, and thither Adams brought Saris to have audience of the great Chieftain, by special desire. Captain Saris had been made the bearer of a letter from King James I. of England to the Emperor (Shogun) of Japan, which was delivered in due course at Shidzuoka. The English sovereign had expressed his desire that commercial relations should be established between Britain and Japan. Saris and Adams saw both Iyeyasu and Hidetada, and the project was well received. A charter was granted, in pursuance of which the English were to enjoy as much freedom of trade as the Dutchmen then in Nagasaki, the document comprising eight clauses, and constituting the first “Anglo-Japanese Agreement” of history. Unhappily the venture of the East India Company, in whose favour the charter was given, did not turn out so satisfactorily from a monetary point of view as could have been wished, and eventually the factory that had been established at Hirado, was closed, and the British withdrew, not again to seek commercial privileges until 1856. Saris placed Captain Cocks in charge of the Hirado depot and returned to London to report to the East India Company the success of his mission, and Cocks remained until the withdrawal from Hirado in 1623.
Adams never returned to his own country, and died in his own house at Hemi village, where his grave, with that of his Japanese wife, is to be seen on the hill above the modern naval station of Yokosuka, a few miles south of Yokohama, in the Gulf of Tokio. He had taught his friends at Yedo the art of building ships on the Occidental model, and it is recorded that many of his vessels were employed in over-sea trade to the Philippines, Siam, Cochin China, and Mexico. But the law of 1621 prohibiting the use of decked ocean-going craft brought about a return to the ancient form of junk with a single mast. The construction of decked sailing boats has only of late years been revived in connection with the fisheries of Yeso and the quest of the seal and sea-otter, off the Kuriles archipelago. After the East India Company closed its factory at Hirado trade was still further restricted, and in obedience to an edict of 1641, the Dutch were finally confined to the islet of Deshima, in Nagasaki harbour, and all other foreigners were ordered to quit the country. Saris had long before returned home,—Adams had been dead for years,—and little or nothing occurred for two centuries to remind the Western world of the existence of the far-off Japanese Empire.
Throughout this interval the feudal system flourished and the Shogunate was at the zenith of its power. Every daimio nominally owned allegiance to the Ten-shi’s deputy at Yedo, but there had been murmurings against the feudal rule long before the American ships made their appearance at the entrance to the Bay of Yedo in 1853. A few men, more daring than their fellows, had been bold enough to write and speak openly of their desire to see the ancient order of things re-established and of their hope that the Ten-shi would again in person regulate the affairs of his dominions. In most cases the would-be reformers had for their temerity lost their heads. But the leaven that they had introduced had begun to work, and when the Shogun Iyesada made the treaties with the Western nations under which Japan was reopened to foreign trade and intercourse the real basis of the opposition which he encountered, and which outlasted his own lifetime and that of his successor in the office of Shogun, was an antagonism to the Shogunate itself, and not to the strangers who sought to develop commerce with the Empire. Thus it came about that the truly progressive clans,—Satsuma, Choshiu, Tosa, and Hizen,—all of which had in some form or other availed themselves of foreign inventions in the form of rifles and other implements of warfare, or of steamships and gunboats and armaments, with the object, as it would seem, of strengthening their own positions, were to be found ranged under the banner of Jo-I, or “Expulsion of the Alien,” when with more candour their slogan might have been “Down with the Shogunate.” The Tokugawa side, on the other hand, was in favour of the resumption of foreign relations and maintained the advisability of pursuing the policy of kai-koku—i.e. opening the country—which Iyesada had initiated. Neither side was in actual fact antagonistic to foreigners, and no sooner had the Jo-I party attained its purpose in overthrowing those who had espoused the cause of the Shogun, than it at once adopted an attitude towards aliens which was in effect a complete ratification of the policy that had been adhered to by the Government of Yedo. The Sat-cho alliance to “expel the stranger” entered into between Satsuma and Choshiu at the end of 1861, or early in 1862,—a couple of years before the present Marquis Ito and his comrade Inouye Bunda, now Count Inouye, stole away to England,—was mainly designed to embarrass the Shogunate, and was by no means so reactionary as it at first appeared to be.
When Perry dropped anchor at Uraga it was the Shogun Iyeyoshi who sat on the Viceregal throne in Yedo, but he shortly afterwards died, and was buried in the cemetery attached to Zozoji temple in Shiba, where five other Shoguns of the Tokugawa line were interred, and when Perry came for the promised answer to the American President’s letter the Shogun Iyesada was in power. But soon afterwards his health failed him to the degree that he found it expedient to appoint a Regent in the person of the Go Tai-Ro (lit.: Honoured Great Elder)—i.e. Prime Minister of State under the Tokugawa Government—an office which was filled by the baron Naosuke Ii Kamon-no-kami, between whom and the feudal chieftain of Mito there were great differences of opinion in regard to the wisdom of the Kai-koku policy. For reasons which were never very clearly comprehended, Nari-aki, the senior lord of Mito, was all his life bitterly opposed to the influx of foreigners, and when in 1860 the Regent was assassinated at the Sakurada Gate of Yedo castle the crime was perpetrated by men who had once been retainers of the Mito family, but had voluntarily severed their connection therewith in order that the responsibility for the murder that they were resolved to commit should not be laid at the door of their lord. They banded themselves together as Ro-nins, or “Wave-men,” casting themselves as it were on the billows of adventure, and caring nothing whither they might drift in the political currents of the hour. Other Ro-nins made a midnight attack in 1861 on the then recently-established British Legation at Takanawa, a southern suburb of Yedo, and these were afterwards proved to have belonged previously to the Mito clan. The daimio Nari-aki died in 1862, and it was felt that one source of uneasiness had been removed from the path of those who were totally averse to the suggested expulsion of the subjects of foreign powers and repudiation of the compacts which had been entered into. But the assassinated Regent had had other enemies in the political world, for his appointment had never been favourably received by the Jo-I party (in reality the advocates of the restoration of direct imperial rule, and who only used Jo-I as a convenient battle-cry) and when, in 1858, the Shogun Iyesada died and his place was taken by the youthful Iyemochi, at that time only twelve years old, and the Regency of Ii Kamon no Kami was continued, the antagonism between the rival factions—one nominally pro-foreign and the other nominally anti-foreign, but neither of them seriously concerned with the foreigner so much as with the abrogation or retention of the feudal system,—grew more fierce and deep-seated than ever. The Mito clan, notwithstanding that its old prince Nari-aki had been violently anti-foreign, had in a general way given its support to the Shogun, but even in Mito dissensions arose, and the clansmen were divided among themselves. In proportion as these internal quarrels arose in the Shogun’s party its influence in the State declined and that of the party of the Mikado, as it was termed, gained strength. It must be understood that the reference here is not to the now-reigning Emperor but to his father, who occupied the throne until the year 1867. An imperial ordinance promulgated in 1862 abolished the old law made in the days of Iyeyasu whereby the feudal lords were obliged to spend half their time at the capital, and this repeal of a statute on which the Shogunate had relied for the preservation of its ascendency over the clans hastened, no doubt, the downfall of its authority. It was further weakened, it may be supposed, by the internecine strife that arose from the rivalries of the three branches of the Tokugawa house, for when Iyesada died it had been the ardent desire of the Mito prince to place his son Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu,—otherwise Tokugawa Keiki,—on the viceregal throne at Yedo, a wish that was thwarted by the Regent Ii Kamon no kami. The reason that Nari-aki’s son bore two names was that in the year 1848, when he was only eleven years old, he had been adopted into the family of the Owari branch of the Tokugawa family, which branch bore the surname of Hitotsubashi, while his other name could be read as either Keiki or Yoshinobu, the Chinese characters by which it was written being readable according to the Kan-On, or Chinese sounds as Keiki, while the Japanese equivalents of the same symbols are Yoshinobu. To the candidature of Nari-aki’s son the Regent would not agree, and carried his point in favour of Kikuchiyo, a prince of the Kishiu branch of the Tokugawa family, who took the name on his accession of Iyemochi. This prince was the thirteenth child of the XIth Shogun, and a cousin of the deceased Iyesada. The regent’s power at this period was equal to the effort of compelling Nari-aki to confine himself to his Yedo mansion, in a forced retirement which was tantamount to imprisonment, and similar steps were taken in regard to the princes of Owari, Hizen, Tosa, and Uwajima, who were opposed to the Regent’s policy. Tokugawa Keiki was forbidden to show himself at Yedo castle, and was ordered to remain in strict seclusion within his own abode.
Meanwhile the Emperor Komei, at Kioto, was being urged by the feudal lords of Tosa, Hizen, Sendai, Uwajima, and other provinces to abrogate the treaties which the Regent had made, to close the ports, and expel all strangers from the land, but Ii Kamon no kami was too strong for them to succeed in overthrowing him, and it will be understood that the representations of the Ministers of foreign powers already accredited to Japan in virtue of the treaties must all have tended to confirm the Regent in his resolution to abide by the terms of the compacts which he had entered into. This was in effect the situation in March 1860, when the ro-nins at the Sakurada Gate in Yedo put an end to the life of the Regent, and affairs were left in greater uncertainty than ever.
The baron Ii Kamon-no-kami Naosuke is considered to have been a genuinely patriotic statesman, one, moreover, who was able to realise the necessities of the hour and gifted with tact and resolution to carry his point. His persistence in the policy of kai-koku procured for him the undisguised antagonism of a very powerful faction, but he remained unshaken in his determination to adhere to the arrangements that had been entered into with foreign powers. The assassins responsible for his death had carried on their persons, as was customary with ro-nins bent on some notable deed, written declarations setting forth their motives, and declaring it to be their belief that the admission of aliens to the country spelt speedy ruin. His intimate friend, Baron Matsudaira of Yada, had sought to dissuade him from paying his customary visits to the Shogun, who dwelt within the inner moat of the castle, and in urging his request had even endeavoured to hold the Regent back by grasping the sleeve of his robe, a scrap of the material being torn away in the effort, so vehement were Matsudaira’s representations of the impending danger. That was on the 21st of February, a fortnight before the murder was actually perpetrated, so that Ii Kamon-no-kami was perfectly conscious of the risk he ran in continuing to perform his daily duty at the castle. His own residence was just outside the second moat, and he had only quitted it a few minutes when, at nine o’clock on the morning of the third of the third month (April 5th according to the Gregorian calendar), he received several sword-thrusts as he sat in his palanquin, and died immediately. The day was one on which his enemies were sure that he would be passing that way early, as it was one of the great annual festivals (Sekku) when the princes and barons invariably went to the palace to pay their respects and offer the congratulations appropriate to the season. Their retinues included numerous swordsmen, and their processions were characterised by a pomp almost unimaginable to-day, with scores of trusty henchmen, their lords’ crests prominently displayed on their helmets and their banners and insignia borne aloft, marching on either side the palanquin to guard their chief. The Regent’s cortege was at the Sakurada Gate when the attack was delivered, and the falling snow had led the retainers to keep their sword-hilts covered, so that there was a fatal delay in encountering the ro-nins, who, moreover, were disguised as peasants, and wore rain-coats to conceal their weapons. Eight of the Regent’s men were killed, and three of the ro-nins were slain on the spot, eight more being brought to execution at a later date. The whole thing was the work of but a few minutes, and the band no doubt had a confederate who was skilled in heraldry watching at the gate, ready to announce the baron’s approach, and able to distinguish his procession by the device on the banners which some of his retinue bore.
The Regent was forty-five years old at the time of his death, having been born in 1815, the fourteenth son of the baron Naonaka. The Ii family is a very old one, an ancestor having aided in the subjugation of the rebels, so termed,—presumably the Ainus,—in the island of Yeso, between A.D. 987 and 1011, when the Emperor Ichijo was on the throne. The name Ii is taken from the spot not far from Hamana inlet, in Totomi province, called Ii-dani, or the valley of Ii, whereat the first baron built a castle in the eighth century. But having been appointed protector of the city of Kioto, one of the baron’s ancestors had removed to Hikoné, on Lake Biwa, to be nearer his charge, and thus it came about that Ii Kamon-no-kami was Lord of Hikoné at the period when he became Regent, and dwelt at the Hikoné Yashiki in Yedo. The baron Ii bequeathed to the nation a couplet illustrative of his real patriotism, a quality which even those who were opposed to his policy never failed to recognise as part of his noble nature. It runs:—
“Omi no mi kishi utsu nami no iku tabi mo,
Miyo ni kokoro wo kudaki nuru kana!”
(Rent as the wave-beat rocks on Omi’s strand
My broken heart, for our belovéd Land!)
Lake Biwa, on which stands Hikoné, is often in poetry termed the Sea of Omi. It washes the shore of what in feudal times were the lord of Hikoné’s estates.
At the time when the dissensions between the supporters of the Bakufu and the nominally anti-foreign faction were at their height, the young Shogun was but fifteen years old, and was able to render his party but little help in the crisis in its fortunes which had been reached. An effort was made to bring about a fusion of the interests by the marriage of the Shogun to the Mikado’s sister, the Princess Kazu, on 11th March 1862, the hope being that it might thus be feasible to present a united front to the incursions of the Westerners, but the union failed for the time being to have any political results in the direction anticipated, and the divergence of views on the question of the admission of strangers remained as pronounced as at first. In this attempt to reconcile the conflicting interests of parties the prince of Satsuma, acting through his uncle, Shimadzu Saburo, and on the advice of Saigo Takamori and Okubo Toshimichi, elsewhere referred to in this book, had exerted all his influence but without avail. On the other hand a vast amount of jealousy was created between the Chiefs of Satsuma and Choshiu, for the Baron Mori, the lord of Choshiu, was at this time wholly in favour of the expulsion of foreigners.
Matters were in this condition, when the least spark might lead to an explosion, in the summer of 1863, at the moment when the Shogun, possibly as a consequence of the Kioto Court influence brought to bear through his connection by marriage with the imperial house, decided to proceed to the Mikado’s capital and submit himself entirely to the Emperor Komei’s commands. He expressed his concurrence in the Court party’s views on the subject of the abrogation of the treaties, and was willing that the aliens should be driven out of the land. Whether he was sincere in this attitude or not is a question that it is not easy to answer, but at all events there was a personal quarrel at Kioto between the young Shogun and Mori, the Choshiu chieftain, which ended disastrously for Mori, who was sent down by the Emperor Komei to his own dominions in the west and Iyemochi remained in favour. The Choshiu clan was from that hour in direct antagonism to the Shogun’s party, and the baron Mori’s retainers were so indignant at what they considered to be the insult put upon their lord at Kioto that they marched to that city and attacked it The present ruler of Japan was only very young at the time, and it was a novel experience, no doubt, to hear the rattle of musketry in close proximity to the palace walls. The Choshiu clansmen were encountered and worsted by the soldiers of the Shogun, who had been ordered by imperial edict to punish Choshiu for the outrage, and at the same time the chief of the insubordinate clan was by the Emperor’s command deposed.
The Choshiu baron remained obdurate, and in pursuance of his hostile attitude towards foreigners, and presumably with the idea of embroiling the Shogun’s government with Western powers, he persevered in the practice, despite all remonstrance, of firing on such vessels as attempted to pass the Straits of Shimonoseki. He set the Shogun’s authority completely at defiance, and raised in the south-west of Japan the standard of revolt. At the head of a numerous army the Choshiu leaders, one of whom was the present Marshal Yamagata, again set out for Kioto, and were met by the Shogun’s forces led by Iyemochi himself, who was certainly not deficient in courage, though his health, even at that time, was far from satisfactory. The series of engagements which followed terminated badly for the Shogun’s supporters, for the Choshiu men were better armed, and had been drilled on something like Western principles, as the result of a study of military books translated from the Dutch. They also bore rifles of the “Tower” and other patterns which probably had been brought to Japan from Europe, by way of China.
The first step towards the fall of the Shogunate had in reality been taken when the admission was made that the power of the Shogun had its limitations, for the doctrine which had prevailed for centuries, and to which the supremacy of the Tokugawa house was traceable, was that the holder of this high office enjoyed complete freedom of action without reference to the monarch at Kioto and was to all intents and purposes the executive head of the State. The visit paid to Kioto by the Shogun Iyemochi at the instigation of the imperial counsellors struck at the root of this theory of absolute power and led to the open revolt of some of the provincial magnates against the authority of the Bakufu, a title, by the way, which, as applied to the Yedo Government, sufficiently demonstrated its military character, since Baku signified the curtain which was used in camp to screen the Generalissimo’s quarters from the vulgar gaze, and Fu meant “seat of government.” Once the principle became admitted that the Shogun was like other of the nation’s most puissant nobles, only a vassal of the Ten-shi, the way was paved in a measure for the restoration of the real monarch to the exercise of his rightful prerogatives and the re-establishment of that direct rule which had existed in former years prior to the usurpation of regal power by the Ashikaga and Tokugawa Shoguns. It may be said, therefore, that the thin end of the wedge with which the fabric of the Yedo government was ultimately to be sundered and overthrown was inserted in 1863. The actual outcome of the Shogun’s visit to Kioto was the issue of an imperial notification to the Ministers of Foreign Powers at Yedo that all strangers would be expelled from the Empire. The announcement came from the Department for Foreign Affairs in the Bakufu, and was to the effect that the orders which had been received by the Shogun from Kioto were peremptory, and required the closing of the recently opened ports. The foreigners were to be driven out, because the people of Japan were not desirous of holding intercourse with foreign countries. The Minister added that the discussion of this subject had been left to him “by his Majesty,” by which term was meant the Shogun, who had figured in the early treaties,—that for example made by the Earl of Elgin on behalf of Queen Victoria, dated 26th August 1858,—as “his Majesty the Tycoon of Japan.” The Shogun’s government was at this time trying to sit on two stools simultaneously, for while the notification was given to the foreign representatives in obedience to the orders received from Kioto there was palpably no intention of giving effect to them in any shape, even had the Bakufu then possessed the strength requisite to bring about the strangers’ exclusion. On this point the presence of war vessels at Yokohama warranted the Bakufu officials in entertaining serious doubts. At all events the Shogun’s Government soon afterwards had to express regret for the deplorable affair near Tsurumi, on the highroad from Yokohama to Yedo, when an Englishman lost his life, and in offering an apology the Bakufu expressed a hope that nothing might again arise to imperil the friendly relations between Britain and Japan. When it was urged that the murderers should be brought to justice the Bakufu was fain to acknowledge that it had not the power to punish the Satsuma clan which had been guilty of the crime, and thereupon Admiral Kuper was sent to Kagoshima to bombard the Satsuma chieftain’s forts. The engagement took place on the 11th of August, a fortnight before the Elgin treaty was signed at Yedo, the breach between the Shogun and the southern clans being at that time practically complete. The bombardment spurred the Satsuma clan to the attainment of greater military strength, for their leaders were quick to grasp the importance which Satsuma would acquire, in connection with those coming events which even then were casting long shadows athwart the political path, by being first in the field with approximately efficient naval and military forces. Western appliances were imported and foreign inventions largely drawn upon to increase Satsuma’s effective strength, and from being hostile to foreigners the attitude of the clansmen became almost friendly, a circumstance that was partly due, it may have been, to the consciousness of the Satsuma leaders that in spite of their antiquated weapons they had made no mean fight of it when assailed in their stronghold by the modern British ships of war.
The waning Shogunate had despatched a mission to Europe the previous year to beg for an extension of time in regard to those provisions of the treaties which included the opening of additional ports to foreign trade, for it was felt that the Bakufu had trouble enough on its hands without arousing further opposition by the fulfilment of the strict letter of the compacts which had been entered into with the Western powers. That mission was successful inasmuch as the opening of Kobé-Hiogo was postponed until the 1st of January 1868, and the British Government gave assurances of its unwillingness to take any steps that might embarrass the Government of the Shogun. But a fresh source of trouble had speedily developed itself in Choshiu, by the baron’s arbitrary treatment of shipping at Shimonoseki, and when, after the united squadrons of the Western powers had compelled the defenders of the forts in the straits to haul down their flag, and an indemnity had been exacted, the Bakufu became more than ever discredited, and its downfall accelerated. As with Satsuma, so with Choshiu, the fighting led to the foes becoming far better friends than had seemed to be possible, and in 1864 the baron Mori signified his willingness that any of his ports in Choshiu should be opened to the commerce of the strangers. It was not until many years after this that Shimonoseki was actually opened, but the delay was not due to the reluctance of the clan. During those prolonged contests with the Bakufu the clans of Satsuma and Choshiu were secretly allied, and the rivalry which might have been utilised to enable the Shogunate to triumph over Choshiu by enlisting the help of the Satsuma clan in the execution of the imperial command given to the Shogun Iyemochi to punish Choshiu was not in reality to be obtained by reason of this private compact between the two daimios. The bond of union was, of course, a common desire to bring about the abolition of the Viceregal office and restore the personal rule of the Emperor. The abstention of the Satsuma clan from interference on the side of the Shogunate probably saved the Choshiu clan from the defeat that would otherwise, it is to be believed, have overtaken them in the end. It was the policy of the Satsuma chieftain to allow the Shogunate to be worsted.
Difficulties multiplied, and the Shogun Iyemochi had taken up his residence in the castle of Osaka, after paying a second visit to the Emperor at Kioto, at the end of 1864, so the foreign ministers had to journey thither when they desired to communicate personally with him in his retreat. By this time some of the more powerful among the provincial daimios had fallen away from their allegiance to the Shogun, and had ceased to attend the Court at Yedo or to reside there during the prescribed six months of the year. Satsuma, for instance, did not occupy his yashiki after September 1862, until he paid it a visit in the early seventies, and others among the Yedo mansions of the provincial lords remained unoccupied from that time forward until they were turned to account as Government offices after the Restoration. The Shogun’s entourage lost the pomp and circumstance of state in 1864, with the removal of his retinue to Osaka, and the internecine strife which culminated in the battle of Uyeno in 1868 was entered upon soon afterwards.
In 1866, however, while the Shogun’s men were contending for the mastery with the retainers of Choshiu, the Emperor Komei decided to ratify the treaties that the Shogun had made, and thenceforward the relations of the Bakufu with the representatives of Occidental powers were characterised by greater cordiality than had for some time past existed. The British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, who had succeeded Sir Rutherford Alcock at Yedo, sent Messrs Mitford and Satow to Osaka with a message to the Shogun, and the mission ended with mutual satisfaction; the Shogun wrote to the Emperor at Kioto urging the opening of the port of Kobé-Hiogo to trade as early as practicable. The Emperor Komei finally gave his consent, and even expressed himself at this time as favourably disposed towards the fulfilment of the treaties. The right of native merchants to hire foreign vessels to trade either at the open ports or abroad was established in 1866, and thus Japanese foreign trade was set free from the restrictions which had checked its development.
As an illustration of the amicable relations which had by this time grown up between the Japanese authorities and foreigners, it may be related how, on the 21st of March 1866, 800 samurai troops, under the command of Kubota Sentaro, marched out of Yokohama in company with the British from the camp on the Bluff for a field day in the country towards Kamakura. The Japanese soldiers who thus for the first time in the history of the two nations bore their part in an Anglo-Japanese Alliance were men belonging to the Shogun’s forces, and their officers had acquired a knowledge of Western drill from their studies at the British camp, under the guidance of the officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers, then forming the garrison of the Yokohama foreign settlement. Less than two years before the Shogun’s troops had participated in similar manœuvres, but only to a very slight degree, as at that time the Japanese had been armed with the bow and arrow and wore chain armour, in the ancient style. Two years’ drill had made the Shogun’s men so efficient that their shooting with the rifle astonished the British spectators by its rapidity, and by the ease with which the men handled their weapons, comparatively unaccustomed as they undoubtedly then were to modern firearms. Among those who were in this way the pioneers of the Japanese modern military organisation were many personal friends of the first Ambassador to the Court of St James, Viscount Hayashi.
In August 1866, the Shogun Iyemochi, whose health had for a long time past been failing, died at Osaka, his end having been accelerated, it is beyond doubt, by the vicissitudes of the last year or two, and the effort demanded of him when personally taking the field at the head of his army against the troops of the contumacious lord of Choshiu. Notwithstanding the fast-growing power of the Shogunate’s political adversaries, the moment was scarcely fitting for attempting its entire overthrow, and in December of that year the Shogun Keiki, seventh son of the prince of Mito, a branch of the Tokugawa family, and adopted son of the Hitotsubashi family—i.e. the Owari branch of the same Tokugawa house—was duly invested with all the dignities of his exalted office. He had been nominated Shogun, as already explained, in 1858, by the then prince of Mito his father, but had been passed over owing to the strenuous opposition of the Regent, whose hostility to the Mito prince Nari-aki has been alluded to, and its effects described.
The newly appointed Shogun had had abundant opportunities of observing the gathering disposition of his countrymen to seek the restoration of the sovereign to the direct rule of his dominions and the abolition of the system of government by delegate which had for two and a half centuries prevailed. The transfer of the active duties of government to the hands of the real monarch had become a matter easy of accomplishment, moreover, by reason of the fact that the policy of the Kioto Government and that of the Shogun no longer differed in respect of the treatment of the foreigners who sought to establish intimate diplomatic and commercial relations with Japan.
In January 1867, the Emperor Komei fell a victim to smallpox, five weeks after he had appointed Tokugawa Keiki to the office of Shogun. Though the Bakufu was declining rapidly, the hour had not arrived for its final extinction, but no one could better judge of the hopelessness of the situation, perhaps, than the Shogun Keiki, who had for several years acted as guardian to the late occupant of the position, and had been also Minister of Justice (Giyobukiyo) in the time of Iyesada.
Despite the patriotic willingness of the Shogun Keiki to recognise from the very outset the need which was beginning to be felt of a thoroughly unified administration, the northern clans, which had been faithful to the Tokugawa house and had ever made its cause their own, were far from being reconciled to the reorganisation of the government as it was sought to constitute it, and appealed to arms against the domination of the Satsuma and Choshiu combination that had by this time obtained vast influence at Court. Civil war followed, but the strife was desultory in character until the later months of the year, by which time the Shogun had satisfied himself of his inability to effectively chastise the recalcitrant lord of Choshiu, and was compelled to accept defeat. As, moreover, his position as Shogun was manifestly under such conditions intolerable, he tendered to the Emperor his resignation of the office that had been in his family for 264 years.
The Prince of Tosa had returned to his castle at Kochi in October 1867, and had written to the Shogun in the following terms:—
“It appears to me that although the government and penal laws have been administered by the military class ever since the Middle Ages, yet since the arrival of foreigners we have been squabbling amongst ourselves, and much public discussion has been excited. The East and the West have risen in arms against each other, and civil war has never ceased, the effect being to draw on us the insults of foreign nations.
The cause of this lies in the fact that the administration proceeds from two centres, and because the Empire’s ears and eyes are turned in two different directions. The march of events has brought about a revolution and the old system can no longer be obstinately persevered in.
You should restore the governing power into the hands of the sovereign, and so lay a foundation on which Japan may take its stand as the equal of all other countries. This is the most imperative duty of the present moment and is the heartfelt prayer of YODO.
Your Highness is wise enough to take this advice into consideration.”
The full name of the writer of this remarkable epistle was Yama-no-uchi Yodo, daimio of Tosa province.
It was not until the close of December 1867 that the Emperor received the formal abdication of the Shogun’s powers, and it was foreseen that among his adherents there would be many who would resist to the uttermost what they could but regard as their chieftain’s degradation, voluntary or otherwise. For the resignation of his prerogatives involved also the surrender of his lands and possessions, and his followers’ fortunes were so inseparably linked with his that it meant to them the deprivation in like manner of all those privileges on which they had thereunto placed the highest value. The Satsuma and Choshiu leaders were willing to avail themselves, however, of their proximity to the throne by seizing the person of the Emperor, and this coup d’état was carried out.
On the 3rd of January 1868, suddenly appeared an imperial edict giving to the three chiefs of Satsuma, Tosa, and Geishiu the charge of the Nine Gates of Kioto,—in other words the guardianship of the Emperor’s palace,—an office which had previously been held by the Lord of Aidzu, a northern province, and who ceased to occupy it by reason of his having espoused the cause of the Shogun in the Kai-koku versus Jo-I discussion.
It is due to Aidzu to acknowledge that the clan, from the time when, in 1862, it had been given the charge by the Shogun Iyemochi of the imperial city, had evinced the utmost loyalty and energy in its defence. In repelling the attack of the Choshiu men in 1864 the Aidzu chieftain’s retainers had shown the greatest bravery and determination, and as honest, staunch protectors of the Emperor’s person and guardians of the palace the clansmen had had no sympathy with the agitators who had sought to sow discord between the monarch and his deputy. Both sides, indeed, had reason to value the lord of Aidzu’s fidelity to the trust reposed in him. When, therefore, the edict appeared by which Aidzu was relieved of his functions, the adherents of the Shogunate were incensed, for they saw, or believed that they saw, in the coup d’état the clearest possible indications of a Satsuma and Choshiu intrigue. The rescript is remarkable as having definitely decreed the end of the old regime, and it brought about the ascendency of the southern clans, for which the way had been paved in great measure during the previous Emperor’s reign. The old distinctions between the court lords (kuge) and the territorial magnates were at one stroke swept away, new titles were introduced, and while some of the princes, the kuge, and many of the samurai, found places under the new regime, the adherents of the Tokugawa were for the most part dismissed from office and their positions given to men of the opposing side.
Acting under the authority of the sovereign, the perpetrators of the coup d’état proceeded to set up a provisional government, and the Shogun was directed to surrender his fiefs and hold himself entirely at the disposal of the Emperor, whose pleasure would in due course be made known to him. This decisive stroke was delivered by the combined agency of the leaders of the clans of Satsuma, Choshiu, Hizen, and Tosa, and the Shogun was on the verge of yielding to the demand made upon him when hostilities broke out between his adherents and the followers of the Satsuma chieftain. The Shogun was in this way driven into the position of seeming antagonism to the Imperial Government as provisionally constituted, and the fact that he was in great measure the victim of circumstances was in after years most generously recognised by his imperial master. The Shogun, acting no doubt on the advice tendered to him by his supporters, quitted Kioto on horseback, accompanied by only a few mounted attendants, on the 6th January, and reached the castle of Osaka early in the morning of the 7th, just four days after the coup d’état and though he has by some been blamed for allowing himself to be ousted from his position at the Emperor’s side, as the principal adviser of his sovereign, it is difficult to censure him for so doing seeing that the monarch had already begun to issue decrees without consulting his customary adviser. In fact, the decree which was issued as a result of the coup d’état expressly stated that thenceforward everything connected with the government of the country would emanate from the Cho-Tei—i.e. the Imperial Court at Kioto—and strict obedience to the terms of the proclamation was enjoined upon all. The chiefs of the Aidzu and other clans which held allegiance to the Tokugawa side throughout its vicissitudes were summoned to a conference the night previous to the Shogun’s departure for Osaka, and a letter was written to the Cho-Tei by the Shogun in which he declared that it being evident that some deceiver stood at the young sovereign’s side he would, for the safety of the nation, resume the duties of his office, and the better to secure for himself due freedom of action he would remove to the city of Osaka, where he could in his Majesty’s interests venture to take upon himself once more the direction of affairs as Shogun. History relates that at the meeting of his supporters held in the Shogunal palace at Kioto it was urged on his Highness that it would be better to retain control of the neck of the bottle by holding Osaka, the key of Kioto, than wait to fall into the trap which had been set for them. The formal resignation of the Shogun had been tendered by him to the Emperor at the close of 1867, but not definitely accepted, and when it was found that he had quitted the capital an imperial messenger was despatched to Osaka to request his return and the lords of Owari and Echizen were ordered to furnish an escort. Preparations were at once made to obey the sovereign’s command, but the Aidzu and Kuwana clansmen, who had followed their chiefs to Osaka, declared that they would form the escort necessary, and set out in the van of the force which was to constitute the Shogunal procession on the short journey northward. The Shogun himself was to start with the last of his little army, some four days later than the vanguard. To the experienced eyes of the Satsuma and Choshiu leaders, who now had entirely the ear of the young ruler, and whose troops were at this time in full possession of the capital, this march back of the Shogun’s whole army had for them the most sinister of meanings, and accordingly their combined regiments were thrown forward, to challenge the advance of the Tokugawa men, as far as Fushimi, a village seven miles from Kioto on the highway east of the river Yodo. The Commander-in-chief of these imperialist forces was the prince who then bore the title of the Ninnaji-no-miya, a close relative of the Emperor, and before him was carried the gold brocade banner which is emblematic of delegated sovereign authority. The prince afterwards took by imperial order the name of Higashi Fushimi-no-miya, and he is elsewhere referred to as having subsequently spent some time in England. Marshal Saigo Takamori, as he afterwards became, held a position equivalent to that of Chief of Staff in modern campaigns. The main body of the Shogun’s army marched by the Fushimi-kai-do, or eastern road, though a portion took the western one, and there was a contingent of the followers of the lord of Idzumi on that road also, on whose fealty the Shogun believed he might rely. As the sequel showed, the defection of this force was his undoing, for at the critical moment it allowed itself to be won over bodily by the imperialists. At the village of Fushimi the Shogun’s men found that barriers had been erected to stay their progress, and though when challenged the leading company made answer “this is the procession of his Highness the Shogun, who is going to Kioto by the Emperor’s express command,” passage was refused by the imperialist guard. The Shogun’s men were ordered to advance, and an engagement commenced which lasted for three whole days without intermission. The treachery of the men of Tsu, retainers of Todo Idzumi-no-kami, turned the scale, and the Shogun’s army was compelled to retreat from Fushimi towards Osaka, where the Chiefs of Aidzu and other clans loyal to the Tokugawa house found the warships belonging to their side, under the command of Admiral Enomoto, lying off the mouth of the Yodo at Tempo-san. The Shogun himself received the distressing news of the defeat of his forces at Fushimi when about to set out with the last of his army for Kioto, on the 27th of January 1868, and on the afternoon of that day, realising that irremediable disaster had befallen his arms, he quietly took his departure from Osaka castle attended by a few faithful friends, and safely reached the Kaiyo Maru.
This was a Dutch-built frigate which had been purchased for him in Europe and brought out to Japan shortly before. In order to reach the ship the Shogun had had to take boat at the Shin-Sei bridge in Osaka, whence the distance to Tempo-san is about four miles by river.
But before he set out he penned a letter to the foreign representatives then present in Osaka, to the effect that the battle having gone against him, they must provide for their own safety, and they accordingly did so to the best of their ability. The British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, was staying in a temple in the northern part of the city, and, with his mounted escort of ex-constables of the London police, he rode into the newly established foreign settlement at Kawaguchi that night. At this crisis in the affairs of Japan it was advisable, to prevent mishap, that the British and other foreign ministers should be well guarded, and Sir Harry had with him in addition to his own escort a detachment of the Ninth Regiment, then quartered at Yokohama, always at his disposal. The ships of the powers also lay at Tempo-san, within hail, but the weather being at the moment exceptionally stormy the ministers could not get aboard the vessels. It has to be recorded that Osaka city was held by the men of Choshiu, who showed every disposition to befriend the foreign residents and protected them against any possible violence of the mob, though only four years had elapsed since the bombardment of Shimonoseki by the allied squadrons, and that incident could not have been entirely forgotten. The Tokugawa men had quitted Osaka on the day following the departure of the Shogun, and the mob seized the opportunity, prior to the entry of the Choshiu troops, to pillage the castle and set it afire. The men wounded in the battle of the 27th painfully made their way along the roads from Fushimi, and many were attended by the medical officer of the British Legation who had accompanied Sir Harry Parkes from Tokio. Dr Willis, the genial Irishman and accomplished surgeon here alluded to, is doubtless remembered to this day by many of his patients. He was at a later date in charge of the hospital at Kagoshima, belonging to the Satsuma clan, and was universally respected in Japan. When, in 1877, the clan was declared to be in rebellion, and all foreigners in the country and at out-ports were directed to repair to the nearest “treaty port” for safety, where they would be under the protection of their own warships, he declined to quit his post at the hospital, where he could be of use to his Satsuma friends, and the British cruiser sent to bring away the foreign residents had to leave him behind. But as a bombardment was imminent a Japanese government steamer was sent to fetch him away, and he was then induced to yield.
Although the Shogun had embarked on the Kaiyo Maru on the 27th January at Tempo-san, she did not immediately sail for the gulf of Tokio, but took part in the memorable sea-fight which occurred near Kobé shortly afterwards. Late on the 27th the dwellers in the newly opened foreign settlement saw from the esplanade that the Kaiyo Maru, together with the Ban-riyo Maru (which was in reality the Emperor yacht that Queen Victoria had presented to the Shogun), and Fusiyama, a steamer that the Shogunate had bought, arrived from Osaka, at a time when there were three vessels of the prince of Satsuma’s little fleet in Kobé harbour. When their adversaries steamed in the Satsuma ships were preparing to leave, but they waited until dawn, and then got under weigh. The Kaiyo immediately sent two shots after them, and one of the Satsuma vessels, originally named the Kiang-su, turned and slowly steamed round the harbour, as a challenge, and then followed her consorts the Scotland and the Lotus. The three Shogunate vessels instantly accepted the gage of battle, and all six ships disappeared below the horizon to the southward. The fight took place in Awa bay, which faces Kobé, on the Shikoku coast, about forty miles from that now well-known and flourishing port. The Scotland was sunk, and another of the Satsuma ships took fire. No precise knowledge is obtainable as to what damages the remaining vessels received but the Kaiyo Maru, Emperor yacht, and Fusiyama were able to reach Shinagawa, close to Tokio, on the 4th of the ensuing month, exactly a week after they left Kobé. Immediately on his arrival there the Shogun landed and went to his castle, now the imperial residence.
Yedo, now Tokio, was at that time still the headquarters of the Shogunate, and while stirring events had taken place in the vicinity of the Ten-shi’s capital of Kioto, scarcely less exciting incidents had had to be recorded in respect of the Shogun’s centre of authority in the north. The duty of keeping the peace in Yedo had been assigned to the dai-mio Sakai Sayemon-no-jo, a magnate whose income was that of 150,000 koku.1 To assist in the work he had engaged a number of ro-nin, or masterless samurai, whom he dubbed the Shin-Cho-gumi, lit.: newly raised company, and installed as a species of police. Finding that the dwellers in the Satsuma Yashiki at Mita, adjoining Shiba, where now stands the Shiba palace, were somewhat addicted to burglary, he determined to put a stop to such irregularities, and demanded of the clansmen then resident in the yashiki that the culprits should be surrendered to justice. In the temper of the samurai of all classes in those days of storm and stress a peremptory demand of this nature was tantamount to a challenge to a trial of strength, and a desperate combat ensued at Mita, in which fifty of the Satsuma men were killed outright. Some contrived to make good their escape to a Satsuma vessel that was at the moment in the harbour of Shinagawa (one of the three that afterwards fought at Awa Bay) and she quickly got up steam and weighed anchor. Four Shogunate ships lying off Shinagawa fired on her as she passed them, and two—the Eagle and the Dumbarton—were able to take up the chase. The Eagle and the Satsuma vessel had a long running fight, following an encounter in Mississippi Bay, near Yokohama, which the residents of that port were privileged to witness on the Sunday afternoon, and in the end the Satsuma champion sped away to the southward and the Eagle returned to her anchorage at Shinagawa. In the Mita fight between the Shin-Cho-gumi and other Shogunate men and the retainers of Satsuma the yashiki was practically burned to the ground and the bodies of the fallen were cremated within its walls. It goes without saying that the deadly animosity which existed between the Satsuma and Tokugawa followers was in no sense diminished by these active hostilities.
In resigning into the hands of the Emperor a power that had for two and a half centuries been wielded by the Tokugawa family the Shogun Keiki issued the manifesto which is here reproduced according to a translation made at the time, though the dignity and force of the original composition are necessarily somewhat impaired.
Manifesto
“A retrospect of the various changes through which the Empire has passed shows us that after the deadness of the monarchical authority, the power passed into the hands of the Minister of State,—and that by the wars of 1156 to 1159 the governmental power came into the hands of the military class. My ancestor Iyeyasu received greater marks of confidence than any before him, and his descendants have succeeded him for more than two hundred years.
Though I perform the same duties, the objects of the Government and of the penal laws have been missed, and it is with feelings of the greatest humiliation that I find myself obliged to acknowledge my own want of virtue as the cause of the present state of things.
Moreover, our intercourse with foreign countries becomes daily more extensive, and consequently our national policy cannot be pursued unless directed by the whole power of the State.
If therefore the old regime be changed and the Governmental authority be restored to the Imperial Court,—if the counsels of the whole Empire be collected and the wise decisions received,—and if we unite with all our heart and all our strength to protect and maintain the Empire, it will be able to range itself with the nations of the Earth. This comprises our whole duty to our country.
However, if you [the Daimios] have any particular ideas on the subject, you may state them without reserve.”
The Shogun had lost no time in making known to his imperial master at Kioto his desire to submit unreservedly to the sovereign’s will, for a courier was despatched from Yedo shortly after the arrival of the Kaiyo Maru at Shinagawa anchorage. But it turned out that after the Shogun’s departure from Osaka an imperial messenger in the person of the baron Higashi Kuze was sent to Kobé to assure Sir Harry Parkes and the other foreign representatives that the engagements which had been entered into by Japan with their respective governments would be observed to the letter, and the imperial despatch contained an announcement of the Shogun’s resignation. The memorable document was dated the 3rd of February,—the day before the Shogun reached Yedo. Not only was the imperial rescript of the most welcome,—because reassuring,—character, but it bore for the first time in the history of Japan the sign-manual of the Emperor in the form of his personal name of Mutsuhito. Never before in the lifetime of the monarch had the personal name been appended to a state paper, it being customary to attach the great seal alone, but on this occasion both the great seal and that bearing the ruler’s own name were affixed to the document of which Higashi Kuze (now Count) was the bearer. The text thereof was as follows:—
The Emperor of Japan announces to the Sovereigns of all foreign nations and to their subjects that permission has been granted to the Shogun Yoshinobu to return the governing power in accordance with his own request. Henceforward we shall exercise supreme authority both in the internal and external affairs of the country. Consequently the title of Emperor should be substituted for that of Tycoon which has been hitherto employed in the Treaties. Officers are being appointed by us to conduct foreign affairs. It is desirable that the representatives of all the treaty powers should recognise this announcement.
Mutsuhito.
(With the Seal of Dai Nihon,—Great Japan.)
February 3, 1868.
The Emperor’s relative Ninnaja-no-Miya, afterwards Prince Higashi Fushimi, then became Minister for Foreign Affairs, and he wrote to all the foreign ministers notifying to them the fact of his appointment, and stating that it was the Emperor’s express mandate to him that all existing agreements made by the Bakufu with foreign countries should be respected.
For a while the Shogun retired to the temple of Uyeno, but on the decision of the Emperor being made known to him he went first to Mito, and not long afterwards to Shidzuoka, the chief town of Suruga province, at that time also known by its ancient name of Sumpu. He directed his followers without exception to adopt a similar course and submit themselves to the imperial will, yielding the Ten-shi implicit obedience from that time forward. In the vast majority of cases, however, this excellent counsel fell on deaf ears, for the adherents of the Tokugawa house were for the most part resolved by this time to carry on the struggle to an end.
On the retirement of Tokugawa Keiki the third son of Prince Tayasu, of the Mito branch of the family, by name Kamenosuké, at that time only five years of age, became the lineal head of the house. He is now Prince Iyesato, the President of the Tokio House of Peers, and bears the title of Kō-shaku, lit.: Duke, though by courtesy styled Prince, there being in Japan a distinction between those who bear the simple title of Prince and the Imperial Princes of the Blood Royal.
More recently the Emperor, in the abundance of that magnanimity which has ever distinguished him, called the former Shogun, who is to-day in his sixty-ninth year, to the Imperial Palace at Tokio, and conferred upon him likewise the rank of Kō-shaku, a title similar to that borne by Prince Tokugawa Iyesato, who, as explained, represents the older (Tayasu) branch of the Tokugawa family, so that there are now two noblemen who hold this rank in what in pre-Restoration days was the viceregal line of Tokugawa Shoguns who claimed descent from Iyeyasu the Law-giver.
Prince Tokugawa Keiki, during his retirement at Shidzuoka, was often visited by those who had shared the fortunes of the Shogunate, but he entirely refrained from all interference with politics, and lived the life of a country gentleman, finding his recreation mainly in fishing, and showing his sympathy with the hard-working agricultural population in a way that won for him the respect and regard of all classes. When the Emperor sent for him to visit Tokio, a few years ago, he set out amid demonstrations of esteem on the part of the populace in Suruga which must have convinced him by their spontaneity that if in the course of events he had been compelled to relinquish the semi-regal state in which he had dwelt at the capital, he had retained in the hearts of his fellow-subjects of the Ten-shi a place of highest honour, and that the affection for his person evinced at every stage of the journey by those who were in former days his henchmen had flourished unabated throughout the lapse of close upon four decades. A writer once described the Shogunal entourage in terms which, after all the changes that Japan has undergone during the last quarter of a century, read somewhat strangely, but they serve to convey most vividly to the mind that magnificence by which, in the pre-Restoration period, the Court of Yedo was distinguished. There was a direct contrast between it and the almost severe simplicity of the Kioto Dai-ri, which housed the real monarch, in his complete seclusion, while his vicegerent performed most of the duties of sovereignty in a city 400 miles distant. The quotation is from an account given by one of his Highness’s own pages, and affords an interesting sketch of the daily routine in the Shogunal palace, or Nijo, at the Western Capital.
The usual form of address, we are told, was Go Zen (Your Highness), and there were in the palace no fewer than fifty pages, whose duties were to attend on the Shogun at all times, to wait at table, dress his hair in the fashion peculiar to that time, and, when invited to do so, take part in equestrian and other exercises. The Shogun habitually rose at eight o’clock, and made his toilet for the day. He never wore any garment twice, the whole of his raiment being renewed each day. At breakfast seven or eight dishes were placed before him, but he ate sparingly at all meals, and at ten o’clock he saw his ministers in council (the Go-ro-ju, or assembled honoured elders). Having devoted the forenoon to affairs of state he usually, at midday, went to the “male quarters” of the palace to ride, shoot, or play polo,—in Japanese “da-kiu”—being skilled in archery, and a sure shot with the pistol. On the lake he had a boat in which he rowed himself, and he was expert in fishing with a casting-net. At four o’clock he usually returned to the ladies’ palace, and listened to their playing on the koto or Biwa (the samisen was always too vulgar an instrument to have entry to the palace) and at 6 P.M. the evening repast of choice viands was served in great variety. His highness dined alone, having many ladies to wait on him, as well as pages, and the banquet often lasted until 11 P.M., with music and classic dances at intervals during the evening. He had no companions, for the reason, no doubt, that his rank prevented his associating on terms of equality with even the feudal lords, who were obliged by an inflexible etiquette to bow their heads to the floor when in his august presence, and to remain in that attitude throughout an interview. It is recorded that in 1866 a photograph of the Shogun was taken in his palace of Nijo at Kioto by an officer of an English man-of-war then in Japanese waters, his Highness wearing at the time his robes of ceremony, and it would be interesting to learn that the portrait still exists. The Nijo was built by the first Shogun of the Tokugawa line, the “Law-giver” Iyeyasu, and it was designed to be as much a fortress as a palace. The gorgeous gateways, resplendent in lacquer and gilding, leading to the inner apartments, remind one in their wealth of embellishment of those wonderful temple gates and halls at Nikko, constructed not long afterwards by Iyeyasu’s grandson, the magnificent Iyemitsu, and in the splendid audience chamber, where the Shogun sat on a dais to receive the homage of the feudal barons, the visitor catches a glimpse, as it were, of the pomp and circumstance which to the end of the Bakufu’s existence as a power in Japan surrounded the person of the “Last of the Shoguns.”
For fifteen years prior to its extinction the foreign policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate had been that which was found acceptable to the Emperor Mutsuhito on his accession, thus the necessity for the “Tycoon’s” intervention to secure imperial recognition for the treaties was no longer apparent, and it was inevitable that the position he held should eventually become untenable, apart from all other considerations of political exigency. The predominance of the Bakufu as a military despotism attained its zenith, to judge by the available history of the period, in the days of Iyemitsu, and in proportion as the individual strength and influence of the numerous feudal barons who owed it allegiance were found to increase, the real power of the Tokugawa house steadily diminished. While it lasted, however, the Bakufu did much to render Japan a prosperous country, studiously fostering the arts of civilisation in general, and diligently seeking to promote secular education. It established academies as far back as 1857 for the study of foreign languages and science, supplemented by a school of medicine in 1858.
Notes
1 In those days the standing of a feudal lord among his fellows was in strict accord with his income, and some dai-mios enjoyed enormous revenues as expressed in koku—1 koku = 5 bushels of rice.