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He himself evinced a disposition to be merciful, especially in the case of the Court nobles. These he sent eastward to the Bakufu capital, which place, however, very few of them reached alive, their deaths being variously compassed on the way. To the Imperial family no pity was shown.

Thus, whereas a man was granted ingress or egress if he carried a passport signed by his own feudal chief and addressed to the guards at the barrier, a woman might not pass unless she was provided with an order signed by a Bakufu official.

From that time princes and nobles who saw no prospect of secular distinction began to take the tonsure, and this retirement to the cloister was assiduously encouraged by the Muromachi shoguns. It is true that, from the first, the representatives of this line had relied on the Bakufu, whether of Kamakura or of Muromachi.

In the Minamoto's original scheme of government the office of shogun was an administrative reality. Its purpose was to invest the Bakufu chief with permanent authority to command all the military and naval forces throughout the empire for the defence and tranquillization of the country.

It has also been shown that the princes of the senior branch uniformly relied on Kamakura and kept the Bakufu informed of all intrigues devised in Kyoto, whereas those of the junior branch constantly cherished the hope of reasserting the independence of the throne. Go-Daigo was an able sovereign. He dispensed justice scrupulously and made the good of the country his prime aim.

Customs duties amounting to five per cent, were levied; 495 pounds of silver had to be paid annually as a rent for the little island of Deshima, and every year a mission had to proceed to Yedo from the factory, carrying presents for the chief Bakufu officials, which presents are said to have aggregated some 550 pounds of silver on each occasion.

A shrewd, clever, and scheming old man, the Prince of Mito now became the defender of the cause of the Emperor and the mouthpiece of the conservative party. At the head of the Bakufu party was a man of iron and fertile resources, Ii Kamon No Kami. He was the Daimio of Hikone, a castled town and fief on Lake Biwa, in Mino. His revenue was small, being only three hundred and fifty thousand koku.

The men who served the Bakufu during its middle period in the capacity of ministers had been taken almost entirely from the families of Ii, Sakai, and Hotta, but none of them had shown any marked ability; they had allowed their functions to be usurped by the personal attendants of the shogun.

This rescript indicated three courses, one of which the shogun was asked to choose: namely, first, that he himself should proceed to Kyoto for the purpose of there conferring with the principal feudatories as to the best means of tranquillizing the nation; secondly, that the five principal littoral fiefs should be ordered to prepare coast defences, and, thirdly, that Keiki of Mito and the feudatory of Echizen should be appointed to high office in the Bakufu administration.

Thus when Kwanno Chqkuyo established a place of education in Yedo, and Nakai Seishi did the same in Osaka, liberal grants of land were made by the Bakufu to both men. Another step taken by the shogun was to institute a search for old books throughout the country, and to collect manuscripts which had been kept in various families for generations.