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What is certain is that the Bakufu sent to Kyoto the prime minister, Sakai Tadakiyo, with three other representatives, and that shortly after their arrival in the Imperial capital, arrangements were completed for the proposed change.

Sanjo Sanemori, a former councillor of State, was arrested on suspicion, but his examination disclosed nothing. Kameyama, however, conveyed to the Bakufu a solemn oath of innocence, with which Fushimi was fain to be ostensibly content. But his Majesty remained unconvinced at heart.

But in the year of her death, Yasutoki, who had just succeeded to the regency, made an important reform. He organized within the Man-dokoro a council of fifteen or sixteen members, which was called the Hyojo-shu, and which virtually constituted the Bakufu cabinet.

WITH the accession of the seventh Hojo regent, Sadatoki, the prosperous era of the Bakufu came to an end. Sadatoki himself seems to have been a man of much ability and fine impulses. He succeeded his father, Tokimune, at the age of fourteen, and during nine years he remained under the tutelage of the prime minister, Taira no Yoritsuna, thereafter taking the reins of government into his own hands.

If the feudatory or the deputy Were held to be acting contrary to the dictates of integrity and reason, the suitor might change his domicile for the purpose of submitting a petition to the authorities in Yedo; and the law provided that no obstruction should be placed in the way of such change. As stated above, the original principle of the Bakufu was to avoid compiling any written criminal code.

Thereupon Kameyama now cloistered Emperor submitted the matter to the Bakufu, who, after grave deliberation, decided that Go-Fukakusa's son should be named Crown Prince and should reign in succession to Go-Uda. This ruler is known in history as Fushimi. Shortly after his accession a sensational event occurred.

Mitsumura and his elder brother, Yasumura, escaped to a temple where, after a stubborn resistance, they and 270 of their vassals committed suicide. No mercy was shown. The Miura were hunted and slaughtered everywhere, their wide, landed estates being confiscated and divided among the Bakufu, the fanes, and the courtiers at Kyoto.

This system already existed in the case of Enryaku-ji on Hiei-zan in Kyoto, and it was Tengai's ambition that his sect, the Tendai, should possess in Yedo a temple qualified to compete with the great monastery of the Imperial capital. Finally, the Kwanei-ji was intended to guard the "Demon's Gate" of the Bakufu city as the Enryaku-ji guarded the Imperial capital.

One of Tsunayoshi's first orders was that this huge vessel should be broken up, and when his ministers remonstrated on the ground that she would be invaluable in case of emergency, he replied that if an insurrection could not be suppressed without such extraordinary instruments, the Bakufu might step down at once from the seats of power.

The country's foreign relations soon became a source of profound concern to the new ruler. Among the Court nobles there had developed in Ninko's reign a strong desire to make their influence felt in the administration of the empire, and thus to emerge from the insignificant position to which the Bakufu system condemned them.