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They also noted the shogun's decisions and appended them to documents. The exercise of these functions afforded opportunities for interfering in administrative affairs, and such opportunities were fully utilized, to the great detriment of public interest. A koke was usually on watch in the castle by day. The latter numbered twenty-four.
Hakuseki was able to detect that the conduct of the envoys violated in many respects the rules of Chinese etiquette, and having obtained the shogun's nomination to receive the envoy, Cho, he convinced the latter that there must be no more neglect of due formalities.
This innovation was nominally prompted by solicitude for the shogun's safety, but as its obvious result was to narrow his sources of information and to bring him under the direct influence of the newly appointed officials, there is strong reason to believe that the measure was a reversion to the evil schemes of Sakai Tadakiyo, who plotted to usurp the shogun's authority.
In the days of the seventh shogun, Ietsugu, the Emperor Reigen would have given his daughter Yaso to be the shogun's consort for the purpose of restoring real friendship between the two Courts, but the death of the shogun in his boyhood interrupted the project. Higashiyama abdicated in favour of Nakanomikado, who reigned for twenty-five years.
But such exculpations amount to saying that he was an essentially weak man, the slave of his surroundings. The lawlessness of the time and the indifference with which the shogun's mandates were treated find illustration in the story of the Kwanto. When Mochiuji perished, the only member of his family that survived was his five-year-old son, Shigeuji.
French experts were engaged to remodel the army, and English officers to organize the navy; the shogun's brother was sent to the Paris Exposition, and Occidental fashions were introduced at the ceremonies of the Bakufu Court. When Keiki assumed office he had to deal speedily with two problems; that is to say, the complication with Choshu, and the opening of Hyogo.
During twenty days a perpetual round of pastimes was devised for the entertainment of the sovereign and the Court nobles couplet composing, music, football, boating, dancing, and feasting. All this was typical of the life Yoshimitsu led after his resignation of the shogun's office. Pleasure trips engrossed his attention trips to Ise, to Yamato, to Hyogo, to Wakasa, and so forth.
A battle took place, in which he was defeated and killed. Yoritomo was now supreme lord of Japan, the mikado, for whom he acted, being a mere tool in his hands. Yet one great conflict had still to be fought by the shogun's younger brother, whose romantic story we have next to tell. Yoritomo was not the only son of the Minamoto chief whom the tyrant let live.
It had been practised from medieval times and often with direct sanction of the authorities. But in no circumstances was it officially permissible within the cities of Kyoto, Yedo, Osaka, and Sumpu, or in the vicinity of the shogun's shrines. The forty-seven ronins had therefore committed a capital crime.
The last-named reason seems to have been what prompted the revolt of 1651, when Ietsuna, aged ten, had just succeeded in the shogunate his father Iemitsu who had exalted the power of the Tokugawa at the expense of their military houses. The ronin headed by Yui Shosetsu and Marubashi Chuya plotted to set fire to the city of Yedo and take the shogun's castle. The plot was discovered.
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