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Updated: May 7, 2025
No important move or decision was made without his careful consideration and final approval. These and other noble qualities of the present Emperor have, without doubt, done much toward transferring the loyalty of the people from the local daimyo to the national throne.
Although in Confucian theory the supreme loyalty may have been due the Emperor, in point of fact it was shown to the local daimyo. Confucian ethics was communal and might easily have turned in the direction of national communalism; it would then have coincided completely with Shinto in this respect.
There is one place in Japan where it is thought unlucky to cultivate chrysanthemums, for reasons which shall presently appear; and that place is in the pretty little city of Himeji, in the province of Harima. Himeji contains the ruins of a great castle of thirty turrets; and a daimyo used to dwell therein whose revenue was one hundred and fifty-six thousand koku of rice.
By way of compensation for this levy he reduced to half a year the time that each feudal chief had to reside in Yedo. This meant, of course, a substantial lessening of the great expenses entailed upon the feudatories by the sankin kotai system, and the relief thus afforded proved most welcome to the daimyo and the shomyo alike.
Fortunately it was not so hard to please us, and certainly the inn people did their best; for they led the way to what formerly were the state apartments, that part of the house where the daimyo of Kaga had been wont to lodge when he stopped here over night on his journey north.
The local persecutions in Kyushu, for example, would seem to have been natural consequences of the intolerance of the Jesuits in the days of their power, when converted daimyo burned Buddhist temples and massacred Buddhist priests; and these persecutions were most pitiless in those very districts such as Bungo, Omura, and Higo where the native religion had been most fiercely persecuted at Jesuit instigation.
As for the castle, its enormous strength rendered it well-nigh impregnable, and after weeks of effort the Tokugawa forces had nothing to show for their repeated attacks except a long list of casualties. Ieyasu now had recourse to intrigue. The mother of Kyogoku Takatsugu, daimyo of Obama, in Wakasa, was the younger sister of the lady Yodo.
Some three hundred of them were put into ships and sent out of the country, together with various Japanese suspected of religious political intrigues, such as Takayama, former daimyo of Akashi, who was called "Justo Ucondono" by the Jesuit writers, and who had been dispossessed and degraded by Hideyoshi for the same reasons. Iyeyasu set no example of unnecessary severity.
Neither daimyo nor shomyo is permitted to enter into secret engagements or to exchange written oaths, or to give or take hostages. In a quarrel the one who forebears shall be recognized as having reason. No man, whatever his income, should keep a large number of concubines. The amount of sake imbibed should be limited to one's capacity.
In 1572 the Portuguese presumed to ask for the whole town of Nagasaki, as a gift to their church, with power of jurisdiction over the same; threatening, in case of refusal, to establish themselves elsewhere. The daimyo, Omura, at first demurred, but eventually yielded; and Nagasaki then became Christian territory, directly governed by the Church.
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