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In 1632, when the second shogun, Hidetada, died, it is related that the feudal barons observed the conduct of his successor, Iemitsu, with close attention, and that a feeling of some uneasiness prevailed.
It is recorded, though not on independent authority, that when his end was drawing near he spoke to those at his side in the folio whig terms: "My death is now in sight, but happily the country is at peace, and Hidetada has already discharged the duties of shogun for several years. I have, therefore, no cause for anxiety.
In the following May, Hideyori was made nai-daijin, and in the same month a marriage was contracted between him, then in his eleventh year, and Tenju-in, the seven-year-old daughter of Hidetada, son and successor of Ieyasu. Ieyasu now took up his residence at Momo-yama Castle and Hidetada was ordered to live in Yedo.
It was further ordered that Hidetada, son of Ieyasu, should give his daughter in marriage to Hideyori; that Ieyasu, residing in the Fushimi palace, should act as regent until Hideyori reached the age of fifteen, and that Maeda Toshiiye, governing the castle of Osaka, should act as guardian of Hideyori.
A colossal campaign such as the latter had conducted against the southern island, in 1587, never commended itself to the ambition of Ieyasu or to that of his comparatively feeble successor, Hidetada. Hence, the presence of Spanish or Portuguese ships in Satsuma suggested danger of an exceptional degree.
By the death of Ietsugu, in 1716, the Hidetada line of the Tokugawa family became extinct, and a successor to the shogunate had to be sought from the Tokugawa of Kii province in the person of Yoshimune, grandson of Yorinobu and great-grandson of Ieyasu. Born in 1677, Yoshimune, the eighth Tokugawa shogun, succeeded to office in 1716, at the age of thirty-nine.
But the Nakasendo column of thirty-eight thousand men under Hidetada encountered such desperate resistance before the castle of Ueda, at the hands of Sanada Masayuki, that it did not reach Sekigahara until the great battle was over. Meanwhile, the western army had pushed steadily eastward.
A comet made its appearance and was regarded with anxiety by the astrologists of Kyoto, who associated its advent with certain misfortune. Hidetada ridiculed these fears. "What can we tell," he said, "about the situation of a solitary star in the wide universe, and how can we know that it has anything to do with this little world?"
The same policy was pursued by the second shogun, Hidetada, who assigned to the ex-Emperor an income of 3000 koku and made various allowances to princes and other members of the Imperial family.
The two works having been published to the order and under the patronage of the Bakufu, their contents were by no means free from the stain of favour and affection, but they nevertheless possess inestimable historical value. Hidetada, third son of Ieyasu, was born in 1579; succeeded to the shogunate in 1605; abdicated in 1622, and died in 1632.
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