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Updated: June 3, 2025
No other battle was fought on the soil of Japan for two hundred and fifty-three years. Iyeyasu had the blood of the Minamoto clan in his veins. He had therefore an hereditary claim to the shogunate, as successor to the great Yoritomo, the founder of the family and the first to bear the title of Great Shogun.
At which he wondred, and thought me to lie. Thus, from one thing to another, I abode with him till midnight." ... The two men liked each other at sight, it appears. Of Iyeyasu, Adams significantly observes: "He viewed me well, and seemed to be wonderful favourable."
The despotism of the daimyo was first checked by the founders of the Tokugawa dynasty, Iyeyasu, who so restricted their powers that they became, with some exceptions, liable to lose their estates if proved guilty of oppression and cruelty. Of the Sanke, there were three clans, or families: of the Kokushu, eighteen; of the Tozama, eighty-six; and of the Fudai, one hundred and seventy-six.
We have already seen that etiquette was rigidly enforced upon all classes by the military rule: for at least ten centuries before Iyeyasu, the nation had been disciplined in politeness, under the edge of the sword. But under the Tokugawa Shogunate politeness became particularly a popular characteristic, a rule of conduct maintained by even the lowest classes in their daily relations.
The details of the hero's last quarrel with the heroine and the precise thoughts that went with it are muffled by the inability to speak. The power of the play is in the adequate style the man represents the colony. Sessue Hayakawa should give us Japanese tales more adapted to the films. We should have stories of Iyeyasu and Hideyoshi, written from the ground up for the photoplay theatre.
He gave them answer, says Adams, "that we had as yet not doen to him nor to none of his lande any harme or dammage: therefore against Reason and Iustice to put vs to death." ... And there came to pass precisely what the Jesuits had most feared, what they had vainly endeavoured by intimidation, by slander, by all possible intrigue to prevent, an interview between Iyeyasu and the heretic Adams.
I might multiply any number of descriptions of seppuku from literature or from the relation of eye-witnesses; but one more instance will suffice. Two brothers, Sakon and Naiki, respectively twenty-four and seventeen years of age, made an effort to kill Iyéyasu in order to avenge their father's wrongs; but before they could enter the camp they were made prisoners.
Had the government of Japan at the time of the advent of foreigners been in the strong hand of a Taiko or an Iyeyasu, the rulers might have been greatly exercised by the extraordinary event, but public opinion for reform would hardly have been called forth, and the birth of constitutional liberty would long have been delayed.
Something of the same old Chinese teaching we find reechoed, a thousand years later, in the Legacy of Iyeyasu: "The art of governing a country consists in the manifestation of due deference on the part of a suzerain to his vassals. Know that if you turn your back upon this, you will be assassinated; and the Empire will be lost."
It is for his political genius that Iyeyasu particularly deserves fame. Once more, in 1615, he was forced to fight for his supremacy, against the son of the late premier. A bloody battle followed, ending in victory for Iyeyasu and the burning of the castle of Ozaka, in whose flames the aspirant for power probably met his doom.
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