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Updated: June 24, 2025
It was at this time, also, that the military families of the Kwanto in general and of Kamakura in particular began to find their incomes distressingly inadequate to meet the greatly increased and constantly increasing outlays that resulted from following the costly customs of Kyoto as reflected at the shogun's palace.
Not rapidly or without a struggle, but slowly and inevitably, the poison of bad example permeated Kamakura society, and the sinecures in the shogun's household came to be coveted by the veterans of the Bakufu, who, throughout the peaceful times secured by Hojo rule, found no means of gaining honours or riches in the field, and who saw themselves obliged to mortgage their estates in order to meet the cost of living, augmented by extravagant banquets, fine buildings, and rich garments.
With two exceptions every baron to whose hands this circular came forwarded it to the Bakufu in Yedo. The exceptions were Tadanaga and Tadahiro, who consequently fell under the shogun's suspicion. Thereafter, it is related that some of the barons set themselves to deceive the Bakufu by various wiles.
Although the Restoration of 1868 nominally gave back to the Throne all it had been forced to leave in other hands since 1603, that transfer of power was imaginary rather than real, the new military organization which succeeded the Shogun's government being the vital portion of the Restoration.
Alas! the main temple, the hall in honour of the sect to which it belongs, the hall of services, the bell-tower, the entrance-hall, and the residence of the prince of the blood, were all burnt down in the battle of Uyéno, in the summer of 1868, when the Shogun's men made their last stand in Yedo against the troops of the Mikado.
It was a piece of religion to defend the Mikado; it was a plain piece of political righteousness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody usurpation. To Yoshida the moment for action seemed to have arrived. He was himself still confined in Choshu. Nothing was free but his intelligence; but with that he sharpened a sword for the Shogun's minister.
Yoshiteru's younger brother, Yoshiaki, fled to Omi, but afterwards made his way to Owari, where Oda Nobunaga took him by the hand and ultimately placed him in the shogun's seat at Kyoto. Among the fifteen representatives of the Ashikaga, two were slain by their own vassals, five died in exile, and one had to commit suicide.
But what about the ships?" "Two separate phases of a society at war, perhaps a more progressive against a less technically advanced. American warships paying a visit to the Shogun's Japan, for example." Ross grinned. "Those warships didn't seem to fancy their welcome. They steered out to sea fast enough when the rocks began to fall."
These representatives learned to believe that the shogun's ministers were determined either to avoid making treaties or to evade them when made. However natural this suspicion may have been, it lacked solid foundation. That is proved by a memorial which the Yedo statesmen addressed to the Throne after the negotiation of the Harris treaty.
But the Commodore was already in treaty with the Shogun's Government; it was one of the stipulations that no Japanese was to be aided in escaping from Japan; and Yoshida and his followers were handed over as prisoners to the authorities at Simoda.
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