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Thenceforth, the administration fell entirely into the hands of this schemer. Tsunayoshi lost his only son in childhood and no other being born to him, he invited a high Buddhist priest to pray for an heir to the shogunate.

During the Kamakura era, the Court magnates continued to despise the Bakufu adherents, and the distance between the capital and Kamakura imparted to the latter an element of rusticity. But with the establishment of the Muromachi shogunate a change took place. The Bakufu, the visible repository of power, stood side by side with the Court, and opportunities for close relations existed constantly.

In 1860 a Japanese embassy arrived at Washington, and similar ones were established in European capitals. In 1869 the revolution was over. The party of the usurping Tycoon was defeated and the Shogunate abolished. The anti-foreign spirit which was allied with it shared this defeat, and the party desiring to adopt the methods of foreign lands was triumphant.

By them Emperor or shogun could be deposed and banished without scruple; and the helplessness of the shogunate can be inferred from the fact, that the seventh Hojo regent, before deposing the seventh shogun, sent him home in a palanquin, head downwards and heels upwards. Nevertheless the Hojo suffered the phantom-shogunate to linger on, until 1333.

All the events of the rise of the military power and the concentration of authority under the Tokugawa Shogunate properly belong to the first revolutionary period. At the time of the opening of Japan, society had not evolutionally advanced beyond a stage corresponding to that of the antique Western societies in the seventh or eighth century before Christ.

To the champion wrestlers to two or three men only in a generation the family of the "Driving Wind" awards the privilege of wearing a rope-girdle. In the time of the Shogunate these champions used to wrestle before the Shogun. They are still held, however, at the shrines of Kamo, at Kiôto, and of Kasuga, in Yamato.

Nevertheless he received from Ieyasu a charter so liberal that it plainly displayed the mood of the Tokugawa shogun towards foreign trade: " The ship that has now come for the first time from England over the sea to Japan may carry on trade of all kinds without hindrance. " With regard to the cargoes of ships, requisition will be made by list according to the requirements of the shogunate.

His posterity shall be impoverished by the confiscation of his property, as a warning for those who disobey the laws." Iyeyasu's command ended the practice of junshi among his own vassals; but it continued, or revived again, after his death. In 1664 the shogunate issued an edict proclaiming that the family of any person performing junshi should be punished; and the shogunate was in earnest.

This refusal was subsequently explained as a hint to the feudal chiefs that inordinate ambition should be banished from their bosoms; but in reality Iemitsu was influenced by the traditional principle that the Throne had no higher gift to bestow on a subject than the shogunate.

For this mouldering hamlet represents all that remains of the million-peopled streets of Yoritomo's capital, the mighty city of the Shogunate, the ancient seat of feudal power, whither came the envoys of Kublai Khan demanding tribute, to lose their heads for their temerity.