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Updated: May 20, 2025
The leaders were beheaded, banished, or ordered to commit suicide; the Mito feudatory being sentenced to perpetual confinement in his fief; the daimyo of Owari, to permanent retirement; and Keiki, former candidate for the succession to the shogunate, being deprived of office and directed to live in seclusion.
The Shogun Iyemochi attempted to chastise the daimyo of Choshu for this act of hostility; but the attempt only proved the weakness of the military government. Iyemochi died soon after this defeat; and his successor Hitotsubashi had no chance to do anything, for the now evident feebleness of the Shogunate gave its enemies courage to strike a fatal blow.
Two of his Ministers came to him and represented that he must not only think of himself, but of the party who supported the Shogunate, and that as he had betrayed them by false hopes he had no choice but to perform Hara-kiru.
It is necessary, therefore, to direct our eyes for a moment to the course of affairs on the side of the Ashikaga. Ashikaga Takauji's original idea was to follow the system of Yoritomo in everything. Kamakura was to be his capital and he assumed the title of shogun. This was in 1335. Three years later he received the shogunate in due form from the Northern sovereign, Komyo.
To him the ambition of winning the shogunate presented itself strongly, and was only abandoned when Uesugi Noriharu committed suicide to add weight to a protest against such an essay. Japanese annals contain many records of lives thus sacrificed on the altar of devotion and loyalty. From the outset the Uesugi family were the pillars of the Ashikaga kwanryo in Kamakura.
The year of the former's accession to the shogunate had seen the re-issue of anti-Christian decrees and the martyrdom of some five hundred Christians within the Tokugawa domains, whither the tide of persecution now flowed for the first time. From that period onwards official attempts to eradicate Christianity in Japan were unceasing.
But as the ancient histories were studied and the old constitution was brought into light, the real nature of the Shogunate began to reveal itself.
Thus, during the shogunate of Hidetada, no less than forty changes are recorded to have been made among the feudatories, and in the time of Iemitsu there were thirty-five of such incidents. History relates that to be transferred from one fief to another, even without nominal loss of revenue, was regarded as a calamity of ten years' duration.
In the light of these facts, some other explanation of the relations between the Shogunate and the Imperial Court must be sought than that which depends upon the claim now made by Japanese historians of the official type, that the throne, throughout this whole period, was divinely preserved by the Heavenly Gods. What happened, in outline, seems to have been a combination of very different forces.
It was the Restoration that overthrew the Tokugawa Shogunate, which reigned supreme for over two centuries and a half. It was the Restoration that brought us face to face with the Occidentals. It was the Restoration that pulled the demigods of the Feudal lords down to the level of the commoners. It was the Restoration that deprived the samurai of their fiefs and reduced them to penury.
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