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Updated: May 20, 2025
So long, however, as Yoshimochi ruled in Kyoto, the Kamakura kwanrya abstained from further intrigues; but on the accession of the sometime bonze, Yoshinori, to the shogunate, all sense of restraint was removed. The governor-general now made no attempt to conceal his hostility to the Muromachi shogun.
Their adherence to the Tokugawas was but nominal, and only the strong pressure of superior power was able to wring from them a haughty semblance of obedience. They chafed perpetually under the rule of one who was in reality a vassal like themselves." They now saw in the rising tide of public sentiment against the Tokugawa Shogunate a rare opportunity of accomplishing their cherished aim.
The last-named reason seems to have been what prompted the revolt of 1651, when Ietsuna, aged ten, had just succeeded in the shogunate his father Iemitsu who had exalted the power of the Tokugawa at the expense of their military houses. The ronin headed by Yui Shosetsu and Marubashi Chuya plotted to set fire to the city of Yedo and take the shogun's castle. The plot was discovered.
They did this in two ways; first, by developing the prolonged peace necessary for a high grade of scholarship which, turning its attention to ancient history, discovered that the Shogunate was assuming powers not in accord with the primitive practice nor in accord with the theory of the divine descent of the Imperial house.
The enemies of the Shogunate then persuaded the imperial court to order the expulsion of the foreigners; and this order which, it must be remembered, was essentially a religious order, emanating from the source of all acknowledged authority placed the military government in a serious dilemma.
But they chafed under it, and watched for a chance to break the yoke. All the while this chance was being slowly created for them not by any political changes, but by the patient toil of Japanese men of letters. Three among these the greatest scholars that Japan ever produced especially prepared the way, by their intellectual labours, for the abolition of the Shogunate.
Thus, in effect, the government of the country, taken out of the hands of the shogun and the feudatories, fell into those of their vassals. There were exceptions, of course, but so rare as to be mere accidental. . . The revolution which involved the fall of the shogunate, and ultimately of feudalism, may be called democratic with regard to the personnel of those who planned and directed it.
Some historians of the time relate that the shogun's infatuation betrayed him into promising to raise Yoshiyasu's revenue to a million koku, and to nominate as successor to the shogunate a son borne by Yoshiyasu's wife to Tsunayoshi; but according to tradition, these crowning extravagances were averted on the very night preceding the day of their intended consummation, the shogun being stabbed to death by his wife, who immediately committed suicide.
Meanwhile the Shogunate had ascertained for itself the impossibility of resisting foreign aggression: it was fairly well informed as to the strength of Western countries. The imperial court was nowise informed; and the Shogunate naturally dreaded to furnish the information.
As the vices of King John and the indifference and ignorance of the first two Georges of England begat the strength and hope of the English Parliament, so the public opinion of Japan sprouted out of the ruins of the Shogunate régime. We must therefore seek for the beginning of the Constitutional Movement of Japan in the peculiar circumstances in which she found herself between 1853 and 1868.
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