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Updated: June 20, 2025
The Shogunate had indeed established peace and inaugurated prosperity; but who could forget that it had originated in a military usurpation of imperial rights? Only by the restoration of the Son of Heaven to his ancient position of power, and by the relegation of the military chiefs to their proper state of subordination, could the best interests of the nation be really served....
The national governmental system was materially affected by the need, throughout many centuries, of systematic methods of defense against the Ainu. The rise of the Shogunate dates back to 883 A.D., when the chief of the forces opposing the Ainu was appointed by the Emperor and bore the official title, "The Barbarian-expelling Generalissimo."
The overthrow of the Shogunate was primarily the work of young men; the introduction of almost all the sweeping reforms which have transformed Japan has been the work of young men who, though but partly equipped for their work, approached it with energy and perfect confidence, not knowing enough perhaps to realize the difficulties they were undertaking.
The shogun ruled over between two and three hundred lords of provinces or districts, whose powers and privileges varied according to income and grade. Under the Tokugawa shogunate there were 292 of these lords, or daimyo.
Yet it was not until the year 1841 that the Shogunate took alarm, and proclaimed its disquiet by banishing from the capital the great scholar Hirata, and forbidding him to write anything more. Not long afterwards he died.
When Prince Tokugawa Iyémochi, the last but one of the Shoguns, left Yedo for Kiôto, one Shimmon Tatsugorô, chief of the Otokodaté, undertook the management of his journey, and some three or four years ago was raised to the dignity of Hatamoto for many faithful services. After the battle of Fushimi, and the abolition of the Shogunate, he accompanied the last of the Shoguns in his retirement.
The building of splendid residences, the laying out of spacious parks, the gratification of luxurious tastes, and the procuring of funds to defray the cost of his vast extravagance these things occupied his entire attention. Associated with the Ashikaga shogunate is a financial device known in history as tokusei, a term signifying "virtuous administration."
These assembled their forces, restored the banished Emperor, and combined in a desperate attack upon the regent's capital, Kamakura. The city was stormed and burned; and the last of the Hojo rulers, after a brave but vain defence, performed harakiri. Thus shogunate and regency vanished together, in 1333. For the moment the whole power of administration had been restored to the Mikado.
Under the Tokugawa rule, the question of obeying or resisting an imperial command would have depended upon the attitude of the shogun; and no daimyo would have risked such obedience to the court at Kyoto as might have signified disobedience to the court at Yedo. Not at least until the shogunate had fallen into decay.
"Soon the movement became religious and political above all, patriotic.... The Shogunate was frowned on, because it had supplanted the autocracy of the heaven-descended Mikados. Buddhism and Confucianism were sneered at because of their foreign origin. This order triumphed for a moment in the revolution of 1868."
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