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Updated: June 8, 2025
From that time princes and nobles who saw no prospect of secular distinction began to take the tonsure, and this retirement to the cloister was assiduously encouraged by the Muromachi shoguns. It is true that, from the first, the representatives of this line had relied on the Bakufu, whether of Kamakura or of Muromachi.
The far-reaching consequences of this conception will be dealt with in a later chapter. Here, it is sufficient to say that one of the greatest and most truly patriotic of the Tokugawa shoguns himself unwittingly sowed the seeds of disaffection destined to prove fatal to his own family. Yoshimune was fond of astronomy.
The daimios, who had been compelled to live at Yedo, flocked to Kioto. The Mikado, countenanced by the foreigners, overcame the resistance of the party of the Shoguns. He removed his residence to Yedo, now called Tokio . Feudalism was abolished , and a constitution promulgated in 1889. The empire was thus united and strengthened.
The two rulers exchanged the costliest presents, the emperor conferred all authority upon the general, and when Yoritomo returned to his capital city he held in his control the ruling power of the realm. Though really a vassal of the emperor, he wielded the power of the emperor himself, and from 1192 until 1868 the mikados were insignificant puppets and the shoguns the real lords of the land.
But very soon after his coronation, the Emperor Komei departed from this time-honoured sequence of procedure and formally instructed the Bakufu that the traditional policy of the empire in foreign affairs must be strictly maintained. The early Tokugawa shoguns would have strongly resented such interference, but times had changed, and Ieyoshi bowed his head quietly to the new order.
The shoguns were chosen by them from the Minamoto clan, boys being selected, some of them but two or three years old, who were deposed as soon as they showed a desire to rule. The same was the case with the mikados, who were also creatures of the Hojo clan. One of them who had been deposed raised an army and fought for his throne. He was defeated and exiled to a distant monastery.
Japanese society then assumed, as to its upper ranks, nearly all the hierarchical forms which it presented down to the era of the Tokugawa shoguns, who consolidated the system without seriously changing its fundamental structure.
Those who from youth were in the hereditary line of rule, sons of Shoguns, daimyos, and samurai, were forced by the very communalism of the social order to an exceptional personal development. They shot far ahead of the common man. Feudalism is favorable to the development of personality in the favored few, while it represses that of the masses.
All the details of the ceremony were ordered in conformity with precedents set in the times of the Ashikaga shoguns, Yoshimitsu and Yoshimasa, but the greatly superior resources of Hideyoshi were enlisted to give eclat to the fete. The ceremonies were spread over five days. They included singing, dancing, couplet composing, and present giving. The last was on a scale of unprecedented dimensions.
An example of this practice was shown in the story of "The Forty-seven Rônins." A husband has but to report the matter to his lord, and the ceremony of divorce is completed. Thus, in the days of the Shoguns' power, a Hatamoto who had divorced his wife reported the matter to the Shogun. A Daimio's retainer reports the matter to his Prince.
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