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Updated: June 8, 2025
They were buried in this place; and I believe that this is the last instance on record of the ancient Japanese custom of Junshi, that is to say, "dying with the master." At Uyéno is the second of the burial-grounds of the Shoguns.
The anvils rang merrily as the armorers forged weapons for the troops, merchants sought the new city with their goods, heavily laden boats flocked into its harbor, and almost as if by magic a great city, the destined capital of the shoguns, rose from the fields. The site of Kamakura had been well chosen.
They were obliged to pay tribute of respect to the shogun in a manner equivalent to doing homage. Though they could return at intervals to their estates, their wives and children were kept in Yedo as hostages for their good behavior. When Iyemitsu died, the shoguns had cemented their power beyond dispute.
Let Japan close her public schools, and Japan in two generations will be a barbaric kingdom of the Shoguns, shorn of every vestige of power and prestige, the easy victim of the machinations of Western diplomats.
The genealogies which fill pages of the Records from the days of Jimmu downwards point clearly to the growth of a powerful feudal aristocracy, for the younger sons born to successive sovereigns bear, for the most part, names indicative of territorial lordship; but it seems justifiable to conclude that the first great impetus to that kind of decentralization was given by Sujin's despatch of the Shido shoguns.
The mikado gradually became lost to view behind a screen of officialism, which hid the throne. Eventually all the military power fell into the hands of the shoguns, and the mikado was seen no more at the head of his army. His power decayed, as he became to the people rather a distant deity than a present and active ruler.
The Mikado, after having been for centuries in the keeping of the Tokugawa Shoguns, was captured by the clans of Satsuma and Choshu, and has been in their keeping ever since. They were represented politically by five men, the Genro or Elder Statesmen, who are sometimes miscalled the Privy Council. Only two still survive.
Others were deposed, and neither mikados nor shoguns were permitted to reign except as puppets in the hands of the powerful regents of the realm. None of the Hojo ever claimed the office of shogun. They were content to serve as the power behind the throne. As time went on, the usual result of such a state of affairs showed itself.
Prince Munetaka, an elder brother of the reigning Emperor, was chosen, and thus the last four Bakufu shoguns were all of Imperial blood. Their lineage, however, did not avail much as against Bakufu arbitrariness.
The obvious effect of such doctrines was to discredit the Bakufu shoguns, and information having ultimately been lodged in Yedo through an enemy of Takenouchi, seventeen Court nobles together with others were arrested and punished, some capitally and some by exile.
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