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Updated: May 24, 2025
They compelled a more complete Japanese unity than had existed before, for they demanded direct relations with the national head. And when treaty negotiations revealed the lack of such a head, they undertook to show its necessity by themselves punishing those local rulers who did not recognize the Tokugawa headship.
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.
On one occasion, at Osaka, in 1839, a rebellion broke out which was believed, though without evidence, to have been instigated in some way by men with Christian ideas, and was certainly led by Oshio, the bitter opponent of Buddhism, of Tokugawa, and of the prevalent Confucianism. Possibly, the uprising was aided by refugees from Korea.
The new literature changed its tone. Instead of the servility, faint suggestiveness, and restrained politeness characteristic of the literature from the Gen-hei period to the first half of the Tokugawa period, that of the Revival Era began to wear a bolder and freer aspect. History came to be recorded with more truthfulness and boldness than ever before.
But in the middle period of the Tokugawa Bakufu the Genroku period, as it is commonly called the tradesman became a comparatively conspicuous figure. This now found a substitute in the haikai, which admitted language taken from purely Japanese sources and could thus be produced without any exercise of special scholarship.
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.
Therefore, to many onlookers it seemed that the Tokugawa Government had been overthrown to make room for the all-powerful southern feudatory. In order to provide a safeguard against such a danger, the young Emperor was asked to make oath that a broadly based deliberative assembly should be convened for the purpose of conducting State affairs in conformity with public opinion.
Moreover, when it became known that an illegitimate son of Hideyori, called Kunimatsu, had been carried from the castle by some common soldiers and secreted at a farmhouse in Fushimi, Ieyasu caused this child of six to be seized and beheaded by a common executioner at Sanjo-kawara in Kyoto. This episode reflects no credit whatever on the Tokugawa leader.
It has been stated above that one of the abuses which came into large practice from the middle period of the Tokugawa Bakufu was the adoption of children of ignoble birth into samurai families in consideration of monetary payments by their parents. This mercenary custom was strictly interdicted by the Matsudaira regent, who justly saw in it a danger to the solidity of the military class.
For the first time in Japanese history the nation was integrated, integrated, at least, in so far as the peculiar nature of the social unit rendered possible. The counsels of the founder of Yedo were followed by his successors; and the Tokugawa shogunate, which lasted until 1867, gave the country fifteen military sovereigns.
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