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Updated: June 27, 2025
Tsunayoshi died of small-pox in 1709, after a brief illness. Having been born in 1662, Ienobu was in his forty-seventh year when he succeeded to the office of shogun. His first act was to abolish Tsunayoshi's legislation for the protection of animals.
That dignity falls to Tsunayoshi and to Tsunayoshi alone. He is the legitimate son of the late shogun, Iemitsu, and the only brother of the present shogun, Ietsuna. If the minister is not jesting, his proposition is inexplicable." This bold utterance was received with profound silence, and after a few moments Sakai Tadakiyo retired from the council chamber.
For several years prior to the accession of Tsunayoshi, the province of Echigo had been disturbed by an intrigue in the family of Matsudaira Mitsunaga. It is unnecessary to enter into further details. The incident was typical of the conditions existing in many of the barons' households, and the history of Japan furnishes numerous parallel cases.
Tsunayoshi did not confine his patronage to Chinese literature; he devoted much energy to the encouragement of Japanese classical studies, also. Thus, in 1689, he invited to Yedo Kitamura Kigin and his son Shuncho and bestowed upon the former the title of Hoin together with a revenue of five hundred koku.
He therefore set himself to lead the shogun into licentious habits, and the lecture-meetings ultimately changed their complexion. Tsunayoshi, giving an ideograph from his name to Yasuaki, called him Yoshiyasu, and authorized him to assume the family name of Matsudaira, conferring upon him at the same time a new domain in the province of Kai yielding 150,000 koku.
There had been born to Iemitsu five sons, of whom the eldest, Ietsuna, had succeeded to the shogunate, and three others had died, the only one remaining alive being Tsunayoshi, who, having been born in 1646, was now in his thirty-fourth year. On Tsunayoshi's accession the prime minister, Sakai Tadakiyo, was released from office, and Hotta Masatoshi became his successor.
Naturally, as Masatoshi had been instrumental in obtaining the succession for Tsunayoshi, his influence with the latter was very great. But there can be no question that he deserves to rank as one of Japan's leading statesmen in any age, and that he devoted his signal abilities to the cause of progress and administrative purity.
The fifth shogun, Tsunayoshi, was then in power, and the era of his reforming spirit had not yet passed away. He adopted Shunkai's suggestion and obtained the Imperial sanction for a change of calendar so that the Husan-ming system went out of force after 822 years of use in Japan.
But this enormous sum did not long survive the extravagance of Tsunayoshi. After the assassination of Hotta Masatoshi, the administrative power fell entirely into the hands of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, and the example set by him for those under his guidance, and by his master, the shogun, soon found followers among all classes of the people.
"As for me," he added, "I have no desire to preserve such an evidence of constant apprehension and at such a charge on the coffers of the State." Tsunayoshi also instructed his officials to search throughout the empire for persons of conspicuous filial piety and women of noted chastity.
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