Soon after he related the incident to some court nobles from Kioto, who had stopped at the castle, and who, to his surprise, did not share his indignation at the act.
"Why, the incident was delightful," said one among them who was specially versed in poetic lore; "who would have looked for such wit and such knowledge of our classic poetry in a young girl in this uncultivated spot? The trouble is, friend Ota, that you are not learned enough to take the maiden's meaning."
"I take it that she meant to laugh at a soaked fowler," growled the warrior.
"Not so. It was only a graceful way of telling you that she had no mino to loan. She was too shy to say no to your request, and so handed you a mountain camellia. Centuries ago one of our poets sang of this flower, 'Although it has seven or eight petals, yet, I grieve to say, it has no seed' (mino). The cunning little witch has managed to say 'no' to you in the most graceful way imaginable."
Here, where the castle stood, Iyeyasu started to build a city, at the suggestion of his superior Hideyoshi. Thus began the great city of Yedo,—now Tokio, the eastern capital of Japan. In 1600, Iyeyasu, then at the head of affairs, pushed the work on his new city with energy, employing no less than three hundred thousand men. The castle was enlarged, canals were excavated, streets laid out and graded, marshes filled, and numerous buildings erected, fleets of junks bringing granite for the citadel, while the neighboring forests furnished the timber for the dwellings.
An outer ditch was dug on a grand scale, and gates and towers were built with no walls to join them and no dwellings within many furlongs of their site. But to those who laughed at the magnificent plan on which the young city had been laid out, the founder declared that the coming time would see his walls built and the dwellings of the city stretching far beyond them. Before a century his words were verified, and Yedo had a population of half a million souls. To-day it is the home of more than a million people.
It is for his political genius that Iyeyasu particularly deserves fame. Once more, in 1615, he was forced to fight for his supremacy, against the son of the late premier. A bloody battle followed, ending in victory for Iyeyasu and the burning of the castle of Ozaka, in whose flames the aspirant for power probably met his doom. No other battle was fought on the soil of Japan for two hundred and fifty-three years.
Iyeyasu had the blood of the Minamoto clan in his veins. He had therefore an hereditary claim to the shogunate, as successor to the great Yoritomo, the founder of the family and the first to bear the title of Great Shogun. This title, Sei-i Tai Shogun, was now conferred by the mikado on the new military chief, and was borne by his descendants, the Tokugawa family, until the great revolution of 1868, when the mikado again seized his long-lost authority.
Before this period, civil war had for centuries desolated Japan. After 1615 war ceased in that long distracted land and peace and prosperity prevailed. What were the steps taken by the new shogun to insure this happy result? It arose through the establishment of a well-defined system of feudalism, and the bringing of the feudal lords under the immediate control of the shogun.
Japan was already organized on a semi-feudal system. The land was divided between the great lords or daimios, who possessed strong castles and large landed estates, with a powerful armed following, and into whose treasuries much of the revenue of the kingdom flowed. These powerful princes of the realm were conciliated by the conqueror. Under them were daimios of smaller estate, many of whom had joined him in his career; and lower still a large number of minor military holders, whose grants of land enabled them to bring small bodies of followers into the field.