THE EX-SHOGUN AND FAMILY

The armada which had threatened Japan’s independence had no sooner been disposed of than internecine strife began afresh, and rival dynasties of Shoguns kept the land in a ferment until, in 1392, the northern or Ashikaga line proved itself the stronger, and Japan entered into the enjoyment of two centuries of almost uninterrupted peace. Under the Ashikaga administration the country flourished exceedingly, and the epoch is famed in Japanese history as one in which learning and the sciences advanced to a degree of perfection never before known. High art and culture everywhere prevailed.

It was during the supremacy of the Ashikaga Shoguns that the geisha first became popular in Japan, and the musical instrument termed the samisen was introduced from the Loo-Choo islands. The earliest trace to be met with of the use of this species of guitar is contained in a history of events for the year 1558, and it has been suggested that the Loo-Choo people obtained the instrument from the Spaniards who came to the Philippines in 1520, and continued their voyage under Magellan northward as far as Nafa. But this view of the samisen’s origin is not entirely concurred in by Japanese archæologists who hold that it is improbable, for many reasons, that it is merely a bad copy of the guitar. The Loochooans called it the Jamisen, and used it to scare away snakes, because its sound was, as they declared, much like the cry of the mongoose (ichneumon), which is the implacable enemy of the serpent tribe. Possibly this explanation of the purpose which their special instrument of music was made of old to serve may not altogether commend itself to the geisha body to-day, and it would appear to be more probable that snake’s skin was stretched on the drum where ordinarily vellum is employed,—in more recent time cat’s skin has been used,—and that ja = serpent, and mi = body, sen = strings, may be the actual derivation of the name, though as written now in Japan it might mean “three dainty threads.” The geisha’s office was to sing, dance, play the samisen or other musical instrument, to pour out wine for the guests, and generally to infuse gaiety and good humour among the convives, her title of gei = accomplishments, and sha = exponent, sufficiently indicating the nature of the services she was engaged to render. She was, in fact, a professional entertainer, and in the luxurious days of the Ashikaga Shogunate she became fashionable, and has never lost her popularity. Her taste in dress is considered to be unapproachable, her coiffure is a triumph of the hairdresser’s art,—the recognised style being some form or other of the “shimada,” a fashion brought to the capital centuries ago from the town of Shimada, a railway station midway between Tokio and Kioto,—she is entirely her own mistress, and often lives in her own house, though in the majority of cases she dwells with others and has an agent who makes contracts for her. Her attractions may draw patrons and benefit the landlord, as he is quick to perceive, of the restaurant to which she may choose to attach herself, and if she should be summoned to a house or to take part in an entertainment to which she does not care to go, she is at perfect liberty to decline the invitation. Anything less resembling the life of slavery that it is sometimes represented to be it would be difficult to imagine. Her singing and dancing are usually remunerated at a fixed price per half-hour, varying according to her status as an accomplished entertainer, and she is not infrequently called upon to display her abilities to a party composed exclusively of ladies, whose wish it may be, like that of the other sex, to beguile the tedium of a winter evening by her witty conversation and her skill in music. Finally it must be added that a geisha of good repute is more sought after than one whose morality is deemed to be somewhat lax. In any case her character is always known to the police, for it is the rule that she must take out a licence as an entertainer, and the Chief Superintendent of the Section, in handing the document to her, commonly adds some words of fatherly admonition to avoid the many pitfalls that of necessity lie in her path.

The nation once more experienced the miseries of civil strife towards the close of the sixteenth century, this time by reason of the introduction of a religion which differed from that which had been dominant in Japan for twenty-three centuries, and likewise from that Buddhism which had found its way eastward 1000 years before from India. The Portuguese had obtained the right, under the Ashikaga rule, to settle in Japan, and in 1542 they brought with them,—what were altogether strange at that time to the Ten-shi’s people,—firearms, and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic faith. The keen desire manifested by the Jesuits to make proselytes speedily provoked the antagonism of the Buddhist and Shinto priesthoods, but, as was the case in China, the climax seems to have been reached only with the assumption by the new-comers of political power. To such pretensions the ruling house at Yedo could but oppose all its strength, and the patriotism of the country asserted itself in the form of a persecution that left no stone unturned in the effort to rid the land of a direct menace to its existence as an independent monarchy, secure from the influences of the Church of Rome. But the expulsion of the visitors was not accomplished until many years after the supremacy of the Ashikaga line had been successfully challenged by Nobunaga, and to the renowned Hideyoshi,—the Taiko-sama, or Great general,—had succeeded the scarcely less famous Iyeyasu, “the Law-giver,” who founded the Toku-gawa dynasty of Shoguns, and himself to all intents and purposes governed the country, from his accession in 1603 to the post of Sei-I-Tai-Sho-Gun, to his death in 1616, for though nominally he gave way to his third son, Hidetada, in 1605, he really ruled in his son’s name, and retained the executive power in his own hands. His ostensible retirement was due to his desire for leisure to frame his system of laws for the better government of the empire, and he drew up a scheme for the effective subordination of the provincial dai-mios, or feudatories, to the ruling authority at Yedo, which remained in force until the Restoration of direct sovereign rule, in 1868.

The Shogun Iyeyasu was descended from the Minamoto family, and the name Toku-gawa, lit.: stream of blessings, is said to have been taken from a river and village of the same name in the province of Shimo-tsuke, and not far from the celebrated Nikko Shrines. On the banks of the little Tokugawa the Shogun’s ancestors had dwelt, as farmers, for centuries, but the father of Iyeyasu,—Toku-gawa Shiro,—lived in the village of Matsudaira, in the province of Mikawa, which borders on the Pacific, about midway between Kobé and Yokohama. Here the “Law-giver” was born in 1542, the year that the Portuguese voyager, Mendez Pinto, first set foot on the soil of Japan. Iyeyasu fought under Nobunaga, and Hideyoshi, and ultimately succeeded the renowned Tai-ko Sama in the supreme command of the military forces, occupying thereafter the position of Sei-I-Tai-Sho-Gun. Iyeyasu first acquired property in his native province of Mikawa, and all his early associations were with that region, so much so that his opponents in after years were accustomed to allude to him somewhat slightingly as the “man from Mikawa.” When Iyeyasu obtained the position of Shogun in 1603 he elevated his birthplace to a position of honour by conferring its name as an extra title on many of his supporters, and down to the date of the abolition of such territorial distinctions there were not a few prominent dai-mios who thus preserved their connection with the Tokugawa regime from the beginning of its supremacy. The traces were to be found in titles such as “Nabeshima Matsudaira Hizen no Kami”—the baron Nabeshima Matsudaira of Hizen province,—Kuroda Matsudaira the dai-mio of Chikuzen,—and a host of others. In accord with the plans formulated by Tokugawa Iyeyasu every one among the number, some 300 in all, of the provincial barons was personally required to spend a moiety of each year in residence at his Yashiki in Yedo, and to leave his family there for the other six months,—the Yashikis being town mansions dotted about the capital in which a semi-regal state was kept up, and where the barons were surrounded by hundreds of their own retainers, ready to do their chieftain’s bidding on the instant. The remnants of these mansions are still to be found in modern Tokio, but they were in great part utilised, on the Restoration of Imperial rule, as Government offices and barracks for the troops of the army then about to be formed on Western lines. One of the most remarkable of these mansions of Old Yedo was that occupied by the Mito family, and it still retains much of its ancient splendour, inasmuch as it has been converted into a public park, and its magnificent gardens are maintained at the expense of the State, while the buildings and site of the historic residence of the Mito princes have been made over to the military for the purposes of an arsenal. It was part of Iyeyasu’s plan to adequately provide for the preservation of the Tokugawa line in the office of Shogun, and to that end he conferred upon three of his sons dukedoms in Owari, Kishiu, and Mito respectively. These three provinces are somewhat widely separated, for Owari is the region of which the flourishing city of Nagoya is at the present day the centre,—Kishiu is the province that borders the Kî channel at the eastern entrance to the Inland Sea,—and the Mito territory was that which is situated north-east of Tokio, and to the north of the river Toné, where it enters the Pacific near Cape Inuboye. Kishiu is now known as Wakayama Ken or Prefecture, Owari is Aichi Ken, and Mito is now Ibaraki Ken, though the boundaries do not exactly correspond with the ancient frontiers. The tripartite grant of territory to his seventh, eighth, and ninth sons respectively under this arrangement was accompanied by the proviso that in the event of the failure of the direct line the Shogun should be chosen from among the cadets of one or other of these families. In after years it frequently became needful to fall back on the wisely ordained succession thus laid down at the beginning of Iyeyasu’s reign at Yedo, wise in the sense that the extinction of the line was provided against, though it was not always possible to make a selection that met with the approval of all parties, since it sometimes happened that more than one branch of the Tokugawa house was ready with a candidate for the post of honour. It will presently be seen that a difficulty arose in this respect only a few years prior to the abolition of the Shogun’s office altogether, and which was not disposed of without many heart-burnings.

Some idea may be formed of the scale of magnificence on which the feudal system inaugurated during Iyeyasu’s tenure of the Shogunal office was based from the subjoined table of the barons’ revenues. For convenience’ sake I have added the approximate value of the koku of rice, in terms of which the incomes were formerly calculated, at the prices ruling in Japan for that commodity at the present day.

ANNUAL INCOMES OF THE BARONS UNDER THE SHOGUNATE

The San-ke, descended from the three youngest Sons
of the Founder of the Tokugawa house
Title Residence Income At present
value
koku £
Owari Nagoya 610,000 = 762,000
Kii Wakayama 559,000 = 700,000
Mito Mito 350,000 = 440,000
(All bore the family arms of the Tokugawa, three
heart-shaped leaves in a circle.)