Meanwhile, in 1609, Dutch traders had established themselves in the island of Hirado, where they were joined four years later by English traders representing the East India Company. The latter had not the resources necessary for so distant an undertaking, nor was the English navy strong enough to support the Company’s enterprise against the Dutch, who were then wresting from the Portuguese the supremacy in Eastern waters. At the end of ten years, therefore, the trading station was abandoned.

The Christian persecution continued with varying intensity for more than twenty years, culminating in the insurrection of Shimabara in 1638. With the bloody suppression of that rising, due as much to local misgovernment as to religious causes, the curtain falls on the early history of Christianity in Japan. Two years earlier, in 1636, an edict issued by the third Shōgun, Iyémitsu, forbade all Japanese to go abroad, reduced the tonnage of native vessels so as to render them unfit for ocean voyages, and closed the country to all foreigners except the Chinese and Dutch. The Portuguese were chiefly affected by this measure, for the English had abandoned their trading enterprise in Hirado in 1623, and in the following year the rupture of relations with Spain had put an end to the residence of Spanish subjects, thus justifying Xavier’s warning that the King of Spain should be careful how he interfered with Japan, in case he burnt his fingers. The Dutch owed their escape from expulsion to the fact that the Japanese did not regard them as being Christians at all, because of their openly expressed hostility to the form of Christianity professed by the missionaries. In neither case was the lot of the two favoured nationalities at all enviable. In 1641 the Dutch were removed from Hirado and interned in Déshima, an artificial island quarter of the town of Nagasaki; and some fifty years later the Chinese, who had traded at that port in comparative liberty from a date which is uncertain, were confined in an enclosure close to the Dutch settlement. Here, paying dearly as State prisoners for the commercial privileges they enjoyed, these traders carried on a precarious and gradually dwindling commerce until Japan was opened for the second time to foreign intercourse in the middle of the nineteenth century.

CHAPTER III
The Tokugawa Shōguns—Consolidation of Duarchy.

The rule of Hidéyoshi was followed by that of a new line of Shōguns. The circumstances under which it was established are well known. At the death of Hidéyoshi in 1598 the government of the country was, during the minority of his son Hidéyori, entrusted to five feudal nobles who acted as regents. Of these, the most prominent was Tokugawa Iyéyasu, who had married Hidéyoshi’s daughter, and whose feudal territories consisted of the eight provinces in the east of the main island known as the Kwantō. Disputes soon arose between the regents, and an appeal to arms resulted in the decisive victory of Iyéyasu at Séki-ga-hara, near Lake Biwa. This was in October, 1600. In 1603 he was appointed Shōgun, and twelve years later the death, in what is known as the Ōsaka summer campaign, of Hidéyori, the only personage who could challenge his supremacy, left him without any dangerous rival. Now for the first time in Japanese history the authority of the Shōgunate extended throughout the whole of Japan. The prestige of the previous ruler had been as great, and his reputation in the field higher, but he was not, like his successor, of Minamoto stock, nor could he trace his descent from an Emperor; there were remote districts in the country where his influence had not penetrated, out-of-the-way places where his writ had never run. In founding a fresh line of Shōguns the new ruler had other circumstances in his favour. The country was tired of civil war and exhausted; the fighting power and resources of turbulent chiefs had been weakened by long-continued hostilities; and much of the work of pacification had been already done.

Although the Tokugawa Shōgunate was, in its main outlines, the repetition of a government which had existed before, it differed in some important respects from previous administrations.

The third Shōgun, the ruler responsible for the closing of the country, put the finishing touches to the new system of government; but it owed more to the genius of his grandfather, the founder of the line, who framed it, supervised its operation and left posthumous instructions, known as “The Hundred Articles,” to ensure its observance by his successors. Japanese writers agree in stating that “The Hundred Articles” give a general idea of the system of government established by Iyéyasu. But it is a very general idea, a mere outline of things, that we are thus enabled to glean. To fill in the details of the picture it is necessary to draw on other sources of information.

The difference between the rule of Iyéyasu and that of previous Shōguns lay in the more complete subjection of the Imperial Court, in the wider range of his authority, which surpassed that of his two immediate predecessors, and in the highly organized and stable character of the administration he established. The changes he effected in the government of the country may be conveniently considered under the following heads, it being borne in mind that they were the work of several years, and that many were made after his early abdication in 1605, when he was governing the country, in the name of his son, the second Shōgun:—

1. Redistribution of feudal territories. 2. Position of feudal nobility. 3. Reorganization of central administration. 4. Relations between the Court and Shōgunate, and between the Court and Court nobles and the feudal nobility.

1. The new Shōgun in establishing his rule followed the example of his predecessors. Maps which give the distribution of feudal territories before and after the year 1600, and again after the fall of Ōsaka in 1615, show the sweeping character of the changes he carried out on both occasions. As a result of these changes, the most extensive fiefs at the outset of Tokugawa rule were those held by the three Tokugawa Houses in the provinces of Kii, Owari and Hitachi (Mito), to which may be added those in the possession of the Daimiōs of Satsuma, Hizen, Chōshiū, Aki, Tosa, Kaga, Échizen, Sendai and Mutsu.

2. Before the establishment of the Tokugawa Shōgunate the feudal nobles were divided into three classes—lords of provinces, lords of territories and lords of castles. In the organization of the feudal nobility, as remodelled by Iyéyasu, this old division was retained, but he created the three princely Houses of Owari, Kii and Mito (Hitachi), called collectively the Gosanké, and placed them at the head of the new order of precedence. It was from the two first-mentioned Houses, together with the Gosankiō, a family group of later institution, that, failing a direct heir, subsequent Shōguns were chosen. To the representative of the third House—that of Mito—the position of Adviser to the Shōgunate was assigned, and he was supposed to have a determining voice in the selection of a new Shōgun when this became necessary. Another important change was the separation of the feudal nobility into two broad classes—the Fudai daimiōs, or hereditary vassals, who had submitted to the new ruler before the fall of Ōsaka, and the Tozama daimiōs, who had acknowledged his supremacy later. The former class alone had the privilege of being employed in the Councils of State and the higher administrative posts. Two new feudal groups also made their appearance—the Hatamoto, or Bannermen, who filled the less important administrative posts, besides supplying the personnel of the various departments of State, and whose fiefs in some cases rivalled in extent those of the smaller daimiōs; and the Gokénin, a kind of landed gentry.