The Awakening of Japan

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II THE CHRYSALIS The Tokugawa tyrants, who initiated the policy of strict seclusion, were the successors of various lines of shoguns who, as military regents of the Mikado, had, since the twelfth century, usurped the government of Japan. Before that period, Japan was under the personal rule of the Mikado,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II THE CHRYSALIS The Tokugawa tyrants, who initiated the policy of strict seclusion, were the successors of various lines of shoguns who, as military regents of the Mikado, had, since the twelfth century, usurped the government of Japan. Before that period, Japan was under the personal rule of the Mikado, who, with the assistance of court functionaries, reigned over the country from Kioto. The over-centralization of the imperial bureaucracy, however, was the cause of its own decay. Its neglect of provincial administration led to local disturbances and the creation of baronial estales, over which the Kioto court exercised no active control. The real authority thus came into the hands of the strongest baronial power, whose representative, vested by the Mikado with the title of shogun, or commander-in- chief, ruled the country as regent, the Mikado retaining but a nominal sovereignty over the empire. The first, or Kamakura, shogunate, so called from the city which its representatives made their capital, exercised the powers of government from 1186 to 1333. This was followed by a temporary restitution of power to the Mikado; but the reins of government soon fell into the hands of another line of shoguns, the Ashikaga, who from 1336 to 1573 ruled the country from Kioto itself. The fall of the Ashikaga shogunate was followed by a long period of civil war, during which the various great barons struggled for supremacy. Out of this state of turmoil arose that Napoleonic genius, Taiko Hideyoshi, who, born a peasant, died, in 1598, the master of unified Japan. His son was, however, unable to retain the authority left him by his father, and the dictatorship of the empire devolved, in 1600, on lyeyasu, the first of the To- kugawa shoguns. The Tokugawa shogunate differed from those...