The Dog Shogun: The Personality and Policies of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (review)

In this tendentious biography of one of Tokugawa Japan's most colorful, controversial characters, Beatrice Bodart-Bailey makes large claims for her hero. Tsunayoshi, the fifth Tokugawa shogun, was not the effeminate, sex-addled mother's boy of popular lore, but a wise statesman, shrewd in his judgments, who received his bad reputation because he put the welfare of commoners ahead of his class's interests. The infamous "Laws of Compassion," which stipulated stern punishments for maltreatment of animals, should be seen as an attempt to civilize the samurai by taking away opportunities to kill. In choosing as his advisers men he had made rather than daimyo already entrenched in the system, he followed the path defined by Machiavelli and taken by absolutist rulers in Europe. By employing men of talent whatever their hereditary status, he brought about a paradigm shift in the governance of early modern Japan that presaged the modern bureaucratic state.

It is hard to fault Bodart-Bailey's basic premise that Tsunayoshi has been maligned in popular histories and his achievements overlooked. Trained in Chinese studies from an early age, he understood the duties of a ruler and acted accordingly. He ruthlessly suppressed attempts by daimyo to usurp his authority and treat him as a mere figurehead. He quelled disorder by dispossessing incompetent daimyo. He reformed local administration to the benefit of peasants and his treasury. His decision to devalue the coinage put more money into circulation, thus contributing to the prosperity of the Genroku age. Following the natural disasters of the early eighteenth century, culminating in the 1706 eruption of Mt. Fuji, he dispatched able officials to assess the damage and take countermeasures to aid the victims, ignoring daimyo jurisdictions in the process. So successful were his efforts that riots did not break out as they did following the 1783 eruption of Mt. Asama.

Bodart-Bailey tries to revise history's valuation not only of Tsunayoshi but also of his predecessors and successors. Tsunayoshi is not to blame for the depletion of the gold reserves hoarded by Ieyasu; that was the fault of Iemitsu, who used his vast financial resources to display his power in a transfiguration of wealth into authority. Although Tsunayoshi is often criticized for his extravagance, he was almost parsimonious compared to his successor, Ienobu, who insisted on an expensive rebuilding of Chiyoda castle, acquiesced in devaluing the currency, and outdid Tsunayoshi in the number of noh dances he mastered. The fourth shogun, the weakling Ietsuna, having allowed his ministers free rein to run the government for their own profit, Tsunayoshi had no choice but to bring in new men to restore control to the shogun.

The book's revaluation extends to the era as a whole. The Akō incident (better known by the stage title Chūshingura) represented not the apotheosis of the samurai, but their decline. Bodart-Bailey criticizes the hapless Asano Naganori for his ineptitude and his retainers for having failed to educate him in his duties as a ruler. To absolve Tsunayoshi's government of criticism in the way it handled the case, she accepts Satō Naokata's verdict that Kira was blameless. She points out that the so-called loyal retainers lived dissolute lives and asserts that they lacked the skill in martial arts necessary for an honorable attack in daylight and should have committed suicide after killing Kira. Further, although Ogyū Sorai may have written in support of the final judgment, he did not influence Tsunayoshi's thinking, as the shogun had already come to the correct decision on this case. Sorai came into Tsunayoshi's orbit through Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, whose sagacity, probity, and competence is amply documented in Matsukage nikki, written by his concubine Ō"gimachi Machiko. Tsunayoshi chose Yoshiyasu to be his disciple; Yoshiyasu later employed Sorai. Bodart-Bailey reads Sorai's criticisms of previous shogun in Seidan, the recommendation for reforms that he presented to the eighth shogun...