The Dog Shogun

1. Prologue

1 1 Prologue From the beginning Heaven seemed to show its displeasure with the government of the ¤fth Tokugawa shogun Tsunayoshi. As the ceremonies on his accession were being held in the eighth intercalary month of Enpô 8 (1680), heavy rainstorms and earthquakes caused damage to roofs and walls at Edo castle, and a tidal wave brought death along the shore. Fire broke out in the city, and as the smoke rose, strange objects were seen ¶ying in the sky. In the countryside storms and ¶oods were devastating the harvest, causing rice prices to skyrocket and famine to in¶ict Japan.1 When earthquakes and storms had abated, on a perfectly still day, the cross bar of the large stone gate at the Sanô shrine mysteriously collapsed, causing the stones to bleed. Some people, however, suggested that it was not the stones that were bleeding but the blood of bats crushed between the tumbling debris that tainted the earth.2 When Tsunayoshi’s government came to an end nearly three decades later with his death on the tenth day of the ¤rst month of Hôei 6 (1709), opinions were similarly divided. Heavy downpours ended a long drought the very day he passed away, and continuous rain, sleet, and snow caused his funeral to be postponed . As if to in¶ict pain on the realm’s dignitaries even in death, ceremonial garments were splashed with dirt and the muddy road proved extraordinarily dangerous when Tsunayoshi’s funeral procession ¤nally made its way from Edo castle to the ancestral temple at Ueno on the twenty-second day of the ¤rst month.3 Overwhelmed by grief, some courtiers following the procession had shaven their heads and donned monk’s robes to show that their secular life had come to an end.4 In the household of the grand chamberlain Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu , Machiko, the daughter of the Kyoto noble Ôgimachi Dainagon, was to compare the late shogun to the revered king Wen of ancient China. During the thirty years of his reign, she asserted, he did not make a single mistake. He never ceased caring for his people; till late into the night he had sat bent over his books to perfect the way of government.5 Others, however, were of very different opinion. On learning of the shogun ’s death, Konoe Motohiro wrote in his diary: “Indeed, in the entire thirty years of this shogun’s government nothing good has happened. The complaints 2 Prologue of the people have increased daily. His death will be the ful¤llment of a longcherished wish for his heir in the Western enceinte who has been waiting impatiently to succeed. When this sad news reaches the provinces will people secretly rejoice? It is better not to speak about it, better not speak about it.”6 Motohiro was the father-in-law of Ienobu, Tsunayoshi’s nephew, adopted son, and successor. As a man of forty-seven, Ienobu was no doubt anxiously waiting in the wings to take over the government of the country, and Motohiro’s opinion might well have been colored by the desire to reap the bene¤ts that would come to him once his son-in-law became shogun. But he was also one of those many high-ranking men whose expectations of promotion had been shattered with the accession of the ¤fth shogun. When the rule of precedent should have guaranteed Motohiro in Kyoto the high imperial appointment of kanpaku (regent) in Tenna 2 (1682), he was passed over at the instigation of the ruler at Edo, causing Motohiro and his family enormous grief and loss of face. It took eight further years until he ¤nally obtained the coveted appointment.7 Motohiro’s wholesale condemnation of the ¤fth shogun’s thirty years of government was echoed many times over in the following decades and centuries. It also appears in the Dutch sources, where the diary of the Dutch factory at Deshima notes that “instead of mourning, there is a lot of joy at the Shogun’s death and many lampoons circulate, especially about his avariciousness.”8 The Story of the Three Kings The essence of such lampoons is contained in Sannô gaiki(The unof¤cial record of the three kings), an anonymous piece of writing that circulated around Edo soon after the short-lived government of the sixth shogun and the even briefer one of his infant son, the seventh shogun Ietsugu. Parodying the government of the last three shoguns, it reserved...