Tokugawa Iemitsu

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In this Japanese name, the surname is Tokugawa.
Senior First Rank
Tokugawa Iemitsu
Shōgun
In office
1623–1651
Monarchs
Preceded byTokugawa Hidetada
Succeeded byTokugawa Ietsuna
Personal details
Born(1604-08-12)August 12, 1604
Edo, Tokugawa shogunate
(now Tokyo, Japan)
DiedJune 8, 1651(1651-06-08) (aged 46)
Edo, Tokugawa shogunate
Children
Parents
Signature

Tokugawa Iemitsu (徳川 家光, August 12, 1604 – June 8, 1651) was the third shōgun of the Tokugawa dynasty. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Hidetada with Oeyo, and the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Lady Kasuga was his wet nurse, who acted as his political adviser and was at the forefront of shogunate negotiations with the Imperial court. Iemitsu ruled from 1623 to 1651; during this period he crucified Christians, expelled all Europeans from Japan and closed the borders of the country, a foreign politics policy that continued for over 200 years after its institution. It is debatable whether Iemitsu can be considered a kinslayer for making his younger brother Tadanaga commit suicide by seppuku.

Early life (1604–1617)[edit]

Tokugawa Iemitsu was born on 12 August 1604. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Hidetada and grandson of the last great unifier of Japan, the first Tokugawa shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu.[1] He was the first member of the Tokugawa family born after Tokugawa Ieyasu became shōgun. (There was some rumour said that he was not Hidetada's son but Ieyasu's son with Kasuga no Tsubone).

Not much is known of Iemitsu's early life; his childhood name was Takechiyo (竹千代). He had two sisters, Senhime and Masako, and a brother, who would become a rival, Tadanaga. Tadanaga was his parents' favorite. However, Ieyasu made it clear that Iemitsu would be next in line as shōgun after Hidetada.

An obsolete spelling of his given name is Iyemitsu.

Family[edit]

Parents

Consorts and issue:

  • Wife: Takatsukasa Takako (1622–1683) later Honriin, Takatsukasa Nobufusa's daughter
  • Concubine: Ofuri no Kata (d. 1640) later Jishōin (自証院)
    • Chiyohime (千代姫, 29 April 1637 – 10 January 1699), first daughter
  • Concubine: Oraku no Kata (1621–1653) later Hōjuin (宝樹院), Aoki Toshinaga's daughter (青木利長娘)
  • Concubine: Omasa no Kata (おまさの方)
    • Tokugawa Kamematsu (17 April 1643– 2 September 1647), second son
  • Concubine: Onatsu no Kata (順性院; 1622-1683) later Junshōin (順性院), Fujieda Shigeya's daughter (藤枝重家娘)
  • Concubine: Otama no Kata (1627–1705) later Keishoin (桂昌院), Honjo Sonsei's daughter (本庄宗正)
  • Concubine: Orisa no Kata (d. 1674) later Jokoin (定光院)
    • Tokugawa Tsurumatsu (1 February 1647 – 22 August 1648), fifth son
  • Concubine: Oman no Kata (1624–1711) later Eikoin (永光院)
  • Concubine: Okoto no Kata (1614-1691) later Hoshin'in (芳心院)

Adopted Daughters:

Tokugawa heir (1617–1623)[edit]

Iemitsu came of age in 1617 and dropped his childhood name in favor of Tokugawa Iemitsu. He also was installed officially as the heir to the Tokugawa shogunate. The only person to contest this position was his younger brother Tokugawa Tadanaga. A fierce rivalry began to develop between the brothers.

From an early age Iemitsu practiced the shūdō tradition. However, in 1620, he had a falling out with his homosexual lover, Sakabe Gozaemon, a childhood friend and retainer, aged twenty-one, and murdered him as they shared a bathtub.[2]

He married Takatsukasa Takako, daughter of Takatsukasa Nobufusa at 12 December 1623. His relationship with Takako was good but Takako had three miscarriages.

Shogunal regency (1623–1632)[edit]

In 1623, when Iemitsu was nineteen, Hidetada abdicated the post of shōgun in his favor. Hidetada continued to rule as Ōgosho (retired shōgun), but Iemitsu nevertheless assumed a role as formal head of the bakufu bureaucracy.[3]

In 1626, shōgun Iemitsu and retired shōgun Hidetada visited Emperor Go-Mizunoo, Empress Masako (Hidetada's daughter and Iemitsu's sister), and Imperial Princess Meishō in Kyoto. Shōgun Iemitsu made lavish grants of gold and money to the court nobles and the court itself. Yet relations with Go-Mizunoo deteriorated after the Purple Robe Incident (紫衣事件, shi-e jiken), during which the Emperor was accused of having bestowed honorific purple garments to more than ten priests despite an edict which banned them for two years (probably in order to break the bond between the Emperor and religious circles). The shogunate intervened, making the bestowing of the garments invalid. When Lady Kasuga and Masako broke a taboo by visiting the imperial court as a commoner, Go-Mizunoo abdicated, embarrassed, and Meisho became empress. The shōgun was now the uncle of the sitting monarch.

In Kan'ei 9, on the 24th day of the 2nd month (1632), Ōgosho Hidetada died,[4] and Iemitsu could assume real power. Worried that his brother Tokugawa Tadanaga might assassinate him, however, he ruled carefully until his brother's death by seppuku in 1633.

Shōgun (1632–1651)[edit]

Hidetada left his advisors, all veteran daimyōs, to act as regents for Iemitsu. In 1633, after his brother's death, Iemitsu dismissed these men. In place of his father's advisors, Iemitsu appointed his childhood friends. With their help Iemitsu created a strong, centralized administration. This made him unpopular with many daimyōs, but Iemitsu simply removed his opponents.

His sankin-kōtai system forced daimyōs to reside in Edo in alternating sequence, spending a certain amount of time in Edo, and a certain amount of time in their home provinces. It is often said that one of the key goals of this policy was to prevent the daimyōs from amassing too much wealth or power by separating them from their home provinces, and by forcing them to regularly devote a sizable sum to funding the immense travel expenses associated with the journey (along with a large entourage) to and from Edo. The system also involved the daimyōs' wives and heirs remaining in Edo, disconnected from their lord and from their home province, serving essentially as hostages who might be harmed or killed if the daimyōs were to plot rebellion against the shogunate.[5]

Anti-Europeanization edicts[edit]

Main article: Sakoku

The century-long presence of Catholic traders and missionaries in Japan ended in the 1630s when Iemitsu ordered the expulsion of nearly every European from the country. European access to trade relations with Japan was restricted to one Dutch ship each year. Iemitsu's policies on this matter were reinforced after the execution of two Portuguese men who came to plead for the re-establishment of Japan's earlier foreign trade policy. By the end of the 1630s, Iemitsu had issued a series of edicts more extensively detailing a system of restrictions on the flow of people, goods, and information in and out of the country.

Over the course of the 1630s, Iemitsu issued a series of edicts restricting Japan's dealings with the outside world. The most famous of those edicts was the so-called Sakoku Edict of 1635, which contained the main restrictions introduced by Iemitsu. With it, he forbade every Japanese ship and person to travel to another country, or to return to Japanese shores. The punishment for violation was death. Japanese, who had since the 1590s traveled extensively in East and Southeast Asia (and, in rare instances, much farther afield), were now forbidden from leaving the country or returning, under pain of death.

The edict offered lavish gifts and awards for anyone who could provide information about priests and their followers who secretly practiced and spread their religion across the country. Furthermore, every newly arrived ship was required to be thoroughly examined for Catholic priests and followers. The document pays extremely close attention to every detail regarding incoming foreign ships. For example, merchants coming from abroad had to submit a list of the goods they were bringing with them before being granted permission to trade. Additional provisions specified details of the timing and logistics of trade. For example, one clause declares that the "date of departure homeward for foreign ships shall not be later than the twentieth day of the ninth month". In addition to this, Iemitsu forbade alterations of the set price for raw silk and thus made sure that competition between trading cities was brought to a minimum.

In 1637, an armed revolt arose against Iemitsu's anti-Christian policies in Shimabara, but there were other reasons involved, such as overly-high taxation and cruel treatment of peasants by the local lord. The period domestic unrest is known as the Shimabara Rebellion.[1] Thousands were killed in the shogunate's suppression of the revolt and countless more were executed afterwards.[6] The fact that many of the rebels were Christians was used by the Bakufu as a convenient pretext for expelling the Portuguese and restricting the Dutch East India Company to Dejima in Nagasaki.

Following the edicts, Japan remained very much connected to international commerce, information, and cultural exchange, though only through four avenues. Nagasaki was the center of trade and other dealings with the Dutch East India Company, and with independent Chinese merchants. Satsuma Domain controlled relations with the Ryūkyū Kingdom (and through Ryūkyū, had access to Chinese goods and information, as well as products from further afield through alternative trade routes that passed through Ryūkyū), while Tsushima Domain handled diplomatic and trade relations with Joseon-dynasty Korea, and Matsumae Domain managed communications with the Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, as well as limited communication with related peoples on the mainland close to Sakhalin. Japan in this period has often been described as "closed", or under sakoku (鎖国, "chained country"), but since the 1980s, if not earlier, scholars have argued for the use of terms such as 'kaikin" (海禁, "maritime restrictions"), emphasizing the fact that Japan was not "closed" to the outside world, but was in fact very actively engaged with the outside world, albeit through a limited set of avenues.[7] However, the measures Iemitsu enacted were so powerful that it was not until the 1850s that Japanese ports opened to a wider range of trading partners, Westerners were free to settle and travel within Japan, and Japanese were once more free to travel overseas.

Relations with Imperial court[edit]

In 1643 Empress Meisho abdicated the throne. She was succeeded by her younger half-brother (Go-Mizunoo's son by a consort) Emperor Go-Kōmyō, who disliked the shogunate for its violent and barbaric ways. He repeatedly made insulting comments about Iemitsu and his eldest son and heir, Tokugawa Ietsuna.

Death[edit]

In 1651 shōgun Iemitsu died at the age of 47, being the first Tokugawa shōgun whose reign ended with death and not abdication. He was accorded a posthumous name of Taiyūin,[1] also known as Daiyūin (大猷院) and buried in Taiyu-in Temple, Nikko.[8] Iemitsu had expanded Nikkō Tōshō-gū prior to his death, but was careful to avoid iconography for his mausoleum that could be seen as surpassing that of his grandfather.[9] He was succeeded by his eldest son and heir, Tokugawa Ietsuna.

Honours[edit]

Eras of Iemitsu's bakufu[edit]

The years in which Iemitsu was shōgun are more specifically identified by more than one era name or nengō.[10]

Ancestry[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Tokugawa, Iemitsu" in Japan Encyclopedia, pp. 976-977, p. 976, at Google Books; n.b., Louis-Frédéric is pseudonym of Louis-Frédéric Nussbaum, see Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Authority File Archived 2012-05-24 at archive.today.
  2. ^ Louis Crompton, Homosexuality p. 439
  3. ^ Titsingh, J. (1834). Annales des empereurs du Japon, p. 410.
  4. ^ Titsingh, p. 411.
  5. ^ Vaporis, Constantine. Tour of Duty. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008.
  6. ^ Screech, T. (2006). Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779–1822. p. 85.
  7. ^ Arano, Yasunori. "The Entrenchment of the Concept of "National Seclusion". Acta Asiatica 67 (1994). pp. 83–103.
    Arano, Yasunori. Sakoku wo minaosu 「鎖国」を見直す. Kawasaki: Kawasaki Shimin Academy, 2003.
    Kato, Eiichi. "Research Trends in the Study of the History of Japanese Foreign Relations at the Start of the Early Modern Period: On the Reexamination of 'National Seclusion' – From the 1970's to 1990's." Acta Asiatica 67 (1994). pp. 1–29.
    Tashiro, Kazui and Susan D. Videen. "Foreign Relations during the Edo Period: Sakoku Reexamined". Journal of Japanese Studies 8:2 (1982). pp. 283–306.
    Toby, Ronald. "Reopening the Question of Sakoku: Diplomacy in the Legitimation of the Tokugawa Bakufu", Journal of Japanese Studies 3:2 (1977). pp. 323–363.
  8. ^ Bodart-Bailey, Beatrice. (1999). Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed, p. 440.
  9. ^ Mausoleum of Tokugawa Iemitsu (Historical marker). Nikkō Tōshō-gū: Nikkō Tōshō-gū. 2023.
  10. ^ Titsingh, pp. 410–412.
  11. ^ "Genealogy". Reichsarchiv (in Japanese). Retrieved 4 July 2018.

References[edit]

Military offices
Preceded by Shōgun:
Tokugawa Iemitsu
1623–1651 		Succeeded by
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