Directory_and_Chronicle_1841 — Page 333

1841:

Notices of Japan, No. X.

819

additional principalities. He obtained from Iyeyas a solemn prontise to procure the recognition of Hide-yori as siogoun, as soon as the boy should have completed his fifteenth year.

The death of Taiko-sama was the signal for the renewal by the vassal princes of their efforts to emancipate themselves from the yoke, nominally of the mikado, really of the siogoun; whilst the ambitious and treacherous Iyeyas, who had long aspired to the office he had promised to secure to his grand-daughter's husband, secretly fomented disorders so propitious to his designs. As regent for Ilide-yori, he gradually extorted higher and higher titles from the mikado; at length, he demanded and obtained that of singoun, and waged open war upon the ward to whom he was bound by so many ties, to whom he had sworn al- legiance. Hide-yori, was supported by all the Japanese Christians, whose zeal in behalf of the son of the universally admired and regretted Taiko-sama was, to say the least, warmly approved and encouraged by the Jesuits; and the re- verend Fathers had good cause to exert themselves strenuously on his side, inde- pendently even of any idea of the justice of his cause, since the young prince showed them so much favor, that they actually indulged the flattering hope of seeing him erelong openly profess Christianity, and, should he triumph, make it the established religion of Japan.

But, in 1615, Iyeyas besieged his grandchild's husband in Ohosaka castle, and took this, his rival's last remaining stronghold, as perfidiously, it is said, as he had gained the siogounship. Over the fate of Hide-yori a veil of mystery hangs. According to some accounts, after setting fire to the castle, when he found it betrayed into his enemy's hands, he perished in the flames; according to others, he effected his escape amidst the confusion caused by the conflagration, and made his way to the principal city of Satzuma, where his posterity is still believed to exist. It is certain that the princes of Satzuma are much courted by the siogoun, who seek their daughters as wives. The consort of the present singoun is a Satzuma princess.

Iyeyas, who in the progress of his usurpation had successively taken the names of Daifu-sama and Ongonchio, had now only to secure the siogounship to him- self and his posterity. For this purpose, he confirmed all the measures devised by Taiko-sama for insuring the fidelity of the princes, bestowed many confiscated principalities upon his own partisans and younger sons, and weakened all, as far as he could, by dismemberment. He deprived the mikado of even the little power that Taiko-sama had left him, reducing the absolute autocrat to the utter help. lessness and complete irremediable dependence, which have been described as the present and actual condition of the son of heaven; and, finally, he proceeded to enforce the persecution of his rival's supporters, the native Christians and foreign missionaries, which Siebold decidedly ascribes to political, not religious, motives on the part of the new Japanese potentate; and which, in the reign of his successor, resulted in the system of exclusion and seclusion still followed in Japan.

Iyeyas, upon his death, was deified by the mikado under the name of Gongen- sama; and his policy has proved successful. His posterity still hold the siogoun- ship in undisturbed tranquillity; and although evidently so degenerated from the energy, and talent of their ancestor, that they have suffered the power to fall from their own hands into that of their ministers, the change is one which they perhaps feel as gratifying to their pride as to their indolence.