The Dog Shogun: The Personality And Policies of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi

393 Pages·2006·5.4 MB·English

by  Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey

JAPANESE HISTORY
Tsunayoshi (1646–1709), the fifth Tokugawa shogun, is one of the most no-
torious figures in Japanese history. Viewed by many as a tyrant, his policies
were demed ecentric, extreme, and unorthodox. His Laws of Compasion, the
which made the maltreatment of dogs an offense punishable by death, earned
him the nickname Dog Shogun, by which he is still popularly known today. Bodart-Bailey
However, Tsunayoshi’s rule coincides with the famed Genroku era, a period
of unprecedented cultural growth and prosperity that Japan would not experi-
DOG SHOGUN
ence again until the mid-twentieth century. It was under Tsunayoshi that for
the first time in Japanese history considerable numbers of ordinary towns-
people were in a financial position to acquire an education and enjoy many
of the amusements previously reserved for the ruling elite. The Personality
Based on a masterful reexamination of primary sources, this exciting
new work by a senior scholar of the Tokugawa period maintains that Tsuna- and Policies
yoshi’s notoriety stems largely from the work of samurai historians and offi-
cials who saw their privileges challenged by a ruler sympathetic to commoners.
Beatrice Bodart-Bailey’s insightful analysis of Tsunayoshi’s background sheds of Tokugawa
new light on his personality and the policies associated with his shogunate.
Tsunayoshi was the fourth son of Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604–1651) and was Tsunayoshi
left largely in the care of his mother, the daughter of a greengrocer. Under her
influence, Bodart-Bailey argues, the future ruler rebelled against the values of
his class. As evidence she cites the fact that, as shogun, Tsunayoshi not only
decreed the registration of dogs, which were kept in large numbers by samu-
rai and posed a threat to the populace, but also the registration of pregnant
women and young children to prevent infanticide. He decreed, moreover, that
officials take on the onerous tasks of finding homes for abandoned children
and caring for sick travelers.
In the eyes of his detractors, Tsunayoshi’s interest in Confucian and
Buddhist studies and his other intellectual pursuits were merely distractions
for a dilettante. Bodart-Bailey counters that view by pointing out that one of
Japan’s most important political philosophers, Ogyû Sorai, learned his craft
under the fifth shogun. Sorai not only praised Tsunayoshi’s government, but
his writings constitute the theoretical framework for many of the ruler’s con-
troversial policies. Another salutary aspect of Tsunayoshi’s leadership that
Bodart-Bailey brings to light is his role in preventing the famines and riots that
would have undoubtedly taken place following the worst earthquake and tsu-
nami as well as the most violent eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan’s history—all
of which occurred during the final years of Tsunayoshi’s shogunate.
Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey is professor of Japanese history and a founding
member of the Department of Comparative Culture, Otsuma Women’s Uni-
versity, Tokyo.
Cover art: Portrait of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, reproduced courtesy of Hasedera, Nara.
Cover design by Santos Barbasa Jr. ISBN-13: 978-0-8248-3030-4
ISBN-10: 0-8248-3030-X
University of Hawai‘i Press
Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey
Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888
www.uhpress.hawaii.edu
the
DOG SHOGUN
The Dog Shogun
Portrait of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, reproduced courtesy of Hasedera,
Nara. The box containing the portrait scroll has the name of the monk
Ryûkei (1647–1717) written in black ink; hence the painting is
believed to be contemporaneous.
The Dog Shogun
The Personality and Policies
of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi
Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey
University of Hawai‘i Press • Honolulu
© 2006 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
11 10 09 08 07 06 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bodart-Bailey, Beatrice M.
The dog shogun : the personality and policies of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi / Beatrice
M. Bodart-Bailey.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8248-2978-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8248-2978-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8248-3030-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8248-3030-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Tokugawa, Tsunayoshi, 1646–1709. 2. Shoguns—Biography. 3. Japan—
Politics and government—1600–1868. I. Title.
DS872.T634B63 2006
952'.025092—dc22
2005036471
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free
paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by Lucie Aono
Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
To my daughter Mia
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Conventions xi
1 Prologue 1
2 The Inheritance 10
3 When a Child’s Nurse Ought to Be Male 21
4 Lord of Tatebayashi 37
5 Confucian Governance 50
6 A Great and Excellent Lord 69
7 The First Year of Government 79
8 The Rise and Fall of Hotta Masatoshi 90
9 The Shogun’s New Men 103
10 The Laws of Compassion 128
11 The Dog Shogun 144
12 The Forty-Seven Loyal Samurai 161
13 Financial Matters 183
14 Producing Currency 197
15 The Two Wheels of a Cart 207
16 The Apprenticeship of Ogyû Sorai 230
17 The Final Years 255
18 The Legacy 278
Abbreviations 299
Notes 301
Glossary 345
Bibliography 351
Index 371
vii
Acknowledgments
My research on the policies of the ¤fth shogun Tsunayoshi began when Syd
Crawcour, then Professor of the Department of Far Eastern History, Research
School of Paci¤c Studies of the Australian National University, suggested that I
write a Ph.D. thesis on the political signi¤cance of the Grand Chamberlain
Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu. It soon became apparent to me that Yoshiyasu’s greatest
political signi¤cance lay in faithfully executing the policies of the ¤fth shogun,
and a signi¤cant part of my thesis dealt with these policies. Since this was some
twenty-¤ve years ago, the list of people I need to thank is long, and it will be
impossible to mention all.
However, I do want to express my warm gratitude to my two thesis super-
visors, Syd Crawcour and Andrew Fraser. They not only ensured successful
completion of the thesis but also set me on the right path for future research.
Further, they invited Japanese historians to Canberra from whose scholarship
and support I pro¤ted greatly at the time and also on many occasions in Japan
since. I am particularly indebted in this respect to Banno Junji, Kamiki Tetsuo,
and Tsuji Tatsuya (in alphabetical order, here as elsewhere). Tom Harper helped
with my ¤rst attempts at reading Matsukage nikki, the late Eugene Kamenka
with Max Weber.
My warm gratitude goes to the late Julia Ching, for help with kanbun
texts but even more important for being a caring friend and an inspiration and
model with her hard work and determination from the very beginning of my
studies in Australia.
Personal and teaching commitments meant that only sections of my thesis
were published as articles. When I returned to full-time research, work on the
documents of Engelbert Kaempfer occupied an unexpectedly long period. I
would not advise young scholars to embark on a different topic before publish-
ing their Ph.D. thesis as a book, but the research necessary to interpret
Kaempfer’s account of Japan greatly deepened my understanding of the period.
Consequently those individuals and institutions whose assistance I acknowledge
in Kaempfer’s Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed also need to be thanked here.
The detailed research that increasingly emboldened me to challenge es-
tablished opinion, however, would have been dif¤cult without living in Japan
ix