THE MILITARY EPOCH
Shōgun also, partly because he had a parvenu's love of rank, partly because he deemed such distinctions essential to the efficient exercise of governing power. But the social canon which restricted the Shōgunate to a prince of the blood or a descendant of the Minamoto family, could not be set aside even in favour of a Hideyoshi.[1] Thus his career, beginning in hopeless obscurity and culminating in practical headship of the Empire, implies a complete overthrow of the old barriers of caste and precedent, yet it also indicates the existence of a limit beyond which no ambition might soar. There were, in fact, two thrones in Japan, the throne occupied by the "Child of Heaven" (Tenshi) and the throne occupied by the feudal sovereign, the Shōgun, and the occupancy of the former was not more strictly confined to the lineal descendants of Jimmu than was the occupancy of the latter to a scion of the Minamoto.
Not suffering from the defect that disqualified Hideyoshi for the Shōgunate, and succeeding to the fruits of Hideyoshi's genius, Iyeyasu, the Tokugawa chief, was able to organise a feudal government that lasted for two and a half centuries, whereas the Taikō's sway may be said to have died with himself. Iyeyasu and his achievements, however, must be spoken of independently.
Upon the story of the military epoch one trait of Japanese character is indelibly impressed, a
- ↑ See Appendix, note 7.
37
