EARLY TOKUGAWA TIMES
rated the policy of hermetically sealing the country against foreign intercourse, though in that matter he obeyed the teaching of experience rather than the suggestion of inclination. His dying behest to his son and successor showed that the people occupied a large place in his thoughts, yet he made no attempt to improve the condition of the lower orders, being apparently persuaded that poverty and hardship were their appointed lot. Neither did he devise any system for rewarding merit, hereditary titles to office and emolument ranking higher, in his opinion, than individual qualifications.
It is a curious fact that the most commendable of his measures from an ethical point of view proved the principal means of undermining the organisation he had so cleverly devised. Thinking to soften the military spirit of the age, he bestowed open-handed patronage on literature and education. But literature in those days was derived altogether from China. Japanese scholars saw nothing worthy of study beyond Confucianism. Iyeyasu himself had not read deeply. Sharing the ignorance which characterised the military class in his time, he had no perception of the true spirit of Confucian and Mencian political philosophy. He issued an order that primers of the ancient learning should be procured and studied. The order was obeyed and the various feudal chiefs hastened to emulate its spirit, so that the Zen
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