Chapter III
THE EARLY TOKUGAWA TIMES
The two greatest figures of mediæval Japan, if not the two greatest in her whole history, are Hideyoshi, the Taikō, and Tokugawa Iyeyasu. Contemporaries and therefore rivals, as was inevitable under the circumstances of their era, that they avoided fatal collision must be counted one of the clearest evidences of their astuteness. They did once meet in battle, and the Taikō, for all his military genius, suffered defeat. But thereafter they lived in concord, and the Tokugawa chief, surviving Hideyoshi and becoming the administrative head of the nation, organised a system of government which gave to the country two and a half centuries of tranquillity. Iyeyasu, had he respected his pledges, should have applied himself to secure to the Taikō's son, Hideyori, the supreme place won by Hideyoshi's genius. But the ethics of the age did not require any such sacrifice of personal ambition. The Tokugawa chief not only crushed the man he had promised to support, but deliberately contrived an oppor-
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