EARLY TOKUGAWA TIMES
But while he seemed to be organising a feudal system, Iyeyasu made every effort, at the same time, to paralyse the strength of the feudatories. Without the Shōgun's permission they were forbidden to contract marriages, to build castles, to construct large ships, to make warlike preparations, or to found temples. A strict veto was also imposed on the passage of vassals from the service of one feudatory into that of another, and it was enacted that each feudal chief must spend a part of every second year in Yedo, and must leave his sons there always as hostages for his own fealty. The provision with regard to the sons was abolished in the middle of the seventeenth century, but not until 1862 did the obligation imposed on the feudatories themselves undergo any relaxation.
The effect of this system—Sankin Kōtai, as it was called—upon the prosperity and embellishment of Yedo, as well as upon the supremacy of the Tokugawa administration and the allegiance of the military nobles, is easily conceived. Not merely were the territorial chiefs thus brought into constant contact with the head of the government through whose grace they held their fiefs; not merely did their attendance in Yedo constitute a sign of their allegiance,—a sign that could be unerringly interpreted,—but Yedo itself became their capital. There they had to take their places and preserve their state among their peers, and the magnificent mansions that
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