EARLY TOKUGAWA TIMES
the Throne if he were not permitted to reward even a monk; and soon afterwards he did actually abdicate, after having been obliged to grant audience to the Shōgun's nurse.[1]
Thus early in the history of the Tokugawa administration a collision between the two Courts of Kyōtō and Yedo seemed imminent. But Iyemitsu averted the peril with characteristic vigour. He repaired to Kyōtō with a retinue of thirty-five thousand men-at-arms, raised the revenue of the Imperial Household from three thousand koku of rice (about as many sovereigns) to ten thousand koku, and distributed a hundred and twenty thousand riyo (appropriately one hundred and ninety-two thousand sovereigns) among the Court officials. He appears to have realised, even more clearly than his grandfather, Iyeyasu, that the stability of the Shōgunate system depended on the absolutism of its administration, and it will be seen presently that the system fell owing to the failure of his successors to follow his autocratic example.
But however large his conception of governing authority, he seems to have been, like his grandfather, entirely without ambition that his country should figure prominently on the stage of the world. He made no attempt to take advantage of the victories won in Siam by his nationals, Yamada Jinzayemon and Tsuda Matazayemon. He rejected renewed applications for
- ↑ See Appendix, note 24.
99
