MIDDLE PERIOD
sought the sanction of the Court in Kyōtō. Such an example of submissiveness had no precedent in the annals of the Tokugawa. It stood at the very antipodes of the policy advocated by Arai Hakuseki, and it should probably be regarded as a practical recognition of the doctrines advanced by the Mito school of annalists. Had the Emperor desired to bring about the fall of the Shogunate, an opportunity undoubtedly presented itself at that juncture. But the Imperial Court had learned to rely on the Tokugawa administration, and no idea of a radical change seems to have been entertained. It is impossible not to admire the spirit of Yoshimune's efforts, though their inefficacy must tend to discredit them in the pages of history.
This retrospect arrives now at the second half of the eighteenth century, and one of the facts that presents itself vividly is the disordered state of the Tokugawa finances. The trouble began in the Genroku era (1688–1703) when the Shōgun Tsunayoshi, while enacting laws of the most stringent character against extravagance of all kinds on the part of the people, set no limit whatever to the indulgence of his own costly caprices, so that the Tokugawa income of some three million koku of rice in kind, and 760,000 riyo in gold, equivalent in all to about four millions sterling, proved inadequate to defray the outlays of the Yedo Court and the administrative expenditures. The financiers of the time saw no
147
