The Last Shogun by Ryotaro Shiba

Author:Ryotaro Shiba [Shiba, Ryotaro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kodansha USA
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

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With his second return to Kyoto, Keiki sought to establish absolute authority over the political world, with the court, the nobles, and the daimyo all in his control. There seemed no other way to disentangle the chaos.

Soon after arriving, Keiki moved out of the Higashi Hongan-ji and into an empty house belonging to the Sakai of Wakasa. To his new, more permanent quarters he summoned for frequent conference his three ever-faithful cronies Matsudaira Shungaku of Echizen, Date Munenari of Uwajima, and Shimazu Hisamitsu, the regent lord of Satsuma. Yamanouchi Yodo of Tosa was another of their number, but he was a man of shifting and unpredictable moods whose appearances were rare.

“Let’s call these the ‘meetings at the home of the shogunal guardian,’ ” suggested Keiki.

Each of the men assembled there was leader of a great domain; no other members of the military elite were as well versed in the affairs of the realm as they. Keiki sought to use these meetings to forge a political nexus with which to oversee both the court and the bakufu. And yet they were all four of them stubborn and willful men. There was immediate discord. Even Shungaku, the most easygoing among them, had begun to harbor doubts about Keiki.

“Does he think that ingenuity alone is enough to rule the country?” he grumbled. “He comes up with too many devious plans; you can never take the man at his word.”

Keiki, for his part, had never placed any faith in Shimazu Hisamitsu. Satsuma intended to use the power of the court to abolish the Tokugawa bakufu and set up a government of its own, he suspected. It was the suspicion harbored by every member of the bakufu, one that went a long way to explain the political maneuverings of the Satsuma loyalists. At the moment, they had the court in their pocket. The emperor’s three most trusted aides (Prince Nakagawa, former regent Konoe Tadahiro, and Regent Nijo Nariyuki) were virtual puppets of Satsuma, which paid the bulk of their living expenses—and those had lately undergone a dramatic surge. Satsuma’s vast outpouring of energy, money, and grain on Kyoto was certainly uncommon. Before long, the “meetings at the home of the shogunal guardian” broke off due to internal dissension, while Satsuma Hisamitsu and his followers were preaching to the emperor and the nobles, beginning to make them unlikely converts to throwing open the doors of Japan.

At first Keiki was unaware of this development. He took occasion one day to tell senior councillor Sakai Tadashige and other bakufu officials, “ridding the country of foreigners is no longer a viable option. Rather than allow a rift between the court and the bakufu based on such an unenforceable policy, why not issue an unequivocal order now for opening the country?”

No one responded.

“Why are you silent?” Keiki was incredulous. Suffering under constant pressure from foreign countries as they were, the cabinet members would be quick to see the merit of his plan, he had assumed.

Finally Sakai spoke up: “Sir,

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