Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/112

Rh tunity for crushing him, and posterity does not count the act a crime.

Campaigns, battles, and political intrigues do not find a place in these volumes; else there would be much to tell about the events which raised the Tokugawa to supremacy. A pathetic figure lends special interest to the last act of the drama; the figure of the beautiful Yodo, the Taikō's favourite mistress and mother of the lad to whom he vainly bequeathed the fruits of his splendid victories and still more brilliant statesmanship. Left a widow at twenty-two, Yodo devoted herself uniquely to her son's cause, and in the final fight, when she and he, shut up in the castle of Osaka, had been refused quarter by Iyeyasu and saw death coming steadily closer, the lady and her band of handmaidens did soldier's service, and at the supreme moment died by their own hands.

Iyeyasu then stood without a rival in the whole Empire. To other leaders opportunities equally great had presented themselves, but to utilise them as he utilised them required a genius for organisation which he alone seems to have possessed, and a power of analysing the lessons of history which few have equalled.

The first problem to be considered was the position of the Emperor. It has been shown in these pages that the doctrine of the Mikado's divine descent survived all the vicissitudes of Imperial life. Weeds might flourish in the ne-