Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/113

 glected courtyards of the Kyōtō Palace; the corpse of an Emperor might lie uninterred for weeks through lack of money to perform the funeral rites; sovereigns might be held prisoners by haughty subjects, or compelled to abdicate at the first display of a tendency to exercise independent governing sway; but the theory of the monarch's sacrosanctity remained practically unchallenged. Even to-day, when the merciless scalpel of the critic lays open the mummy-cases of antiquity, and discloses dust and emptiness in places peopled by tradition with figures of splendid humanity, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find a Japanese writer bold enough to scrutinise the legends that environ the Throne. Side by side with such companions as constitutional government, parliamentary institutions, and freedom of speech and pen, faith in the sovereign's direct descent from heavenly ancestors seems strangely incongruous. But it still abides, and Iyeyasu had to reckon with it in his day. Trespasses upon the Imperial prerogatives had greatly helped to undermine the power of the Fujiwara, the Taira, and the Hōjō. Iyeyasu had to provide against that error in the case of himself and his descendants. He had also to provide that the sovereign should no longer be a puppet in the hands of ambitious nobles, and that insurrection against his own administrative authority should no longer be able to borrow legitimacy from an enforced semblance of Imperial sanction. These ends he