Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/116

 which, bearing the signatures of the Tokugawa chief and the Regent (Kwampaku)—the latter acting as the sovereign's representative—made provision for everything relating to the Imperial Court; and the remaining eighteen, which had the signature of Iyeyasu only, contained general administrative rules.

Having thus placed the relations of the Shōgun's administration and the Imperial Court on a clear basis, and having secured for the former virtually autocratic authority while leaving the latter's dignity nominally undisturbed, Iyeyasu took the map of feudal Japan and reconstructed it. Like everything really great, his principle of procedure was simple. Wherever risk could be discerned of coalitions hostile to his house, he inserted a wedge formed of his own partisans. Two hundred and thirty-seven military nobles held practically the whole of Japan in fief. One hundred and fifteen of these were Tokugawa vassals; men who owed their ranks and estates to his favour, and on whose fidelity it should have been possible to rely implicitly. He wove these two hundred and thirty-seven fiefs into a pattern such that one of the hundred and fifteen loyal threads always had a place between any two of the remainder whose fealty was doubtful or their revolt probable. Thus he bequeathed to his descendants a congeries of principalities so arranged as to offer automatic resistance to rebellion or anarchy.