Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/120

 doctrines of Buddhism, which contributed so much to the development of the heroic and the sentimental, and were therefore favourable to the stability of military feudalism, gradually gave place to a theory that the only legitimate ruler was heaven-appointed; that the good of the people should be the first object of administration, and that to fail in achieving that good was to forfeit the title of administrator. Before the Tokugawa chief died he had himself imbibed something of this philosophy, and it was perhaps because he foresaw the tendency of the Chinese learning he had thus encouraged that, on his death-bed, he enjoined upon his successor the duty of taking care of the people before all things. He had unwittingly sown the seeds of a new revolution.

The continuity of historical repetition is especially marked in the case of Japan, where the same influences, undisturbed by any invasion of foreign ideas, remained in operation from generation to generation. The families of the Fugiwara, the Taira, and the Saionji had each in turn sought to perpetuate its power by furnishing a consort for the sovereign. The Tokugawa's impulse was to adopt the same device. A daughter of the second Shōgun, Hidetada, became Empress. It is recorded that eleven hundred and eighty chests were required to carry her trousseau, and that the costs of her outfit and of her journey to Kyōtō aggregated more than a million pounds