Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/123

 sterling,—a strange commentary on the doctrine of economy inculcated continually in the ordinances of the Tokugawa. Yet another point where the old habits re-asserted themselves was an attempt to transfer the administrative authority from its nominal repository, the Shōgun, to his chief minister, and the traditional analogy was completed by the intrusion of feminine intrigue into the drama. Hidetada's wife—a sister of the Taikō's celebrated mistress, Yodo, whose heroic defence of the Osaka Castle and her pitiful death have been spoken of above, bore him two sons, for the younger of whom she used all her influence to secure the succession, and the chief minister having been won over to her cause, and hoping to become himself the real repository of power, headed one of the parties into which the Shōgun's Court became divided. Thus, even before the death of Iyeyasu, his house was threatened with a repetition of the drama enacted previously in the case of every family that had climbed to administrative supremacy, a drama that would doubtless have succeeded in the case of the Tokugawa also had not Iyeyasu emerged from his retirement to defeat it.

When the boy, Iyemitsu, against whom this plot had been directed, inherited the Shōgunate, he proved himself one of the greatest of the Tokugawa, as well as one of the most masterful. Assembling all the principal feudal chiefs, he made to them this speech: "My grandfather