Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/28

 thought only of stifling the Court in an atmosphere of effeminacy and stagnation, and it cannot be doubted that had their policy been resolutely followed by later Shōguns, Imperialism would have lost every effective attribute of majesty. By way of further provision against disturbing contingencies, they established a Prince of the Blood as abbot of the magnificent temple built by Iyemitsu on the northeast of Yedo. In that they followed the example of the Hōjō, who had contrived that the office of Shōgun in Kamakura should be nominally held by a Prince available at any moment as an alternative sovereign, and had they needed a precedent for consummating the drama, they would have found it in the procedure of the Ashikaga who set up the Northern Court to legitimatise their own usurpation.

As in the case of the Throne so in that of the Shogunate, the privilege of supplying an heir in the event of failure in the direct line was limited to three houses (go-sanke)—Owari, Kii, and Mito—to which were subsequently added three others—Tayasu, Hitotsubashi, and Shimizu. The Ashikaga ruler Yoshimitsu had been the first to ape Imperialism in this matter. He accurately copied the organisation of the Kyōtō Court, nominating two groups of five and seven families, to which he assigned the same titles and the same offices in his own administration as those belonging to the sekke and the seiga in the