was the eighth shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan
, ruling from 1716 until his abdication in 1745. He was the son of Tokugawa Mitsusada, the grandson of Tokugawa Yorinobu, and the great-grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Lineage
Yoshimune was not the son of any former shogun. Rather, he was a
member of a
cadet branch of the
Tokugawa clan. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the
founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, well aware of the extinction of
the
Minamoto line in 1219, had
realized that his descendants might die out, leaving the Tokugawa
family at risk of extinction. Thus, while his son
Tokugawa Hidetada was the second shogun,
he selected three other sons to establish the
gosanke, hereditary houses which would provide
a shogun if there were no male heir. The three
gosanke were the
Owari,
Kii, and
Mito branches.
Yoshimune was from the branch of Kii. The founder of the Kii house
was one of Tokugawa Ieyasu's sons,
Tokugawa Yorinobu. Ieyasu appointed him
daimyo of Kii. Yorinobu's son,
Tokugawa Mitsusada, succeeded him. Two of
Mitsusada's sons succeeded him, and when they died, Tokugawa
Yoshimune, Mitsusada's fourth son, became daimyo of Kii in 1705.
Later, he became shogun.
Yoshimune was closely related to the Tokugawa shoguns. His
grandfather, Tokugawa Yorinobu, was a brother of second shogun
Tokugawa Hidetada, while
Yoshimune's father, Tokugawa Mitsusada, was a first cousin of third
shogun
Tokugawa Iemitsu. Yoshimune
thus was a second cousin to the fourth and fifth shoguns (both
brothers)
Tokugawa Ietsuna and
Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, as well as
a second cousin to
Tokugawa
Tsunashige, whose son became Shogun
Tokugawa Ienobu.
Early life (1684–1716)
Tokugawa Yoshimune was born in 1684 in the rich region of Kii, a
region which was then ruled by his father, Tokugawa Mitsusada.
Yoshimune's childhood name was Tokugawa Genroku. At that time, his
second cousin
Tokugawa
Tsunayoshi was ruling in Edo as shogun. Kii was a rich region
of over 500,000
koku, but it was still
in debt. Even during Mitsusada's time, Kii was in deep debt and had
a lot to pay back to the shogunate.
In 1697, Genroku underwent the rites of passage and took the name
Tokugawa Shinnosuke. In 1705, when Shinnosuke was just 21 years
old, his father Mitsusada and two older brothers died. Thus, the
ruling shogun
Tokugawa Ienobu
appointed him daimyo of Kii. He took the name Tokugawa Yorikata and
began to administer the province. Nonetheless, great financial debt
which the domain had owed to the shogunate since his father's and
even grandfather's time continued to burden the finances. What made
things worse was that in 1707, a
tsunami
destroyed and killed many in the coastal areas of Kii Province.
Yorikata did his best to try to stabilize things in Kii, but relied
on leadership from Edo.
In 1712, Shogun Ienobu died, and was succeeded by his son, the
boy-shogun
Tokugawa Ietsugu. Now,
Yorikata decided that he could not rely on the conservative
Confucianists like
Arai Hakuseki in
Edo and must do his best to stabilize things in Kii. But before he
could plan things in effect, Shogun Ietsugu died in early 1716. He
was only seven years old, and died without an heir. The other
children of the late Shogun Ienobu were too young to rule, thus it
was decided by the shogunate to select the next shogun from one of
the cadet lines.
Shogun Yoshimune (1716-1745)
Yoshimune succeeded to the post of the shogun in Shōtoku 1 (1716).
His term of his shogunate would last for 30 years.
Yoshimune is today considered the best of the Tokugawa
shoguns.
Yoshimune established the
gosankyo
to augment (or perhaps to replace) the
gosanke. Two of his sons, together with the
second son of his successor Ieshige, became the founders of the
Tayasu, Hitotsubashi and Shimizu lines. Unlike the
gosanke, they did not rule
domains. Still, they remained
prominent until the end of Tokugawa rule, and some later shoguns
were chosen from the Hitotsubashi line.
Yoshimune is known for his financial reforms. He dismissed the
conservative adviser
Arai Hakuseki and
he began what would come to be known as the
Kyōhō Reforms.
Although foreign books had been strictly forbidden since 1640,
Yoshimune relaxed the rules in 1720, starting an influx of foreign
books and their translations into Japan, and initiating the
development of Western studies, or
rangaku.
In 1745, Yoshimune retired, taking the title
Ōgosho and
leaving his public post to his oldest son. The title is the one
that Tokugawa Ieyasu had taken on retiring in favor of his son
Hidetada, who in turn took the same title on retirement.
Yoshimune died in on the 20th day of the 5th month of the year
Kan'en 4.
Eras of Yoshimune's rule
The years in which Yoshimune was shogun are more specifically
identified by more than one
era
name or
nengō.
In popular media
Tokugawa Yoshimune was the central character of the long-running
television series
Abarenbo Shogun.
This
jidaigeki included a few
factual aspects of the career of Yoshimune, although the program
was mostly fiction.
The 1995
Taiga drama Hachidai Shogun
Yoshimune portrayed the life of Yoshimune in the NHK
Sunday
prime time slot. Toshiyuki Nishida portrayed the adult
Yoshimune in the
James Miki series.
On January
2, 2008, the annual TV
Tokyo
jidaigeki spectacular Tokugawa Fūun-roku chronicles
events in the life of Yoshimune.
Notes
- Titsingh, Isaac. (1834). Annales des empereurs du
Japon, p. 417.
- Screech, T. (2006). Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac
Titsingh and Japan, 1779-1822. pp. 99, 238.
- Screech, p. 128.
References
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