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12 August 1604 – 8 June 1651 was the third shōgun of the Tokugawa dynasty. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Hidetada with Oeyo, and the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Lady Kasuga was his wet nurse, who acted as his political adviser and was at the forefront of shogunate negotiations with the Imperial court. Iemitsu ruled from 1623 to 1651; during this period he crucified Christians, expelled all Europeans from Japan and closed the borders of the country, a foreign policy that continued for over 200 years after its institution.
Not much is known of Iemitsu's early life; his childhood name was Takechiyo (竹千代). He had two sisters, Senhime and Tokugawa Masako, and a brother, who would become a rival, Tadanaga. Tadanaga was his parents' favorite. However, Ieyasu made it clear that Iemitsu would be next in line as shōgun after Hidetada.
He was said to have been sickly from birth.
An obsolete spelling of his given name is Iyemitsu.
Adopted Daughters:
From an early age Iemitsu practiced the shūdō tradition. However, in 1620, he had a falling out with his homosexual lover, Sakabe Gozaemon, a childhood friend and retainer, aged twenty-one, and murdered him as they shared a bathtub.
He married Takatsukasa Takako, daughter of Takatsukasa Nobufusa at 12 December 1623. His relationship with Takako was good but Takako had three miscarriages.
In 1626, shōgun Iemitsu and retired shōgun Hidetada visited Emperor Go-Mizunoo, Empress Tokugawa Masako (Hidetada's daughter and Iemitsu's sister), and Imperial Princess Meishō in Kyoto. Shōgun Iemitsu made lavish grants of gold and money to the court nobles and the court itself. Yet relations with Go-Mizunoo deteriorated after the shi-e jiken, during which the Emperor was accused of having bestowed honorific purple garments to more than ten priests despite an edict which banned them for two years (probably in order to break the bond between the Emperor and religious circles). The shogunate intervened, making the bestowing of the garments invalid. When Lady Kasuga and Masako broke a taboo by visiting the imperial court as a commoner, Go-Mizunoo abdicated, embarrassed, and Meisho became empress. The shōgun was now the uncle of the sitting monarch.
In 1629, the government banned the practice of kabuki due to samurai fighting over female performers, leading to the practice of wakashu kabuki, in which young boys performed the roles instead. This attracted the attention of Iemitsu, who was known for his pederasty. In 1652, one year after Iemitsu's death, wakashu kabuki was banned, also due to samurai fighting over the performers; Iemitsu's enjoyment of it helped to postpone its ban until after his death.
In Kan'ei 9, on the 24th day of the 2nd month (1632), Ōgosho Hidetada died,Titsingh, p. 411. and Iemitsu could assume real power. Worried that his brother Tokugawa Tadanaga might assassinate him, however, he ruled carefully until his brother's death by seppuku in 1633.
In 1635, Iemitsu issued the second version of the buke shohatto, a collection of edicts dictating the powers and responsibilities of the daimyō. The original version had first been promulgated in 1615 under Hidedata. Iemitsu expanded the edicts to define the relationship between the Han system, the feudal domains of the daimyō, and the shogunate, increasing the number of edicts from thirteen to twenty-one. These new edicts further restricted the powers of the daimyō, preventing them from interfering with highways that entered their domains, constructing barriers, imposing embargoes, or building ships larger than 500 koku. Furthermore, the edicts gave bakufu officials control over all criminal matters, leading to the establishment of the hyōjōsho, a tribunal which settled such matters, in the same year. Some edicts addressed separate matters, such as expressing support for filial piety, hostility towards Christianity, and establishing rules on who could wear certain clothes or ride in palanquins.
One major change instituted by the buke shohatto was the establishment of the sankin-kōtai system, which forced daimyō to reside in Edo in alternating sequence, spending a certain amount of time in Edo, and a certain amount of time in their home provinces. The system at first originally applied to the tozama daimyō, but expanded to apply to all daimyō by 1642. One of the key goals of this policy was to prevent the daimyō from amassing too much wealth or power by separating them from their home provinces, and by forcing them to regularly devote a sizable sum to funding the immense travel expenses associated with the journey, along with a large entourage, to and from Edo. The system also involved the daimyōs wives and heirs remaining in Edo, disconnected from their lord and from their home province, serving essentially as hostages who might be harmed or killed if the daimyō were to plot rebellion against the shogunate. (2025). 9780824834708, University of Hawai'i press. ISBN 9780824834708
Over the course of the 1630s, Iemitsu issued a series of edicts restricting Japan's dealings with the outside world. The most famous of those edicts was the so-called Sakoku Edict of 1635, which contained the main restrictions introduced by Iemitsu. With it, he forbade every Japanese ship and person to travel to another country, or to return to Japanese shores. The punishment for violation was death. Japanese, who had since the 1590s traveled extensively in East and Southeast Asia (and, in rare instances, much farther afield), were now forbidden from leaving the country or returning, under pain of death.
The edict offered lavish gifts and awards for anyone who could provide information about priests and their followers who secretly practiced and spread their religion across the country. Furthermore, every newly arrived ship was required to be thoroughly examined for Catholic priests and followers. The document pays extremely close attention to every detail regarding incoming foreign ships. For example, merchants coming from abroad had to submit a list of the goods they were bringing with them before being granted permission to trade. Additional provisions specified details of the timing and logistics of trade. For example, one clause declares that the "date of departure homeward for foreign ships shall not be later than the twentieth day of the ninth month". In addition to this, Iemitsu forbade alterations of the set price for raw silk and thus made sure that competition between trading cities was brought to a minimum.
In 1637, an armed revolt arose against Iemitsu's anti-Christian policies in Shimabara, but there were other reasons involved, such as overly-high taxation and cruel treatment of peasants by the local lord. The period domestic unrest is known as the Shimabara Rebellion. Thousands were killed in the shogunate's suppression of the revolt and countless more were executed afterwards.Screech, T. (2006). Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779–1822. p. 85. The fact that many of the rebels were Christians was used by the Bakufu as a convenient pretext for expelling the Portuguese and restricting the Dutch East India Company to Dejima in Nagasaki.
Following the edicts, Japan remained very much connected to international commerce, information, and cultural exchange, though only through four avenues. Nagasaki was the center of trade and other dealings with the Dutch East India Company, and with independent Chinese merchants. Satsuma Domain controlled relations with the Ryūkyū Kingdom (and through Ryūkyū, had access to Chinese goods and information, as well as products from further afield through alternative trade routes that passed through Ryūkyū), while Tsushima Domain handled diplomatic and trade relations with Joseon-dynasty Korea, and Matsumae Domain managed communications with the Ainu people, the indigenous people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, as well as limited communication with related peoples on the mainland close to Sakhalin. Japan in this period has often been described as "closed", or under sakoku (鎖国, "chained country"), but since the 1980s, if not earlier, scholars have argued for the use of terms such as 'kaikin" (海禁, "maritime restrictions"), emphasizing the fact that Japan was not "closed" to the outside world, but was in fact very actively engaged with the outside world, albeit through a limited set of avenues.Arano, Yasunori. "The Entrenchment of the Concept of "National Seclusion". Acta Asiatica 67 (1994). pp. 83–103.
Arano, Yasunori. Sakoku wo minaosu 「鎖国」を見直す. Kawasaki: Kawasaki Shimin Academy, 2003.
Kato, Eiichi. "Research Trends in the Study of the History of Japanese Foreign Relations at the Start of the Early Modern Period: On the Reexamination of 'National Seclusion' – From the 1970's to 1990's." Acta Asiatica 67 (1994). pp. 1–29.
Tashiro, Kazui and Susan D. Videen. "Foreign Relations during the Edo Period: Sakoku Reexamined". Journal of Japanese Studies 8:2 (1982). pp. 283–306.
Toby, Ronald. "Reopening the Question of Sakoku: Diplomacy in the Legitimation of the Tokugawa Bakufu", Journal of Japanese Studies 3:2 (1977). pp. 323–363. However, the measures Iemitsu enacted were so powerful that it was not until the 1850s that Japanese ports opened to a wider range of trading partners, Westerners were free to settle and travel within Japan, and Japanese were once more free to travel overseas.
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