Background
Tsunayoshi Tokugawa was born on 23 February 1646 born in Edo Castle, he was a son of the third shogun, Iemitsu.
徳川 綱吉
Tsunayoshi Tokugawa was born on 23 February 1646 born in Edo Castle, he was a son of the third shogun, Iemitsu.
In 1651 he was made lord of the castle of Tatebayashi in the province of Kozuke. In 1680 the fourth shogun, Ietsuna, who was Tsunayoshi’s elder brother, fell gravely ill, and because he had no heir, Tsunayoshi was made his adopted son. When Ietsuna died the same year, Tsunayoshi succeeded to the position of shogun. He thereupon dismissed Sakai Tadakiyo from the post of tairo (senior councilor of state), the highest ministerial position in the shogunate, and in 1681 appointed Hotta Masatoshi to the position. In 1684, however, Hotta Masatoshi was assas-sinated in Edo Castle, and thereafter, in 1688, Tsunayoshi raised Yanagi- sawa Yoshiyasu to the post of sobayonin, or intermediary between the shogun and the roju (councilors of state), and relied heavily upon him.
In the early part of his term as shogun, Tsunayoshi ruled with considerable sternness, punishing daimyo who had violated the law and in 1683 issuing orders regulating the type of clothing the populace could wear. He was a patron of learning and took steps to encourage the study and spread of Confucianism. Thus in 1690 he founded the Seido in the Yushima section of Edo, a temple dedicated to the worship of Confucius, and decreed that the Chu Hsi school of Neo-Confucianism should be the official doctrine of the state, appointing the scholar Hayashi Nobuatsu to the post of daigaku-no- kami, or head of the state university sponsored by the shogunate. In 1687, however, he issued an edict enjoining kindness to birds, fish, insects, and other living creatures and, because he himself had been born in the Year of the Dog, calling for special respect in the treatment of dogs. The unusually heavy penalties decreed for violators of the edict and the severity with which it was enforced aroused widespread popular resentment and were damaging to his reputation as a ruler.
The latter part of his rule coincided with the Genroku era (1688-1703), when the cities of Edo and Osaka flourished and the townsmen began to develop a lively literature and culture that was distinctively their own. At the same time, the life of both the townsmen and the samurai became marked by increasing luxury, and the shogunate found itself sinking deeper into debt each year. In 1696 Ogiwara Shigehide, who held the post of kanjo- bngyo, superintendent of the treasury for the shogunate, attempted to remedy the situation by debasing the value of the gold and silver currency, but this precipitated a sudden rise in prices and created great confusion in the eco¬nomic world. The revenge of the fourty-seven ronin of Ako, an event that attracted wide attention and was to become famous in Japanese literature and drama, took place shortly before the end of his rule.
