Tokugawa Yoshimune
Tokugawa Yoshimune (徳川 吉宗
Tokugawa Yoshimune,
November 27,
1684-
July 12,
1751 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.
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 a shogun did not provide an 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. 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.
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 bakufu.
In 1697, Genroku had his 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
1713, 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 nine 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 bakufu to select the next shogun from one of the cadet lines. The Kii branch seemed to be the line which was most direct to Ieyasu, and Tokugawa Yorikata was the head of it.
Yoshimune succeeded the post of the shogun in
1716, given that the main lineage lacked a legimate heir. In
1745, he 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.
Yoshimune established the Gosankyo (御三卿) 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.
As shogun, Yoshimune is best known for his financial reform and for dismissing his conservative adviser
Arai Hakuseki and instigating the
Kyōhō reforms. He is often considered the politically most able Tokugawa shogun after the line's founder
Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Although foreign books were strictly forbidden from
1640, rules were relaxed under Tokugawa Yoshimune in
1720, starting an influx of foreign books and their translations into Japan, and initiating the development of Western studies, or
Rangaku.
Tokugawa Yoshimune was the central character of the long-running television series
Abarembo 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.
