After Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Edo shogunate, he was enfeoffed as a meritorious man. The daimyōs were close to the Tokugawa clan, and there were kin-domain daimyōs, daimyō daimyōs, and daimyō daimyōs. Later, satsuma domain, which was in the ascendancy at the end of the shogunate, belonged to the daimyō of the outer form. Although their ancestors were favored by Tokugawa Ieyasu, for hundreds of years, their relationship with the shogun in remote areas had long been as light as water. Therefore, by the time of the collapse of the curtain, the noise was also the most fierce.
Among the closest relatives of the daimyōs, three are extremely important.
They are the Imperial Three Houses.
Japanese imperial character usage, essentially the same as Kanji, has the meaning of respect, but the scope is different.
Kanji can only be used for emperors, as in Japanese, which is very broad.
Mizoya, denoting the honorable three-family family.
In the beginning, it was the Tokugawa clan of Owari Domain, the ninth son of Ieyasu, Tokugawa Yoshinaga, the Tokugawa clan of the 10th son, Raisan, and the Tokugawa clan, which was also the shogun family.
(Tokugawa family's Daio stills)
The main role of the creation of the Imperial Three Families was that once the Clan family was eliminated, they could pass on the children from the other two families to become generals.
Some people have to say, isn't it very unlucky to do this? Where is the curse of the general?
The problem is, there are really a lot of such problems.
For example, Emperor Wuzong of Ming did not have a dragon son, so Zhu Houxi became the Jiajing Emperor.
Not to mention the Tokugawa family, whose descendants had a very high rate of premature death.
In order to give the Tokugawa clan a life extension when needed, Ieyasu gave a preventive injection with tears in his eyes.
In addition to Owari and Kii, there is the Mito Tokugawa family.
Their fiefdoms, according to Feng Shui theory, were dead, so they were not chosen from their adopted children, but were chosen for deputy generals, and were responsible for supervising the generals not to be blind.
However, with the death of Ieyasu, the position of vice shogun would pose a threat to the shogun, so although he was a close relative, the shogun was still a little uneasy about the Mito clan, and in the end, after a long time, the status of the Mito clan declined, and it was listed as the michiyasu clan alongside the Owari Tokugawa clan and the Kii Tokugawa clan.
In other words, the Tokugawa Clan in Edo Castle achieved an overwhelmingly solid position.
By the time of the yashiro shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune, there were the Gosan clans.
When Yoshimune was a shogun, it was already 1716 and the shogunate had been established for 113 years, and he had inherited the throne from Kii Domain, taking over a mess of bloated institutions and financial difficulties.
(Tokugawa Yoshimune stills)
When he embarked on reform, he had to worry more about the problem of succession.
His eldest son, Tokugawa Iemi, grew up in the hands of harem women, was drunk, frail, and could not even speak well, and was famous for bedwetting, and was not the general's choice at first glance.
Tokugawa Munetake, on the other hand, was clever and clever from an early age, and was a scholar with three-leaf lines in Sinology, calligraphy and painting, omnipotent.
If he were the eldest son, Tokugawa Yoshimune would have laughed in his dreams.
Unfortunately, he was the second son.
But this does not prevent some people from taking zongwu's side, hoping that the general can think about the society and abolish Yu Lixian.
Ran Jizong thought about it again and again, believing that the abolition of the long and young would lead to disaster, and still decided to let the family become the son of the world.
Still, he was worried.
Because when he was a second-generation shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada faced the same dilemma as him, and the eldest son, Iemitsu, and his younger brother, Tadanaga, were very similar to the current situation of Ieshige and Munatake. Xiu Zhong did not have Li Xian in the end, and it seemed that the family light of the brain was not smart, but after succeeding to the throne, he made a big splash and used his brother's rebellion as an excuse to let Zhong Chang cut his abdomen.
Obviously, there are powerful people around Jiaguang who are making suggestions.
One day when he is old, no, the Ooka Tadamitsu around the family, will he also come up with a bad idea and make the best brother do it?
This kind of thing has been learned from the past, and we have to guard against it.
(Stills from the Edo period)
So he came up with a solution, which was for Tokugawa Munetake to create the Taeda Yasuya family, and the fourth son, Munakata, to create the Hitotsubashi family.
They were all daimyōs of 100,000 stones, but they did not lead the people, and lived in Edo Castle, Tian'an Ichibashi, named after the city gate closest to their home.
In this way, they are far away from Da'ao, and the pressure on the family weight will be small, and zong wu and Zong Yin can also know that the family weight is the real successor, and you don't have to act rashly, so as not to give up your life in vain.
It can be said that the creation of these two families is to save lives.
After the death of Tokugawa Yoshimune, Ieshige had his son create the Shimizu Tokugawa family, along with Ta'an Kazuhashi, and was called Mizosan.
Their rank was lower than that of the Imperial Three Families, and their rank was lower than theirs, but their blood relationship with the current general was much closer. It was also given the right to succeed the clan once the heirs were extinct.
In this way, the descendants of six families can enter the General's Mansion.
The last shogun, Tokugawa Keiki, was born in Mito Domain, and later came to the Hitotsubashi family, from Hitotsubashi Keiki to Tokugawa Keiki.