Emperor Akihito, who abdicated yesterday (March 12, 2019), was the first Japanese emperor in 200 years to abdicate before his death, but in ancient Japan, abdicated emperors abounded, leaving aside the abdication of the emperor to become emperor of the Taishang Dynasty in order to use another system to participate in politics more deeply and comprehensively, the abdication of the emperor is usually a literal abdication of the throne - the abandonment of the throne.
To discuss the ancients, Kim wants to talk about an early Tokugawa shogunate emperor, Emperor Go-Mizuo (June 29, 1596 – September 11, 1680), who insisted on abdicating himself when he was 33 years old in the sixth year of Kanei (1629), leaving the throne to his daughter who was only 5 years old.
Emperor Go-Mizuo was the third son of Emperor Goyōsei and the 108th Emperor of Japan
The reason why such a strange thing happened is that we have to talk about it from the beginning.
Emperor Go-Mizuo was named Masahito, the third son of Emperor Go-yōsei, although he was the crown prince, but his father initially did not want to give up the throne to him, but wanted to give his brother, who was Also Emperor Go-Mizuo's uncle Prince Hachijō Miya tomohito, but Prince Hachijo Miyo tomohito was once the adopted son of Toyotomi hideyoshi, and at this time Toyotomi Hideyoshi's youngest son Toyotomiya Hideyoshi was still occupying Osaka Castle, and was not finally eliminated by Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the identity of Prince Hachijo Miya to tomohito was more sensitive, so Emperor Go-yomiya still ceded the throne to Emperor Go-Mizuo. However, because of such a twist and turn, the emperor's father and son have been at odds for a long time.
Emperor Go-Yonaisei abdicated in the sixteenth year of Keichō (1611) because the Tokugawa shogunate interfered with the imperial court in punishing female officials and secretaries of state, which was the emperor's way of showing his last dignity without real power, but it was more formal to say (there is also the meaning of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the original shogunate needed the authority endorsement of the imperial court, and the imperial court also needed the financial support of the shogunate, so this happened), and when it came to his son, Emperor Go-Mizuo, the reason for abdication was more strange and funny.
In 1620, the daughter of the second shogun Tokugawa Hidetada (granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu) Tokugawa Kazuko (November 23, 1607 – August 2, 1678) married Emperor Go-Mizuo to become the Middle Palace.
Tokugawa Ieyasu's side room, the Acha Bureau, replaced her mother in the palace when She entered the palace, and was known as the Minbu Secretarial Bureau.
Tokugawa Kazuko is a gentle and cheerful samurai woman
Kazuko's maiden name, Matsuhime, as mentioned earlier, was the granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu and the daughter of Tokugawa Hidetada, and from a matrilineal point of view, her mother was Hidetada's masamune Ae, so she was also the granddaughter of Oda City and Asai Nagamasa, and the niece of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's side-muro-yotsu (that is, Toyotomi Hideyoshi's mother), and from any point of view, she was a full-fledged samurai daughter. Therefore, her marriage to Emperor Go-Mizuo was a typical combination of public and military affairs, which was almost absent in previous Japanese history, and the Fujiwara clan, which constantly married their daughters to the emperor to obtain foreign status, belonged to the public family, and the head of the samurai family, Hira Kiyomori, when he married his daughter to the emperor, went through the procedure of letting the emperor adopt him, and The marriage of Kazuko can be said to be unprecedented.
The second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada and Lady Asai, and Kazuko's parents
The Tokugawa family's home-colored clover aoi
Under the circumstances at the time, the marriage seemed to be a win-win situation on the surface: after Kazuko became empress, he reborn a prince with the blood of the Tokugawa family, and later this prince became the emperor, which helped to strengthen the authority of the Tokugawa shogunate, and the Tokugawa family could become a powerful family like the Fujiwara clan in the Heian period, holding the authority of the imperial court in their own hands; and at that time, the strength indicator represented by Ishigaka, the emperor family was only equivalent to a very small daimyō, and the marriage with the family of the people of the world could not only obtain a staggering amount of dowry It is also important to receive sustained financial support.
Although it was a political marriage, the relationship between Emperor Go-Mizuo and Kazuko was relatively harmonious, and the two gave birth to the imperial daughter Prince Yukiko Uchi (that is, the later Emperor Myeongsho, which we will talk more about later) in the ninth year of Motowa (1623), and then gave birth to 2 boys and 2 daughters, but to Tokugawa Hidetada's regret, both princes died at an early age (in 1626, Prince Takahito was born and made crown prince, and died 2 years later; Wakamiya was born in 1628 and died of illness shortly after birth).
In order to control the imperial family and the public family, the Tokugawa shogunate promulgated the "Prohibition and Public Law" in the first year of the Yuanhe (1615), which established the relationship between the Tokugawa shogunate and the imperial family and the public family in the form of a legal code, and restrained the latter, the first of which stipulated that the emperor should take the study of knowledge as the first priority in various technical abilities, and in the end, you should not worry about other things; and there were also restrictions on the status of the imperial court to give monks, and the fuse that later broke out was this.
In the fourth year of Kanei (1627), Emperor Go-Mizuo gave dozens of monks from Daitoku-ji Temple and Myohin-ji Temple to wear purple robes without informing the Tokugawa shogunate, and from the emperor's point of view, this was not only in accordance with old customs, but also for economic and income considerations, not necessarily deliberately provoking the shogunate, but the shogunate reacted very strongly, believing that the emperor and the imperial court violated the "Forbidden and Public Laws", strictly prohibited the monks from wearing purple robes, and Emperor Go-Mizuo was not willing to show weakness, strongly protested, and some senior monks also jointly protested against the shogunate. This was the so-called "Purple Dress Incident", which resulted in the loss of face on the imperial court.
If this was not enough to break the relationship between the imperial court and the shogunate, then the next thing was the last straw for The abdication of Emperor Go-Mizuo.
Kasuga bureau once secretly visited Tokugawa Ieyasu and asked him to appoint an heir, thus helping the three generations of shoguns Iemitsu to succeed to the throne smoothly.
During the reign of the third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, the shogunate adopted a series of powerful policies.
In the sixth year of Kanei (1629), the parents of the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, On their way to visit Ise Jingu Shrine, in the name of the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu and in the name of the nobleman Sanjo Nishishijo Yoshimitsu, asked to pay homage to Emperor Go-Mizuo and Empress Tokugawa Kazuko, saying that Kasuga Ryō had raised Tokugawa Iemitsu from an early age, and she was a mother and son, but she was only a nursing mother by the shogun's side, and did not have any official rank (Kasuga Nin, an official rank from Sanpin, was temporarily given to her by Emperor Go-Mizuo in order to regain face), and at the same time, Kasuga, whose real name was Saito Fuku (Afu), was involved in the Honnō-ji Rebellion with Mitsuhide to kill the daughter of Toshizo Saito of Oda Nobunaga, and came from a family of rebels; these factors combined to make her visit to the shrine feel very humiliating to both Emperor Go-Mizuo and the Secretary of State, believing that this was the Tokugawa shogunate's complete disregard for the imperial court.
In November of that year, Emperor Go-Mizuo resolutely abdicated the throne and ceded the throne to his daughter Prince Kokouchi, the seventh emperor of the eight female emperors in Japanese history.
Emperor Myeongsho was the daughter of Kazuko Tokugawa and had the bloodline of the Tokugawa family, but according to the system and customs of the time, the female emperor was only a transitional figure, and Prince Kokochi needed to cede the throne to a male emperor in the future, and because he had been emperor, he needed not to marry, and it is difficult to say that Emperor Go-Mizuo did not cut off the blood of the Tokugawa family that was once owned in the emperor's family in this way.
The Kuan yong Tongbao is the largest coin in Japanese history, with the longest mint period and the largest number of editions, and it is also one of the largest number of foreign coins flowing into Our country.
Emperor Myeongsei reigned for 14 years, and in the 20th year of Hisōei (1643), he ceded the throne to Prince Sue-eun, the fourth son of Emperor Go-Mizuo, who was emperor of The Later Mitsuo, the eighth prince of Go-Mizuo, and the 16th son of Emperor Go-Mizuo. They were all half-brothers of Emperor Myeongsho, the sons of Emperor Go-Mizuo and concubines other than Tokugawa Kazuko, and in this sense, the Tokugawa shogunate's painstaking plan to let the tokugawa family's bloodline enter the Tenjin clan was completely unrealized.
This may also be the counterattack made by Emperor Go-Mizuo in his own way when he was played by the Tokugawa shogunate, and although this counterattack was passive and helpless, it even had some effect.