But the fifth Shogun, Tsunayoshi (1680-1709), was a literary pedant with a superstitious mind. He built schools, reformed the calendar, and spent large sums of money on the encouragement of art. On these undertakings he wasted his substance, and by neglecting the sound political precepts of his Confucianist advisers, got his finances into disorder. To remedy these disorders he applied to men with little experience, and on their advice tampered with the coinage and adopted measures which led to an increase in the prices of all articles of food. This did not make him popular with the common people, and even the submissive Court of Kyoto began to be restless when the state of the Shogunal exchequer would not permit of the payment of the annual allowance of 150,000 koku of rice. Then, as though this were not enough, Tsunayoshi gave himself up to monkish advisers, and embarked on a series of most remarkable enactments.

[paragraph continues] The taking of animal life was absolutely forbidden, kittens and puppies were saved from the water-butt, and the Yedo police had to keep track of all the litters that were born, and make accurate lists of sex, markings, etc. A samurai of Akita, who had the misfortune to kill a swallow, was put to death for the crime, and all his family sent into exile (1686); the whole legislation being based on the theory that life is sacred--unless it were human life, which in Japan of the Middle Ages was far from being treated with reverence. The good citizens of Yedo were powerless against their master, but they took their revenge in lampoons on the Inu-Kubo, or Dog-Shogun, as they nicknamed him. Tsunayoshi was murdered by his wife in 1709, and it took the great Arai Hakuseki all his energies and skill, during the next two reigns, to restore the Shogunate to popular favour. The Tokugawas were nearly always fortunate in the fidelity of their ablest followers.

It was under these circumstances that men's minds began to turn once more to the Imperial House in Kyoto, and to dream of a Restoration of that House to its legitimate place. Strangely enough, the first impetus to this movement came from the Tokugawas themselves. Tokugawa Mitsukuni, a grandson of Ieyasu, succeeded in 1656 to the Daimyate of Mito. He at once, being a studious and enlightened man, commenced the compilation of a vast History of his country, for the carrying out of which he gathered in his fief-city a number of prominent scholars. Eminent amongst these was a Chinese scholar, Shu Shunsui, a refugee, who had left his country rather than