A. L. Sadler - The Maker of Modern Japan: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu

LONDON AND NEW YORK

IT hardly scems necessary to begin with the usual apology for producing another book on a Japanese subject in this case because Tokugawa Ieyasu is unquestionably one of the greatest men the world has yet seen, while not only is the type of government of which he developed the most perfect example yet known finding increasing favour in the West, but the empire he did so much to build up is becoming of ever greater international significance year by year. In these circumstances it may be convenient for students of Oriental affairs as well as for others interested in the lives of dominating personalities to have access to some of the outstanding facts of his life and character as they are usually presented to his own countrymen. Possibly lack of material available in European languages, leading to the very free use of the imagination, is the partial cause of the great want of accuracy in statements concerning Japanese history in many books that treat of it, and if this volume is of assistance in diminishing this tendency it may not be entirely useless. The fact that Tokugawa Ieyasu is less known to the average well-read person than his contemporary Akbar may be to some extent due to the lack of any account of his life in any European tongue. And that given here is rather introductory than exhaustive, and contains more material from Japanese sources than quotations from the European documents bearing on him and his period.

Had there existed in Japanese a good modern biography of Ieyasu of convenient length it might have been more profitable to translate it, but no suitable one is available. The most interesting treatment of his life by a modern writer is that in the great work of Tokutomi Soho, History of the Japanese People in Modern Times, which begins about the time of the birth of Ieyasu and continues the story down to the present day. To it I am greatly indebted, and I have availed myself freely of its mounmental learning and critical judgment. No doubt a biography of this kind is somewhat repelling on account of its unfamiliar atmosphere and strange names. As a reviewer recently observed of another work on a Japanese theme, it unfortunately had so many Japanese names in it. But this is now a world in which it may be advisable to get used to them, for unquestionably people of the land of Nippon will always have Japanese names. In fact, unlike ourselves and our European neighbours their names are entirely Japanese, and very rarely, indeed, drawn from any foreign source, except where the exigencies of the script makes the pronunciation Sinico-Japanese. It may be of assistance to repeat that the vowels are as in Italian and the consonants as in English, When Ieyasus name was written in our seript in his own day in his letter to King James Minnamoto no Yei ye yass, it was nearer to the actual sound than is the ordinary way of representing it now, for final u is practically silent in Japanese, and would be quite correct if the second syllable were omitted altogether. I have followed Brinkley in using the spelling with a single y as being the more concise.

In recent years the names of Tokugawa and Matsudaira have no doubt become more widely known outside their homeland owing to two very eminent bearers of them, Tokugawa Iemasa, now Japanese Ambassador at Istambul, seventeenth heir to Ieyasu in the main house, and Matsudaira Tsuneo, Ambassador at the Court of St. James, of the branch house of the lords of Aizu, descended from his grandson Masayuki, scholar and philosopher as well as feudal lord, both of whom have carried on the distinguished tradition of their family as diplomatic representatives both in Europe and America.

All names are in the normal Japanese order, surname first and given name second. In this period, as up to 1870, peasants and artisans had no surname, but might acquire one by becoming military men, for it was only after the days of Ieyasu that the samurai became a fixed caste, and in the sixteenth century as in the twentieth not only a baton but a halo were within the reach of any man of genius.

This book is not peppered with references, for they would be quite useless except to those who read Japanese historical texts, and for them the list of sources at the end will, I think, be sufficient. I wish to thank Miss Githa Conolly, B.A., for assistance in the preparation of the manuscript.