His father, Ienobu, died on the 13th of November, 1712, so
that there was an interval of five months between the demise of the
sixth shogun and the accession of the seventh. Of course, a child of
four years who held the office of shogun for the brief period of
three years could not take any part in the administration or have any
voice in the appointment or dismissal of officials. Thus, Arai
Hakuseki's tenure of office depended upon his relations with the
other ministers, and as all of these did not approve his drastic
reforms, he was obliged to retire, but Manabe Norifusa remained in
office.

ENGRAVING: TOKUGAWA YOSHIMUNE

THE EIGHTH SHOGUN, YOSHIMUNE

By the death of Ietsugu, in 1716, the Hidetada line of the Tokugawa
family became extinct, and a successor to the shogunate had to be
sought from the Tokugawa of Kii province in the person of Yoshimune,
grandson of Yorinobu and great-grandson of Ieyasu. Born in 1677,
Yoshimune, the eighth Tokugawa shogun, succeeded to office in 1716,
at the age of thirty-nine. The son of a concubine, he had been
obliged to subsist on the proceeds of a very small estate, and he
therefore well understood the uses of economy and the condition of
the people. His habits were simple and plain, and he attached as much
importance as Ieyasu himself had done to military arts and literary
pursuits. It had become a custom on the occasion of each shogun's
succession to issue a decree confirming, expanding, or altering the
systems of the previous potentate. Yoshimune's first decree placed
special emphasis on the necessity of diligence in the discharge of
administrative functions and the eschewing of extravagance. Always he
made it his unflagging aim to restore the martial spirit which had
begun to fade from the samurai's bosom, and in the forefront of
important reforms he placed frugality. The Bakufu had fallen into the
habit of modelling their systems and their procedure after Kyoto
examples. In fact, they aimed at converting Yedo into a replica of
the Imperial capital. This, Yoshimune recognized as disadvantageous
to the Bakufu themselves and an obstacle to the resuscitation of
bushido. Therefore, he set himself to restore all the manners and
customs of former days, and it became his habit to preface decrees
and ordinances with the phrase "In pursuance of the methods, fixed
by Gongen" (Ieyasu). His idea was that only the decadence of bushido
could result from imitating the habits of the Imperial