tinction of being one of the first governments in the world to develop an extensive and efficient secret police system and to make of it an important organ of state. With three centuries of experience in such practices, it is not surprising that the secret police should have loomed so large in the political make-up of Japan in recent years.
The Tokugawa left the age-old fiction of imperial rule undisturbed. They actually helped reenforce it by fairly generous economic treatment of the emperors and their courtiers, while keeping them under close surveillance and strict control. Ieyasu in 1603 took for himself the old title of Shogun, indicating that in theory he was merely the generalissimo of the emperor’s armies. To insure that his death would not upset the supremacy of his family, he abdicated two years later in favor of one of his less gifted but more dependable sons. As a result of this move, Ieyasu’s death in 1616 produced no political repercussions.
The early Edo leaders were determined to do everything they could to insure that the ineptness or stupidity of some future Shogun should not bring disaster to the regime. They created a strong, complicated central administration quite capable of ruling the land with or without the Shogun, many of whom proved to be little more than figureheads. This central administration consisted of a Prime Minister—a post often left vacant—a council of state made up of four or five “elders,” a group of “junior elders” who controlled the affairs of the petty vassals of Edo, a large body of civil administrators, and the metsuke.
The membership of the administration was recruited