Tokugawa Nariaki — The Lord of Mito Who Armed an Ideology

The slogan that drove the Bakumatsu — revere the emperor, expel the barbarians — got its political weight from one domain. That domain was Mito, and its lord was Tokugawa Nariaki.

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Who Was Tokugawa Nariaki?

Three roles.

Reformer of Mito. He overhauled the domain's finances and founded the Kodokan, a large domain academy.

Advocate of coastal defence. Alarmed by foreign ships, he cast cannon and pressed the shogunate relentlessly on the subject.

Patron of an ideology. Mito possessed its own scholarly tradition, and under Nariaki it acquired political force. The sonno joi that the loyalists of the 1860s marched under came out of Mito.

He was born in 1800 into the Mito Tokugawa house, one of the three senior branches of the shogunal family.

Tokugawa Nariaki's Reforms as the "Fierce Lord"

On becoming lord he set about restoring the domain's finances.

He surveyed land, enforced austerity, and staged large military exercises. He also had temple bells collected and recast as cannon — a hard-edged measure that put him in conflict with the Buddhist establishment.

The Kodokan taught both martial arts and scholarship on a large scale, and became the base of Mito learning, from which the ideology spread nationally.

His forcefulness made enemies, and in 1844 the shogunate ordered him into retirement and confinement. He was difficult for the shogunate to handle as well.

Tokugawa Nariaki's Return to Politics After the Black Ships

Perry's arrival in 1853 changed his position.

What he had been saying about coastal defence suddenly looked like description rather than agitation, and the shogunate brought him back as an advisor on defence.

But his position was uncompromising expulsion, which could not be reconciled with opening ports and signing treaties. His principles and the actual diplomacy did not fit together.

Tokugawa Nariaki Against Ii Naosuke

Then came the shogunal succession dispute.

The thirteenth shogun had no heir, and the shogunate split. Nariaki backed Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu — his own son — as older and more capable of handling the crisis.

The tairo, or chief minister, Ii Naosuke chose Tokugawa Iemochi of Kii instead, on grounds of blood proximity, and then signed a commercial treaty without imperial sanction.

Nariaki protested. Ii's response was the Ansei Purge: Nariaki was barred from the castle and placed under house arrest in 1858, and ordered into permanent confinement at Mito in 1859.

Then men of Mito killed Ii at the Sakuradamon gate. Nariaki did not order it, but his ideology and his punishment stand behind the act beyond question.

He died a few months later, in 1860, aged sixty.

Tokugawa Nariaki's Family

Searches about Nariaki cluster around his family tree, for two reasons.

He had a very large number of children, a fact often remarked on by itself.

And his seventh son was Tokugawa Yoshinobu, adopted into the Hitotsubashi house and eventually the last shogun — the man who offered governing authority back to the emperor. The shogunate itself was abolished separately, by the restoration decree issued that December.

The son of the era's most committed expulsionist wound up handing power back to the court. Other sons were adopted into daimyo houses across the country, spreading Mito blood through the domains of the Bakumatsu.

Tokugawa Nariaki's Grave

Nariaki is buried at Zuiryusan in Hitachiota, Ibaraki Prefecture.

It is the burial ground of the lords of Mito, and it is unusual in that the graves follow Confucian rather than Buddhist form — quite unlike the temple cemeteries of most daimyo houses.

In Mito itself stand the Kairakuen garden he laid out and the Kodokan. A school, a garden, and cannon, all commissioned by the same man, is a fair summary of the domain he was trying to build.

Tokugawa Nariaki Timeline

For the ideology see sonno joi, and for his son, Tokugawa Yoshinobu.