For a moment, a bunch of expectant, curious, or nervous eyes fell on Qingdeng.
Qingdeng looked calm and didn't even move his brows.
Qingto was not surprised by Echigoya Bunzaburo's question.
Before he came to the banquet, he had already guessed the purpose of the banquet and what he wanted to ask.
How is the situation in Kyoto? This is probably the topic of greatest concern to people in Kanto... no, all over Japan.
"Mr. Echigoya, I'm sorry."
Qingden put down the tea bowl in his hand, smiled bitterly and shook his head.
"As for the recent situation in Kyoto, I am still waiting and watching."
This is true.
What's going on in Kyoto... Qingto really doesn't know much about this, or he hasn't gotten the latest information yet.
It has only been 1 year and 8 months since Qingdeng took up his position as the side minister and the servant of the Imperial Palace.
A mere two years is not a very long time.
However, in less than two years, numerous major events occurred in Japan! The national situation has undergone earth-shaking changes!
In recent years, the thoughts of "respecting the king" and "repelling the barbarians" have gradually merged. A new group - those with patriots who respect the king and resist the barbarians (referred to as "respecting the king and resisting the barbarians") has become active.
The core purpose of the former is to enhance the authority of the emperor and the Kyoto court.
The core essence of the latter is to expel all foreigners in Japan.
Logically speaking, these two unrelated trends of thought should not overlap.
However, history is like this, full of all kinds of joke-like coincidences.
For the Japanese in the Edo period, their respect for the emperor was not necessarily that deep.
After more than 250 years of unremitting suppression by the Edo shogunate, the emperor and the Kyoto court were excluded from the political and economic space, and their own influence was greatly weakened.
The Japanese in the Edo period called the shogun "Kongkata-sama" and "Oshu Lord" and recognized him as the sole ruler of the country.
The emperor is an emperor, and the court is called "inner area" or "forbidden area", which is an insignificant and distant existence.
However, the emperor has always existed, and so has the public family and the Kyoto court.
[Note: Public family: specifically refers to the hereditary nobles living in Gyeonggi who serve the emperor and the court. Corresponding to this is the "samurai family", that is, the families and characters of the samurai system]
Long before the outbreak of the "Black Ship Incident", the idea of ​​respecting the king centered on the Mito Domain had taken root and spread widely.
In other words, there have always been people who uphold the idea of ​​respecting the king, and there are still many of them.
However, these people are basically concentrated in the samurai class, and the civilian class may not even understand what the imperial court is.
The currently reigning Emperor Tsuhito hates foreigners and strongly opposes the founding of the country.
As a result, he became the "embodiment of resisting the foreigners", an excellent and very convenient banner for promoting the ideology of resisting the foreigners.
Your Majesty has already said that he hates foreigners, so what are we, those of us who uphold the idea of ​​respecting the king, waiting for? Why don’t we stand up quickly! Drive out all barbarians in the country and respond to His Majesty’s call!
The anti-barbarian patriots also became excited.
Although since the founding of the Tokugawa family, the emperor has always been a mascot with no troops, no power, no food, and only an extraordinary influence in the cultural field, he has always been the nominal head of state of the country, and even the shogunate is one of them.
Minister.
In other words, as long as the banner of "This is the Holy Will" is raised, it will occupy the natural political highest point.
The worst thing to avoid in war is to have unknown troops.
And now, the "name" of the patriots who fought against the foreigners has come!
Our actions to resist the foreigners are just acts that comply with the holy will. In this way, the anti-barbarian patriots used the emperor to carry out their anti-barbarian activities even more unscrupulously.
From this, the ideas of opposing the barbarians and respecting the emperor merged, and quickly evolved into the movement of respecting the king and resisting the barbarians.
The Gyeonggi region, where the emperor and his court were located, became the center of the movement to respect the king and repel the foreigners.
If Emperor Tohito was an enlightened person who welcomed the founding of the country, then it is unclear whether the two would have merged and whether the movement to respect the king and resist the foreigners would have spread throughout Japan.
The increasingly fierce movement to respect the king and repel the barbarians in the Gyeonggi region has made the shogunate deeply worried.
Unlike the Kyoto court, which had been away from politics for a long time and therefore had little understanding of the real situation in the country, and the anti-Japanese patriots who were only enthusiastic, the Edo shogunate was well aware of how terrible the industrial civilization of overseas powers was.
"Repelling the foreigners" is definitely not feasible, and "founding the country" has become the inevitable trend of the times.
In addition, the "reverence for the king" proposition of the Zunban movement was also unacceptable to the shogunate.
There are no two days in the sky, and there are no two masters in the country.
As the authority of the emperor and the Kyoto court increased, the authority of the shogun and the Edo shogunate was bound to decline - this was absolute and impossible to avoid.
"Honoring the king" and "repelling the barbarians"... are all taboos of the shogunate.
The idea of ​​respecting the pro-prohibition movement was completely contrary to the interests of the Edo shogunate.
Therefore, in order to suppress the pro-protest movement, save the declining national power, and reshape the Tokugawa authority, the Edo shogunate decided to restart the "combination of public and military forces."
As early as Aoshito's first bole, Naomi Ii, was still alive, he was vigorously promoting a combat strategy-letting the general (Tokugawa Iemo) marry a woman from the royal family. As a result, the shogunate and the court formed a relationship.
Inseparable relationship.
Naomi Ii believed that if Edo and Kyoto were hostile for a long time, it would be very detrimental to the future of the country, so a cooperation mechanism must be established.
So he proposed marriage to the royal family and asked "who would be more suitable to marry a general."
At that time, there were three princesses suitable for marriage.
The late Emperor Nitaka's daughter, Toshinomiya who is 30 years old, and Wagoniya who is in her youth.
Today the emperor also has an imperial daughter, Fugui Palace, who was born just over 5 months old.
It is not suitable for a dignified general to conquer barbarians, whether he is marrying a 30-year-old aunt or a five-month-old baby.
Therefore, the only imperial daughter suitable to marry was Wagoniya who was similar in age to Tokugawa Iemo.
While the shogunate and the court were slowly discussing, the "Sakurada Gate Incident" broke out, Naomi Ii was killed, and the "combination of public and military affairs" was temporarily suspended.
After the shogunate decided to restart the "combination of public and military affairs" in order to fight against the pro-rebellion movement, Nobumasa Ando, ​​the successor of Lao-Chinese leader, continued to negotiate with the court.
[Note: In order to prevent the concentration of power, there were many senior middlemen in the Edo shogunate, with a maximum number of four to five. They adopted a monthly system to take turns managing different affairs. The person who took the leadership position among them was called the "first laoshi"]
After repeated discussions, the two parties finally decided to work hard to promote the marriage contract.
However... He Gong strongly resisted the marriage.
She had been married to Prince Arisugawa Chihito since she was a child, and they were in love with each other. She did not want to leave her husband.
In addition, Gyeonggi people generally discriminate against the Kanto people. They think that Kanto is an undeveloped, barbaric and smoky land, and think that the Kanto people are a bunch of rude and ignorant "Eastern Yi". This kind of prejudice makes the He Palace dissatisfied with the marriage.
Things are getting more and more conflicting.
Emperor Sohito once personally tried to persuade his sister to marry Tokugawa Iemo, but Wagongiya flatly refused.
She directly put down her harsh words: "I don't want to go to Edo. Even if I become a nun, I will not marry in Kanto!"
Something went wrong in the imperial court, and riots began to occur in the outside world.
The shogunate's move to "combine the public and military" has done a lot of harm to the Zunzheng movement. The shogunate and the court are already one family. Isn't it inappropriate for you to dictate the shogunate's ideas and policies?
People who uphold the idea of ​​​​respecting and resisting will naturally not be happy to be led by the shogunate.
As a result, they criticized the public-military integration movement.
Wakura refused to marry into the samurai family, and when the situation reached a stalemate, a capable man named Iwakura Tomoshi appeared on the scene.
This man was a Waka disciple of Guan Baiying Si Zhengtong. He was good at pleasing Takashi Si Zhengtong and became his personal attendant in the first year of Anzheng (1854).
[Note·Guan Bai: An official position in the Kyoto court. Responsible for assisting the emperor in handling government affairs. Guan Bai is to the Kyoto court, similar to Lao Zhong to the Edo shogunate]
This man was extremely smart. Compared with those shabby public aristocrats who only knew how to recite poems and compose poems, he was outstanding and broad-minded, good at strategy and political vision.
Iwakura Tomoe said to Emperor Tohito: "This is a rare opportunity. Since the shogunate requires so much from us, we should adopt this opinion and grant them a gift. In this way, we can put forward conditions, and the conditions are
The Ansei Provisional Treaty ("Japan-U.S. Amended Trade Treaty") signed by Naomi Ii was abolished, thereby reversing the situation again and proposing the policy of expelling the foreigners. In this way, although the administration was entrusted to the shogunate, the shogunate must seek instructions from the imperial court before doing anything. In this way, in the end,
The real power will be in the hands of the imperial court."
Emperor Tohito also believed that if he wanted the shogunate to implement the policy of resisting foreigners again, it must adopt Iwakura Tomomi's opinions.
There were also people in the royal family who objected to Wakura's marriage to Kanto. Iwakura Tomomi interviewed them directly, or bribed poor members of the public family, and sometimes threatened to be demoted.
In short, he used all his tactics to consolidate his power.
In the end, even Prince Arisugawa Chihito, who was engaged to have a baby marriage with Wagoniya, succumbed.
The isolated and helpless Hegong had no choice but to agree to the marriage.
To be continued...