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Paper short abstract:

The three so-called "incidents" of Horeki, Miwa and Songo between 1756 and 1793 have been a alivly debated topic among Japanese historians since the Meiji period. Roughly in the last ten years however, several aspects of such topic have been restudied opening new glimpses of historical research

Paper long abstract:

In the second half of the 18th century, three episodes occurred which were presented in the Meiji period as if they had anticipated the imperial restoration of 1868 and a return to the monarchy the Heian period. We refer in particular to the “incidents" of hōreki( 1756-59) and meiwa (1767) and to the songo Ikken of 1789-93. These events are well known and there is no need to summarize them here. Suffice it to say that they have been considered in the past in the context of a supposed contraposition between the imperial court and the shogunate. However, a new interpretation appeared in the last decades of the 20th century that had its fulcrum, as far as the hōreki Incident is concerned, in the contrast between two groups of court nobles, one of which was accused of attempting a rebellion against the bakufu. The influence of suika shinto on the latter was emphasized also. More recently in the 2010s a further development of the research has taken place which insisted on aspects only hinted at before with an additional use of some previously ignored manuscript sources. New details were brought to light as well, on the principal characters of the hōreki jiken, including Takenouchi Shikibu, whose philosophical orientation stood out against the broad background of nativist doctrines, including kokugaku, and of factional rivalry among shintō priests.

Moreover new findings concern the relationship, never fully clarified before, between Shikibu and Yamagata Daini, the protagonist of the meiwa jiken. As to political history also stimulating details were noted. Both during the hōreki and the songo incidents the emperors themselves look as if they directly acted, according to a dynamic unusual for the Tokugawa period. In the discussions on the eve of songo, the officials of bakufu showed also to have assimilated the doctrine of Chinese origin, but extraneous to the Japanese tradition, that court and bakufu officials were subordinate within a single hierarchy to the shōgun, whose authority was inferior only to that of the tennō himself. Paradoxically it did not help this time to justify the reassertion of the imperial authority.