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Paper short abstract:

The authors of Taisei-kyō could not acknowledge the existence of the Tokugawa shōgun, for the text allegedly dates from the early seventh century. Instead, they stressed the military exploits of ancient commanders. The same approach was adopted in popular literature of the seventeenth century.

Paper long abstract:

Fundamentally, Sendai kuji hongi taisei-kyō explains what the ideal political order of the Japanese state should be. The main point is that the emperor must be regarded as the descendant of the gods and as the apex of the state. One of the three fundamental strands of Shinto beliefs that Taisei-kyō preaches, Saigen 斎元, is defined as the Way that is unique to the divine country Japan. Its ideal is the continuity of the absolute, vertical relations between high and low, in which a subject shall never offend against his lord, the emperor.

At the time when Taisei-kyō was printed, the de facto ruler of Japan was the Tokugawa shōgun. In his study of Taisei-kyō, Kōno Seizō 河野省三 points out that "Taisei-kyō in several ways contributed to the administrative and ideological stability of the Tokugawa regime." (See his Kuji taisei-kyō ni kan-suru kenkyū (1952), p. 43.) As Taisei-kyō was deemed to have been written in the early seventh century, the question naturally becomes, how Taisei-kyō contributed to the "stability of the Tokugawa regime."

My provisional answer is: In the "Annals of the August Grandchild" (Kōson hongi) and the "Annals of the Divine Emperors (Shinkō hongi), which are chapters that treat the history of the emperors, Taisei-kyō describes the military exploits of such commanders as Michi no Omi no Mikoto 道臣命 and Takeshiuchi no Sukune 武内宿禰, who with their military skills protected the emperors and protected the peace of the state.

The identical personalities also appear as famous generals in such collective biographies of military leaders as Honchō yūzō hyakushō-den 本朝有像百将伝 and Honchō buke kongen 本朝武家根元, first printed in 1656 and 1657 respectively. Here, the historical importance of the Tokugawa shōgun, who also were military leaders, is most certainly implied.

In my presentation, I will examine the way in which the military leaders of ancient times are described in Taisei-kyō and books linked to it, and try to find out the position of the Tokugawa shōgun in Taisei-kyō.