Tokugawa Iemochi

Tokugawa Iemochi

• Birth: 1846
• Death: 1866
• Titles: Jusanmi Sakonoe Chujo,Shonii Gondainagon, Naidaijin, Ukonoe Taisho, Seii Taishogun, Juichii, Udaijin, Zoshoichii Dajodaijin
• Childhood Names: 菊千代 (Kikuchiyo), 慶福 (Yoshitomi)
• Japanese: 徳川家茂　(Tokugawa Iemochi)

Tokugawa Iemochi was the 14th shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate.

He was born in the Kishû Tokugawa residence in Edo in 1846, and became the head of the Kishû Tokugawa clan at age four.

There was a faction that supported Tokugawa Yoshinobu as successor to the shogun Iesada, but when Iesada died in 1858, Iemochi became the 14th Tokugawa Shogun by the recommendation of Ii Naosuke. This was during the Bakumatsu period, and the shogunate was facing both domestic troubles and foreign pressures. The shogunate pursued marriage between the Tokugawa line and the Imperial court, a policy known as kôbu gattai ("union of court and military"), in the hopes of appeasing the sonnô jôi ("Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians") extremists.

In 1862, Iemochi and Princess Kazu-no-Miya (younger sister of Emperor Kômei) wedded in a magnificent ceremony, the most visible show of the kôbu gattai policy.

The following year, in 1863, Iemochi visited Kyoto at the request (or demand) of the Imperial Court, the first visit by a shogun to the Imperial city since that of Tokugawa Iemitsu over two hundred years earlier. He traveled not along the Tôkaidô, but by ship as far as Osaka,, and was accompanied by the Rôshigumi (the future Shinsengumi), which had been conscripted to accompany him as part of his entourage. This journey, along with the shogun's visits to the Koganehara hunting grounds, were depicted in popular woodblock prints through a conceit, replacing Iemochi with Minamoto no Yoritomo.

In 1866, during the second Choshu expedition, Iemochi died in Osaka castle. His grave is at Zôjô-ji, in Tokyo.

References

• Tokugawa Iemochi: The Life and Times of the 14th Shogun, Tokugawa Memorial Foundation, 2007.