The Reign of Shogun Ishida Hidetaka (1733 - 1761)
Japan's Enlightenment:
Unlike some of his predecessors, Mitsushige had been fortunate enough to be blessed with three sons: Mitsuhide, Hidetada and Hidetaka. As the youngest son, Hidetaka had prepared himself from a young age the reality of never becoming Shogun. He was an unambitious, kind and thoughtful child. Good qualities for a princess to have, but not so good for a samurai's son. In fact, Hidetaka shunned martial pursuits altogether, preferring instead to devote his life to the arts, painting, calligraphy and pottery being his favourites. His brothers were quite the opposite, enjoying kenjutsu, sojutsu, kyujutsu and by far their favourite of all, Bajutsu (or horsemanship).
Both Mitsuhide and Hidetada were keen riders and upon reaching adulthood enlisted in the cavalry. As the oldest and therefore the "crown prince" Mitsuhide joined first and served with distinction in the Pacific Theatre of the War of Spanish Succession before his untimely death due to malaria while on garrison duty in Manila. Hidetada never saw active military service abroad, instead preferring to spend his days on hunting trips in the Japanese countryside. One one such occasion he fell off his horse and banged his head on a tree stump, most likely causing a cerebral hemorrhage, killing him. Out of nowhere Hidetaka had gone from third in line to the Shogunate to first.
Hidetaka's reign was very much different to that of his predecessors: he paid little attention to economic or military affairs, instead preferring to focus on his artistic pursuits. Hidetaka spent his days painting and conversing with other artists, the "Hidetaka Circle", a group of artists which centred around the Shogun, soon became a prominent part of Court life. Under his reign, Japan entered an artistic renaissance, with traditional styles and themes fusing with new techniques learned from European Classicism creating a distinctly Japanese Classicist style. The late Heain and Gempei periods were popular themes of this proto-Romanticist art and literature.
Hidetaka may not have spent as much time or effort in running the country, but when he did he proved to be a most effective and innovative Shogun. One such example was the establishment of Japan's first (albeit state run) newspaper, the
Nihon Shimbun. The
Nihon Shimbun was unusual in that, unlike the contemporary gazettes of Europe, it featured independent columns dedicated to art and literatuire, including "syndicated" stories and poetry in addition to news and chronicles of edicts, state appointments and Court life. As the papers were published by the state, they remained heavily biased towards the Shogunate and some historians have claimed that Hidetaka used the medium as a propaganda tool. As his reign was marked as one of the most stable in recent memory, if this was so it must have worked.
First issue of the Nihon Shimbun
circa 1735. The mass publishing of the paper was made possible due to the importation of modern printing presses from The Netherlands.
Thanks to Mitsushige's education reforms, over half of the Japanese population were now literate by 1745, and rising. Hidetaka commissioned Japan's institutes of higher education to provide Japanese-language translations of European works and treatises on medicine, science, history and most importantly, philosophy. Because of Hidetaka, an entire generation of newly-literate Japanese were exposed to the best the Enlightenment had to offer, much to the benefit of Japan's scientific and academic circles.
Hidetaka's reign wasn't all sunshine and daises though. Japanese sailors had long been aware of an uninhabited island off the coast of Honshu. Because nobody lived there, they were known as the Bonin islands, literally "No Person (uninhabited) Islands". The islands were rich in flora and fauna, but had no real economic or strategic use to Japan, apart from their remoteness. In 1755, Hidetaka ordered the establishment of a penal colony on the islands, one which soon earned a reputation as a downright terrible place to be sent to. Crime in Japan - rebellions aside of course - was always very low by contemporary European standards, so the penal colony mostly served as a deterrent. Nevertheless, the exile of a few "political prisoners" definitely helped contribute to the stability of Hidetaka's reign.
Fall of Eagles:
When we last left Europe the Hapsburg Empire was in the ascendant, following the merge of the Austrian and Spanish crowns. In 1735 Karl was made Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire, adding the northern German lands to his burgeoning Empire. Karl grew more and more ambitious and his former allies more and more nervous; it seemed that in slaying one monster they had created another one.
One country in particular was worried about the rise of Austria, their northern German neighbour Prussia. Unlike their German neighbours, Prussia refused to accept Austrian hegemony and began plotting with France and Austria's former allies Britain and The Netherlands. Karl tried to offset this by establishing a new, Catholic-based alliance bloc centering around the Hapsburgs, France, Poland, the Italian states and possibly Japan. Karl was perhaps foolish to try and convince France that it's ties to Austria based on a common faith were worth more than a Frenchman on the throne of Spain and while Austria and Poland did sign an alliance the Catholic Bloc Karl envisioned never came to fruition.
The alliance with the PLC turned out to be a poisoned chalice for both Poland and the Hapsburgs. Prussia began plotting with the Russian Tsar to partition the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth between them. The Quintuple Alliance against the Hapsburgs: France, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain and The Netherlands, was born. Japan, which had strong trade links with nations on both sides opted to remain neutral, though quietly and tacitly backed the Quintuple Alliance. Japanese bankers, the "gnomes of Zipangu" as Karl pejoratively called them, provided low interest loans to the Quintuple powers while also selling off Japanese currency reserves bought during the War of Spanish Succession, causing the devaluation the Hapsburg Schilling.
Unlike the last major European war, Japanese influence though not insignificant was negligible, and most of the credit to defeating the Hapsburgs goes to the European Powers, Prussia in particular. The War of the Quintuple Alliance, or War of Hapsburg Containment lasted three years from 1740 to 1743 and resulted in a decisive alliance victory. At the Treaty of Den Haag (1743), Karl was forced to relinquish the crown of Spain to a Bourbon, under the provision that the crowns of France and Spain never merge (the alliance had clearly learned it's lesson from the last war) and while he was allowed to keep the Holy Roman crown, almost all of the Northern Holy Roman states entered the Prussian fold. Poland and Lithuania were partitioned between Poland and Lithuania were partitioned between Prussia and Russia, with Austria receiving a few southern provinces as compensation for losing it's Spanish lands. The War of the Quintuple Alliance could be seen as the War of the Four Eagles: whereas the Polish Eagle had fallen and the Hapsburg Eagle wounded, the Prussian and Russian Eagles were in the ascendant.
Hidetaka in traditional shogunal robes, circa 1758. Best remembered for his patronage of the arts and his monkey-like appearance reminiscent of Hideyoshi, Hidetaka was a competent, innovative yet ultimately bland and uninteresting Shogun. He died peacefully in 1761 at age 63, his heir Hidetsugu was only 11 months old at the time of his death.
