德川家 2차 처분의 산파역, 오쿠보 도시미치(大久保利通)

Abstract

This article examines how the second punishment of the Tokugawa family was decided and executed by the new government in Keio 4(1868) and what kind of role Okubo Toshimichi played in that process. Though some former retainers of the Tokugawa shogunate and many residents of Kanto considered the first punishment of the Tokugawa family as humilating, the new government hastened to implement a followup punishment and started to make decisions on ‘inheritor’･ ‘stipend size’･‘relocation territory’ after Saigo's arrival in Kyoto on the sixth of the second lunar April. It was Okubo who played a prominent part in this process. In the court council, an agreement was reached on the ‘inheritor’ issue, but there was a disagreement between Saigo's ‘Edo grand governor's office proposal’ and Okubo's Kyoto new government proposal. In these circumstances, Okubo made a suggestion to the new government to send a highest official to Edo, considering the ongoing rebellion by the Shogitai and the new government's distrust on the Edo grand governor's office who had shown a generous attitude in their negotiation with the Tokugawa family. Sanjo, who arrived in Edo as a grand inspector, felt a threatening atmosphere in Edo and informed the Tokugawa family of the imperial command endorsing the inheritor of the Tokugawa family and a planned imperial notice about the family's ‘feudal stipend’ and new ‘relocated territory’. After the successful suppression of the Shogitai on May 15, Sanjo notified the Tokugawa family on May 24 of the imperial order appointing the family inheritor as a feudal lord of the Sunpu and providing 70 mangoku of stipend to the inheritor(whose notification was delayed following Okubo's strong opinion against it), thus completing the second punishment of the family.