Note 4 — NEWS FROM FILIPINAS, 1640–42
Reading edition
Apparently referring to the mikado and his seclusion from active life—a condition which had existed for many years, but which Iyeyasu especially intensified in order to strengthen his own power and that of his house. The mikado at the time mentioned in our text was Meishō—a woman, according to B. H. Chamberlain (Murray’s Handbook of Japan, 4th ed., pp. 65, 67). The reference may possibly be to Hideyori; but he died much earlier, in 1621.