When Tokugawa Iemitsu was trying to convince his father, Tokugawa Hidetada was facing a delicate cloisonne plum ** flower arrangement.

For his eldest son with a strange personality, Tokugawa Hidetada actually didn't like it. In his opinion, the eldest son, who was not close to his blood brother, but was unusually close to his nurse's son, was really a bit upside down.

However, as the third son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was born at the end of the Warring States period, he saw the Toyotomi era when he was a teenager and the flowers were full of flowers. I also know very well how Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was known as the man of the world, suppressed his eloquent father to death.

Regarded as a god-like palace by the princes and the people of the family, he could only tremble in front of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and live a precarious life.

If it weren't for Toyotomi Hideyoshi's launch of the Korean Campaign, which angered the overlords on the mainland, and lost troops in Korea, the Toyotomi family was greatly damaged. Later, because of the birth of his son-in-law, he beheaded his adopted son Toyotomi Hideji's family, which made the Toyotomi family fall apart, and the world could not fall into the hands of the Tokugawa family.

After Tokugawa Ieyasu appointed the third shogun of the shogunate, Tokugawa Hidetada obeyed his father's will and no longer wavered in the inheritance of his eldest son.

First, Tokugawa Hidetada feared that the end of the Oda family and the Toyotomi family would happen to his own family again. After all, these two people in the world who already hold the world in their hands are because of the infighting in the family, which caused the outer daimyo to seize their inheritance.

Second, from his birth to his ascension to the position of general, Tokugawa Hidetada followed Tokugawa Ieyasu's design, step by step. Although Tokugawa Ieyasu has now passed away, the retainers who followed Ieyasu to lay the foundation of the Tokugawa family still obey Tokugawa Ieyasu's instructions before his death, rather than what he meant as a second-generation shogun.

Therefore, the retainers who supported him, the eldest son, within the shogunate, were not much less than the retainers who supported him. In this situation, as long as Tokugawa Iemitsu did not make a move to lose the hearts of the people, even Tokugawa Hidetada could not shake the position of the eldest son's shogun.

All he can do now is try to bridge the conflict between the eldest son and the youngest son, at least not let the two brothers kill each other.

Apparently, however, neither brother understood what he meant, and still regarded the other as their enemy. Tokugawa Hidetada had no choice but to try his best to keep his young son in the feudal kingdom and not let him come to Edo to see him. lest the hatred of the two brothers grow deeper and deeper.

But Tokugawa Hidetada was still quite annoyed by Afuku's behavior of going to the emperor without permission this time. It's just that the eldest son insisted that it was indeed his order for the nurse to meet the emperor, so that Tokugawa Hidetada could not punish Afuku.

Therefore, he could only show his existence in national politics, and rejected the lock-up order that Jiaguang wanted to issue.

The first is to show the shogunate officials below that although he has given up the position of shogun to his eldest son, it does not mean that he is no longer concerned with political affairs.

Second, he was indeed deeply dissatisfied with the decree that his eldest son wanted to issue. The Ming Kingdom is not comparable to those Nanban thousands of miles away, and it is not that the shogunate can make the Tang people obey their orders with a random order.

Although the current Ming Kingdom is inseparable from a small country that emerged in the Northeast, for Tokugawa Hidetada and the Japanese people, what they remember deeply is the battle of Bunroku and Keichaga.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea with hundreds of thousands of elite soldiers who ended the troubled times of the Warring States, but he couldn't even defeat tens of thousands of Ming ** teams, and several water battles at sea were even more powerless by the Chinese and North Korean naval forces.

The failure of the battles of Bunroku and Keicho was not only the loss of a large number of strong troops in the southwestern Japanese domains. More importantly, the war completely shattered the confidence of the Japanese daimyo to attack the mainland.

When Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered his army to cross the Tsushima Strait, these daimyo generals did not feel how strong the Ming army would be. After all, the soldiers under their command have been eliminated from generation to generation in hundreds of years of war.

It can be said that the Japanese soldiers who invaded Korea were familiar with the war almost from birth. With such an army on the mainland, almost no one thought that they would lose to the Ming ** team with comparable strength. As for the Koreans, the Japanese never took it seriously.

But soon the Japanese daimyo and the famous generals of the Warring States period discovered that fighting with the Ming ** team was a completely different experience from fighting on the Japanese archipelago.

Compared with those Ming cavalry, the Takeda family's Chibei is like a group of young children playing, if it weren't for the fact that the terrain of Korea is conducive to infantry, I'm afraid these Japanese troops would have been driven into the sea by the Ming cavalry.

Although the Tokugawa clan and the Tohoku feudal clans did not participate in the battle of Bunroku and Keichaga, they retained their own vitality. However, the Tokugawa clan still possessed no match for the Toyotomi retainers and the southwestern feudal clans.

In the end, Tokugawa Ieyasu still relied on the contradictions within the Toyotomi family, so that the Toyotomi family and the descendants fought each other to win the world.

However, both Tokugawa Ieyasu and Tokugawa Hidetada were worried that the Ming Congress would use the battles of Bunroku and Keicho as an excuse to launch a crusade against Japan.

Japan's naval battles were not as good as the Ming Kingdom, and the land battles were not as good as the Ming Kingdom, plus the Tokugawa family's seizure of the Toyotomi world, was not so justifiable. Once the Ming Kingdom made any moves against Japan, Tokugawa Hidetada was even more worried about whether those enemies of the Tokugawa family would take the opportunity to raise troops.

Therefore, when Tokugawa Ieyasu won the world, he sent people to show goodwill to the Ming Kingdom, and at the same time recruited the southern barbarians to build ships for themselves, trying to prepare for war and both.

Tokugawa Hidetada also continued Tokugawa Ieyasu's policy toward the Ming, allowing Ming merchants to trade freely with Japan in order to gain the favor of the Ming Kingdom and to understand the Ming Kingdom.

Of course, all kinds of silk, raw silk and other luxury goods transported by Ming merchants can greatly reduce the financial resources of local princes, which is also Tokugawa Hidetada's plan to kill two birds with one stone.

Last year, the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom officially sent a representative to visit the shogunate and concluded friendly relations with Japan, which was regarded as removing the hidden danger left by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea and greatly increasing the prestige of the Tokugawa shogunate.

Now that the ink has not yet dried, Tokugawa Iemitsu wants to start restricting the scale of the other party's trade and the ports of call.

Moreover, some of the Ming merchant ships that are now trading with Japan are simply the private property of the Ming emperor. The threat of detention of these merchant ships was undoubtedly a provocation to the dignity of the Ming emperor.

Japan and China have been in contact for thousands of years, and Tokugawa Hidetada, of course, knows how much those Tang people love their face.

The edict from the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom to Toyotomi Hideyoshi was not just a gift to his subordinates. At the beginning, Toyotomi Hideyoshi fell into the middle and summoned the daimyo ministers to listen to the edict of the Ming Emperor, but he was greatly embarrassed, but in the end, he endured it.

It is said that the current Emperor Ming is only 18 years old, and Tokugawa Hidetada doesn't want to test how low the bottom line of patience is for this great emperor.

Tokugawa Hidetada finally let go of the lotus flower in his hand, and the eldest son's proposition made him lose the mood of flower arrangement.

Tokugawa Hidetada glanced up at his eldest son, and then said, "Last year, the Tang people sent an envoy to repair and sign a peace and trade agreement with our country, so don't you have your signature on it?"

After that agreement was signed, didn't the shogunate announce it to the princes? Didn't you make a declaration to the emperor?

It's only been a year now, and you want to issue a lockdown order against the Tang people. How will the Tang people, the princes, the emperor, and the imperial court view the shogunate?

Sakai Tadakatsu and Matsudaira Nobutsuna, who negotiated an agreement with the Tang people last year, made the shogunate so ugly, should they apologize? ”

Tokugawa Iemitsu suddenly stopped talking, and he confronted his father's series of questions with silence. After a long while, Tokugawa Hidetada was a little helpless to break the suffocating silence first and said to his eldest son.

"Didn't the Tang people send an envoy to Edo, and you can send someone to exchange views with this envoy? Let them first restrain the Tang ships and the Tang people who trade with Japan, and if those Tang people in Japan still ignore the laws and regulations of the shogunate, it is not too late to submit an order to restrain the Tang people.

Doesn't the Tang people have an old saying, called salute first and then soldier. Although the Ming Kingdom is the Heavenly Empire, but when the Tang people arrived in Japan, they should also abide by the laws and disciplines of our country, we first expressed our attitude, and then took decisive measures, even if the Ming Emperor knew what happened, he could not blame our country for this..."

After Tokugawa Hidetada softened his tone, Tokugawa Iemitsu finally accepted his father's suggestion and temporarily withdrew the lockdown decree he had issued.

Before he exited the room, he inadvertently glanced at Mei ** on the desk in front of his father, and then finally left without saying a word.

Leaving the palace where the Great Imperial Palace lived, Izu Mamoru Matsudaira Nobutsuna, who was waiting outside the door, immediately bent down and followed him.

Tokugawa Iemitsu didn't stop talking to his cronie, he walked dozens of paces, away from his father's palace, before stopping under a cedar tree.

"Damn." Tokugawa Iemitsu suddenly blushed and whispered, his right hand clenched into a fist and punched the tree hard.

Matsudaira Nobutsuna lowered his head and didn't dare to speak, he knew that his lord was probably angry with his father again. The contradiction between the general and the Great Imperial Palace is not something that his little Izu Mamoru can mix.

Even Izu, who is known as wise, does not dare to give advice to Tokugawa Iemitsu in the relationship between father and son.

After taking a few deep breaths, Tokugawa Iemitsu finally calmed down, and he ordered without looking back: "There is a plum ** in the Great Imperial Palace, I have never seen it before, you go and find out, who sent it." Doesn't it have something to do with my good brother..."