Another and more serious quarrel occurred not long afterwards in the reign of the same Emperor and during the rule of the third Shōgun, to whom many of the later interpolations in the early Tokugawa laws are generally ascribed. The cause of the dispute was a trivial matter—the promotion by the Emperor, irregularly as the Shōgunate claimed, of certain members of the Buddhist clergy connected with the Court. This time it had a serious ending. The Emperor, mortified by what he regarded as vexatious interference with his authority, resigned the Imperial dignity, being succeeded on the Throne by his daughter, the child of the Tokugawa princess already mentioned. A third instance, convenient for our purpose, is typical of the complications caused both in the matter of succession to the Throne, and in appointments to the office of Shōgun, by the difficulty of reconciling the custom of adoption with the dictates of filial piety, as laid down in Confucian doctrine. The time was the end of the eighteenth century. There were then a boy-Emperor eight years of age and a boy-Shōgun a few years older. Each had been adopted by his predecessor, who in each case had died shortly afterwards, the young Emperor’s succession to the Throne antedating the appointment of the young Shōgun by some six years. It was necessary to appoint a guardian for the young Shōgun, and some members of the Yedo ministry wished to appoint to this post the father, who belonged to the Hitotsubashi branch of the Tokugawa family. This course received the support of the boy-Shōgun, who, to show his filial respect, desired to instal his father with the title of ex-Shōgun (_Taigiōsho_) in the palace at Yedo set apart for the Shōgun’s heir. The proposal was resisted by the other Ministers on the ground that it was against precedent and would disturb public morals, in which ceremonial propriety played, as we know, so important a part. In the event of the adoptive parent dying in the lifetime of the real father—which in this case actually happened—the latter might, it was said, claim to be received in the former’s place into the adoptive family, a contingency which would lead to inconvenience and confusion. While the dispute was going on matters were complicated by the receipt of a similar request from the boy-Emperor in Kiōto, who desired that his father might be honoured by being given the title of ex-Emperor. There were precedents for the favour requested in the latter instance, and it would probably have been granted had the Government not felt that the concession would weaken their position in regard to the young Shōgun. Both requests were consequently refused; whereupon stormy scenes, we are told, occurred at the Yedo palace, in the course of which the Shōgun drew his sword on one of the offending Councillors, and an angry correspondence continued for two or three years between Kiōto and Yedo. In the end neither request was granted, and the Ministers whose counsel