Tokugawa Yoshinobu Receives a Dukedom in 1902

The defeat of the Tokugawa government had separated Yoshinobu’s position from leadership of the main family. Tokugawa Iesato succeeded to that house, while the former shogun spent decades in Shizuoka. Yoshinobu later moved to Tokyo and received an imperial audience in March 1898.

On June 3, 1902, Yoshinobu received a dukedom, the highest rank in the Meiji peerage, and permission to establish a separate house. The new Yoshinobu line did not replace Iesato’s main Tokugawa house. Recognition thus attached to the former shogun and his own descendants while preserving the family arrangement created after the Restoration.

The award changed his standing under the government he had once opposed. It did not restore the shogunate or his authority over the country. He continued a private household and contacts with relatives, including Tokugawa Akitake, with whom he shared photography and excursions.

Yoshinobu subsequently handed the headship of his new house to his son Yoshihisa in December 1910. The 1902 award had created a hereditary place within the peerage: it provided a successor for that status, rather than returning national political leadership to the former shogun.