ABSTRACT
At the same time as the Tokugawa were establishing a working definition of their authority in relation to the power of the daimyo below and the prerogatives of the imperial institution above, they sought to elevate the temporal powers at their command to the plane of spiritual authority. This is a strategy now familiar to us from study of Emperor Shomu with Todaiji and Nobunaga with Azuchi Castle. The key to this theocratic strategy was architectural, even more manifest than it was in relation to the daimyo and the court, for it is in dealing with the divine that architecture most convincingly makes tangible that which is intangible. The construction of spectacular mausolea, dedicated to their predecessors in shogunal office, offered the Tokugawa family a religious means to the secular end of enhancing the political legitimacy of its government.
