The characteristic of Tokugawa’s seal was to adopt quotes of Confucianism. Tokugawa’s first seal was engraved with “福徳”. He also used black jar style seal carved with “無悔無frequently.
From around 1598, he started to use seal carved with “忠恕”. 福徳 = Fukutoku means happiness. “無悔無損” means that nobody gets hurt without your fault. “忠恕” called “Chujo” means mind of being considerate and compassionate. A seal characters Ieyasu chose was moral words in contrast of other Samurai lords.
The feature of Ieyasu’s seal was that decorative portorat eagle, dragon, tiger, lion which used to be used in impression as symbol of authorization was not adopted to his seal. He rather preferred to use moral words on impression instead of animals.
Roman character seal
Alessandro “Valignano” with a title of visitador, who came to Japan in 1568 placed home ground at Bungo province and made effort to preach the gospel. His seal had “耶蘇我会印” which means Jesuit. This seal was used for documents of church in the wake of “Inbanjo”. At the time, Otomo Sorin , lord of “Bango” province have undergone the Christian ritual of baptism and was named “Fransis” but he abbreviated baptismal name to FRCO and put it on his seal.
Moreover, Samurai lords influenced by baptized lord tried to undergo the Christian ritual of baptism and divide their baptismal name into two columns on impression in accordance with Portuguese style seal format.
A seal of Hosokawa Tadaoki who is the first lord of Buzen “kokura” province, was carved with Tada in first column and “woqui” in second column. This seal was divided paragraph into two columns in accordance with Portuguese style seal format.
Samurai class placed more importance on sealing than signing. One of the biggest feature in Edo period is that commoners started to use seal.
Huge market economy like “Rakuichi-rakuza” introduced by Oda Nobunaga was maintained in Shogunate feudal system created by Ieyasu as well and Merchant came to take hold of economy. In the result, seal was in need of every single contracts like trading, loan bonds, private written pledge
However, samurai class could use vemillion ink but commoners were not allowed to use vermillion ink but used indian ink instead.
Commoners got required to deposit their seals to town officer or lord and seal ledger was created to collate seal as needed. A deposited seal was called “jitsu-in” and used for important documents.
There was a proverb , “Ingou wa kubi to tsurikae (印形は首と釣り変え)” which shows how important seals were at the time.
“Ingyou” indicates Hanko, this proverb tells us the lesson and posture of using seal. Once you stamp seal on a contract, you must be prepared to be executed because there are many cases that people who had stamped without much thought on a contract suffered disadvantage and loss. The more significance of seal socially increased, the severer punishment was imposed to people who committed counterfeit, abuse of sealing.
In the Tokugawa period, no official seal was existed. For example, when holding court, seal was actually used but there was no official seal on the purpose of using in court so There was a custom that judges stamped own “jituin” (registered seal) seal and sign “Kaou”.
In the period of Meiji restoration, new government restored official seal institution based on Ritsuryo system. The new government requested each agents to cast official seals and gave seals to governors of each provinces.
Moreover, following in the wake of western countries’ custom, credential to foreign monarch was made it rule to seal up. As of old in Japan, credential was sent as the envelop was open and put on cotton bag. After Meiji period, credential was put into adhesive envelop and stamped seal on it after closing the envelop.