Japan

by Edwin Reischauer

  Because of the Ashikaga hope of reaping the benefits of the lucrative trade with China and the desire of the Ming dynasty in China to put a stop to Japanese piracy, a system was worked out in 1404, after several decades of diplomatic overtures on both sides, for a limited number of Japanese ships to go periodically between the two countries with tallies provided by the Chinese court attesting to their legitimacy. Between 1404 and 1547 some eighty-four Japanese ships went to China as part of this so-called tally trade. The Chinese saw the system as fitting into their concept that the other nations of the world were subservient to the Chinese empire and had to pay it tribute if they wished to be considered part of the civilized world. To the lasting shame of Japanese historians, Yoshimitsu and his successors not only sent “tribute” but were willing to accept investiture by the Chinese emperors as “kings of Japan.” The Ashikaga, however, did not in fact control much of the tally trade, except during the first few years. Most of the ships were financed by other prominent warrior families or religious institutions, particularly Zen monasteries, as well as by private merchants. The Japanese had little regard for the Chinese concept of a controlled tributary trade and were intent only on making profits, and so they continually sent more ships on more occasions than the official agreement called for. The bulk of the exchange of goods with China, moreover, was carried on by unauthorized ships and pirates, and a flow of trade also grew up with Korea by way of Tsushima Island and with China by way of the Ryukyu Islands, the modern Okinawa.

  Foreign trade was only one of the aspects of economic growth during this time. The indebtedness of the Kamakura jito was a sign of a growing money economy. There was a marked decline of barter in favor of the use of currency, which was largely in the form of copper coins from China. But money drafts also came into wide use. The slow breakdown of the shoen also gave rise to wider trade patterns within the country and the development of periodic marketplaces all over the land, as well as trading ports along the coast. Pawnbrokers, moneylenders, and wholesale merchants became prominent elements in the society of the time. The political fragmentation of the country led to the creation of toll barriers on the roads, set up by petty feudal authorities. But such fragmentation was at least in part offset by the development of manufacturing and trading guilds, known as za, which protected themselves through monopoly rights, guaranteed by the patronage of prestigious families and institutions associated with the old imperial court. Such guilds flourished particularly in the environs of Kyoto, the economic as well as political heart of the country.

  Marked technological advances were also evident during this period in increased rice yields per acre and in the development in all parts of Japan of many small specialized centers of production for papermaking, weaving, metalworking, and the like. While raw materials, such as copper, remained the fundamental Japanese exports to the continent, and imports were largely manufactured goods, such as minted coins, silks, art works, and books, the export of some manufactured items to China, chiefly swords and painted folding fans and screens, showed that Japan was catching up with China technologically. The finely laminated steel swords of Japan, in fact, were the best the world has ever seen and were in great demand abroad. Some 30,000 are recorded to have been shipped to China in a single tally mission, to the consternation of the Chinese authorities.

  The location of the bakufu in Kyoto, together with the continued decline of the imperial court, resulted in the transfer of leadership in cultural matters from the court to the Ashikaga. In fact, some of the shoguns proved much more noteworthy as cultural than military leaders. Even the strong Yoshimitsu set the artistic tone of his day, and his monastic retreat in the northern hills of Kyoto, with its gorgeous Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji) built in 1397, made Northern Hills (Kitayama) the name for the culture of his time. Similarly, the Eastern Hills (Higashiyama) culture of the eighth shogun, Yoshimasa (1436–1490), derived its name from his monastic retreat in the eastern hills of Kyoto, where he built his smaller but subtly beautiful Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji) in 1483.

  The Ashikaga shoguns strongly favored the Rinzai sect of Zen, probably seeing it as a balance to the rich, landed monasteries of the older sects. Takauji relied heavily on a Zen cleric, Muso Soseki, in religious, artistic, and even political matters. The Ashikaga, following a Chinese precedent, designated five great Zen monasteries in the capital to be the official Gozan or Five Monasteries, and this practice developed into an elaborate system of ranking Zen monasteries throughout the country, centering around what grew to be eleven major ones in Kyoto.

  Zen monks were active in the official tally trade with China, and they were the carriers of many new influences that reflected the cultural achievements of China during the Sung dynasty (960–1279). They revived Japanese interest and skills in the Chinese language and literature, introduced the revised Confucian teachings of Sung times known as Neo-Confucianism, popularized Sung styles of monochrome landscape painting, and took the lead in the type of landscape gardening that reached its perfection in the gardens of the Kyoto Zen monasteries of this period and is now copied around the world. They also introduced Japanese to the drinking of tea, which at first was looked on as an aid in meditation but by the late sixteenth century had become an elaborate esthetic ritual. The so-called tea ceremony, together with flower arrangement, which also derives from medieval times, were to become part of the training of every cultivated girl in modern Japan.

  Consulate General of Japan, New York

  Late sixteenth-century garden at the Sambo-In temple in Kyoto.

  The refined artistic taste of the Ashikaga court and its Zen monks left a lasting impression on Japanese esthetics. It emphasized what was natural, irregular, small, and simple in preference to things that were artificial, shaped by man, large, and grandiose. It displayed a disciplined cultivation of the essence—the handful of blossoms or branches in a flower arrangement; the simple instruments and spare, graceful movements of the tea ceremony; the sometimes austere design of the gardens, which in limited space called to mind the vast wonders of nature; and the few bold lines of paintings that suggested sweeping landscapes and vast cosmic powers. It was an esthetic that complemented the emphasis on discipline and self-cultivation the feudal Japanese had derived from Zen and the warrior ethos. It was also an esthetic peculiarly suited to the relative simplicity and poverty of medieval Japan. It is interesting that in recent years it has proved to have worldwide appeal in our own more complex and affluent age.

  While the Ashikaga court was dominated by Zen esthetic tastes and new Chinese artistic influences, an even greater part of the culture of the time grew from native and often quite popular roots. The domestic architecture of the age, with its entranceway, sliding paper doors, tokonoma, or recess for the display of art objects, and thick reed mats (tatami) covering the whole floor space of rooms, is essentially the domestic architecture of modern times. In literature the traditional forms continued, though with declining vigor, while new and more plebian trends became more typical of the age. Well-known stories and historical incidents recited by blind lute players and others became popular, as did tales of ghosts and goblins. Great epic accounts of warfare were particularly popular, such as the Heike monogatari (“Tale of Heike”) of the early thirteenth century, which recounts the rise and fall of the Taira family, and the Taiheiki (“Record of the Great Peace”) of around 1370, which tells of the incessant conflict of the period of the Northern and Southern Courts. In poetry the practice of linking endless chains of verses composed in turn by two or more persons became a veritable craze. Governed by elaborate rules and calling for great skill and wit, these renga, or “chain poems,” were clearly derived from the classic thirty-one-syllable “short poem,” alternating as they did the two basic components of the “short poem”—two 7-syllable lines and three lines of 5–7–5 syllables.

  The most important literary development of the time was the No drama, which grew out of old and simple popular dr
amatic forms but was perfected into a highly literary, stylized type of drama at the court of Yoshimitsu. No featured a bare stage, a chorus, a limited number of actors who chanted their lines, and a stately dance by the main actor as the climax. The subject matter was usually popular Shinto or Buddhist beliefs, often exemplified through well-known incidents of history. No survives today in its classic form and continues to have a small circle of devotees.

  The collapse of the bakufu and of all central power at the time of the Onin War (1467–1477) ushered in a century of rapid change in which Japan was in many ways made over politically and socially. Great changes in the whole nature of the warrior class and its economic foundations had actually been going on for a long time before the war broke out. Throughout the Kamakura period the jito had taken every opportunity to increase their income and power at the expense of the old proprietors of the shoen or local authorities who were not Kamakura vassals. The proprietors, in a desperate effort to hold on to as much of their income as possible, were often forced into various types of disadvantageous compromises. Among the commonest of these in the late Kamakura period were agreements to the equal division, between the proprietor and the jito, of the income from an estate. The endemic warfare of the half-century of the period of the Northern and Southern Courts gave warriors all over the country excuses to settle by arms their private quarrels with one another and to encroach further on the income and rights of the nonmilitary classes. Special military assessments of half the remaining income due the old proprietors became standardized in 1352 and 1368. This sort of erosion of the proprietory rights to the old estates and public lands continued throughout the Ashikaga period, until finally the Onin War and its aftermath of incessant fighting wiped out the last vestiges of the old system.

  As the estates and public lands disappeared, the economic support of the warriors changed from shiki income as jito to the total revenue from the tracts of land over which they now had undisputed control. If a warrior was strong enough, he held this land with his own power; but in most cases he held it as a fief from some stronger warrior, to whom he owed in return his services as a vassal. Thus by the end of the fifteenth century the whole land had become completely feudalized.

  Another great change in the warrior class had come from a gradual shift in military technology. Massed footsoldiers armed with pikes had become the chief force in battle, in place of the individual mounted knight, who now served more as a captain. This shift blurred the class lines between aristocratic fighting men and peasants. In the old days, only the rich few could afford the expensive accoutrements of battle, but now any sturdy peasant could become a pikeman. Armies grew much larger, and the lower classes could on occasion challenge the military domination of the upper classes.

  The slow elimination of the shoen and the income from them all but wiped out the old imperial court and the aristocracy in Kyoto. The imperial family and a greatly shrunken court nobility suffered severe impoverishment, surviving on dues as patrons of the guilds in the capital area and later on the largess of leading military figures. The vestigial existence that the old imperial government still had was due primarily to the semireligious aura of the emperors and the continuing belief that only they could be the legitimate source of political authority.

  The shugo system had never been very effective in controlling the provinces. Normally the area of theoretical authority of a shugo far exceeded his powers of control. Though responsible for one or several provinces, their own lands tended to be scattered and rarely constituted more than a small fraction of the total area of any of their assigned provinces. Some of the lesser warrior families in these provinces, known as kokujin, or “provincials,” might be their vassals, but others were unattached military men who built up their own independent territories or formed leagues of small military families. The complete breakdown of central authority in the Onin War gave the “provincials” a chance to make a bid for more power. The next century in Japanese history is known as the period of the Warring States, again a name taken from an era in Chinese history, and was characterized by what the Japanese have called gekokujo—“the lower defeats the upper.” Vassals overthrew their lords, and hitherto obscure “provincials” emerged as powerful new lords. Most of the shugo houses were replaced during this century by a new set of feudal leaders in control of smaller but much more consolidated domains.

  These new feudal lords came to be known as daimyo. Though their domains might be quite small, all the warriors in them were clearly their vassals. The confusion of the European feudal system, in which men often held fiefs from more than one lord, was never tolerated in Japan. The daimyo domains and other feudal holdings had also become consolidated through the development of the custom of unitary inheritance by a single heir—a system comparable to primogeniture, though not quite the same because the heir was not necessarily the eldest son. A daimyo’s vassals were enfiefed by him with their own lands or, as increasingly became the case, were simply salaried soldiers and administrators gathered around his headquarters, which was usually a centrally located castle. All the other people, peasant and merchant alike, were similarly under the daimyo’s control, the merchants supplying him with materiel and transport for war and the peasants paying taxes to him or his vassals and providing extra footsoldiers when needed. “House codes” often spelled out the organization and laws of a domain. To the Europeans, who appeared in Japan in the middle of the sixteenth century, the daimyo appeared to be petty kings.

  The daimyo, though fearing no higher authority, whether imperial or shogunal, were almost constantly at war with one another and at times had to deal with the military power of the lower classes. The southern commercial half of Kyoto fell under the control of the local merchants, and Sakai, now the southern part of the city of Osaka but at the time the chief entrepôt for trade on the Inland Sea and with China, became essentially an autonomous town. Peasant groups, particularly in the area around the capital, often marshaled military power to assert their rights. Political organizations of the common people were known as ikki, which in time came to mean “popular uprisings.” Such disturbances became increasingly common in the fifteenth century, and they often forced the bakufu to issue tokusei, or “virtuous government” edicts, canceling the debts not just of the warriors, as in Kamakura times, but of all people.

  Political groupings of the common people frequently centered around the temples and congregations of the popular faith sects. In Kyoto, Nichiren groups were particularly strong, but in other regions Shinshu predominated. It was known at the time as the Ikko, or “Single Minded,” sect, and one hears a great deal of Ikko-ikki, or uprisings of its adherents. This sect even won military predominance in the province of Kaga north of Kyoto in 1488 and was recognized as the undisputed ruler of this province for several decades after 1531. The Shinshu sect also built a strong castle headquarters in the emerging port town of Osaka.

  The rise of the footsoldier and of popular miltiary power posed a threat to feudal rule and typified the remarkably dynamic development of Japan at this time. Even though the Ashikaga period was an era of great political confusion and almost constant warfare, it witnessed extraordinary cultural innovation, institutional development, and economic growth. It saw the disappearance of all but the vestiges of the old imperial system and the emergence of a completely feudal society, comparable to that of high feudalism in Europe, though considerably better organized. The Japanese, who only a few centuries earlier had been a backward people on the edge of the civilized world, had grown to the point where they were able to compete on terms of equality with the Chinese and also with the Europeans, whom they were about to encounter.

  6

  THE REESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL UNITY

  The vigorous Japan of the first half of the sixteenth century still showed no signs of re-creating an effective central government, but the foundations for a new form of political unity had been laid. These foundations consisted of the daimyo domai
ns, into which almost all of Japan was now divided. They varied greatly in size, but tended to be compact, well-defined political units. National unity could be achieved simply by establishing some form of association or accepted leadership among them. Naturally many of the stronger daimyo began to aspire to the creation of just this sort of unity by winning control over the rest.

  The tendency was for stronger daimyo to reduce their weaker neighbors to vassalage or swallow them up completely. This process was probably hastened in the second half of the sixteenth century by the introduction of firearms from Europe. The first Europeans to reach Japan were Portuguese traders who landed on Tanegashima, an island off the southern tip of Kyushu, apparently in 1543. The Japanese at once took note of their guns, which were matchlock muskets, and began to imitate their manufacture and even improve on their technology. The use of guns soon became more prevalent in Japan than in contemporary Europe, and the winning side of a battle fought in 1575 had 10,000 matchlockmen in its force of 38,000, using them in serried ranks to maintain a steady fire. The cannon introduced at the same time necessitated a new type of castle construction. In place of the many small hilltop castles that had characterized the preceding age, the Japanese began to build great fortresses made up of concentric circles of earth-banked stone walls surrounded by broad moats. Though the white-walled wooden structures that surmounted these walls were more decorative than defensive, the castle fortresses themselves were quite impervious to the firepower of the day.