Japan

by Edwin Reischauer

  Consulate General of Japan

  Central donjon of the Himeji castle near Kobe, the finest remaining example of a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century castle.

  With the aid of this improved military technology, the stronger and abler daimyo subdued their rivals at an even faster pace. The result was the relatively rapid reunification of Japan in the late sixteenth century. The process was achieved by three successive leaders, each building on the work of his predecessor. The first of these was Oda Nobunaga, a daimyo from a region east of Kyoto, who in 1568 seized the capital, ostensibly on behalf of a contender for the position of Ashikaga shogun, though his deposing of this man five years later brought a formal end to the Ashikaga bakufu. Meanwhile, Nobunaga had started to win control over the whole central region. He laid waste the Enryakuji, the great monastic headquarters of the Tendai sect on Mt. Hiei above the capital, and slaughtered its warrior monks; he destroyed the military power of the popular faith sects in the region, seizing the castle headquarters of the Shinshu sect in Osaka after a ten-year war; he forced most of the daimyo of central Japan to recognize him as overlord; and he abolished toll barriers and restrictions on markets in the areas under his control.

  Nobunaga’s career was cut short in 1582 when he was killed by a treacherous vassal, but his work of reunification was continued by his greatest general, Hideyoshi, a man of peasant origin who had risen from the ranks and only later in life assumed the aristocratic-sounding family name of Toyotomi. In 1587 Hideyoshi forced the submission of the great Shimazu domain of Satsuma in southern Kyushu and thereby won control over all western Japan. Three years later, after he destroyed the chief daimyo realm in the Kanto area, all of eastern and northern Japan submitted to him. After centuries of warfare and ineffectual central government, Japan once again had become a politically united nation.

  Hideyoshi, recognizing that by tradition the post of shogun was open only to men of Minamoto descent, did not take that title for himself. But, claiming a shadowy Fujiwara ancestry, he did assume high court posts, including that of chancellor. In fact, he is known to history as the taiko, a term for a retired chancellor. Basing himself in Kyoto and the restored Shinshu castle at Osaka, he set about ruling the whole nation and putting order into its political structure. He started a great cadastral survey of the land in 1582 and on the basis of it assigned fiefs and duties to his vassals, moving them about quite freely. He standardized the currency and tried to monopolize foreign trade by insisting that ships could sail abroad only with his documents of authorization. In an effort to put an end to the warfare and popular uprisings that had characterized Japan for centuries, he decreed in 1588 the confiscation of all swords from the peasants, and in 1591 he issued orders that all warriors, peasants, and merchants must remain in their current occupations and positions.

  After such a long period of warfare, Japan was naturally overflowing with military men, and it was possibly in order to lessen the dangers of this situation that Hideyoshi turned the interests of the military class to foreign campaigns, though his motives, of course, may simply have been those of the many men before him who had longed for more worlds to conquer. In any case, he embarked in 1592 on the conquest of the world, meaning for him China. He dispatched an army of about 150,000 men, which quickly overran Korea but was checked by Chinese forces near Korea’s northern border and by Korean “turtle ships,” probably the world’s first armored vessels, which disrupted his lines of supply. In 1597 Hideyoshi renewed the attack, but the whole expedition was withdrawn when he died the next year.

  Hideyoshi left only an infant heir under the protection of his five chief vassals, whom he had formed into a council, but the strongest of these men soon took power in his own name. This was Tokugawa Ieyasu, who had first achieved prominence as an ally of Nobunaga, protecting his eastern flank, and later, after Hideyoshi’s subjugation of the Kanto in 1590, had been given by Hideyoshi a huge fief in that region. Here at Edo, the modern Tokyo, he had built a great castle headquarters, the central portion of which forms the contemporary imperial palace grounds. Ieyasu won his mastery over the country in a decisive battle in 1600 at Sekigahara, in a low pass between the capital area and the regions to the east, and he legitimized his position by taking the title of shogun in 1603. He made sure of his hold on the country in campaigns in 1614 and 1615 against the great Osaka castle, where the last adherents of the cause of Hideyoshi’s heir were annihilated. Ieyasu, unlike his two predecessors, managed to stabilize the political situation and was able to pass his rule on to his heirs, who continued to occupy the position of shogun for more than two and a half centuries. The age from 1600 until 1867, therefore, is known either as the Tokugawa period or, from their capital, as the Edo period.

  The system of rule that Ieyasu and his first two successors perfected in the first half of the seventeenth century was based on the daimyo domains that had grown up during the preceding century and on the methods of central control over them and the whole nation that Nobunaga and Hideyoshi had been developing. It was thus basically feudal in structure, but it represented a highly organized and stable stage of feudalism, unlike anything Europe ever witnessed. In fact, in terms of organization, efficiency, and order, it was, if anything, ahead of the contemporary kingdoms of Europe, at least until the late eighteenth century. This sort of highly organized, very stable, and relatively centralized feudalism is so at variance with the experience of Europe or even earlier feudal Japan that historians are unsure as to what it should be called, but it is probably best regarded as a stage of late feudalism that was unique to Japan and would have been impossible to maintain in any less isolated country.

  Although in complete control of the country, the early Tokugawa shogun did not push ahead to an untried centralization of government of the type we know today, but instead made use of the thoroughly familiar daimyo system in order to bring quick stability to the land. The shogun reserved for themselves a huge realm consisting of about a quarter of the agricultural land of the country, located largely around their Kanto headquarters in Edo and the old capital region around Kyoto, but including also all the major Japanese cities, ports, and mines. The other three-quarters of the land was divided among theoretically autonomous daimyo, numbering 265 at the end of the Tokugawa period, and made up of three categories. First came the “related” daimyo, consisting of cadet branches of the Tokugawa family, including the three large domains of Mito, Nagoya, and Wakayama, which flanked the shogunal realm. Next came a relatively large number of fudai, or “hereditary” daimyo, who had been Ieyasu’s vassals before 1600 and held relatively small fiefs, largely in the more central parts of Japan. Finally there were the tozama, or “outer” daimyo, who had been Ieyasu’s allies or in some cases enemies at the battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and held for the most part relatively large fiefs at the western and northern ends of the islands, far from the strategically important central part of the country.

  The domains of the daimyo varied greatly in size. They were based on the national cadastral surveys Hideyoshi had carried out and were ranked in terms of their rice production measured in koku, the equivalent of 4.96 bushels. The lowest yield that would qualify a man for the rank of daimyo was 10,000 koku, and the largest “outer” lord had a domain of 1,022,700 koku. Collectively, the more than 26 million koku yield of Japan was divided so that the shogun’s realm and the domains of his “hereditary” vassals received slightly more than a quarter each, considerably more than a third went to the “outer” daimyo, and the remainder of about one-eighth was held by the “related” daimyo. Thus the Tokugawa coalition of shogun, “related” houses, and “hereditary” daimyo held well over half the agricultural land and virtually all the central and most strategic regions.

  The Edo government, or bakufu, not only supervised directly the cities and the quarter of the land that constituted the shogun’s realm, but also served as a supervisory government for the whole nation. In the fashion already pio
neered by the Hojo of Kamakura, though in much more complex and highly developed form, it consisted of a series of councils; a number of two-man or four-man administrative posts, such as regional deputies and commissioners in charge of the various cities, financial matters, the control of religious institutions, and the like; a few intendants to supervise the shogunal lands; and a mass of petty clerical positions and military guard units. The top two councils, known as the “elders” and the “junior elders,” which were in charge, respectively, of national affairs and matters relating to the shogunal realm, were made up of a few selected “hereditary” daimyo, who served as chairmen in monthly rotation. The lesser administrative posts, clerkships, and military guard groups were filled with minor direct vassals, or retainers, of the shogun. These were divided into two categories—almost 5,000 “standard bearers” (hatamoto) of relatively high rank and income and some 18,000 “honorable house men,” who at the lower levels were footsoldiers with only subsistence salaries. The “related” houses, though providing shogunal heirs when the main line died out, did not normally participate in the Edo government, and the “outside” daimyo were strictly excluded from it.

  As time passed, the majority of the shogun, coming to the post by heredity as they did, proved to be ineffectual leaders and gradually sank to a largely symbolic role, but the bakufu was a relatively efficient bureaucracy that could function even without shogunal leadership. The various posts in the government were open only to men of specific hereditary ranks, but since there were always many more eligible at each level than the posts available, it was possible to choose the more able ones for actual service, particularly in the higher positions. Men of outstanding ability, especially if they attracted the shogun’s attention, might on occasion be raised in rank and income, thus qualifying them for higher posts. The availability of many candidates for most of the posts of importance gave rise in time to contending reformist and conservative cliques vying for power by winning the shogun’s backing.

  The general principles of the Tokugawa government and its control over the domains were spelled out in a code called Laws for the Military Houses, issued in 1615 and again in revised form in 1635. The domains, which later came to be known as han, were organized in close imitation of the shogun’s government. A daimyo’s band of vassals consisted of a few chief vassals with subfiefs, who made up his higher councils, and lesser vassals, who were largely salaried rather than enfiefed, lived around his castle headquarters, and staffed the lower echelons of his government and made up his guard forces. Each domain had its own laws, but they were shaped to conform closely to those of Edo.

  The daimyo were in theory autonomous in running the internal affairs of their domains, but in reality they were kept under strict surveillance and control by the central government and often treated as little more than its local officials. During the first half-century of Tokugawa rule there were 281 cases of daimyo being moved from one domain to another and 213 of the confiscation of a domain because of the lack of an heir or for alleged misrule. Though in later years both types of interference became much less frequent, the Edo government insisted throughout on its right to approve of all daimyo inheritances and marriages, restricted the castle construction and size of the military forces of the daimyo, prohibited direct relations between the various domains, and called on the daimyo for heavy contributions for the construction of its own castles and other public works. Naturally Edo considered all the armed forces of the domains as being subject to its call at any time.

  The arbitrary moving about of the daimyo weakened their hold on the loyalty of the peasants they ruled but at the same time strengthened their control over their vassals and retainers. These military men had to move with their daimyo and, uprooted from their native soil, where their ancestors had once controlled both land and peasants, they were forced to rely entirely on their bonds to their daimyo. In the process, they became close-knit groups that presaged the business and other groupings that are such a predominant feature of contemporary Japanese society.

  The most important way in which the domains were controlled proved to be the sankin kotai, or the system of “alternate attendance” of the daimyo in Edo. According to this system, which had been perfected by the 1630s, a daimyo spent alternate years in residence at the shogunal court and in his own domain. Great daimyo processions, especially on the Tokaido highway between Kyoto and Edo, were one of the more frequent and spectacular sights of the age. A daimyo’s chief wife and heir had to be left in Edo at all times as permanent hostages. The sankin kotai system not only put a heavy financial burden on the daimyo by forcing them to maintain one or more large residences in Edo and make the costly annual trips there and back, but also tended to turn them and their families into Edo courtiers, somewhat out of touch with the people of their own domains.

  In addition to controlling the whole military class in this way, the bakufu exercised strict supervision over the nonfeudal classes throughout the shogun’s realm, which included the major ports of Osaka and Nagasaki and the old capital of Kyoto. It allotted a minuscule 187,000 koku, less than a tenth of 1 percent of the agricultural production of the land, to the support of the imperial court and its ancient noble families and only 600,000 koku to the maintenance of religious establishments, showing how far these once-great institutions had fallen in income and power. Desiring to stabilize social conditions, it strengthened the sharp lines that Hideyoshi had started to draw between occupational groups.

  To support his effort to stabilize the country, Ieyasu found the theories of the great twelfth-century Chinese Neo-Confucian scholar Chu Hsi (Shushi in Japanese) to be of use, and he and his successors made a sort of Tokugawa orthodoxy of Chu Hsi’s teachings. According to Confucian theory, society was divided into four classes: the scholar-rulers, or warrior-rulers in the case of Japan; the peasants, who were the prime producers of wealth; the artisans, who were the secondary producers; and merchants, whose function was seen as being basically parasitic, thus putting them at the bottom of society. This strongly agrarian bias naturally fitted the attitudes of the warrior class, which, having developed as a landowning aristocracy, was oriented toward agricultural production and land taxes rather than trade.

  While little was done to enforce the divisions among the three lower classes, the lines between them and the top warrior-ruler class were made very sharp. This top class was a relatively large one, consisting of about 7 percent of the total population, larger by far than that in any feudal land in Europe. It is known in Japan by the generic term of bushi, “military families,” but in the West usually by the more specific name of samurai, or “retainers.” This top class was theoretically cut off from intermarrying with the lower classes. With the exception of the enfiefed members of its higher ranks, it had relatively little contact of any sort with the rest of the population, because it was congregated largely in Edo or at the castle headquarters of the daimyo. It was distinguished from the lower classes by its right to bear family surnames, its special dress, and the two swords that men wore at all times as their badge of samurai status.

  The unsettled conditions and the increasing military and political power of the common people in the century preceding the reunification of Japan had given promise of a more fluid society than the Tokugawa system turned out to be. The reassertion of firm control by a warrior class through an essentially feudal pattern of government has been seen by some historians as an unfortunate and anachronistic reversion to feudalism. But seen in another light, it was merely the standardization and perfection of known techniques of rule, which in a relatively short period of time produced for the Japanese a stable and carefully organized form of government, in many ways more efficient than the emerging nation-states of Europe. In any case, the Tokugawa system brought peace to Japan and proved capable of functioning with reasonable efficiency until the middle of the nineteenth century.

  The maintenance of the political and social divisions and local autono
mies of the Tokugawa system probably would have proved impossible if Japan had not reestablished relative isolation from outside pressures during this period. At first, this isolation was not the conscious policy of any Japanese ruler but resulted somewhat accidentally from the experience the Japanese had in their first contacts with Europeans and the Christian religion. Portuguese traders, who, because of their superior ships and seamanship, were coming to be important carriers of trade in Asian waters, continued to come to Japan after their first discovery of the islands in 1543, and by 1549 the newly founded Jesuit order started missionary work there. One of the great founders of the Jesuit order, St. Francis Xavier, was active in Japan from 1549 to 1551. He was followed by other able missionaries, many of whom were enthusiastic about the Japanese because of their responsiveness to Christianity and the fact that the Japanese feudal ethos made them much more understandable and admirable than other Asian peoples in the eyes of Europeans, who themselves were just emerging from their own long feudal experience.

  To the Japanese, Christianity at first seemed to be a variant of the popular faith sects of Buddhism, and some Kyushu daimyo, noticing that the Portuguese traders tended to go where the Jesuit priests were welcome, embraced the new religion and ordered their subjects to follow suit. The port of Nagasaki, which was in time to become the chief contact point with the outside world, was founded by one of these lords in 1571 to attract the Portuguese trade. The Christian missionaries were also well received in the capital area, where Nobunaga saw them as allies in his fight to destroy the power of the Buddhist sects. For a while there was quite a craze for Portuguese things, and artists painted many scenes depicting the great ships, outlandish costumes, and somber black-robed priests of these namban, or “southern barbarians,” who had approached Japan from the south. It has been estimated that by around 1580 there were some 150,000 Christians in Japan and perhaps twice that number in the early seventeenth century, which would be a larger percentage of the total population of Japan than is Christian today.