Overview
Samuel Hideo Yamashita
Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History
Pomona College
From 1185 through 1867, Japan was ruled by warriors. They held most of the country's wealth and devised methods to control the general population, warriors and non-warriors alike. They even became the arbiters of taste and influenced popular culture. Warrior domination of "medieval Japan" raises several important questions. First, who were these individuals who called themselves samurai, "those who serve," and what enabled them to overthrow the former civilian rulers of the country? Second, what was the nature of warrior rule-what strategies, institutions, and devices did they use in governing? Third, how did warrior rule change during the "medieval period," and what explains these changes? And fourth, what impact did seven centuries of warrior rule have on Japanese values, social customs, and culture?
Warriors first achieved prominence around 900 when the civil government established in 794 proved incapable of maintaining order in the provinces. The reason for the government's failure was that the officials responsible for administering these areas were content to enjoy the pleasures of the capital, Heian-kyô (modern-day Kyoto), and to ignore their duties or to leave them to their subordinates. Consequently, by the late 800s, a certain lawlessness had spread over the provinces, especially in western and eastern Japan. Local notables-men with both extensive landholdings and small armies-both caused and helped quiet this disorder. In the 900s and 1000s several defied the government in what were virtual rebellions, which other local notables were asked to quell. The government therefore became more and more dependent on these powerful provincial men. By the 1100s the Taira and Minamoto families were the most powerful of these local notables. Both were descended from the imperial line and well established in the provinces-the Taira in western Japan and the Minamoto in the east. The Taira enjoyed imperial favor from 1159 until 1180, when Minamoto forces defeated theirs in a series of decisive battles that made the Minamoto the dominant warrior family in the country.
In 1192 the Minamoto created the first military government-which was called, after the Chinese fashion, a "tent government" (J. bakufu). That year the emperor legitimized the Minamoto rule when he bestowed on Yoritomo, the leader, the title "barbarian-quelling generalissimo" (J. sei-i-tai-shôgun), a title from the 800s that was given to the military leader sent to do battle with the indigenous Ainu people. Eager to avoid the temptations of Heian-kyô, the Minamoto located the capital of the new government in Kamakura, a quiet coastal town in eastern Japan. Hence the new regime is also known as the Kamakura government. When Yoritomo died in 1199, his wife's family, the Hôjô, began to rule behind the scenes as regents for young Minamoto shoguns.
Yoritomo's government was staffed by members of the Minamoto and Hôjô clans. The central government in Kamakura consisted of three main institutions, all of which had existed in the Minamoto house since the 1180s and were indigenous warrior institutions: the Office of Administration was responsible for the general administration of the country; the Office of Samurai oversaw the entire band of Minamoto and Hôjô warriors; and the Board of Inquiry handled disputes between them. In addition, Yoritomo dispatched his men to the countryside. Those appointed to the position of "constable" (J. shûgo) were responsible for maintaining order. The "stewards" (J. jitô) were charged with ensuring that landowners received income from their holdings, and they themselves kept approximately 13 percent of what was produced in the countryside.
With the founding of the first military government, warriors began to influence contemporary culture, through the values and practices expressed in two new literary forms that appeared in the Kamakura period (1185-1333). The first new literary form was the warrior house codes (J. kakun) and "last testaments" (J. yuikai). Composed by warrior leaders for their heirs and trusted retainers, these short, often pithy, texts prescribed what family members and trusted retainers were to believe and how they were to act. Although full of fascinating information about warriors, these documents also reveal that their values, beliefs, and practices varied from family to family in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Thus it is impossible to speak of a single warrior tradition; instead, there were many different warrior traditions. The "warrior tale" (J. gunki monogatari) was the second new literary form. These tales were long, highly romanticized prose accounts of heroic warriors and their exploits and were meant to be chanted rather than read. Performed by itinerant monks, the warrior tales reached a broad population, spreading knowledge of the warriors' values and ethos throughout the country. The Tales of the Heike (Heike monogatari), which was composed in the thirteenth century by a court nobleman, is an account of the rivalry of the Taira and Minamoto clans and the most famous example of this genre.
In 1333, the imperial family attempted to regain power. With the support of some of the warriors, they almost succeeded, but the restoration failed when Ashikaga Takauji, one of their warrior allies, betrayed them after taking control of the imperial capital, Heian-kyô.[1] In 1338 Takauji was given the title of shogun and created a new military government known simply as the Ashikaga or Muromachi government, the latter referring to the section of Heian-kyô where the central government offices were located. The first Ashikaga shoguns and their successors governed from the capital and relied heavily on their constables to maintain order and collect taxes in the provinces. However, the territories that the Ashikaga constables administered were extensive, often consisting of several provinces, and thus they became much more powerful than their Kamakura counterparts. The constables' power is reflected in their being permitted to retain 50 percent of what was produced in the countryside. Their mistake was that they lived in Heian-kyô, leaving the actual administration of their territories to their underlings, and this later had serious consequences.
The period of Ashikawa rule was a veritable cultural renaissance. The Zen Buddhist establishment, which had enjoyed the patronage of the Hôjô family, flourished under the Ashikaga, with Zen monasteries becoming the major centers of learning. In addition, new forms of culture, such as monochrome ink painting and rock gardening, were introduced from China. The Ashikaga shoguns and constables became active promoters of the new styles of painting and gardening and patrons of two other new cultural forms, both indigenous: a distinctive architecture and nô drama.
Life in the countryside changed dramatically under the Ashikaga rule. The first change was economic. Beginning in the 1400s, agricultural production increased significantly, owing to improved irrigation, the wide use of draft animals, better tools, and the planting of new varieties of rice. The result was larger surpluses and thus movable wealth. This, in turn, encouraged the commercialization of the rural economy, as farmers were able to grow for the market and had more freedom to sell their produce and crafts. However, much of the growing wealth of the countryside stayed there, which was the result of an important political development. Under their absentee constables, the Ashikaga control of the countryside grew weaker and weaker, with two discernible effects: the absentee landowners in the capital and elsewhere received less and less of what was produced on their lands, and more and more of what was produced locally stayed in the countryside, enriching rural communities and giving them more self-sufficiency and autonomy. These economic and political changes explain the rise of a new kind of local warrior leader called a daimyô, or "great name." Many had served Ashikaga constables in the 1400s and early 1500s, but in the mid-1500s they began to displace their former masters, seizing the land in their jurisdictions and appropriating its wealth for themselves. The Ashikaga administrators were gradually eliminated, driven back to the capital or killed, and by the end of the 1500s the Japanese islands had come firmly under the control of several hundred daimyô, who continually warred with one another.
This conflict began to abate in the 1580s when two daimyô-Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598)-took control of vast territories through outright conquest and skilled diplomacy. Something like national unity was achieved in1600, when a coalition of eastern daimyô, led by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1582), defeated their rivals in a decisive battle at a village in central Japan called Sekigahara. Ieyasu and his successors created a new military government based in Edo (modern-day Tokyo), a community of just 30,000 people in what had once been a small fishing hamlet on the edge of what is now Tokyo Bay.
The new Tokugawa regime was not a true national government. Rather, it was a national coalition of daimyô headed by the Tokugawa clan, which worked hard to maintain their dominance. First, they made sure that they held more land than anyone else in the country and thus were richer than any of their rivals; indeed, Tokugawa lands accounted for approximately 60 percent of the country's wealth. Second, they carefully protected their own holdings by dispatching trusted Tokugawa retainers to the major cities-mainly Ôsaka and Heian-kyô-and territories bordering the domains of former Tokugawa enemies. Third, the Tokugawa adapted a long-standing warrior device, hostage taking, and required that the daimyô of each domain spend every other year in Edo. When they were not in Edo, they had to leave their wife and heirs behind as virtual captives of the shogun. By design, this system of alternate attendance also placed extraordinary financial demands on the daimyô: they had to maintain residences in Edo and in their domain for themselves and their retainers and to travel to Edo and back to their domain in the appropriate style with the requisite number of retainers and porters. Finally, the Tokugawa instituted strict and highly restrictive rules governing the behavior of daimyô, the imperial court, and the general population in their territories. In their own domains, daimyô typically replicated the Tokugawa model of control.
So what was Japan like during the pax Tokugawa? First, its population grew from 12 million in 1600 to 31 million in 1720. Second, warriors, who comprised 5 to 6 percent of the population, were elevated socially, and they alone had the right to wear swords. They were separated from farmers, artisans, and merchants, and intermarriage was strictly prohibited. A fifth stratum included ecclesiastics, entertainers, prostitutes, and the pariah classes-the eta and hinin.[2] The country was increasingly urbanized-a third feature of Tokugawa Japan. In 1720, the new capital, Edo, was home to more than a million people, and Ôsaka and Heian-kyô had populations of around 360,000 and 350,00, respectively. In addition, each feudal domain had an urban center, the castle town, to which most warriors had been relocated by 1700. The biggest of these towns had populations of much more than 100,000. Fourth, both the national and rural economies had become increasingly commercialized. In accordance with the alternate attendance system, daimyô moved to and from Edo, which led to the creation of a national banking system. In the countryside, increased agricultural production and infrequent land surveys allowed farmers to keep more of what they produced, thus prompting them to grow cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and rapeseed and encouraging the commercialization of rural agriculture. Finally, in 1639 the Tokugawa authorities, fearing Christianty and foreign intervention in domestic affairs, closed the country to open and unrestricted commerce with the outside world. The Chinese and the Dutch were allowed to carry on a restricted trade through the port of Nagasaki, but Japanese were prohibited from leaving the country.
Warrior patronage of the arts continued under Tokugawa rule, although it was not as crucial as it had been in earlier periods. The daimyô and other high-ranking warriors supported the so-called high culture-chiefly painting, nô drama, and classical forms of literature-whereas the new cultural forms were sustained by the growing urban populations. For example, two new forms of drama-kabuki and puppet plays-appeared in the major cities in the seventeenth century and became immensely popular. Although the playwrights were forbidden to write about pornographic or politically sensitive themes, they generally ignored or circumvented these prohibitions, much to the delight of theatergoers. Several new literary genres also rose to the fore, including "stories of the floating world" (J. ukiyo-zôshi) and haiku, a shorter version of a long classical poetic form. Woodblock illustrations of the stories of the floating world were printed and sold, coming to be known as "pictures of the floating world" (J. ukiyo-e).
Notes:
1. In Japanese practice the surname precedes the given name, and it is common to refer to famous figures by their given name. Consequently, Minamoto Yoritomo is known as Yoritomo and Ashikaga Takauji and Tokugawa Ieyasu are commonly referred to as Takauji and Ieyasu respectively.
2. The eta ("pollution abundant") and hinin ("non-human") were traditional pariah classes whose origins are unclear. Their members were in polluting trades such as slaughtering animals and leatherworking and worked as custodians of graves, tomb guards, etc. Their behavior, dress and residential patterns were strictly restricted.
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