first became popular in Japan, and the musical instrument termed the
_samisen_ was introduced from the Loo-Choo islands. The earliest trace
to be met with of the use of this species of guitar is contained in a
history of events for the year 1558, and it has been suggested that the
Loo-Choo people obtained the instrument from the Spaniards who came
to the Philippines in 1520, and continued their voyage under Magellan
northward as far as Nafa. But this view of the samisen’s origin is
not entirely concurred in by Japanese archæologists who hold that it
is improbable, for many reasons, that it is merely a bad copy of the
guitar. The Loochooans called it the Jamisen, and used it to scare away
snakes, because its sound was, as they declared, much like the cry of
the mongoose (ichneumon), which is the implacable enemy of the serpent
tribe. Possibly this explanation of the purpose which their special
instrument of music was made of old to serve may not altogether commend
itself to the geisha body to-day, and it would appear to be more probable
that snake’s skin was stretched on the drum where ordinarily vellum is
employed,—in more recent time cat’s skin has been used,—and that ja =
serpent, and mi = body, sen = strings, may be the actual derivation of
the name, though as written now in Japan it might mean “three dainty
threads.” The geisha’s office was to sing, dance, play the samisen or
other musical instrument, to pour out wine for the guests, and generally
to infuse gaiety and good humour among the convives, her title of gei
= accomplishments, and sha = exponent, sufficiently indicating the
nature of the services she was engaged to render. She was, in fact, a
professional entertainer, and in the luxurious days of the Ashikaga
Shogunate she became fashionable, and has never lost her popularity. Her
taste in dress is considered to be unapproachable, her coiffure is a
triumph of the hairdresser’s art,—the recognised style being some form
or other of the “shimada,” a fashion brought to the capital centuries
ago from the town of Shimada, a railway station midway between Tokio
and Kioto,—she is entirely her own mistress, and often lives in her own
house, though in the majority of cases she dwells with others and has an
agent who makes contracts for her. Her attractions may draw patrons and
benefit the landlord, as he is quick to perceive, of the restaurant to
which she may choose to attach herself, and if she should be summoned to
a house or to take part in an entertainment to which she does not care
to go, she is at perfect liberty to decline the invitation. Anything
less resembling the life of slavery that it is sometimes represented to
be it would be difficult to imagine. Her singing and dancing are usually
remunerated at a fixed price per half-hour, varying according to her
status as an accomplished entertainer, and she is not infrequently called
upon to display her abilities to a party composed exclusively of ladies,
whose wish it may be, like that of the other sex, to beguile the tedium
of a winter evening by her witty conversation and her skill in music.
Finally it must be added that a geisha of good repute is more sought
after than one whose morality is deemed to be somewhat lax. In any case
her character is always known to the police, for it is the rule that she
must take out a licence as an entertainer, and the Chief Superintendent
of the Section, in handing the document to her, commonly adds some words
of fatherly admonition to avoid the many pitfalls that of necessity lie
in her path.
The nation once more experienced the miseries of civil strife towards the
close of the sixteenth century, this time by reason of the introduction
of a religion which differed from that which had been dominant in Japan
for twenty-three centuries, and likewise from that Buddhism which had
found its way eastward 1000 years before from India. The Portuguese had
obtained the right, under the Ashikaga rule, to settle in Japan, and in
1542 they brought with them,—what were altogether strange at that time to
the Ten-shi’s people,—firearms, and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic
faith. The keen desire manifested by the Jesuits to make proselytes
speedily provoked the antagonism of the Buddhist and Shinto priesthoods,
but, as was the case in China, the climax seems to have been reached
only with the assumption by the new-comers of political power. To such
pretensions the ruling house at Yedo could but oppose all its strength,
and the patriotism of the country asserted itself in the form of a
persecution that left no stone unturned in the effort to rid the land of
a direct menace to its existence as an independent monarchy, secure from
the influences of the Church of Rome. But the expulsion of the visitors
was not accomplished until many years after the supremacy of the Ashikaga
line had been successfully challenged by Nobunaga, and to the renowned
Hideyoshi,—the Taiko-sama, or Great general,—had succeeded the scarcely
less famous Iyeyasu, “the Law-giver,” who founded the Toku-gawa dynasty
of Shoguns, and himself to all intents and purposes governed the country,
from his accession in 1603 to the post of Sei-I-Tai-Sho-Gun, to his death
in 1616, for though nominally he gave way to his third son, Hidetada,
in 1605, he really ruled in his son’s name, and retained the executive
power in his own hands. His ostensible retirement was due to his desire
for leisure to frame his system of laws for the better government of the
empire, and he drew up a scheme for the effective subordination of the
provincial dai-mios, or feudatories, to the ruling authority at Yedo,
which remained in force until the Restoration of direct sovereign rule,
in 1868.
The Shogun Iyeyasu was descended from the Minamoto family, and the name
Toku-gawa, _lit._: stream of blessings, is said to have been taken from
a river and village of the same name in the province of Shimo-tsuke,
and not far from the celebrated Nikko Shrines. On the banks of the
little Tokugawa the Shogun’s ancestors had dwelt, as farmers, for
centuries, but the father of Iyeyasu,—Toku-gawa Shiro,—lived in the
village of Matsudaira, in the province of Mikawa, which borders on the
Pacific, about midway between Kobé and Yokohama. Here the “Law-giver”
was born in 1542, the year that the Portuguese voyager, Mendez Pinto,
first set foot on the soil of Japan. Iyeyasu fought under Nobunaga,
and Hideyoshi, and ultimately succeeded the renowned Tai-ko Sama in
the supreme command of the military forces, occupying thereafter the
position of Sei-I-Tai-Sho-Gun. Iyeyasu first acquired property in his
native province of Mikawa, and all his early associations were with that
region, so much so that his opponents in after years were accustomed
to allude to him somewhat slightingly as the “man from Mikawa.” When
Iyeyasu obtained the position of Shogun in 1603 he elevated his
birthplace to a position of honour by conferring its name as an extra
title on many of his supporters, and down to the date of the abolition
of such territorial distinctions there were not a few prominent dai-mios
who thus preserved their connection with the Tokugawa regime from the
beginning of its supremacy. The traces were to be found in titles such
as “Nabeshima Matsudaira Hizen no Kami”—the baron Nabeshima Matsudaira
of Hizen province,—Kuroda Matsudaira the dai-mio of Chikuzen,—and a
host of others. In accord with the plans formulated by Tokugawa Iyeyasu
every one among the number, some 300 in all, of the provincial barons
was personally required to spend a moiety of each year in residence
at his Yashiki in Yedo, and to leave his family there for the other
six months,—the Yashikis being town mansions dotted about the capital
in which a semi-regal state was kept up, and where the barons were
surrounded by hundreds of their own retainers, ready to do their
chieftain’s bidding on the instant. The remnants of these mansions are
still to be found in modern Tokio, but they were in great part utilised,
on the Restoration of Imperial rule, as Government offices and barracks
for the troops of the army then about to be formed on Western lines.
One of the most remarkable of these mansions of Old Yedo was that
occupied by the Mito family, and it still retains much of its ancient
splendour, inasmuch as it has been converted into a public park, and its
magnificent gardens are maintained at the expense of the State, while
the buildings and site of the historic residence of the Mito princes
have been made over to the military for the purposes of an arsenal. It
was part of Iyeyasu’s plan to adequately provide for the preservation of
the Tokugawa line in the office of Shogun, and to that end he conferred
upon three of his sons dukedoms in Owari, Kishiu, and Mito respectively.
These three provinces are somewhat widely separated, for Owari is the
region of which the flourishing city of Nagoya is at the present day the
centre,—Kishiu is the province that borders the Kî channel at the eastern
entrance to the Inland Sea,—and the Mito territory was that which is
situated north-east of Tokio, and to the north of the river Toné, where
it enters the Pacific near Cape Inuboye. Kishiu is now known as Wakayama
_Ken_ or Prefecture, Owari is Aichi _Ken_, and Mito is now Ibaraki
_Ken_, though the boundaries do not exactly correspond with the ancient
frontiers. The tripartite grant of territory to his seventh, eighth, and
ninth sons respectively under this arrangement was accompanied by the
proviso that in the event of the failure of the direct line the Shogun
should be chosen from among the cadets of one or other of these families.
In after years it frequently became needful to fall back on the wisely
ordained succession thus laid down at the beginning of Iyeyasu’s reign
at Yedo, wise in the sense that the extinction of the line was provided
against, though it was not always possible to make a selection that met
with the approval of all parties, since it sometimes happened that more
than one branch of the Tokugawa house was ready with a candidate for the
post of honour. It will presently be seen that a difficulty arose in this
respect only a few years prior to the abolition of the Shogun’s office
altogether, and which was not disposed of without many heart-burnings.
Some idea may be formed of the scale of magnificence on which the feudal
system inaugurated during Iyeyasu’s tenure of the Shogunal office was
based from the subjoined table of the barons’ revenues. For convenience’
sake I have added the approximate value of the _koku_ of rice, in terms
of which the incomes were formerly calculated, at the prices ruling in
Japan for that commodity at the present day.
ANNUAL INCOMES OF THE BARONS UNDER THE SHOGUNATE
The _San-ke_, descended from the three youngest Sons of the Founder of
the Tokugawa house
Title Residence Income At present
value
koku £
Owari Nagoya 610,000 = 762,000
Kii Wakayama 559,000 = 700,000
Mito Mito 350,000 = 440,000
(All bore the family arms of the Tokugawa, three heart-shaped leaves in a
circle.)
Mostly sprung from the Governors appointed by, or the personal
connections or vassals of Tokugawa Iyeyasu, A.D. 1603-16
Dai-Mio’s Clan Family Name Residence Income At present
value
koku £
Kaga Mayeda Kanazawa 1,027,000 = 1,284,000
Satsuma Shimadzu Kagoshima 710,000 = 887,000
Sendai Date Sendai 625,000 = 780,000
{ Close
Echizen Matsudaira Fukui 320,000 = 400,000 { Relatives
Aidzu Matsudaira Wakamatsu 230,000 = 280,000 { of
{ Iyeyasu
Higo Hosokawa Kumamoto 540,000 = 655,000
Chikuzen Kuroda Fukuoka 520,000 = 650,000
Geishiu (Aki) Asano Hiroshima 426,000 = 535,000
Choshiu & Suwo Mori Hagi 369,000 = 462,000
Hizen Nabeshima Saga 350,000 = 463,000
Inaba Ikeda Tottori 350,000 = 463,000
Bizen Ikeda Okayama 315,000 = 419,000
Ashiu (Awa) Hachisuka Tokushima 258,000 = 323,000
Tosa Yamanouchi Kochi 242,000 = 304,000
Chikugo Arima Kurume 210,000 = 267,000
Descended from Hachiman Taro
Dai-Mio’s Clan Family Name Residence Income At present
value
koku £
Akita (Ugo) Sataki Akita 206,000 = 258,000
Nambu (Mutsu) Nambu Morioka 200,000 = 250,000
Yonezawa (Uzen) Uyesugi Yonezawa 150,000 = 188,000
At the time of Iyeyasu the total revenue of the Empire was calculated
to be equal to 28,900,000 koku of rice, out of which he distributed
20,000,000 of koku among those daimios and other dignitaries who were
closely attached to the Tokugawa house, and retained 8,900,000 koku for
the support of his own household and the maintenance of Government in
Yedo. From this immense sum he also had to make, it must be borne in
mind, suitable grants to the Court at Kioto, including the privy purse,
and it was incumbent on the Shogun at all times to secure to the Emperor
ample funds for the support of the imperial dignity and honour. In
former years this duty had not invariably been executed on a fitting
scale of liberality, the Ashikaga Shoguns in particular having made it
a point to keep the Emperors poor. Under the regime of the Tokugawa,
however, this had never been a cause of complaint, and in the days of
Iyeyasu especially the apportionments of revenue to the service of the
Court were made on a satisfactory basis. The repair of roads, and the
cost of local administration in general, were matters to which the
Daimios were expected to give attention without any allowances beyond
those made from headquarters, their own incomes having in the majority of
cases been ample for all purposes.
Following these eighteen “kokushiu daimios” ranked the eighteen “Ka-mon”
(Members of the family) who were all relatives of the Tokugawa house,
and bore the name of Matsudaira, the revenues they enjoyed ranging from
10,000 to 200,000 koku.
Next to the Ka-mon were the “To-sama” (outside lords) with incomes
of 10,000 to 100,000 koku. They numbered from 90 to 100. These were
representatives of collateral branches of the Kokushiu or greater barons,
but were “outside” the Tokugawa.
After the “To-sama” ranked the “Fu-dai” (successive generations) and
of these there were 115 families, with revenues ranging from 10,000 to
350,000 koku. The fu-dai were the main support of the Tokugawa house
under the Shogunate regime.
It is not surprising to know that the feudal castles of these numerous
barons were at one time to be counted by the hundred, or that many are
still extant.
Among the Fudai families ranked two which became exceptionally
conspicuous in the later days of the Tokugawa Shogunate,—as will
presently appear, one for the defection of its chief to the opposing side
in the battle of Fushimi in 1868, the other, on the contrary, for the
sturdy loyalty which the head of the house exhibited to the engagements
which on behalf of the Tokugawa Shogun he, as Regent, had entered into
with the nations of the West. The first was Todo, the chieftain of Tsu,
in Isé, whose followers went over to the imperialists and turned the
scale against the Tokugawas,—the other the famous Ii Kamon-no-kami, who
was killed in Tokio by political assassins in 1860. These two barons
were the richest of the Fu-dai, each having a rent roll valued at
half-a-million sterling.
When Iyeyasu the Law-giver died in 1616 his first resting-place was at
the temple of Kunozan, in the province of Suruga, which adjoins his own
native province of Mikawa. The mount of Kuno is close to the port of
Shimidzu, in Suruga Gulf, and the temple is approached by many flights
of stone steps, and looks out immediately on the broad Pacific, the
impressive solitude of the spot being broken only by the occasional
visits of bands of pilgrims coming from far-distant parts of Japan to pay
their respects at the shrine. The wooden structures betray the ravages
of time, notwithstanding that the contributions of the faithful are
devoted to the preservation of this and like edifices which possess for
the Ten-shi’s subjects deep historic interest, and the peculiar sanctity
of the fane in Japanese estimation is doubtless heightened by the claim
made for it by the attendant priests that it still holds the heart of the
great Shogun though the rest of his remains were transferred to Nikko in
1617. Nikko, the incomparable Nikko, _lit._: Sun’s Effulgence,—is so well
known to Occidental travellers that a lengthy description of its glories
would here be superfluous, and it need only be mentioned, perhaps, that
the splendid cryptomeria-bordered highways met with on the journey
thither were equally with his code of laws a part of “Iyeyasu’s Legacy”
to the nation, inasmuch as it was with a wish to afford the millions
who in after years might traverse the roads of Niphon that protection
from its fierce summer suns which might be derived from spreading shade
trees that the founder of the Tokugawa house caused those magnificent
avenues to be planted and maintained. The tomb at Nikko to which his
body was removed from Kunozan in March 1617 was regularly visited by
the occupants, each in his turn, of Yedo Castle, but only the founder’s
grandson Iyemitsu, who completed the work of building Nikko, and also
of the original Uyeno temples at Yedo, rests beside Iyeyasu in this
sacred spot. The other Shoguns of the Tokugawa line were interred in the
capital, six at Uyeno, and six at Zozoji in Shiba, and on the “Rock of
the Dead,” as the hill at Nikko is named on which these heroes of Old
Japan repose, only the mausolea of the First and Third of the Tokugawa
Shoguns are to be found. But there is that in the surroundings of the
lonely graves on the crest of Hotoké-Iwa that is absent even in the
gorgeous edifices which stand within those famous groves of pine and
cedar that envelop the base of the mountain, and in the simplicity of the
unadorned tombs, with their moss-covered approaches, and the time-worn
balustrades which surround the peaceful courtyard, with its few bronze
urns and incense-burners, there is grandeur unmistakable, and a dignity
which no wealth of embellishment ever could confer. Iyeyasu in his
lifetime wielded practically regal sway, and he and his successors of the
Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns were _de facto_ rulers in Japan, and obtained
their investiture direct from the Ten-shi who was _de jure_ ruler at
the ancient capital of Kioto, while they, as vicegerents, held their
semi-imperial courts at Yedo.
The rise of the military power dates from the days of Hideyoshi, whose
ambition it was to subjugate Korea and add the peninsula to the Empire of
Japan. But all his efforts, from one cause and another, were frustrated,
and when in 1598 he died, after six years of ineffectual strife, the idea
was for a time abandoned, his successor, Iyeyasu, as we have already
seen, choosing the path of internal reform as that by which he would
seek fame, rather than that of foreign conquest. Hideyoshi had restored
order to the land, and it was for his successor in the exalted office to
consolidate and strengthen the influence which the Taiko had acquired
with the feudatory chiefs, and to carry onward to complete fulfilment
the work of centralisation so boldly begun. Hidetada, as the second
Shogun, followed in his father’s footsteps, though his tastes lay rather
in the direction of art, but it was reserved for Iyemitsu to perfect
Iyeyasu’s policy, and it was by Iyemitsu that Japan was closed for the
time to foreign intercourse. In 1617 all Japanese ports excepting Hirado
and Nagasaki were barred to strangers, and four years later the subjects
of the Ten-shi were forbidden to visit foreign lands. In 1624 all
foreigners save the Dutch and the English were banished from Japan;—and
in 1637 there took place the terrible massacre of Christian converts at
Shimabara in Kiushiu. By 1638 aliens of every sort save the Dutch had
been expelled, and the Hollanders remained only on promise of faithful
compliance with severe restrictive laws, and at the sacrifice in great
measure of their personal liberty. Christianity, it was supposed, had
been rooted out, but it was found in after years to have survived to
some degree, in the vicinity of Nagasaki, the persecution to which its
adherents were subjected.
Thus though the Anti-Christian edicts were promulgated during the latter
part of Iyeyasu’s life it was by his grandson, who succeeded Hidetada,
that the policy of extermination was resolutely carried into effect. How
far the action of the Shogunate was prompted at this time by the dread
of foreign encroachment is to be gathered from the proclamations issued
at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Hideyoshi, moreover, is
said to have paid more attention than it deserved to the idle boast of
the Portuguese that it was the practice of their monarch to first send
missionaries to convert the natives of a country to his own religion and
next to send an army which, aided by the converts, contrived to overrun
the land and add it to his dominions. Iyemitsu said in reference to this
report:—
“If my dynasty perishes in consequence of civil wars, this is
a disgrace which falls only on me: but if only an inch of our
territory were to fall into foreign hands, the whole nation
would have cause to be ashamed.”
Under the Tokugawa regime the influence of the military caste was
predominant, and the _samurai_ ranked next to the nobles, but all
samurai were not of equal rank, for the spearmen were of higher grade
than the men who fought with firearms, and the mounted man ranked above
his comrade who fought on foot. Among the retainers of the barons a
_hatamoto_, as he was termed, was a person who had command of as many,
in some cases, as thirty foot-soldiers, and held a position akin to that
of captain in the modern army. _Hatamoto_ signified “under the flag,”
each company having its own distinctive banner inscribed with its number
and place of origin. The _hatamochi_ was the actual standard-bearer from
Hata, a banner, and Mochi, to hold. The ashi-garu (_lit._: light of
foot) was the lowest rank of samurai of the feudal times, and the man
who carried a gun was less entitled to respect, according to that rigid
code of honour which was so jealously guarded by the knighthood of Japan,
than the man who met his enemy with the sword,—foot to foot, and hand
to hand. It was doubtless to be ascribed to a survival of this feeling
that in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 the followers of Marshal Saigo
were ever anxious to come to close quarters with their foes, and often
threw away their rifles in order the better to wield their treasured
swords. The warrior trained in the old school had nothing but contempt
for the method of fighting which enabled a man to hurl missiles at an
enemy from a comparatively safe distance. The samurai’s principles led
him to challenge his adversary to mortal combat in the open field, but
were averse to anything which might be construed as seeking an undue
advantage. With the military caste uppermost, and the farmers ranking
next in order of precedence, then the artisans, and lastly the tradesmen
or traffickers in wares of whatever description, with a lower class still
of genuine outcasts, distinguished as Eta (the tanners) or Hi-nin (not
men) the people of Japan led a more or less contented life of seclusion
from the outer world until the arrival on their coasts of Commodore
Perry’s ships in 1853, though it would be wrong to imagine that there had
not arisen in the land in all those years a spirit of inquiry concerning
the mode of life which prevailed among other nations. On the contrary,
and more particularly towards the end of the Tokugawa epoch, thoughtful
men had come to the front with proposals for enlightened government,
earnestly advocating the adoption of some system that should be more in
accord with what was dimly conceived to be the age of progress that had
dawned in the other hemisphere, vague reports of which had reached the
hidden East through various channels.
It was while Iyeyasu virtually ruled Japan, and before his son Hidetada
had been invested with the Shogunal authority, that a shipwrecked
English mariner, Will Adams of Rotherhithe, won his way to favour by
his abilities, mainly in the direction of shipbuilding, and attained
to high rank in the service of the Shogunate. The East India Company,
a few years later (June, 1613), established a depot at Hirado, in Spex
Straits, not far from Nagasaki, where the Dutchmen had been earlier in
the field. Adams learned that some of his countrymen were resident at
Hirado, and journeyed thither overland at the Shogun Iyeyasu’s command
to see them. He found the little colony in charge of Captain John Saris,
whose diary has afforded much information concerning the mode of life
of the pioneers of British trade in their remote settlement in the then
little-known “Zipangu” of Portuguese navigators, and Adams himself
left some few written traces of his remarkable career which have been
carefully preserved, and are of the utmost value as throwing light on
the manners of that period when the feudal system was in full force. On
retiring nominally from the control of affairs in favour of Hidetada, in
1605, Iyeyasu had taken up his abode at Shidzuoka, then called Sumpu, and
thither Adams brought Saris to have audience of the great Chieftain, by
special desire. Captain Saris had been made the bearer of a letter from
King James I. of England to the Emperor (Shogun) of Japan, which was
delivered in due course at Shidzuoka. The English sovereign had expressed
his desire that commercial relations should be established between
Britain and Japan. Saris and Adams saw both Iyeyasu and Hidetada, and the
project was well received. A charter was granted, in pursuance of which
the English were to enjoy as much freedom of trade as the Dutchmen then
in Nagasaki, the document comprising eight clauses, and constituting the
first “Anglo-Japanese Agreement” of history. Unhappily the venture of the
East India Company, in whose favour the charter was given, did not turn
out so satisfactorily from a monetary point of view as could have been
wished, and eventually the factory that had been established at Hirado,
was closed, and the British withdrew, not again to seek commercial
privileges until 1856. Saris placed Captain Cocks in charge of the Hirado
depot and returned to London to report to the East India Company the
success of his mission, and Cocks remained until the withdrawal from
Hirado in 1623.