THE WELDING OF THE NATION
THE POLITICAL DISINTEGRATION OF THE COUNTRY
A war with a foreign power or powers is generally a very efficient
factor in history, conducing to the unification of a nation, especially
when that nation is composed of more than one race. The German Empire,
which was consolidated mainly by virtue of the wars of 1864, 1866, and
1870-1871, is one of the most exemplary instances. Japan, being
surrounded by sea on all sides, has had more advantages than any
continental country in moulding into one all the racial elements which
happened to find their way into the insular pale. These are the very
same advantages which Great Britain has enjoyed in Europe. We should
have been able, perhaps, without any coercion from without, to become a
solid nation by the sole operation of geographical causes. If we had
been left, however, to the mercy of influences of those kinds only, then
we might have been obliged to wait for long years in order to see the
nation welded, for in respect of the complexity of racial composition,
Japan cannot be said to be inferior to any national state in either
hemisphere. To facilitate the national consolidation, therefore, the
force acting from without was most welcome for us.
Of wars serviceable to such an end, however, there had been very scanty
chances offered to us. Though the wars against the Ainu had continued
much longer than is apt to be imagined by modern Japanese, and had made
their influence felt in bringing about the consolidation of the Japanese
as a nation, the spasmodic insurrections of the aborigines were but
flickerings of cinders about to die out. For several centuries the Ainu
had been a race destined only to wane irrevocably more and more, so that
no serious danger was to be feared from that quarter. Outside of the
Ainu, no other foreign people dared for a long time to invade us on so
large a scale as to cause any serious damage.
As regards China, the dynasty of the Sung, which began to reign over the
empire in the year 960, had been constantly harassed by the incursions
of various northern tribes. After an existence of a century and a half,
the greater portion of northern China was bereft of the dynasty by the
Chin, a state founded by a Tartar tribe called the Churche. The Chin,
however, was in turn overthrown in the year 1234 by the Mongols, another
nomadic tribe, which rose in the rear of the latter state. Within a half
century from that, the Chinese dynasty of the Sung, which had been long
gasping in the south, drew its last breath under pressure of the same
Mongols that founded the Empire of the Yuan.
From China, therefore, in the state it had been, we had nothing to fear.
As to the Korean peninsula, which had come under the influence of China
at the time of the T'ang dynasty, the state founded there by the
inhabitants was enabled now to breathe freely on account of the
anarchical condition of the suzerain state. Though Kokuri and Kutara
had, in spite of our assistance, been both destroyed by the army of the
T'ang, Shiragi, which had been left unmolested by the T'ang as a half
independent ally, conquered the greater part of the peninsula, and the
people of that state frequently pillaged our western coasts. This
Shiragi surrendered at the beginning of the tenth century to Korea, a
new state which arose in the north of the peninsula. The relations of
the new Korea with our country were on the whole very peaceful, except
for some interruptions caused by the incursions of the pirates from that
country on our coast at the end of the same century.
Besides the Koreans, there were many tribes inhabiting the north and the
east of Korea and along the coast of the Sea of Japan, which made
themselves independent of China one after the other, though all the
states founded by them had but an ephemeral existence. Some of those
minor states kept up a very cordial intercourse with our country, while
others acted in a contrary way. Among the latter may be counted the
pirates from Toi, that is to say, from the region of a Churche tribe,
though the real home of this throng of sea-thieves has not yet been
identified with any exactness, pirates who devastated the island of Iki
and the northern coast of Kyushu with a fleet consisting of more than
fifty ships. This took place in the year 1019, and the repulse of this
piratical attack was the last military exploit of the Fujiwara nobles.
After that complete tranquillity reigned in our western quarter for more
than two centuries and a half until the first Mongolian invasion of
1274. Hitherto, to repel the inroads of pirates, the forces which could
be set in motion in the western provinces only, had proved to be more
than sufficient for the purpose. Against the first Mongolian invasion
also, the retainers of the Shogun in the western provinces only were
mobilised as usual by command from Kamakura. The battle scenes of the
war were described by one of the warriors who took part in it, and
painted by a contemporary master on a scroll, which has come down in
good preservation to our day, and now forms one of the imperial
treasures to be handed on to prosperity. The expeditionary fleet of the
Yuan consisted of more than nine hundred ships, with 15,000 Mongols and
Chinese and 8,000 Koreans on board, besides 6,700 of the crews, so that
it was too overwhelming in numbers even for our valiant soldiers to
fight against with some hope of victory. It was not by the valour of
our soldiers alone, therefore, that the invasion was frustrated. The
elements, the turbulent wind and wave, did virtually more than mere
human efforts could have achieved in destroying the formidable enemy's
ships.
Irritated at this failure of the first expedition, Khubilai, the Emperor
of Yuan, immediately ordered the preparation of another expedition on a
far larger scale. The second invasion of Japan was undertaken at last in
the 1281, after an interval of seven years. This time the invading
forces far outnumbered those of the first expedition, totalling more
than one hundred thousand in all. On the other hand, the forces which
the Shogunate could raise in the western provinces only proved this time
plainly inadequate. Seeing this, Tokimune Hojo, who was the virtual
master of the Shogunate, mobilised the retainers in the eastern
provinces too, and sent them to the battlefield in Kyushu. A fierce
battle was fought on the shore near Hakata. Our soldiers made a
desperate effort to prevent the landing of the enemy's troops,
contending inch by inch against fearful odds, so that the Mongols could
not complete their disembarkment, before a hurricane suddenly arose that
swept away at least two-thirds of their men and ships. A lasting check
was thus put upon the expansion of the triumphant Mongols on the east,
just forty years after the battle of Liegnitz in Silesia had been fought
successfully by the Teutonic nobles on the west against the same foe.
Though the frustration of the two Mongolian attempts upon our country
should rather be attributed to the intervention of elemental forces
which worked at very propitious opportunities, than to the bravery of
our warriors, it cannot be disputed that they fought to their utmost, so
that it would be derogatory to the military honour of our forefathers,
if we supposed that nothing worth mentioning was achieved by them at
all. In any case, the annihilation of the Mongolian fleet by us is an
historical feat which might be considered together with the defeat of
the Invincible Armada by the English three centuries later. In both
countries the memorable victory was due to the dauntless courage of the
warriors engaged in the battle, and the firm attitude of the person who
stood then at the helm of the state. In Japan, Tokimune did not lend his
ears to the milder counsels of the shrewder diplomatists at the court of
Kyoto.
What is more noteworthy, however, than anything else in this war was not
the bravery of our forefathers, but the fact that men recruited from the
eastern as well as from the western provinces of the empire fought for
the first time side by side against the foreign invaders. Such a
cooperation of the people from all quarters of Japan in defence of the
country was not a sight which could have been witnessed before the
establishment of the military regime, for until that time the
unification of the Empire had not extended to the northern extremity of
Honto, and for ninety years after the inauguration of the Shogunate at
Kamakura, there had been no occasion for our warriors to try their
fortune in arms against any foreign enemy. Now the Japanese were induced
for the first time to feel the necessity for national solidarity, only
because enterprising Khubilai dared to attack the island empire, which
would have done no harm to him if he had left it unmolested, and would
have added very little to his already overgrown empire, if he had
succeeded in his adventurous expedition. It may be perhaps exaggerating
a little to call this war a national undertaking on our part when we
consider the small number of men engaged in it. The retainers of the
Shogunate, however, who were the representatives of the Japanese of that
time, all hurried to the northern coast of Kyushu, even from the
remotest part of the empire, in order to defend their country against
their common foe. The peculiar custom of intimidating children to stop
their crying, by reminding them of the Mongolian invasion, an
obsolescent custom which has existed even in the northernmost region of
Honto, shows how thoroughly and deeply the Mongol scare shook the whole
empire, and left its indelible impress on the nation as a whole. The
first beat of the pulse of a national enthusiasm has thus become
audible.
If this feeling of national solidarity had gone deep into the
consciousness of the people, and had continued steadily increasing
without relaxation, then it might have done considerable good in
facilitating the wholesome organisation of our national state. Viewed
from this point, it must be considered rather a misfortune to our
country that the terrible enemy was too easily put to rout. The pressure
once removed, men no more troubled themselves about the need for
solidarity. Nay, the war itself sowed the seeds of discontent among the
warriors engaged, on account of the incapacity of the Shogunate to
recompense them amply for their services. Already after the civil war of
the Jokyu era, the military government of Kamakura had been reduced to a
straitened condition, for what it could get by the confiscation of the
properties of the vanquished proved insufficient to provide the rewards
for the faithful followers of the Shogunate. In the war with the
Mongols, there was no enemy within the country from whom land could be
confiscated. Nevertheless those warriors had to be rewarded with grants
of land only, which the Shogunate could find nowhere. If the private
moral bond, which had linked the retainers with the Shogun at the time
of Yoritomo, could long continue in the state it had been, the Shogunate
could have sometimes expected from them service without recompense. The
military government, with the Hojo family as its real master, however,
could not likewise exact gratuitous service from them. The relation
between the Shogunate and its retainers became too public and formal for
this.
Those who were appointed as _djito_ by Yoritomo at the beginning of the
Shogunate had all been retainers of the Minamoto family from the first.
Though they discharged the duties of military police within their
respective manors as if they were public officials, yet their private
character far outweighed their public semblance. As the Shogunate
gradually took the form of a regular government, this private and
personal bond between the Shogun and his retainers grew weaker, and the
public character of the _djito_ began to predominate. This was
especially the case after the virtual management of the Shogunate fell
into the hands of the Hojo family. It is true that those retainers still
called themselves the _go-kenin_, or the domestics of the Shogun of
Kamakura. The later Shogun, however, sprung from the Fujiwara family or
of blood imperial, and could not demand the same obedience which
Yoritomo had found easy to obtain from his hereditary vassals. In
effect, the Shogunate reserved to the end the right of giving sanction
as regards the inheritance of the office of _djito_, but the exercise of
the reserved right was generally nominal. A _djito_ could appoint as his
successor either his wife or any of his children, or could divide his
official tenure among many inheritors. No Salic law and no law of
primogeniture yet existed in Japan of the Kamakura period, so that,
besides many _djito_ who were incapable of discharging the military
duties in person on account of sex or age, there were to be found
eventually a great number of _djito_, whose official tenure covered a
very small patch of ricefield, so small that it was too narrow to
exercise any jurisdiction within it! Moreover, men of utterly unwarlike
professions like priests, and corporations such as Shinto shrines and
Buddhist temples, were also entitled to succeed to the inheritance of
the office of _djito_, if only it were bequeathed to them by a lawful
will. In these cases, where the rightful _djito_ could not officiate in
person, a lieutenant, private in character, used to be appointed. Those
lieutenants, however, not being publicly responsible to the Shogun,
behaved very arbitrarily. That was a breach severely felt in the
military system of the Shogunate.
The worst evil of all was that the Shogunate, which should have been an
office for household affairs and the camp of the Shogun, was gradually
turned into a princely court. Those warriors who did valiant service
under Yoritomo in establishing the Shogunate had been in a great measure
illiterate, so that only with great difficulty could the Shogun find a
secretary among his retainers. As the organisation of the military
government approached completion, the need of a literary education on
the part of the warriors increased accordingly. Such an education, the
source of which, however, was not to be sought at that time out of
Kyoto, could hardly be introduced into Kamakura without being
accompanied by other elements of the metropolitan civilisation
represented by the Fujiwara nobles. The installation of a scion of the
Fujiwara and of princes of the blood imperial into the Shogunate
facilitated the permeation of the Kyoto culture, which by its nature was
too refined to suit congenially men of military profession. The
bodyguard of the Shogun began to be chosen from warriors whose demeanor
was the most courtier-like, and one of the accomplishments necessary was
the ability to compose short poems. Such a condition of the Shogunate
could not fail to estrange those retainers who did not live habitually
in Kamakura, and were, therefore, not yet tainted with the effeminacy of
a courtier's life. The main support, on whom the Shogun should have been
able to depend in time of stress, became thus unreliable. At this
juncture an Ainu insurrection, which was the last recorded in our
history, broke out in the year 1322, and continued till the downfall of
the Kamakura Shogunate. It was by this insurrection that the tottering
edifice of the military government was finally shaken, instantly leading
to its catastrophe.
The force which gave the finishing stroke to the Shogun's power and
prestige came, as had long been expected, from Kyoto. Inversely as the
warriors of Kamakura had been turned to pseudo-courtiers, the
court-nobles of Kyoto had become tainted by the militaristic
temperament of the Kamakura warriors. The training in archery, the
dog-shooting in an enclosure, which was considered a specially good
training for a real battle, and many other martial pastimes became the
fashion among the Kyoto nobles, as it had been among warriors. After
their defeat in the civil war of the Jokyu, they felt more keenly than
before the magnitude of their power lost to Kamakura, and became the
more discontented. Moreover, from the four corners of the empire the
malcontents against the Hojo family flocked to Kyoto, and persuaded the
already disaffected courtiers, to attempt the restoration of the real
command of the government to themselves. The Shogunate, having been
apprised of the plot, tried to suppress it in time by force, but was
unable to strike at the root of the evil, for the recalcitrants rose
against the Hojo one after another. On the other hand, those retainers
who would have willingly died for a Shogun of the Minamoto family did
not like to stake their lives on behalf of the Hojo. Kamakura was at
last taken by a handful of warriors from the neighbouring provinces led
by a chieftain of one of the branch families of the Minamoto. The last
of the Hojo committed suicide, and with the downfall of the family, the
Shogunate of Kamakura broke down. This happened in the year 1334. The
real power of the state was restored to Kyoto in the name of the Emperor
Go-Daigo.
The courtiers of Kyoto rejoiced in the thought that they could now
conduct themselves as the true masters of Japan, but they were instantly
disillusioned. Those warriors who had assisted them in the restoration
of their former power, would not allow the courtiers to have the lion's
share of the booty. Supported by a multitude of such dissatisfied
soldiery, Takauji Ashikaga, another scion of the Minamoto, made himself
the real master of the situation, and was appointed Shogun. Though once
defeated by the army of his opponents at Kyoto, he was soon enabled to
raise a large host in the western provinces, where, since the Mongolian
invasion, the majority of the warriors thirsted for the change more than
in other provinces, and he captured the metropolis. His opponents,
however, continued their resistance in various parts of the empire. The
courtiers, too, were divided into two parties, and the majority sided
with the stronger, that is to say, with the Ashikaga family. At the same
time the imperial family was divided into two. Thus the civil war, which
strongly resembled the War of the Roses, ensued and raged all over the
provinces for about fifty-six years, until the two parties were
reconciled at last in the year 1392. In this way the whole of the empire
came again under one military regime, and for about two centuries, the
family of the Ashikaga continued at the head of the new Shogunate.
The new Shogunate was established at Kyoto, instead of Kamakura, which
became now the seat of a lieutenancy, administered by a branch of the
Ashikaga, and therefore reduced in political importance. This change of
the seat of the military government is a matter of great moment in the
history of our country. One of the several reasons which may be assigned
for the change, was that the supporters of the Ashikaga were not limited
to the warriors of the eastern provinces, as they had been with the
Kamakura Shogunate. Takauji owed his ultimate success rather to the
soldiers from the western provinces, so that Kyoto suited far better as
the centre of his new military regime than Kamakura.
Another reason which the Ashikaga Shogunate had in view in changing its
seat, was that a great apprehension which had been entertained by the
former Shogunate, would thereby cease. One of the anxieties which had
harassed the government of Kamakura constantly had been the fear that it
might one day be overthrown by attack from Kyoto. To provide against the
danger a resident lieutenant,--afterwards increased to two,--a member of
the family of Hojo, was stationed at Kyoto. The function of these
lieutenants was to look out for the interests of the Shogunate at Kyoto,
and at the same time to superintend the retainers in the western
provinces. Besides, being two in number, these lieutenants watched each
other closely, so that it was impossible for either of them to try to
make himself independent of Kamakura. This system worked excellently
for a time, but was ultimately unable to save the declining Shogunate.
By shifting the seat of the military government to Kyoto itself, this
anxiety might now be removed.
The greatest profit, however, which accrued to the Shogunate by the
change of its government seat, was that one could facilitate the
achievement of the political concentration of the empire, by making it
coincide with the centre of civilisation. If the Shogunate of Kamakura
could keep, with its political power, its original fresh spirit, which
had remained latent during the long regime of the courtiers and begun
suddenly to develop itself along with the establishment of the military
government, the result would have been not only the prolonging of the
duration of the Shogunate, but the full blossoming of a healthy and
unenervated culture, and Kamakura might have become the political as
well as the cultural centre of the empire. The history of our country,
however, was not destined to run in that way. The time-honoured
civilisation, which had been nurtured at Kyoto since many centuries,
was, though of exotic origin, in itself a highly finished one.
Notwithstanding its effeminacy, it had its own peculiar charm, which
ranked in perfection far above the naive culture of Kamakura, the latter
being too rough and new, however refreshing. Those Buddhist priests who
had once hoped to make Kamakura the centre of their new religious
movement, found at last that unless they secured a firm foothold in the
old metropolis, nothing permanent could be attained. The missionary
campaign of the various reformed sects had been undertaken with renewed
vigour at Kyoto since the end of the thirteenth century. In other words,
the enervation of the Kamakura Shogunate disappointed those
torch-bearers of the new civilisation, who might perhaps have expected
too much from the political power of the military government established
there. Thus the Shogunate of Kamakura had lost its _raison d'etre_,
before other factors of civilisation, such as art and literature, had
time to develop themselves there independent of those of Kyoto, so as to
suit the new spirit of the new age, that is to say, before the Shogunate
could accomplish its cultural mission in the history of Japan. The
culture of Kyoto proved itself to be omnipotent as ever.
Regarded in this manner, the return of the governmental seat to Kyoto
had a great advantage. The new Shogunate, having located its centre in
the same historical place where the classical civilisation of Japan had
had its cradle also, its military and political organisation could work
hand in hand with the social and cultural movement. The prestige of the
Shogun was bedecked with a brighter halo than when Kamakura had been the
seat of his government. The change, however, was accompanied with
invidious results, ruinous not only to the Shogunate, but to the
political integrity of the country at large.
After having experienced the vicissitudes of a long civil war, the
courtiers became convinced that they could not overthrow by any means
the military regime, which had already taken deep root in the social
structure of our country. So they began to think that it was wiser for
them to make use of that military power than to try any abortive
attempts against it. They heaped, therefore, on the successive Shoguns
of the Ashikaga family titles of high-sounding honour, much higher than
those with which the Shoguns of Kamakura had been invested. In the
imperial palace, too, special deference was paid to the Shogun. Such a
rise in the court-rank of the Shogun induced his retainers to vie with
one another in obtaining some official rank of distinction in the
courtiers' hierarchical scale. Those who belonged to the higher classes
among them, though they were mostly the _shugo_ or military governors of
one or more provinces, used to spend a greater part of their time at
Kyoto, on account of holding some civil office in the government of the
Shogun, and lived in a very aristocratic way, which was easy and
indolent, that is to say, not much different from that of the courtiers.
There were many social meetings, in which both courtiers and warriors
participated together, and the object of these meetings mostly consisted
in enjoying various kinds of literary pastimes, among which the
commonest was a trick in versification called _renga_, that is to say,
the composing by turns of a line of an unfinished poem, which should
form a sequence to the preceding and at the same time become the
prologue to the next. Through manifold channels of this and the like
kinds of amusements, a very intimate relation between the two classes
was cemented. The refinement of the courtiers' circle, though somewhat
vulgarised compared with that of the previous period, freely penetrated
into the families of the rough soldiery. Marriages between members of
the two classes also took place frequently, by which the courtiers
gained materially, while the soldiers could thereby assuage the
uneasiness of their parvenu-consciousness. A new social life thus sprang
up.
Among the two parties, which were reconciled in this way, that which
profited the more by it, was of course the courtiers. Although the
income from their manors, to which they were entitled as proprietors _de
jure_, might have become less in comparison with that of the age
anterior to the establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate, yet they were
now relieved of all the troubles which might have beset them had they
remained holding the real power of the state. Having relinquished their
political ambitions and shifted all the cares of the state and military
affairs upon the shoulders of the Shogunate, they became utterly
irresponsible, could breathe freely and enjoy their idle hours not in
the least disturbed. On the other hand, the militarists, having found
that it was no longer necessary to circumscribe the privileges of the
courtiers still more narrowly than before, forgot that ultimately their
interests must necessarily collide in principle with those of the
latter. What were contradictory at bottom seemed to them practically
reconcilable. The Shogunate thought that it was its duty to uphold the
interests of the courtiers by its military power, a task which was soon
found to be impossible. On account of the weakness of the central
government, disorder ruled in Kyoto and in the provinces as well, and
paved the way for the political disintegration of the whole empire. To
explain the political phenomena I must turn for a while to the relations
between the _shugo_, the military governors of provinces, and the
_djito_ under their protection.
In the time of the Kamakura Shogunate, as aforesaid, each province had a
military governor, called the _shugo_, appointed by the Shogun. The
_shugo_, himself a _djito_, and a very influential one of that class,
served as an intermediate commander in transmitting to the _djito_ under
him the military instructions which he had received from Kamakura. He
was, therefore, nothing else but a marshal of all the _djito_ within
that province. There existed no relation of vassalage between him and
the _djito_ under his military jurisdiction. The latter remained to the
end the direct vassals of the Shogunate at Kamakura, and only as regards
the military organisation were subordinated to the _shugo_. The office
of the _shugo_ was not the hereditary possession of any family, so that
the Shogun could nominate any _djito_ to be _shugo_ of any province at
his pleasure, without fear of disturbing thereby the personal relation
between him and his retainers in that province. In some respects this
relation resembled that of the English king and the barons, who swore,
besides their oath of fealty to a higher noble as their liege lord,
direct allegiance to their king. As long as the line of Yoritomo,
therefore, continued as hereditary Shogun, the Shogunate could depend on
the fidelity of those _djito_, who were but the household vassals of the
Minamoto family, and by this personal tie keep the political unity of
the country infrangible.
After the extinction of the Minamoto family, the Shogun who succeeded
one after another had no hereditary nor personal relations with those
_djito_, and could claim no more than the official prestige of the
Shogun allowed them to do. As to the Hojo family, though the real power
of the Shogunate was in its hands, originally it was no higher in rank
than the _djito_, and could not, in its own name, command obedience from
any of the Shogun's retainers. There is some similarity between the
organisation of the time of the Kamakura Shogunate in this second phase
and the "Kreis" institution of the German empire in the fifteenth
century, which was initiated with the object of political concentration
by Maximilian I., whose real power lay in his being a duke of Austria,
and not Emperor of Germany. However admirable as an organisation, such
a political status was undoubtedly untenable. No wonder that the
military regime of Kamakura gradually collapsed.
The relation of _shugo_ and _djito_ in the time of the Ashikaga was
quite of a different sort from that in the former Shogunate. The office
of _shugo_ became now the hereditary possession of certain privileged
families, which constituted a body of higher warriors, towering above
the common _djito_. The _shugo_ stood in the position of protector to
all the _djito_ of the province he governed, and those _djito_ who stood
under a _shugo_ were designated his "hikwan" or proteges. The relation
of vassalage arose thus between the _shugo_ and the _djito_ in the same
province, a legal status which had not existed in the Kamakura period.
The direct relation between the common _djito_ and the Shogun, which was
the main spring of the political regime of the Kamakura era, was now cut
off. No doubt the _shugo_ in the Ashikaga period had in their provinces,
besides their suzerainty over the _djito_, the tenure of certain tracts
of land, as in the days of Kamakura. The great difference between them,
however, was that in the Kamakura era a retainer of the Shogun was first
installed as a _djito_ of a manor, and then appointed _shugo_, while in
the Ashikaga age the land which the _shugo_ held directly was his
demesne as _shugo_ and not the land held as a retainer of the Shogun at
Kyoto, independent of his office of _shugo_. To sum up, the _shugo_ of
the Ashikaga period was not a mere office, as in the days of Kamakura,
but a legal status of the warriors ranking next to the Shogun. As the
result of such an organisation each province or group of provinces under
a _shugo_ became a political entity, while it had been but a military
entity in the Kamakura era. If the Shogun at Kyoto, therefore, had been
strong enough to enforce his will over all the _shugo_ of the provinces,
then the political unity of the country at large could safely continue
in the hands of the Ashikaga.
The Shogunate of the Ashikaga, however, had not been originally so
formulated as to enable it to impose implicit obedience on all the
higher military officials of the _shugo_ class. For this family, though
a branch of the Minamoto, had nothing in its history that could attract,
as Yoritomo did, a vast number of willing warriors to serve under its
banner. That Takauji was promoted to the headship of the second military
government was largely due to the assistance of the warriors from
various parts of the empire who were not personally related to his
family, but were disaffected at seeing the power of the courtiers
restored, neither was it by any means to be attributed to his personal
capacity, which was rather mediocre both as general and as statesman.
This origin of the Ashikaga family, therefore, made it difficult from
the first for the Shogun of the line to curb the arrogance of his
influential generals. Insurrection against the Shogunate followed one
after another, so that no year passed without some small disturbance
somewhere.
This state culminated in the civil war begun in the Ohnin era, that is
to say, in 1467. The war had its origin in the quarrel about the
succession to the Shogunate between the son and the adopted son, in
reality the younger brother, of the Shogun Yoshimasa. This family
question of the Ashikaga became mixed up with other quarrels about the
succession in two of the influential military families, Shiba and
Hatakeyama. Other _shugo_ of various provinces sided with this or that
party, brought their liege-men to Kyoto, and turned the streets of the
metropolis into a battle-field. Thus the most desultory civil war in our
history was waged under the eyes of the Emperor and of the Shogun,
neither of whom had any power to stop it. After the burning, plundering,
and killing, carried on most ruthlessly for nine years, the
street-fighting in Kyoto ceased, leaving almost no trace of the
historical city of yore. The scenes of anarchy were then transferred to
the provinces, and it took many years before the whole country became
pacified. Nay, complete peace was not restored till the fall of the
Ashikaga Shogunate itself. Such was one phase of the political
disintegration of the age, and its result was that Japan was torn
asunder into a number of semi-independent bodies, each with a _shugo_ at
its head.
If the process of the political decomposition of the state had been
limited to what is described above, then peace might have reigned at
least within each of those bodies. Unfortunately, however, for the
welfare of the people, none of these _shugo_ was strong enough to keep
order even within his own sphere of military jurisdiction. Most of them
had lost their military character, having become accustomed to life in
the capital, as stated above, and they left the care of their respective
provinces in the hands of their proteges, men who soon made themselves
independent of their patrons, so that there arose a number of minor
political bodies in the jurisdiction of each _shugo_. Again these
proteges, that is to say, the heads of the minor political bodies, were
put down in turn by their vassals, and so forth. Moreover, some of these
minor bodies were further divided into still smaller bodies, while
others became aggrandised by annexation by the stronger of neighboring
weaker ones. In this way Japan fell into a state of chaos, being an
agglomeration of political bodies of various sizes, with masters ever
changing, and with frontiers constantly shifting without any reference
to the former administrative boundaries. This second phase completed the
total disintegration of the empire.
The last of the Shoguns who tried to stem this irresistible tendency to
disintegration was Yoshihisa, the son of Yoshimasa. His succession to
his father, as has already been described, was the cause of the civil
war of the Ohnin era, for which, however, he was not responsible in the
least, being only eight years old when he was invested with the
Shogunate in the year 1473. He grew up, however, to be the most typical
Shogun of all the Ashikaga. Though born in the highest of the military
families, he had as his mother a daughter of a court-noble, and was
educated in his boyhood by Kanera Ichijo, one of the most learned
courtiers of the time. When Yoshihisa reached manhood, therefore, he was
a courtier clad in military garments. He thought and acted as if he were
a high Fujiwara noble, and even had his household managed by a courtier.
Through this confidant, the proprietors _de jure_ of manors, that is to
say, courtiers, shrines, and temples, clung to the young Shogun, and
pressed him to coerce, on their behalf, those arbitrary _shugo_ and
minor captains who dared impudently to appropriate the whole of the
revenue from those manors to themselves, so that the share due to these
proprietors _de jure_ had been kept in arrears for many years. The
Shogun was easily persuaded, and Takayori Sasaki, the _shugo_ of the
province of Ohmi, was first chosen as the object of chastisement, for
his province was the nearest to Kyoto and abounded in those manors
belonging to the courtiers and the like. It was in the year 1487 that
Yoshihisa in person led a punitive expedition into Ohmi, crossed lake
Biwa, and pitched his camp on its eastern shore. Contemporary chronicles
unanimously describe in vivid colours how the gallant and refined young
prince, clad in bright military costume, marched out of Kyoto surrounded
by a bizarre host of warriors and courtiers. The latter group, however,
did not count for aught in warfare, while the former followed the Shogun
only halfheartedly. It was especially so with those _shugo_ who were of
the same caste and of the same status as the attacked, and therefore did
not like to see him crushed in the interest of the _de jure_ but
faineant proprietors. The victory of the army of the Shogun was hopeless
from the first. After staying two years in camp Yoshihisa died without
being able to see his enemy vanquished. One of his cousins, who
succeeded to the Shogunate, renewed the expedition, and at last ousted
the disobedient _shugo_ from his province, but the proprietors _de jure_
of the manors could not regain their lost rights, what was due to them
having been usurped by other new pretenders, not less arbitrary than
their predecessors.
The expedition of Yoshihisa was an epoch-making event in the history of
our country. To support by military power the courtiers, whose cup had
already begun to run over and whose interests could not be always
consistent with the welfare of the Shogunate, was evidently a quixotic
attempt. Still it cannot be disputed that Yoshihisa fought at least for
an ideal, however unrealisable it might have been. He reminds us of the
scions of the Hohenstaufen who fought in Italy for the imperial ideal
traditional in their family. The failure of the expedition into Ohmi
meant the utter impossibility of the restoration of the courtiers'
prestige and the approach of the total disappearance of the manorial
system from the islands of Japan. This is a mighty economical change for
the empire, the importance of which could not be overvalued. The old
regime initiated by the reform of the Taikwa was going down to its
grave, and new Japan was beginning to dawn side by side with the
momentous political disintegration of the country. We see, indeed,
simultaneous with this political and economical change, the
transformation of various factors of civilisation, preparing themselves
for the coming age. The first turning of the wheel of history, however,
depended on the political regeneration of the country by a master-hand.