END OF MEDIAEVAL JAPAN
In order to see a nation consolidated, it is necessary not only to have
a nucleus serving as a centre, towards which the whole nation might
converge, but to have at the same time the centralising power of that
nucleus strengthened sufficiently to hold the nation solid and compact.
Moreover, the constituent parts of that nation ought to have the
capacity to respond to the action emanating from that common centre or
nucleus towards those parts, and facilitate the reciprocal relation
between the centralising and the centralised. More than that. There must
be formed strong links between those component parts themselves towards
one another. For if each part be linked only to a common centre and
estranged from other parts, then there is a great danger of the breaking
asunder of the whole, however strong the centralising force of that
nucleus might be, and in case of the debilitation of that sole centre,
there might remain no other force alive to keep the constituent parts
compactly together. To impart, however, the consolidating force to those
component parts, they should be instituted each as a separate organism.
In other words, unless those parts constitute themselves each in an
organic social and political body, provided with the power of acting
within and without, they cannot form any close connection among
themselves and with the central nucleus; and to be provided with such a
power, or to become an organism, each part, too, must have in its turn
its own nucleus, around which the rest of that part might converge. To
speak summarily, for a strong centralisation there must be, besides one
nucleus, or nucleus of the first order, a certain number of nuclei of
the second or minor order, and sometimes there must be nuclei of the
third and lower orders.
It might be deduced from what is said above that without a sufficient
number of local centres, that is to say, without the existence of
well-developed minor political organisms, the political centre, however
powerful it might be, would not be able to hold a country together,
lacking cohesion between those constituent parts. Japan had long been in
such a disorderly state which continued until the middle of the Ashikaga
period, that is to say, the middle of the fifteenth century. The
political influence of Kamakura, though independent of Kyoto, was of
very short duration, and Kyoto had continued on the whole as the sole
political and social centre. If there had been in the provinces a place
worthy to be called a city, besides Kamakura, it could only be sought
in Hakata on the northern coast of Kyushu. Other places were hardly to
be termed cities, being but little more than sites of periodical fairs
at the utmost. The growth of the cities of Sakai and Yamaguchi is of
rather later origin, dating from the middle of the Ashikaga age. The
Emperor, the Shogun, and one metropolitan city had dominated the whole
of the country for a long time, so that, superficially observed, Japan
could be said to have been superbly centralised, and therefore
excellently unified. In reality, however, the prestige of the Emperor
declined, as well as the military power of the Shogunate, and Kyoto, the
site of the imperial court and of the military government, lost the
political influence it once had possessed. After all, nothing was found
influential enough in the earlier Ashikaga age to serve by itself as a
means of solidifying the nation, while there had not yet been formed
those minor provincial centres around which communities of lesser
magnitude might crystallise. Manors, which were the remnants of the
former ages, were of course a kind of agricultural communities, and
could be considered as social and economical units, but they were
politically dependent on their proprietors living in Kyoto or somewhere
else outside of those manors, and in cultural respects most of the
manors counted almost for nothing. All Japan was thus thrown into a
state of chaos, when the military power of the Ashikaga Shogunate was
reduced to impotence.
This chaotic period of Japanese history has been generally considered as
the retrogressive age of our civilisation, quite in the same sense in
which the medieval age in European history has come to be designated as
the Dark Ages. It is a great mistake, however, to stigmatise the
Ashikaga period as having witnessed no progress in any cultural factor,
just as it has been a fatal misconception of early European historians
to think that medieval Europe was indeed dark in every cultural respect.
Though the classicism of the former ages might seem a civilisation of a
far higher stage when compared with the vulgarised culture of the later,
or so-called Dark Age, yet the vulgarisation should not be necessarily
branded as a backward movement of civilisation. The vulgarisation at
least accompanies a wider propagation, a deeper permeation, and the
better adaptation to the real social condition of the time, and should
not be looked down upon as an absolutely decadent process. In the
seemingly anarchical period of the early Ashikaga, Japan had been
undergoing, in sooth, an important change in social and cultural
respects. Nay, even politically a change of mighty consequence was in
course of evolution. Having reached an extreme state of disorder, a germ
of fresh order was gradually forming itself out of necessity. That the
_shugo_ of this period held sway over a district far more extensive than
the land held by any of the _shugo_ of the Kamakura period, is in a
sense a remarkable political progress. Yamana, one of the most powerful
of the Ashikaga _shugo_, is said to have possessed about one-sixth of the
whole of Japan, and on that account was called Lord One-sixth. Such
great feudatories were never possible in the Kamakura period. Most of
these grand lords, though living mainly in Kyoto, as was stated in the
previous chapter, had their provincial residences, which, too, were not
so unpretentious as those of the _djito_ of the Kamakura. Each lord
maintained princely state, and around his court, a thriving social life
must have grown up, making the beginning of the modern Japanese
provincial towns. The governmental sites of the _daimyo_ or feudatories
of the Tokugawa period generally find the origin of their urban
development in these residences of the _shugo_ of the Ashikaga period.
The trade with China was another cause of the growth of modern Japanese
cities, especially of those which are situated by the sea, such as
Sakai, Osaka, Nagasaki, and this development of the maritime commercial
cities led naturally to the general advancement of the humanistic
culture of our country. Our intercourse with China, the fountain-head of
the culture of the East, though it had been suspended between the
governments since the end of the ninth century, had never been abandoned
entirely, and merchant ships had continued to ply between the two
countries almost without interruption. During the Kamakura Shogunate
too, we have reason to suppose that this steady intercourse livened
into considerable activity and bustling profitable to both sides, China,
at that epoch of our history, being governed by the Sung and the Yuan
dynasties successively. Sanetomo, the second son of Yoritomo and the
third Shogun in Kamakura, was said to have built a ship in order to
cross over to that country. The port then trading with China was Hakata,
and the privileged ships, which were limited in number, must have been
under the care and protection of the Shogunate. Those ships carried on
board not only commodities of exchange, but passengers also, who were
mostly priests. Some of the ships even appear to have been sent solely
for trade in behalf of certain Buddhist temples. In this we see again
the singular coincidence between the histories of Europe and of Japan.
The Levantine trade of the Italian cities in the age of the Crusades
counted among its participators many churches and priests also. It is
needless to say that those Japanese priests, who went abroad
accompanying adventurous merchants and came back loaded with profound
religious knowledge, did at the same time conspicuous service in
promoting the general culture of our country. What was most remarkable,
however, was that there were not a few Chinese Buddhists, who came over
to this country and settled here. Their main purpose was of course to
propagate the doctrine of the Zen sect, which had got the upper hand in
China at that time. They were cordially welcomed by the Shogunate, and
later by the Imperial Court too, and were installed in the noted temples
of Kamakura and Kyoto as chief priests, and besides their religious
activities, these learned men contributed much toward the introduction
of contemporary Chinese civilisation in general, in no less degree than
did the Japanese priests. Among the various departments of knowledge
which these priests imparted to the warriors and courtiers, one of the
most important was instruction in the pure Chinese classics and in
secular literature. There are still extant in our country not a small
number of rare books printed in the Sung and the Yuan dynasty and
imported hither at that time, and these manifest how rich in variety
were the books then introduced to Japan. The founding of the famous
library at Kanazawa near Kamakura, by a learned member of the Hojo
family in a time not far distant from that of the Mongolian invasion,
may perhaps be attributed to the influence of some of these priests.
Without doubt the invasion of the Mongolian host put a momentary stop to
this mutual intercourse. It seems, however, that the trade with China
was revived soon after the war, and continued down to the time of the
Ashikaga, without being interrupted materially even by the long civil
war. Far from cessation or interruption, the official intercourse
between the two states which had been broken off for some years was
during this civil war restored to its former amicable condition. It was
while the internecine strife was raging over the whole of the island
Empire, that a change of dynasty took place in China. The Mongols were
driven away to their original abode in the desert, and in their place
reigned in China the new dynasty of the Ming, founded by a general of
Chinese blood. This founder of the Ming sent an embassy to Japan to
announce the inauguration of his line and to secure the coast of his
empire from inroads and pillage by Japanese pirates, who, since several
centuries, had been ravaging the Korean and then the Chinese coast, and
became especially rampant during the civil war, being let loose by the
unexampled lawless state of our country. The ambassador of the Chinese
emperor, however, could not at once reach Kyoto, which was his
destination. For at that time in Kyushu ruled an imperial prince who was
a scion of the branch antagonistic to that which reigned in the
metropolis supported by the Ashikaga, and the prince-governor, as he was
then the master of the historic trading port of Hakata, intercepted the
Chinese ambassador on his way, received him, and sent him back. This
happened in the year 1369. Seven years afterwards this very prince sent
an envoy to the Chinese government, perhaps with the object of obtaining
some material assistance from beyond the sea, in order to make himself
strong enough to overpower his enemy in Japan, the Ashikaga party. As
the sender was a prince of the blood imperial, the envoy sent by him
seems to have been regarded as if he were the representative of the real
government of Japan, and the intercourse between the two countries thus
began to take official form again. When the civil war ended in the
ultimate victory of the Ashikaga party and the annihilation of all its
opponents, this international relation initiated by the prince of Kyushu
was taken up by Yoshimitsu, the third Shogun of the Ashikaga, who sent
an embassy to the Chinese government of the Ming in the year 1401. After
this we see successive exchanges of embassies between the Chinese
government and our Ashikaga Shogunate, the latter vouchsafing the
orderliness of our trading people on the Chinese coast and promising to
bridle the piratical activities of our adventurers, and the former
giving in return munificent presents to the Shogunate. At that time what
our forefathers suffered most from was the scarcity of coins, for
although the beginning of the coinage in our country is so old that it
has been lost in the remotest past, yet for a long period not enough
care was exercised to provide the country with sufficient money in coins
of different denominations to cover the necessities of the growing
industries. No wonder that the presents of copper coins by the emperors
of the Ming were gladly received by the Shogunate, and this Chinese
money, together with that obtained by sale of our commodities, was in
wide circulation throughout Japan, many of them having remained to this
day, and served as auxiliary coins. Among other things of Chinese
provenance earnestly coveted by us, perhaps the most desired were books.
Besides these two articles, copper coins and books, many rarities and
useful commodities must have been imported by these ships, which carried
the envoys on board, and rendered a not insignificant service in
altering for the better the general ways of living of the people of our
country.
The chief emporium of the trade with China in the early Ashikaga period
was of course Hakata in Kyushu as before. As the family of the Ouchi,
however, held the strait of Shimonoseki, the gateway of the Inland Sea,
and as Hakata itself came afterwards under the rule of the same family,
the Chinese trade had been for a long time controlled or rather
monopolised by this lord of the province of Nagato. The prosperity of
the inland city of Yamaguchi, the residential seat of the Ouchi family,
is to be ascribed also to the same circumstance. Moreover, the growth of
the port of Sakai in the easternmost recess of the Inland Sea owes its
origin to the fact that the city was once under the lordship of the same
Ouchi, and a close historical connection was thereby created between it
and the port of Shimonoseki. It was by the co-operation of many other
political causes, however, that the centre of the foreign trade was
shifted from Hakata to Sakai, and when intercourse with western nations
was opened, it was the latter and not the former, which became the
staple market of import and export.
The growth of the Japanese cities, actuated by the political and
commercial conditions of the country as stated above, is a phenomenon
which had much to do with the progress of our civilization in general.
Notwithstanding the manifold drawbacks necessarily accompanying urban
life, cities have been, since very ancient times, one of the most potent
agents in the history of the East as well as of the West, in raising the
general standard of culture to a high level. Rural life, whatever
sonorous praise be chanted for it, would not have been able by itself to
elevate the standard of manners and behaviour much above a blunt rustic
naivete. In this respect we can observe a remarkable difference between
the Ashikaga and the preceding ages, a difference quite similar in
nature to that which existed between the eleventh and the twelfth
centuries in the history of Europe. The sudden increase, in Japan, of
printed books in number and variety shows it more than clearly.
The history of printing in Japan goes back to the middle of the eighth
century, but at the beginning the matter printed was limited to detached
leaflets. What was printed the earliest in the form of a book and is
still extant, bears the date of 1088. After that, however, very few
books had been printed for a long time. Moreover, those few were
exclusively religious. It was in the year 1247 that one of the
commentaries on the _Lun-yue_, the famous work of the teachings of
Confucius, was put into a reprint, after the model of a contemporary
Chinese edition, that is to say, of the Sung age. That this
non-religious or non-Buddhist work was first edited in Japan in the
middle of the Kamakura period, proves the enlargement of the circle of
readers in Chinese classics by the participation of the warrior-class.
Such editing of secular Chinese works, however, was discontinued for
three-quarters of a century, and was not resumed until 1322, only ten
years before the outbreak of the long civil war. The book printed at the
latter date was after one of the Chinese editions of the _Shu-king_,
another piece of Confucian literature. This was followed by the
reprinting of many other non-religious Chinese works. The civil war too
astonishes us not only in that it did not hinder the continuance of the
reprints of useful Chinese originals, but also in that the number of
books reprinted has suddenly increased in general since this period.
Among the books issued during the war, a commentary on the _Lun-yue_, of
a text different from that above mentioned, and said to have been made
at Sakai, was the most remarkable. The edition was dated 1364, and
reprinted again and again in several places. In this case the place
where the printing was first undertaken demands also our attention.
Hitherto almost all the books had been published in Kyoto, except some
tomes of Buddhist literature, which occasionally had been edited in the
convents at Nara or Koya. But now printing began to be undertaken not
only in these historical and sacred places, but in purely commercial
cities of quite recent growth, as Sakai. It is said that about this time
several kinds of books of Chinese literature were edited in the city of
Hakata, and that it was a naturalised Chinese who had started the
undertaking there. Another tradition tells us that two Chinese
block-engravers came and settled at Hakata, and engaged in their
professional business, which contributed much to the increase of
reprinted books. Shortly after the civil war, in the beginning of the
fifteenth century, books were printed in other places more remotely
situated in the provinces, such as Yamaguchi and Ashikaga. The
last-named was the cradle of the Shogunate House of the Ashikaga, and
there just at this time a college was founded, or according to some,
restored, by Norizane Uyesugi, one of the most influential retainers of
the Shogunate in eastern Japan. Thus, in the latter half of the
fifteenth century, the reprinting of Chinese classics became a fashion
throughout the empire. In addition to the ever-increasing number of
books reprinted at Kyoto and Sakai, we find now those printed at places
as far remote as Kagoshima in the west. In the east there seems to have
lived in the neighborhood of Odawara, a new political centre, at least
one engraver, engaged in block-cutting for books. Summing up what has
been stated above, the increase of the number of book-editing localities
meant the increase of minor cultural centres in the provinces, that is
to say, the wider diffusion of civilisation in the empire.
Another important fact to be specially noticed is that the varieties of
books reprinted became gradually multifarious. Though those books
printed in the Ashikaga age were mostly reproductions of Chinese works,
and very few purely Japanese books were edited until the end of the age,
yet those Chinese works themselves, which were reprinted, became more
and more diversified in kind. Not only Buddhist and Confucian classics,
and works of purely literary character, especially poetical works and
books on versification, but several medical works also were reprinted
and issued in the later Ashikaga age. The study of medicine had been
revived since the civil war by the intercourse with China, and soon
after the war, some Japanese students went abroad to learn the science
there. The reprinting of medical books, therefore, was to be considered
as a token of the growing necessity for medical students ever increasing
in our country, and the beginning of the revival of scientific
education.
As to the works of Japanese authors which were put into print, the first
publication seems to have been that of religious treatise in Chinese by
the priest Honen, printed at the beginning of the Kamakura period, and
the work was many times reprinted afterwards. Another work by the same
priest, which was written in Japanese, was issued at the end of the same
period. During the civil war numerous works, mostly in Chinese, by the
Japanese Zen priests were published, among which the history of Buddhism
in Japan, entitled the _Genko-shakusho_, was the most noteworthy, and
was therefore reprinted over and over again. A chronological table of
the history of Japan, and two editions of the Joyei Laws were
subsequently printed. A text-book for children, to train them in the use
of Chinese ideographs, was first printed at the close of the Ashikaga
period, and the demand for the appearance of such a book proves that the
education of children began to arouse the general attention.
From what is said above, we can safely conclude that during the course
of the Ashikaga period, the level of civilisation of our country had
been raised in a marked degree, and that at the same time there arose
one after another numerous cultural centres in the provinces, which were
in their main features nothing but Kyoto on a small scale, but
nevertheless contributed not the least to the betterment of national
civilisation in general owing to their common rivalry. One would perhaps
entertain some doubt as to the veracity of the assertion, that in an age
such as of the Ashikaga, when political anarchy was in full play, so
remarkable an advancement had been steadily achieved by our forefathers.
If he would, however, look at the history of the Italian renaissance,
then he would not be at a loss to see that political disorder does not
necessarily thwart the progress of civilisation, but on the contrary
often stimulates it.
The territories owned by great feudatories or _daimyo_ in the Ashikaga
age were by no means compact entities definitely bounded. Their
frontiers constantly shifted to and fro according to frequently
recurring waxings and wanings in strength of this or that _daimyo_, and
these fluctuations depended, in their turn, on the results sometimes of
petty skirmishes and sometimes of political intrigues, so that an
unwavering steadiness was the least thing to be expected at that time.
This politically unsettled condition of Japan, however, was in a certain
sense a boon to our country, for it took away all the hindrances which
lay in the way of internal communication, and paved the path to the
ultimate political unity of the empire. I do not say of course that
travelling at that time was quite safe from any kind of molestation, but
the main obstacles to communication were rather of a social than of a
political nature. In other words, they were of kinds which could not be
got rid of in a like stage of civilisation, even if Japan had been
politically not dismembered, and adventurous merchants did not shrink
from facing such difficulties. No need to speak of those piratical
traders, who went out from the western islands and the coastal regions
of the Inland Sea on their devastating errands to the Korean and the
Chinese coasts. The less warlike merchants ventured to trade with the
Ainu, who had retired into the island of Hokkaido, and had not been
heard of since the beginning of the Ashikaga period.
Among the itinerants travelling a long distance may be counted the
professional literati also, the experts in the art of composing the
_renga_, the short Japanese poems. They went about throughout the
provinces, visiting feudal lords in their castles, teaching them the
literary pastimes, thus imparting their first lesson in aesthetic
education to those who had never tasted it. Courtiers, too, weakminded
as they were, travelled great distances, to call on some rich bourgeois
or powerful _daimyo_, who were thinking of becoming their munificent
patrons, and taught them, besides the afore-said art of composing
Japanese poems, the sport of kicking leather balls and other leisurely
pastimes which had been the favourites among the courtiers in Kyoto, and
received in return a generous hospitality and fees for the lessons which
they gave. Buddhist priests were the third set of busy travellers of the
time. Missionary activities had not much relaxed since the Kamakura
period, though no influential sect had been started in this age. Every
nook and corner of the island empire had received the footprints of
these religious itinerants, and some of the more enterprising priests
even crossed the sea to the island of what is now Hokkaido in order to
preach to the Ainu dwelling there. Pilgrims to the shrines of Ise, where
the ancestress of the Imperial line was enshrined, may also be counted
among the busy interprovincial travellers.
All these wanderers served not only to transmit to distant provincial
towns the culture engendered and nourished in the metropolis, but also
to make the intercourse between the minor cultural centres more intimate
than before, so as to spread a civilisation of a uniform standard and
nature throughout the whole of the empire. Japan was thus for the first
time unified in her civilisation in order to prepare herself for a solid
political unification.
Let me repeat that Japan of the Ashikaga age had within herself no
constant political boundaries nor any other artificial barriers to
impede the people of one province nor of the territory of one _daimyo_
from going to another province or the territory of another _daimyo_, and
this, in a great measure, facilitated communications between the
inhabitants of different provinces. The fact that the college at
Ashikaga in eastern Japan was, notwithstanding its insufficient
accommodation, thronged with pupils from various parts of the country,
even from a province so far off from Kyoto as Satsuma, proves that bad
roads and poor means of conveyance did not obstruct the Japanese of that
time from traversing great distances in order to get a liberal
education, and such activity and lively traffic would naturally tend to
the formation of big emporiums here and there within the empire.
Unfortunately the geographical features of our country did not allow it
to see a great number of such large commercial cities formed within it,
as the Hanseatic towns had been formed in medieval Germany, although we
find very close resemblances between Germany of the twelfth and of the
thirteenth century and Japan under the Ashikaga regime as regards their
political conditions. The only one of the Japanese cities which had ever
attained such a height of prosperity as to be fairly matched with the
free cities of the Hansa was Sakai in the province of Idzumi.
The city of Sakai, as its name, which means in the Japanese tongue "the
Boundary," denotes, was situated just on the boundary line of the two
adjoining provinces Settsu and Idzumi, and at the quondam estuary of the
river Yamato. The frontier-line, however, and the course of the river,
were afterwards changed, so that the city is now entirely included
within the province of Idzumi, and there is no river running near the
city. The fact that it was once a border town shows that it could never
have been the seat of the provincial government. Neither had it ever
been the residence of any powerful feudal lord during the whole military
regime. Moreover, nature has bestowed no special favour on the city. The
bay of Sakai is very widely open, affording no protection against the
west wind. In addition to that, it has been very shallow since old
times. Even in an undeveloped stage of ship-building, the port was unfit
for the mooring of vessels of a size as large as the junks trading with
China were at that time, so that they had to be equipped somewhere else
in a neighbouring harbour, and then brought and anchored far off from
the shore in the bay of Sakai. The only geographical advantage of the
port lay in the fact that the shortest sea-route to the island of
Shikoku started thence. The first impulse to the development of the city
seems to have been given during the civil war, for it was the nearest
access to the sea for one of the parties which had its stronghold in the
mountainous region of the province of Yamato, adjacent to Idzumi. At the
end of the war, the port came, as before stated, under the rule of the
family of Ouchi, and from Ouchi it passed into the hands of the family
of Hosokawa, also one of the chief vassals of the Ashikaga Shogunate,
holding the north-eastern part of the island of Shikoku, and Sakai
serving the family always as the landing-place of its followers, when
they were on their way to Kyoto, to pay their respects to the Shogun or
to fight there for their own interests. On account of this usefulness
the harbour-city of Sakai had been granted privileges by the hereditary
chief of the Hosokawa, as a recompense for the assistance given by the
merchants of the city, and those same privileges, in extent, amounted
to almost as much as the municipal freedom enjoyed by the free cities of
Europe. The administration of the city was in the hands of a few wealthy
merchants, and was rarely interfered with by its feudal lord. Among the
merchants there were ten, at first, who monopolised the municipal
government, each of them being very rich as the proprietors of certain
storehouses on the beach, the rents of which paid them a good income. In
the later Ashikaga age, however, we hear the names of the thirty-six
municipal councillors of Sakai. This increase in the number might
perhaps have been the result of the growth in opulence of the citizens.
In short, though the city had been under the oligarchical rule of the
wealthy merchants of the city, like Venice and Florence in medieval
Italy, yet it was none the less autonomous, which is quite an
exceptional case in the whole course of the history of our country.
The golden age of the city of Sakai dates from the year 1476 or
thereabouts, when a squadron trading with China first sailed out from
the harbour. Until that time all the vessels plying between this country
and China used to set out from Hakata or from Hyogo, which is nearly the
same thing as Kobe. Although the adventurous merchants of Sakai carried
their trade before this time as far as the islands of Loo-choo, and
often participated in the Chinese trade also, yet no vessel had ever
started from there for China till then. That Sakai became at this date
a chief trading port dealing with China might presumably have been owing
to the intercession of its hereditary lord Hosokawa, but the determining
cause of this assumption of such an honourable position among the
commercial cities of Japan must have been the indisputable superiority
of the material strength of the city. Many of the higher vassals of the
Shogunate borrowed money from the merchants of Sakai in order to equip
their soldiers. Nay, even the Shogunate itself had often to mortgage its
landed estates to the merchants of the city in order to save its
treasury from running short. The wealth of the citizens enabled them to
fortify their city very strongly, by surrounding it with a deep moat,
and to enlist into their service a great number of knights-errant, who
abounded in Japan at that time. These, together with the consciousness
of indispensable assistance rendered to the Shogunate, to various great
feudatories and condottieri, emboldened the citizens to defy the
otherwise formidable military powers, and those warriors, on the other
hand, who owed much to the pecuniary aid of the Sakai merchants, could
but treat the latter with great consideration, which was unwonted at
that time. Although the citizens of Sakai were not entirely free from
the sufferings of the war, for they had often to quarter soldiers in
their houses, yet no battle was allowed to be fought within the city,
notwithstanding that a most sanguinary war was raging all around in the
empire.
It was natural, therefore, that, after the civil war of the Ohnin era,
Sakai should be considered safer to live in than Kyoto. Sakai became the
asylum for the civilisation of Japan, to save it from utter destruction.
Poets, painters, musicians, and singers, who had found living in the
turbulent metropolis intolerably hard, sought shelter in Sakai, and
there occupied themselves quietly with their own professions. Various
handicrafts, such as lacquering, porcelain-making, and weaving were all
started there with enormous success. Especially as to the weaving, it is
said that this industry, which had once flourished and been afterwards
abandoned in Kyoto on account of the political disturbances there, was
not only continued at Sakai, but also improved by the Chinese weavers,
who repaired to the city and taught the natives the art of making
various costly textiles of Chinese invention. In some respects the
textiles of the Nishijin, now one of the specialties of Kyoto, may be
said to be the continuation of the Sakai looms.
Another kind of industry, which developed in the city in the later
Ashikaga period, was the manufacture of fire-arms. Immediately after the
introduction of fire-arms by a Portuguese in the year 1541, a merchant
of Sakai happened to learn the art of making guns somewhere or other in
Kyushu, and after his return to the city he began to practise there the
business he had learnt. Sakai thus became the origin of the propagation,
in central and eastern Japan, of the use of the new arm.
From what has been described above, the reader would easily understand
that the intellectual level of the citizens of Sakai stood much higher
than that of the average Japanese of that time. Wit and pleasantry were
the accomplishments highly prized there, so that the city produced out
of its inhabitants a large number of versatile diplomatists,
story-tellers, and buffoons. As their economic conditions were very
easy, the social life of the city was polished, enlightened, and even
luxurious. The manufacture of sake, the Japanese favourite drink made
from rice, was highly developed in the city, and the fame of the
Sakai-tub was renowned the country round. To protect the brewers, the
Shogunate issued an order forbidding the importation of sake into the
city. The tea-ceremony and the flower-trimming, two fashionable pastimes
already in vogue at that time, were eagerly practised here by wealthy
merchants. Many famous experts in this sort of amusement were found
among the inhabitants of the city, and they were generally connoisseurs
highly skilled in the fine arts, as Sen-no-Rikyu, for example. Various
curios, native and foreign, were bought and sold there at exorbitant
high prices.
The prosperous condition of the city induced many Buddhists, especially
the priests of the Jodo-shinshu, the most active sect of Japanese
Buddhism at that time, to try their propaganda in the city. They had
numerous temples built, and by lending to the merchants their influence
at the Shogun's court obtained from it the privilege of trading with
China, thus making common cause with the citizens of that port. The
earlier Christian missionaries, too, endeavoured to make this city the
centre of their movement. It was indeed at the end of the year 1550,
that Francis Xavier, who was not only the greatest missionary whom Japan
has ever received from the West, but also one of the greatest men in the
world too, arrived at the city from Yamaguchi on his way to Kyoto.
Though he could achieve nothing noteworthy during his short stay here,
on account of illness, yet by him the first seed of Christianity was
sown in the central regions of the empire, and ten years later the first
Christian hymn was sung in the church founded in the city.
The civilisation of the city of Sakai represented that of the whole
empire in the later Ashikaga age, manifested in its most glaring
colours. The essential character of the civilisation was not
aristocratic, but bourgeois. The lower strata of the people still had
nothing to do with it. It is true that we can recognise already at this
period the beginning of the proletariat movement. The frequent
disturbances raised by apaches in the streets of Kyoto and the
insurrections of agricultural workers in the provinces, remind us of
the Peasants' War in the time of the Reformation in Europe. Their
demands as well as their connection with the religious agitation of the
time closely resembled those of the followers of Goetz von Berlichingen.
They could not, however, secure any permanent result by their
insurrections, so that the character of the civilisation remained
essentially bourgeois, not having suffered any marked change from those
disturbances.
The civilisation of the bourgeois cannot but be individualistic, and its
main difference from that of the aristocracy lies also herein. It has
been so in Europe, and it could not have been otherwise in our country.
The fact that individualism got the upper hand in the Ashikaga age may
be proved by a phenomenon in the history of Japanese art.
Portrait-painting had made some progress already in the Kamakura period,
as was stated in the foregoing chapter. The artistic development in this
branch of painting made it independent of religious pictures. The
portrait-paintings of the age, however, even those executed by such
eminent masters as Takanobu and Nobuzane, are only images of the typical
courtier or warrior, not to mention the stiffness of the style. Very
little of the individuality of the persons represented was manifested in
them. The scroll-paintings, to which the attention of most of the
artists of the age was directed, contained pictures of many persons, but
to depict scenes was the chief aim of scroll-paintings, so that no
serious pains were taken in the delineation of individuals. That
portrait-painting remained thus long in an undeveloped stage cannot be
explained away simply by the tardiness of the progress of arts in
general. The chief cause must be attributed to the fact that the
contemporary civilisation was lacking in individualistic elements.
Unless there is a rise of the individualistic spirit in a certain
measure, no real progress in portraiture can be expected.
In the Ashikaga period, a large number of scroll-paintings had been
produced as before, but they were mostly inferior in quality to those of
the preceding age. On the other hand, we notice a vast improvement in
the portrait-painting of this period. It may be due to some extent to
the influence of the Zen sect, the sect which prevailed among the upper
class of that time, for its creed is said to be strongly
individualistic. Mainly, however, it must have come from the general
spirit of the age, which, though it could not be said to have been free
from the influence of the same sect, was induced to become
individualistic more by social and economical reasons than by religious
ones. By painters of the schools of Tosa and Kano were painted numerous
portraits of eminent personages, such as the Shogun, courtiers, great
feudatories, priests, especially of the Zen sect, literati, artists,
experts in tea-ceremony, and so forth. Their pictures were generally
made after death by order of the near relatives, friends, vassals or
disciples of the deceased, to be a memorial of the person whom they
adored or revered. Not a small number of those paintings are extant to
this day, showing vividly the characteristics of those illustrious
figures in Japanese history.
The political anarchy combined with the individualistic tendency of the
age could not fail to lead to the moral dissolution of the people. To
the same effect, too, the literature of the time, which was a revival of
that of the Fujiwara period, contributed. The classical authors of
Japanese literature at the height of the Fujiwara period were now
perused, commented upon, and elucidated with devouring eagerness, the
most adored among them being Murasaki-Shikibu, whose famous novel,
_Genji-monogatari_, was regarded mystically and held to be almost
divine. The nature of this literature was for the most part realistic,
or rather sentimental, verging sometimes on sensuality. It was, however,
clad in the exquisitely refined costume of beautiful diction and choice
turns of phrase, borrowed or metamorphosed from the inexhaustible stores
of Chinese literature. As to the revived form of literature in the
Ashikaga period, the difference between it and that of the old time was
so remarkable, that it could not be overlooked. Vulgarisation usurping
the place of refinement, and coarse sensuality reigning rampant was the
outcome of the cultivation of the classical literature. The moral tone
of the stories and novels produced in this decadent age unmistakably
reflects how low was the ebb of the sense of decency of that period,
fostered by the naturalistic tendency manifested in the Fujiwara
classics.
These depict the dark side of the age, but in order not to be one-sided
in my judgment, let me tell also about its bright side. The culture of
the Ashikaga had from the beginning a trend to grow more and more
humanistic as it approached the end of the period. One more aspect in
the history of Japanese painting proves it to the full. Landscapes and
still-life pictures, which had been formerly painted only as the
accessories of religious images or as the background in the scroll
paintings, before which the main subjects, that is to say, the
personages in stories were made to play, began now to form by themselves
each a special independent group of subjects for painting. This shows
that the people of the time had already entered a cultural stage able to
enjoy the arts for art's sake. Many pictures of such a kind by the brush
of noted Chinese masters were imported into our country, and several
clever Japanese artists also painted after them. Some of our artists,
like Sesshu, went over to China to study the art of painting there. The
differentiation of the school of Kano from the older Tosa was another
result of this development. Most of these pictures were executed in the
form of _kakemono_, or hanging pictures, so called from their being
hung in a special niche of a drawing room or a study. Screens, or
_byobu_, mounted with pictures, became also a fashion. In general, the
furnishing of a house was now a matter of a certain educated taste, and
various systems were devised and formulated by accomplished experts.
The delicacy of the aesthetic sense in indoor-life was moreover enhanced
by the laborious etiquette of fashionable tea-parties held by
aristocrats and bourgeois alike. The tea-plant itself is said to have
been introduced from China into our country in the reign of the Emperor
Saga, that is to say, at the beginning of the ninth century. Its use,
however, as the daily beverage was of a far later date. Yosai, the
founder of the Zen sect in Japan, wrote in the early Kamakura period a
commendation on tea as the healthiest drink of all. Still, for a long
while after him, tea seems to have been used exclusively by Buddhists as
a tonic. It was in the Ashikaga age that tea came first into general use
among the well-to-do classes of the people. As the production of it was,
however, not so abundant as now, it was not used daily as at present,
but occasionally, with an etiquette conducted with exquisitely refined
taste, both hosts and guests rivalling one another in displaying their
artistic acquirements by delivering extempore speeches in criticism of
the various articles of art exhibited, or in amusing themselves with
mystic dialogues of the Zen creed, or the lively exchange of witty
repartees.
After all, the tendency of the culture of the later Ashikaga period was
in the main humanistic. There was no political authority so firmly
constituted, nor were conventional morals of the time so rigorous, as to
be able to put an effective check on any liberal thinker, nor to
intervene in the daily life of the people. Thought and action in Japan
has never been more free than in that age. That Christianity could find
innumerable converts from one end of the empire to the other within half
a century after its introduction, may be accounted for by supposing that
the ground for it had been prepared long before by this exceedingly
humanistic culture. In this respect we see the dawn of modern Japan
already in the later Ashikaga age. What a striking similarity to the
Italian renaissance! Japan was now in the throes of travail--the time
for a new birth was fast approaching. Conditions on the whole were
favourable. All that was wanted for this were the moral regeneration of
the people and the political reconstruction of the Empire.