THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN JAPAN
Anarchy engendered peace at least. At the end of the Ashikaga Shogunate
the minor territorial lords, who had sprung up out of the impotency of
the Shogun, were swallowed up one after another by the more powerful
ones. The rights of manorial holders, that is to say, of court-nobles,
shrines, and temples, over estates legally their own, though long since
fallen into a condition of semi-desuetude, were active, sensitive, yet
powerful enough in the middle of the period to withstand the attempted
encroachments of those territorial lords, who were _de jure_ only
managers of the estates entrusted to their care; but those rights began
in course of time to lose their enforcing power, and were finally set at
naught by the all-powerful military magnates. The link between the
estates and their proprietors was thus virtually cut off, and each
territory, which was in truth an agglomeration of several estates, came
to stand as one body under the rule of a military lord, without any
reservation to his right. In other words, each territory became a domain
of a lord pure and simple, and it may be best explained by imagining a
quasi-sovereign state in Europe formed by joining together a certain
number of ecclesiastical domains, the lands of which were contiguous. It
is true that the size of such territories varied, ranging from one so
big as to contain several provinces down to petty ones comprising only a
few villages; their boundaries, too, shifted from time to time.
Notwithstanding this diversity in size and the inconstancy of the
frontier-lines, these territories were similar to one another in their
main nature, no more complicated by intricate manorial systems. If,
therefore, there appeared at once some irresistible necessity for
national unification or some great historical figure, whose ability was
equal to the task of achieving the work, Japan could now be made a solid
national state far more easily than at any earlier period.
Besides this facilitation of the political unity, what most contributed
to the settling of the general order was the resuscitation of the moral
sense of the nation. The highly advanced Chinese civilisation introduced
into our country at a time when it was comparatively naive, had an
effect which could not be termed exactly in all respects wholesome. The
morals of the people, whose mode of life was simplicity itself, not
having yet tasted the sumptuousness of civilised life, excelled those of
higher civilised nations in veracity, soberness, and courage. Lacking,
however, in the firm consciousness which must accompany any virtue of a
standard worthy of sincere admiration, these attributes of the ancient
Japanese, though laudable in themselves, could have no high intrinsic
value, and were inadequate to stem the enervating influence of the
elegantly developed alien civilisation introduced later on into the
country. The ethical ties, which are indispensable at any time for
maintaining the social order in a healthy condition, were gradually
reduced to a state of utter dissolution in the later or over-refined
stage of the Fujiwara period, especially among the upper classes. With
the attainment of political power by the warrior class in the formation
of the Kamakura Shogunate, there shimmered once some hope of the
reawakening of the moral spirit, for fidelity and gratitude, which were
the cardinal virtues of the Kamakura warriors, were efficient factors in
refreshing and invigorating a society which had once fallen into a
despicable languor and demoralisation. The ascendency of these bracing
forces, however, was but transitory. This disappointment came not only
from the shortness of the duration of the genuine military regime at
Kamakura, but also from another reason not less probable. The admirable
virtues of the warriors were the natural outcome of the peculiar private
circumstances created in the fighting bodies of the time, and were on
that account essentially domestic in their nature. As long as these
warriors remained, therefore, mere professional fighters and tools in
the hands of court nobles, the moral ties binding leaders and followers
as well as the _esprit de corps_ among these followers themselves had
very slight chance of coming into contact with politics. In short, the
majority of these warriors were not acquainted with public life at all,
so that they were at a loss how to behave themselves as public men when,
as the real masters of the country, they found themselves obliged to
deal with political affairs. Public affairs are generally prone to
induce men even of high probity to put undue importance upon the
attainment of end, rather than to make them scrupulous about the means
of arriving at that end; and if the moral sense of the people is not
developed enough to guard against this injurious infection of private
life from the meddling with public affairs, then their inborn and yet
untried virtues may often fail to assert themselves against the
influence of the depravity which can find its way more easily into
public than into private life. Such was the case with the warriors of
the Kamakura age. Through their ascendency the martial spirit of the
nation, which had languished somewhat under the rule of the Fujiwara
nobles, was once more revived, but their descendants at the end of that
Shogunate could not be so brave and simple-hearted as their forefathers
were. The extinction of the Minamoto family, too, relieved these
warriors of their duty as hereditary liegemen of the Shogun, for
henceforth both the Shogun, who was now of a different family from that
of the Minamoto, and the Hojo, the real master of the Shogunate, were to
them superiors only in official relations. This disappearance of the
object on which the fidelity of the warriors used to concentrate, made
fidelity itself an empty virtue. At least among the circle of warriors
in the age in which fidelity was everything and all other virtues were
but ancillary to it, this loss must have been a great drawback to the
improvement of the morality of the nation. The demoralisation of the
influential class had thus set in since the latter part of the Kamakura
age. No wonder that during the civil war which ensued many of the
prominent warriors changed sides very frequently, almost without any
hesitation, obeying only the dictates and suggestions of their private
interests. That this civil war, which ended without any decisive battle
being fought, could drag on for nearly a century, may be best understood
by taking this recklessness of the participants into consideration. The
inconsistency in their attitude or the want of fidelity towards those to
whom they ought to be faithful was not restricted to their transactions
in public affairs only, but extended also to the recesses of their
family life. Parents could no more confide in their own children, nor
husband in his wife, and masters had always to be on guard against
betrayal by their servants. After the civil war there were many periods
of intermittent peace in the first half of the Ashikaga regime, but
that was not a result of the firm and strong government of the Shogun.
They were rather lulls after storms, brought about by the weariness felt
after a long anarchy.
The culmination of this deplorable condition of national demoralisation
falls to the epoch of the next civil war, that is to say, of the Ohnin
era. It is in this period that we witness a great development of the spy
system and of the usage of taking hostages as a security against breach
of faith. Even such means, however, proved often inefficient to guard
against the unexpected treachery of supposed intimate friends, or a
sudden attack from the rear by trusted neighbours. Desertion, though not
recommended as a laudable action, was nevertheless not considered a
detestable infamy, especially when it was carried out anterior to the
pitching of the camps against the enemy, and deserters or betrayers were
generally welcomed and loaded with munificent rewards by their new
masters. Was it possible that such a ruthless state could continue for
long without any counteraction? If any one had once betrayed his first
master for the sake of selfish interests, could he claim after that to
be a sort of person able to enjoy the implicit confidence of his second
master? Examples of repeated breaches of faith abound in the history of
the time. It was from the general unreliableness caused by such habitual
acts of treachery, that the practice of giving quarter to deserters and
facile surrenderers began gradually to diminish. And the result was
that the danger of being killed after having surrendered or capitulated
became a cause to induce those warriors, who would otherwise have easily
given up their master's cause, to remain true to him to the end. This is
one of the reasons why, after so long a domination of this miserable
demoralisation, we begin frequently to come upon those beautiful
episodes which showed the solidarity of clans admirably maintained and
the utter loyalty of vassals to their lord, fighting to the death under
his banner. The process, however, of ameliorating the morals of the
nation should not begin from the relation of master and servant, but
slowly start from within families. One could not refrain from feeling
the imperative necessity of trustworthy mutual dependence among members
connected by ties of blood, amidst the dreary environs in which no
hearty confidence could be put in any one with safety. That the
_Hsiao-king_, a Chinese moral book treating of the merits of filial
piety, was widely read in educated circles of the time, and that several
editions of the same book have been published since the middle of the
Ashikaga period, show how great a stress was put on the encouragement of
domestic duties. With the family, made a compact body, as the starting
point, the reorganisation of social and national morals was thus set on
foot. The growth of the tendency of liegemen to share the same fate as
their lord is to be looked upon as a kind of extension of this family
solidarity, as it came not from the consideration of the mere relation
between a master and his servants, but rather from that of the
hereditary transmittal of such a relation on both sides, just as it was
at the beginning of the Kamakura Shogunate. There was no doubt therefore
that the smaller the size of the territory of a lord, the easier the
consummation of the process of its compact consolidation, which was
necessarily cemented by a close mutual attachment between the lord of
that territory and his dependents within and without his family. Not
only that. If that territory was small and weak, and in constant danger
of being destroyed or annexed by powerful neighbours, then the same
process of consolidation was effected very swiftly. The territory in the
province of Mikawa, which was owned by the family of the Tokugawa, was
one of many such instances. This territory was so small in size, that it
did not cover more than a half of the province, and moreover it was
surrounded by the domains belonging to the two powerful families of Oda
and Imagawa on the west and east, so that the small estate of the
Tokugawa family was constantly harassed by them, and maintained as a
protectorate now by the one and then by the other of the two. On that
account nowhere else was there a stronger demand for a close affinity
between a territorial lord and his men, than in this domain of the
Tokugawa's. Consequently we see there not only an early progress in
territorial consolidation, but along with it the resuscitation of an
acute moral sense, especially in the direction necessary and compatible
to the maintenance and development of a military state.
The reawakening of the high moral sense in the nation and the formation
of compact self-constituted territories, virtually independent but amply
liable to the influence of unifying forces, were the phenomena in the
latter half of the Ashikaga period. That the country was slow in
becoming nationalised and unified must be attributed to the
insufficiency of that reawakening and the insolidity of those
quasi-independent territories. The general culture of the time, which
was humanistic in nature, was powerless for the moment to facilitate
this movement which was national and moral at the same time. Humanistic
as it was, it was able to pervade the provinces, and gave to Japan a
uniform colour of culture. That was already, indeed, a stride forward on
the way to national unification. Nay, it may be said that the impulse to
that very unification was given by that very culture. Generally,
however, the humanistic culture of any form has no particular state of
things as its practical goal, and therefore cannot necessarily lead to
an improvement in the morals of any particular nation, nor does it
always stimulate the desire for the national unification of a certain
country. On the contrary, it often counteracts these movements, and
seemingly contributes toward accelerating the demoralisation and
dismemberment of a nation, for individualism and selfishness get often
the upper hand when such a culture becomes ascendant. The fruit which
the Renaissance of the Quattrocento bore to Italians was just of this
sort, and the direct influence which the humanistic culture of the later
Ashikaga produced on Japan was not very much different from that. The
culture, which had spread widely all over Japan, rather tended to loosen
moral ties, and at least diminished the social stability. Persons, of a
character morally most depraved, such as traitors, murderers, and so
forth, were not infrequently men of high culture. Most of the rebellious
servants of the Ashikaga Shogun were said to have been
highly-accomplished literati. Some of them were addicted to the perusal
of the sensational novels produced in the golden age of classical
literature in Japan, such as the _Ise-_ and the _Genji-monogatari_, and
others were composers of short poems fashionable in those days,
rejoicing at their own display of flighty wit, while not a few of them
were liberal patronisers of the contemporary art, especially of
painting. What a striking parallelism to those Popes and their nephews,
in the time of the Renaissance, whose patronising of arts is as renowned
as their atrocious vices!
If the culture inborn or borrowed from China was unable to save the
country from a moral and political crisis, what was the fruit borne by
the seeds of the new exotic culture, that is to say, of Christianity,
sown just at this juncture? I will not dilate here on the relation
between religion and morality in general. Suffice it to say that
religious people are not always virtuous. Bigots are generally men of
perverse character, and mostly vicious. This is a truism. It has been so
with Buddhism and many other religions. Why should it be otherwise only
in the case of Christianity? As regards the general culture of our
country, the introduction of Christianity is a very important historical
fact, the influence of which can by no means be overlooked. Though the
secular culture which was introduced into Japan as the accessory of the
Christian propaganda was of a very limited nature, and though the free
acceptance of it was cut short soon after its circulation, yet this new
element of civilisation brought over by the missionaries was much more
than a drop in the ocean. However difficult it be to perceive the traces
of the Western culture in the spirit of the age which was to follow, it
cannot be denied that it left, after all, some indelible mark on our
national history. That it had spread within a few decades all over the
contemporary Japan, from the extreme south to the furthest north, should
also not be left out of sight. Thenceforth the Fables of AEsop have not
ceased to be told in the lamplit hours in the nurseries of Japan. We see
Japan, after the first introduction of Christianity, painted in a
somewhat different colour, though the difference of tincture may be
said to be extremely slight. The knowledge at least that there were
outside of China, many people in the far West, civilised enough to teach
us in several branches of science and art, opened the eyes of the island
nation to a wider field of vision, and began to alter the views which we
had entertained about things Chinese. Previously, for anything to become
authoritative, it had been enough if the Chinese origin of that thing
could be assured. The overshadowing influence which China had wielded
over Japan at the time of the Fujiwara regime was revived in different
form in the middle Ashikaga period, the former being China of the T'ang,
while the latter that of the Sung, Yuan, and Ming. In short, China had
long continued as a too brilliant guiding star to the Japanese mind,
Korea, by the way, having been regarded only as one of the
intermediaries between the "flowery" Empire and our country. It would
be, of course, a hasty judgment to conclude that the introduction of
Christianity instantly let the scales fall from the eyes of the Japanese
as regards China, and aroused thereby a fervent national enthusiasm of
the people, but at least it was a strong impetus to the awakening of the
national consciousness, and led indirectly to the political unification
of the country. In this respect the introduction of the new religion had
a salutary effect on our history.
As to the betterment of the individual morals of the contemporary
Japanese, however, the influence of Christianity cannot be said to have
been wholesome in all ways. It probably did as much mischief as good
during its brief prosperity. Any cult, which may be styled a universal
religion, contains a strong tincture of individualism in its doctrines,
and any creed of which individualism is a main factor often easily tends
to encourage, against its original purpose, the pursuit of selfish
objects. In this respect even Christianity can offer no exception. What,
then, could it preach, at the end of the Ashikaga regime, to the
Japanese who were already individualistic enough without the new
teaching of the western religion, besides the intensifying of that
individualism to make it still more strong and prevalent? Moreover, the
very moral doctrine of the Christianity introduced by Francis Xavier and
his successors was nothing but the moral of the Jesuits of the sixteenth
century, who maintained the unscrupulous teaching that the end justified
the means, the moral principle which has been universally adjudged in
Europe to be a very dangerous and obnoxious doctrine. Could it have been
otherwise only in our country as an exceptional case? But if these
missionaries had all been men of truly noble and upright character, they
should have been able perhaps to raise the standard of our national
morals by personal contact with the Japanese, notwithstanding the moral
tenets of their religion. Unfortunately, however, most of them were of
debased character, with the exception of St. Francis Xavier and a few
others. We need not doubt the ardent desire of these missionaries to
save the "souls" of the Japanese, and thus to recover in the East what
they had lost in the West. But by whatever motive their pious
undertakings may have been prompted, their religious enthusiasm and
their dauntless courage do not confute the charge of dishonesty. That
the majority of them were grossest liars is evident from their reports
addressed to their superiors in Europe, in which the numbers of converts
and martyrs in this country were misrepresented and ridiculously
exaggerated, in order bombastically to manifest their undue merits,
exaggeration which could not be attributed to a lack of precise
knowledge about those matters. What could we expect from men of such
knavish characters as regards the moral regeneration of the contemporary
Japanese?
As these missionaries, however, were at least cunning, if not
intelligent in a good sense, it would not have been impossible for them
to achieve something in the domain of the moral education of the nation,
if they could only have understood the real state of Japan of that time.
On the contrary, their comprehension of our country and of our
forefathers was far wide of the mark. Most of them had expected to find
in Japan an El Dorado inhabited by primitive folks of a very low grade
of intelligence, where they could play their parts gloriously as
missionaries by preaching the Gospel in the wilderness. They had not
dreamt that the culture possessed by the Japanese of that time, though
for the most part borrowed from China, was superior to that of some
still uncivilised parts of Europe, for the difference in the form of
civilisation deceived them in their judgment of the value of Eastern
culture. When they set their feet on Japanese soil, therefore, they soon
discovered that they had been grossly mistaken, and then running to the
opposite extreme they fell into the error of overestimation. Yet they
did not stop at this. This first misconception on the part of the
missionaries about Japan left in them an ineradicable prejudice. They
became very niggards in seeing things Japanese in an impartial light,
and constituted themselves consciously or unconsciously fault-finders of
the people, and unfortunately the Japan of that time furnished them with
much material to corroborate their low opinion. The result was that
while on the one hand the Japanese were praised far above their real
value, they were stigmatised equally far below their real merits.
Regrettable as it was for Japan to have received such reprehensible
people as pioneers of Western civilisation, it was also pitiable that
Christianity, which had been fervently embraced by a large number of
Japanese, was once rooted out chiefly on account of the incredible folly
of these missionaries, who fermented trouble and embroiled themselves in
numberless intrigues, which were quite useless and unnecessary as
regards the cause of Christianity. It would, in good sooth, have been
absurd to hope to have the morality of the people improved by the
personal influence of such reckless adventurers.
Japan was ready to be transformed into a solid national state, and at
the same time to emerge from a chaotic medieval condition to enter the
modern status. The cultural milieu, however, though it might have been
ripe for change, must have found it difficult to get transformed by
itself, and wanted an infusion of some new element to create an
opportunity for the change. A new element did come in, but it proved to
be unable to effect any wholesome alteration, so that in order to create
that opportunity the only possible and promising way was to resort first
to the political unification of the country, and thus to start from the
political and so to reach social and individual regeneration. And for
that political unification the right man was not long wanting. We find
him first in Nobunaga Oda, then in Hideyoshi Toyotomi, and lastly in
Iyeyasu Tokugawa.
The first task was naturally to break down the authority of numerous
traditions and conventions which had kept the nation in fetters for a
long time. This task was an appropriate one for such a hero as Nobunaga,
who was imperious and intrepid enough to brave every difficulty coming
in his way. He was born in a family which had been of the following of
the house of Shiba, one of the branches of the Ashikaga, and had
continued as the hereditary administrator of Owari, a province which
formed part of the domain of its suzerain lord. When the power of the
house of Shiba decayed, the Oda family asserted its virtual independence
in the very province in which it had been the vicegerent of its lord,
and it was after this assertion of independence that our hero was born.
Strictly speaking, therefore, his right as a territorial lord was
founded on an act of usurpation, that is to say, Nobunaga's claim as the
owner of the province had no footing in the old system of the Ashikaga,
so that he was destined by his birth to become a creator of the new age,
and not the upholder of the ancient regime. The province over which he
held sway has been called one of the richest provinces in Japan, and was
not far from Kyoto, which was, as often stated before, still by far the
most influential among the political and cultural centres of the empire.
He and his vassals, therefore, had more opportunities than most of the
territorial lords and their vassals living in remote provinces, of
getting sundry knowledge useful to make his territory greater and
stronger. In the year 1560 he defeated and killed his powerful enemy on
the east, Yoshimoto Imagawa, the lord of the two provinces, Totomi and
Suruga. This was his first acquisition of new territory. Four years
after, the province of Mino, lying to the north of Owari, came into his
possession. In 1568 he marched his army into Kyoto to avenge the death
of the Shogun Yoshiteru, and installed his brother, who was the last of
the Ashikaga line, as the new Shogun. Then one territory after another
was added to his dominion, so that the Shogun was at last eclipsed in
power and influence by Oda, without ever having renounced his hereditary
rights. Nobunaga's dominion reached from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific
shore, when he met at the height of his career of conquest a premature
death by the hand of a traitor.
It is not, however, on account of the magnitude of the territories which
he annexed, that Nobunaga figures in the history of Japan, for the land
conquered by dint of his arms did not cover more than one-third of the
island of Honto. His real historical importance lies not there, but in
that he destroyed the old Japan and made himself the harbinger of the
new age, though the honour of being creator of modern Japan must be
assigned rather to Hideyoshi, his successor. Since the beginning of our
history, the Japanese have always been very reluctant, in the cultural
respect, to give up what they have possessed from the first, while they
have been very eager and keen to take in the new exotic elements which
seemed agreeable or useful to them. In other words, the Japanese have
been simultaneously conservative and progressive, and immoderately so in
both ways. The result of such a conservation and assimilation operating
at the same time was that the country has gradually become a depository
of a huge mass of things Japanese and Chinese, no matter whether they
were desirable or not. If any exotic matter or custom once found its way
into this country, it was preserved with tender care and never-relaxing
tenacity, as if it were some treasure found or made at home and would
prove a credit to our country. In this way we could save from
destruction and demolition a great many historical remains, material as
well as spiritual, not only of Japanese but also of Chinese origins.
There may still be found in our country many things, the histories of
which show that they had once their beginnings in China indeed, but the
traces of their origins have long been entirely lost there. Needless to
say that the religious rites and other traditions of our forefathers in
remotest antiquity have been carefully handed down to us. This assiduity
for preserving on the part of the Japanese can best be realised by the
existence to this day of very old wooden buildings, some of which, in
their dates of erection, go back to more than twelve hundred years ago.
Besides this conservative propensity of the nation, the history of our
country has also been very favourable to the effort of preserving. We
have had no chronic change of dynasties as in China, nor have we
experienced any violent revolution, shaking the whole structure of the
country, as the French people had. Though our history has not lacked in
civil wars and political convulsions, their destructive force has been
comparatively feeble, and one Imperial house has continued to reign here
from the mythic Age of the Gods! With this permanent sovereign family as
the _point d'appui_, it has been easier in Japan than in any other
country to preserve things historic. Things thus preserved, however,
have not all been worthy of such care. As we have been obliged to march
constantly with hurried steps in our course of civilisation, little time
has been left to us to pause and discriminate what was good for
preservation from what was not. We have betaken ourselves occasionally
to the process of rumination, but it did not render us much assistance.
Not only rubbish has not been rejected, as it should have been, but the
things which proved of good service at one time and subsequently wore
out, have been hoarded over-numerously. Think of this immense quantity
of the slag, the detritus, of the civilisations of various countries in
various ages all dumped into the limited area of our small empire! No
people, however vigorous and progressive they may have been, would have
been able to go on briskly with such a heavy burden on their backs. The
worst evils were to be recognised in the sphere of religious belief and
in the transactions of daily official business. Red tape, home-made and
that of China of all dynasties, taken in haphazard and fastened
together, formed the guiding-lines of the so-called "administrative
business" in the time of the court-nobles' regime. The prestige of these
conventionalities was so powerful that even after the installation of
the Shogunate, that is to say, after the establishment of the government
which really meant to govern, the administration, promising to be far
more effective than that of the Fujiwara's, had to be varnished with
this conventionalism. Kiyomori, the first of the warriors to become the
political head of the country, failed, because he was ignorant of this
red-tapism. The Shogunate initiated by Yoritomo tried at first to keep
itself aloof from this influence, but could succeed only for a short
duration. The second Shogunate, the Ashikaga, had been overrun almost
from its inception by the red tape of the courtiers' regime, as well as
by the routine newly started in Kamakura. The humanistic culture, which
glimmered during the latter part of this Shogunate, was by its nature
able to find its place only where conventionalism did not reign, but it
soon began to give way and be conventionalised also. Until this
red-tapism was destroyed, there could have been no possibility of the
modernisation of Japan.
Superstitions of all sorts, when fixed in their forms and launched on
the stream of time to float down to posterity with authority
undiminished by age, make the worst kind of convention. We had a great
mass of conventions of this type in our country. Various superstitions,
from the primitive forms of worship, such as fetichism, totemism, and
so forth, to the highest forms of idolatry, survived notwithstanding the
introduction of Buddhism. Buddhism, too, has produced various sects
which were rather to be called coarse superstitions. Taoism was also
introduced together with the general Chinese culture. Not to mention
that Shintoism, which was by its original nature hardly to be called a
religion, but only a system or body of rites inseparable from the
history of our country, became blended with the Buddhist elements and
was preached as a religion of a hybrid character. Thus a concourse of
different superstitions of all ages had their common field of action in
the spirit of the people, so that it has became exceedingly difficult to
tell exactly to what kind of faith this or that Japanese belonged; in
other words, one was divided against one's self. To put it in the best
light, religiously the Japanese were divided into a large number of
different religious groups. Religion is generally spoken of in Europe as
one of the characteristics of a nation. If it is insufficient to serve
as an associating link of a nation, at least the difference in religious
belief can draw a line of marked distinction between different nations,
and thus the embracing of the same religion becomes indirectly a strong
uniting force in a nation. Such a co-existence of heterogeneous forms of
religious beliefs painted the confessional map of Japan in too many
variegated colours, a condition which was directly opposed to the
process of national unification, of which our country had been placed
in urgent need for a very long time. In short, it was hard for us to
expect from the religious side anything helpful in our national affairs.
Moreover, the religious spirit of the nation reached its climax in this
later Ashikaga period. Except in the age of the introduction of Buddhism
and the beginning of the Kamakura era, enthusiasm for salvation has
never, in all the course of Japanese history, been stronger than in this
period. We witness now several religious corporations, the most
remarkable of which were those formed by two violent and influential
sects of Japanese Buddhism, Jodo-shinshu or Ikko-shu and Nichiren-shu or
Hokke-shu. The followers of the latter, though said to be the most
aggressive sectarians in our country, were not so numerous as the
former, and were put under control by Nobunaga with no great difficulty.
The former, however, was by far the mightier, constituting an exclusive
society by itself, and its adherents spread especially over the
provinces of central Japan, that is to say, wherever the arms of
Nobunaga were triumphant. It presented therefore a great hindrance to
the uniform administration of his domains.
Other Buddhist bodies, which had been not less formidable, not because
their creed had numerous fervent adherents, but because they had an
invisible historical prestige originating in very old times, were the
monks of the temples and monasteries on Mount Hiyei, belonging to the
Tendai sect, and of those clustered on Mount Koya, of the Shingon sect.
These two sects had long ceased active propaganda, but the temples had
been revered by the Imperial house, and none had ever dared to put a
check upon the arrogance of the priests and monks residing in them. As
they had received rich donations in land from the court and from
devotees, they had been able to live a luxurious life, and very few of
them gave themselves up to religious works. Most of them behaved as if
they were soldiers by profession, and were always ready to fight, not
only in defence of the interests of the corporations to which they
belonged, but also as auxiliaries of neighbouring territorial lords,
when their aid was called for. Such had been the practice since the end
of Fujiwara regime. The more their soldierly character predominated, the
more their religious colouring decreased, and in the period of which I
am speaking now, they were rather territorial powers than religious
bodies. If we seek for their counterpart in the history of Europe, the
republic founded by order of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia would
fairly correspond to them, rather than ordinary bishoprics or
archbishoprics. For the unification, therefore, they were also obstacles
which could not be suffered to remain as they had been.
In order to achieve the national unification and to effect the
modernisation of the country, it was necessary to dispense with all the
red tape, the time-honoured superstitions and all other encumbrances
lying in the way. It was not, however, an easy task to do away with all
these things, for they had been held sacrosanct, so that to set them at
defiance was but to brave the public opinion of the time. And none had
been courageous enough to raise his hand against them, until Nobunaga
decided to rid himself of all these feeble but tenacious shackles.
In the year 1571 Nobunaga attacked Mount Hiyei, for the turbulent
shavelings of the mountain had sided with his enemies in the war of the
preceding year, and burned down the Temple Yenryakuji to the ground. The
emblem of the glory of Buddhism in Japan, which had stood for more than
seven centuries, was thus turned to ashes. The next blow was struck at
the recalcitrant priests of the temple of Negoro, belonging to the same
sect as Koya and situated near it. As for the Ikko-sectarians with the
Hongwanji as centre, the arms of Nobunaga were not so successful against
them as against the other two temples, so that in the end he was
compelled to conclude an armistice with them, but he was able in great
measure to curtail their overbearing power. Of all these feats of arms,
the burning of the temples on Mount Hiyei most dumbfounded Nobunaga's
contemporaries, for the hallowed institution, held in the highest esteem
rivalling even the prestige of the Imperial family, was thus prostrated
in the dust, unable to rise up again to its former grandeur. It is much
lamented by later historians that in the conflagration of the temple an
immense number of invaluable documents, chronicles and other kinds of
historical records was swept away forever, and they calumniated our hero
on this account rather severely. It is true that if those materials had
existed to this day, the history of our country would have been much
more lucid and easy to comprehend than it is now, and if Nobunaga could
have saved those papers first, and then burnt the temple, he would have
acted far more wisely than he did, and have earned less censure from
posterity. But history is not made for the sake of historians, and we
need not much lament about losses which there was little possibility of
avoiding. A nation ought to feel more grateful to a great man for giving
her a promising future, than for preserving merely some souvenirs of the
past. The bell announcing the dawn of modern Japan was rung by nobody
but Nobunaga himself by this demolition of a decrepit institution.
It was not only those proud priests that defied Nobunaga and thereby
suffered a heavy calamity, but the flourishing city of Sakai met the
same fate. As the city had been accustomed to despise the military force
of the condottieri, who abounded in the provinces neighbouring Kyoto and
were easily to be bribed by money to change sides, it misunderstood the
new rising power of Nobunaga, and dared to defy him. The insolence of
the citizens of this wealthy town irritated Nobunaga and was punished by
him severely. The defence works of the city were razed to the ground,
and the city was placed under the control of a mayor appointed by him.
The only city in Japan which promised to grow an autonomous political
body thus succumbed to the new unifying force.
Nobunaga was born, however, not to be a mere insensate destroyer of
ancient Japan. He seems also to have been gifted with the ability of
reconstruction, an ability which was not meagre in him at all. That his
special attention was directed to the improvement of the means of
communication shows that he considered the work of organisation and
consolidation to be as important as gaining a victory. The countenance
which he gave to the Christian missionaries might have been the result
of his repugnance at the degradation or intractability of the Buddhists
in Japan. Could it not be imagined, however, that he was prone, in
religious affairs as well as in other things, to seek the yet untried
means thoroughly to renovate Japan? It is much to be regretted that he
did not live long enough to see his aims attained. When he died, his
destructive task had not reached its end, and his constructive work had
barely begun. It was he, however, who indicated that Japan was a country
which could be truly unified, and that what had come to be preserved and
revered blindly should not all necessarily be so; and the grand task of
building up the new Japan, initiated by him, was transferred to his
successor, Hideyoshi.
It was in 1582 that Nobunaga died in Kyoto, and in the quarrel which
ensued after his death among his Diadochi, Hideyoshi remained as the
final successor. The year after, Osaka was chosen as the place of his
residence. He was of very low origin, so that he had even less footing
in the conventional old regime than his master Nobunaga, and therefore
was more fitted to become the creator of the new Japan. He continued the
course of conquest begun by Nobunaga, and annexed the whole of historic
Japan within eight years from his accession to the political power. The
most noteworthy item in his internal administration was the land survey
which he ordered to be undertaken parallel to the progress of his arms.
The great estates of Japan were one after another subjected to a uniform
measurement, and thus was fashioned the standard of new taxation. This
land-survey began in 1590 and continued till the death of Hideyoshi. The
proportion of the tax levied to the area of the taxable land must still
have varied in different localities, but the mode of taxation was now
simplified thereby to a great extent, for the old systems, each of which
was peculiar to an individual estate, were henceforth mostly abrogated.
The manorial system of old Japan was entirely swept away.
The unity of the nation under Hideyoshi, that is to say, Japan at the
disposal of a single person, an illuminated despot, might have been
really the result of the long process of unification gradually
accentuated, but it may also be considered as one of the causes which
brought about a still stronger national consciousness. The expulsion of
the foreign missionaries and the prohibition of the Christian propaganda
did not constitute a religious persecution in its strict sense. That
Hideyoshi was no enthusiastic Buddhist should be accepted as a negative
proof of it. Most probably he had no religious aversion against
Christianity, but the intermeddling of those missionaries in the
politics of our country infuriated him, for the demand for the solid
unification of the nation, embodied in him, was against such an
encroachment. The persecution, which crowned many adventurers with the
honour of martyrdom, is to be imputed to the lack of prudence on the
part of those missionaries.
As to the motive of the Korean invasion undertaken by Hideyoshi, various
interpretations have been put forth by various historians. Some explain
it as mere love of adventure and fame. Others attribute it to the
necessity of keeping malcontent warriors engaged abroad, in order to
keep the country pacific. As Hideyoshi himself died while the expedition
was still in progress, giving neither explanation nor hint of his real
motive, it is very difficult for us to fathom his innermost thought. It
would not be altogether a mistaken idea, however, if we consider it as
an outcome of his unifying aspiration carried a few steps farther
outside the empire.
When we consider his brilliant career from its beginning, the amount of
work which he accomplished greatly exceeded what we could expect from a
single ordinary mortal. He performed his share of the construction of
new Japan admirably. As to the organisation of what Hideyoshi had
roughly put together, it was reserved for the prudent intelligence of
Iyeyasu to accomplish.