THE TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE,--ITS POLITICAL REGIME
The spirit of the coming age was loudly heralded by Nobunaga. Most of
the hindrances which had persistently obstructed the national progress
for a long while were cleared away at his peremptory call. Then out of
the quarry opened by him the stones for the new pieces of sculpture were
hewn out by his successor Hideyoshi. The blocks, however, which were
only rough-cut by the latter, were left unfinished, awaiting the final
touch of wise and prudent Iyeyasu. The Shogunate which he set up at
Yedo, now Tokyo, in the province of Musashi, continued for more than two
centuries and a half. Not only was it the longest in duration among our
Shogunates, but it exceeded most of the European dynasties in the number
of years which it covered, being a little longer than the reign of the
Bourbons in France, including that of the branch of Orleans and of the
Restoration. During this long regime of the single house of the
Tokugawa, Japan had been able to prepare herself slowly to attain the
stage on which all the world witnesses her now standing.
The history of Japan under this Shogunate shows that throughout the
whole epoch our country had not yet been entirely stripped of her
medieval garments, but it is absurd at the same time to designate the
period as essentially not modern. For long years we have been on our
forward march, always dragging along with us the ever-accumulating
residue of the civilisation of the past. If any one, however, should
venture to judge us by the enormous heaps of these souvenirs of a
by-gone civilisation overburdening us, and should say that the Japanese
had been standing still these two centuries and a half, then he would be
entirely mistaken. The overestimation of Japan of the Meidji era by a
great many foreigners is, though seconded by not a few Japanese, a fault
which had its origin in this misapprehension about our country under the
Tokugawa regime. The attention of these observers was engrossed, when
they took their first views of the land and people, by those things
which seemed to them strange and curious, being quite different from
what they themselves possessed at home, or which were thought by them
anachronistic, on account of having been abandoned by them long ago,
though once they had them also in their own countries. As regards what
they had been accustomed to at home, they took very little notice of it
in Japan, and considered the existence of such things in our country as
a matter of course, if they happened to come across them. Most of them
came over to Japan, prepossessed already by their expectations of
finding here a unique country, and were thus unconsciously led, after
their view of the country itself, to depict it in a very quaint light,
as something entirely different from anything they had ever experienced
anywhere; an error which even the most studious and acute observer, such
as Engelhardt Kaempfer, was not able to escape. No need to mention the
rest, especially those missionaries who wished to extol their own merits
at the expense of the Japanese. We are still suffering from
misconceptions about our country on the part of
Europeans,--misconceptions which are the legacy of the misrepresentation
of Japan by those early observers. By no means, however, do I presume to
try to exhibit Japan only in her brightest colours. Far from it, and
what I ask foreign readers not to forget is that the history of Japan
under the Tokugawa Shogunate, the period which was essentially modern,
should not be superficially judged by its abundance of feudal trammels
fondly described by contemporary Europeans. In this chapter, I shall
first make manifest which were the things medieval retained in the time
of the Tokugawa, and then treat about the essential character of the age
which should be called all but modern.
In the foregoing chapter I spoke about some resemblances between our
later Ashikaga period and the Italian renaissance of the Quattrocento.
In the successive phases which followed in the East and in the West,
there might be found some other similarities. History, however, has not
been ordained to run in streams exactly parallel to one another in all
countries, and to be a counterpart of the age of the Reformation, the
epochs of the Oda and the Toyotomi are not more appropriate than the age
of the Kamakura Shogunate. A style in Japanese art, prevalent during and
after the regime of Hideyoshi and called "the Momoyama" by recent
connoisseurs had a striking resemblance to the Empire style, which
followed the Rococo in Europe, and in some respects indeed the later
Ashikaga period of our history might be likened to Europe of the
eighteenth century, without gross inappropriateness, while at other
points it might be compared to the Renaissance with equal fairness. It
would be very stupid, however, to surmise that Japan in the Tokugawa
period attained to a culture which in its general aspect belonged almost
to the same stage as that prevailing in Europe in the early nineteenth
century. Art, though an important cultural factor, cannot be made the
sole criterion of the civilisation of any nation or people. It is quite
indisputable that Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate had many things
about which we could not boast.
So long as war is a calamity unavoidable in this world, it is folly to
expect in any country that the cruelty of men to men will entirely
cease. But if the intensity of cruelty in warfare be taken as being in
inverse ratio to the progress of civilisation, as it generally used to
be, then the Tokugawa period evidently should not be lauded as an age of
great enlightenment. Until the end of the Shogunate of this house it had
been the custom for a warrior on the battlefield to cut off the head of
the antagonist whom he had slain. Though we have had no such
demoralising sort of warfare in our history as that carried on by
mercenary troops in medieval Europe, where defeated warriors were taken
prisoners in order to obtain from them as rich ransoms as they could
afford to pay, in other words, though the nature of warfare in Japan was
far more serious in general than in the West, it was on that account far
more dangerous for the combatants engaged. It was the custom in any
battle to reward that warrior who first decapitated an enemy's head as
generously as one who was the first over the wall in an attack on a
fortress. Moreover, during the ceremony in celebration of a victory on a
battlefield, all those enemy heads were collected and brought for the
inspection of the commanding general of the victorious army. Such a
custom in warfare, however efficient it might have been in stimulating
the martial courage of warriors, cannot be regarded as praiseworthy in
any civilised country, even where war is considered as the highest
occupation of the people.
The Japanese manner of suicide called _hara-kiri_ or _seppuku_, a custom
of world-wide celebrity, is another thing which is well to be commented
on here. If any foreigner should suppose that _seppuku_ has been very
frequently committed in the same manner as we see it practised on the
stage, he would be greatly misled in appreciating the true national
character of the Japanese. On the contrary, _seppuku_ has not been a
matter of everyday occurrence, having taken place far less frequently
than one hears now-a-days about railway accidents. Moreover, when it was
performed, it was carried out in decent ways, if we may use the word
decent here, and not in the grotesque mode displayed on the Japanese
stage, accompanied by sardonic laughter, with bowels exposed after
cutting the belly crosswise. The reason why the Japanese warrior
resorted to _seppuku_ in committing suicide was not to kill himself in a
methodically cruel manner, but to die an honourable and manly death by
his own hand. For such methods of committing suicide, as taking poison,
drowning, strangling oneself, and the like, were considered very
ignoble, and especially unworthy of warriors. Even to die by merely
cutting one's throat was held to be rather effeminate. The fear of the
protraction of the death agony was looked on as a token of cowardice,
and therefore to be able to kill one's self in the most sober and
circumstantial manner, and at the same time to do it with every
consideration of others, was thought to be one of the requisite
qualifications of a brave warrior in an emergency. In short, for a
suicide to be honourable, it had to be proved that it was not the result
of insanity. Thus we can see that not the spirit of cruelty but martial
honour was the motive of committing _seppuku_, and it would be unfair to
stigmatise the Japanese as a cruel people because of the practice. Still
I am far from wishing to vindicate this custom in all its aspects. The
fact that this method of killing one's self continued during the whole
of the Tokugawa regime as a penalty, without loss of honour, for capital
crimes of the _samurai_ show that the humane culture of the age left
much to be wished for.
Class distinction was another dark spot on the culture of the age. All
sorts of people outside the fighting class were roughly classified into
three bodies, that is to say, peasants, artisans, and merchants, and
were held in utter subjection, as classes made simply to be governed.
But the often-quoted tradition that warriors of that time had as their
privilege the right to kill any of the commonalty at their sweet will
and pleasure, without the risk of incurring the slightest punishment
thereby, is erroneous, having no foundation in real historical fact.
Those warriors who had committed a homicide were without prejudice
called upon to justify their act before the proper authority. If they
failed to prove that they were the provoked and injured party, they were
sure to have severe penalties inflicted on them. On the whole, however,
the common people in the Tokugawa age were looked down upon by warriors
as inferiors in reasoning and understanding, and therefore as
disqualified to participate in public affairs, social as well as
political. That their intellectual defects must have been due to their
neglected education was a matter clean put out of mind. As regards the
respective professions of the above-mentioned three classes of
plebeians, agriculture was thought to be the most honourable, on account
of producing the staple food-material, so that warriors, especially of
the lower classes, did not disdain to engage in tilling the lands
allotted to them or in exploring new arable lands. The peasants
themselves, however, were not so greatly esteemed on account of their
engaging in a profession which was held honourable. Handicrafts in
general and artisans employed in them had not been held particularly
respectable by themselves, but as the profession was productive, it was
recognised as indispensable, despised by no means. Moreover, many
artistic geniuses, who had come out of the innumerable multitudes of
artisans of various trades, have been held in very high regard in our
country, where the people have the reputation of being one of the most
artistic in the world; and those articles of rare talent unwittingly
raised the esteem of the crafts in which they were engaged. That which
was most despised as a profession was the business of merchants in all
lines, for to gain by buying and selling was thought from times past to
be a transaction approaching almost to chicanery, and therefore by no
means to be encouraged from the standpoint of national and martial
morals. Pedlars and small shop-keepers were therefore simply held in
contempt. Great merchants, however, though not much esteemed on account
of their profession, were generally treated with due consideration in
virtue of their amassed wealth. Only too frequently had the Shogunate,
as well as various _daimyo_, been obliged to stoop to court the goodwill
of rich merchants in order to get money from them.
The methods of taxation were very arbitrary, and the person and the
rights of property of individuals were not very highly respected at that
time, the common people under the Shogunate being often subjected to
hard and brutal treatment, their persons maltreated and injured and
their properties confiscated on various trifling pretences. Though the
way to petition was not absolutely debarred to them, it was made very
irksome and perilous for plebeians to sue and obtain a hearing for their
manifold complaints. On the other hand, as they were not recognised as a
part of the nation to be necessarily consulted, and as the _vox populi_
was not heeded in the management of public affairs, their education was
not regarded as an indispensable duty of the government. No serious
endeavour had ever been made to improve the common people
intellectually, nor to raise their standard of living. If a number of
them showed themselves able to behave like gentle folk, as if they had
been warriors by birth and, therefore, well-educated, they were rewarded
as men of extraordinary merits such as could not be reasonably expected
of them.
The status of the political organisation of the country during the
Tokugawa regime was also what ought to be called medieval, if we draw
our conclusions from the materials ranged on the darker side only. The
country had been divided into parcels, large and small, numbering in all
a little less than three hundred, each with a territorial lord or a
_daimyo_ as its quasi-independent autocratic ruler. The frontier line
dividing adjacent territories belonging to different _daimyo_ used to be
guarded very vigilantly on both sides, and passage, both in and out, was
minutely scrutinised. For that purpose numerous barrier-gates were set
up along and within the boundary. Any land bounded by such frontiers,
and conferred on a _daimyo_ by the Shogunate as his hereditary
possession, was by its nature a self-constituted state, the political
system prevailing within which having been modelled after that of the
Shogunate itself. At the same time the territory of a _daimyo_ was
economically a self-providing, self-sufficient body. To become in such
wise independent at least was the ideal of the _daimyo_ possessing the
territory or of the territorial statesmen under him. In other words, the
territory of a _daimyo_ was an entity, political and economical. In each
territory certain kinds of produce from those confines had been
strictly prohibited by regulation to be exported beyond the frontier,
for fear that there might sometimes occur a scarcity of those
commodities for the use of the inhabitants of the territory, or lest
other territories should imitate the cultivation of like kinds of
produce, so that the value of their own commodities might decrease
thereby. In case of a famine, that is to say, of the failure of rice
crops in a territory, a phenomenon which has by no means been of rare
occurrence in our country, the export of cereals used to be forbidden in
most of the neighboring territories, even when they had a "bumper crop."
Such an internal embargo testifies that not only had Japan been closed
against foreigners, but within herself each territory cared only for its
own welfare, adhering to a mercantilist principle, as if it stood quite
secluded from the rest of the country. Very little of the cohesion
necessary to an integral state could be perceived in Japan of that time.
Such was the condition of Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate presented
to the eyes of, and easily noticed by, the foreign observers, who
visited our country at the beginning and the middle of the period. Nay,
many of the foreigners who wrote about our land and people seem to have
shared nearly the same views as above. In truth, however, many important
factors of the Japanese history of this epoch have been omitted by
them, and the idea they could form of Japan from the one-sided and
scanty material at their disposal was only a very incomplete image of
modern Japanese civilisation. I shall, therefore, try to give a general
survey of the political and social condition of our country from the
beginning of the seventeenth century down to the Revolution of the
Meidji, and then shall treat in brief about the civilisation of the age.
The Shogunate of the house of the Tokugawa was not an entirely new
invention. It was a partial recognition of the old regime which Iyeyasu
had inherited from Hideyoshi, as far as the territorial lords were
concerned, who were installed or recognised anterior to the advent of
Iyeyasu to power. Though a great many of the former feudatories,
especially those who had been faithful to the House of the Toyotomi to
the last, had been killed or deprived of their possessions after the
decisive battle of Sekigahara, not a few of them survived, counting
among them the most powerful of the _daimyo_, the House of Mayeta, who
was the master of Kaga and two other provinces on the Sea of Japan. The
lords of this kind had formerly been the equals of the Tokugawa, when
the latter was standing under the protection of Hideyoshi, and it was
difficult for the new Shogunate, in a country where the Emperor has ever
been the paramount sovereign, to make those lords formally swear the
oath of fealty to itself. The nature of the sovereignty, therefore, of
the Tokugawa over the feudatories aforesaid was only that of _primus
inter pares_. The _daimyo_ who stood in this relation to the Shogunate
were called _tozama_.
The rest of the _daimyo_, together with the bodyguard of the Shogun, the
so-called "eighty thousand" with their habitual residence at Yedo, made
up the hereditary retainers or _fudai_. The non-domestic _daimyo_ had
nothing to do with the Shogun's central government, all the posts of
which, from such high functionaries as the _rochu_ or elders, who were
none other than the cabinet ministers of the Shogunate, down to such
petty officials as scribes and watchmen, had been all filled with
domestics of various grades. As far as these domestics or direct
retainers of the Shogunate were concerned, the military regime of the
Tokugawa can be held to have been a revived form of that of Kamakura. In
the former, however, the disparity in power and wealth between the upper
and the lower domestics of the Shogun was far more remarkable than it
had been among the retainers of the latter, that is to say, the _djito_.
The term "go-kenin," held to be honourable in the time of Kamakura,
became, in the Tokugawa period, a designation of the lowest order of the
direct vassals of the Shogun. A certain number belonging to the upper
class of the _fudai_ or domestics of the Tokugawa Shogunate were made
_daimyo_, and placed on the same footing as feudatories of historical
lineage, the former equals of the Tokugawa, and formed with them
henceforth the highest military nobility of the country. The remainder
of the domestics, who were not raised to the rank of _daimyo_, were
comprised under the name of _hatamoto_, which means "under the
standard," that is to say, the Body-guard of the Shogun. Among the
members of this body there were indeed numerous scales of gradation. The
lowest of them had to lead a very miserable and straitened life in some
obscure corners of the city of Yedo, while the best of them stood as
regards income very near to minor _daimyo_, and were often more
influential. Their political status, however, notwithstanding manifold
differences in rank among them, was all the same, all being equally,
direct vassals of the Shogunate, and having no regular warriors or
_samurai_ as their own vassals. They, therefore, belonged to the lowest
grade of the privileged classes in the military hierarchy, and in this
respect there was no cardinal difference between them and the common
_samurai_ who were vassals of ordinary _daimyo_. That they were,
however, the immediate subjects of the Shogun, and that they did not owe
fealty to any _daimyo_, who was in reality subordinate at least to the
Shogun, if not his vassal in name, placed them in a status like that of
the knights immediate of the Holy Roman Empire or of the mediatised
princes of recent Germany; in short, above the status of ordinary
_samurai_ attached to an ordinary _daimyo_. Strictly speaking, between
these two there interposed another group of _samurai_. They were the
vassals of the three _daimyo_ of extraordinary distinction, of Nagoya in
the province of Owari, of Wakayama in the province of Kii, and of Mito
in the province of Hitachi. All these three being of the lateral
branches of the Tokugawa, were held in specially high regard, and put at
the topmost of all the other _daimyo_, so that their vassals considered
themselves to be quasi-_hatamoto_ and therefore above the "common" or
"garden" _samurai_.
The _daimyo_ acted as virtual potentates in territories granted to them,
and held a court and a government there, both modelled largely after the
household and the government of the Shogun at Yedo. The better part of
the _daimyo_ resided in castles built imposingly after the architectural
style of the fortresses in Europe at that time, the technic having
perhaps been introduced along with Christianity, and they led a life far
more easy and elegant, though more regular, than the _shugo_ of the
Ashikaga age. It has been ascribed, by the way, to the rare sagacity of
Iyeyasu as a politician, that the territories of the two kinds of
_daimyo_, _tozama_ and _fudai_, were so adroitly juxtaposed, that the
latter were able to keep watch over the former's attitude toward the
Shogunate.
The _daimyo_ were ranked according to the officially estimated amount of
rice to be produced in the territory of each. In the time of Kamakura,
the renumeration of the _djito_ was counted by the area of ricefields in
the manor entrusted to his care. By and by, the land which was the
source of the renumeration for a _djito_ came to be partitioned among
his numerous descendants, and some of the portions allotted became so
small, that it was but ridiculous to think of exercising the
jurisdiction of military police over them. Area of land began to cease
thus to be the standard of valuation of the income of a _djito_, when
the office of _djito_ meant only the emolument accompanying it, and no
longer carried with it the responsibility incumbent on it at its first
establishment. The ultimate result of such a change was that the
quantity or the price of rice produced began to be adopted gradually as
the standard of valuation of the income of territorial lords, and for a
while the two standards were in use together till the end of the
Ashikaga age. Moreover, infrequently part of the income of a _shugo_ was
reckoned by the quantity of rice, while another part of the income of
the same _shugo_ was assessed by the sale-price of the rice cultivated.
This promiscuous way of valuation, however, caused great irregularity
and confusion. For, added to the disagreement about the real quantity of
rice produced and the amount registered to be produced, the price of the
cereal itself had been so ceaselessly fluctuating according to the
inconstant condition of crops, that there was no such thing as a regular
standard price of rice invariably applicable to any year and to any
locality. Nevertheless, in an age when no uniform system of currency was
established and to accept any coin at its face value was an impossible
matter, in other words, when it was difficult to represent the price of
rice in any sort of coin then in use, to make a standard of value, not
of the actual amount of rice but of its unceasingly vacillating price,
could not but cause a great deal of inconvenience and confusion. We can
easily see from the above that the quantity of rice was by far the surer
means of bargaining than the money, which was not only indeterminate in
value but insufficient to boot. Hideyoshi, therefore, put a stop to the
use of the method of indicating the income of a territorial lord by its
valuation in money, and decreed that henceforth only the yearly
estimated yield of rice, counted by the _koku_ as a unit, should be
adopted as the means of denoting the revenue of a territory, a _koku_
roughly corresponding to five bushels in English measure. The
land-survey, which he undertook on a grand scale throughout the whole
empire, had as its main purpose to measure the area of land classed as
rice-fields in the territories of the _daimyo_, according to the units
newly decreed, and to make the estimate of the amount of rice said to be
produced commensurate as nearly as possible with the average crop
realisable. Withal, the inequality of the standard of estimate in
different localities was rectified by this assessment of Hideyoshi's.
This method of estimating the income of a _daimyo_ had come into general
use since the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate. As there was then no
system in our country of gradating the _daimyo_ by titles, such as
dukes, counts, and so forth, the estimated annual yield of rice in
_koku_ was used as the sole means of determining the rank of the lords
of the various territories in the long queue of the Tokugawa _daimyo_,
with the exception of a very few who had been placed in a comparatively
high rank on account of their specially noble lineage or the unique
position of their families in the national history, though most of the
nobles belonging to the latter class were classed as an intervening
group. The minimum number of _koku_ assigned to a _daimyo_ was ten
thousand. As regards the maximum number of _koku_, there was no legal
limit. One who stood, however, highest in order was the above-mentioned
House of Mayeta, the lord of Kaga etc., whose domain was assessed at
more than a million _koku_. About three hundred _daimyo_, who were
ranged between the two extremes, were divided into three orders. All
those worth more than two hundred thousand _koku_ formed a class of the
_daimyo_ major, and those worth less than one hundred thousand were
comprised in a group of the _daimyo_ minor, while the rest, that is to
say, those between one and two hundred thousand formed the middle corps.
In the Shogun's court, a seat was assigned to each _daimyo_ in a
specified room, according to the class to which he belonged. One could,
therefore, easily tell the rank of a _daimyo_ by the name of the room in
which he had to wait when he attended on the Shogun. All _daimyo_,
almost without exception, had to move in and out at fixed intervals
between his territory, where his castle or camp stood, and Yedo, where
he kept, or, to say more correctly, was granted by the Shogun,
residences, generally more than two in number. The interval allowed to a
_daimyo_ for remaining in his territory varied according to the distance
of that territory from Yedo, being the shorter and oftener for the
nearer. He was obliged to leave his wife and children constantly in one
of his residences at Yedo, as hostages for his fidelity to the Shogun.
As to the vassals or _samurai_ of a _daimyo_, there were also two sorts.
By far the greater part of the _samurai_ belonging to a _daimyo_ had
their dwellings in their master's territory, generally in the vicinity
of his castle. These _samurai_ were the main support of their lord, and
had to accompany him by turns in his official tour to Yedo and back. The
rest of the _samurai_ under the same lord, a band which formed the small
minority, lived constantly in Yedo, each family in a compartment of the
accessory buildings surrounding the lord's residence like a colony.
These were as a rule men who were enlisted into the service of a
_daimyo_ more for the sake of making a gallant show at his official and
social functions at Yedo, than for the sake of strengthening his
fighting forces. It was natural that men accustomed to the polished life
of the military capital were thought better qualified to fulfil such
functions than the rustic _samurai_ fresh from his territories who were
good only for fighting and other serious kinds of business. While a
_daimyo_ was absent in his territory, a _samurai_ of his, belonging to
this metropolitan group, was entrusted with the care of his residences
and their occupants in Yedo, and also with the duty of receiving orders
from the Shogunate or of transacting inter-territorial business with
representatives of other _daimyo_ at Yedo. The meetings held by these
representatives of the _daimyo_ were said to be one of the most
fashionable gatherings in Yedo. That the doyen of such functionaries had
a certain prestige over others, was very similar to the usage among the
diplomatic corps in Europe.
The _samurai_ who had their abode in their lord's territory, however,
represented the real strength of a _daimyo_, and were the soul and body
of the whole military regime. The number of _samurai_ in a territory
differed according to the rank and the resources of a _daimyo_. Some of
the powerful nobles counted more than ten thousand regular _samurai_
under them, while minor ones could maintain only a few hundred as
necessary retainers. In the latter case almost all of the _samurai_ had
their dwellings clustering around the castle or camp of their lord. If
there were any _samurai_ who lived outside of the residential town,
they led an agricultural rather than a soldierly life. The relation of
vassalage in such a territory was simple, for under the _samurai_
consisting of a single order there was no swords-wearer serving them. In
the territory of the powerful _daimyo_, however, especially in those of
the big _daimyo_ in Kyushu and the northern part of Honto, comprising an
area of two or more average provinces in Middle Japan, the relation of
vassalage was very complicated, sometimes forming a feudalism of the
second order. That is to say, the most influential _samurai_ under those
_daimyo_ had also their own small territory granted by their lord, just
as the latter had his granted or recognised by the Shogunate, and held
several hundred swords-wearers, non-commissioned _samurai_, in their
service. It was not rare that some of these magnates surpassed in income
many minor independent _daimyo_, and had in their hands the destiny of a
greater number of people, for their emolument rose often to twenty or
thirty thousand _koku_. Their rank in the military regime, however, was
indisputably lower than that of the smallest of _daimyo_, on account of
their being only indirectly subordinate to the Shogun.
In all territories throughout the whole country, the emolument of the
_samurai_ was granted in the form of land, or of rice from the granaries
of the _daimyo_, or paid in cash. Sometimes we see a combination of two
or three of these forms given to one _samurai_. Besides this pay a
patch of ground was allotted to each _samurai_ as his homestead, and a
part of that ground used to be cultivated to produce vegetables for
family consumption. In whatever form a _samurai_ might receive his
stipend, it was officially denoted by the number of _koku_, registered
as his nominal income, and that very number determined his position in
the list of vassals of a _daimyo_, unless he came from an
extraordinarily distinguished lineage. As regards the maximum and the
minimum number of _koku_ given to _samurai_, there was no uniform
standard applicable to all of the territories. Such powerful _daimyo_ as
Mayeta in Kaga, Shimatsu in Satsuma, and Date in Mutsu owned many
vassal-_samurai_ who were so puissant as to be fairly comparable to
small _daimyo_, while in the territories of the latter, a _samurai_ of
pretty high position in his small territorial circle received an
allowance of _koku_ so scant that one of the lowest rank, if he were a
regular _samurai_, would disdain to receive in big territories.
Generally speaking, however, one hundred _koku_ was considered to be an
average standard, applicable to _samurai_ under any _daimyo_, to
distinguish those of the respectable or official class from those of the
non-commissioned or subaltern class. Only the _samurai_ above this
standard could keep servants bearing two swords, long and short, as a
_samurai_ himself did. Not only all officers in time of war, but all
high civil functionaries in the territorial government of a _daimyo_
were taken from this body of orthodox _samurai_. The _samurai_ below
this level could keep a servant wearing only one sword, the shorter, and
they had to serve their lord as officials of the inferior class, such as
scribes, cashiers, butlers, etc.
The lowest in the scale of the military regime was the group of
_ashigaru_, that is to say, of the light infantry. Those who belonged to
this group, though wearers of two swords, were not counted as of the
corps of _samurai_. Being legally vassals of a _daimyo_, they had yet
very rare chances of serving him directly, and often they enlisted into
the household service of a higher _samurai_. Between the _ashigaru_ and
the regular _samurai_, there was another intermediate group of
two-sworded men, called _kachi_, which means warriors-on-foot. In feudal
times all warriors, if of _samurai_ rank, were presumed to be cavaliers,
though in reality most of them had not even a stable, and skill in
horsemanship was not rigorously required from the _samurai_ of the lower
class. The name _kachi_, given to those who in rank came next to the
_samurai_, implied that this intermediate group of quasi-_samurai_ was
not allowed to ride on horse-back. This group was, however, much nearer
to the _samurai_ than to the _ashigaru_ group.
So far I have given a rough sketch of the gradations in the military
regime in the territory of a _daimyo_. It should be here noticed that,
besides the classes above stated, there were many other minor groups
below the regular _samurai_, and that there were also diverse
heterogeneities of system in the territories of different _daimyo_.
Needless to say that the gradations and kinds of _hatamoto_, who were
_samurai_ serving directly under the Shogun, were far more multifarious
and complex than those of the _samurai_ under a _daimyo_. There is no
doubt, however, that the apex of the whole military regime was the
Shogun himself, while at its foundation were the sundry _samurai_ who
numbered perhaps nearly half a million families in all.
All the lands of Japan were not allotted exhaustively to the _daimyo_ by
the Shogunate. On the contrary, immense territories in various parts of
the empire, amounting to four millions of _koku_, were reserved to the
Shogun himself. Important sea-ports, such as Nagasaki, Sakai, and
Niigata, rich mines like those in the province of Iwami and in the
island of Sado, the vast forest of Kiso in the province of Shinano, and
so forth, were kept in the hands of the Shogunate, out of economical as
well as political reasons. With the income from all these agricultural
and industrial resources, the Shogunate defrayed all the governmental
charges and the expenses of national defence, as well as the enormous
civil list of the Shogun himself, who maintained a very luxurious court.
The stipend for the lower class of _hatamoto_, who had no land allotted
to them, was paid also with the rice raised in the Shogun's domain or
bought with his money and stored in Yedo. As to the fiscal system and
the direct domain of a _daimyo_ in his territory, it is needless to say
that everywhere the imitation of that of the Shogun prevailed, conducted
only on a smaller scale.
The relation of the Shogunate to the Emperor at Kyoto was on the whole
but a continuation of the same status as in the time of Hideyoshi. Since
the Fujiwara period state affairs had ceased to be conducted personally
by the Emperor himself. The regent, who was at first, and ought to have
been ever after, appointed during the minority or the illness of an
Emperor, became identical with the highest ministerial post, and lost
its extra-ordinary character. It is true that some of the able emperors,
dissatisfied with such a state of things, tried to take the reins of
government into their own hands again, and some succeeded for a while in
the recovery of their political power, so far as their relations with
the Fujiwara family were concerned. What they could recover, however,
was not all of the prestige which had slipped out of the hands of their
predecessors. For on account of the lassitude of the Fujiwara
court-nobles, the power which they had once arrogated to themselves
passed into the possession of the newly arisen warrior class, and what
those emperors could recover was only a part of what still remained in
the hands of the Fujiwara. The Emperor Go-Daigo was the last who tried
desperately to resume the imperial prerogative once wrested from the
Kamakura Shogunate, and he succeeded in his endeavour. He could not,
however, prevent the advent to power of the new Shogunate of the
Ashikaga. After that, through the most turbulent age in the history of
Japan, which continued to the time of Hideyoshi, the imperial household
could sustain itself only meagrely on the scanty income from a few
estates. But however lacking in power and material resource the Emperor
might have been, he still continued to be the source and fountain of
honour as ever, and everybody clearly knew that he was, being held
divine, indisputably higher than the Shogun, who was obliged to obey if
the Emperor chose to command. What was to be regretted was that no
Emperor had been strong enough to command. The saying "le roi regne,
mais il ne gouverne pas" has never been accepted in our country as the
constitutional principle. That the imperial prestige was never totally
lost even in the depths of the turmoil of war may be proved by the fact
that the Emperor often interceded in struggles between various _daimyo_,
who waged weary and acrimonious wars against one another. The political
situation of the Emperor, however, had been unsettled for a long while,
only because the situation had remained for long not urgent enough to
require to be made instantly clear. If it had had to be solved at once,
without doubt it must have been solved in favour of the Emperor.
Especially after the civil war of the Ohnin era, to restore the nominal
power, of which the Shogun of the Ashikaga family was in possession,
would have added nothing substantial to the real power of the then
Emperor, for the Shogunate of that time was but a scapegoat in the hands
of impudent and adventurous warriors. Even the prestige of the Emperor
and the Shogun combined would not have sufficed to achieve anything
momentous at that period, when the country had been so torn asunder as
not to be easily united and pacified. What was most needed in Japan of
that time was a fresh, strong, energetic military dictator.
Nobunaga, who came soon after the Ashikaga, was endued, at the height of
his power, with a civil title belonging to the regime of court-nobles,
and had not, until his untimely death, been invested by the Emperor with
the Shogunate. Having sprung from a warrior family which had been
originally subservient to one of the retainers of the Shogunate, he
would perhaps have been loth himself to be looked on as an usurper even
after he had ceased to assist the Shogun, who survived him. Moreover,
during his whole life, it was impossible for him to become the virtual
master of the whole of Japan. It was Hideyoshi, his vassal and
successor, who succeeded at last in the unification of long-disturbed
Japan by dint of arms. He, however, was also not invested with the
Shogunate. It is said that he would have liked, indeed, to become one,
but was dissuaded from it, having been reminded that he did not belong
to either the Minamoto or the Taira, the two renowned warrior-families
which were historically thought to be the only ones qualified to provide
the generalissimo, the Shogun. After his death and the subsequent defeat
of the partisans of his family in the decisive battle of Sekigahara in
1600, Iyeyasu Tokugawa, who gave himself out as the descendant of
Minamoto-no-Yoshiiye, succeeded to the power as Shogun in 1603. With
this political change the Emperor had really very little to do, except
to give recognition to the _fait accompli_. The selection of Yedo by
Iyeyasu as the site of the new Shogunate created a political situation
like that of Kamakura by Yoritomo. It is even said that Iyeyasu himself
in organising the new military regime made the system of the Kamakura
Shogunate his model.
By the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, no marked change
occurred in the Emperor's position as supreme sovereign of the country
as ever, but the Shogunate conducted the state business as the regent
entrusted with the whole care of the island Empire, so that the
government at Yedo had no occasion to refer to the court at Kyoto to
obtain the imperial sanction. In this respect the Shogunate of Yedo was
decidedly more independent of the Imperial Court than had been the
Kamakura Shogunate. Kyoto, however, continued as before to be the
fountainhead of all honour. All the honours and titles of the _daimyo_
were conferred in the name of the reigning Emperor, though through the
intermediary of the Shogunate. The appellations of these distinctions
were also the same as those given to court-nobles, only being
comparatively low in the case of the former, if we take the real
influence of the _daimyo_ into consideration. For the emoluments of
court-nobles in the time of the Tokugawa were generally very small, and
the highest of them could only match materially with the middle class of
the _hatamoto_ or the high class vassals of some powerful _daimyo_. All
the manorial estates which the court-nobles had retained until the
middle of the Ashikaga period had since been occupied by warriors
paramount in the respective regions, and they changed their master
several times during the anarchical disorders at the end of the period,
so that restitution became utterly impossible. The total amount which
the Shogunate at Yedo had to pay to the court-nobles as annual honoraria
was about eighty thousand _koku_.
The Imperial Household had a civil list amounting at first to one
hundred thousand _koku_, which was more than three times what it had
been at the time of the Ashikaga. A little later it was increased to
three hundred thousand _koku_, and the sum remained stationary at that
figure for more than half a century. Then an annual subsidy in cash
between thirty and forty thousand _ryo_ was added. The Empress had to be
provided for separately. When there was an ex-Emperor or Crown Prince,
then he also was entitled to a separate allowance from Yedo. If we
include, therefore, the emolument paid to the court-nobles, and estimate
them all together by the number of _koku_, the Shogunate had to pay to
Kyoto an annual sum of between four and five hundred thousand.
Extraordinary expenditures, such as the rebuilding of the imperial
palace, were also part of the burden of the Shogunate. On the whole, the
financial condition of the court at Kyoto was somewhat more straitened
than that of the most powerful _daimyo_.
With his income as stated the Emperor maintained his court, and
performed historical ceremonies, each prescribed for a certain day of a
certain season. He did not need to trouble himself about state affairs,
for all such matters had been delegated _de facto_ to the Shogunate, or
rather the Shogun behaved himself as if he were the sole agent of the
Emperor. To have direct communication with the Emperor had been
forbidden to all _daimyo_. The Shogun, on his part, entrusted everything
concerning local affairs to the _daimyo_. As to the judicial procedure,
that of the Shogunate was taken as the model by all _daimyo_. There
still prevailed a great many peculiarities in each particular territory
in the ways of legislation and its enforcement, so that Japan of that
time presented a most motley aspect as regards legal matters, like
France under the ancient regime. The power of the _daimyo_ to impose
taxes and raise contributions was restricted by no explicit law, and
therefore had been exercised rather arbitrarily. When in financial
stress, he could freely make applications, approaching to commands, to
some of his well-to-do subjects, whatever the cause of his pecuniary
embarrassment might be. Besides he could coin money, if its use were
limited to his own territory. No need to say that notes were also
abundantly issued by his treasurer for circulation within his territory
as substitutes for the legal tender. In time of peace the _samurai_
under a _daimyo_ served their lord in his territorial government as
civil officials. They, however, being warriors by nature, had to be
constantly trained in military arts, with various weapons, among which
swords and spears were preferred as the most practical. Archery had not
been abandoned entirely, and the bow and arrow was still held to be the
emblem of the noble calling of warriors, but this sort of weapon had
never been used on battle-fields since the beginning of the Tokugawa
period, so that the art had become on the whole ceremonial. The use of
fire-arms introduced at the end of the Ashikaga epoch became rapidly
general all over the country. Gunners were employed, as archers formerly
had been, in opening a battle, and then made way for the attack of the
infantry. Shooting was considered in the Tokugawa period to be more
practical than archery, but as there was little space for showing
personal bravery in the practice of this art, It was not highly
encouraged among the _samurai_. Though fighting on horseback had not
been prevalent on the battle-field since the middle Ashikaga, commanders
at least continued to ride, so that horsemanship was a requisite art of
the _samurai_ in the Tokugawa age, especially among its higher grades.
It should be here well noticed the _jujutsu_, which is now very
celebrated all over the world as a military art originated and
cultivated by the Japanese, did not much attract the attention of the
orthodox Tokugawa warriors, for it was thought to be an art useful in
arresting culprits, and therefore good only for lower _samurai_ or those
below them in rank, who were generally in charge of the police business
in all territories.
With such military accomplishments, the _samurai_ of the period were to
serve their territorial master in time of war as leaders and fighters,
for it was still the age in which all warriors were expected to display
a personal bravery, parallel to their ability to lead and command
troops, as in medieval Europe. As there had been neither external nor
civil war, however, for more than two centuries since the semi-religious
insurrection at Shimabara in Kyushu was subdued in the year 1638, war
was prepared for only as an imaginary possibility, and not as a probable
emergency. The _samurai_ of all territories, therefore, though said to
be on a constant war footing, were not trained as they should have
been. We see indeed the division of them into fighting groups and the
appointment of a leader for each group in times of peace. But there was
no manoeuvring nor any training of a like kind in tactical movements.
The only military exercise approaching it was the hunting of wild game
or the sham hunting which ended in cruelly sacrificing dogs, and even
these sports were not practised frequently. That those pieces of
Japanese armour, which foreigners can now see in many museums in Europe
and America, had been long found to be a sort of thing rather
inconvenient to wear in this country, yet had nevertheless continued to
be a furniture indispensable to every household of _samurai_ and to be
embellished with an exquisite workmanship, proves how academically war
had been regarded in those far-off days. It can be easily gathered from
the above statement that the _samurai_ of the time were more civil
functionaries than fighting men. Their real status, however, being
warriors and not civilians, they were constantly subjected to martial
law. They had to serve their master always with all their might, holding
themselves responsible with their lives, as if they were on the
battlefield facing the enemy. Many examples may be cited from the
history of the age of _samurai_ suicides, committed on account of some
misdemeanour or the mismanagement of the civil administration confided
to him. In effect, an armed peace reigned throughout the Empire.