SETTING THE STAGE In the 1300s, the unity that had been achieved in Japan in the previous century broke down. Shoguns, or military leaders, in the north and south fought for power. Although these two rival courts came back together at the end of the century, a series of politically weak shoguns let control of the country slip from their grasp.
Background
Shoguns and Samurai: 11th - 19th century
- The military rule of the shoguns, a central thread of Japanese history, is made possible by a new warrior class known as the samurai. They emerge during the clan warfare of the 11th and 12th centuries, establishing themselves as the local aristocracy of small independent territories.
- In a pattern similar to contemporary feudalism in Europe, the samurai enhance their status by serving more powerful regional lords. The result, once warfare has given way to peace, is a pyramid of loyalty leading up to the military overlord of Japan, the shogun himself.
- With oriental thoroughness, the code of honour of the samurai becomes a more absolute commitment of loyalty and discipline than is practised by any feudal warrior in Europe. It is formalized as bushido, an ideal of behaviour similar in some ways to Confucianism (in its obligations of respect and decorum) but with an added emphasis on the martial virtues of courage and physical skill.
- The ultimate safeguard of samurai honour is the ritual suicide known in Japan as sepukku, but usually called Hara-kiri in the west.
Ashikaga Shogunate: 1338-1573
The shoguns at Kamakura retain power for only a couple of generations after the Mongol invasions. A civil war results in one of their vassals, Takauji, winning power in 1338. He moves the bakufu, or military headquarters, to Kyoto - already the residence of the imperial family.
Takauji is a member of the Ashikaga family, so the new administration at Kyoto is known as the Ashikaga shogunate. It lasts from 1338 to 1573. In describing Japanese culture the era is more commonly called Muromachi, from the district of Kyoto in which the Ashikaga establish their government.
The Ashikaga shoguns are never as firmly in control of Japan as their predecessors in Kamakura. From 1467 the country is in an almost permanent state of civil war, until their shogunate is brought to an end in 1573. But the Ashikaga make a great contribution to the cultural life of Japan.
They create Zen temples and gardens, with areas specially designed for the Tea Ceremony. The famous Golden Pavilion in Kyoto is built in 1397 by the shogun Yoshimitsu as a villa for his own retirement (it is adapted after his death to become a Buddhist temple). Theatre is another Ashikaga passion. A key moment in the story of No drama is a performance by the 11-year-old Zeami for Yoshimitsu in 1374.
Strong Leaders Take Control
In 1467, civil war shattered Japan’s feudal system. The country collapsed into chaos.
Centralized rule ended. Power drained away from the shogun to territorial lords in hundreds of separate domains.
- Local Lords Rule a violent era of disorder followed. This time in Japanese history, which lasted from 1467 to 1568, is known as the Sengoku, or “Warring States,” period.
- Powerful samurai seized control of old feudal estates. They offered peasants and others protection in return for their loyalty. These warrior-chieftains, called daimyo, became lords in a new kind of Japanese feudalism. Under this system, security came from this group of powerful warlords.
The emperor at Kyoto became a figurehead.
- The new Japanese feudalism resembled European feudalism in many ways. The daimyo built fortified castles and created small armies of samurai on horses. Later they added foot soldiers with muskets (guns) to their ranks. Rival daimyo often fought each other for territory. This led to endless disorder throughout the land.
- New Leaders Restore Order a number of ambitious daimyo hoped to gather enough power to take control of the entire country. One of them, the brutal and ambitious Oda Nobunaga, defeated his rivals and seized the imperial capital Kyoto in 1568.
Following his own motto, “Rule the empire by force,” Nobunaga sought to eliminate his remaining enemies. These included rival daimyo as well as wealthy Buddhist monasteries aligned with them.
In 1575, Nobunaga’s 3,000 musketeers crushed an enemy force of samurai cavalry. This was the first time firearms had been used effectively in battle in Japan. However, Nobunaga was not able to unify Japan.
He committed seppuku, the ritual suicide of a samurai, in 1582, when one of his own generals turned on him. Nobunaga’s best general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, continued his fallen leader’s mission.
- Hideyoshiset out to destroy the daimyos that remained hostile. By 1590, by combining brute force with shrewd political alliances, he controlled most of the country. Hideyoshi did not stop with Japan. With the idea of eventually conquering China, he invaded Korea in 1592 and began a long campaign against the Koreans and their Ming Chinese allies. When Hideyoshi died in 1598, his troops withdrew from Korea.
Tokugawa Shogunate Unites Japan One of Hideyoshi’s strongest daimyo allies,Tokugawa Ieyasu, completed the unification of Japan.
- In 1600, Ieyasu defeated his rivals at the Battle of Sekigahara. His victory earned him the loyalty of daimyo throughout Japan. Three years later, Ieyasu became the sole ruler, or shogun. He then moved Japan’s capital to his power base at Edo, a small fishing village that would later become the city of Tokyo.
Japan was unified, but the daimyo still governed at the local level. To keep them from rebelling, Ieyasu required that they spend every other year in the capital. Even when they returned to their lands, they had to leave their families behind as hostages in Edo.
- Through this “alternate attendance policy” and other restrictions, Ieyasu tamed the daimyo. This was a major step toward restoring centralized government to Japan. As a result, the rule of law overcame the rule of the sword.
Ieyasu founded the Tokugawa Shogunate, which would continue until 1867. On his death bed in 1616, Ieyasu advised his son and successor, Hidetada, “Take care of the people. Strive to be virtuous. Never neglect to protect the country.” Most of the Tokugawa shoguns followed that advice, and their rule brought a welcome stability to Japan.
Tokugawa Society and Culture
Japan enjoyed more than two centuries of stability, prosperity, and isolation under the Tokugawa shoguns. The farming community produced more food, and the population rose. Still, the vast majority of peasants, weighed down by heavy taxes, led lives filled with misery. The people who prospered in Tokugawa society were the merchant class and the rich. However, everyone, rich and poor alike, benefited from a flowering of Japanese culture during this era.
Social History In Japan, as in China, Confucian values influenced ideas about society.
According to Confucius, the ideal society depended on agriculture, not urban commerce. Farmers, not merchants, made ideal citizens. In the real world of Tokugawa Japan, however, peasant farmers bore the main tax burden and faced more difficulties than any other class. Many of them abandoned farm life and headed for the expanding towns and cities.
- There they mixed with samurai, artisans, and merchants—the other main classes of Tokugawa society. By the mid-1700s, Japan began to shift from a rural to an urban society. Edo had grown by that time from a small town in 1600 to perhaps the largest city in the world.
Its population was more than one million. The rise of large commercial centers increased employment opportunities for women. Women found jobs in entertainment, textile manufacturing, and publishing. Still, the typical Japanese woman led a sheltered and restricted life as a peasant wife. She worked in the fields, managed the household, cared for the children, and obeyed her husband without question.
- Culture Under the Tokugawa Shogunate Traditional culture continued to thrive. Samurai attended ceremonial noh dramas based on tragic themes. They read tales of ancient warriors and their courage in battle. In their homes, they hung paintings that showed scenes from classical literature.
- Such traditional entertainment faced competition in the cities from new styles of drama, art, and literature. Townspeople attended kabuki theater. These were dramas in which actors in elaborate costumes, using music, dance, and mime, performed skits about modern urban life. The paintings they enjoyed were often woodblock prints showing sophisticated city life.
- Townspeople read popular stories about self-made merchants or the hardships of life. The novelist Saikaku created this new type of urban fiction. The people also read haiku, poetry, which does not express ideas, but presents images. For example, Matsuo Basho, the greatest of all the Japanese haiku poets, wrote just before his death in 1694:
Contact Between Europe and Japan
Europeans began coming to Japan in the 16th century, during a time of severe disorder. At first, the Japanese were curious about these newcomers. They welcomed the traders and missionaries, who introduced fascinating new technologies and ideas. Within a century, the aggressive Europeans had worn out their welcome.
Portuguese Sailors and Technology Reach Japan The Japanese first encountered Europeans in 1543, when shipwrecked Portuguese sailors washed up on the shores of southern Japan. Portuguese merchants soon followed. They hoped to involve themselves in Japan’s trade with China and Southeast Asia.
- The Portuguese brought clocks, eyeglasses, tobacco, firearms, and other unfamiliar items from Europe. Japanese merchants, eager to expand their markets, were happy to receive the newcomers and their goods.
The daimyo, too, welcomed the strangers. They were particularly interested in the Portuguese muskets and cannons. One war lordlistened intently to a Japanese observer’s description of a musket:
- Firearms forever changed the time-honored tradition of the Japanese warrior, whose principal weapon had been the sword. Many samurai, who retained the sword as their principal weapon, would lose their lives to musket fire in future combat. The cannon also had a huge impact on Japan. Daimyo had to build fortified castles to withstand the destructive force of cannonballs.
- The castles attracted merchants, artisans, and others to surrounding lands. Many of these lands grew into the towns and cities of modern Japan.
- Christian Missionaries in Japan In 1549, Christian missionaries began arriving in Japan. The Japanese accepted the missionaries in part because they associated them with the muskets and other European goods that they wanted.
- The religious orders of Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans came to convert the Japanese. Francis Xavier, a Jesuit, led the first mission to Japan and baptized about a hundred converts. Missionaries converted about 300,000 Japanese to Christianity by the year 1600.
The success of the missionaries upset Tokugawa Ieyasu. He found aspects of the Christian invasion troublesome. Missionaries, actively seeking convert, scorned traditional Japanese beliefs and sometimes involved themselves in local politics. At first, Ieyasu did not take any action. He feared driving off the Portuguese, English, Spanish, and Dutch traders who spurred Japan’s economy.
- By 1612, however, the shogun had come to fear religious uprisings more. He banned Christianity and focused on ridding his country of all Christians. Repression of Christianity continued off and on for the next two decades. In 1637, the issue came to a head. An uprising in southern Japan of some 30,000 peasants, led by dissatisfied samurai, shook the Tokugawa regime. Because so many of the rebels were Christian, the shogun decided that Christianity was at the root of the rebellion.
After that, the shoguns ruthlessly persecuted Christians. All Japanese were forced to demonstrate faithfulness to some branch of Buddhism. These policies eventually eliminated Christianity in Japan.
The Closed Country Policy
The persecution of Christians was part of an attempt to control foreign ideas. When Europeans first arrived, no central authority existed to contain them. The strong leaders who later took power did not like the introduction of European ideas and ways, but they valued European trade. As time passed, the Tokugawa shoguns realized that they could safely exclude both the missionaries and the merchants.
- By 1639, they had sealed Japan’s borders and instituted a “closed country policy.”One port, Nagasaki, remained open to foreign traders. However, only Dutch andChinese merchants were allowed into the port. Since the Tokugawa shoguns controlled Nagasaki, they now had a monopoly on foreign trade, which continued to be profitable.
For more than 200 years, Japan remained basically closed to Europeans. Japan would continue to develop as a self-sufficient country, free from European attempts to colonize or to establish their presence. The Europeans had met with much resistance in their efforts to open the East to trade. Expansion to the West in the Americas, as you will learn in Chapter 20, would prove much more successful.