Read: from Japan: History and Culture from Classical to CoolChapter 8: Embracing the West (209-243)Analyze documents: from Modern Japan: A History in DocumentsChapter 4: Turning Outward: 1890-1912Read: from Japan: History and Culture from Classical to CoolChapter 9: Modernity and Its Discontents (244- 275)Analyze documents: from Modern Japan: A History in DocumentsChapter 5: Imperial Democracy, 1912-30Assignment: For every module, you will write an analysis paper evaluating the reading materials, documents, and the film/s assigned for the previous and current week. You should not try to cover all the material; rather select one or two elements you find particularly interesting and analyze them.Choosing a clear focus will help you write an effective response because you must do more than merely summarize.Research:Please make sure to look up secondary sources such as the films/documentaries, the bio and other works from the director, and any other information that will enhance your analysis.Purpose:This assignment is designed to help you evaluate and understand Japan through the analysis and evaluation of primary and secondary historic sources. Moreover, it will help prepare and decide which topics you want to select for your final projects.
Link for Japan: History and Culture from Classical to Cool:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fiu/reader.a…
ES from
ory
PAG
hist
Modern Japan
A History in Documents
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ES from
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PAG
hist
Modern Japan
A History in Documents
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James L.Huffman
3
ES from
ory
PAG
hist
To Grace and Simon
General Editors
Sarah Deutsch
Associate Professor of History
University of Arizona
3
Oxford New York
Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai
Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi
São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto
Copyright © 2004 by James L. Huffman.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Huffman, James L., 1941–
Modern Japan: a history in documents / James L. Huffman.
p. cm. — (Pages from history)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-19-514742-1 (alk. paper)
1. Japan—History—1868– 2. Japan—History—Tokugawa period,
1600-1868. I. Title. II. Series.
DS881.9.H85 2004
952.025—dc22
2004008185
Printed in the United States of America
On acid-free paper
Carol K. Karlsen
Professor of History
University of Michigan
Robert G. Moeller
Professor of History
University of California, Irvine
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Associate Professor of History
Indiana University
Board of Advisors
Steven Goldberg
Social Studies Supervisor
New Rochelle, N.Y. Public Schools
John Pyne
Social Studies Supervisor
West Milford, N.J. Public Schools
Cover: The main shopping street of Shinjuku,
Tokyo, Japan. Copyright © Cheryl Conlon.
Frontispiece: At the beginning of the twentieth
century, crowds took to the streets frequently in
Japan’s cities: for festivals, to demonstrate for
lower streetcar fares, to celebrate military triumphs.
Here, residents of Yokohama celebrate with flags,
lanterns, and banners in the aftermath of Japan’s
1905 victory in the Russo-Japanese War.
Title page: The feminist poet and essayist
Yosano Akiko sits for a formal photo in 1915
with her husband, the less-famous writer Yosano
Tekkan, and their children.
Contents
6
8
11
WHAT IS A DOCUMENT?
HOW TO READ A DOCUMENT
INTRODUCTION
17
20
28
37
42
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
Closing the Country
A Feudal Regime
Life Under the Tokugawa
The Shogunate Under
Challenge
47
THE OLD ORDER TOPPLES:
1853–68
Japan’s Sense of the World
Perry’s Arrival
A Land in Transition
Symbols of Change
Tumultuous Times
Demise of a Domain Lord
Chapter One
Chapter Seven
159
161
170
176
THE REEMERGENCE: 1945–70
An Occupied Land
The Return to Normal Life
The Reemergence
185
JAPAN AS A WORLD POWER:
AFTER 1970
Surmounting Crises
Awash in Capital
As the Century Ended
Chapter Eight
187
195
201
Chapter Two: Picture Essay
49
50
51
52
54
55
Chapter Three
57
59
67
74
CONFRONTING THE MODERN
WORLD: 1868–89
Envisioning a New World
Creating a New System
A New Society
Chapter Four
81
83
87
98
TURNING OUTWARD: 1890–1912
Rising Nationalism
An Expansionist Turn
A Modern, Urban Society
107
109
121
IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY: 1912–30
The Energy of Modernity
Reining in Diversity
131
133
147
THE DARK ERA: 1930–45
The Militarist Turn
War
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
212
214
216
219
220
TIMELINE
FURTHER READING AND
WEBSITES
TEXT CREDITS
PICTURE CREDITS
INDEX
6
MODERN JAPAN
Pick up this page from previous book
What Is a Document?
T
o the historian, a document is,
quite simply, any sort of historical evidence. It is a primary
source, the raw material of history. A document may be more than the
expected government paperwork, such as a
treaty or passport. It is also a letter, diary,
will, grocery list, newspaper article, recipe,
memoir, oral history, school yearbook, map,
chart, architectural plan, poster, musical
score, play script, novel, political cartoon,
painting, photograph––even an object.
Using primary sources allows us not
just to read about history, but to read history itself. It allows us to immerse ourselves
in the look and feel of an era gone by, to
understand its people and their language,
whether verbal or visual. And it allows us
to take an active, hands-on role in (re)constructing history.
Using primary sources requires us to
use our powers of detection to ferret out
the relevant facts and to draw conclusions
from them; just as Agatha Christie uses the
scores in a bridge game to determine the
identity of a murderer, the historian uses
facts from a variety of sources––some, perhaps, seemingly inconsequential––to build
a historical case.
The poet W. H. Auden wrote that history was the study of questions. Primary
sources force us to ask questions—and
then, by answering them, to construct a
narrative or an argument that makes sense
to us. Moreover, as we draw on the many
sources from “the dust-bin of history,” we
can endow that narrative with character,
personality, and texture—all the elements
that make history so endlessly intriguing.
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Cartoon
This political cartoon addresses the issue of church and
state. It illustrates the Supreme Court’s role in balancing
the demands of the 1st Amendment of the Constitution and
the desires of the religious population.
Illustration
Illustrations from
children’s books,
such as this
alphabet from the
New England
Primer, tell us
how children were
educated, and
also what the
religious and
moral values of
the time were.
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WHAT IS A DOCUMENT?
7
Pick up this page from previous book
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Treaty
Map
A 1788 British map of
India shows the region prior
to British colonization, an
indication of the kingdoms
and provinces whose ethnic
divisions would resurface
later in India’s history.
A government document such as this
1805 treaty can reveal not only the
details of government policy, but
information about the people who
signed it. Here, the Indians’ names
were written in English transliteration by U.S. officials; the Indians
added pictographs to the right of
their names.
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Literature
The first written version of the Old English epic Beowulf,
from the late 10th century, is physical evidence of the transition from oral to written history. Charred by fire, it is
also a physical record of the wear and tear of history.
8
How to Read a Document
T
his book aims to bring us close to
the people who actually lived out
Japan’s modern era, through their letters, speeches, documents, cartoons,
statistical charts, and maps. To understand
those people, however, we must treat these
documents as a detective would, looking for
clues about what they really mean. We need
to ask ourselves constant questions as we read
what people in the past have written:
Is this accurate? In the first chapter of this
book, a Portuguese merchant named Alvares
describes Japanese “kings” of the late 1500s; history
tells us, however, that Japan had no kings then.
Why did Alvares make this mistake? Does his error
make the document useless? If not, what does it tell
us? Errors themselves often give us insights into the
writer’s world and worldview.
What are the writer’s biases? All people are
biased, but we must ask what the bias was and how
it affected the source. When the nineteenth-century
traveler Kume Kunitake described Christian scriptures as “delirious ravings,” was he telling us more
about Christianity or more about Japanese understandings of religion? Since we want to know how
people saw the world, biased materials often give us
as much insight as balanced materials do.
What is the context? When we hear the journalist Kiryū Yūyū decry the army’s “reckless actions”
in 1936 (Chapter 6), we must ask what was happening in Japan then. Does his diatribe suggest that
people were free to criticize their government, or
simply that a few brave men risked prison for the
right to speak up?
What lies beneath a document’s surface? An
important trend among historians is the use of literary and visual materials, because they often tell
us more than their composers intended. It is not
enough to ask if the facts are accurate, however;
we must ask what clues they reveal about life at the
time. Omissions can tell us much about a writer’s
way of seeing the world.
The British historian E. H. Carr said that a fact
resembles an empty sack, which the historian must
fill with meaning. So too with documents. They
will not yield much insight unless the reader asks
the right questions. Read carelessly, documents may
mislead, confuse, or hold the full picture back from
us. Examined carefully, they bring the past to life.
MODERN JAPAN
Brackets
In translated materials, the translator often has to include words or ideas
not found in the original text, so that the meaning will be clear to the
English-speaking reader. Such materials normally are placed in brackets.
Tone
Tone may be as important as actual words in helping us understand a document. Kume’s balanced tone here gives us immediate clues about the kind
of man he was and the purpose of the writing. The fact that he sees behavioral differences as signs of variant cultures rather than as indications that
Americans were just barbaric suggests to the reader that Kume was well
educated and a careful observer. The tone also may be our first clue to the
fact that he was on an official mission and that Japanese were quite open to
cultural relativity.
Subconscious Values
Certain phrases tell the reader that the writer may have had values that
even he himself (and his fellow countrymen) did not fully understand. Few
people today would think of American men as having been servants of their
wives in the nineteenth century. Yet that is what Kume thought when he
saw American men holding chairs for women and carrying their things in
public. His statement should prompt the reader to ask what Japanese values
led to such an assessment. Even if Kume’s evaluation of American values
was wrong, it helps us understand Japan’s own values then.
Unintended or Suggestive Information
Although Kume is describing American practices in this journal entry, his
obvious surprise makes it clear that the gender-related behaviors he
observed were not common in Japan. The careful reader would use Kume’s
material as a stimulus to further research, and might learn that in the 1870s
Japanese women indeed did avoid going out publicly with their husbands,
and that Japanese of both genders would have found it not only unusual
but morally offensive for men to treat women deferentially in public.
Concrete Details
Even if an observer’s interpretation of a situation is wrong, the document
still may yield a rich, concrete picture of the setting. This entry makes it
clear that when Kume visited the United States, men were restrained in
their behavior when women were present but “lax” when by themselves.
People also ate by lamplight, rode in carriages, wore shoes, and used chairs
(an uncommon practice in Japan then). And Kume obviously saw (or heard
about) instances of husbands being punished by their wives when they had
acted offensively.
Photos
Photos may not provide the concrete facts of an era, but they help us
understand the human values that undergirded those facts. The photo here,
taken by a professional photographer in 1876, shows Sakai Denpatsu,
Kyoto’s first governor, just before a new law took effect requiring samurai
to give up their swords and cut their hair. Careful readers may be impressed
by Sakai’s eagerness to retain a record of the traditional samurai dignity and
garb, but they also will note how even he blended Japanese and Western
elements: old Japanese kimono, sword, and shoes alongside a Western-style
chair, the traditional hairstyle carefully combed to be recorded by a newfangled camera.
HOW TO READ A DOCUMENT
9
Journal of Kume Kunitake on 1872 Visit to the United States
From the time our group boarded ship at Yokohama, [we found ourselves]
in a realm of completely alien customs. What is appropriate deportment
for us seems to attract their curiosity, and what is proper behavior for
them is strange to us. . . . What we found most strange in their behavior
was the relations between men and women.
With respect to relations between husbands and wives, it is the practice in Japan that the wife serves her husband’s parents and that children
serve their parents, but in America the husband follows the ”Way of
Serving His Wife.” The [American husband] lights the lamps, prepares
food at the table, presents shoes to his wife, brushes the dust off [her]
clothes, helps her up and down the stairs, offers her his chair, and carries
her things when she goes out. If the wife becomes a little angry, the husband is quick to offer affection and show respect, bowing and scraping to
beg her forgiveness. But if she does not accept his apologies, he may find
himself turned out of the house and denied meals.
When riding in the same ship or carriage, men stand up and offer
their seats to the women, who accept with no hesitation at all. When
women take their places sitting down, the men all crowd around them to
show their respect. Men are restrained in their behavior when together
[with women] at the same gathering. . . . It is only when the women
retire that the men begin to become lax in their behavior. . . .
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11
Introduction
J
The thirty-seven-foot-high bronze
statue of Buddha at Kamakura,
built in the 1200s, not long after
the warrior class had taken power
in Japan, illustrates not only how
wealthy the new samurai leaders
were but how deeply they valued
both art and religion. The nineteenth-century Westerners’ eagerness to be photographed on the
Buddha’s lap showed both the
statue’s height and the visitors’
lack of respect for Buddhism.
apan already possessed an ancient civilization when the first
Western visitors, a group of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors,
stumbled onto the coast of southern Tanegashima island in 1542.
Though a young country in comparison with its neighbor
China, this archipelago nation had been ruled at least nominally by
emperors for more than a thousand years and had boasted a welldeveloped, community-based culture for a full two millennia. The
Japanese people were as highly educated as any on the globe, and the
country’s literary and art worlds were sophisticated. It was little wonder that the first European arrivals called the Japanese the “best race
yet discovered.” Japanese culture was, after all, well in advance of that
of Europe.
Until the eighth century, Japan’s central regions were ruled directly by the imperial Yamato family, a clan said to have descended from
the sun goddess and to have ruled these divinely created islands since
660 BCE, when the first emperor, Jimmu, came down from the heavens.
The family’s rule had peaked in the eighth century at Nara, a capital
city of 200,000 people where taste and elegance vied with intricate
law codes, adapted from China, to make Japan a model of progress. A
fifty-three-foot statue of Buddha, dedicated in 752 CE and covered in
15,000 pounds of gold, showcased the new importance of Buddhism,
as well as the ruling family’s wealth. Although the emperors lost much
of their political power to a noble family named Fujiwara after the capital moved north to Kyoto (then called Heian) to get away from Nara’s
meddling Buddhist influence at the end of the century, the emphasis
on taste and elegance remained. During the 400 peaceful years in
which Heian dominated Japanese life, a group of women produced
brilliant works of literature, including what has been called the world’s
first novel, the Tale of Genji, while men vied for esteem by showing off
their learning, and everyone competed to be the best dressed and the
most elegant calligraphers.
The mood turned darker near the end of the 1100s, when a warrior family named Minamoto took control of the country by military
12
MODERN JAPAN
force and moved the administrative capital 300 miles east, to the
remote region of Kamakura. For the next four centuries, the sword
would dominate political life, first in the hands of powerful clans
named Hōjō and Ashikaga who controlled Japan from the capital,
and later under the power of regional lords, called daimyō, who
largely ignored the central government and ruled from feudal
castle towns. Even during this period, however, the emperors continued to sit on their thrones, powerless but important as high
priestly symbols of Japan’s link to the heavens. And while the
fighting sometimes was brutal, the samurai, or warrior class, nurtured education and the arts as vigorously as the nobles of Heian
had. In the 1400s and 1500s, drawing inspiration from the Zen
sect of Buddhism, samurai produced some of history’s most unusual and sophisticated art forms: rock gardens, flower arranging, ink
paintings, and the tea ceremony. One of the most popular stories
of the age was that of Atsumori, a young warrior slain by an enemy
soldier who cried profusely while beheading him; when Atsumori’s body was examined, he was found to be carrying a flute
alongside his sword. It was thus a combination of martial vigor and
cultural sophistication that set the stage for Japan’s modern era.
One of the distinctive features of Japan’s ancient history is its
complex interactions with the rest of Asia. Living less than a hundred miles off the continent, the Japanese drew endlessly on the
culture and institutions of China, adapting its religions, writing system, law codes, and cultural tastes—even while vigorously maintaining their own distinct values and styles. When one of Japan’s
earliest leaders, the regent Shōtoku Taishi, sent a study mission to
China in 607 CE, he made it clear that his people were eager to
learn from China, but he also revealed their self-confidence by
giving the embassy this charge: “From the sovereign of the land of
the rising sun to the sovereign of the land of the setting sun.” The
Chinese emperor, offended, refused to assist the mission’s members.
That same tension—between a thirst to understand foreign
institutions and a determination to assert and preserve native traditions—continued to shape the whole of Japan’s modern era,
propelling dynamic change at times, inviting calamity at others.
During the early modern centuries when the Tokugawa family
ruled (1600 –1868), the country shut itself off from the rest of the
world, fearful that trade and Christianity would undermine the
Tokugawa’s hold on power. Once the West reentered, in the mid1800s, the newness of foreign technology and the military threat
INTRODUCTION
13
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of imperialism triggered an explosion, a rush to modernize that
caused urban residents to gasp: “Old things pass away between a
night and a morning.” The clash between national values and
Westernization also triggered Japan’s march down the road of
imperialism. When leaders became convinced late in the nineteenth century that Japan’s culture and independence could be
preserved only by showing the country’s strength militarily, they
began wars with China and Russia, winning both, and secured
their own colonies in Taiwan and Korea. The patriotism stimulated by those victories turned into aggressive nationalism in the
1930s, fueling Japan’s disastrous participation in World War II.
Japan’s World War II defeat in 1945 brought more than mere
humiliation and devastation. It also assured the country’s renewal,
with even greater force, and heightened the tension between
embracing foreign influences and nurturing native traditions. For at
least two generations after the war, the country engaged the rest of
the world almost as intensely as it had in the late 1800s, and even
more successfully. It was the United States rather than China that
fueled Japan’s internationalism this time, with the Americans providing a government structure and constitution during the postwar
Like the British Isles on the western
fringe of the Eurasian land mass, the
Japanese archipelago is dwarfed geographically by continental neighbors
such as China, Russia, and India.
In the modern era, however, it used its
location and astute policies to emerge
as Asia’s most powerful nation.
14
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Kawabata Yasunari, Japan’s first Nobel Prize winner
in literature (1968), illustrated in his works the postwar
tension between international influences and domestic
traditions. He knew Western literature well and wrote
about such modern topics as decay and death, yet used
the literary styles of classical Japan. A traditionalist
who wore the kimono, he loved the game of go, a complicated board game somewhat like chess.
MODERN JAPAN
occupation (1945–52), then helping to build Japan’s economy in
the 1950s through everything from military procurements to trade
and defense alliances.
By the late 1960s, Japan had become its own engine, using a
combination of energy, hard work, efficient institutions, and
effective education to develop the world’s second-largest economy. By the 1980s, it was arguably the richest country on earth,
giving out more foreign aid than any other nation and planting its
businesses around the globe. The well-tailored Japanese businessman became a common sight at the best hotels of every city in the
world. After the economy went into a tailspin in the 1990s, however, Japan’s international profile dimmed. Japan seemed to turn
inward once more, as the passage of decades made World War II
an increasingly vague memory. The dynamism of its cultural life
never died out; nor did its reputation as one of the world’s most
educated, safest, best-working societies. It continued to be one of
the world’s largest economies and to work quietly as an agent of
change in Asia. But as several times before, the islands began to
focus more heavily on domestic issues. Several generations of
fierce engagement with the outside world were followed, at the
turn of the twenty-first century, by an inward turn.
Finding primary sources to study Japan’s last 1,500 years never
has been a problem. For reasons that historians have not fully figured out, writing came late to the Japanese islands; their culture
was well developed long before they began adapting China’s
written script to fit their own spoken language in the early fifth
century. Once that process began, however, the Japanese took
fervently to writing and record keeping. They compiled their
first major poetry anthology, the Man’yōshū, “Collection of Ten
Thousand Leaves,” in the mid-700s, a few decades after they had
published a monumental seventeen-volume set of legal and administrative codes. And in the 760s, the empress ordered a million
copies of Buddhist incantations to be printed and distributed
throughout the country. From that point on, the Japanese wrote
with a passion, right down to the modern age: keeping diaries,
publishing sermons and stories, composing histories, recording
farming methods, and carrying on the kinds of public conversations possible only through the written word.
When a 1760 law insisted that since “books had long been
published, no more are necessary,” the officials were, more than
anything, admitting the impossibility of stemming the flow of private writing. Indeed, one of the distinctive characteristics of
Japanese writing is the fact that so much of it was private in
INTRODUCTION
15
nature. As early as the 1000s, much of the best writing was done
by women courtiers, people without the credentials (or right) to
use the Chinese script used in official documents. By the onset of
the modern era in the early 1800s, when government control was
particularly stringent, private scholars were issuing forth discussions of every aspect of national life, while dissidents were using
cunning of every sort—including highly commercial, hard-tosuppress “newspapers” called broadsides—to get their ideas into
the public arena. Once the daily newspaper press took root in the
1870s, that process gathered steam, and by the early 1900s Japan
had a mass press, reflecting the views of an expanding public with
as much energy and controversy as could be found anywhere in
Europe or the United States. Even in the highly censored days of
the 1930s and World War II, private speeches and publications
continued to make a wide range of views available to those courageous enough to seek them out.
The point of all this is that historians seeking to know Japan’s
past, particularly in the modern era, will be hindered more by an
abundance of sources than by a lack of them. No matter what the
segment of society—mountain villagers, political radicals, schoolteachers, fishermen’s wives, athletes, rural philosophers, prostitutes, rebel farmers, city office workers—it is well represented in
the collected, preserved writings of Japan. Irokawa Daikichi, one
of Japan’s best-known contemporary historians, has spent a career
trying to hear the voice of what he calls “grass-roots culture” and
he has found it, not just in the essays of “‘learned men’ among the
common people” but in pamphlets, records, written appeals,
newspaper reports, and court documents by and about the “inarticulate masses.” The Japanese are educated; they are opinionated;
they are writers; they are record keepers. The historian’s job—and
it is not an easy one, the abundance of sources notwithstanding—
is to find those records, to interpret them, and to develop as complete a picture of Japan’s past as possible.
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Japanese at all levels of society delight in calligraphy
and are eager to show off their skills at it. One of the
most popular slogans for calligraphers in the late 1940s,
particularly among schoolchildren, was heiwa kokka
kensetsu, “building a nation of peace” (top). Twelveyear-old crown prince Akihito, who became emperor in
1989, reproduced the slogan on New Year’s Day 1946.
In a more recent example (bottom), a calligraphy student
writes a modern version of an old Japanese saying.
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17
Chapter One
The Shogun’s
Realm
W
The viciousness of the fighting during
the Tokugawa forces’ attack on
Toyotomi castle in Osaka in 1615
was captured by the artist Kuroda
Nagamasa. Although the gun had
been introduced to Japan by then,
Tokugawa warriors still
primarily used swords and pikes.
hen the Boston journalist Edward H. House arrived in
Tokyo in the summer of 1870, he proclaimed himself
surprised by what he found: a people struggling with
massive social changes yet gracious to the many foreigners who were pressuring Japan to make these changes, orderly and
law abiding even in a time of political tumult. “The climate is lovely,”
he wrote to his New York editor; “the people (natives, I mean) are
kind; hospitable, and courteous to a degree which more than justifies
all that has been said in their praise; . . . the scenery inexhaustibly
attractive, and the cost of living is light.” It was not the first time
Westerners had been impressed by Japan. The initial European visitors, nearly three centuries earlier, had found the Japanese people
handsome, intelligent, orderly, and gracious. Some even commented
on how quickly they adapted, then surpassed, the Westerners in skills
as varied as making bread and turning a profit at trade.
One reason the visitors were impressed lay in the ages-old ability
of the Japanese to structure their surroundings and institutions so that
a large segment of the populace enjoyed the “good” life. Though
plagued as much by strife as other peoples, the Japanese elites had
focused for a millennium on education and harmony as keys to civilization. Another reason, by House’s time, lay in the specific political
and social structures of the Tokugawa era (1600–1868), which had
given the country two and a half centuries of peace by emphasizing
loyalty and learning, while providing enough money and freedom to
spawn vibrant cities, alive with commerce and trade, up and down the
islands. It was this time that laid the foundations for Japan’s modern era.
One of the remarkable features of life under Tokugawa rule was its
peaceful nature. For four centuries prior to consolidation of control by
18
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This depiction of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who
took power in 1600, was sketched in the
formal style typical of portraits of powerful men of the seventeenth century, with
the subject dressed in heavy court robes
and sitting, unsmiling, on a dais. He
had himself named shogun in 1603.
MODERN JAPAN
family head Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1600, the country had been at war, held together loosely in the
better times by national overlords who called
themselves “shoguns,” and ruled during less stable
periods by as many as 250 regional lords known
as daimyō, “great names.” By the late fifteenth century, fighting had laid waste to the capital city of
Kyoto, turning both the shogun and the emperor
into figureheads and plunging Japan into a feudal
era in which competing members of the military
class ruled relatively small domains from massive
defensive castles. After Ieyasu had consolidated
his victory by leveling the castle of chief rival
Toyotomi in 1615, the country remained at peace
for 250 years. There were peasant uprisings—during the famine-plagued period of 1833–37, for
example, when the annual frosts came as early as August. But these
uprisings were local and isolated, no threat to Japan as a whole.
At the base of the stability was a sophisticated, well-run
administration, grounded in a unique system called bakuhan in
Japanese and “centralized feudalism” in English. In this system, the
Tokugawa rulers adopted a Neo-Confucian philosophy from
China that demanded loyalty to parents and rulers and allowed
the daimyō to retain control of their own domains (to the extent of
collecting taxes and maintaining local armies). But the Tokugawa
held onto absolute allegiance through a set of regulations that
kept the lords in the capital city of Edo (today’s Tokyo) half the
time. They also adopted an elaborate legal system that kept people satisfied yet controlled. And they barred most foreigners from
coming to the country and Japanese from leaving, thus making
sure their opponents got neither money nor ideas from abroad.
The ruling samurai class, focused on maintaining status and privilege, eventually grew stagnant.
Although this system was tightly controlled, it provided
enough flexibility and opportunity to make the Tokugawa years
energetic. Merchant firms flourished, as sake, or rice wine, brewers and soy sauce manufacturers with names like Mitsui and
Kikkoman moved into ever wider fields of operations, founding
silk spinning and cotton weaving factories, establishing rice
exchanges, and even managing the shogun’s finances. By the early
nineteenth century, many of them had become financial giants,
making loans to cash-strapped rulers and accumulating wealth
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
19
that made Japan’s towns and cities prosper. One result of the economic vitality was the appearance of schools in every region: public academies in the capital of each domain (now called a han), private institutions run by leading scholars, and more than 10,000
popular schools—many of them taught and operated by
women—run out of homes, shops, or even temples. As the
Tokugawa era moved into its last half-century, literacy rates had
risen as high as those in England, and a healthy intellectual life
supported a large array of thought systems: national learning that
focused on the uniqueness of Japan’s past, study of the West called
“Dutch learning” (so-called because the only Westerners allowed
in Japan were from the Netherlands), and Neo-Confucianism,
which emphasized character development, public service, and
loyalty to a benevolent state, as well as a more practical approach
to Japan’s contemporary problems.
The most dramatic evidence of Tokugawa vitality came in the
urban areas, where merchant wealth undergirded entertainment
centers that were as lively as they were lowbrow. Every city had a
geisha quarter, presided over by female entertainers who danced,
sang, and made conversation with male visitors. These centers
produced some of the most interesting arts of Japanese history.
Japan’s first prominent woodblock artist
was Moronobu Hishikawa, a native of
The kabuki theater, for example, provided plays that were known
Chiba, on Edo Bay, who illustrated
for both intricate plots and dramatic staging, such as temple
nearly 150 books on everything from
kimono patterns and puppet plays to life
bells falling on worshipers and samurai disguised as women.
in the cities’ entertainment quarters. He
Novelists spun tales of love and moneymaking that sold into
was well known for his portrayals of
the hundreds of thousands. Poets wrote three-line, seventeenwomen dressed in the latest fashions,
along with men who came to visit them.
syllable poems called haiku and composed sets of spontaneous but
elaborately linked verses, while they drank
wine and engaged in witty repartee. Tattooists worked wonders on the arms and chests
of the fashion conscious. And artists produced multicolored woodblock illustrations
of women in the pleasure quarters and commoners in the fields, provoking scorn from
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the samurai but creating art forms that would
influence Western artists from Vincent van
Gogh to Paul Cézanne. When the American naval officer Matthew Perry pressured
Japan to reopen its ports to Western ships in
1853, the country was as well integrated
politically and as sophisticated culturally as
any on Earth.
20
MODERN JAPAN
Closing the Country
The first Westerners arrived in Japan from Portugal in the
mid-1500s, and across the next half-century traders and missionaries created a European boomlet, serving as intermediaries for an expansive trade within Asia, introducing such
popular European objects as eyeglasses and clocks, demonstrating the art of shipbuilding, and converting as many as
200,000 Japanese to the Christian faith. A number of the
coastal daimyō grew richer as a result of the trade that the
Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish encouraged. And European
guns helped to shift the military balance, leading to the
country’s reunification and the Tokugawa family’s triumph
in 1600 as national overlords.
Although the Western presence would not last long
beyond the Tokugawa victory, most of the visitors themselves were impressed by this “new” Asian people. They
Image Not Available
Prints of the “exotic” Westerners, called
Namban art, became extremely popular
in Japan in the late 1500s and early
1600s. Portuguese sailors, in baggy
pants, arrived in the port city of
Nagasaki late in the sixteenth century,
bringing with them Catholic missionaries,
as well as items for trade. The size and
sophisticated structures of the Portuguese
ships impressed the Japanese greatly.
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
21
found them different from the Chinese, Indians, and Filippinos, more curious and more accepting of outsiders. The
Jesuit priest and commercial agent João Rodrigues, who
spent more than thirty years in Japan, wrote two volumes
about the Japanese, Arte da Lingoa de Iapan in 1608 and
Lingoa de Iapan in 1620. He reveals a typical Westerner’s
ambivalence toward the sixteenth-century Japanese, whom
he saw as intelligent and principled, yet unduly selfimpressed. His observations also reveal the ethnocentrism
that characterized most European travelers at that time.
The Japanese tend to be of medium build and on the short side
rather than tall, although they admire well-built men. They have
many natural talents and an alert understanding, and experience
shows that they are competent in all our moral and speculative sciences and the Chinese language. This can be seen in those who
profess their sciences and letters, and in the discerning and subtle questions put by even pagans when they listen to sermons
about the mysteries of the faith preached to the pagans. . . . In
general the Japanese are very much ruled by natural reason and
submit to it. . . .
As the Japanese have been brought up here at the end of the
world without knowing or being in contact with anybody save the
Chinese and Koreans, they naturally have a high opinion of themselves and of their nation. They accordingly have a haughty and
proud spirit, and however much they see or hear about other
nations, they always think that their own country is the best, especially as regards weapons and their use in war. They have an intrepid and bold spirit, and they believe that nobody in the whole
world equals them in this respect and that all are far inferior to
them. . . . They are so punctilious and meticulous that they do not
hesitate to lay down their life on a single point of honour. . . .
They welcome foreigners with much kindness and they are
very trusting in allowing them to enter their country. In this
respect they are very different from the Chinese and Koreans,
who despise foreigners and are very apprehensive as regards their
kingdoms, because they are weak and timid, while the Japanese
are courageous and intrepid. They wonder at the civil practice of
killing tame and domestic animals and things of that sort, for they
show great pity and compassion in this respect.
Jorge Alvares, a Portuguese merchant who visited Japan
briefly in the mid-1500s, reported to Jesuit mission leaders
European women use artificial
means to make their teeth white;
Japanese women use iron and
vinegar to make their mouth
and teeth black.
—Portuguese priest Luis
Frois’s accounts of travel in
Japan, Kulturgegensätze EuropaJapan (Cultural Differences:
Europe and Japan), 1585
Fish is with them an ordinary
article of diet and is so plentiful
as to cost very little. They
usually eat this in a practically
raw state, after having dipped
it in boiling vinegar.
—Report from Japan by
Italian traveler Francesco
Carletti,1597–98, published
in Ragionamenti (1701)
22
T
he food is placed in little bowls or platters
of wood, covered with a red lacquer, in
the most cleanly fashion. And then the whole
is eaten without touching anything with their
fingers. For this purpose they make use of two
little round sticks, with blunt ends, about the
size of a quill pen, which are made of either
wood or gold. These are called hashi.
—Report from Japan by Italian traveler
Francesco Carletti, 1597–98, in Ragionamenti
(1701)
One of the early Tokugawa period’s most
influential samurai was the swordsman
Miyamoto Musashi, whose exploits and
writings became the source of many later
legends. The nineteenth-century woodblock
artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi captured
Miyamoto’s aura by showing a wandering
priest holding a magnifying glass to his
head, trying to see if some minute, hardto-see feature of his face might explain the
swordsman’s great skill and wisdom.
MODERN JAPAN
on social interactions between people of different classes.
He mistakes the domain lord, or daimyō, for a “king,” but
shows a keen understanding of Japanese etiquette.
The people greatly venerate their king and it is reckoned a high
honour for the sons of the greatest nobles of the kingdom to serve
him. They kneel down, placing both hands on the ground, when
they receive or hand anything over in his presence. They like
speaking softly and look down on us for speaking roughly.
Etiquette demands that a man receives guests of equal rank by
kneeling with his hands on the floor until they are seated. When
the king goes abroad, he is attended by his guards. When the people meet him in the streets, they all bow low with their shoes in
their hands until he passes. Inferiors do the same for superiors, and
if they meet noble and honourable people they take off their
shoes and bow very low with their hands between their thighs.
No matter how astute Western visitors were in describing
Japanese practices, they had a harder time grasping the
value system that lay behind daily behavior. Nor were they
quick to see how perceptive and erudite Japan’s own writers
had been for centuries in assessing the country’s complicated social norms. Perhaps the clearest view of Tokugawa-era
customs and values was presented by fiction writers like
Ihara Saikaku, who in 1688 published Tales of Samurai Honor,
a series of short stories illustrating the nature of warrior life.
In “His Own Money Put Him Naked into the River,” Saikaku
describes how the samurai Aoto Zaemon treated two workers who tried, but failed, to find some coins he had dropped
into a river. The first worker lies, substituting his own coins
for the lost ones in order to curry Aoto’s favor, while the second acts honorably, chiding his greedy fellow yet refusing to
reveal that man’s dishonesty to others. Saikaku’s tale depicts
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both the era’s norms and the tendency of many people to
stray from the accepted path.
Although the man said nothing, Aoto heard the whole story by
chance and had the dishonest laborer seized. Aoto ordered him to
atone for his misdeeds by hunting for the lost money every day
until he found it. This time, Aoto assigned him a strict supervisor
and had him stripped naked so that there would be no further
opportunity for trickery.
The man suffered greatly as fall turned into winter on the river.
The river began to dry up and finally nothing was left but bare
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
23
sand. On the ninety-seventh day of his search, he found every last
one of the coins and so narrowly escaped with his life. . . .
Aoto later made secret inquiries about the laborer who had spoken out for the cause of righteousness. He turned out to be a
descendant of the distinguished samurai family of Chiba no Suke,
and his real name was Chiba Magokurō. Circumstances had forced
Magokurō’s father to conceal his identity and that of his son, and
they had lived as commoners among the people. Deeply moved by
Magokurō’s demonstration of true samurai spirit, Aoto Zaemon
spoke about the matter to Lord Tokiyori with successful results.
Magokurō was summoned and was restored to samurai status.
Japanese officials found the Europeans increasingly worrisome as a potential threat to power as the decades passed.
Lord Tokiyori
The Chiba family became
prominent in the 1100s;
Lord Tokiyori ruled Japan
as a regent of the Hōjō
family in the 1200s.
They puzzled over the unfamiliar Christian doctrines and
practices, such as consuming Christ’s “body and blood” in
the sacrament of communion. And they debated about
whether the visitors’ true motives were commercial or religious, particularly when they learned that priests often were
employed by the ship captains as linguists and commercial
agents. Many stories and songs such as those compiled in the
1639 book Kirishitan monogatari, “Christian Tales,” caricature everything from the Christians’ self righteousness to
their consumption of meat, which offended the Buddhists,
who were vegetarians.
How different are the habits of Japanese monks from the customs
of South Barbary! . . . It is not by a miracle that the Kirishitans
[Christians] are not covetous and refrain from fawning on their
parishioners. For the King of South Barbary each year dispatches
a Black Ship or a galliot, to eliminate any want in all their temples;
and everyone gets his share—including simple parishioners, if
their faith be deep. So it is no wonder that they appear to be
uncovetous and prudent. And, moreover, day and night they eat
the flesh of cows, horses, swine, chickens, and meaner yet!
Anxious thus to adopt the manner of wild beasts, many became
members of their religion mainly for the taste of such foods.
By 1612, the Tokugawa government—worried over the
potential political and economic power of the Europeans—
had banned Christianity in Japan, and by 1616 it had limited
European trade to Nagasaki and the small southern island of
Hirado. During the next two decades, the officials carried out
South Barbary
“South Barbary” or nanban was
the Japanese name for Spain,
Portugal, and Italy in the 1500s
and 1600s. Like the Chinese,
the Japanese regarded all foreigners as barbarians, and since
the missionaries and traders
most often arrived in Japan
from Macao, the island off
south China, or the Philippines
to the south, they were labeled
“southern barbarians.”
24
MODERN JAPAN
Early seventeenth-century paintings
exaggerated the features of European
priests that distinguished them most
from the Japanese: heavy eyebrows,
overpowering, fleshy faces, and flowing
black clerical robes.
Image Not Available
a bitter persecution of Japanese Christians, forcing them to
renounce their faith under threat of torture, imprisonment,
or even death. As a result, all missionaries were banished,
and some 3,000 Japanese Christians were executed, many of
them by crucifixion. After a bloody 1636 uprising against the
lord of the Shimabara region of Kyushu by 40,000 peasants,
most of them Christians, the government issued edicts that
effectively banned Europeans from Japan. The only exception was the Dutch, who had avoided proselytizing and thus
were allowed to remain under severe restrictions on a small,
man-made island called Dejima in Nagasaki harbor. A 1640
government edict, which ordered the lord of Chikugo in
northern Kyushu to be vigilant against Christians, illustrates
the vigor of the officials who pursued the “closed country”
No Japanese ships may leave for foreign
countries.
Any Japanese now living abroad who tries
to return to Japan will be put to death.
No offspring of Southern Barbarians will
be allowed to remain. Anyone violating
this order will be killed, and all relatives
punished according to the gravity of the
offence.
—From Closed Country Edict, June 1636
policy across the next century.
In recent years there have been instances of those who used the
cover of the Macao trade to venture by ship to Nagasaki with the
secret intent to spread the pernicious creed of the Lord of Heaven
and thus to delude the populace. This was immediately detected
by the perspicacious and valiant government, which instituted
stringent proscriptions. If worshippers of this pernicious creed
were discovered, punishment was extended unto their relations.
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
25
Nevertheless, Bateren continued being hidden in the Macao vessels
and brought over to delude our populace. For that reason, last year
an even more stringent prohibition was issued and traffic from
Macao was stopped altogether, with the injunction that any ship
coming again would be completely demolished and its passengers
killed. And yet the barbarians transgressed our country’s prohibition and under the false pretence of presenting their side of the
matter came again. Once again they dispatched ambassadors to
the port of Nagasaki. Seventy of the gang were arrested and their
heads put on exhibition; the ship and its various implements were
broken up and sunk to the bottom of the sea. This is something
you have seen before your very eyes. From now and ever after you
must observe our proscriptions. . . .
Now that those who came from Macao have met their punishment the prohibition of the Jesuits is ever more stringent: that
they should come is not permissible. And yet the possibility cannot be excluded that the barbarians in their surfeit of zeal to disseminate their accursed doctrine will hide within your ships, the
ministers of monstrosity and preachers of perdition venturing
secretly across to work deceit upon the populace. They may arrive
with shaved heads or unshaven, dressed in Chinese robes or affecting our country’s costume—but where will they hide their cat’s
eyes and protruding noses, their red hair and shrike’s tongues! . . .
Anything of the sort will mean that all on board that ship, the old
and the young, will be executed and the ship burnt and sunk. . . .
Take care to observe the official proscriptions of our country; do
not be taken in by the barbarians!
During the years when Japan was closed to the world, an
average of two Dutch vessels and a few Chinese ships were
allowed to visit Nagasaki yearly to ensure that Japan had
access to certain desirable items from abroad and to enable
its rulers to keep up with foreign developments. While the
Chinese traders—Japanese viewed them as representatives
of Earth’s most advanced land—were allowed to live in
Nagasaki proper, the Dutch were confined to prison-like
conditions at Dejima island, which could be traversed in 236
steps. They sold the luxury items that had been brought
from Europe, collected Japanese goods for sale back home,
and spent their hours chatting, playing games, and smoking
drowsily. A few traders took advantage of the idle hours to
study Japan. One of the most astute observers was Engelbert Kaempfer, a German doctor who gave his interpreters
Bateren
Bateren or “bugbear Padres” was
the derogatory label applied to
Christian priests, particularly
those of the Jesuit order, in sixteenth-century Japan. These
men often were depicted as
having long noses, strange
complexions, and uncouth,
aggressive habits.
shrike
Shrikes are shrill-sounding
birds with long tails and
hooked beaks; their plumage
is gray, white, and black.
26
MODERN JAPAN
liquor and medical treatments in ex-change for knowledge
and books during his two years at Dejima (1690 –92). His twovolume History of Japan, published in 1727–28, tells much
about the Japanese attitude toward foreigners then.
Dutchmen stroll in the garden-like area
outside their living quarters in Dejima, the
two-block-long island that served as their
home and headquarters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The artist
captured the quietness and boredom that
marked the months they had to spend in
Dejima between ship arrivals from Holland.
This jail goes by the name Dejima, that is, the island which lies in
front of the city. It is also called Dejima machi, because it is counted as one street: the street of the in-front-lying island. The island
is situated next to the city and has been built up with boulders one
and a half by two fathoms from the ocean floor, which at this
point is rocky and sandy and at low tide emerges from the water;
the island rises half a fathom above the highest water level. It has
the shape of a fan without a handle, or rounded square following
the curve of the city, to which it is linked by a bridge of hewn
stones a few steps long. . . . The area of the island is estimated
to be one stadium, or 600 steps in length and 240 in width.
According to my measurements it is 82 ordinary steps in width
and 236 in length through the middle, following the curve, being
shorter on the side of the city and longer on that facing the sea on
account of its shape. Two roads crossing each other run through
the whole island, and in addition there is a circular road within the
barricades, which can be closed off when necessary. The rain gutters run into the sea in a deep curve, so that they cannot be used
for passing anything in or out of the island. . . . Three guard houses are also situated within the limits of the island, one at each end
and in the middle. At the entrance there is moreover a place with
the necessary equipment to extinguish fires.
Kaempfer’s History of Japan also describes the way the
shogun treated the Dutch during one of their annual trips to
Image Not Available
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
27
the capital in Edo, which were required so that the govern-
It is prohibited
ment could stay informed about European affairs.
—that women enter, except prostitutes.
The shogun had first been seated next to the women at some distance in front of us, but now he moved to the side, as close to us
as he could behind the blind. He had us take off our kappa, or ceremonial robes, and sit upright so that he could inspect us; had us
now stand up and walk, now pay compliments to each other, then
again dance, jump, pretend to be drunk, speak Japanese, read
Dutch, draw, sing, put on our coats, and take them off again.
During this process I broke into the following song:
Wretched me! Impudently I thought
That the ordeal of wild escape to distant lands
Would permit me to forget you,
My angel.
Yet neither Taurus nor Caucus,
Turks nor heathens,
Indus nor Ganges River,
Can part us,
Can quell the fire. . . .
Away with you, court of empty pleasures!
Away with you, land of immense treasures!
Nothing can give me earthly pleasure,
But the chaste loveliness,
Of my precious Florimene.
Deeply longing for each other,
She for me, and I for her.
At the demand of the shogun we had to put up with providing
such amusements and perform innumerable other monkey tricks.
The captain, however, was excused so that the light of authority
of our superiors, whom he represented, would not be blemished.
Moreover, his poised demeanor made him an unlikely candidate
for such impositions. After we had drilled for two hours—albeit
always after courteous requests— . . . servants served each of us
with small Japanese dishes on separate little tables; instead of
knives we were given two small sticks. We ate just a little. The
remains had to be taken away by the old interpreter, carried with
both hands in front of him, by him who hardly had the strength
to drag his feet. Thereupon we were told to put on our coats and
take our leave; we complied immediately.
—that monks and mountain priests enter,
except the priests from Mount Kōya.
—that people enter who ask for alms or bet
for a living.
—to enter inside the posts placed around
Dejima or to pass below the bridge.
—that, unless it be unavoidable, the Dutch
leave Dejima.
The above order is to be strictly obeyed.
—Sign posted outside Dejima during
Engelbert Kaempfer’s stay there, 1690–92
Taurus nor Caucus
The Taurus are mountains in
southern Turkey, and the
Caucus is a mountain range
north of Turkey.
28
MODERN JAPAN
A Feudal Regime
In the spring of 1615, Tokugawa Ieyasu destroyed the last
vestiges of opposition in a vicious attack on the rival Toyotomi family castle in Osaka. Using nearly 200,000 men, he laid
waste to the castle defenses and forced the suicide of the
defending lord. Ieyasu’s victory established the Tokugawa as
Japan’s rulers and created the groundwork for a peace that
would last for 250 years. The bloody battle inspired what generally is considered Japan’s first example of journalism: a
broadside illustrating the battle and showing the consternation inside the Toyotomi castle. Published by Ieyasu on June 4,
Image Not Available
This artist’s depiction of Tokugawa
troops attacking the Osaka Castle in
1615 marked a major journalistic milestone as the first broadside, or singlepage newspaper, ever published in
Japan. The written characters at the
bottom describe the battle.
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
29
the day the battle ended, the sheet was intended to inspire
lords across the country to give the new rulers their loyalty.
The Tokugawa system for controlling the country was
unusually effective, a family-based structure that gave autonomy to each domain even while ensuring loyalty to the
central regime in Edo. Scholars have criticized the mature
Tokugawa government for being inflexible and insulated.
The truth is, however, that this government—called bakuhan
because of the way it balanced the bakufu, “central government,” and the han, “regional domains”—was both flexible
and resilient enough to keep Japan peaceful and vibrant for
the better part of 300 years.
At the base of the Tokugawa system was a commitment
to the Neo-Confucianism that had undergirded Chinese
dynasties for half a millennium. Under that doctrine, emphasis was placed on the four-class status system, in which samurai officials lorded it over farmers, craftsmen, and merchants
(in that order). It was the ruler’s responsibility to see that
people lived in comfort and fairness. Of special importance
was loyalty. All people—villagers, townspeople, workers,
priests, even samurai—were to faithfully follow those above
them in rank. At the same time, balance was equally important; even loyalty or the rank system would become destructive if used by the upper class to oppress the lower class.
Lords and followers alike were to seek the good of the country. The shogun’s advisor Ogyū Sōrai explains this system of
balance in a series of letters to warrior friends in the 1720s.
The division of everything in the world into four classes—warriors, peasants, artisans, and merchants—is something that the
sages devised long ago; the four classes of people did not exist naturally in heaven and on earth. Farmers cultivate the fields and feed
the people of the world. Artisans make household goods for the
people of the world to use. Merchants keep produce and goods
circulating and thus benefit the people of the world. And the warriors oversee all of this and prevent disorder. Although each class
performs its own duties, each assists the others, and so if any one
class were lacking, the country would be the worse for it. And so
because people live together, they all are officials helping the ruler
become the “father and mother of the people. . . .”
One’s first concern should be Humane Government—for
without the unity of rulers and their subjects, military victory is
impossible. Thus the lord of a province should regard his warriors
“F
ilial piety” entails serving one’s parents.
“Brotherly Respect” entails serving
one’s elder brother. “Loyalty” entails taking
on and doing for others—whether a lord
or anyone else—what one would do for
oneself. “Trust” requires speaking carefully
and not lying or making mistakes in one’s
dealings with friends and others as well.
—Shogun’s advisor Ogyū Sōrai in a letter
of 1727
30
MODERN JAPAN
and the general population as a
family that has been given him by
Heaven, a family that he cannot
abandon. He should make their
hardship his hardship and do what
he can to make them enjoy their
lives in the province. . . .
The general population is
Image Not Available
dumb and does only what they are
used to doing. This being so, one
must plan even everyday matters,
grow grasses and trees locally,
carry out the annual tree cutting at
New Year’s, assemble the hundred
craftsmen, and encourage commerce. If the root (read agriculture)
Buddhist sects such as Shingon, which
is slighted and the branch (read commerce) is favored, the
was founded by the priest Kōbō Daishi,
province will decline, and the resulting mob of merchants will
provided a popular, more devotional alterbecome the bane of the province. But there are cases in which a
native to the philosophical approach of
Neo-Confucianism. This devotional scroll
poor province became rich through its merchants. In any event,
shows Kōbō Daishi during his student
one should pay attention to the ebb and flow of commerce.
years in China, at a banquet celebrating
his ordination. Though the scroll does
Because extravagance and gambling signal the deterioration of the
not identify the celebrants, Kōbō is probapopulation at large, one should prohibit gambling, using harsh
bly seated in the center at the top table.
punishments to enforce the prohibition, and set up a system regulating dress and house wares. If you are cautious, your province
should become as wealthy as you want. . . .
The idea that our bodies belong to our lords and are no longer
ours is popular nowadays. Yet this does not appear in the Way of
Sages and should be seen as the stuff of flattery and sycophancy.
. . . “Loyalty” is seeing another person’s affairs as one’s own and
nothing more. . . . Retainers are a lord’s assistants, not his person* Man’s life is like going on a long journey under
al toys. The practice of treating retainers as toys originates in the
a heavy burden: one must not hurry.
mistake mentioned earlier—namely, the idea that a retainer’s body
* If you regard discomfort as a normal condition
you are not likely to be troubled by want.
is not his own property—and this violates the Way of Sages.
* When ambition arises in your mind consider
the days of your adversity.
* Patience is the foundation of security and long
life: consider anger as an enemy.
* He who only knows victory and doesn’t know
defeat will fare badly.
* Blame yourself: don’t blame others.
* The insufficient is better than the superfluous.
—Maxims of Tokugawa Ieyasu
At the center of the Tokugawa system was the bakufu’s control of every aspect of the feudal lords’ lives under military
“house laws.” These laws, issued in 1615, provided instructions on everything from daimyō’s etiquette to their ways
of spending money. The most important of the regulations
was Number Nine, which required that lords spend regular
periods in Edo serving the shogun. It laid the basis for the
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
31
innovative governmental system that made daimyō simultaneously lords of their own domains and submissive servants of the Tokugawa rulers.
1. The study of literature and the practice of the military arts,
including archery and horsemanship, must be cultivated diligently.
“On the left hand literature, on the right hand use of arms” was the
rule of the ancients. Both must be pursued concurrently. Archery
and horsemanship are essential skills for military men. . . .
2. Avoid group drinking and wild parties. The existing codes
forbid these matters. Especially, when one indulges in licentious
sex, or becomes addicted to gambling, it creates a cause for the
destruction of one’s own domain.
7. If innovations are being made or factions are being formed
in a neighboring domain, it must be reported immediately. Men
have a proclivity toward forming factions, but seldom do they
attain their goals. There are some who [on account of their factions] disobey their masters and fathers, and feud with their neighboring villages. Why must one engage in [meaningless] innovations, instead of obeying old examples?
8. Marriage must not be contracted in private. . . . The thirtyeighth hexagram k’uei [from the Book of Changes], says “marriage is
not to be contracted to create disturbance. Let the longing of male
and female for each other be satisfied. If disturbance is to take
hold, then the proper time will slip by.” . . . To form a factional
alliance through marriage is the root of treason.
9. The daimyō’s visits (sankin) to Edo must follow the following
regulations: . . . It is not permissible to be accompanied by a large
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the Book of Changes
T
he Book of Changes, one of
Confucianism’s five ancient
classics, explained various
combinations of short and
long lines, to enable readers
to divine the future.
Nijō Castle was constructed by the
Tokugawa government in the 1600s
as a residence for the shogun when
he visited Kyoto. It was noted for its
“nightingale floors,” which warned
of approaching enemies by making a
chirping sound when people walked
on them. All Japanese castles were
surrounded by moats to protect them
from enemy armies.
32
koku
A koku was the standard unit
of pay and taxation during the
Tokugawa era. It equaled about
five bushels of unpolished rice.
Despite the prohibition on taking
“a large force of soldiers” along,
powerful daimyō often took hundreds—or even thousands—of
men with them to Edo.
MODERN JAPAN
force of soldiers. For the daimyō whose revenues range from
1,000,000 koku down to 200,000 koku of rice, not more than twenty horsemen may accompany them. For those whose revenues
are 100,000 koku or less, the number is to be proportionate to
their incomes. On official business, however, the number of
persons accompanying him can be proportionate to the rank of
each daimyō.
12. The samurai of all domains must practice frugality. When
the rich proudly display their wealth, the poor are ashamed of not
being on a par with them. There is nothing which will corrupt
public morality more than this, and therefore it must be severely
restricted.
A 1635 amendment to House Law Number Nine stipulated
that daimyō service in Edo would occur in alternating years.
This created the sankin kōtai, “alternate attendance,” system that required lords to spend every other year in the
capital while their wives and children remained there permanently, as hostages. This system did more than anything
else to integrate the Tokugawa realm.
It is now settled that the daimyō . . . are to serve in turns (kōtai) at
Edo. They shall proceed hither (sankin) every year in the summer
during the course of the fourth month. Lately the numbers of
retainers and servants accompanying them have become excessive. This is not only wasteful to the domains and districts, but
also imposes considerable hardship on the people.
An important feature of the Tokugawa system was the
respectful but condescending way in which officials treated
the emperor. Japan has the oldest unbroken imperial line in
the world, with successive generations of the same family
having held the throne for more than 1,700 years. Since the
ninth century, however, the emperors had had little more
than spiritual power, with people outside the imperial family running the country. During the 200 years prior to the
Tokugawa victory, the emperors had been not only powerless but impoverished, as rival lords were too busy fighting
each other to pay much attention to the throne. In an effort
to shore up its own legitimacy, the Tokugawa family restored
the emperors’ palaces, built grand gardens for them, and
provided them with money to live well. The Tokugawa did
not, however, restore power to the throne. By keeping the
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
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emperors in Kyoto while setting up the bakufu three hundred miles to the east, in Edo, the shogun made it clear:
emperors would be high priests, shoguns would rule.
Three pieces of literature illustrate the changing role of
the emperors across time. The first, this poem from the
ancient anthology Man’yōshū (A Collection of Ten Thousand
Leaves), written in 759 CE, indicates the power and prestige
of the sovereigns in the 700s, a century when both males and
females ruled.
Our great Sovereign, a goddess,
Of her sacred will
Has reared a towering place
On Yoshinu’s shore,
Encircled by its rapids;
And, climbing, she surveys the land.
The overlapping mountains,
Rising like green walls,
Offer the blossoms in spring,
And with autumn, show their tinted leaves,
As godly tributes to the Throne.
The god of the Yu River, to provide the royal table,
Holds the cormorant-fishing
In its upper shallows,
And sinks the fishing-nets
In the lower stream.
33
This illustration accompanied
an 1872 Harper’s Weekly
article on the godlike status
of Japan’s ruler. This image
shows an imagined audience
before the emperor by samurai
officials, who dare not look
upon his divine face. The
emperor appears partly veiled
at the top, in the middle of the
room, sitting behind a screen.
34
MODERN JAPAN
Thus the mountains and the river
Serve our Sovereign, one in will;
It is truly the reign of a divinity.
In the early eleventh century, the female courtier Murasaki
Shikibu wrote the Tale of Genji, a 1,000-page masterpiece
depicting the lavish lives of the aristocrats that is often
called the world’s first novel. By this time, most emperors
had grown politically weak, symbolic figureheads who
enjoyed luxurious living and romance while regents and
nobles exercised power.
Episodes from the Tale of Genji inspired
countless artists across Japanese history.
Here the seventeenth-century artist Iwasa
Matabei depicts a spring storm at the isolated beach at Suma in western Japan,
where Prince Genji was exiled after a
scandalous love affair. Blooming cherry
trees, which symbolize sadness because
of the blossoms’ short lives, suggest the
prince’s anguish and loneliness.
In a certain reign there was a lady not of the first rank whom the
emperor loved more than any of the others. The grand ladies with
high ambitions thought her a presumptuous upstart, and lesser
ladies were still more resentful. Everything she did offended someone. Probably aware of what was happening, she fell seriously ill
and came to spend more time at home than at court. The emperor’s pity and affection quite passed bounds. No longer caring what
his ladies and courtiers might say, he behaved as if intent upon
stirring gossip. . . .
It may have been because of a bond in a former life that she
bore the emperor a beautiful son, a jewel beyond compare. The
emperor was in a fever of impatience to see the child, still with the
mother’s family; and when, on the earliest day possible, he was
brought to court, he did indeed prove to be a most marvelous
babe. The emperor’s eldest son was the grandson of the Minister
of the Right. The world assumed that with this powerful support
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THE SHOGUN’S REALM
35
he would one day be named crown prince; but the new child was
far more beautiful. On public occasions the emperor continued to
favor his eldest son. The new child was a private treasure, so to
speak, on which to lavish uninhibited affection.
The mother was not of such a low rank as to attend upon the
emperor’s personal needs. In the general view she belonged to the
upper classes. He insisted on having her always beside him, however, and on nights when there was music or other entertainment
he would require that she be present. Sometimes the two of them
would sleep late, and even after they had risen he would not let her
go. Because of his unreasonable demands she was widely held to
have fallen into immoderate habits out of keeping with her rank.
With the birth of the son, it became yet clearer that she was
the emperor’s favorite.
By the early 1600s, Tokugawa Ieyasu saw the emperor’s role
as largely ritualistic and spiritual, in contrast to his own
more powerful role. His attitude is revealed in this story
from the Historical Records of Great Japan.
Once, Lord Tosho [Tokugawa Ieyasu] conversed with Honda,
Governor Sado, on the subject of the emperor, the shogun, and
the farmer. “Whether there is order or chaos in the nation depends
on the virtues and vices of these three. The emperor, with compassion in his heart for the needs of the people, must not be remiss
in the performance of his duties—from the early morning worship
of the New Year to the monthly functions of the court. Secondly,
the shogun must not forget the possibility of war in the peacetime,
and must maintain his discipline. He should be able to maintain
order in the country; he should bear in mind the security of the
sovereign; and he must strive to dispel the anxieties of the people.
One who cultivates the way of the warrior only in the times of crisis is like a rat who bites his captor in the throes of being captured.
The man may die from the effects of poisonous bite, but to generate courage at the spur of the moment is not the way of a warrior. To assume the way of the warrior upon the outbreak of war is
like a rat biting its captor. Although this is better than fleeing from
the scene, the true master of the way of the warrior is one who
maintains his martial discipline even in time of peace.
The Tokugawa legal system was well developed, with laws
for each institution and status group, as well as detailed
administrative and criminal codes for the nation. Constant
36
T
he best-known judicial decision of the
Tokugawa era inspired the Tale of the FortySeven Masterless Warriors (Chūshingura), which
narrated the experience of servants whose
lord, Asano Naganori, was sentenced to commit suicide after he lost his temper in 1701
and drew his sword in the shogun’s court
against an arrogant superior named Kira. His
forty-seven retainers spent much of the next
two years throwing Kira off guard by pretending to have become dissolute, then regrouped,
charged Kira’s estate, found him hiding in a
storeroom, and killed him. They took his head
to Sengakukji temple, where Asano’s remains
had been interred, and presented it to their
lord. The case created a sensation for the
nation and a problem for the government,
because while contemporary laws demanded
execution for murder, the public was impressed
by the retainers’ faithfulness to the old feudal
code of vengeance. In the end, the men were
ordered to commit suicide, thus upholding
both the law and their own honor. The event
has inspired endless stories and dramas over
the last 300 years.
MODERN JAPAN
discussions by scholars and writers of how to apply legal
principles to daily life supplemented the formal laws. This
account by the scholar-statesman Arai Hakuseki about a
young warrior who was jailed in 1716 for running away from
his lord typically reflects the widespread concern with applying laws justly to life’s complex situations.
In the region of the Sagami River . . . a young samurai who had
killed a robber had been detained by the men of Nakajima in that
neighborhood and had been brought to the Daikansho [steward’s
office]. When the incident was looked into, it was ascertained that
the samurai was called Sakai. . . . On his way to Suruga Providence,
between Totsuka and Fujisawa, a big man began following him,
and when he got near the river, the fellow had put his hand into
the samurai’s bosom and stolen his purse, so the samurai drew his
sword and cut him down with one stroke. When the local people
were interrogated about the man who had been killed, they
replied that they did not know anything about him but that he
might be a robber plying up and down the highway. It was also
said that this young samurai was a retainer in the house of Honda
Totomi-no-Kami Masatake and that he had recently run away
from his lord’s house. Although his slaying of the robber was a fine
deed, since he had run away from his lord’s house, he had, for the
time being, been put into prison on the grounds that his offense
could not be overlooked.
I told Akifusa that if this man were punished, the rest of the
robber-band would spread a false report, and that if the story got
about that he had been punished for killing a robber, in the future
people traveling along the highway would suffer beyond
endurance at the hands of robbers. However, I said there was a
way to deal with the matter and he should delay his decision for
a while. I sent a message to Asakura Yoichi Kagetake telling him
there was something I wanted to see him about. He came at once,
and I asked him if someone had recently run away from his master’s house. He replied: “That is so. A man named Sakai has run
away and killed a robber near the Sagami River.” I told him that it
was because of that man that I had asked him to see me and said:
“It will be very cruel if, despite the fact that the young fellow has
killed a robber, he is punished because he has run away from his
lord’s house. What should we do?” “I see,” he said, and came the
next day and told me he had spoken to his lord who had agreed
not to inflict any punishment on the man. I told him that was wise
and reported what had happened to Akifusa.
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
37
Life Under the Tokugawa
The samurai class dominated the Tokugawa world. They rested atop the status system, held all offices, operated most of
the schools, and received government stipends for their service to society. However, with the honors came restrictions
that prevented samurai from going into business or participating—except in disguise—in the popular culture of the
cities. As a result, although many of them lived well, an even
greater number lived at the edge of poverty. Many samurai
were unemployed because there were too few government
(i.e., respectable) jobs, which forced them to idleness and
decadence because they had no other work options. By the
early 1800s, many daimyō were deeply in debt, in hock to the
merchants who lived free of the restrictions. Regardless of
their personal condition, all samurai strove for the ideal. One
of its foremost spokesmen was Yamamoto Tsunetomo, who
became well known in the eighteenth century for a 1716
book of sayings called Hagakure (In the Shadow of Leaves),
on the way samurai should live.
The way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to
either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one’s aim is to die a dog’s death is the frivolous way
of sophisticates.
It is bad taste to yawn in front of people. When one unexpectedly has to yawn, if he rubs his forehead in an upward direction, the sensation will stop. If that does not work, he can lick his
lips while keeping his mouth closed, or simply hide it with his
hand or his sleeve in such a way that no one will know what he is
doing. It is the same with sneezing.
These are from the recorded sayings of Yamamoto Jin’emon:
If you can understand one affair, you will understand eight.
An affected laugh shows lack of self-respect in a man and lewdness in a woman. . . .
A samurai with no group and no horse is not a samurai at all. . . .
It is said that one should rise at four in the morning, bathe and
arrange his hair daily, eat when the sun comes up, and retire
when it becomes dark.
A samurai will use a toothpick even though he has not eaten.
There are two kinds of dispositions, inward and outward, and
a person who is lacking in one
or the other is worthless. It is,
for example, like the blade of a
sword. . . . If a person has his
sword out all the time, he is
habitually swinging a naked
blade; people will not approach
him. . . . If a sword is always
sheathed, it will become rusty,
the blade will dull, and people
will think as much of its owner.
—Yamamoto Tsunetomo,
Hagakure: The Book of the
Samurai, 1716
38
The samurai’s most important
talent was the ability to use his
sword skillfully and justly.
Each samurai wore two swords,
a long one for battle and a short
one with which to kill himself if
the occasion demanded it. These
swords, made in the fifteenth
century, were approximately 25
and 20 inches long, respectively.
MODERN JAPAN
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When someone is giving you his opinion, you should receive it with
deep gratitude even though it is worthless. If you don’t, he will not
tell you the things that he has seen and heard about you again. It is
best to both give and receive opinions in a friendly way.
Lord Naoshige said, “An ancestor’s good or evil can be determined by
the conduct of his descendants.” A descendant should act in a way
that will manifest the good in his ancestor and not the bad. This is
filial piety.
At the other end of the samurai spectrum was Katsu Kokichi,
a ne’er-do-well of the early 1800s who wrote an autobiography under the pseudonym Musui’s Story, revealing just
about every trait—dishonesty, womanizing, brawling, idleness—a samurai should avoid. His summation at the end of
his memoir pretends shame, but exudes self-satisfaction.
At my brother’s office in Edo there was a man by the name of
Kuboshima Karoku. One day he tricked me into going with him
to the pleasure quarters in the Yoshiwara. I enjoyed myself
immensely and after that went every night. I used up all my
money. Just as I was wondering what to do, the annual tax
money—about seven thousand ryō—arrived from the shogunate
land under my brother’s jurisdiction in Shinano. My brother
ordered me to guard the money until it was delivered to the
shogunate treasury. I kept an eye on the funds, but then my friend
Karoku suggested, “Without money it isn’t much fun in the
Yoshiwara, is it? Go ahead and steal one hundred ryō.” “Not a bad
idea,” I said, and prying open the strongbox, I removed two hundred ryō.
The box rattled rather suspiciously afterward, but Karoku fixed
that by putting in some stones wrapped in paper. The two of us
went about our business looking very innocent. Several days later
my brother Hikoshirō discovered the theft, and when he angrily
cross-examined everyone, the damned errand boy blurted out that
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
39
I had stolen the money. . . . It was plain as day that I had stolen
the money. All the same, everyone looked the other way, and the
incident passed over. As for the two hundred ryō, I spent it all in
the Yoshiwara in less than a month and a half. After that I had to
scrounge from the rice agents at the shogunate warehouse and
other moneylenders. . . .
Reflections on My Life
Although I indulged in every manner of folly and nonsense in
my lifetime, Heaven seems not to have punished me as yet. Here
I am, forty-two, sound of health and without a scratch on my
body. Some of my friends were beaten to death; others vanished
without a trace or suffered one fate or another. I must have been
born under a lucky star, the way I did whatever I pleased. No other
samurai with such a low stipend spent money as I did. And how I
blustered and swaggered about with a trail of followers at my beck
and call!
I wore kimonos of imported silk and fine fabrics that were
beyond the reach of most people. I ate my fill of good food, and
all my life I bought as many prostitutes as I liked. I lived life fully.
Only recently have I come to my senses and begun to act more like
a human being. When I think of my past, my hair stands on end.
He who would call himself a man would do well to not imitate
my ways.
Any grandchildren or great-grandchildren that I may have—
let them read carefully what I have set down and take it as a warning. Even putting these words on paper fills me with shame. . . .
I am most fortunate in having a filial and obedient son. My
daughters, too, are very devoted. My wife has never gone against
my wishes. I am altogether satisfied to have lived until now without any serious mishap. At forty-two I have understood for the
first time what it means to follow the path of righteousness, to
serve one’s lord and one’s father, to live with one’s kinsmen in harmony, and to have compassion and love for one’s wife, children,
and servants.
My past conduct truly fills me with horror. Let my children,
their children, and their children’s children read this record carefully and savor its meaning. So be it.
Early in Japan’s history, women had held prominent roles,
reigned as empresses, written much of the best literature,
and on occasion even served as warriors. By the feudal era,
however, their status had declined to that of subservient
40
MODERN JAPAN
wives responsible for rearing families and serving their husbands. But the reality was more complex, and many Tokugawa women exerted power in fields as varied as literature,
business, and the entertainment world. The official values
of an ideal woman were encapsulated in a widely circulated
1716 manual Onna daigaku (Great Learning for Women). It
calls for wo-men to be obedient, quiet, hard-working, and
self-controlled.
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One of the tasks demanded of women
in Tokugawa society was to hang out
both clothes and books each year in
order to prevent mildew and kill
insects. One woman stops to peruse
the book she has opened.
The five worst infirmities that
afflict the female are indocility,
discontent, slander, jealousy, and
silliness. Without any doubt, these
five infirmities are found in seven
or eight out of every ten women.
—Great Learning for Women, 1716
More precious in a woman is a virtuous heart than a face of beauty. The vicious woman’s heart is ever excited; she glares wildly
around her, she vents her anger on others, her words are harsh and
her accent vulgar. When she speaks it is to set herself above others, to upbraid others, to envy others, to be puffed up with individual pride, to jeer at others, to outdo others—all things at variance with the way in which a woman should walk. The only
qualities that benefit a woman are gentle obedience, chastity,
mercy and quietness.
From her earliest youth a girl should observe the line of demarcation separating women from men, and never, even for an
instant, should she be allowed to see or hear the least impropriety.
The customs of antiquity did not allow men and women to sit in
the same apartment, to keep their wearing apparel in the same
place, to bathe in the same place, or to transmit to each other anything directly from hand to hand. . . .
The great lifelong duty of a woman is obedience. In her dealings with her husband, both the expression of her countenance
and style of her address should be courteous, humble, and conciliatory, never peevish and intractable, never rude and arrogant—
that should be a woman’s first and chiefest care. When the husband issues his instructions, the wife must never disobey him. . . .
Should her husband be roused at any time to anger, she must obey
him with fear and trembling, and not set herself up against him in
anger and forwardness. A woman should look on her husband as
if he were Heaven itself. . . .
Let her never even dream of jealousy. If her husband be dissolute, she must expostulate with him, but never either nurse or
vent her anger. If her jealousy be extreme, it will render her countenance frightful and her accent repulsive, and can only result in
completely alienating her husband from her.
The most lively sector of Tokugawa life probably was the
entertainment quarter in each of the large towns and cities,
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
41
an area known for its free-wheeling style as the “floating
world” of geisha, theater, dance, music, woodblock art, and
popular literature. Condemned by the ruling elites as bastions of moral decay, these centers fostered new artistic
forms that in later generations would be hailed as creative,
avant-garde—and distinctly Japanese. One product of this
world was the ukiyo-e, or woodblock print of the floating
world: from the early illustrated guides to courtesan life by
the artist Moronobu Hishikawa to the depictions of natural
wonders and commoner life by the era’s most celebrated
printmaker, Andō Hiroshige. No one captured the spirit of
this world more fully than the novelist Ihara Saikaku, who
wrote about samurai justice, vendettas, love affairs, and
moneymaking. His 1688 accounts of merchant greed in The
Eternal Storehouse of Japan ridicule men willing to bend any
rule in search of riches.
Fuji-ichi was a clever man, and his substantial fortune was amassed
in his own lifetime. But first and foremost he was a man who knew
his own mind, and this was the basis of his success. In addition to
carrying out his own business, he kept a separate ledger, bound
from old scraps of paper, in which, as he sat all day in his shop,
pen in hand, he entered a variety of information. As the clerks
from the money exchanges passed by he noted down the market
ratio of copper and gold; he inquired about the current quotations
of the stock brokers; he sought information from druggists’ and
haberdashers’ assistants on the state of the market at Nagasaki; for
the latest news on ginned cotton, salt, and saké, he noted the various days on which the Kyoto dealers received dispatches from
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T
he most popular poetic form of the Tokugawa era was the three-line, seventeensyllable haiku, and the greatest master of the
form was Matsuo Bashō, who spent years
wandering on foot across Japan, writing travel
accounts interlaced with poetry.
Men have grieved to hear monkeys—
What of a child forsaken
In the autumn wind?
My summer clothing—
I still have not quite finished
Picking out the lice.
Octopus in a trap—
Its dreams are fleeting under
The summer moon.
I can see how she looked—
The old woman, weeping alone,
The moon her companion.
The passing of spring—
The birds weep and in the eyes
Of fish there are tears.
One of the earliest eighteenth-century
ukiyo-e artists, Miyagawa Chosun, was
known for his attention to the elegant attire
of the geisha and their visitors. Here, in the
scroll “Festivals of the Twelve Months,” he
shows a group of geisha dancing, while
several musicians play the flute, drums,
and three-stringed shamisen (lute) during
an autumn festival.
42
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Andō Hiroshige was the first prominent
artist to add landscapes and daily
scenes to the woodblock genre, of which
this depiction of a flash rainstorm at
Ohashi is typical. Andō is known to
have designed more than 10,000 prints.
MODERN JAPAN
the Edo branch shops. Every day a thousand
things were entered in his book, and people
came to Fuji-ichi if they were ever in doubt. . . .
Once, on the evening of the seventh day of
the New Year, some neighbors asked leave to
send their sons to Fuji-ichi’s house to seek advice on how to become millionaires. Lighting
the lamp in the sitting room, Fuji-ichi sent his
daughter to wait, bidding her let him know
when she heard a noise at the private door from
the street. The young girl, doing as she was told
with charming grace, first carefully lowered the
wick in the lamp. Then, when she heard the
voices of visitors, she raised the wick again and
retired to the scullery. By the time the three
guests had seated themselves the grinding of an
earthenware mortar could be heard from the
kitchen, and the sound fell with pleasant
promise on their ears. They speculated on what
was in store for them.
“Pickled whale skin soup?” hazarded the
first.
“No. As this is our first visit of the year, it
ought to be rice-cake gruel,” said the second.
The third listened carefully for some time,
and then confidently announced that it was
noodle soup. Visitors always go through this amusing performance. Fuji-ichi then entered and talked to the three of them on
the requisites for success. . . .
“As a general rule,” concluded Fuji-ichi, “give the closest attention to even the smallest details. Well now, you have kindly talked
with me from early evening, and it is high time that refreshments
were served. But not to provide refreshments is one way of becoming a millionaire. The noise of the mortar you heard when you
first arrived was the pounding of starch for the covers of the
Account Book.”
The Shogunate Under Challenge
In 1771 the physician Sugita Genpaku discovered a Dutch
anatomy book that illustrated the body’s internal organs in
ways wholly at variance with Chinese medical texts. When
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
43
an autopsy supported the Dutch version, he decided to study
the West more earnestly. It was a sign that a new world was
arriving. Japan had always looked to China as the font of
wisdom and culture, dominating the world like the shogun
dominated his domains. But in the next decades, the old
order began to crumble. Western ships breached the coast,
scholars began to question both Chinese scholarship and
Japan’s defenses, and some officials began raising doubts
about Tokugawa legitimacy. All the while, the bakufu was
growing old and less capable of handling change.
The Tokugawa rulers issued a decree after British ships
showed up in Nagasaki harbor in 1825, ordering the immediate expulsion of all foreign visitors and revealing both the
rulers’ fears and their inflexible mindset.
One sign of the changing times in the late
Tokugawa years was the appearance of
paintings depicting the functions of the
human body. This print by the nineteenthcentury woodblock artist Utagawa
Kunisada shows a man digesting a carp,
one of Japan’s favorite seafoods.
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44
MODERN JAPAN
Because there has been an increase in the number of ships [coming to our shores], a new decree is needed. . . . A British ship carried out violent acts in Nagasaki several years ago; more recently
they have been using rowboats to approach shore at several
places, asking for firewood, water, and provisions. Last year, they
landed without permission and attacked cargo vessels, then stole
rice, grain, and livestock. They also have engaged in the unacceptable behavior of encouraging their evil religion. Nor are the
English alone responsible. The Southern Barbarians and other
Westerners all come, despite our prohibitions on their evil religion, landing at whatever port village they desire. We will send
men to those areas and expel them. . . . If they insist on landing
and trying to push us aside, we have no choice but to destroy
them. . . . Chinese, Korean, and Okinawan vessels are easy to recognize. Dutch ships, which are harder to recognize, must be
inspected and checked carefully. Boats from anywhere else should
be sent away without a second thought.
While some scholars called for Japan to open up to the
West—to begin trading and develop a modern army—others
focused on the need to strengthen Japan by renewing
ancient values. Japanese culture, said the nationalist scholar
Aizawa Seishisai, was inherently superior to that of the
West, but the regime needed to be strengthened by placing
the emperor at the center, just as Europe had made Christianity the core of Western institutions. Aizawa’s Shinron (New
Theses), published in 1825, argues that even though Christianity is evil, it unifies the Westerners and makes them
strong. Japan, it says, must return to “the way,” to the
emperor-centered values that had enabled it to triumph over
foreign challenges such as that of the Mongols in the thirteenth century.
For close to three hundred years now the Western barbarians have
rampaged on the high seas. Why are they able to enlarge their territories and fulfill their every desire? Does their wisdom and
courage exceed that of an ordinary man? Is their government so
benevolent that they win popular support? Are their rites, music,
laws, and political institutions superb in all respects? Do they
possess some superhuman, divine powers? Hardly. Christianity is
the sole key of their success. It is a truly evil and base religion,
barely worth discussing. But its main doctrines are simple to grasp
THE SHOGUN’S REALM
45
and well-contrived; they can easily deceive stupid commoners
with it. . . .
They win a reputation for benevolence by performing small
acts of kindness temporarily to peoples they seek to conquer. After
they capture a people’s hearts and minds, they propagate their doctrines. Their gross falsehoods and misrepresentations deceive
many, particularly those who yearn for things foreign. Such dupes,
with their smattering of secondhand Western knowledge, write
books with an air of scholarly authority; so even daimyō or highranking officials at times cannot escape infection from barbarian
ways. Once beguiled by Christianity, they cannot be brought back
to their senses. Herein lies the secret of barbarians’ success.
Whenever they seek to take over a country, they employ the
same method. By trading with that nation, they learn about its
geography and defenses. If these be weak, they dispatch troops to
invade the nation; if strong, they propagate Christianity to subvert it from within. Once our people’s hearts and minds are captivated by Christianity, they will greet the barbarian host with open
arms, and we will be powerless to stop them. . . .
To defend the nation and improve military preparedness, we
first must determine our fundamental [foreign] policy—war or
peace. Otherwise we will drift aimlessly, morale and discipline will
slacken, high and low will indulge in the ways of ease and comfort, intelligent men will be unable to devise stratagems, and
courageous men will be unable to work up their anger. . . . When
the Mongols sullied our honor, Hojo Tokimune resolutely
beheaded their envoy and ordered that an army be raised to smite
them. His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Kameyama, prayed that a
disaster befall himself rather than the nation. In that hour of crisis,
we willingly courted oblivion and the people ceased fearing death.
Indeed, did anyone not aspire to die ardently in the realm’s defense!
Hence, we once again attained spiritual unity, and the purity and
intensity of our sincerity unleashed a raging typhoon that
destroyed the barbarian fleet. Ah, the ancients expressed it well
when they said, “Place a man between the jaws of death, and he
will emerge unscathed.” Or again, “If officials and commoners are
led to believe that savage hordes are closing in, fortune will be
with us.” Therefore I say that we must once and for all establish
our basic foreign policy and place the realm between the jaws of
death. Only then can we implement defense measures.
Image Not Available
The Tokugawa government’s opposition
to Christianity is symbolized by this
carved stone on the island of Amakusa,
marking the place where thousands of
Christians were buried after being killed
in an uprising against the government in
1636. The stone, dedicated to the “martyrs” of a region known for its resistance
against the Tokugawa government, was
photographed by a Christian missionary
early in the 1900s.
Image Not Available
47
C h a p t e r Tw o : P i c t u r e E s s a y
The Old
Order Topples:
1853–68
J
A nineteenth-century print
entitled “United States of
North America: Perry Arrives
in Uraga, Soshu Province”
shows the steamship on which
Commodore Matthew Perry
entered Edo Bay in July 1853
to open relations between Japan
and the United States. His ship
flies the American flag and
belches black smoke.
apanese leadership circles were filled with talk about naiyū gaikan
at the beginning of the 1850s. The phrase, which means “troubles at home and dangers from abroad,” came from the ancient
Chinese idea that when serious foreign and domestic troubles
occur simultaneously, the dynasty is about to fall. And troubles of
every sort were plaguing the ruling Tokugawa family. The bakufu
administrative structures were old and creaky, leading one young
upstart to say that hidebound officials acted like “wooden monkeys.”
The ruling elites were laden with debts so heavy that, for some, loan
interest alone consumed 90 percent of their annual income. Discontented urbanites in Osaka, angry over high taxes, famine, and poor
services, had destroyed a quarter of the city during the late 1830s. And
though the rebellion was put down fairly easily, the regime had not
been able to quell a deluge of ensuing criticism from the political and
intellectual elites. Scholars decried official inability to meet the needs
of the poor. Dutch-learning scholars complained that Japan had not
kept up with the West. Traditionalists lamented the movement of jobseeking peasants into the cities. Domain lords were frustrated over the
costs of the alternate attendance system.
As if to underline the instability, foreign ships were showing up
with increasing frequency in Japanese waters. When U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo Bay in 1853 with black ships laden
with nearly a hundred cannons, the Japanese concluded that the “dangers from abroad” were imminent. The Tokugawa’s hold on power
seemed tenuous.
48
Abe Yasuyuki’s 1853 map of the world
reflects the imprecision of the Japanese understanding of the world beyond their shores.
The legend at the bottom says the world has
four great seas (which it does not identify)
and six continents: Asia, North America,
South America, Europe, Rimiya (Africa),
and Mecalanica, the huge land mass at the
southern extreme. It identifies seas by names
such as Great Western Ocean (eastern
Atlantic), Large Eastern Ocean (western
Atlantic), South Sea (southern Pacific), …