$Unique_ID{COW01986} $Pretitle{230} $Title{Japan Chapter 1A. Historical Setting} $Subtitle{} $Author{Rinn-Sup Shinn} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{japan japanese century military imperial period china court time political} $Date{1981} $Log{Himeji Castle*0198601.scf } Country: Japan Book: Japan, A Country Study Author: Rinn-Sup Shinn Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1981 Chapter 1A. Historical Setting [See Himeji Castle: Himeji Castle, built in the late sixteenth century and located seventy-two kilometers west of Osaka, is one of the finest remaining examples of feudal castle architecture.] Geography has been a significant factor in the historical evolution of Japan. In its formative centuries the country was spared foreign invasions and impositions, being shielded by the sea from all centers of early civilization except China, which itself was not close enough to intrude in Japanese affairs but not distant enough to be entirely inconsequential. In fact in the indigenous development of political, cultural, and social life, geographical proximity to China had extensive and far-reaching consequences. Initially through the sinicized local kingdoms in the Korean peninsula and later directly, the Japanese borrowed heavily from China and adapted Chinese patterns to their environment and traditions. The result is a distinctive Japanese culture within which, however, certain elements are still identifiable as Chinese-influenced. China was not the only source of foreign influence, however. The process of borrowing, adaptation, and reinterpretation was affected also by contacts with European missionaries and traders beginning in the sixteenth century-and, of course, by the Japanese defeat in World War II and the resulting Allied occupation, the principal agent of which was the United States. In their early contacts with Western "barbarians" the Japanese showed a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. This ambivalence led to two centuries of self-imposed national isolation until 1854 when Japan was shocked to realize that the sea could no longer provide the natural shield against the technologically superior Western military powers. The rude awakening generated a mood of anxiety and a host of searching questions about how best to cope with seaborne pressure from Westerners to end the country's isolation. The decision to yield to the Western demand for trade in the mid-nineteenth century was a significant turning point in Japanese history. It provided impetus for the overthrow of the feudal dictatorship of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868). Of much greater significance was the fact that this ending was the beginning of a new Japan, no longer encumbered by the feudal norms and practices of the preceding seven hundred years. It was during those feudal centuries, however, that the basic social, political, and cultural patterns of contemporary Japan had crystallized. Politically the country had been under dual authority: the emperor was limited to ceremonial functions symbolizing the continuity of the nation but the actual power of governance was exercised by a military strong man called the shogun and a hereditary ruling class consisting of territorial lords and warriors. Imperial rule restored in 1868 under the youthful Meiji emperor, a new Japan began to take shape under a small group of young samurai (warriors) who held commanding positions as the oligarchs of the new order. Their overriding purpose was to bring about political, economic, social, and military modernization of Japan and to enable the country to compete with the Western powers on equal terms. The dramatic success attained in modernization, as measured by victorious wars with China and Russia, brought with it a degree of social evolution and a large measure of economic progress. Politically the new Japan became a constitutional monarchy. Political parties were formed and participated in elections to the national legislature, called the Imperial Diet, but the supremacy of the oligarchy-controlled executive branch acting in the name of the emperor was beyond challenge. The Meiji oligarchy wanted a prosperous and militarily powerful Japan but not a democratic polity based on popular sovereignty. The Meiji ruling elite and its bureaucratic successors sought not only to preserve but to emphasize the values of unquestioning obedience to superiors, absolute loyalty to the emperor and his representatives, and self-sacrifice. Belief in the divine origin of the emperor and the nation was revived to stimulate national loyalty, and an aggressive nationalism was rationalized in terms of a sacred mission claimed for the nation. Japan's role as a major power was enhanced further in the second decade of the twentieth century, and its expansionist designs on the Asian mainland heightened the uneasiness of China and Western powers. At home there was social and economic unrest occasioned by the end of World War I boom conditions. Internal tensions, coupled with growing Japanese frustrations caused by Western efforts to contain Japanese expansionism, took on increasingly nationalistic undertones. In the 1930s the problems were compounded by the severe effect on Japan of worldwide depression, and an ultranationalist military group was able to arrogate power to itself, resulting in an attempt to impose Japanese hegemony over China, and after 1941, over the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia. Both efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. The military defeat in the Pacific war in 1945 brought a period of foreign occupation, the first in Japanese history. Occupation forces instituted an ambitious program of social, political, and economic reform to lay the foundation of a democratic Japan. A new constitution guaranteed civil liberties and established a parliamentary system of government responsive to the electorate. Legal measures were initiated to remove old social inequalities, and land reform and economic reconstruction, financed for the most part by the United States, greatly stimulated economic recovery and growth. The occupation was terminated in 1952 and independence restored to Japan; since then the country has prospered economically as a result of the initiative and hard work of its people and favorable international conditions. The political system continued to function through the civility of parliamentary politics. Conservative dominance under the Liberal Democratic Party remained unbroken, but the opposition, though disunited, continued to hold enough parliamentary seats to block any government attempt at constitutional amendment. In foreign affairs Japan regained and further enhanced its position as a major economic power engaged in worldwide competition. Militarily its dependence on the United States for security continued, while internal debates on the pros and cons of an expanded defense establishment engaged growing public attention. By the mid-1970s the country's steadily rising prosperity had generated a mood of self-confidence. Prosperity was not without cost, however. It was tempered by anxiety about an array of issues concerning population pressure, industrial pollution, housing shortages, urbanization, and uncertainties over stable access to oil and other raw materials. Early Japan The racial origins of the Japanese people are not established, but most ancestors of the people are believed to have migrated from northern Asia to Hokkaido and from northeast Asia, via Korea, to Kyushu, and possibly also from southeast Asia. Predominantly Mongoloid in physical type, they probably spoke languages related to the Altaic family, which includes the Korean and Mongolian languages. The known exception to Mongoloid origin are the Ainu people, found mainly in northern Japan, who some believe to be descended from early Caucasoid peoples of northern Asia. Recent archaeological finds show evidence of human settlement in Japan much earlier than was previously believed-as early as 50,000 years ago. Apart from the Paleolithic period ending in about 11,000 B.C., three cultural eras are identified in prehistoric Japan. The first, from around 11,000 B.C. to 300 B.C., is the Jomon ("rope-pattern"), so named because of the distinctive cord impressions found on the pottery; this period is marked by a hunting, fishing, and food-gathering culture. The second is the Yayoi culture (lasting roughly to 300 A.D.), named after a site in what is modern Tokyo where wheel-thrown pottery was unearthed in 1884. During the Yayoi period waves of immigrants came from China and Korea: these settlers introduced wet rice cultivation to augment hunting and fishing, weaving, and the use of bronze and iron implements. The third period is identified as that of the tomb culture (300 A.D.-600 A.D.), so named because of a number of impressive earth burial mounds built from about the middle of the third to seventh centuries A.D. To construct some of these huge burial mounds would have required large-scale social and political organization under central control. Among the entombed objects were long iron swords, bronze mirrors, and comma-shaped jewels-similar to those made in ancient Korea and in northeast Asia. These items in time became the symbols of Japanese imperial authority. According to legend the first Japanese state was founded in 660 B.C., but politically it was not until about the fifth century A.D. that Japan emerged from its prehistoric past. By that time a centralized, clan-based authority had been firmly established in the fertile Yamato plain in west central Honshu, which was to become the center of political power and Japanese culture until the eleventh century. The most powerful of the rival clans in the fifth century was the Yamato, whose authority extended even to a small coastal kingdom of southern Korea called Mimana (Kaya, or Karak, in Korean). The supremacy of the clan was ensured in part by nurturing the myth of the clan's divine descent from the Sun Goddess through the first Emperor Jimmu, progenitor of the imperial house that continued to reign in 1981. In time the clan's hereditary and inviolable status as the imperial house became too well established for a usurper to challenge. During Japan's formative centuries, China, to which it was first known under the name of Wo (literally, dwarf), was the principal source for cultural borrowing. Chinese culture reached Japan indirectly at first by way of Korea, whose rival kingdoms were themselves influenced by Chinese patterns. In the fifth century A.D., Confucian texts and Chinese characters were brought to Japan by Korean scholars; until that time Japan had been without a writing system of its own. Buddhism, originating in India, came to Japan in the mid-sixth century, again through Korea. In A.D. 604 it won the imperial blessing and quickly became the vehicle for the transmission of Chinese civilization to Japan. In that year the Chinese calendar was also adopted. In 607 the regent Prince Shotoku sent official embassies to China to learn directly about Buddhism and other aspects of Chinese society. The practice of dispatching envoys to China continued until 838. The period of cultural absorption coincided with the political and intellectual vigor of the Sui (518-618) and Tang (618-907) dynasties in China. During this time the foundations of Japanese civilization were first laid through a synthesis of indigenous elements and imported Chinese art, literature, religion, ethics, administrative patterns, and technology. The process was aided considerably by Chinese and Korean immigrants, scholars, and Buddhist monks among them, who were welcomed at that time to Japan. The Nara and Heian Periods (710-1185) Between A.D. 645 and A.D. 702 a centralized bureaucracy was organized on the model of China. In 710 a permanent national capital was set up at Nara, patterned after Chang'an, capital during the Tang dynasty. This step ended the old practice of shifting the seat of imperial court every time a new emperor was enthroned. The country was divided into provinces and districts, and the heads of those divisions were appointed by the emperor. In practice the authority of the central government was vague, however, because real power had acceded notably into the hands of the Fujiwara clan that, by the middle of the seventh century, had become dominant through intermarriage with the Yamato family. At the local level, district governors, rather than provincial governors, emerged as a powerful force. District governors were appointed from among local notables only for life; however, in time the office became hereditary, and those occupying the position were to play a dominant role in the coming centuries. In contrast the provincial governorships became sinecures, held by aristocrats who remained at the imperial court. Innovations in landownership, taxation, and military organization were introduced during the short Nara period (710-784), but none proved to have a lasting effect. The clans were in theory deprived of their landholdings, to be redistributed equally among peasant cultivators as the basis for equitable taxation. Many members of the clan aristocracy managed to retain their land, though some did accept compensation in official positions and honors. The Chinese system of bureaucracy based on learning and merit failed to take root in Japan in view of opposition from the aristocrat-dominated bureaucracy. Appointments and promotions were apportioned among the ruling Fujiwara and their proteges, and a candidate's courtly accomplishments were a better recommendation than his learning and abilities. Taxes were payable by the peasants in produce, labor, or military service. Conscript armies of foot soldiers were created, but they did not prove effective in frontier wars against the Ainu. The inadequacy of the conscript armies left the mounted warriors as the Japanese military ideal. During the Nara era, Buddhism, entrenched as the faith of the court and the aristocracy, did not disestablish the indigenous Shinto worship that remained popular at the grass roots. Its temples did, however, emerge, apart from their role as centers of culture and learning, as a powerful economic and political force. Under imperial support, Buddhist temples and their tax-exempt manors spread throughout the country. As they grew in numbers and wealth, priestly interference in state affairs posed a growing threat to the secular authority of the government. In 784 the capital was moved to Nagaoka and then to Heian (modern Kyoto) in 794 in order to escape the intrigue and power of the monks in the Nara area. The new, larger capital was built at Kyoto, again on the model of Chang'an, the Tang capital; it was to remain the seat of the imperial court until 1868. The Heian period (794-1185) is heralded for the flowering of Japanese classical culture. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, what would later be considered characteristic literature, art, and architecture had blossomed under the patronage and participation of court circles. Especially notable was the emergence during the tenth century of an indigenous phonetic syllabary (kana), derived from a certain number of Chinese ideographs. Before that time the Japanese had written exclusively in Chinese or with a combination of Chinese for both meaning and phonetic representation of Japanese sounds. The kana script, which came in two forms, made possible the production of literary works by men and women of the day at court. The most famous work of the period-and one of the world's earliest novels and probably the greatest work in all Japanese literature-is the Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji), written around 1000 by Lady Shikibu Murasaki; it provides revealing glimpses into the life at the Kyoto court, where sensitivity to human emotions, courtly behavior, and exquisite taste in calligraphy, pottery, and the arts were highly valued. The Heian period saw the birth of new Buddhist sects, founded by monks returning from China. The Tendai sect, established by the monk Saicho, stressed the validity of all doctrines of Buddhism and the doctrine of salvation through meditation, virtue, and scriptural readings. The Shingon sect, founded by another Buddhist priest, Kukai, preached that all reality is but a manifestation of the universal Buddha; it was esoteric, given to the use of colorful ceremonies and magic spells. Popular with the court aristocrats, these essentially eclectic sects sought to reconcile Buddhism with Shinto and in fact facilitated the virtual incorporation of Shinto into Buddhism. (It was not until the nineteenth century that Shinto was fully separated and made independent from Buddhism.) Toward the end of the Heian period, still another sect, the Jodo ("pure land"), was founded by Honen Shonin. This school eschewed rituals and philosophical subtleties and preached instead a doctrine of salvation through faith in the Amida Buddha (the lord of the Western paradise); faith was to be expressed by repetition of the phrase "namu amida butsu" ("utter devotion to the Amida Buddha"). Because of its simplicity the Jodo sect gained immense popularity at the grass roots. An offshoot of the Jodo became known as the "True Pure Land" sect. Politically the salient feature of the Heian era was the prominence of the Fujiwara, the wealthiest and most influential of the aristocratic court families. Immense tax-free landholdings, manipulation of court politics, and intermarriage with the Yamato line assured the Fujiwara complete control of the imperial court from about 857 to 1160. The three centuries of dominance by this clan are sometimes referred to as the Fujiwara period. In this period, however, the Fujiwara-dominated central government authority waned gradually as the great temples, court officials, and local lords expanded, often by illegal means, their tax-free, private estates or manors. On these manors the farmers bore the brunt of taxpaying burdens. By the end of the eleventh century, land tenure and tax collection, which depended on the good will of local officials, had broken down, and the government was on the brink of fiscal collapse. Under the pressure of mounting economic tension after the tenth century, political chaos reigned in the provinces. The wealthier local strong men organized their own armed protection groups to ensure the safety of their possessions and to maintain their "private" government, so to speak, but without trying to usurp the Yamato's imperial prerogatives. It was in these groups that the hereditary samurai class of the later centuries had its origin. The formation of such protection groups was noticeable especially in the Kanto plain, where modern Tokyo is located. As the power of the court-based aristocracy waned progressively, rivalries among local military clans intensified. Eventually out of the chaos emerged two great warrior clans, Genji and Heike, both of which claimed imperial descent. An epic struggle between these clans ended in the Genji victory in 1185, ushering in what historians call a seven-century Japanese feudal period. The Genji triumph also occasioned the appearance of a new political structure under the hereditary military aristocracy. The Kamakura and Ashikaga Periods (1185-1573) The nearly 700-year period of rule by military overlords began formally in 1192 when Minamoto Yoritomo, who had established his bakufu (military government) at Kamakura, near modern Tokyo, assumed the title of shogun. In theory this title constituted the imperial delegation of broad powers relating to military and police functions, but in fact, given the generations of strife-torn social order, control of the military was tantamount to control of the organs of civil government in Kyoto as well. The Kamakura shogunate restored some semblance of central control via the installation of provincial military governors and stewards in public and private landed estates. The latter not only collected taxes for the shogunate but also provided positions with which to reward the loyal. The two posts were often held concurrently by the same influential local clans and in time became hereditary. Some of the governors in charge of several provinces came to be known as daimyos. The developing customary law of the time showed certain feudal characteristics plus the kinship orientation of the past. The relationship between lord and vassal, for example, resembled the kinship tie of father and son. Locally, social relationships were regulated by the house laws of the dominant families. Differing in detail, these codes rested on the assumption that paternalism and loyal service constituted the foundation of the social order. The military or samurai class, which gradually crystallized in this period, comprised lords, mounted armored noblemen, and foot soldiers. It became the ruling class responsible for both civil and military functions, leaving intact, however, the fiction of imperial rule from the powerless Kyoto court under civil aristocracy. The ideal virtues of the samurai were absolute obedience and loyalty to his lord, spartan self-control, and courage. The power of the Minamoto clan did not long survive the death of Yoritomo in 1199. By mid-thirteenth century the Hojo clan, from which Yoritomo's wife had come, had established a hereditary regency over the Kamakura shogunate. Hojo chiefs were generally able men and relied on personal relationships with provincial lords in maintaining their preeminence. In time the feudal bonds weakened as some provincial lords grew wealthy and stronger and challenged the shogunate's authority. The cost of defense against Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281 had further negative consequences for the Hojo and the shogunate. The first invasion was repelled with some difficulty. In the second, Japan was saved by a typhoon that wrecked the invader's fleet; that typhoon has since become known as kamikaze; literally, divine wind. Unlike the aftermath of internal warfare, there were no spoils from this defensive fighting, and the Hojo leaders' inability to reward their vassals lost them much support, undermining the basis of the shogunate's authority. The Kamakura shogunate ended in 1333 when a retired emperor, known by his posthumous name of Go-Daigo, attempted to restore the Kyoto-based imperial rule and was joined by the Kamakura general Ashikaga Takauji. Takauji soon turned against Go-Daigo and assumed the title of shogun, at the same time placing a nobleman from another branch of the imperial line on the throne. Go-Daigo set up a separate court, which continued to function from 1335 until it was destroyed in 1392. Culturally the early Kamakura period was distinguished by religious developments and complementary artistic growth. In the mid-thirteenth century the Nichiren Buddhist sect, named after its founder, preached that the Lotus Sutra rather than Amida was the sole source of truth, attacking all other sects as heretical. Highly evangelical and nationalistic, the sect sought to identify its self-proclaimed truth with the welfare of the country and denounced the shogunate for bringing about a division of political power under a dualist system of government seated in Kamakura and Kyoto. Religious revival also was manifest in a rapid growth of the Zen sect, which stressed rigorous self-discipline and meditation. The mystic, austere, and antischolastic thrust of the sect was well suited to the samurai and later became the philosophical basis of the bushido, the way of the warrior. Tea, which was introduced from China by Zen scholars along with the teachings of neo-Confucianism, was used as an aid to meditation, and the tea ceremony inspired further development of ceramics. Zen Buddhism also stimulated the art of landscape and portrait paintings and historical scrolls of battle scenes. Appointing himself shogun in 1338, Takauji established his bakufu in a section of Kyoto called Muromachi-hence the Ashikaga period (1338-1573) is also known as Muromachi. This period was a time of incessant factional and military strife and, despite the resulting political breakdown, was marked by rapid socioeconomic change and cultural advance. The Muromachi era (from which the arts of the period take their name) is often compared to the Heian period for cultural and artistic achievements, made possible by the enthusiastic patronage of the court as well as the Zen Buddhist monasteries serving generally as centers of learning and art. Cultural influences from China were assimilated and were given new expression in monochrome landscape painting (Sesshu, 1420-1506, being the best known painter), architectural styles, landscape and rock gardening, flower arrangement, and the tea ceremony. Purely Japanese art forms were also created, among them the No, the great religion-based lyric drama. Architectural masterpieces were built in sizable number, as seen in some of the surviving Zen temples and gardens in Kyoto. The bakufu authority deteriorated after a war of imperial succession (1467-77) during which both imperial and Ashikaga families split into rival warring camps. Kyoto and its vicinity were laid waste during the conflict, and the imperial court was reduced to a state of penury. The shogunate, exhausted by the succession struggle and shorn of power, never regained effective hold over local domains during the hundred years of internal strife from the middle of the fifteenth century onward. In fact whatever authority the various Ashikaga shoguns could exercise was on the sufferance of a new group of local military governors or daimyos, who with the deterioration of bakufu authority had moved into the power vacuum. Many of the new daimyos were of nonaristocratic samurai origin, and their rise to power was due to their martial skills and political acumen. Their upward mobility was characterized at the time as gekokujo (inferiors overcoming superiors). By the middle of the sixteenth century, over two-thirds of the country fell into the hands of about 200 daimyos. Some of these were noblemen, and others were of humble origins with roots in the farming villages. Their military and civil authority was absolute within their fiefs. In most cases independent of the bakufu control, a daimyo-ruled domain consisted of a castle, vassals, samurai retainers, towns, and villages. Economically it was supported by commoners-peasants, artisans, and merchants-the peasants bearing the brunt of taxes in addition to military obligations. Social and economic tensions often touched off peasant revolts, led and joined sometimes by impoverished samurai themselves. The daimyos sought to consolidate their power by regulating the personal lives of their vassals and retainers and by demanding loyalty from them even more stringently than had the Kamakura shogunate. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Japan had for all practical purposes become "feudal," given the autonomy and fragmentation of local barons characteristic of the Europe of the time. Despite feudal warfare, trade, manufacturing, and commerce developed steadily. By the fifteenth century foreign trade was an important factor in Japan's economy. It was extended beyond the original trade with China in the sixteenth century when the first Westerners reached Japan. Japanese took to the seas not only as traders but also as pirates who in Ashikaga times were the scourge of the coasts of Korea, China, and Southeast Asia. Japanese exports included fine handicraft items such as screens, folding fans, and swords. Foreign commerce was sponsored mainly by the daimyos and the merchants of western Japan. A rapid increase in manufacturing and commerce was reflected in the formation of guilds and the rise of a merchant class. This was accompanied by the growth of ports and towns, a gradual spread of a money economy, and the blurring of formerly rigid social barriers between the samurai and commoner classes. Osaka developed as Japan's principal trading center without any daimyo control. Rather it was under the protection of a castle-monastery of True Pure Land Buddhists that remained impregnable until the late sixteenth century. The first Westerners to reach Japan were Portuguese traders whom the Japanese called "southern barbarians" because of their arrival from the south seas. They came from Macao in the 1540s. They were followed by Jesuit missionaries, among them Saint Francis Xavier, who were welcomed by the Ashikaga and the leading daimyo of Kyushu and who succeeded in converting some Japanese. The traders also introduced potatoes, tobacco, muskets, and gunpowder.