Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0198/01987.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 44KB | 672 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01987}
$Pretitle{230}
$Title{Japan
Chapter 1B.   National Reunification}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Rinn-Sup Shinn}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{samurai
government
tokugawa
daimyos
japanese
military
japan
political
imperial
western}
$Date{1981}
$Log{}
Country:     Japan
Book:        Japan, A Country Study
Author:      Rinn-Sup Shinn
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 1B.   National Reunification

     In the latter half of the sixteenth century, a trend toward
centralization was gathering momentum as the more powerful of the daimyos
consolidated their gains by subjugating the weaker. Revolutionary changes in
warfare wrought by the use of firearms were largely responsible. The musket
and the cannon acquired from the Portuguese traders meant a revolution in
military strategy. The daimyos now based their military operations on large
fortified castles that commanded considerable expanses of territory and in
major campaigns used mass armies of foot soldiers armed with the new weapons.
Mounted samurai lost their advantages to the peasant recruits who, as
infantrymen, proved equally effective.

     Reunification was finally achieved by a celebrated military
triumvirate-Oda Nobunaga (1534-82), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), and Tokugawa
Ieyasu (1542-1616). Nobunaga, a leading daimyo in central Japan, gained
dominance over the imperial court and the shogunate itself by 1568. In 1573
the shogunate was abolished for all practical purposes. The first daimyo to
make effective use of the musket's firepower, Nobunaga also demolished the
most powerful of the great Buddhist monasteries around Kyoto and captured the
castle-monastery of Osaka held by the True Pure Land Buddhists. His success
broke the temporal power of the Buddhist sects; the Buddhists were never again
to regain their political influence in the country.

     After Nobunaga was assassinated in 1582, his vassal and ablest commander,
Hideyoshi, completed the unification of the country. Hideyoshi established an
efficient countrywide administration from the modern Osaka area and introduced
a monetary reform and a land survey. In 1592 he received the title of kampaku
(civil chancellor) from the emperor because his low social status as a
commoner did not qualify him for the rank of shogun. In an attempt to minimize
the possibility of plots against him, he assigned friendly and unfriendly
daimyos to domains adjacent to one another. This tactic was continued by the
succeeding Tokugawa shogun.

     Hideyoshi was not as friendly toward Christian missionaries as Nobunaga
had been. Nobunaga had welcomed the missionaries in part to offset the power
of Buddhist priesthood. Hideyoshi suspected the missionaries of being
political agents for foreign powers and was not unaware of their potential as
allies of unfriendly daimyos at home. In 1587 he issued an edict banning their
activities. This was not strictly enforced, however, until ten years later
when, annoyed by feuding between missionary groups, he ordered the execution
of several missionaries and Japanese converts.

     Hideyoshi had an obsession with China. In 1592 and 1598 he launched two
invasions of Korea as the first steps toward the conquest of China. Although
initially successful, his expedition was thwarted by the combined Chinese and
Korean forces-and later as a result of internal chaos following his own death
in 1598. Hideyoshi was succeeded by Ieyasu, the Kanto-based daimyo who had
been the most powerful and astute strategist among Hideyoshi's vassals. Ieyasu
was challenged by a coalition of daimyos but defeated it decisively at
Sekigahara in central Japan in 1600. Three years later he was appointed shogun
by the emperor and established the bakufu in Edo, modern Tokyo. The Tokugawa
dynasty remained supreme for the next 250 years until the coming of United
States warships in 1853 and 1854.

The Tokugawa Period (1603-1868)

The Shogunate and Internal Developments

     Ieyasu's first and most pressing step was to consolidate power over
daimyos. The measures he put into force were continued and elaborated on by
his immediate successors. For political control the daimyos were divided into
three categories: twenty-three lords who were natural allies because of their
kinship ties by birth to the Tokugawa line; 145 hereditary lords who had been
allies of Ieyasu before the battle of Sekigahara; and ninety-eight "outer"
daimyos who had submitted to Tokugawa power only after 1600. Ieyasu relied on
the first two to check the outer daimyos, among whom were some of the richest
and most powerful. Rewarded with high civil and military posts, the first two
loyalist daimyo groups were placed in control of strategic areas and cities on
the main route of communication (the Tokaido) and of those areas adjacent to
the potentially troublesome domains in Kyushu and northern Honshu. Of the
loyalist daimyo the branch families of the Tokugawa shogunate held strong
points in the three most strategic areas-the Kanto plain, the Nagoya region in
central Japan, and the Osaka region.

     To ensure Edo-centered political stability, the shogunate installed a
system of residence whereby daimyos were required to maintain residence
alternately in Edo and in their fiefs. During their absence from Edo, they had
to leave their families in Edo as hostages. As part of Tokugawa surveillance,
checkpoints were set up on all important routes, among other things, to look
for "women leaving Edo and firearms entering Edo." The requirement for double
residence was economically costly as it involved processions to and from Edo
usually every other year. According to historian Milton W. Meyer, as much as a
quarter of daimyos' annual income was spent on alternate residence. In
addition daimyos were obligated to make generous contributions to the
bakufu-sponsored public works projects. Moreover the possibility of an
anti-Tokugawa plot was minimized by edicts forbidding daimyos to enter into
alliance with one another, to build or repair castles, or to contact the
imperial court without prior authorization. In order to stabilize the social
base of the political order, the shogunate instituted a rigidly stratified and
hereditary occupational class structure, which was buttressed by hierarchical,
status-oriented Confucian concepts. At the top of the structure was the
samurai class, whose elite status was distinguished not only by its control of
administrative and military positions but also by the wearing of two swords.
The class boundary between the samurai, who with their families constituted 5
to 7 percent of the total 30 million people of Japan during the Tokugawa
period, and the other three group was on the whole strictly maintained.

     After the last decade of the sixteenth century, the samurai class
underwent some change. Until that time many of the samurai were landed
aristocrats, although some were former peasants having small landholdings. In
time of war they were called on by their lords to perform military duties and
were also joined by peasant recruits. After the turn of the seventeenth
century, however, the samurai class became frozen as a hereditary, privileged
warrior-bureaucrat group whose membership was determined by birth and who were
prohibited from intermarrying with other lower classes. This meant that the
peasants were excluded from military service. All members of the class were by
definition warriors, but not all were bureaucrats. Most of the samurai lived
in castle towns where the daimyos, who constituted the top layer of the class,
maintained their feudal authority. A small number of samurai lived on the land
as landed aristocrats, but most of them received stipends in the form of rice.
Stipends corresponded to their official ranks. Despite their collective
elitism, the samurai were by no means socially equal. There was great social
distance between upper samurai and lower samurai, depending on wealth, rank,
and income. Generally lower samurai performed duties as foot