The Tokugawa Polity

The Tokugawa Polity

The tumultuous changes of modern times in Japan unfolded against the backdrop of more than two centuries of unprecedented peace and social order. This era, called the Tokugawa period after the family name of Japan's military rulers between sixteen hundred and eighteen sixty-eight, has left a variety of images for later ages. The Tokugawa order was bolstered by harsh laws and restrictions on social and geographic mobility. Officials are said to have ruled by the motto, "Sesame seeds and peasants are very much alike. The more you squeeze them, the more you can extract from them." At the same time, the Tokugawa centuries were an era of flourishing rural production and commerce and lively city life. One careful European observer wrote in the sixteen nineties that "an incredible number of people daily use the highways of Japan's provinces, indeed at certain times of the year they are as crowded as the streets of a populous European city."

Numerous formal restrictions coexisted with an energetic, at times rambunctious, population over the Tokugawa centuries. And important changes took place. These did not set the Tokugawa system on a smooth course toward modernity, but they were important nonetheless. By the nineteenth century, the regime faced grave problems. Underemployed warriors suffered a troubling identity crisis. Established institutions and ideas seemed inadequate to deal with new pressures at home and from outside. Rulers strongly committed to maintaining order faced social tensions and protests. A look at the origins of Tokugawa society and the emergence of these problems helps one make sense of the unexpected and hardly predictable modern transformations that began when the regime eventually collapsed.

UNIFICATION

The most important feature of Tokugawa history was the absence of warfare. The contrast to what came before was immense. From fourteen sixty-seven to fourteen seventy-seven, the Onin War destroyed the ancient capital of Kyoto, the emperor's home since seven hundred ninety-four, a beautiful city of temples and aristocratic residences. For the next century, warfare was constant. Hundreds of thousands of samurai men in arms clustered around provincial military rulers called daimyo. These regional rulers jockeyed for control of land, people, and commerce.

Although war was a dominant theme of the age, this was by no means a century of unrelieved misery for all. Commerce flourished, and several cities emerged as relatively autonomous international trading ports. Some devotees of Buddhism organized powerful communities called ikkō (single-minded) sects. They too won autonomy from daimyo control.

Then, between the fifteen seventies and sixteen hundred, three remarkable, often ruthless rulers pulled together an enduring political order. From the sixteen hundreds through the mid-nineteen hundreds, people in Japan enjoyed over two hundred fifty years free of war. The warrior elite of daimyo and samurai retained their place as political rulers, but the character of the warriors changed dramatically. Immense change likewise came to economic and cultural life.

The first of the so-called unifiers was Oda Nobunaga. He began as modest lord of the Owari domain in the vicinity of present-day Nagoya. In fifteen fifty-five Nobunaga began his rise to power, soon embarking on a ruthless campaign of terror. He laid waste to the Buddhist strongholds, killing thousands of monks and burning great libraries and temples. In fifteen eighty he overcame the most important fortress-temple of the ikkō sect of Buddhism. By fifteen eighty-two, when he was assassinated by a treacherous underling, he had consolidated control over roughly one-third of Japan.

Viewed with fear and awe at the time, Nobunaga has not been remembered kindly by historians, who have called him "a magnificent savage," a "cruel and callous brute," even "a Japanese Attila." But Nobunaga was more than a butcher. He also fashioned political institutions that his successors used to good effect in establishing and sustaining the Tokugawa peace. He encouraged or allowed relatively autonomous village organization as long as villagers paid taxes. He developed a bureaucratic program of tax collection, so that his vassals did not collect revenue directly from villages. Instead, specialized tax collectors did this, and they gave the loot in part to the vassals, in part to Nobunaga. He simultaneously separated the thousands of petty military lords from their fiefs. He took "proprietorship" from these men, and in exchange he guaranteed the petty lord an income reflecting the size and output of his land. In doing this, he established the right to reassign a subordinate lord.

For this system to work, a systematic survey of the land, its productive capacity, its size, and its ownership was crucial. Nobunaga pioneered in the use of surveys of the quality and quantity of agricultural land, and this constituted a foundation of the early modern political system. He also began the practice of disarming villagers and establishing a fairly sharp class boundary between warriors and farmers.

In the wake of Nobunaga's death, one lieutenant took up the banner as aspiring hegemon. This was Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a low-born foot soldier of unimposing appearance. His contemporaries dubbed him "the monkey." His wife is said to have called him a "bald rat." Epithets aside, he was a brilliant political strategist. In contrast to Nobunaga, who obliterated rivals and gave their lands to trusted underlings, Hideyoshi pursued a politics of alliance-building. He attacked enemies who resisted, but he accepted oaths of loyalty from those who came over to his side. In such fashion, he extended dominion over all of Japan by fifteen ninety-one.

Hideyoshi continued and systematized the institutions of Nobunaga, and he added some twists of his own. He took hostages from the daimyo to ensure their loyalty. In fifteen eighty-eight he extended throughout his lands the practice of disarming peasants through so-called sword hunts. He also launched two massive and disastrous invasions of Korea in fifteen ninety-two and fifteen ninety-seven, seemingly with the intention of conquering China as well. Hideyoshi simultaneously turned against the Jesuit missionaries who had been winning converts in Japan since they first arrived in the fifteen fifties. At the time of his death in fifteen ninety-eight, Hideyoshi stood unchallenged at the apex of a federation of daimyo that covered the entire territory of Japan. He left behind a council of his most trusted lieutenants, called regents. They pledged to rule on behalf of his young son until the boy came of age. This was an unstable plan for succession, and a power struggle soon broke out among the regents.