THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY
OF JAPAN
General editors
JOHN W. HALL, MARIUS B. JANSEN, MADOKA KANAI,
AND DENIS TWITCHETT
Volume 3
Medieval Japan
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE CAMBRIDGE
HISTORY OF
JAPAN
Volume 3
Medieval Japan
Edited by
KOZO YAMAMURA
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE
Since the beginning of this century the Cambridge histories have set a
pattern in the English-reading world for multivolume series containing
chapters written by specialists under the guidance of volume editors.
Plans for a Cambridge history of Japan were begun in the 1970s
and completed in 1978. The task was not to be easy. The details of
Japanese history are not matters of common knowledge among Western
historians. The cultural mode of Japan differs greatly from that of
the West, and above all there are the daunting problems of terminology
and language. In compensation, however, foreign scholars have
been assisted by the remarkable achievements of the Japanese scholars
during the last century in recasting their history in modern conceptual
and methodological terms.
History has played a major role in Japanese culture and thought,
and the Japanese record is long and full. Japan's rulers from ancient
times have found legitimacy in tradition, both mythic and historic,
and Japan's thinkers have probed for a national morality and system of
values in their country's past. The importance of history was also
emphasized in the continental cultural influences that entered Japan
from early times. Its expression changed as the Japanese consciousness
turned to questions of dynastic origin, as it came to reflect Buddhist
views of time and reality, and as it sought justification for rule by the
samurai estate. By the eighteenth century the successive need to explain
the divinity of government, justify the ruler's place through his
virtue and compassion, and interpret the flux of political change had
resulted in the fashioning of a highly subjective fusion of Shinto,
Buddhist, and Confucian norms.
In the nineteenth century the Japanese became familiar with Western
forms of historical expression and felt the need to fit their national
history into patterns of a larger world history. As the modern Japanese
state took its place among other nations, Japanese history faced the
task of reconciling a parochial past with a more catholic present. Historians
familiarized themselves with European accounts of the course of
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
vi GENERAL EDITORS PREFACE
civilization and described Japan's nineteenth-century turn from military
to civilian bureaucratic rule under monarchical guidance as part of
a larger, worldwide pattern. Buckle, Guizot, Spencer, and then Marx
successively provided interpretative schema.
The twentieth-century ideology of the imperial nation state, however,
operated to inhibit full play of universalism in historical interpretation.
The growth and ideology of the imperial realm required caution
on the part of historians, particularly with reference to Japanese
origins.
Japan's defeat in World War II brought release from these inhibitions
and for a time replaced them with compulsive denunciation of
the pretensions of the imperial state. Soon the expansion of higher
education brought changes in the size and variety of the Japanese
scholarly world. Historical inquiry was now free to range widely. A
new opening to the West brought lively interest in historical expressions
in the West, and a historical profession that had become cautiously
and expertly positivist began to rethink its material in terms of
larger patterns.
At just this juncture the serious study of Japanese history began in
the West. Before World War II the only distinguished general survey
of Japanese history in English was G. B. Sansom's Japan: A Short
Cultural History, first published in 1931 and still in print. English and
American students of Japan, many trained in wartime language programs,
were soon able to travel to Japan for study and participation
with Japanese scholars in cooperative projects. International conferences
and symposia produced volumes of essays that served as benchmarks
of intellectual focus and technical advance. Within Japan itself
an outpouring of historical scholarship, popular publishing, and historical
romance heightened the historical consciousness of a nation
aware of the dramatic changes to which it was witness.
In 1978 plans were adopted to produce this series on Japanese history
as a way of taking stock of what has been learned. The present
generation of Western historians can draw upon the solid foundations
of the modern Japanese historical profession. The decision to limit the
enterprise to six volumes meant that topics such as the history of art
and literature, aspects of economics and technology and science, and
the riches of local history would have to be left out. They too have
been the beneficiaries of vigorous study and publication in Japan and
in the Western world.
Multivolume series have appeared many times in Japanese since the
beginning of the century, but until the 1960s the number of professionCambridge
Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE vii
ally trained historians of Japan in the Western world was too small to
sustain such an enterprise. Although that number has grown, the
general editors have thought it best to draw on Japanese specialists for
contributions in areas where they retain a clear authority. In such cases
the act of translation itself involves a form of editorial cooperation that
requires the skills of a trained historian whose name deserves acknowl-
edgment.
The primary objective of the present series is to put before the
English-reading audience as complete a record of Japanese history as
possible. But the Japanese case attracts our attention for other reasons
as well. To some it has seemed that the more we have come to know
about Japan the more we are drawn to the apparent similarities with
Western history. The long continuous course of Japan's historical record
has tempted historians to look for resemblances between its patterns
of political and social organization and those of the West. The
rapid emergence of Japan's modern nation state has occupied the attention
of comparative historians, both Japanese and Western. On the
other hand, specialists are inclined to point out the dangers of being
misled by seeming parallels.
The striking advances in our knowledge of Japan's past will continue
and accelerate. Western historians of this great and complex
subject will continue to grapple with it, and they must as Japan's
world role becomes more prominent. The need for greater and deeper
understanding of Japan will continue to be evident. Japanese history
belongs to the world, not only as a right and necessity but also as a
subject of compelling interest.
JOHN W. HALL
MARIUS B. JANSEN
MADOKA KANAI
DENIS TWITCHETT
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CONTENTS
General editors' preface page v
List of maps, figures, and tables xiv
Preface to Volume 3 xvii
Introduction 1
by Kozo YAMAMURA, Henry M. Jackson School of
International Studies, University of Washington
Japanese and English works on medieval history 6
Discussion of the chapters in this volume 12
Concluding notes 27
Appendix: Chronology of medieval period 31
Selected bibliography 39
1 The Kamakura bakufu 46
by JEFFREY P. MASS, Department of History, Stanford
University, and Oxford University
The background to the Gempei War 47
The Gempei War 52
The Gempei aftermath: jito and shugo 59
The road to Jokyu 66
The Jokyu disturbance and its aftermath 70
Bakufu governance 74
Shugo and jito 80
The bakufu at mid-century 87
2 Medieval shoen 89
by OYAMA K Y O H E I , Faculty of Literature, Kyoto
University
Translated by MARTIN COLLCUTT
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K CONTENTS
The internal structure of medieval provinces 89
The domestic economy of shoen proprietors 96
The internal structure of shoen 101
The power of the jito n o
Social strata in shoen 120
Courtiers and warriors 123
3 The decline of the Kamakura bakufu 128
bylSHii SUSUMU, Faculty of Literature, Tokyo
University
Translated by JEFFREY P. MASS and H I T O M I
TONOMURA
Introduction 128
The Mongol invasions and the Kamakura bakufu 131
Japan after the Mongol wars 148
The fall of the Kamakura bakufu 160
4 The Muromachi bakufu 175
by J O H N W H I T N E Y HALL , Department of History,
Yale University
Introduction 175
The rise of the Ashikaga house 177
The founding of the Muromachi bakufu 183
The path to Ashikaga legitimacy 189
Shogun, shugo, and provincial administration 193
The Muromachi distribution of power 201
The Muromachi bakufu: instruments of
administration and enforcement 211
Bakufu fiscal and manpower supports 219
The last hundred years 225
5 Muromachi local government: shugo and kokujin 231
by IMATANI AKIRA, Faculty of Liberal Arts and
Sciences, Yokohama City University
Translated by SUZANNE GAY
Introduction 231
Regional administrative officials: kubo and tandai 232
Shugo daimyo 235
The relationship between shugo and kokujin
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CONTENTS XI
The decline of the shoen system 260
byNAGAHARA K.EIJI, Faculty of Economics,
Hitotsubashi University
Translated by MICHAEL P. BIRT
Turning points in the decline of the shoen 261
The growth of the jito and shokan as ryoshu 265
The development of the shugo domainal system 272
Peasants' protest and growth 280
The collapse of the shoen proprietors' authority 289
Conclusion: the disappearance of the shoen 298
The medieval peasant 301
by NAGAHARA K E I J I , Faculty of Economics,
Hitotsubashi University
Translated by SUZANNE GAY
Status differences among peasants in the shoen
system 303
Land development and agricultural operations 310
The peasants, overlord rule, and taxation 315
The economic life of the peasants 324
The regional consolidation of peasant society 330
The sengoku daimyo and the peasants 341
The growth of commerce in medieval Japan 344
by Kozo YAMAMURA, Henry M. Jackson School of
International Studies, University of Washington
The initial conditions 344
Acceleration of commerce and monetization 360
Commerce and cities in the Nambokucho and
Muromachi periods 376
Conclusion 394
Japan and East Asia 396
by KAWAZOE S H O J I , Faculty of Literature, Kyushu
University
Translated by G. CAMERON H U R S T III
Japan's international relations in East Asia 396
Foreign relations at the founding of the Kamakura
• bakufu 398
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Xll CONTENTS
Foreign relations during the Hojo regency 404
The Mongol invasions 411
Foreign relations in the early Muromachi period 423
The tribute system and Japan 432
Changes in the international relations of East Asia 440
10 Cultural life in medieval Japan 447
by H. PAUL V'ARLEY•, Department ofEast Asian
Languages and Cultures, Columbia University
The Kamakura period and the end of Buddhist
law 447
The Tale of the Heike and other war tales 449
The age of Shinkokinshii poetry 452
The revival of Shinto and the late Kamakura period 455
The early Muromachi period 458
The noh theater 462
The evolution of new interior settings for the arts 468
Social ideals and aesthetic values of the
Higashiyama epoch 470
Linked-verse poetry 473
The Higashiyama epoch and the scholarship of
nostalgia 481
Landscape paintings and gardens 485
The culture of tea 488
The Azuchi-Momoyama epoch 491
Decorative screen and door-panel painting 492
Genre painting and Azuchi-Momoyama humanism 495
The world of tea 497
11 The other side of culture in medieval Japan 500
by BARBARA RUCH, Department of East Asian
Languages and Cultures, Columbia University
Historiographical issues 500
The case of Mugai Nyodai 502
Working for a living 511
Election of the gods 518
Unheeded voices, winked-at lives 521
Akashi no Kakuichi 531
Conclusion 541
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CONTENTS X1U
12 Buddhism in the Kamakura period 544
by OSUMI K A Z U O , Faculty of Literature, Tokyo
Women's College
Translated, adapted, and expanded by
JAMES C. DOBBINS
Introduction 544
The originators of Kamakura Buddhism 546
The response of the Buddhist establishment 560
The formation of religious organizations 571
Conclusion 580
13 Zen and the gozan . 583
by M A R T I N COLLCUTT, Departments of History and
East Asian Studies, Princeton University
The transmission of Ch'an Buddhism to Japan 584
The development of the Zen monastic institution in
medieval Japan 596
Economy and administration of the medieval Zen
monastery 637
Changes in Zen practice, culture, and the monastic
life 643
Works cited 653
Glossary 687
Index 702
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
MAPS, FIGURES, AND TABLES
MAPS
Medieval Japan: regions and provinces page xix
Medieval Japan: major towns, trading centers,
and routes xx-xxi
4.1 The Ashikaga house, ca. 1330 181
4.2 Provinces in central bloc held by Ashikaga collateral
shugo, ca. 1400 195
4.3 Provinces held by noncollateral houses, ca. 1400 195
4.4 Location of hokonin, 1444-9 218
4.5 Location of hokonin, 1565 218
FIGURES
3.1 System of alternate succession between Gofukakusa
and Kameyama lines 166
4.1 Ashikaga lineage genealogy 178
4.2 Organization of the bakufu, 1350 212
4.3 Changes in bakufu structure after Tadayoshi's
expulsion, 1352 213
5.1 Organization of shugo authority in Yamashiro and
Kawachi provinces, ca. 1379 249
7.1 Conceptualization of a typical shoen 305
11.1 Wooden sculpture of medieval abbess Mugai Nyodai 503
13.1 The growth of Zen schools, thirteenth to sixteenth
century 597
TABLES
2.1 Shoen in Noto Province 91
2.2 Go and betchmiyd in the Wakasa kokuga domain 97
xiv
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MAPS, FIGURES, AND TABLES XV
2.3 Kumagai family holdings in Miri-no-sho 106
2.4 Management of jitd-kadota paddy and dry fields in
Miri-no-sho 107
4.1 Ashikaga shoguns 177
4.2 Control of provinces by Ashikaga collaterals and
other families, ca. 1400 194
4.3 Guardsmen holdings by province 221
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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PREFACE TO VOLUME 3
Nearly eight years elapsed between the initial selection of authors and
the submission of the edited manuscript to Cambridge University
Press. During those eight rewarding and taxing years I learned a great
deal more about the medieval history of Japan and wrote over four
hundred letters. As in making good wine, the process of writing,
translating, and editing can proceed only slowly. And because of the
period covered, coordinating the use and translation of Japanese terms
and concepts further lengthened the process.
I feel confident that the volume that emerged is worthy of the years
of aging. I believe that the principal goal of producing a volume useful
to a wide readership has been attained and that all the chapters in this
volume can benefit both beginning and advanced students wishing to
deepen and broaden their knowledge of Japan's medieval period.
Above all, I believe that these chapters collectively bring Japan's medieval
age as a whole into sharper focus.
Conventional romanization is used throughout this volume for Japanese
and Korean terms, and the Wade-Giles system is followed for
Chinese terms. Japanese and Chinese personal names follow their native
form, with surname preceding given name, except in citations of
Japanese authors writing English.
I express my sincere gratitude to all who played a vital part in making
this volume possible. First to be thanked are the authors who
patiently responded to my queries and suggestions and the translators
who struggled with many thorny problems. I especially owe a
great deal to two of the authors, Jeffrey Mass and Keiji Nagahara,
who provided me with valuable advice on many substantive and
editorial matters. My deep appreciation is due also to the General
Editors, who guided me generously in every step of the long process,
and to two of my graduate students, Martha Lane and Karla
Pearson, who assisted me tirelessly and ably in all that had to be
done to convert fourteen essays written on both sides of the Pacific
xvii
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
xvill PREFACE TO VOLUME 3
into a volume that meets the rigorous standards of the General Editors
and Cambridge University Press. Finally, I wish to thank the
Japan Foundation for grants that covered manuscript fees, costs of
translating chapters by Japanese contributors, and editorial expenses
and meetings.
The only reward that the authors and editors of this volume seek is
that its readers will find studying Japan's medieval period interesting
and rewarding, as well as essential to understanding the history of
Japan.
Kozo YAMAMURA
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
INTRODUCTION
The subject of this volume is medieval Japan, spanning the three and
a half centuries between the final decades of the twelfth century
when the Kamakura bakufu was founded and the mid-sixteenth century
during which civil wars raged following the effective demise of
the Muromachi bakufu.1
The historical events and developments of
these colorful centuries depict medieval Japan's polity, economy, society,
and culture, as well as its relations with its Asian neighbors. The
major events and the most significant developments are not difficult
to summarize.
This was the period of warriors. Throughout these centuries, the
power of the warrior class continued to rise, and one political result of
this development was the formation of two warrior governments, or
bakufu. The first, the Kamakura bakufu, founded in the 1180s, was
not able to govern the nation single-handedly. In several important
respects, it had to share power with the civil authority of the tenno —
usually translated as the emperor2
- and the court. But under the
second warrior government - the Ashikaga bakufu that came into being
in 1336 and was firmly established by the end of the fourteenth
century - the warrior class was able to erode the power of the civil
authority. During the first half of the fifteenth century, when the
bakufu's power was at its zenith, the warrior class governed the nation
in substantive ways. Although the civil authority did not lose all its
power and continued to help legitimize the bakufu, it was manipulated
and used to serve the bakufu's own political needs almost at will.
The demise of the Kamakura bakufu in 1333 and the beginning of
the effective end of the Ashikaga bakufu in the late fifteenth century
came about because of political and military challenges to the bakufu's
1 Although this volume on medieval Japan deals primarily with the Kamakura and Muromachi
periods as dated by most Western scholars, when the period began and ended continues to be
debated among Japanese specialists. For a succinct discussion of the debate among Japanese
scholars, see Hall (1983), pp. 5-8.
2 An accurate translation of tenno is neither "king" nor "emperor," especially as applied to the
tenno of the medieval period. However, because "emperor" has become an accepted translation,
the term is used interchangeably with tenno in this volume.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
2 INTRODUCTION
power from within the warrior class. The third and last bakufu in
Japanese history, the Tokugawa bakufu, took power in 1600 by unifying
the regional warrior powers that had rendered the Ashikaga
bakufu powerless and engaged in a century of internal warfare. The
establishment of the Tokugawa bakufu, with a 267-year history that
could be written with little reference to the civil authority, was the
culmination of the warrior power that had first built the Kamakura
bakufu nearly 500 years earlier.
Paralleling the continuing rise of the warriors' power was the gradual
transformation of the shoen - Japan's counterpart to the medieval
manors of Europe - and public land intofiefs.Shoen were first created
in the eighth century from privatized public land, and they had become,
by the twelfth century, the principal source of private wealth
and income for the emperor himself, nobles, and temples. Along with
local and regional officers of the civil government and others, many
warriors too played a role in the process of privatization. They either
opened new paddies, mostly by reclaiming unused land, or managed
to exert their power over nearby public paddies. They then commended
these paddies to nobles and temples, which were able to
obtain legal grants of immunity from the dues imposed on the paddies.
This process gradually reduced the income of the civil government,
although it benefited the nobles and temples that shared the income
from the paddies with the warriors who commended them. The warriors
also increased their income by usurping, in various ways, rights
to income from the shoen as well as from the public land that continued
to provide political and economic bases for the civil authority.
The establishment of the Kamakura bakufu signaled the beginning
of more systematic incursion by warriors into shoen, as well as into the
public land. The process of incursion was at first slow but gathered
momentum during the thirteenth century. As a result, more and more
of the income from the shoen and public land was captured by ;.ie
warriors at the expense of the emperor, nobles, and temples, as we!.", as
the civil government. During the Muromachi period, there was a more
systematic and thorough transformation ofshoen and public land, shifting
from these forms of landholding - the basis of the political and
economic power of those supporting and benefiting from the civil
authority - to fiefs. In contrast with the Kamakura bakufu, the Muromachi
bakufu adopted more measures to impose dues on a regional
basis and more forcefully promoted the interests of the warrior class as
a whole at the cost of the political and economic interests of the
nonwarrior elites. In the second half of the fifteenth century and into
the sixteenth, as the bakufu's power declined, the warriors in their
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
INTRODUCTION 3
capacity as regional and local powers were increasingly aggressive in
depriving the civil elites of their remaining public land, shoen, and
other sources of income. By the mid-sixteenth century, few shoen and
little public land remained.
The growth of institutional capabilities to administer justice and the
development of the bureaucracy occurred along with the rise in power
of the warrior class and the steady transformation of shoen and public
land into fiefs. In the Kamakura period especially, but also in the
Muromachi period, laws and legal institutions to adjudicate disputes
over rights to income from land and over other types of conflicts
involving such matters as inheritance, became increasingly important
to the polity and society. The bureaucracy and expertise necessary for
effective governance also grew over time. Although their effectiveness
was reduced as both bakufu lost power, the institutional capabilities to
adjudicate and to administer that developed in the Kamakura period
and continued to increase in the Muromachi period profoundly affected
the course and character of Japan's medieval history.
Aided by the steady growth of productivity and output in agriculture,
the medieval period was one of growing commerce and continuing
monetization of the economy. Market activities that first increased
in the capital in the late twelfth century accelerated from the midthirteenth
century. By the middle of the Muromachi period, markets
became accessible to all villagers across the nation, and the specialization
of occupations, which still was limited in the early Kamakura
years, progressed substantially, thereby increasing the skill and efficiency
of merchants and artisans. As commerce grew, so did cities,
nodes of transportation, and economic institutions.
With the growth of commerce and monetization resulting from the
rapid increase in the use of coins imported from China, the political
and economic conflicts expected in an increasingly market-oriented
society became more frequent by the fourteenth century. These included
disputes between moneylenders and borrowers (many of whom
were warriors), between recipients and payers of dues over the mix of
in-kind and cash dues, and between guilds and their would-be competitors.
These and many other conflicts often involved, directly or indirectly,
the political and economic interests of the bakufu, the civil
elite, and the warriors.
The lives of the cultivators, by far the majority of the population,
also underwent several significant transformations. Their collective lot
improved principally because of the greater agricultural productivity,
which resulted from the rising use of double cropping and fertilizer
and, most importantly, the more intensive cultivation of paddies over
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
4 INTRODUCTION
which cultivators enjoyed a slowly increasing degree of managerial
freedom and ownership rights. Political developments and wars inevitably
affected the cultivators' lives through ad hoc imposts, temporary
dislocation, newly instituted levies, and other exactions. But by the
Muromachi period, their ability to produce more and to benefit from
market activities gradually helped them win political and social freedom
at the village level, which in turn enabled them to govern their
daily lives in matters such as the maintenance of law and order and
irrigation. Through mutual aid and more effective collective actions
demanding the reduction of dues and mitigation of other political and
economic threats to their well-being, cultivators became better able to
cope with hardships imposed by nature and by the ruling elites.
A very important part of this medieval history is the new Buddhist
sects and Zen Buddhism that became an integral part of Japanese
society and culture during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, as
well as the noh plays, tea ceremonies, linked verses, sansui paintings,
shoin-style architecture, and many other cultural pursuits and manifestations
that flourished especially in the Muromachi period. Surprising
as it may seem, many elements of what we today view as Japanese
culture were firmly established in medieval Japan, despite the rise and
fall of the two bakufu and all the political turmoil and warfare that the
political developments of this period entailed.
The renewed inflow of Buddhist teachings from China and, more
importantly, the adaptation of these teachings and the adoption of
innovative methods of proselytizing by the leaders of the new sects and
Zen Buddhism altered the place of Buddhism in society and in the
daily lives of both the elites and the commoners. Kamakura warriors'
lives became imbued with Zen Buddhism, and the social and political
histories of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were changed by the
influence of Buddhism on warriors and commoners alike. The bestknown
results of these developments were the growth of religious
institutions led by politically powerful temples, the increase in the
number of temples across the nation, and the persistent and often
successful rebellions by the followers of a few sects in the waning years
of the Muromachi bakufu and into the Sengoku period. The motivations
for these rebellions against warrior overlords were not a21 religious,
but it is impossible to explain their character and scope wkhout
considering the religious motivations involved in these political uprisings
by peasants and some warriors.
The cultural developments in the Muromachi period took various
forms and were deeply affected by Buddhism. Under the active patronCambridge
Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
INTRODUCTION 5
age of the Ashikaga shoguns - Yoshimitsu and Yoshimasa in particular
- the cultural life of the elites reached its height, and the legacies of
the elite culture from this period in literature, the performing arts,
painting, and architecture continue to form an important core of Japanese
culture. Commoners also contributed to the flowering of culture in
these centuries. Their dance, music, and songs - often rustic but also
affected by the world view of Buddhism - added color and energy to
their lives and, as typified in the noh performed for the enjoyment of the
elite, villagers' dances and songs often provided the basis from which
the highly refined elite culture evolved.
Finally, in outlining the history of medieval Japan, one can hardly
fail to note the influence of Japan's East Asian neighbors on Japan's
medieval history and that of Japan on China and Korea. Japanese
pirates (wako) persistently pillaged the coasts of China and Korea
throughout this period. Although partly motivated by trade, the most
notable effect of these wako was continual diplomatic friction. China
was the source of Buddhist teachings and virtually all the coins used in
medieval Japan, and it was Japan's most important trade partner, as
evidenced in Japan's efforts to maintain the tally trade (the officially
sanctioned and restricted trade) with Ming China. The continent,
however, was also the source of medieval Japan's most trying diplomatic
and political-military experiences. The Mongol invasions of the
last decades of the thirteenth century imposed heavy political and
economic burdens on Kamakura Japan, contributing to the fall of the
bakufu. The frequent and, at times, threatening demands made by
Ming China on the Ashikaga bakufu to accept the status of tributary
state forced the shogun and his bakufu to acknowledge that medieval
Japan was part of East Asia in which China considered itself the unchallenged
hegemonic power.
The collective goal of the authors of this volume is to describe more
fully and to analyze more closely the various parts of this history. In
this Introduction I shall summarize the methodological orientation of
both Japanese and Western specialists in the medieval period. This
overview will help acquaint readers with the essential characteristics of
Japanese historiography which, for Western specialists, serves as an
indispensable source of learning and research. This summary of Japanese
historiography may also be useful to nonspecialists who want to
read the translated works of Japanese authors cited in the selected
bibliography following the Introduction. This bibliography of works
in English is presented only to aid nonspecialist readers of this volume
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6 INTRODUCTION
and is not intended to be comprehensive. In addition, for discussions
of historiographies in Japanese and English, interested readers are
invited to examine those works on historiography also cited in the
bibliography following the Introduction.3
Following these short historiographical notes, I shall discuss, for
each chapter of this volume, its historiographical significance and its
contents and, in the footnote ending this short discussion, cite the
more recent works in English that refer to the topic of the chapter. I
shall conclude with some of my reflections on the present state of
Western historiography regarding medieval Japan.
A chronology of the main historical events and developments appears
as an appendix to this Introduction, and a glossary of Japanese
terms is appended at the end of this volume.
JAPANESE AND ENGLISH WORKS ON MEDIEVAL HISTORY
To understand Japanese historiography for the medieval period, one
first must be acquainted with twoforces majeures that shaped the character
of the historiography and that had and continue to have profound
effects on its essential character.4
One is Japan's national experience in
the past hundred years ofhaving been a latecomer to modernization and
industrialization, and the other is the Marxist framework of analysis
that was widely adopted by Japanese historians in the early decades of
this century. Although the effects of both have been diminishing since
the 1960s, even today they continue to mold and affect the works of
Japanese historians.
It is not surprising that Japan's national experience of having been a
follower of the early industrializers, of having eagerly pursued industrialization
and modernization-cum-Westernization, influenced several
prewar generations of Japanese historians. The most important question
asked by historians around the turn of the century was, How and
why did Japanese history differ from those of the industrialized Western
nations? This meant that these historians had little choice but to be
comparativists, often explicitly and always implicitly.
3 In discussing the historiography, thus the works included in the bibliography following the
Introduction, as well as in referring to "Western" scholarship, I refer only to those works
published in English. This reflects only the limitations of my linguistic competence and does
not suggest that significant works in other Western languages do not exist. Readers should be
aware, for example, that many important and useful works on the period have been published
in German.
4 Readers who do not read Japanese but wish to gain a further understanding of Japanese
historiography can examine Hall (1966, 1968, 1983), Mass (1980), Takeuchi (1982), and
Yamamura (1975).
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JAPANESE AND ENGLISH WORKS 7
The main topics of study pursued by medievalists, therefore, were
the similarities and differences in medieval institutions in Japan and
Europe, the reasons for the differences between Japan and Europe in
the pace of change in the medieval political economy, and the reasons
for the assumed similarities in the patterns of evolution through history,
from ancient to medieval and then to modern. In essence, the
topics that attracted the most attention from Japanese historians of this
period were, they believed, those that helped them see Japanese history
as reflected in the historiographical mirror of the West. These and
many other comparative questions continued to be asked into the first
decades of this century, by pioneering medieval historians who focused
on the search for similarities between the institutions and laws
of medieval Europe and those of medieval Japan. The scholars who
followed the pioneers gradually broadened the scope of their studies to
compare and contrast medieval Japan's political and social organizations
and patterns of landownership with those of medieval Europe.
Superimposed on this comparativist mold of historiography was the
Marxist framework of historical analysis adopted by many Japanese
historians and social scientists beginning around the time of World
War I. The use of this framework quickly spread, and by the early
1930s it had become firmly established as the dominant method of
historical analysis. There were two mutually reinforcing reasons for
this development. One was the increasing intellectual and political
commitment to leftist ideologies by Japanese historians and social scientists
in these decades characterized by political suppression, the
prolonged agricultural depression of the 1920s, and the Great Depression
and rise of nationalistic militarism of the 1930s. The second
reason was to build a broad analytic framework in which to place a
methodological foundation for the comparative character of Japanese
historiography.
The result was that many of the two generations of historians - those
publishing in the interwar years and those in the immediate postwar
decades - focused on examining and debating historical questions and
issues that are significant within the scope of Marxist analysis. For
medievalists, the most important of these questions was when Japan
experienced feudalism, a crucial, preindustrial stage in the Marxist
analysis. Debates among specialists concerning the periodization and
character of Japanese feudalism were intense and often were both
academic and political. In these decades, numerous monographs and
articles were produced concerning many questions and aspects of medieval
history significant within the Marxist framework.
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8 INTRODUCTION
No attempt will be made here to delineate these multifaceted and
often heated debates. But it is useful to note that much of the debate
within the Marxist framework of analysis focused less on an explicit
comparison of Western and Japanese feudalism and their institutional
characteristics. Instead, the debate concentrated more on when Japan
experienced "pure" feudalism according to each scholar's interpretation
of Marx's definition of the term; on the validity of each scholar's
characterization of the patterns of landownership, methods and forms
of payments of peasant dues, and motivations for interclass struggles;
and on how these patterns, forms, and motivations changed over time.
Before the early 1960s, many scholars' works were implicitly motivated
by their political ideology, and the Marxist interpretation of
medieval history enjoyed its heyday in the late 1940s and 1950s. However,
the ideological motivation grew less and less evident in the 1960s,
and by the 1970s many scholars used the Marxist framework of analysis
and vocabulary merely as familiar and useful tools of historical
study that had been generally accepted by their profession.
The preoccupation of two generations of historians with questions
and issues within the Marxist framework of analysis had a few other
important effects on the historiography of the period. One was that the
profession was not hospitable to those who wished to study such aspects
of the period as cities, social life, religion, and culture that were
not central to the Marxist analysis. An important result was that scholars
studying these topics tended to adopt the Marxist framework of
analysis and to use as much as possible the Marxist vocabulary.
The other consequence of the profession's preoccupation with Marxist
analysis was that economic history became a political-institutional
economic history concentrating on interclass politicoeconomic conflicts
and the characteristics of production methods in each stage of
history that gave rise to and defined the nature of these conflicts. To
this day, there is no monograph on Japan's medieval economy that
uses the analytic insights of modern (neoclassical) economic theory, as
is found in large numbers in the study of the European medieval
economy.
But this began to change in the 1960s, becoming more perceptible
in the 1970s. The numerous reasons for this change are related,
the principal one being that many Japanese began to perceive that
Japan had completed its "catch-up" period of industrialization/
modernization. Marxist analysis, while still exerting a strong influence
on the profession, slowly but steadily lost its former grip, as
demonstrated by the increased number of works whose methods of
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JAPANESE AND ENGLISH WORKS 9
analysis and central questions deviated from those that had preoccupied
earlier scholars. This trend has been strengthened, moreover,
because the immediate postwar generation of scholars is being replaced
by a new generation that generally is not as interested as their
predecessors had been in the questions that arose directly from the
Marxist framework of analysis. The sudden rise in the number of
active professional historians since the 1950s (owing to the larger
number of academic posts that became available in universities created
after 1945) also has contributed to this trend.
The change, however, is occurring slowly, and so it may be more
accurate to characterize the historiography of the medieval period as
being in transition. Signs of transition are today found in, for example,
the fact that more and more case studies of historical figures, regional
political institutions, and forms of economic change are being undertaken,
not to provide evidence for the validity of the Marxist analysis,
but to offer descriptions and analyses with less and less direct relevance
(if any at all) to the Marxist framework of analysis. As yet,
extrapolating from such a recent trend is premature. The studies that
have appeared in the past fifteen years have not yet challenged in any
fundamental ways the Marxist core of the institutional and politicaleconomic
history of medieval Japan. Whether or not the process of
transition that has begun will gain sufficient momentum to challenge
the Marxist framework and rewrite the history of the medieval centuries
remains to be demonstrated.
Except for the few instances noted, serious professional study of medieval
Japanese history by scholars writing in English did not begin until
after World War II. What works were available in the prewar years
were limited to naive accounts based on translations of the great Japanese
historical narratives such as the Heike monogatari or Azuma
kagami. The history of premodern Japan consisted of the "interweaving
of great and petty men and events" and an analysis of what human
emotions lay behind the narratives contained in "diaries, war tales,
morality pieces, and the more fanciful chronicles." History was to be
understood "through dialogue and overt (covert) passion." And in the
prewar decades, "the rendering of a famous text was evidently considered
task enough." Thus, "there were no monographs, and - lacking
these - little experience in learning to use sources critically."5
A significant exception to this was the work of Asakawa Kan'ichi,
5 Mass (1980), p. 63.
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10 INTRODUCTION
the Japanese-born Yale scholar, which was published in the 1930s and
1940s. Many of his works were on the medieval land system, and they
were the first - and for years the only - studies of the shoen system
available to Westerners that made extensive use of documentary evidence.
Asakawa's studies, however, were comparative; he was searching
for similarities between the medieval land systems of Japan and
Europe. The other exceptional scholar of the prewar period was
George B. Sansom. His major prewar publication, Japan: A Short
Cultural History, may have relied too heavily on the "history-throughnarrative"
approach and may not have been comprehensive in coverage,
but it provided a vivid picture of Japanese history and numerous
interpretive insights.6
Although ironically the study of Japan began in earnest as a result of
World War II, its medieval history was neglected during the immediate
postwar years. The reasons for this include the strong interest in
the post-1868 period of a large majority of Western historians of Japan
and the linguistic barrier to using original medieval documents. And
as is still true today, anyone attempting to begin a serious study of the
period must learn the Marxist analysis and vocabulary that the Japanese
continue to use.
This neglect of the medieval period ceased rather abruptly in the
mid-1970s when, relative to the still very small number of specialists,
there was a sudden profusion of works on many aspects of the medieval
period. But before describing the works that have appeared during
the past fifteen years, we must first discuss John W. Hall's Government
and Local Power in Japan, soo-1700, published in 1966; this
work in a real sense began a new chapter of study of medieval Japan in
the United States.
The historiographical significance of Hall's book is that he demonstrated
that Japanese history can be written using what he called
the concept of familial organization as the fundamental authorityconveying
force within the Japanese sociopolitical structure, which
he defined as
not a narrowly denned kinship organization, but rather the extended uji
system in which family and "family-like" bonds extended over branch
(ichimon), allied (fudai) and even subordinate (Jkenin) families surrounding the
6 Some scholars might also include James Murdoch, A History of Japan, as an exception.
However, Volume I of his work, beginning with the "origins" and ending with the "arrival of
the Portuguese in 1542," is of extremely limited interest to the students of the period it covers,
despite occasional insights and lively narratives. This is an idiosyncratic work of an able and
tireless amateur in the original positive sense of the term, but it is unable to withstand
scholarly scrutiny, as Sansom's work still can.
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JAPANESE AND ENGLISH WORKS II
main line of an aristocratic lineage. This u/t-type structure lay at the heart of
any power-holding arrangement, providing the basic framework through
which authority was exercised.7
Or, as paraphrased by Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hall's concept of familial
organization is a major contribution because it helped show "the essential
rationality of historical development, the continuity underlying
and the integrity discernible in change, the ascendancy of structure
over person."8
This was Hall's effort to rewrite Japan's premodern history without
using feudalism - as used by either the earlier comparativist writers
or the Marxists - as the key concept in the study of Japanese
history. As Hall himself wrote in 1962, feudalism as a historical
concept applied to the analysis of Japan's past caused historians to
make facile comparisons of European and Japanese history and to
confine their studies to a narrow range of historical aspects readily
accommodated by the concept, such as the lord-vassal relationship
in its many manifestations and military culture and ethics, and also
caused historians "to accept military power as the ultimate determining
force in history." His specific objection to the Marxist use of
feudalism was that the concept is used "in almost anthropomorphic
fashion as a living social organism which can be described as 'taking
over' a society, as 'bringing' certain institutions into being, as 'resisting'
change or 'leading' to other stages of society."9
Hall's work
showed that non-Japanese scholars using original documents could
reinterpret Japanese history and challenge the dominant Marxist view
offered by Japanese scholars.
As noted, the study of medieval Japan began to increase in the mid-
1970s. The main reason for this growth is the greater number of
specialists, many of whom are better trained than were most of the
earlier generations of scholars, both in historiography and in their
ability to use primary and secondary sources. The better linguistic
capabilities of recent entrants to the field is partly a result of the
postwar public and private funding that became available for graduate
study and extended stays in Japan.
As is evident in the appended bibliography, the recent upsurge of
scholarly activities in the field of medieval history took two forms:
the publication of several multiauthor volumes, most of which included
articles on the medieval period as well as on the Heian,
Sengoku, and Tokugawa periods, and the larger number of research
7 Mass (1982a), p. 262. 8 Berry (1987), p. 187. 9 Hall (1968).
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12 INTRODUCTION
monographs and articles on the Kamakura and Muromachi periods
by individual scholars.10
DISCUSSION OF THE CHAPTERS IN THIS VOLUME
This section summarizes each chapter in this volume in order of appearance
and briefly discusses both the works of the author to date and
significant recent works by others that are relevant to the subject of
the chapter.
In his numerous works, Jeffrey P. Mass has begun to revise
Kamakura history and to present a new vision of the Kamakura
bakufu that challenges many of the existing Western interpretations of
Japan's medieval history. His chapter in this volume, "The Kamakura
Bakufu," summarizes many of his new insights and interpretations
and reveals his ability to make extensive and imaginative use of original
sources. Mass is careful to identify throughout the chapter the
differences in interpretation between his and the more widely held
views of both Japanese and Western scholars. For example, he has
shown that the once-cherished notion of tyrannic rule by Taira
Kiyomori is an exaggeration because Taira was hampered by Emperor
Goshirakawa for most of his supposed hegemony; the traditional view
of the Jokyu disturbance of 1221 as a clash between court a.id bakufu
cannot be sustained and must be seen as a war in which disenchanted
vassals joined Emperor Gotoba's rebellion; the military estate stewards
(jito) were not a new phenomenon invented by Yoritomo but were
appropriated and recast by him to meet his own needs; the office of
provincial constables (shugo) were not established in 1185, as the
Azuma kagami states, but later and as a means of controlling the jito;
there is a need to distinguish and evaluate more carefully the differing
historical significance of jito appointed before and after the Jokyu
disturbance of 1221 (hompo and shimpo jito) and the development of
thejito's proprietary control over shoen; and the role of judicial arbitrator
is one of the most significant facets of the Kamakura bakufu.
Those who have read Mass's earlier works will note that his chapter
shows that his analysis of the Kamakura period is changing. Mass
previously viewed the period as one principally of disengagement and
innovation instead of continuity with the past or integration with its
traditions, but he has now shifted closer to the evolutionary view
10 See Hall and Mass, eds. (1974); Hall, Nagahara, and Yamamura, eds. (1981); Hall and
Toyoda, eds. (1977); Mass, ed. (1982); Mass and Hauser, eds. (1985); and Yamamura (1975).
Some readers may also want to consult Elison and Smith (1981).
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DISCUSSION OF THE CHAPTERS 13
espoused by Hall. Mass now views the Heian system of imperial aristocratic
rule as still vigorous during the twelfth century but also as
remaining the essential framework within which the bakufu was
obliged to operate. In this sense, he concludes that the Heian pattern
of government survived into the fourteenth century and was destroyed
with the Kamakura bakufu rather than by it. However, Mass does
point out and discuss those aspects of the period and the bakufu that
he believes were revolutionary in nature. One example is Yoritomo's
vision, which enabled this Minamoto leader to take advantage of the
chaos of the Gempei War to fulfill the most deep-seated desire of the
warriors class: to possess guaranteed landholdings outside Kyoto's
purview. A second example is Yoritomo's accommodation with the
court in 1183 through which, for the first time in Japanese history, a
noncentral source of authority provided patronage for central recipients
and exerted its power as well in central and western Japan.
Mass stresses that accommodation with the court changed the
bakufu's scope of authority from one previously limited to military
and police functions to one that became increasingly judicial in tone;
that is, the bakufu's major function evolved from simply fulfilling the
warriors' desires to restoring political stability, a stability that could be
maintained only by protecting equally the rights of warriors and of
courtiers. Mass emphasizes that the one-time rebel established a
bakufu that became a genuine force for law and order. Indeed, Mass
sees a crucial raison d'etre for the bakufu's existence in the settlement
of land disputes. The bakufu developed a sophisticated legal system
that attempted to arbitrate between the local interests of Kamakura
vassals, or the jito, and the central elites, the proprietors of shoen. As in
his earlier writings, Mass discusses the evolution of a legal system that
was created to undertake this task. This system of adjudication was
based on precedents and in turn developed basic ideas of impartiality,
modes of proof, due process, and the right of appeal. Mass's goal here
is to show that the Kamakura bakufu maintained peace and stability
through the legal system that the bakufu developed with considerable
skill and foresight.11
Oyama Kyohei, who wrote the chapter "The Medieval Shoen" is
Japan's leading scholar on this subject and has written numerous articles
on the shoen. Oyama's interest is broad, and he has studied propri-
11 See all of the entries in the selected bibliography for Jeffrey P. Mass; Goble (1982, 1985);
Hurst (1982); Kiley (1982); Steenstrup (1979, 1980a, 1980b); Takeuchi (1982); and Varley
(1979a).
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14 INTRODUCTION
etorship, management of shoen, the jito's roles in the shoen, and the
lives of the shoen cultivators as payers of dues, defenders of the paddies
against nature, and participants in the growing market economy.
Oyama begins his chapter with an attempt to determine the extent
of shoen formation in three provinces, by using the provincial land
registers (otabumi). What he finds from the registers of Noto, Awaji,
and Wakasa provinces is that the percentage of the land that contained
shoen varied from approximately 50 percent in Wakasa to more than 70
percent in Noto and Awaji. Although his observation that the shoen
system was becoming a fixture in medieval Japanese society is not
surprising to students of the period, his finding is significant in that
few scholars writing in English have attempted to demonstrate how
rapidly and extensively the shoen system was spreading during this
period.
Oyama then examines the economic institutions and practices of
several shoen. On the basis of findings such as that dues were paid in
kind to Kyoto-based proprietors, that the mix cf dues differed by
season and region, and that corvee, too was demanded and received by
the shoen proprietors, Oyama concludes that the household economy
of shoen proprietors in the Kamakura period was basically selfsufficient.
The degree of self-sufficiency and how long it lasted have
been long, intensively debated subjects, as both pertain to the political
and economic reasons for the control over, and growth of, commerce.
The latter half of Oyama's chapter deals with the internal organization
of the shoen. He describes in detail a few shoen and their landholding
patterns-the number of paddies managed and worked by the cultivators
themselves (myo), office land (shokan-myo), and other units of
paddies. The position of the jito within the shoen is also explained in
order to provide a detailed picture of the rights and Iandholdings of
the jito. Oyama looks at a number of court cases to illustrate the
common areas of dispute - excessive corvee imposts, unauthorized
taxation, and improper confiscation of fields - between the jito and
cultivator and between the jito and proprietor.
Oyama concludes with a thoughtful discussion of the current scholarly
debate among specialists of medieval Japan who emphasize one or
the other of the two overlapping land systems of the medieval period:
the local overlord-proprietor system (zaichi-ryoshu) that provided the
warriors' economic base and the shoen system as primarily an institution
that provided the same for the court nobility in both the
Kamakura and Muromachi periods. He argues that those who focus
on the former are attempting to draw parallels with the feudalism of
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DISCUSSION OF THE CHAPTERS 15
medieval Europe, whereas those who concentrate on the latter are
favoring an Asian comparison. Oyama then discusses the recent interest
in the Japanese medieval period in its own right, as having nonEuropean
structural characteristics. He speculates that the shoen system
survived in some places well into the sixteenth century because
the Kamakura bakufu - and to an extent the Muromachi - supported
a policy that created coexistence between the shoen and the zaichiryoshu
system.12
Ishii Susumu, the author of "The Decline of the Kamakura Bakufu,"
is an undisputed authority on many aspects of the Kamakura bakufu
and an active participant in the debates on the historiographical issues
of the medieval period. His contribution to the study of the shugo
system of the Kamakura period is widely regarded as one of the most
important in advancing our understanding of the system and of the
character of the Kamakura bakufu.
Ishii first examines the effects of the two Mongol invasions of 1274
and 1281, because the invasions themselves, along with the continued
fear of future invasions, put an enormous economic burden on the
bakufu which could neither meet the expenses of fortification nor offer
rewards to the warriors or religious institutions credited with the kamikaze
(divine winds) that ultimately drove back the Mongols. Ishii then
stresses that the invasions were only one factor in the decline of the
bakufu. Other factors included internal dissension within the Hojo
hierarchy, economic difficulties of the warrior class caused by the
growing commercialization and exacerbated by the economic burdens
imposed on it by the invasions, discontent among rival warrior houses
to the Hojo autocracy and monopolization of bakufu posts, and the
rise of domestic unrest evidenced by groups of marauders called akuto
and by peasants. The dispute over the imperial succession, which
divided the court into two factions competing for both the imperial
title and rights to shoen, also took away support for the bakufu. The
bakufu, in the role of arbiter, settled the dispute by introducing a
system of alternate succession, but the bakufu's intervention in court
affairs was met with enmity and resentment, causing Emperor Godaigo
in particular to encourage anti-Hojo and antibakufu sentiment
in his attempt to restore direct imperial rule. Ishii sees the use of
tokuseirei (debt-abrogation decrees) as an attempt by the bakufu to
12 See Hall (1966); Kiley (1974); Mass (1974b); Nagahara (1975); Sato (1974); Piggott (1982);
and Yamamura (1981b).
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l6 INTRODUCTION
overcome some of these problems. But such decrees eased the economic
difficulties of some warriors and peasants for only a brief period
at the cost of further destabilizing the bakufu.13
John W. Hall's "The Muromachi Bakufu" is a thorough and critical
study of the institutional history of the Muromachi period. Hall begins
with a rebuttal of the traditional view that the Muromachi bakufu was
weak when judged in terms of effective centralized rule. He points out
that recent assessments suggest that even in terms of government
efficiency, the Ashikaga should not be dismissed too lightly. Under the
auspices of the third and sixth Ashikaga shoguns (Yoshimitsu and
Yoshinori), a military government for the first time gained possession
of all aspects of secular authority.
The next section of Hall's chapter deals with the shugo system,
focusing on the steps that led to its increased authority during the
period. The most important point of his analysis is that Hall, unlike
many other scholars both in Japan and the West, does not view the
shugo's increased authority as threatening the survival of the bakufu.
Instead, he argues that as long as the shugo and the bakufu "worked
together in a context that admitted the shogun's primacy, the growth
of shugo power in the provinces was to the advantage of the bakufu's
rule."
Hall next examines the delicate balance of power within the bakufu
between the shugo and the shogun. Noting that shogunal control increased
under Yoshimitsu, Hall offers a number of reasons for this: the
end of the fighting over the Southern Court, the development of the
kanrei (deputy shogun) system, the practice of shugo residence in
Kyoto, and military action eliminating recalcitrant shugo. Shogunal
power, Hall emphasizes, was enhanced by the post of kanrei which
rotated among three primary shugo allies, because this practice gave
the bakufu the combined military support of the primary allies needed
to dominate any would-be challenger of shogunal power.
Hall also explores the economic underpinnings of the bakufu, a
subject dealt with only in passing in most histories of the period. He
illustrates the diverse income sources used by the bakufu, which
included - besides landholdings, taxes on merchants, patronage of za
(guilds), tolls on roads and borders, and the tribute trade with Ming
China - all evidence of the burgeoning medieval economy. After the
Onin War (1467-77), the bakufu sphere of authority was reduced
13 See Arnesen (1982); Harrington (1982); Hori (1974); and Varley (1971, 1982).
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DISCUSSION OF THE CHAPTERS 17
almost solely to the city of Kyoto and its close environs, even though
the Muromachi bakufu in form lasted well into the sixteenth century.
An important reason for this decline in authority was, according to
Hall, the trend toward local autonomy which he describes at various
levels. This indeed is a masterful chapter, containing significant insights
and reflections by this postwar pioneer and undisputed leader of
Japan's premodern history.
Another contribution to the institutional history of the Muromachi
period is "Muromachi Local Government: Shugo and Kokujin," by
Imatani Akira, who has in the past dozen years published major works
on the subject of this chapter and on other topics in the institutional
history of the Muromachi period. In this chapter, Imatani focuses on
the decentralization of local authority, an aspect of the institutional
history of the period that until very recently was little studied by
Western scholars. Imatani's central concern is to analyze the constant
battles that Muromachi bakufu had to fight for control of the periphery.
He first examines the failure of the regional administrative officials
in the Kanto region (kubo) and in Kyushu (tandai). The post of
kubo was established by the bakufu in an attempt to maintain control
in the region and was considered of such importance that an Ashikaga
branch family member was appointed to the position. But instead of
strengthening the bakufu's control, the kubo became a constant source
of trouble and rebellion for the bakufu. After analyzing the development,
Imatani concludes that the failure of the kubo and tandai systems
needs to be seen as an important reason for the decentralization
in peripheral areas and subsequently for the general state of war that
characterized the period.
However, the central intent of Imatani's chapter is to examine the
decentralization of power that resulted from the increasing power of
the shugo despite the bakufu's attempts to control them. He observes
that the transformation of the shugo into a regional hegemon was due
to their increased power to enforce decisions regarding land disputes,
to levy hanzei and other taxes, as well as to secure other powers. The
power to impose a levy taking half of the proprietary dues (hanzei)
from shoen eventually enabled the shugo to absorb parts of the shoen,
thus providing an economic base capable of supporting vassals. The
ability to impose a provincewide tax (tansen) expanded the shugo's
authority throughout the province. Imatani also notes that the post's
increasingly hereditary nature further aided in the transformation of
shugo into hegemon. The analyses offered in this part of the chapter
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18 INTRODUCTION
differ in perspective from that adopted by Hall in the preceding chapter,
but they do not counter the substance of Hall's on the changing
relationship between the bakufu and shugo and its effects on the stability
of the Muromachi polity.
In the final section, which is of great interest to specialists, Imatani
analyzes the relationship between the shugo and the kokujin (local
overlords). He discusses the scholarly debate between the proponents
of Nagahara Keiji's view of the shugo as the axis of political order that
established the shugo domain system and the proponents of Kurokawa
Naonori's view of the kokujin instead of the shugo as the central
figure of the time. Imatani concludes that the shugo who exerted
power over their respective regions were the principal force behind
the changes that unfolded from the late fifteenth through the early
sixteenth centuries.14
Following these two chapters on the institutional developments in the
Muromachi period are two chapters, "The Decline of the Shoen" and
"The Medieval Peasant," by Nagahara Keiji who has written many
scholarly monographs, articles, textbooks, and popular "educational"
books on both the medieval and later periods of Japanese history.
Several of his monographs on the premodern period and on historiography
have offered new interpretations, analyses, and insights; some
have been accepted by the profession, and others continue to be
widely debated. Nagahara's scholarly works concentrate on the Muromachi
and Sengoku periods, and his articles in English (see the
bibliography to the Introduction) reveal his contributions to the
study of the medieval period.
The first of Nagahara's chapters describes and analyzes the metamorphosis
of shoen into fief. He begins with an outline of the shoen
system and concludes that its long success lies in the fact that the shoen
answered the economic as well as the social needs of both the ruling
class and the ruled. And turning to the main topic of his essay, he
notes that this successful balance began to be upset because of the
introduction of two new elements, the;'uo and shugo, in which he sees
the manifestation of a process begun in the Kamakura period during
which the power of the central proprietor over the lands, its revenue,
and its inhabitants declined as that of the warrior class increased.
14 See Arnesen (1985); Collcutt (1982a); Davis (1974); Gay (1985); Grossberg (1981a, 1981b);
Hall (1968, 1981, 1985); Harrington (1985); Hayashi (1977); Kawai (1977); Kuwayama
(1977); Miyagawa (1977); Murakami (1984); Sato (1977); Varley (1967, 1980); and Wintersteen
(1974a, 1974b).
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DISCUSSION OF THE CHAPTERS 19
Nagahara concentrates on three pivotal causes of the process that
brought about the eventual demise of the shorn: the incursion by the
jito, that by the shugo, and changes at the village level. The jito were
able, if only gradually over time, to usurp more proprietary rights over
the shoen through means of compromises (wayo) and contracts (ukesho)
with the central proprietors which often led to a physical division of
the shoen (shitaji chubun). Nagahara notes that by the fifteenth century
these jito had been transformed into kokujin-tyoshu (local overlords)
who possessed a contiguous local power base. The shugo's rights over
land increased with the establishment of the Muromachi bakufu. New
rights concerning the resolution of land disputes were granted to
shugo, thus widening the scope of their political and economic authority.
The shugo also received rights to impose taxes (tansen and hanzei)
which gave them the additional lever needed to create a vassal organization
of their own. The eventual outcome of these developments was a
system of shugo domains.
Nagahara then turns to the villages and sees that changes there were
also weakening the shoen system at the same time. The autonomy of
local agricultural communities grew, and there began to appear somura,
self-governing bodies that evolved into the villages of the Tokugawa
period. In the process, many rights of shoen proprietors were
lost, including those over crimes committed in villages. Large-scale
peasant protests (ikki), such as the one in 1428 that interfered in the
collection of shoen taxes and another in 1441 that succeeded in forcing
the bakufu to issue a tokusei edict abrogating debt obligations, also
helped weaken the shoen system.
Nagahara also discusses the various means used by the central proprietors
to stave off the inevitable. These included appeals to the
bakufu and resorts to out-of-court settlements (wayo), such as authorizing
jito to collect and deliver the annual tax (ukesho) and hiring tax
collectors (ukeoi daikan). Nagahara examines the precarious role
played by the bakufu of both the Kamakura and Muromachi periods
to placate military supporters and shoen proprietors. His conclusion is
that the shoen system crumbled under the combined pressures from
above - the jito and shugo - and below - the changes in villages.15
Nagahara's second chapter, "The Medieval Peasant," describes peasant
life and participation in the political changes of the late medieval
period. Convinced that the shoen system was pivotal in the creation of
15 See Nagahara (i960, 1979); and Nagahara and Yamamura (1981).
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20 INTRODUCTION
a medieval peasantry, Nagahara believes that the introduction and
development of the shorn system had a greater impact on the living
conditions of peasants in Japan than did the founding of the Kamakura
bakufu. The shoen system, therefore, is of great significance in
peasant history and is the central defining characteristic of the medieval
period.
In this chapter Nagahara also expands on a subject introduced in his
preceding chapter, that of the growing autonomy of rural communities.
The independence of these communities from control by the
central proprietor and later by the local overlord was realized gradually
as these communities acquired rights of self-governance, welfare,
and taxation. Nagahara's unique contribution is his description of
everyday peasant life - food, clothing, and shelter - on a shoen.
In his chapter, "The Growth of Medieval Commerce," Kozo Yamamura
examines the growth of commerce in medieval Japan and the
many significant changes that this growth brought to Japanese society.
The chapter is organized chronologically and begins with an
overview of the initial conditions - the economic and institutional development
achieved by the mid-thirteenth century - that the author
believes are important to explaining the subsequent rapid growth of
commerce. The following sections describe and analyze the reasons
for, and the effect of, this growth of commerce, which continued
steadily in the Kamakura and accelerated in the Nambokucho and
Muromachi periods.
The principal developments that Yamamura discusses are the
growth of agricultural productivity, which provided a basis for the
growth of commerce; the increase in the size and number of urban
centers; significant institutional developments such as the rise and
growth of guilds (za) and the increasing use of bills of exchange; the
increasing use of Chinese coins even by cultivators in the countryside;
the growing practice of commutation; increasing specialization among
artisans, merchants, and specialists in transportation, all of whom
offered an ever-larger variety of products and services; and the development
of a land and water transportation network.
Interwoven in the descriptions of these and other developments are
discussions of economic and political conflicts that arose as the direct
and indirect results of the growth of commerce and that reflect the
changing balance of political and economic powers among the elite
recipients of shoen dues (the nobles, temples, and shrines); the warrior
class (the bakufu and its retainers and regional and local powers); and
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DISCUSSION OF THE CHAPTERS 21
the commoners (merchants, artisans, and others). The major topics of
this chapter are the political and economic conflicts over the za, between
the za and their competitors, and between their old and new
patrons (nobles, temples against the bakufu and daimyo); over the
tokuseirei (debt-abrogation decrees), pitting lenders (rich merchants
and other moneylenders) against borrowers (warriors and commoners);
and over changing levels and mixes (in-kind versus cash payment)
of dues payment by peasants among the recipients of shoen dues
and between the recipients and the peasants.
In describing these and other closely related developments that occurred
as a result of the growth of commerce, Yamamura attempts to
show that by enlisting the analytic insights of modern economic theory
a few of the questions most frequently debated can be reexamined,
resulting in a better understanding of the political and economic motivations
of those involved. The two principal subjects reexamined are
the reasons that the Ashikaga bakufu or regional powers (shugo
daimyo) did not mint coins of their own but continued to use Chinese
coins, despite a few distinct disadvantages in doing so; and the reasons
that commutation was adopted, not always because of demands by the
principal recipients of the dues but at times at the request of the
cultivators, the payers of the dues themselves.16
The chapter by Kawazoe Shoji, "Japan and East Asia," traces Japan's
relations with its East Asian neighbors during the Kamakura and
Muromachi bakufu. The author is a recognized authority on the subject
and a leading student of the domestic and international causes and
effects of the Mongol invasions and many other historiographical issues,
of the Kamakura period. Kawazoe's principal goal is to show the
close relationship between international relations and domestic politics.
Although Kawazoe's account of Kamakura foreign relations does
include some discussion of the role of the headquarters of Kyushu's
governor general (dazaifu) in the trade with Sung China, his emphasis
is on the Mongol invasions and their effects on Japan's polity and
society of the time. He explains that the Mongols initially sought to
open relations with Japan in order to strengthen their ties with the
Koryo kingdom of Korea and to prevent the Japanese from aiding the
Southern Sung. However, in noting that the Mongol emissaries were
constantly rebuffed, Kawazoe speculates that the Japanese did not
16 See Brown (1951); Hall (1974); Hayashi (1977); Hori (1974); Morris (1977); Nagahara and
Yamamura (1988); Piggott (1982); Sasaki (1981); Toyoda and Sugiyama (1977); Wakita (1975,
1981); and Yamamura (1973, 1975, 1981a, 1981b).
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22 INTRODUCTION
accede to the Mongol overtures for three reasons: The Japanese considered
the Mongol request to be a declaration of war; Japan's information
concerning Mongol intentions was biased because it originated
with the Southern Sung, who were at the time at war with the Mongols;
and Japan was a society governed by warriors whose innate function
predisposed them to war.
Kawazoe stresses that foreign relations in the early years of the
Muromachi bakufu were hindered by the continued existence of the
Southern Court. That is, the traditional trading and diplomatic center,
the Kyushu dazaifu, remained in the hands of the renegade Southern
Court which was brought to an end in 1392. As a result, the bakufu
was unable to gain control of foreign relations until the last two decades
of Yoshimitsu's rule (1368-1408).
Turning to the tribute system with Ming China that began under
Yoshimitsu, Kawazoe posits four reasons for Yoshimitsu's desire to
enter the Ming imperial sphere. First, Yoshimitsu needed the income
generated by the tribute trade to defray the enormous expenditures on
art that were made under his auspices. Second, control over foreign
relations gave legitimacy to Yoshimitsu's rule, as evidenced by his
references to himself as "king" in the dispatches he sent to Ming
China. Third, Ming China could prove to be a formidable enemy, and
thus a tribute relationship would eliminate this insecurity and fear.
And fourth, the tribute trade allowed Yoshimitsu to control the
Kyushu tandai which dealt with all legal trade with China. In addition
to his discussion of the Mongol invasion and Japan's relations with
Ming China, Kawazoe examines the Japanese relationship with Korea
and the Ryukyu Islands, as well as the effect of the omnipresent wako
(pirates) on international relations in East Asia throughout the medieval
period.17
H. Paul Varley's "Cultural Life in Medieval Japan" is a rich and
reflective discussion of the elite cultural achievements of the period as
provided by a leading American scholar of the subject who is also an
authority on the institutional history of medieval Japan. He brings to
his chapter the understanding and breadth of knowledge he has acquired
over the past two decades in numerous valuable studies ranging
from the Onin War, Kamakura intellectual history and folk beliefs,
and selected institutions of the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, to
the many aspects of cultural life in the Muromachi period.
17 See Tanaka (1977); and Yamamura and Kamiki (1983).
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DISCUSSION OF THE CHAPTERS 23
Varley's principal intent is to analyze the aesthetic foundations of
medieval elite culture which he views as the combined product of the
pessimism of the Buddhist concept of mappo (literally, "the latter days
of Buddhist law," thus a period of historical decline) with a nostalgia
for the Heian past. Central to Varley's analysis is the idea that the
pessimism evoked by the concept of mappo set the dominant tone for
the period. This fact, he argues, is evident in one of the great literary
works of the Kamakura period, Kamo no Chomei's Hojoki, and also in
the famous war tale, the Heike monogatari, a chronicle of the fated
destruction of the Taira family during the Gempei War. Varley also
credits mappo with creating the major aesthetic precepts of the age:
yugen (mystery and depth), sabi (loneliness), and wabi (the plain and
humble). The appeal of the "weathered and withered, the desolate and
lonely," he shows, is clearly demonstrated in the last major imperial
poetry anthology compiled in 1205, the Shinkokinshu.
Varley notes that whereas the cultural achievements of the Kamakura
age were the product of courtiers, the Muromachi period saw a
tremendous outpouring of military patronage. In particular, he credits
Yoshimitsu, the third Ashikaga shogun, with the cultural flowering of
the Kitayama epoch (1368-1408). The effect of his patronage, Varley
argues, was most evident in the development of noh drama which
under Yoshimitsu's protege, Zeami, became the refined and courtly
art we know today. Varley speculates that the principal reason for
Yoshimitsu's patronage of the arts lay in political ambition; that is,
Yoshimitsu wished to combine both the military and civil elements of
rule within himself, thus establishing a kind of "feudal kingship."
Varley supports this view by noting that Yoshimitsu institutionalized a
calendar of formal events mimicking that of the imperial court.
In his conclusion, Varley challenges the traditional view that Zen
played a dominant role in molding medieval tastes and sentiments.
Instead, he contends that the products of medieval culture - the Heike
monogatari, renga poetry, noh, sumi-e, landscape painting, and shoinstyle
architecture - all reflect indigenous Japanese feelings and tastes,
with which those of Zen simply coincided. Medieval culture, according
to Varley, is a product of an aesthetic longing for, or a nostalgic
vision of, the courtier past and aesthetic precepts - yugen, sabi, and
wabi - which too had their roots in the Heian period or earlier.18
18 See Brazell (1973); Butler (1969); Ito (1977); Keene (1977); McCullough (1966, 1979);
Rosenfield (1977); Ruck (1971); Sansom (1943); Smith (1981); Ury (1979); Varley (1972,
1977. 1978,1979a, 1979b, 1980, 1984); and Varley and Elison (1981).
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24 INTRODUCTION
What Barbara Ruch offers in her chapter, "The Common Culture of
Medieval Japan," is the perceptive result of her efforts to revise the
cultural history of medieval Japan: an endeavor to broaden our collective
image and knowledge of the cultural life of medieval Japan, by
focusing on the "common culture" of the nonelite majority which has
long remained neglected by Western specialists of the period. Thus
this chapter can be seen as an exploration of a terra incognita in Western
scholarship.
Defining "common culture" as "those attitudes and activities
known to all and esteemed by that same majority, high and low. . . .
one that has outgrown the exclusive ownership of any gender, group,
or coterie in society, high or low, and has become the property of all,"
Ruch illustrates its development by examining its various aspects women,
itinerant storytellers, and shamans as cultural actors and
sources, as well as scrolls, popular songs, and stories. One must be
reminded here that written historical sources for her study are extremely
scarce and thus she must use what sources exist with insight
and imagination.
What Ruch discovered from her examination are the common
threads of medieval society. One is the pervasiveness of tonsure. By
using the life of one medieval abbess, Mugai Nyodai, Ruch represents
the whole complex system of nunhood. Tonsure is viewed not only as a
"disposal system for used women" but also as an option for women
wishing to express individual talent, a socially acceptable form of
deviance from traditional life. Another thread is the creation during
the medieval period of common gods shared by a multitude across
regional and social lines, the most popular of which were the kannon,
jizo, and gods of fortune. The creation of these common gods, Ruch
believes, was "a powerfully unifying social force" during the middle
ages.
Ruch also explores everyday life as depicted in various types of
scrolls; the role of women as shamans, prostitutes, and entertainers;
and the creation of a national myth through the popularization of
the Heike monogatari. She closes her chapter by noting the limitations
inherent in the traditional view of Muromachi culture, the
equation of culture with elitism. In short, she argues that concepts
such as yugen and sabi, said to characterize the arts and literature of
the Muromachi period, play no role at all in the common arts of
painting, sculpture, song, dance, and musical epic that the specialists
have long been studying. She makes the case that those conCambridge
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DISCUSSION OF THE CHAPTERS 2$
cepts belong to an extremely limited world, to rarefied pockets of
medieval society.19
Osumi Kazuo's chapter, "Buddhism in the Kamakura Period," is a
detailed but clearly presented overview and discussion. An undisputed
leading Japanese scholar on Buddhism in the medieval period, Osumi
is working at the forefront of scholarship that is now reacting to and
reevaluating the works of the immediate postwar decades, whose principal
foci were the linkage between religious teachings and social
classes and the teachings and activities of the Kamakura founders of
the new sects as reflections of class or regional values.
Osumi begins by examining the new schools of Buddhism that developed
during this period: Pure Land (Jodo), True Pure Land (Jodo
Shin), Zen (Soto and Rinzai), and Nichiren (Hokke). He provides an
extensive outline of the founders, tenets, and the institutional evolution
of the new schools. Osumi's emphasis, however, is on the nature
of Kamakura Buddhism. The new schools were "revolutionary," he
feels, because for the first time, Buddhism was fully adapted to Japanese
concerns and put down roots among the common people. His
view is buttressed by such examples as the Pure Land teachings of
Honen and Shinran which did not restrict salvation to those with
specialized religious training. Osumi observes that for the first time,
ordinary people could attain enlightenment in the next world through
simple chants (nembutsu) or through faith. He notes that Nichiren's
teachings also appealed to ordinary people, because by propounding a
"this-world" form of salvation, Nichiren was able to offer guidance
and hope for everyday life. Other religious teachings, too, according to
Osumi, synthesized Buddhism with various popular beliefs and practices.
For example, Ippen absorbed many Shinto practices into his
religious teachings, making them more compatible with the spiritual
inclinations of ordinary people.
Osumi also discusses the impact of the new religions on the Buddhist
establishment. The early response of the established schools of
Buddhism was persecution, which caused most of the founders of the
Kamakura schools to spend years in exile. Later, however, the existence
of the new schools acted as a catalyst to a revival of the Buddhist
establishment. Thus, in Osumi's judgment, Kamakura Buddhism
acted as a stimulus forcing the established schools to reassess them-
19 See also Ruch (1977).
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26 INTRODUCTION
selves and to shift their scholastic trends. In short, Osumi feels justified
in concluding that the religious revolution that occurred in the
Kamakura period not only created new schools of Buddhism but also
transformed the old ones.20
The chapter on "Zen and the Gozan" is by Martin Collcutt, author of
both an important book on the subject and significant studies of the
institutional and religious histories of the medieval period. His chapter
provides a perceptive history of Zen in Japan, from its introduction in
the Asuka period (538-710) through the Muromachi period. The first
part of this chapter deals with the transmission of Zen (Ch'an) from
China, a process that, before the Kamakura period, was sporadic.
However, the Kamakura period saw an upsurge in interest in Zen
which Collcutt credits to the perceived decline of the Buddhist establishment,
a belief in mappo, and the popularity of Ch'an in Sung
China, where many Japanese monks, including the founders of the
Rinzai and Soto Zen (Eisai and Dogen), traveled for their training.
Collcutt estimates that by the early fourteenth century the practice of
Zen in Japanese monasteries was probably quite similar to that in
Chinese monasteries.
Collcutt then discusses the institutional development of Zen. The
reasons behind the Hojo and shugo patronage of Zen during the
Kamakura period include, according to Collcutt, a variety of cultural,
political, and social factors, as well as spiritual interests. Noting that
these reasons for patronage remained unchanged into the Muromachi
period, Collcutt offers, as an example, the motivations for the development
of ankokuji (temples for national peace) established by Ashikaga
Takauji in the mid-fourteenth century and built at the urging of an
influential monk of the Rinzai sect, Muso Soseki, who was eager to
close the breach between the supporters of the rival courts and to calm
the restless spirit of Godaigo.
Collcutt also describes the gozan network of Rinzai Zen, a threetiered
hierarchy of temples nationwide and other institutional networks,
including the Daio and Genju schools of Rinzai and the Soto
organization. The fortunes of the networks fluctuated with that of
their patrons, as typified in the gozan's fortunes which rose and fell
with the political power of the Muromachi bakufu. Thus, Collcutt
notes that not surprisingly, when financial support dried up, monaster-
20 See Bloom (1965); Kitagawa (1966); Kuroda (1981); Matsunaga (1969); Rodd (1980); and
Weinstein (1977).
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CONCLUDING NOTES 27
ies were gutted in the Onin War; their monks were dispersed; and
their lands were taken from them.
In the final sections of his chapter, Collcutt discusses the varied
sources of income of the Zen establishment (shoen proprietorship,
donations, prayer fees, za sponsorship, medicancy, and moneylending)
and the place of Zen in medieval society and culture. He believes
that Zen played many roles in the medieval world; for example, apart
from giving spiritual and cultural guidance, the Zen monks served as
diplomats and political advisers, offered prayers for relief from famines,
and conducted funeral services. Their monasteries trained children
of warrior families and also made financial loans and organized
welfare projects. Collcutt concludes that the gozan system, in particular,
was seen by the Ashikaga as conducive to national centralization
and local surveillance.21
CONCLUDING NOTES
Characterizing "an important new feature of Japanese medieval studies
in the West," Mass wrote that there is today "a beginning tendency
to reassess, even challenge at times, the conclusions of the Japanese
historians." He further noted:
This does not mean merely looking at events and institutions through "foreign
eyes," but rather reviewing them via the same source materials that led
to those conclusions in the first place. Naturally, Western abilities in this area
have not progressed very far, but there are the first signs of a genuine dissatisfaction
with the citing of a secondary source and then interpreting simply
from that. If Western scholarship is to win the respect of historians in Japan,
it will be necessary to master the same sources that they use, and also to show
greater confidence in our own capacities for originality."
Hideharu Nitta, however, in reviewing Court and Bakufu in Japan,
which Mass edited and in which Mass made the preceding observations,
wrote:
In his editor's introduction, Mass identifies the importance of the practical
application of primary documents together with the maintenance of originality,
as well as the ability to generalize, as guidelines for American research on
Japanese medieval history. However, what one is conscious of as generality in
the articles in this volume is that descriptions tend toward general statements,
rather than true generalizing. Naturally, some of the articles are heavily under
21 See Akamatsu (1977); Collcutt (1981, 1982b); Dumoulin (1969); Kitagawa (1966); Suzuki
(1973); and Varley (1981). 22 Mass (1982a), p. xvi.
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28 INTRODUCTION
the influence of Japanese researchers. Thus, anyone expecting novel or different
points of view not found in studies made by Japanese will be unsatisfied.
This is probably because American researchers of Japanese medieval history
have not yet developed their own map of the "forest" of the Kamakura
period, a forest which is full of trees, that is, historical facts drawn from
primary documents. Having scrutinized the map made by Japanese researchers,
Americans are increasingly forcing their way into the forest, but they are
not yet able to draw their own map.23
The juxtaposition of Mass's and Nitta's assessments of American
scholarship on the medieval period offers an important clue to appraising
the current state of Western historiography of the medieval period.
Namely, even though Mass believes that he can now discern Western
scholars' abilities to challenge the conclusions of Japanese historians,
Nitta's words on Mass's qualified assessment are quite harsh and declare
that Americans, not having their own map of the forest, see only
trees, as evidenced in the fact that their statements tend toward "general
statements" rather than toward "true generalization."
Although these assessments are not contradictory in a strict sense,
their tones differ sharply. I believe that in no small part, what is
suggested by this difference in the perception of the current state of
Western historiography is due to the difference in what Japanese specialists
consider "a map" and "true generalizing," in contrast with
what most Western historians believe them to be. As noted earlier in
describing Japanese historiography, despite the wide range of historicgraphical
issues debated among Japanese scholars, their works especially
in but not limited to institutional history - follow a map
with dimensions and contours by now well delineated because of the
accumulation of Japanese scholarship to date. That map's latitudes
and longitudes are defined basically by the Marxist framework of
analysis, and it is followed by Japanese historians who may no longer
be aware that the issues they debate and the questions they raise have
origins in the Marxist framework of analysis. That is to say, "true
generalizing," in Nitta's usage, means generalized observations that
are meaningful within this broad framework of Marxist analysis.
What Western scholars consider as a map is different. As demonstrated
in the recent works of most Western scholars, the contours
and dimensions of the map used by each medieval specialist rarely
overlap with those of the maps used by fellow practitioners. Even the
23 Hideharu Nitta's review appears in the Journal ofJapanese Studies 10 (1984): 515. [I do not
wish to suggest that the views expressed in this review accurately reflect Professor Nitta's
general historiographical approach. In using this review, I also assume that the views expressed
in it have been accurately translated from the Japanese.]
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CONCLUDING NOTES 29
rise and decline of feudalism, especially from a comparative perspective,
which was used as an underpinning of analysis by the specialists
of the prewar years and the immediate postwar decades, today attracts
few scholars.
Hall analyzed Japanese history by seeing it as a continuing unfolding
of the familial system, whereas Mass offers his vision of the
Kamakura bakufu as a living dyarchy, whose true character can be
discerned by comparing the relative strength of what was new and
revolutionary with the legacies of the past. When reading the best
works of other specialists on varied aspects of the institutional and
other histories of the period, it becomes clear that each scholar has a
map, be it an internally consistent paradigm or an interpretive view of
history crafted to meet a particular analytic need.
The general statements offered thus are meaningful within the perspective
of the map that each scholar has chosen. Stated differently,
Western scholars enjoy the freedom to choose their own analytic frameworks,
that is, the freedom to raise fresh questions and answer them in
innovative ways. Their Japanese counterparts share a map that yields
"true generalizations," but only within the framework of a shared
map. The freedom of each Western historian to raise questions of his
or her own choosing is a source of creative scholarly energy in the
hands of those having visions capable of creating a consistent explanatory
analytic paradigm for Japanese history.
However, such freedom can be and has been in some instances
misused or abused, because having such freedom can be mistaken for
license to expand one's research efforts on ill-conceived analytic bases
lacking a substantively formulated vision of history. The results can be
studies of limited import and interest. Thus, perhaps it is more accurate
to reword the preceding, stating that in rejecting the Marxist
analysis and the analytic basis that a comparative analysis of feudalism
provided, Western scholars of the period have imposed on themselves
the burden of evolving their own analytic approaches of the medieval
history of Japan. Although containing a high risk of yielding narrowly
conceived works of little interest, this challenge explains the new energy
released into the field, which has produced in the West many
scholarly works.
Mass's observation that Western students have begun to reassess
and even challenge Japanese works and Nitta's remark that some
works by Western scholars are still heavily influenced by Japanese
scholars are basically the same discovery. That is, both are still correct
in referring to or explicitly stating that a large majority of Western
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30 INTRODUCTION
works today still rely, and undoubtedly will continue to depend into
the foreseeable future, on the works of Japanese scholars. This is
inevitable, given the accumulated volume of literature in Japanese, the
much larger number of medievalists in Japan, and Japanese scholars'
comparative advantage in linguistic facility.
But this should not prevent us from noting, as Mass did, that today's
Western scholarship has sufficiently matured to begin to question,
reassess, and confront the interpretations and analyses offered by
Japanese scholars. Reassessment and reinterpretation can take myriad
forms. Restating an event or development without using a Marxist
vocabulary and conceptualization, if presented in a form internally
consistent and readily comprehensible to Western readers, can constitute
a meaningful reassessment of Japanese scholarship. If a specific
historical event is reinterpreted on the basis of an ad hoc paradigm so
that the interpretation advances our understanding of the event, however
modestly, and can serve as a valuable input for others who might
incorporate the result into a study based on a more comprehensive
framework of analysis of medieval history, such a reinterpretation can
be seen as a useful historiographical contribution.
To Nitta and to many other Japanese scholars, what reassessments
and reinterpretations the Western students produce may appear to be
influenced by Japanese works and may be seen as lacking in originality.
But to the extent that such restatements enhance the knowledge of
Japan's medieval history, they must be considered valuable contributions
to the progress of Western scholarship. Similarly, if an event is
seen to have had causes different from those commonly accepted by
Japanese scholars, however subtle these differences may be, this must
be seen as an original contribution, however modest its significance to
the sweep of historical change. What I am arguing here is that more
Western scholars today have become capable of making such reassessments
and original contributions, and a few are challenging parts of
Japanese historiography in significant ways.
An important ingredient that has enabled this progress in Western
scholarship is the growing ability of Western students to use primary
sources. As the works of Collcutt, Hall, Mass, Ruch, Varley, and many
others have demonstrated, there is no substitute for using primary
sources to make original contributions to historiography. However, at
the same time it is no less true that in a young field only slowly
developing by most standards of academic endeavors, diverse forms of
scholarly contributions are necessary for its growth. This means that
we must also welcome "synthetic" works that rely on secondary
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHRONOLOGY 31
sources, as they too are often valuable in reinterpreting and, indeed,
synthesizing known events, developments, and interpretations. The
field must recognize the utility of such efforts by specialists and nonspecialists
alike, who offer descriptive and interpretive works useful to
all interested in the medieval history of Japan.
In the study of medieval history of Japan, the needs of the specialists
and the nonspecialists must be balanced. Otherwise, specialists
can become self-satisfied students of original sources that yield findings
of little broad significance. On the other hand, nonspecialists
will be misled if they believe that genuine progress in a field can be
made without the demanding tasks of specialists who labor to fill the
gaps in our knowledge only a very small part at a time.
I shall conclude this introduction by adding that in the West the
field of medieval history of Japan, still young and having few specialists,
does not lack in topics and questions for continuing research.
Readers of this volume will have little difficulty in suggesting future
research topics that they would like to see the specialists pursue.
Thus, the task has just begun for institutional historians and especially
for others interested in the social, cultural, and economic histories of
the period, which are being studied by no more than a handful of
specialists.
APPENDIX: CHRONOLOGY OF MEDIEVAL PERIOD
Major political events and de- Major sociocultural and eco-
velopments0
' *•d
nomic developments"' '•d
Major international events
and developments*^
IOC Warrior class rises
1087-1192 Insei (cloistered
government)
Late llC-Early 12C Shorn
system now extends throughout
Japan (8)
1150-1200 Taira and Minamoto
families become
prominent
1156 Hogen conflict: Minamoto
challenges Taira position
at court and loses
Pre-Kamakura (before 1185)
11C Artisans are protected in
capital; za appear (8)
11C Markets appear in Kyoto
(8)
12C Artisans begin to trade
with cultivators (8)
1127 Renga first appear in imperial
anthology
1151 and 1163 Major fires in
Kyoto
[1066 Norman conquest of
England]
1127-1279 Southern Sung dynasty
in China
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
INTRODUCTION
Major political events and developments"'
*•d
Major sociocultural and economic
developments"' *•d
Major international events
and developments"-1
*
1159 Heiji War: Minamoto
are defeated again by Taira
(1)
1167 Kiyomori attains highest
court rank
1180 Minamoto Yoritomo establishes
base in Kamakura
1180-5 Gempei War: Minamoto
achieve victory over
Taira (1)
1181 Kiyomori dies
1163 Kiyomori builds
Rengeoin (Sanjusangendo)
1168 Eisai visits China
Late 1170s-early 1180s Fire,
famine, and earthquakes in
Kyoto (10)
1175 Honen founds Jodo sect
(12)
1181 Famine in Kyoto
12C-early 13C Large numbers
of Sung and Southern
Sung coins are imported (8) E
1184-6 Appointment of
hompojiio (1)
1192 Yoritomo given title of
shogun
1192 Yoritomo appoints shugo
(1)
1192 Gokenin first appears (1)
1199 Yorimoto dies
1203 Establishment otshikken
and rise of Hojo (1)
Early 13C Gotoba creates private
army later to challenge
Kamakura (1)
Kamakura period (1185-1333)
Around 1185 Hogen and Heiji
monogatari appear (10)
1187 Fujiwara Yoshinori compiles
Senzai wakashu
Late 12C Court decrees prohibit
use of coins (8)
1191 Eisai introduces Rinzai
teachings
Late 12C Zen thought, meditation,
monastic forms are introduced
(10, 12, 13)
1200-7 Bakufu expel fanatic
Jodo sect groups from
Kamakura
1201-8 Eighth imperial anthology,
Shinkokinshu, is
compiled
Early 13C Marketplaces in
Kamakura are authorized by
bakufu (8)
Early 13C Legal system develops
further; more suits are
brought against jild (1, 6) P
Early 13C Heike monogatari
appears (10)
1207 Honen, Shinran, and
are others are banished from
Kyoto (12)
1189 Southern Sung attempts
to prohibit outflow of Sung
copper to Japan (9)
[1190s Start of first Crusade]
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHRONOLOGY 33
Major political events and de-
velopments0
- *• •*
Major sociocultural and economic
developments0
' *• *
Major international events
and developments"-''
1219 Shogun Santeomo is assassinated
(1)
1221 Jokyu disturbance: an
unsuccessful challenge to the
bakufu by Gotoba and dissatisfied
warriors (1)
1221 Establishment of deputy
bakufu headquarters in
Kyoto (Rokuhara tandai)
1221 Yoritomo appoints
shimpojiw to lands confiscated
following Jokyu disturbance
(1)
1226 Establishment of
hydjoshu and rensho (1)
1227 Bakufu orders shugo to
suppress akuto activities in
west
1230 Establishment of new
shoen is prohibited
1232 Joei code and Goseibai
shikimoku are promulgated (1)
1239 Bakufu prohibits
monks, merchants, and moneylenders
from becoming deputy
jito (8) E
1249 Establishment of
hikitsuke (1)
1212 Kamo no Chomei completes
Hojoki
1220 Jien's Gukansho
appears
Early 13C Use of coins as medium
of exchange increases
(7)
1224 Shinran founds Jodo
Shin sect
1227 Dogen brings the Soto
sect from China
1231 Major famine
1232 Fujiwara Teika submits
Shin chokusen wakashu to
emperor
1232 Wake-no-shima is built
in Kamakura to facilitate ship
docking; becomes base for domestic
and foreign trade (9) I
1239 Bakufu prohibits use of
coins in easternmost
provinces
1241 En'ni returns from
China with important contributions
to Japanese religion
and art (9)
Mid 13C More Chinese Ch'an
masters come to teach Zen;
Buddhist doctrines spread to
samurai and common people
(13)
Mid 13C Gempei seisuiki is
written
Mid 13C Za are organized in
Kamakura by Hojo
1253 Nichiren founds
Nichiren sect (12)
[1215 Magna Carta is signed
in England]
1223 First textual reference to
Japanese pirates (wako) (9)
Mid 13C China attempts to
prohibit export of its coins
and to restrict Japanese ships
in its ports (8) E
Mid 13C Genghis Khan
builds Eurasian empire (9)
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
34 INTRODUCTION
Major political events and developments"'
*• *
Major sociocultural and economic
developments0
' *> *
Major international events
and developments"^
1264 Bakufu curtails official
ships to China (9)
1266 Kublai Khan seeks relations
with Japan (3, 9)
1268 Mongol envoys arrive in
Japan (3)
After 1272 Bakufu orders updating
of olabumi to reassess
paddy holdings E
1274 Mongols attempt first invasion
of Japan (Bun'ei) (3)
1281 Mongols make second invasion
attempt
1284 Tokusei order is issued
by shogunate for shogun's retainers
(3, 8) E
1285 Shimotsuki incident begins
period of autocratic rule
by wkuso (3)
Late 13C Spread of do-ikki,
unified cultivator actions (6,
8)
1293 Heizen-gate disturbance:
Taira Yoshitsuna and
sympathizers are killed by regent
(3)
1293 Bakufu establishes
Chinzei tandai
1297 Bakufu issues Einin
lokuseirei
1301 Bakufu implements practice
of alternate succession (3)
Late Kamakura Akuto become
increasingly significant
problem
14C Shugo control of public
lands becomes pervasive (6) E
1259 Famine in many
provinces
Mid to late 13C Coins become
principal medium of trade in
large cities; merchants and
lenders become common in
Kyoto (8)
Late 13C Bills of exchange begin
to be used (8)
Late 13C Gozan institution
takes shape (13)
1280 Abutsu Ni's Izayoi nikki
appears
[1271-95 Marco Polo visits
China]
Post-Mongols: Japanese merchant
marine is expanded E
1294 Kublai Khan dies (9)
1306 Japanese pirate ships begin
to trade with Chan China
Late Kamakura: Network of
markets and ports are developed
to accommodate commerce
(8)
Early 14C Spread of toll barriers
(8)
1312 Gyokuyo wakashu is
completed
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CHRONOLOGY 35
Major political events and developments"'
*•J
Major sociocultural and economic
developments0
' b
-i
Major international events
and developments"^
1321 Godaigo discontinues
insei, becomes involved in affairs
of state (6)
1331 Genko disturbance: plotters
are arrested
1332 Emperor Godaigo is exiled
to Oki
1333 Godaigo escapes from
Oki
1333 Kamakura bakufu is
overthrown (3, 4)
1333-6 Kemmu restoration:
Godaigo attempts to restore
direct imperial rule
1330s Yoshida Kenko's
Tsurezuregusa appears (13)
1333-84 Kan'ami (develops
noh under patronage of
Yoshimitsu)
Early 14CJito ukelukesho
spread; jito become more autonomous
(6)
14C Shiki structure is weakened;
continguous local
power bases are formed (6) P
Late Kamakura/
Nambokucho: Trading vessels
are sent to Yuan China
with bakufu's approval for
temple and shrine construction
(9)
1336 Ashikaga Takauji defeats
Godaigo's forces
1336 Kemmu shikimoku, legal
code of Muromachi bakufu,
is promulgated
1338 Ashikaga Takauji assumes
title of shogun, settles
bakufu in Kyoto
1336-92 Nambokucho era:
Northern and Southern
Courts both claim imperial
legitimacy
Muromachi: Jito move to
single-heir inheritance, make
vassals of peasant leaders (6)
1348 Kusunoki Masatsura
dies in battle of Shijo Nawate
Muromachi period (1336-1467)
1336-95 Shugo daimyo rise as
shugo's authority expands (4,
6)
1338 Kyoto replaces
Kamakura as focal point of
Zen under Ashikaga (10)
Nambokucho: Za appear in
rural areas (8)
Early Muromachi: Hanzei
laws establish warrior's vested
interest in land (4-6) P
1339-43 Kitabatake
Chikafusa's Jinno shoto ki and
other works of similar intent
appear (4, 10)
Muromachi: Shinden-zukuri
residential style gives way to
shoin-zukuri
1342 Bakufu institutes gozan
jussetsu system [1347 Black Death devastates
Europe]
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
INTRODUCTION
Major political events and developments"'
*•'
Major sociocultural and economic
developments"' *•d
Major international events
and developments"1
Late Nambokucho: Kokujin
band together to fight off
bakufu-appointed shugo (5)
1352 Bakufu imposes hanzei
in Omi, Mino, and Owari
1358 Ashikaga Takauji dies
1368 Yoshimitsu becomes
seii-laishogun
Muromachi: Practice of dividing
office of shugo begins (5)
E
1391-2 Meitoku rebellion: attempt
to overthrow shogunate
is put down by bakufu; shogunal
dominance of nation is
reconsolidated
1392 Northern and Southern
Courts are reconciled by
bakufu
1394 Yoshimitsu resigns the
post of shogun and becomes
dajodaijin
1390s Shugo become local administrators
(5)
1399 Oei disturbance: Ouchi
Yoshiro is killed in battle in
Sakai
1356 Nijo Yoshimoto and
Gusai complete Tsukubasho,
first imperially sponsored
renga anthology (10)
1367 Bakufu imposes
munabechisen to build hospital
in Kyoto
Mid 14C Commutation is
practiced in virtually all regions
of Japan (8)
1371 Bakufu levies tax in
sakaya and doso in Kyoto and
lansen in many provinces to
pay for imperial ascension
ceremony
1371(?) Taiheiki is completed
1376 Masukagami is completed,
probably by Nijo
Yoshimoto
1381 Hana no Gosho, headquarters
of military aristocracy,
is completed
1386 Bakufu settles ranking
of gozan and selects Nanzenji
as the highest-ranked temple
1387 Baishoron appears
Late 14C Gozan sinification
peaks (13)
1392-1467 Kitayama epoch:
a period of stable balance
among court, shogun, and
shugo; Yoshimitsu builds
Kinkakuji in Kyoto (1937);
noh, kydgen, and sumi-e
evolve (4)
1393 Bakufu declares sakaya
and doso are to pay expenses
of mandokoro and no longer
need to pay dues to their civil
protectors
Late 14C-early 15C Zeami
(1363-1443) elevates noh to a
refined art under
Yoshimitsu's patronage
1350 Attacks by toako begin
in earnest(9)
1366 Koryo envoys request
bakufu's suppression of wako
1368-1644 Chinese Ming dynasty
(9)
1369, 1370 Ming China sends
envoy to establish relations
with Japan
1378, 1380 Yoshimitsu's envoys
to Ming China are
refused
1383 Japan abandons attempt
to establish relations with
Ming China
1392 Koryd dynasty collapses
in Korea
1394 Kyushu landai returns
600 captured Koreans
1397 Bakufu establishes formal
ties with Korea
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHRONOLOGY 37
Major political events and de- Major sociocultural and eco- Major international events
velopments"' *•d
nomic developments"' *• * and developments"-''
1401 Machi-gumi rise in
Kyoto (communal organizations
of townsmen for internal
security) E
1408 Yoshimitsu dies
1428 Shocho dokki: tokusei are
demanded in Kinai
1432 Yoshinori destroys
Kamakura branch of
Ashikaga house (4)
1439 Eikyo disturbance:
Kanto kubo Ashikaga
Mochiuji is killed by bakufu
troops
1441 Kakitsu disturbance:
Shogun Yoshinori is assassinated,
ending strong shogunal
rule (4)
1447 Do-ikki destroys parts of
Kyoto
1449, 1457 Ashikaga attempt
to establish branch shogunate
in Kanto fails (4)
Mid 15C Custom of gojichi,
village autonomy, prevails (4,
6)E
1454 Kyoto is in the grip of
unprecedented disorder; thievery
is rampant
Late 14C Sesshu (1420-1506)
master of suiboku ink landscape
painting; develops Japanese
style
15C Tea ceremony develops
into serious pursuit (10)
15C Popularity of renga rises
among all classes
1431 A major famine results
in many deaths in Kyoto;
forced sale of rice is ordered
1439 Last imperial anthology,
Shinzoku kokinshii, is compiled
(10)
15C More religious institutions
turn to moneylenders
(6)P
1440s Disease spreads (8)
1445 Bakufu warriors are prohibited
from pawning or selling
land
Mid 15C Shugo daimyo are
able to increase tax revenue
. by levying tansen
1450s Deaths from famine are
widespread (4)
Mid 15C Ichijo Kanera
(Kaneyoshi) (1402-81), a prolific
scholar of the highest
court positions, contributes
widely in belles-lettres and
studies of Chinese classics
and history; also writes (1476)
Renju gappeki shit on renga
1459 Nationwide famine
1404 Official tally trade begins
with Ming China (9)
1404 Envoy is sent to Korea
1408 Shogun Yoshimochi discontinues
relations with Ming
China
1418 First record of tally
trade between Japan and
Korea
1419 Oei invasion: Korean attack
on Tsushima is repulsed
1423 Unification of Ryukyus;
trade with Japan begins
1433 Tally trade with Ming
China resumes
1451 Ming China restricts
Japanese tribute missions to
one in ten years
[1452-1519 Leonardo da
VinciJ
[1453 Gutenberg Bibles are
printed in Mainz]
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
INTRODUCTION
Major political events and developments"'
*• *
Major sociocultural and economic
developments"-h
-4
Major international events
and developments"^
1462 Major tokusei ikki in
Kyoto are suppressed by several
shugo
1467 Onin War begins;
Kyoto is destroyed
1461 Nationwide spread of
famine-related diseases
15C/16C Soto Zen diffuses nationwide
(13)
1463 Shinkei's Sasamegoto appears
(10)
147S Ikko ikki occur in Kaga
1477 Onin War ends
1480s Shugo daimyo divorce
themselves from bakufu structure,
emerge as sengoku
daimyo
1485 Yamashiro kuni ikki occur;
subdued in 1493
1487 Kaga Ikko ikki stubbornly
resists shugo forces
1506 Ikko ikki battle shugo
forces in Kaga, Noto, and
Etchu
1509 Do-ikki occur in Yamato
and Yamashiro
Sengoku period (1467-1S68)
1467-1568 Higashiyama epoch:
artistic culture flourishes
at Yoshimasa's Ginkakuji
1471 Rennyo builds a dojo in
Echizen
Late 15C Shuko develops
wabicha tea ceremony; further
perfected by Takeno J66
(1502-55) and Sen no Rikyu
(1522-91)
1490 Tokusei ikki occur in
Kyoto and Yamato
1491 S6gi and Kenzai compile
Shinsen isukubashu (renga)
1491-1500 Famine and diseases
occur nationwide;
Kyoto fire razes 25,000
houses
Late 15C-16C Financial support
for Zen is wanted as result
of Onin War (13)
1500 Bakufu prohibits erizeni
by merchants
16C Zen becomes major influence
on the arts (10)
16C Cotton is imported from
India via China and Korea
[1492 Columbus reaches
America]
1510 Trade with Korea is
disrupted
1512 Trade with Korea is
resumed
[1517 Reformation in Germany
begins]
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 39
Major political events and de-
velopments0
' *•d
Major sociocultural and economic
developments0
' *•J
Major international events
and developments0
-1
'
1531 Ikko ikki flare up in
Kaga
1543 Portuguese arrive near
Kyushu; guns are introduced
P
1549 Francis Xavier lands in
Kagoshima and begins to
proselytize
1562 Nobunaga concludes alliance
with Ieyasu
1568 Oda Nobunaga captures
Kyoto
1573 Nobunaga expels Shogun
Yoshiakira from Kyoto
1588 Exiled shogun resigns
1540 Major nationwide
famine
1550 Ukiyoe appears
1568 Nobunaga issues
rakuichi-rakuza decree in
Kano and orders all toll gates
in provinces abolished
1569 Nobunaga issues erizeni
decrees
[1522 Magellan's crew completes
circumnavigation of
world]
1547 Last tally ship is dispatched
to China
Mid 16C Trade with Ryukyus
collapses
1565 Sweet potatoes are introduced
to England; to Japan in
1605
[1571 Spain occupies
Philippines]
"Centuries are abbreviated, as e.g., 16C, for the sixteenth century.
* Boldface numerals in parentheses refer readers to chapters in this volume for further information,
e.g. (4) refers to the fourth chapter, by John W. Hall.
' Developments in brackets [ ] occurred in the West and are given for reference.
''The letters P, E, C, and I following an entry denote that it was also of political, economic,
cultural, or international significance, in addition to the category in which it is listed.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Arnesen, Peter J. 1985. "The Provincial Vassals of Muromachi Shoguns." In Jeffrey P.
Mass and William B. Hauser, eds., The Bakufu in Japanese History. Stanford,
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1984. "The Struggle for Lordship in Late Heian Japan: The Case of Aki." Journal
ofJapanese Studies 10: 101-41.
1982. "Suo Province in the Age of Kamakura." In Jeffrey P. Mass, ed., Court and
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1979. The Medieval Japanese Daimyo: The Ouchi Family's Rule of Suo and Nagato.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Berry, Mary Elizabeth. 1987. "Review of The Bakufu in Japanese History, edited by
Jeffrey P. Mass and William B. Hauser." Journal of Japanese Studies 13: 186-
94Bloom,
Alfred. 1965. Shinran's Gospel of Pure Grace. Tucson: University of Arizona
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Boxer, Charles R. 1974. The Christian Century inJapan, 1549-1650. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Brazell, Karen, trans. 1973. The Confessions of Lady Nijo. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor
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1971. "Towazugatari, Autobiography of a Kamakura Court Lady." Harvard Journal
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Brown, Delmer M. 1951. Money Economy in Medieval Japan: A Case Study in the Use
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Brown, Delmer, and Ichiro Ishida, eds. 1979. The Future and the Past: A Translation of
Gukansho: An Interpretive History of Japan Written in 1219. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Butler, Kenneth. 1969. "Heike Monogatari and the Japanese Warrior Ethic." Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies 29: 93-108.
Collcutt, Martin. 1982a. "Kings of Japan? The Political Authority of the Ashikaga
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1982b. "The Zen Monastery in Kamakura Society." In Jeffrey P. Mass, ed., Court
and Bakufu in Japan: Essays in Kamakura History, New Haven, Conn.: Yale
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1981. Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Davis, David L. 1974. "Ikki in Late Medieval Japan." In John W. Hall and Jeffrey P.
Mass, eds., Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, pp. 221-47.
Dumoulin, Heinrich. 1969. A History of Zen Buddhism. Boston: Beacon Press.
Elison, George, and Bardwell L. Smith. 1981. Warlords, Artists, and Commoners:Japan
in the 16th Century. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Gay, Suzanne. 1985. "Muromachi Rule in Kyoto: Administrative and Judicial Aspects."
In Jeffrey P. Mass and William B. Hauser, eds., The Bakufu in Japanese
History. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, pp. 49-66.
Goble, Andrew. 1985. "The Kamakura Bakufu and Its Officials." In Jeffrey P. Mass
and William B. Hauser, eds., The Bakufu in Japanese History. Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, pp. 31-49.
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Press, pp. 168-90.
Grossberg, Kenneth A. 1981a. Japan's Renaissance: Politics of the Muromachi Bakufu.
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1981b. The Laws of the Muromachi Bakufu. Tokyo: Sophia University Press.
Hall, John W. 1985. "Reflections on Murakami Yasusuke's 'Ie Society As a Pattern of
Civilization.'" Journal ofJapanese Studies 11: 47-56.
1983. "Terms and Concepts in Japanese Medieval History: An Inquiry into the
Problems of Translation."Journal of Japanese Studies 9: 1-32.
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eds., Warlords, Artists, and Commoners. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp.
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1977. "Muromachi Power Structure." In John W. Hall and Takeshi Toyoda, eds.,
Japan in the Muromachi Age. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
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1974. "Kyoto As Historical Background." In John W. Hall and Jeffrey P. Mass,
eds., Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
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Jansen, eds., Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, pp. 15—55.
1966. Government and Local Power in Japan 500-1700: A Study Based on Bizen
Province. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Hall, John W., and Jeffrey P. Mass, eds. 1974. Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional
History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Hall, John W., Keiji Nagahara, and Kozo Yamamura, eds. 1981. Japan Before Tokugawa:
Political Consolidation and Economic Growth. 1500-1650. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press.
Hall, John W., and Takeshi Toyoda, eds. 1977. Japan in the Muromachi Age. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Harrington, Lorraine F. 1985. "Regional Outposts of Muromachi Bakufu Rule: The
Kanto and Kyushu." In Jeffrey P. Mass and William B. Hauser, eds., The Bakufu
in Japanese History. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, pp. 66-99.
1982. "Social Control and the Significance of the Akuto." In Jeffrey P. Mass, ed.,
Court and Bakufu inJapan: Essays in Kamakura History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, pp. 221-50.
Hayashi Tatsusaburo, with George Elison. 1977. "Kyoto in the Muromachi Age." In
John W. Hall and Takeshi Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 15—37.
Hori Kyotsu. 1974. "Economic and Political Effects of the Mongol Wars." In John W.
Hall and Jeffrey P. Mass, eds., Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, pp. 184-200.
Hurst, G. Cameron III. 1982. "The Kobu Polity: Court-Bakufu Relations in
Kamakura Japan." In Jeffrey P. Mass, ed., Court and Bakufu in Japan: Essays in
Kamakura History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, pp. 3-28.
1974. "Development of Insei: A Problem in Japanese History and Historiography."
In John W. Hall and Jeffrey P. Mass, eds., Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional
History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, pp. 60-90.
Ito Teiji, with Paul Norograd. 1977. "Development of the Shoin Style of Architecture."
In John W. Hall and Takeshi Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age.
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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER 1
THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
The establishment of Japan's first warrior government, the Kamakura
bakufu, represented both a culmination and a beginning. Since
the tenth century, an increasingly professionalized class of mounted
fighting men had served in local areas as estate administrators and
policemen and as officials attached to the organs of provincial governance.
By the twelfth century, warriors had come to exercise a dominant
share of the total volume of local government, but even after
two hundred years they remained politically immature. The most
exalted warriors were still only middle-level figures in hierarchies
dominated by courtiers and religious institutions in and near the
capital. The bakufu's founding in the 1180s thus represented an
initial breakthrough to power on the part of elite fighting men, but
the fledgling regime was scarcely in a position to assume unitary
control over the entire country. What evolved was a system of government
approximating a dyarchy. During the Kamakura period, Japan
had two capitals and two interconnected loci of authority. The potential
of warrior power was clear enough to those who cared to envision
it, but the legacy of the past prevented more than a slow progress
into the future.
Until quite recently, studies of Kamakura Japan have tended to
overstate the warriors' achievement, by equating the creation of a new
form of government with the simultaneous destruction of the old. As
is now clear, not only was the Heian system of imperial-aristocratic
rule still vigorous during the twelfth century, but also it remained the
essential framework within which the bakufu, during its lifetime, was
obliged to operate. In this sense, the Heian pattern of government
survived into the fourteenth century - to be destroyed with the Kamakura
bakufu rather than by it. The events of the 1180s were revolutionary
insofar as they witnessed the emergence of Japan's first noncentral
locus of authority and Japan's first government composed of men not
of the most exalted social ranks. But the bakufu, as we shall see, was a
military regime dedicated to keeping warriors away from the battle-
46
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THE BACKGROUND TO THE GEMPEI WAR 47
field and also to finding judicial answers to the feuds and disputes that
were plaguing society .
THE BACKGROUND TO THE GEMPEI WAR
Despite its aversion to fighting, the bakufu was created by war, the
Gempei (Genji versus Heishi, or Minamoto versus Taira) conflict of
1180-5. This was a much more complex upheaveal than its name
implies. Far from being a dispute between two great warrior clans, as
it is so often depicted, the Gempei conflict was a national civil war
involving substantial intraclan fighting and also pitting local against
central interests.1
Indeed, the character of the violence was responsible
for the type of regime that was created. Likewise, the backdrop to
the conflict was a product of society's tensions and is therefore integral
to the history of the Kamakura bakufu.
To understand the limitations of both the warrior victory and the
resulting government, we need to trace the rise of the warrior class in
the Heian period as well as the ascendancy of the Taira in the years just
before the Gempei War. The original blueprint for imperial government
in Japan did not envision a military aristocracy as the mainstay of
administration over the countryside. Yet as the courtiers in the capital
became more confident of their superiority, they began to loosen their
grip over the provinces, exchanging governance over a public realm
for proprietorship over its component pieces. The country was divided
into public and private estates (the provincial lands known as kokugaryo,
and the estates known as shorn), under the authority of governors
and estate holders, respectively, who themselves made up the
courtier and religious elite. The owners of land at the topmost proprietary
level were thus exclusively nobles and clerics. The purpose of
this privatization of land was to secure a flow of revenue that exceeded
what was provided by the holding of bureaucratic office. In turn, this
permitted an increasingly extravagant life-style in the capital. The
division of the country was predicated in this way on the desire of
shoen owners to be absentee landlords. Yet it was equally dependent on
those owners' ability to draft into service a class of willing and obedient
administrators.
1 See Jeffrey P. Mass, "The Emergence of the Kamakura Bakufu," in John Whitney Hall and
Jeffrey P. Mass, eds., Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1974) (hereafter cited as Mass, "The Emergence"). The older view, which
underemphasizes the social implications of the war, is ably treated by Minoru Shinoda, The
Founding of the Kamakura Shogunate (New York: Columbia University Press, i960).
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48 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
This loosening of control from above also loosened the cement that
bound the provinces to the capital. A degree of local instability ensued,
which caused the lower ranks to look to one another for mutual
support and protection. Leadership fell to persons of distinction
whose principal source of prestige was an ancestry traceable to the
capital. Thus, unlike the invaders who promoted the feudalization of
Europe, local leaders in Japan were men with long pedigrees. They
also retained their central connections, which meant that the developing
class of provincial administrators were less members of local war
bands than members of groups that were forming to secure the peace.
This did not preclude outbreaks of lawlessness. But courtiers could
always brand such outbursts as rebellion and enroll others as their
provincial agents. In this way, at any rate, local and central remained
essentially joined for the duration of the Heian period.
The warriors who were becoming the true captains of local society
were called zaichokanjin, or resident officials attached to provincial
government headquarters (kokuga). Although the governorships themselves
continued to rotate among courtiers in Kyoto, positions within
the kokuga became hereditary. Later, during the early stages of the
Gempei War, the developing cleavage of interests here was exploited
by the founder of the Kamakura bakufu, Minamoto Yoritomo. However,
during the two centuries preceding 1180, patrons in the capital
were able to channel the energies of provincial subordinates towards
mutually beneficial ends. On the one hand, the locals were given
extensive powers in the areas of tax collecting and policing. But on the
other hand, these same locals were obliged to work through their
superiors to secure new appointments or confirmations of old ones2
or
to secure justice in the frequent legal battles between kin and nonkin
rivals. Neither the local chieftain nor the clan head (if this was a
different person) was empowered to provide these services on his own
authority; he too was dependent on the support of a central patron.
The result was that ownership and administration, authority and
power, became separable, with little risk to the capital-resident proprietor.
So ingrained was the psychology of a hierarchy in which the
center dominated the periphery that in the absence of some regionally
based patronage source such as the bakufu, courtiers in the capital, no
2 Titles became hereditary and subject to disposition by testament. But wills, in order to be
recognized, required probate by the governor. For details, see Jeffrey P. Mass, "Patterns of
Provincial Inheritance in Late Heian Japan," Journal ofJapanese Studies 9 (Winter 1983): 67-
95Cambridge
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THE BACKGROUND TO THE GEMPEI WAR 49
matter how effete, could remain the superiors of warriors, no matter
how powerful the latter were.3
But Kyoto protected its interests in other ways, too. One of the
most ingenious was to promote a handful of men as career governors.
These persons might then be moved from province to province, much
as modern ambassadors are moved today. The origins of this practice
have not been adequately studied, but by late in the eleventh century
the use of such representatives, now called zuryo, had become interwoven
with the competition between the Fujiwara and retired emperor
patronage blocs in the capital. By this time, governorships had
become, in a sense, commodities circulating among the elite. The
proprietary province (chigyokoku) system, as it was called, was designed
to allow patronage groups to function on both sides of the local
land ledger (shoen and kokugaryo), with the governor as the principal
instrument of manipulation. What is important to us is the identity
and character of the journeyman governors who now came to be employed
by the ex-emperors and Fujiwara. They were from the Taira
and Minamoto, particular scions of which were recognized as career
troubleshooters for provinces possessed by their patrons. Thus, to cite
one example, Taira Masamori received successive appointments to at
least nine provinces, as did his son Tadamori after him. And the
latter's son, the illustrious Kiyomori, was governor of three provinces
before beginning his historic ascent in the capital.4
The leaders of the Taira and Minamoto need to be appreciated in
this light. They were not, as they are usually depicted, regional chieftains
chafing under courtier dominance. Rather, they were bridging
figures - military nobles in the truest sense - between the great central
aristocrats, who were their patrons, and the great provincial warriors,
who were their followers. The leaders' dual character, born out
of service to two constituencies, is essential to an understanding of the
slow progress of warrior development in its initial phase. It is also
basic to the incompleteness of the warrior revolution that was later
spearheaded by the bakufu.
The prestige of the Taira and Minamoto names, and the restraining
influence they came to exercise, are reflected in still another way. The
warrior houses that dominated the provincial headquarters commonly
3 In Weberian terms, the system was maintained by a subjective feeling by subordinates that
courtier dominance was natural and legitimate. See Max Weber, The Theory of Social and
Economic Organization (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. iitfi.
4 Iida Hisao, "Heishi to Kyushu," in Takeuchi Rizo hakase kanreki kinenkai, ed., Shoensei to
buke shakai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1969), p. 50.
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50 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
bore these two surnames, along with one other, Fujiwara. These were
seen at the time as connoting an aristocratic ancestry and served to
bind provincials to the capital while they also awed truly native families.
Not until Kamakura times did houses such as the Chiba, Oyama,
and Miura, among others, come to be known by the names with which
they are remembered historically.5
Unfortunately, this profusion of Taira and Minamoto surnames has
led to the view that the chieftains of these two clans were able to
fashion ongoing combinations of vassals. The notion of evolving warrior
leagues supported the further notion that the histories of the Taira
and Minamoto were in fact the proper framework for tracing the rise
of the warrior.6
However, the records of the era tell a much more
modest story, forcing us to conclude that what has passed for coherent
history is little more than disparate images pulled taut. The chieftains
of the two clans did, at times, add a layer of authority that might be
effective. But their assignment to a succession of provinces (not to
mention long stays in Kyoto) all but ensured that whatever ties they
had formed would inevitably weaken. Thus, the unique but ephemeral
success of the most famous warrior of the era, Minamoto Yoshiie,
needs to be juxtaposed against the peripatetic movements of the succession
of Taira chieftains and the mixed success of Yoshiie's own greatgrandson,
Minamoto Yoshitomo. Yoshitomo was rebuffed as often as
he was accepted in the Minamoto's historic heartland region, the
Kanto, and he was ultimately defeated in 1160 by an army consisting
of only three hundred men.7
Even though the saga of the Taira and Minamoto may thus be a
weak framework for charting the road to 1180, the histories of the
great provincial houses place us on much firmer ground. Here the
emphasis is on an expansion of power within the traditional system of
rule, along with the lack of any means for circumventing that system.
In other words, what was acceptable in the earlier stages of growth did
not necessarily remain so, especially as warrior houses came to feel
vulnerable to pressures from above. The Chiba, for instance, discovered
that the patronage of the Ise Shrine could neither prevent a major
5 To cite but one example, the body of documents bearing on the late Heian Chiba house refers
only to the Taira. See "Ichiki monjo," in Ichikawa shishi, kodai-chusei shiryo (Ichikawa:
Ichikawa shi, 1973), pp. 363-74-
6 For an illustration, see George B. Sansom, A History of Japan to 1334 (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1958), chap. 12.
7 Yasuda Motohisa, Nihon zenshi (chusei 1) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1958), p. 14;
and Jeffrey P. Mass, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1974), pp. 35-44 (hereafter cited as WG).
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THE BACKGROUND TO THE GEMPEI WAR 51
confiscation of their holdings by a new governor in the 1130s nor
protect them from further seizures by the shrine itself a generation
later.8
To the extent that experiences of this kind led to feelings of
resentment, the environment in the provinces was being readied for
change.
As we know, it was not the Minamoto who came to experience
national power first but, rather, the Taira under the leadership of
Kiyomori. Recent historians have amended the traditional view of his
ascendancy by emphasizing both its limited nature and duration.
Kiyomori is now seen less as a warrior riding the crest of a wave of
support from the provinces than as a military noble who attempted,
unsuccessfully, to use the scaffolding of imperial offices to achieve his
hegemony. Lacking large numbers of warrior followers and also the
administrative organization of a central proprietor, Kiyomori failed,
until very late, to establish an identifiable "regime." His legacy, as we
shall see, was to demonstrate the vulnerability of Kyoto to coercion
and to destabilize the countryside. For these reasons, the brief period
of his ascendancy must be counted as a direct contributor to the
outbreak of war in 1180.
The Taira episode is divisible into two subperiods. From 1160 to
1179, Kiyomori operated in the shadow of his patron, the retired
emperor Goshirakawa. Though he himself climbed to the top of the
imperial office hierarchy, becoming chancellor in 1167, he remined
dependent on the spoils system of the ex-sovereign. Wearying, finally,
of established Kyoto's unwavering opposition to his membership
in the capital elite, Kiyomori staged a coup d'etat in late 1179,
which removed the ex-emperor from effective power. Yet this action
succeeded also in destroying the basic collegiality of the courtier
class, which had always competed according to accepted rules. The
damage in Kyoto was further compounded by Kiyomori's seizure of
numerous estate and provincial proprietorships. This not only reduced
the portfolios of his noble and religious rivals; it also upset the
status quo in the countryside. Early in 1180, Kiyomori's own infant
grandson became emperor, an event that accelerated a growing sense
of malaise everywhere.9
While all of this was taking place, the Minamoto leadership was
languishing in exile. Twenty years earlier, at the time of the Heiji
incident, the sons of Yoshitomo, who was himself killed, were scattered
throughout Japan. The eldest, the thirteen-year-old Yoritomo,
8 WG, pp. 48-54. 9 For the Taira ascendancy, see WG, pp. 15-30, 54-56.
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52 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
was placed in the custody of the eastern-based Hojo, a minor branch of
the Taira. We have little information on Yoritomo between 1160 and
1180, save for the fact of his marriage to Masako, the daughter of Hojo
Tokimasa, his guardian. From the perspective of subsequent events,
Kiyomori's leniency in dealing with the offspring of his 1160 enemy
seems impolitic. Yet there was no way the future could have been
foreseen: The heir to the Minamoto name was powerless and had been
absorbed into the Taira by way of marriage to a Taira collateral.
It is in part owing to this absence of any political activity by
Yoritomo that historians have found it difficult to interpret the tumultuous
events that lay just ahead. The impediment to understanding
can be removed only by minimizing the importance of the TairaMinamoto
rivalry, a sentiment evidently shared by Kiyomori as well.
Thus, when Yoritomo raised his banner of rebellion in the eighth
month of 1180, the support he attracted was determined by issues
other than memories of some idealized past. The background of the
Gempei War can be traced to two sources - the perception of vulnerability
at court and the condition of warrior houses locally.
THE GEMPEI WAR
Belying true motivations, wars in Japan are waged under strict categories
of symbols, none more important than devotion to a higher cause.
In 1180, rebellion was justified on the basis of a call to arms against the
Taira by a prince left out of the imperial succession. Though the
prince himself was dead within several weeks (5/26), his overture
retained great significance. The forces of Yoritomo later cited it as a
pretext for their uprising (8/19), and so did the bakufu's later history
of itself (the Azuma kagami) in its opening paragraph.10
The broader
context encouraging widespread violence yielded in this way to an
official explanation.
Yet just as rectification of the succession had little to do with the
outbreak of war, the outburst also cannot be explained as a spontaneous
rallying to the Minamoto. As Yoritomo himself discovered, loyalty
proved a singularly noncombustible element. Before a challenge might
be mounted, the warriors of the east required time to gauge their
current situations. The Chiba, with their recent history of setbacks,
10 Azuma kagami (AK), 1180/4/9. The most accessible edition of the Azuma kagami is that edited
by Nagahara Keiji and Kishi Shozo (Tokyo: Jimbutsu oraisha, 1976-7), 6 vols. The Azuma
kagami covers the period 1180 to 1266 and was prepared in the early fourteenth century. The
later sections are considered to be more reliable.
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THE GEMPEI WAR 53
joined early (6/17), even though they bore a Taira surname. But for
many other houses the issues were more complex, normally centering
on inter- and intrafamily relations within their own home provinces.
As part of the process, houses segmented into new alignments and
subunits, and the provinces themselves became the staging grounds
for a series of incipient civil wars." To prevent the east from disintegrating
into internecine conflict, Yoritomo was obliged to seek some
new common denominator that would bind rather than divide the
families under his leadership. The program he evolved was made part
of his war declaration on 8/19. Rather than organize a war party to
defend the court by dislodging the Taira, Yoritomo designed policies
to satisfy the most deep-seated desires of the warrior class in general.
The Minamoto chieftain promised what had never before been contemplated:
a regional security system that bypassed Kyoto and guaranteed
the landed holdings of followers. The vision was revolutionary - and
led ultimately to the creation of the Kamakura bakufu.
Though Yoritomo couched his program in procourt and anti-Taira
language, the effect of his plan was to disengage the east from central
control, by converting its public and private officers into his own
vassals. Specifically, he authorized the men of the region to assume
possession over the holdings long associated with them and to petition
Yoritomo for confirmations. The temper of the program was set when
the governor's agent (mokudai) of Izu Province, the site of Yoritomo's
long exile, was attacked on 8/17 by forces of the Minamoto. Similar
campaigns followed (for instance, that of the Chiba against the
Shimosa mokudai on 9/13), and this rapidly became a movement to
eliminate all representatives of the central government. At the same
time, the tide of support, which had been sporadic to this point, now
became a ground swell. Resident officials from various provinces
pledged themselves to Yoritomo, as did a number of estate-based personnel.
The effect of this was to deliver into his hands the potential for
rulership over vast areas. This in turn was bolstered by the chieftain's
assumption of a protector's role over the region's leading temples and
shrines. Yoritomo achieved this latter goal by issuing public directives
to the provincial headquarters, in effect, an assumption of the
authority - without the title - of the governor. The issuance of such
documents began on the same day that he declared war.12
11 For details, see Mass, "The Emergence," pp. 134-43.
12 "Mishima jinja monjo," 1180/8/19 Minamoto Yoritomo kudashibumi, in Takeuchi Rizo,
comp., Heian ibun (Tokyo: Tokyodo, 1947-80), 15 vols., 9:3782-83, doc. 4883. This is the
earliest document bearing Yoritomo's name.
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54 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Yoritomo still had many problems to overcome. On 8/23, an army
under his command was soundly defeated at the battle of Ishibashi in
Sagami Province. His opponents were not forces recruited and sent
out by the central Taira but typically were local houses that were
opposing other local houses. They called themselves Taira for the
same reason that Yoritomo's men from Sagami called themselves
Minamoto. Rather quickly, however, the Taira label became obsolete.
Owing to Yoritomo's presence in the region, the appeal of his program,
and a general rallying to his side, families that had remained
neutral or had taken initial positions against him now sought to
reverse themselves. Although this necessitated a submergence of hostile
sentiments on the part of traditional rivals, the alternative was
probably extinction. For his part, Yoritomo showed great leniency in
welcoming earlier enemies and showed great understanding by dividing
and recognizing new families. By the end of 1180, only the tiniest
residue of a "Gempei" War remained in the east, with the task now
one of purging and purifying rather than facing an enemy. Kamakura,
with historic ties to Yoritomo's forebears, was selected as the
seat for his government.
A Taira policy approximating quarantine actually encouraged Yoritomo's
preoccupation with the east. A by-product was to make the
Chubu and Hokuriku regions, which were closer to the capital, the
next arenas for conflict. Already by 1181, province1 warriors in these
areas were seeking to expel Kyoto's representatives by using the same
pretext as their eastern counterparts did. They postured themselves as
Minamoto engaged in a crusade against the Taira. That Yoritomo was
probably ignorant of most of the activities of those invoking his name
suggests that the battleground, now of its own momentum, was rapidly
expanding in size. At this stage - and until 1183 - Yoritomo was
content to limit his personal involvement strictly to the east. For
regions beyond the east he delegated a loose authority to two relatives,
his cousin Yoshinaka and his uncle Yukiie.
In the meantime, the chieftain in Kamakura was identifying a
new enemy. These were the collateral lines of his own house who
were refusing to recognize his authority. Even before the end of
1180, Yoritomo demonstrated his unconcern with the Taira by
marching east against the Satake, relatives who a generation earlier
had refused to submit to his father. The differences between father
and son (in effect, between the 1150s and 1180s) are instructive.
Whereas Yoshitomo the father had been unable to subordinate recalCambridge
Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE GEMPEI WAR 55
citrant Minamoto branches, Yoritomo the son used superior military
strength to force the issue. The Satake were destroyed in battle on
1180/11/5. Other lineages were more prudent. The Nitta, for instance,
reversed their earlier intransigence (9/30) and submitted to
Yoritomo without a fight (12/22). Yet the chieftain in Kamakura
remained vigilant. When another collateral, the Shida, showed signs
of vacillation, Yoritomo rejected their submission and moved to destroy
them (1181/int. 2/20). As we shall see, enmity toward kinsmen
continued to be a much stronger inducement to action than did the
nonthreatening Taira.
Between 1180 and 1183, Yoritomo worked assiduously to mold the
eastern region into a personal sphere of influence. He did this by
converting the existing officialdom into a private vassalage, by attempting
to make himself the source of all patronage in the area, and
by transforming a simple village, Kamakura, into a great center of
government. Now when he prohibited local outrages, authorized fiscal
exemptions, assigned new lands, or issued orders to provincial
officials, he was doing so from a stationary base that he could realistically
call his capital. Yet the Minamoto movement could not continue
indefinitely to develop in isolation, because the contagion of violence
under the Minamoto banner was rapidly spreading. Yoritomo eventually
saw this development as an opportunity to inflate his own chieftainship.
But he also recognized the danger to his fledgling authority
of inaction in the face of warrior outlawry. Though the Taira in
Kyoto and the Minamoto in Kamakura were reluctant to confront
each other, developments in the provinces eventually forced the issue.
They also forced the country's two governmental centers to seek
an accommodation.
The years 1183 to 1185 witnessed a convergence of events on several
levels. The Gempei War, desultory from the beginning, heated up and
reached a sudden climax. The Kamakura bakufu assumed its basic
form. The imperial court, with Kamakura's help, began to revive
itself. And the warrior class, by means of sustained violence, achieved
unprecedented new goals.
The inertia of the war's second and third years was broken in mid-
1183 when Yoritomo's Chubu deputies, Yoshinaka and Yukiie, broke
through the Taira defenses and occupied the capital. For their part,
the Taira leaders, carrying the child emperor with them, fled westward
in an attempt to regroup. Though after the outbreak of war the Taira
had made certain modest efforts to establish closer ties with the provCambridge
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56 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
inces,13
they now had to base themselves there for the first time in a
generation. At least superficially, the Taira and the Minamoto became
comparable, with each side seeking the support of local warriors. In
the capital there was general rejoicing over the departure of the Taira
and genuine optimism over the prospects of converting the Minamoto
into time-honored guardians of the imperial state.
But two major obstacles blocked such hopes - and worked to prevent
Japanese history from reassuming its traditional pre-Taira course.
The first concerned the nature and level of the upheaval in the countryside,
which will be dealt with shortly. The second centered on the
condition of the Minamoto leadership. Soon after his arrival in Kyoto,
Yoshinaka began to posture himself as the true leader of the Minamoto
and to impose his own form of dictatorship on the capital city.
Yoritomo, beside himself with rage, did not, however, do the "logical"
thing. He refused to abandon his own capital to contest his cousin in
the country's capital. Rather, he began negotiating an accord with
agents of the retired emperor that would give permanent status to his
own government. And he began planning a punitive expedition
against Yoshinaka that would be led by his own brother, Yoshitsune.
The accord was eventually hammered out in the intercalated tenth
month of 1183 and has been hailed by some scholars as marking the
official birth of the Kamakura bakufu. The argument here is that a
rebel movement was now being given imperial sanction; a portion of
what Yoritomo had earlier seized was now lawfully released to him.14
The trouble with this view is that it makes Kyoto ultimately responsible
for the creation of the bakufu and a gues as well for a circumscribed
authority. In fact, Yoritomo was already the governing power
in the east, and the accord acknowledged that fact even as it called for
a restoration of traditional proprietorships in the region. More to the
point, as a result of the agreement, the bakufu's range of operations
now became countrywide. From this juncture, Kamakura established
itself as Japan's preeminent peacemaker, a responsibility that began as
a military policing authority but soon became overwhelmingly judicial
in nature. As we shall see, the dispensing of justice emerged as the
essence of Kamakura's governance and as society's greatest need during
the thirteenth century.
13 These efforts centered on the new local titles ofsokan and sogesu; see Ishimoda Sho, "Heishi
seiken no sokan shiki setchi," Rekishi hydron 107 (1959): 7-14; Ishimoda Sho, "Kamakura
bakufu ikkoku jito shiki no seiritsu," in Sato Shin'ichi and Ishimoda Sho, eds., Chusei no ho
to kokka (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, i960), pp. 36-45.
14 For a discussion, see WG, pp. 72-77; and Uwayokote Masataka, "Kamakura seiken seiritsu
ki omeguru kingyo," Hoseishi kenkyu II (i960): 175-81.
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THE GEMPEI WAR 57
The proof for Kamakura's new role lies in the sudden appearance
of a type of document hitherto unseen. These were cease-and-desist
orders issued by Yoritomo in response to appeals for assistance from
traditional estate holders.15
The development was revolutionary for
two reasons. First, for the first time in Japanese history a noncentral
source of authority was providing patronage for central recipients;
this was a reversal of age-old practice and anticipated a new era of
warrior dominance. Second, the decrees themselves provided visual
testimony that the bakufu was now active in central and western
Japan. This countrywide scope became a permanent feature of Kamakura's
authority. At the same time, the language of the edicts made
clear that Yoritomo recognized the legitimacy of the traditional proprietors'
retaining their positions atop the land system. In a real sense,
the one-time rebel was going on record as a force now for law and
order. Henceforth, the rights of warriors and courtiers would be
equally protected, a position adopted as the only realistic way to
return the country to stability.
The postures of both Kyoto and Kamakura were in fact a response,
not to the exigencies of war, but rather to the unprecedented outpouring
of local lawlessness that swept Japan in 1184. Surviving documents
reveal Kyoto's attempts to quell these outbursts by threatening traditional
sanctions, and the dawning awareness that only Kamakura had
any chance to restore true peace.16
One result is that after disposing of
Yoshinaka, Yoshitsune was ordered by his brother to remain in the
capital and to establish a Kamakura office there. He was to issue desist
orders in response to petitions from proprietors.17
The effect of this
was to reinforce both Kamakura's independence and the interdependence
of government in practice.
Now that he was involved in central and western Japan, Yoritomo
recognized the need to make contact with as many people and places as
possible. He dispatched several of his most trusted followers westward
and ordered them to enroll as vassals any who would pledge loyalty.
First priority was to be given to the same zaichokanjin and other local
officials who dominated the east's provincial headquarters. These men
were to be promised the same confirmations and preferments as their
15 For translated examples of such documents, see Jeffrey P. Mass, The Kamakura Bakufu: A
Study in Documents (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976), docs. 1-6 (hereafter
cited as KB).
16 This is most poignantly depicted in a retired emperor's edict of 1184, in KB, doc. 7.
17 For a list of the edicts issued by Yoshitsune, see Mass, "The Emergence," p. 148, n. 71. A
general discussion appears in Tanaka Minoru, "Kamakura dono otsukai ko," Shirin 45
(1962): 1-23.
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58 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
eastern counterparts, because they held the potential of delivering to
the Minamoto large numbers of subordinates. In this way, sections of
territory in hitherto unfamiliar areas could be made the basis of some
permanent Kamakura interest in the west.18
Yoritomo's policy of vassal
recruitment could then be joined by his other method of gaining a
foothold in public and private estates, providing redress for proprietors'
complaints of lawlessness.
Each province and district was different. Some h2d great families
dominating them, others did not. Still others became centers of Taira
partisanship. The result was that Kamakura's approach to individual
areas required a capacity for flexibility. Likewise, because success, by
definition, was bound to be uneven, the potential for influence would
forever be mixed. Eventually, Kamakura would need to find a mechanism
by which to introduce symmetry into its patchwork presence in
the west.
Though the war was an obvious rationale for Minamoto penetration
of that region, it is significant that the main-force fighting that now
began was largely incidental to Kamakura's efforts at aggrandizement.
For example, the battle of Ichinotani in Settsu Province in 1184/2
constituted only the second encounter between what might be called
the main Taira and Minamoto armies.19
Yet the latter's victory did not
lead to Settsu Province's becoming a major Minamoto stronghold.
Evidently, the pursuit of the war and the contest for control of men
and land were separate processes. This is one reason that defeating the
Taira, though recognized as necessary, engendered so little enthusiasm.
Eventually, however, command of the principal Minamoto armies
was placed in the hands of Yoshitsune, and in a series of brilliant
maneuvers he pursued the Taira leaders and destroyed them at
Dannoura in 1185/3.20
The Gempei War, from beginning to end more
framework than reality, was now over. But the forces that it had
unleashed - the real war - were still in development. For Kamakura
to carve a permanent place in the authority structure of Japan, it
would have to devise strategies both to restore real peace and to satisfy
its men. This meant finding ways to restrain and license, confiscate
and confer, punish and reward. The institution of jito met each of
these several requirements.
18 For this effort in the different provinces of the west, see WG, pp. 79-89.
19 The battle of Fujigawa, occurring early in the war (1180/10), was the first such encounter.
Taking place in Suruga Province immediately to the west of the Kanto, it led to the "phony
war" that ended only at Ichinotani.
20 For an account of the battles and strategy of the war, Shinoda, Tke Founding of the Kamakura
Shogunate, is excellent.
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THE GEMPEI AFTERMATH 59
THE GEMPEI AFTERMATH: JITO AND SHUGO
The year 1185 is one of the most famous in Japanese history. Its
reputation derives from the Minamoto victory over the Taira and from
the supposed inauguration of the bakufu's twin officer networks in the
field, those of military estate steward (jito) and military governor
(shugo). As we have just noted, the Gempei denouement was largely an
anticlimax, though it did have an unexpected impact on conditions in
the countryside. With the war officially over, warriors could no longer
use the Gempei labels to justify their private lawlessness. Their aggression
was thus more directly an attack on the courtier-dominated estate
system. During the middle months of 1185, pressure mounted on
Kamakura to quell this rising siege of outlawry.
The bakufu was at a loss as to what to do. Conditions were made
even more complicated by a deterioration in the relationship between
Yoritomo and Yoshitsune and by the retired emperor's decision to
exploit this situation. Thus, not only was there a continuing crisis in
the provinces (much of it spearheaded by victorious Minamoto), but
there also was a developing rift within Kamakura and between it and
Kyoto. The difficulties between the brothers were what eventually
brought things to a head. As we have seen, Yoritomo reserved his
greatest sensitivity throughout the war for threats that issued from
within his own clan. Quite predictably, therefore, when Yoshitsune
began to steer a course during the ninth month that was openly rebellious,
the Minamoto chieftain determined to seek his destruction.21
Yoshitsune, however, eluded capture and succeeded in persuading the
ex-emperor, Goshirakawa, to brand Yoritomo a rebel and to appoint
the hero of the war asjito of Kyushu. The stage was now set for one of
Japanese history's most momentous developments.
Yoritomo responded to the crisis by dispatching an armed force to
Kyoto that laid before the court a series of demands. Unfortunately,
neither the precise content of those demands nor the court's reply can
be ascertained, and so we must rely on an account that is now considered
suspect. According to the Azuma kagami, Yoritomo forced the exemperor
to authorize Kamakura's appointment of countrywide networks
of jito and shugo.12
The importance of this development for
21 More has been written on the Yoritomo-Yoshitsune relationship than on any other familial
rivalry in Japanese history. See Shinoda, The Founding of the Kamakura Shogunau, pp. I2iff;
The chapter on Yoshitsune in Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1975); and the relevant sections of Helen Craig McCulIough, Yoshitsune: A
Fifteenth CenturyJapanese Chronicle (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1966).
22 AK, 1185/11/29. This is the most famous entry in that chronicle.
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60 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
premodern observers is that Yoritomo's authority to make such assignments
was seen as the basis for his government's ongoing presence.
Modern historians go even further than that. The power to appointjito
and shugo represented no less than a merging of the systems of vassalage
and benefice. By virtue of his new authority, Yoritomo became a
feudal chieftain, and Japan was thereby launched on its medieval
phase. Japanese history was part of world history, with east and west
exhibiting similar patterns.23
There are many problems (and not a few virtues) in this latter form
of reasoning. One difficulty has been a tendency to conclude too much
from the Azuma kagami's description. Not only were there no shugo at
all until the early 1190s, but jito countrywide was not the same as jito
everywhere. Moreover, on a different level of argument, a basis for
Kamakura's existence was hardly tantamount to Kamakura's displacement
of Kyoto. The bulk of governance in Japan remained in the
hands of traditional proprietors and governors for the duration of the
Kamakura period. On the other hand, the authorization in question
was momentous, first, because it was never rescinded and, second,
because it did mark something strikingly new. Yet even having said
that, feudalism at the end of the twelfth century registered only modest
beginnings: Yoritomo's reach remained strictly limited, and more
importantly, the bequests he made were over lands neither owned nor
controlled by him. At all events, the chieftain in Kamakura did come
to exercise a type of authority that was new to Japan. Its precise
limits and nature are bound up with the office of jito, to which we
now turn.
The term jito originated in the ninth century but did not become a
land officership until the middle of the twelfth. Though its genealogy
and history during the Heian period are the subjects of heated contro-
versy,24
our concerns are restricted to what happened to the title during
the Gempei War. In part owing to its relative newness, local persons
found it an attractive cover by which to justify unlawful seizures
of rights and profits from centrally owned estates.25
That is, they
claimed to be both Minamoto and privately appointed jito, a combina-
23 Perhaps the classic expression of this older view is by Edwin O. Reischauer, "Japanese
Feudalism," in Rushton Coulborn, ed., Feudalism in History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1956), pp. 31-2. For a more recent discussion of the feudal aspects of
Kamakura's early rule, see Jeffrey P. Mass, "The Early Bakufu and Feudalism," in Jeffrey P.
Mass, ed., Court and Bakufu inJapan: Essays in Kamakura History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1982), pp. 123-42 (hereafter cited as Mass, "Feudalism").
24 A useful survey of the several arguments is by Oae Ryo, "Jito shiki o meguru shomondai,"
Hokei gakkai zasshi 13 (1964): 26-32; also WG, pp. 102-11.
25 WG, pp. 111—19; KB, docs. 6-7.
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THE GEMPEI AFTERMATH 6l
tion that was designed to immunize them from central control but that
actually helped solidify a growing identification of jito with Kamakura.
Most of this development occurred during 1184 and 1185, at
precisely the same time that the bakufu was assuming its overt stance
against warrior lawlessness. It was also the period when Yoritomo was
seriously seeking a common denominator on which to erect a full-scale
reward-control system. The office of jito was eventually used for this
dual purpose. As Yoritomo undoubtedly rationalized it, the most effective
means of ridding the countryside of self-styled jito was for Kyoto
to authorize a Kamakura monopoly of that post. The bakufu chieftain
would then move concertedly against bogus jito while appointing deserving
vassals to lawful jito titles whose rights packages had been
confiscated from losers in the recent war. In this way, the continuity of
services to estates and their proprietors would be ensured, as would
managerial tenures for loyal, law-abiding Minamoto. The bakufu
would make the actual jito appointments and also guarantee their
lawfulness and reliability. Stable conditions would be restored;
Kamakura's presence through its jito would be permanently established;
and the men of the bakufu would enjoy both security and elite
status.
How much of this conception can be credited to Yoritomo in advance
of its implementation is difficult to determine. What is clear is
that the year n 86 witnessed many appointments to jito posts. At the
same time, unauthorized jito continued to be disciplined, as did lawfully
appointed persons who exceeded their rights. In many cases, jito
were dismissed, whether for unusually serious crimes or owing to
unjustified appointments in the first place.26
One result of this attention
to lawfulness and reliability was a network of provincial officers in
perpetual motion. Kamakura did not establish its jito corps to have it
become static in size or fixed in place. A second result of Yoritomo's
willingness to punish even his closest vassals was credibility - with
those who served him and with the estate owners who depended on
him. A major consequence was the quick appearance of Kamakura's
period-long contribution to governance in Japan, its capacity to arbitrate
between the local and central elites.
The shugo institution, despite being accorded a simultaneous birth
with the jito by the Azuma kagami, belongs in fact to a slightly later
period. Though the bakufu did appoint provincial-level officers from
26 For example, the 1186 cancellation of a ;7/d post in the central region's Tamba Province; KB,
doc. 30. The loser of the title was none other than Yoritomo's own brother-in-law, Hojo
Yoshitoki.
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62 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
early in the war, they were evidently not called shugo but, rather,
sdtsuibushi, an older title.27
This distinction is actually extremely important.
Kamakura's wartime sdtsuibushi were all-purpose provincial
commanders bearing little resemblance to the legally constricted shugo
of the 1190s and beyond. Indeed, the contexts in which these two
officer types flourished is entirely different. Whereas the sdtsuibushi
belonged to a period of helter-skelter growth on the part of the emerging
Kamakura bakufu, the shugo were products of a damping-down
process by a government seeking greater control of itself. The connection
between the two titles, then, is largely superficial. Though both
exercised provincewide authority, they had utterly divergent functions.
The Azuma kagami's assertion of an 1185 authorization to appoint
shugo is a confusion with;«o and a later rationalization by chroniclers
intent on creating matching antiquities.
During the later 1180s, the urge to establish a workable division of
responsibility with Kyoto gained impetus. The jito institution constituted
an important beginning here. Yet the country's proprietors
were continuing to deluge Kamakura with undifferentiated appeals
for redress, whereas the bakufu, for its part, had little idea as to
whom it ought to recognize as permanent vassals. Yoritomo, indeed,
became increasingly aware that his government had overextended
itself. He therefore began to turn away petitions for assistance of the
type he had earlier accepted. He also exhorted Kyoto to assume
responsibility for matters now deemed outside his purview.23
One
result was the beginning of a jurisdictional separation between jito
and an equivalent managerial title, that of gesu. The former were
declared men of Kamakura, with bakufu authority over appointments,
dismissals, and punishments. The latter, though their perquisites
and duties were indistinguishable from those of jito, were now
announced to be the responsibility of estate owners. This cutting
edge between jito and gesu became a prominent feature of the KyotoKamakura
dual polity.29
The matter of Kamakura's vassalage was an equally thorny problem,
though one that did not receive Yoritomo's full attention until
after 1190. Until recently, scholars assumed that Yoritomo devised the
term gokenin at the same time that he launched his drive to power in
1180. The Azuma kagami uses the word in its earliest entries, and the
currency of the term also made sense historically. Yoritomo was a
27 The finest treatment of the sotsuibushi-shugo problem is by Yasuda Motohisa, Shugo to jito
(Tokyo: Shibundo, 1964), pp. 22-42. 28 WG, pp. 125-7.
29 The implications of the jito-gesu division are treated in WG, pp. 136-42.
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THE GEMPEI AFTERMATH 63
feudal chieftain, gokenin being the insignia of vassalage appropriate to
his warrior movement. But as we now know, the term was not contemporaneous
with the Gempei War and was not even used in the later
1180s.30
Our conclusion is that vassalage remained a highly amorphous
concept during the bakufu's first decade. Loyalty itself was
often a matter of the moment, and "joining the Minamoto" could
literally be done in isolation. Thus, when the war ended, a determination
was still in the future as to the composition of a permanent band.
The first group to be acknowledged received the initial round of jito
appointments, and these mostly were easterners. But each province of
the country had warriors claiming to be legitimate loyalists. It was left
to Yoritomo to devise a means to test this avowal and to move in the
direction of a less disparate following.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the later n 80s witnessed a consolidation
drive that was scarcely completed by the end of the century.
Apart from the Kanto, the area of first concern was the Chubu, the
bloc of provinces between the country's two capitals. But no region of
the country was fully secure, for Kamakura's command structure had
never been unified. Numerous warriors remained under traditional
chiefs. Yoritomo's solution to these problems was to engage the country's
fighting men in yet another military campaign, this time against
the north. The north was the site of a major enclave of private governance
that had remained aloof from the Gempei War and later had
given refuge to Yoritomo's fugitive brother, Yoshitsune: The Kamakura
chieftain thus had several reasons to attack the family that dominated
the region, the Oshu Fujiwara.
In preparation for his campaign, Yoritomo authorized selected easterners
to initiate a massive recruitment drive in all parts of the country.
Though we lack detailed information on most areas, it is clear that
warriors answered the call from as far away as Kyushu but that the
greatest response came from the Chubu.31
Because the campaign itself
resulted in a victory for Kamakura in 1189, Yoritomo found himself
able to destroy the Fujiwara bloc on his eastern flank and to destroy or
subordinate the Chubu group on his western side. Elsewhere, he rewarded
warriors who fought loyally and punished or purged those who
did not.32
A major step was thus taken in the direction of a kind of
balance sheet on the country's fighting men. This was not yet a policy
30 Yasuda Motohisa, "Gokenin-sei seiritsu ni kansuru ichi shiron," Gakushuin daigaku bungaku
bu kenkyu nempo 16 (1969): 81-110. For a discussion, see Mass, "Feudalism," pp. 131-7.
31 Kasai Sachiko, "Oshu heiran to togoku bushidan," Rekishi kyoiku 16 (1968): 27-40.
32 This is vividly depicted in a Kyushu investiture of 1192; see KB, doc. 37.
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64 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
of identifying permanent vassals, calling them gokenin, and including
their names on vassal registers. But these steps were not very far away.
What was needed to implement such a policy was a corps of deputies
with regular authority and uniform local jurisdiction. Here, then, is
the basis for the shugo institution, provincial commanders who might
also function as constabulary officers. The actual process by which the
shugo were first set into place has unfortunately been lost to us, though
a common surmise is that Yoritomo, on :he occasion of his first trip to
Kyoto since childhood (1190), forced the court to appoint him shugoin-chief
for the entire country.33
Although there is no record of such an
arrangement, personnel identifiable as shugo do begin to appear
around 1192. This was just at the point that the gokenin label also
appears along with indications of the first vassals registers.34
The connections
here can hardly be overlooked: The primary responsibility
for installing and overseeing the gokenin system was granted to the
shugo, who were themselves created as extensions of Yoritomo's declared
lordship over his new vassalage. Moreover, with the institutionalization
of gokenin there also appeared a second legal category, higokenin
(nonvassals), both of whom may earlier have been "Minamoto." At any
rate, by the early 1190s the three basic local innovations of the
Kamakura bakufu, jito, shugo, and gokenin, had been established. At
variance with traditional accounts, it is not the jito and shugo whose
origins should be closely linked but, rather, the shugo and gokenin.
Neither of the latter had anything directly to do with the Gempei War.
It has long been assumed that the final pillar in Kamakura's system,
the office of shogun, was likewise set into place in 1192. Because of
that event, this year is almost as well known as 1185. In a sense,
however, the fame here is misplaced. Although Yoritomo was appointed
shogun in 1192, he did not understand its significance, which
was established only after his death. Thus, the Kamakura chieftain
resigned the office in 1195, never supposing that posterity would
credit him with starting a tradition of shoguns. For Yoritomo, the title
was important only insofar as it might impress Kyoto; he returned to a
more prestigious office (that of utaisho, or commander of the inner
palace guards) in 1195 for precisely that reason.35
Conversely, in no
ways was the post of shogun a capstone to his system of vassalage. As
33 For a discussion, see Yasuda, Shugo to jito, pp. 45ff.
34 See the list of registers in Tanaka Minoru, "Kamakura shoki no seiji katei-kenkyu nenkan o
chushin ni shite," Rekishi kyoiku 11 (1963): 23.
35 For Yoritomo and the title of shogun, see Ishii Ryosuke, "Sei-i tai shogun to Minamoto
Yoritomo," reprinted in Ishii Ryosuke, Taika no kaishin to Kamakura bakufu no seintsu
(Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1958), pp. 87-94; an
d Mass, "Feudalism," pp. 126-8.
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THE GEMPEI AFTERMATH 65
we shall see, it was left to the Hojo, in need of an object for a regency,
to invest the title of shogun with both a future and a past. Yoritomo
thus became the first of a line of shoguns only in the memories of those
who followed him.
In the wake of the northern campaign, Yoritomo, as mentioned,
traveled to Kyoto for his first visit since childhood. By all accounts it
was a triumphant venture. The chieftain of Kamakura was feted everywhere,
and he was granted the utaisho title to which he later returned
after three years as shogun (i 192-5). A further preferment allowed
him to open a mandokoro, a chancellery on the model of those of the
great central aristocrats. Hereafter, decrees by his government issued
from that organ rather than from Yoritomo personally.36
This was, in a
sense, a concession to bureaucratization, arguably the only one of
import that he ever made. More typically, Yoritomo stood firm against
the formation of enclaves of private power and shifted men about from
one governmental task to another. He also continued his policy of
purging warriors whose loyalty he considered suspect. During the
1190s, Yoritomo rid himself of certain province-level vassals in the
west and evolved a complementary policy of elevating undistinguished
easterners to positions of authority in the same region. As his thinking
must have run, men of this type would owe their prestige to the
largesse of the chieftain. In ways such as this, Yoritomo's temperament
inclined him toward patrimonialism, though the realities of warrior
power obliged him to adopt feudal techniques of organization as
well.
To conclude this section on the era of Yoritomo, we should note the
fluctuations in his relationship with Kyoto. The period covering 1185
to 1200 can be divided into three subperiods. The years between 1185
and 1192 witnessed a contest of sorts between the ex-emperor,
Goshirakawa, and Yoritomo. This hardly constituted open warfare.
Committed as he was to resuscitating traditional authority, Yoritomo
dealt respectfully with the retired emperor throughout. For his part,
however, Goshirakawa had little to lose by exploiting this advantage
and by attempting to embarrass the rival regime in Kamakura. At any
rate, when Goshirakawa died in 1192, there was little sorrow felt in the
eastern capital. To prevent further opposition from Kyoto, Yoritomo
decided to assume a higher profile in the politics of the court.
In the early stage of this effort, the Kamakura chief worked closely
with a ranking ally in Kyoto, Kujo Kanezane. A problem developed,
36 For early examples of such edicts, see KB, docs. 12, 16-17.
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66 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
however, when Yoritomo determined that his daughter should occupy
the same imperial consort's position held by Kanezane's daughter.
Yoritomo's goal was no less than to become grandfather to an emperor,
and to promote that cause he undertook a second trip to Kyoto. This
occurred in 1195 and was the occasion of his abandonment of the title
of shogun in deference to a higher-ranking post, the office of utaisho.
By this time, however, there were forces in the capital who saw in
Yoritomo's gambit an opportunity to rid themselves of both Kanezane's
and Kamakura's meddling. The result was exactly as the opposition
interests in Kyoto had hoped. With Yoritomo's assistance,
Kanezane was removed from power, but the eastern chieftain's plans
for his daughter, owing to her untimely death, failed to materialize.
Yoritomo, disappointed and chastened, turned his attention back to
Kamakura. The period between 1196 and 1199 thus became a time of
minimal interaction between the two capitals. The bakufu continued
to accept courtiers' complaints alleging lawlessness by jito. But a new
power bloc had emerged in Kyoto over which Yoritomo exercised little
leverage. When the eastern chieftain died in 1199, he could count as
his most conspicuous failure the lack of closer relations with Kyoto.
THE ROAD TO JOKYU
The period 1200 to 1221 has always had a quality of inevitability about
it. This is because the Jokyu disturbance, pitting the two capitals
against each other, seemed a logical denouement to the establishment
of a warrior regime in a country with only one prior governmental
center. In fact, the war was considerably more complex than merely a
fated showdown between older and newer authority systems. The
lineup of forces in 1221 revealed societies in conflict as much within
themselves as against one another; and the outpouring of violence that
accompanied and followed the war suggests that the Gempei settlement,
embracing various compromises by Yoritomo, had only superficially
satisfied many of the country's warriors. A major result of the
multisided Jokyu struggle was thus a shift, if not a restructuring, in
the power alignments between and within the two capitals as well as
within the warrior class as a whole. For these reasons, the Jokyu
disturbance, belying its brief duration, was the most momentous event
of the thirteenth century, rivaled only by the Mongol invasions.37
37 This multidimensional view of the Jokyu disturbance is presented in Jeffrey P. Mass, The
Development of Kamakura Rule, 1180-1250: A History with Documents (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1979), chap. 1 (hereafter cited as DKR).
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THE ROAD TO JOKYO 67
The dominant theme of progress in Kamakura in the generation
before Jokyu was the rise of the Hojo as hegemons. This was not the
relatively easy progress it is often made out to be. The period was
punctuated by power struggles and rebellions, and the Hojo's emergence
out of this milieu was anything but certain.38
The background of
the competition was the gap at the political center occasioned by
Yoritomo's death. His successors, his sons Yoriie (r. 1199-1203) and
Sanetomo (r. 1203-19), were not of the same mettle as their father,
which meant that actual leadership fell to a coalition of vassals, itself
an unstable arrangement. During the years 1200 to 1203, two families,
the Hiki and the Hojo, presided over this group. The head of the
former was the father-in-law of Yoriie, who was himself hostile to his
mother's family, the Hojo. A bloodletting eventually ensued, which
resulted in the replacement of Yoriie by the more pliable Sanetomo, as
well as the destruction of the Hiki by their rivals, the Hojo. The way
was thus open for the Hojo scion, Tokimasa, to assume brief but direct
command of the Kamakura bakufu.
It has long been assumed that Tokimasa capped this dramatic rise
in 1203 by becoming shikken, or regent, to the new shogun Sanetomo.
According to this tradition, a sequence of shikken henceforth
paralleled a sequence of shoguns. In fact, there is reason to doubt
this version of events, as the title of shikken, meaning director of a
mandokoro, could hardly have been initiated when there was no
mandokoro. During this period the shogun was of insufficiently high
court rank to open a formal chancellery.39
Nevertheless, Tokimasa
did dominate the bakufu until 1205, a fact we know from the regime's
edicts, all of which bear his signature alone.40
In that year he
was displaced by his son and daughter, who, because their father's
rule had not been institutionalized, failed to inherit all his power.
Tokimasa's successors were thus forced to share authority with others,
and for a decade after 1209 the mandokoro, now open, became
the chief decision-making body in Kamakura and the principal issuer
of its edicts.41
In 1213, another bloodletting occurred in which an old-line gokenin
family, the Wada, found itself maneuvered into a treasonous position,
giving the Hojo ample reason to lead a bakufu campaign against it.
38 The clearest account in English of the rise of the Hojo is by H. Paul Varley, "The Hojo
Family and Succession to Power," in Mass, ed., Court and Bakufu in Japan, chap. 6.
39 The shikken post of Tokimasa is noted in AK, 1203/10/9; for a critique, see DKR, pp. 77-79.
40 For example, DKR, docs. 55-59; KB, docs. 20, 33-34, 48, 100, 113, 161, 163.
41 For the role of the mandokoro during this period, see DKR, pp. 75-80.
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68 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Yet even now the Hojo's hold over the governmental apparatus did
not become entirely secure; there were fluctuations in the membership
of the mandokoroy and the Hojo were not always its directors. All
this changed, however, in 1219 when the shogun was assassinated.
This development gave the Hojo a pretext on which to declare an
emergency situation, which was close to the truth, as no successor
was immediately available. In the absence of a nominal lord, the
mandokoro ceased its formal activities, and Hojo Yoshitoki, like his
father before him, began issuing Kamakura's edicts under his own
name. This time the Hojo's accession to power within the bakufu
proved to be permanent.
While the Hojo were succeeding, finally, in securing their hegemony,
a parallel situation was developing in Kyoto under a new retired
emperor. Gotoba was the ultimate beneficiary of Yoritomo's clumsy
meddling in court politics during the middle 1190s. When he "retired"
in 1198 at the age of eighteen, his immediate task was to neutralize
the bloc of supporters that made up his own entourage; it was this
group that had engineered the removal of the Kanezane faction and
blocked Yoritomo's designs at court. By 1202, Gotoba had succeeded
in becoming his own master - and was also well on his way to becoming
master of the capital. He established that his chancellery - the inno-cho
- was the central decision-making body in Kyoto, and he actively
pursued greater wealth, often at the expense of rival proprietors.
The result was a growing feeling of restiveness in Kyoto that paralleled
a like sentiment in Kamakura.
Gotoba, indeed, attempted to capitalize on the growing warrior unrest,
by providing an alternative source of patronage for the country's
fighting men. He did this by recruiting both gokenin and non-gokenin
for his private guard units and by distributing to these retainers various
rank and office preferments. Although Gotoba might not have
been aware of it at first, he was creating, with this activity, the core of
an army that would later challenge Kamakura. The members of his
guards units were drawn from east and west, a development that the
bakufu took little notice of, as relations between the capitals were
peaceful, if not unusually warm. In an earlier era, Yoritomo had
fought court rewards for Minamoto who failed to be nominated by the
chieftain. But now the shogun himself was a conspicuous recipient of
court honors, whereas Kamakura remained parsimonious in granting
jito awards to most western vassals. In time, relatively large numbers
of fighting men came to realize that the bakufu's existence was doing
little to benefit them personally. Integrated, as in times past, with the
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THE ROAD TO JOKYU 69
Kyoto-controlled estate system, warriors of this kind were receptive to
Gotoba's call to arms against Kamakura in 1221.
The events that took place in 1219 are generally considered to have
contributed to the decision to wage war. During the previous year,
Hojo Masako had traveled to Kyoto to negotiate with Gotoba over
the naming of a shogun-designate. Had Sanetomo had an heir, the
trip would not have been necessary. But the Hojo, for whom the post
of shogun was the basis for their regency, had already decided to seek
a successor from within the imperial family. Such a choice would
provide the bakufu (and themselves) with an unimpeachable legitimacy,
whereas for Gotoba (whose infant son was the designee) there
was the prospect of a bakufu "absorbed" into the imperial state.
Early in 1219, however, Sanetomo's assassination prompted a change
of heart on the part of the ex-emperor, and he contributed to the
crisis in Kamakura by reneging on his earlier agreement. After a
show of force in the capital, the bakufu secured a compromise
choice - an infant Fujiwara - to be the next shogun. But when the
child was brought to Kamakura, the ex-emperor resolved to withhold
his formal appointment.
These developments poisoned relations between the two capitals,
though, remarkably, the sources fall suddenly silent regarding actual
movement toward war. There is no indication of overt steps taken on
either side to prepare for any kind of showdown. This silence continued
into the spring of 1221, when the ex-emperor had already decided
on his course. The magnitude of his error only makes more
regrettable our inability to trace events from mid-1219. At any rate,
we can imagine a fevered effort, which contributed to the court's
debacle, to assemble a fighting force that might acquit itself. In the
end, Gotoba's army was a potpourri of warrior society. Drawn mostly
from the central and western provinces, but with a number of eastern
defectors, the forces of the court had little internal coherence.42
Whereas fighting for the bakufu meant the prospect of new jito titles,
fighting for the court promised nothing in particular. Negative (or
passive) feelings toward Kamakura could hardly make up for the
absence of a rewards program.
Nor had Gotoba taken account of the fact that like the Hojo, he had
alienated much of his own natural constituency. Presumably, he believed
that the central shoen proprietors shared his distaste for
Kamakura to the point that they would rally to his cause. He must also
42 The nature of Gotoba's army is discussed in detail in DKR, pp. 16-29.
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70 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
have expected delivery of the warrior-managers and the mercenaries
who served them. In any event, the aristocracy's response was almost
as mixed as that of the country's fighting men. Neutrality was the
stance adopted by many, whereas others were simply not in a position
to guarantee compliance by those living on their estates. A united
Kyoto thus proved to be as elusive for Gotoba as it had been for
Kiyomori two generations earlier.
Before moving to the Jokyu encounter itself, it remains to be pondered
what the ex-emperor hoped to achieve by his challenge to
Kamakura. In his war declaration, he singled out Hojo Yoshitoki, who
was the nearest thing he could find to a common enemy for potential
warrior recruits. The Minamoto, whose rule had already ended, could
be praised for their service to the court, whereas the Hojo, with some
accuracy, could be condemned as usurpers. Beyond that, Gotoba entreated
the men of Kamakura to rely henceforth on the judicial authority
of Kyoto, a subtle plea, as it aimed at compromising Kamakura's
jurisdiction without threatening to dismantle the bakufu itself. To
have sought the support of warriors in overthrowing the warrior government
could only have weakened Gotoba's chances for success. Conversely,
the gokenin who joined the court did not do so out of a desire
to destroy the bakufu idea or to end their own elite status. What they
must have looked forward to was a reorganized regime with a new
warrior leadership and a new form of cooperation with Kyoto. But
Gotoba, whatever his rhetoric, could hardly have shared such views;
his ultimate aim must have been to end Japan's dual polity, perhaps by
placing shugo and jito under his own authority. As we know, this
potential divergence of goals had no time to surface. The Jokyu disturbance,
if not the violence that it unleashed, was over in less than a
month.
THE JOKYU DISTURBANCE AND ITS AFTERMATH
If the Azuma kagami is to be believed, Kamakura had no advance
warning that Gotoba was preparing for war. Not surprisingly, the
bakufu leadership was uncertain at first as to how to respond. The
propriety of engaging an imperial army was debated; yet scruples
gave way, under urging by the Hojo, to the threat that was unmistakably
at hand. Gotoba's war declaration reached Kamakura on the
nineteenth day of the fifth month of 1221. Within a week's time,
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THE JOKYO DISTURBANCE AND ITS AFTERMATH 71
according to the Azuma kagami, a bakufu counterforce of 190,000
men had been assembled.43
The recruitment policies devised by the Hojo had a direct bearing
on the outcome of the war and the settlement that followed. Only
easterners were called to service, although as Kamakura's armies advanced
westward, local vassals were actively recruited. The Kanto-led
military campaign thus formed a wedge for greater penetration of the
west and also offered a chance for further consolidation of the Chubu.
Unlike the beginning stages of the Gempei War, then, the leadership in
Kamakura determined to take the fighting directly to the enemy. The
strategy worked splendidly, and on the fifteenth day of the sixth
month the victorious bakufu army entered the capital. Brushing aside
Gotoba's pleas for mercy, Kamakura scattered into exile the exemperor
and other members of his war party.
So rapidly had events taken place that at first the bakufu could
hardly have appreciated the extent of its victory. The full composition
of the ex-emperor's army was a matter to be determined, and probes
had to be undertaken to judge degrees of war guilt. Similarly, the
bakufu had to examine its own army - who had fought and with what
degree of valor. What complicated all of this was a reign of terror that
now gripped the countryside. Both vassals and nonvassals interpreted
the court's defeat as a license to engage in lawlessness.44
So savage was
this outburst that whatever Kamakura's instinct for revenge against
Kyoto, its leadership realized that the traditional authority system
could not, without risk to the bakufu, be dismantled. In fact, it would
have to be restored, and Kamakura therefore took steps in that direction.
It retained most of the governmental apparatus of the court, and
it set into place a new retired emperor. At the same time, it undertook
to return the countryside to peace by responding to the complaints of
violence lodged by the traditional proprietors.
But Kamakura was hardly prepared to oversee a total return to the
status quo ante. It replaced its ineffective Kyoto shugo's office with a
bakufu branch in the capital, the so-called Rokuhara tandai. It also
reserved for itself the right to interfere in high-level personnel decisions
at court, including the naming of emperors. It further made clear
43 Two translations by William McCullough present a narrative account of the war: "The Azuma
kagami Account of the Shokyu War," Monumenia Nipponica 23 (1968): 102-55; "Shokyuki:
An account of the Shokyu War," Monumenia Nipponica 19 (1964): 163-215, and 21 (1966):
420-53.
44 For a sampling of the violence in 1221 and 1222, see DKR, docs. 21, 24-26; KB, docs. 95,
112, 116.
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72 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
that Kamakura and Kyoto would henceforth work in tandem; the dual
polity was a permanent reality that might never be challenged again.
To underscore this, the bakufu began issuing legislative pronouncements,
demonstrating parity with Kyoto as a lawgiving authority. Finally,
Kamakura responded to the desires of its men by flooding the
central and western provinces with massive numbers of newjito assignments.
This latter development constituted no less than a colonization
drive, for the recipients were almost exclusively easterners and the
appointment areas were the confiscated holdings of dispossessed westerners.
As a result, the demographics of warrior strength in Japan
shifted dramatically in favor of elite fighting men from the Kanto.
The restoration of stability, so high on Kamakura's list of priorities,
was actually undermined by the introduction of large numbers of new
jito into unfamiliar areas. But this was the price that had to be paid to
institutionalize a presence countrywide and to satisfy the expectations
of a core constituency. A major result was a substantial bolstering of
what had long since become Kamakura's principal governmental role,
the dispensing of justice. With bakufu men in possession of rights in
all parts of the country, it was more important than ever that the
policing of jito, immune from the discipline of shorn proprietors, be
handled with dispatch. At first, Kamakura was hard-pressed to keep
up with the demand for judgments, and in fact, its commitment to
fairness may have suffered a bit. But these lapses proved momentary,
as the bakufu was willing to reverse any mistaken decisions.45
At any
rate, the era was one of adjustment and change in Japan after roughly
two decades of equilibrium.
The changes referred to here have less to do with substance and
structure than they do with scope and numbers. That is, the Jokyu
disturbance yielded no institutionally newfigurescomparable to those
evolving out of the Gempei War and its aftermath. What occurred
after 1221 was an expansion of existing officer networks and authority,
not some radical departure into new conceptual space. True, Kamakura
now began posing as a lawgiving authority alongside Kyoto, and
this was certainly unprecedented. But the enactments themselves did
not infringe on the imperial sanction, and in fact, they acknowledged
and fortified it. Moreover, Kamakura's efforts as a lawgiver were decidedly
modest at first, and the bakufu carved out for itself no new
spheres of local or central jurisdiction. What was new after 1221 was
45 A classic example, which involved attempts to rectify errors on four separate occasions, was
finally put right in 1232; see DKR, doc. 33.
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THE JOKYU DISTURBANCE AND ITS AFTERMATH 73
the growth of Kamakura's involvement in dispute resolution and its
accelerated placement of jito. The number of such 71/0 is perhaps the
critical question, and herein lies an interesting tale.
According to a famous datum of history cited in the Azuma kagatni,
Kamakura profited from the confiscation of fully three thousand shden
as part of the Jokyu settlement. If taken literally, a shift of such
magnitude would have significantly tilted the court-bakufu balance.
Kyoto would have suffered a cataclysmic setback and faced severe
revenue shortages followed by immediate decline. In fact, however,
the three thousand figure implied far less than it seemed to. In the first
place, nowhere near that number of transfers can be corroborated; the
total (as with the size of Kamakura's army) is likely exaggerated.
Second, even if the number were accurate, it probably implied the
total of transfers at all levels of authority. That is, Kamakura and
Kyoto shared in this new largesse. The bakufu declared its right to
fashion jito assignments from the managerial packages belonging to
those warriors caught on the losing side. Likewise, the court, with
Kamakura's blessing, shifted an unknown number of proprietary titles
from one segment of the traditional aristocracy - Gotoba's war party to
another, those who had remained neutral or shown sympathy for
Kamakura. It is in this sense, that the Jokyu disturbance engendered
shifts both within and between Japan's two great power blocs. Research
on the "Kyoto settlement" has only just begun, with indications that the
major religious institutions came out strongest.46
By contrast, scholarship
on Kamakura is well advanced and shows a small number of proprietorships,
against numerous new jito titles.47
As reflected in the overall
settlement, then, the bakufu could be assured that the basic ordering of
society was not being impaired. Warriors, difficult to control in the best
of circumstances, would remain middle-level land managers.
A final point on this subject is that the postwar era was not limited
to a year or two; Jokyu land transfers are known from as late as the
1240s, though most of the shifts in holdings obviously occurred earlier.
By 1225 or 1226, Kamakura was prepared to make structural
changes in its organization that pointed the way to a new, mature
phase in bakufu operations.
46 Koyasan, in particular, profited from the court's defeat, but so did the Todaiji and the shrines
of Kamo, Ise, and Iwashimizu; see DKR, pp. 38-40.
47 Details on some 129 post-jokyoyiw appointments appear in Tanaka Minoru, "Jokyu kyogata
bushi no ichi kosatsu - rango no shin jito buninchi o chushin to shite," Shigaku zasshi 65
(1956): 21-48; Tanaka Minoru, "Jokyu no rango no shin jito buninchi," Shigaku zasshi 79
(1970): 38-53Cambridge
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74 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
BAKUFU GOVERNANCE
In 1224, Hojo Yoshitoki died and was followed in death by Masakb a
year later. The new leader of the bakufu was Yoshitoki's son, Yasutoki,
by consensus the greatest of the Hojo regents. Born after the founding
of the bakufu and educated in classical Confucianism, Yasutoki left a
stamp on the regime's operations that survived until the end of the
period. It was under Yasutoki that the bakufu's capacity for mediating
disputes achieved new heights and under him also that Kamakura's
reputation for good government became a fixture of the historical
memory.48
Kamakura's golden age, which began now, owed much of
its luster to the efforts of this extraordinary man.
Yasutoki was an innovator right from the start. Desirous of ending
the postwar emergency, he took three steps to place the bakufu on a
more regular footing. First, he established the cosigner (rensho) institution
wherein a coregent, drawn from his own family, would become
part of Kamakura's formal apparatus.49
Second, he promoted the idea
of collegiality by creating a board of councilors (hydjoshit) to function
as the bakufu's ranking governmental organ. Finally, he moved to
formalize the elevation of the shogun-designate, a step that his predecessors,
even after the Jokyu victory, had not taken. In the first month
of 1226, the eight-year-old Yoritsune became the fourth lord of
Kamakura.
These were Yasutoki's public moves. He also moved behind the
scenes to ensure that the hydjoshu would be responsive to his own
wishes and become the new high court of Kamakura. Although the
council, like the mandokoro before it, was a mixture of old-line gokenin
and ex-noble legal specialists, it differed from its predecessor in being
the instrument of its founder's will. The mandokoro, which had been
founded by the Minamoto and which played such an important role
during the period to 1219, was inactive throughout the 1220s and was
subsequently divested of its entire judicial authority. In 1232, the
shogun was promoted to a court rank high enough to make him eligible
to open a mandokoro. But by that time Yasutoki was its director and
therefore oversaw the chancellery's principal task of investing and
confirming jito posts. In sum, whereas the mandokoro dated back to
48 Note, for example, the high opinion of Yasutoki's tenure held by Kitabatake Chikafusa,
author of the fourteenth-century Jinno Sholoki: A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns, trans. H.
Paul Varley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 228-30.
49 Credit for this innovation used to be given to Hojo Masako, based on an erroneous entry in
the Azuma kagami. The correct attribution was made by Uwayokote Masataka, "Renshosei
no seiritsu," in Kokushi ronshu, vol. 2 (Kyoto: Dokushikai, 1959), pp. 625-40.
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BAKUFU GOVERNANCE 75
Heian times and had an existence tied to the court-sponsored rank of
the shogun, the hydjoshu was a bakufu invention and a vehicle of the
regent. To argue, as many historians have done, that the hydjoshu
constituted the beginning of a new conciliar phase in Kamakura history
is to overlook the organ's origins and to ignore its subsequent
dominance by the Hojo.50
Although the sources do not refer directly to this process, from its
beginning the council became the arena for a rapidly modernizing
system of justice. As mentioned earlier, the bakufu had been placed in
the position of judicial arbiter, literally from the first days of the
Minamoto movement. The earliest settlements were edicts issued by
Yoritomo himself, but after formation of the mandokoro, he centered
much of this authority there. With the chieftain's death, however, the
Hojo, under Tokimasa, came to dominate the process (1203-5),
though in the decade before Jokyu the mandokoro, as noted, experienced
its resurgence. From 1219 to 1226 it was the Hojo once again
who controlled the regime's judgments.51
Belying these power shifts at the top level of the bakufu, the techniques
of justice were rapidly becoming more sophisticated. Technique,
indeed, was emphasized from the start. Because Kamakura had
no written laws at first or any philosophical traditions and because the
country's estates were accustomed to having individualized precedents
(senrei) made the basis of judgments, it was natural for the bakufu to
stress procedure over principle. On a period-long basis, identifying
and confirming local precedents served as the foundation of Kamakura
justice. Flowing from this came basic attitudes toward impartiality,
modes of proof, due process, and the right of appeal. In its
maturity, the system was thus closely calibrated to the needs of a
society that was lawless yet litigious, restive yet still respectful of
higher authority.
A case in 1187 demonstrates the enormous potential of a system of
justice whose principal objective was equity for the litigants rather
than aggrandizement by their judges. At stake was the possession of an
area in distant Kyushu to which the disputants had conflicting claims.
In the words of Yoritomo's settlement edict, "The relative merits of
the two parties have been investigated and judged, and [the/no's] case
50 See Andrew Goble, "The Hojo and Consultative Government," in Mass, ed., Court and
Bakufu inJapan, Chap. 7, for a rejection of the conciliar view made famous by Sato Shin'ichi.
51 Hojo control was direct from 1219 to 1226; thereafter it was through the hydjothu. Either way,
judgments between 1219 and 1333 bore Hojo names exclusively. These have been collected
by Seno Seiichiro, Kamakura bakufu saikyojo thu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1970-1), 2
vols.
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76 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
has been found justified." To establish this, proof records (shomon)
had been placed in evidence, and the "false claim" (hiron) of the
challenger was dismissed. Finally, a copy of the edict was sent to the
government headquarters (dazaifu) in Kyushu, where an additional
order executing the decision was handed down.52
During the era of Yoritorno, justice, it may be said, remained the
prerogative of the chieftain. Though he assigned trusted followers to
cases and allowed them some leeway, he did not have professional
investigators, much less a class of judges. A "judiciary" in the sense of
a separate organ did not appear until later.53
The two decades before Jokyu saw a number of advances in the way
that Kamakura handled suits. And these were indeed suits: The system
was accusatorial, with litigation initiated by a plaintiff. Moreover,
on a period-long basis, the bakufu itself was never a party to such
actions and thereby strengthened its reputation as an arbiter and not
an inquisitor. It is logical that an investigative agency, the monchujo,
should have become active after Yoritimo's death. After conducting
inquiries, which now involved a more clearly defined exchange of
accusation and rebuttal statements (sojo and chinjo), along with gathering
and analyzing evidence, the monchujo issued a report, which was
normally the basis of the judgment. From the beginning, written proof
was considered more reliable than witnesses' or litigants' claims, and
before long, distinctions among types of documents were introduced.
In turn, as verdicts came to rest on documents, the crimes of forging,
pilfering, and extorting records correspondingly became a problem.
As Kamakura quickly discovered, advances in judicial technique were
often followed by attempts to abuse or thwart them.
Integral to the progress in Kamakura was the promotion of a local
support system. Because some types of allegations could most effectively
be verified locally, skugo became the principal agents of investigation
in the provinces. As the traffic of directives and responses
increased, this served to tighten the bakufu's overall control of its
vassalage even as it was expediting the handling of suits. The same end
was served by Kamakura's issuance of formal questionnaires (toijo)
and summonses (meshibumi) either directly or indirectly to defendants.
As for the suits themselves, these tended to fall into three categories.
The most prominent during the early period were actions lodged by
52 KB, doc. 14.
53 The standard view, based on the Azuma kagami, posits a "board of inquiry" (monchujo) from
1184. I take issue with this version of events; see Jeffrey P. Mass, "The Origins of Kamakura
Justice,"Journal ofJapanese Studies 3 (1977): 307-10.
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BAKUFU GOVERNANCE 77
traditional proprietors against jito. Some of these were already quite
complex, involving multiple issues, the product of diversified programs
of lawlessness by increasingly ambitious jito.5
* The second type
of suit, which became far more important later, dealt with intrafamily
vassal disputes, generally over inheritances.55
Finally, there were complaints
by or againstgokenin alleging interfamily infringement.56
Kamakura's
official position against accepting courtier or warrior suits that
did not involve vassals was occasionally transgressed by the bakufu
itself. Yet the policy of separate jurisdictions with Kyoto remained in
force and served as the principal basis for the era's dual polity.
There were, however, certain defects in the system that became
more pronounced in the years immediately following Jokyu. As mentioned
earlier, due process was compromised somewhat under the
weight of litigation caused by the emergency. This led to a rise in the
number of false or frivolous suits and an increasing awareness that
Kamakura's judgments did not contain enough information either to
prevent repetitions of the same problem or to provide the bakufu with
an easy basis for resolving future difficulties. Specifically, the edicts
tended not to contain full-enough histories of either troubled areas or
families and did not present summaries of the oral and written testimony
constituting the basis for the judgment. In addition, by the late
1220s there existed a number of problem estates for which the bakufu
had adopted conflicting positions in the past. In order to set the records
straight and to line up, as it were, the precedents, Yasutoki was
disposed to having Kamakura's highest court, the hyojoshu, rehear
such cases. From a handful of settlement edicts surviving from 1227-
8, we see that Kamakura justice had taken a major step forward.57
Central to the advances made at this time was a new commitment to
impartiality, in the form of the taiketsu, or face-to-face trial confrontation,
and to recording the facts and the reasoning behind a judgment
as based on the oral and written testimony. In the past, plaintiff and
defendant had been regularly summoned, but it is not certain whether
they faced each other and their interrogators simultaneously. Even
now, only a minority of cases reached this ultimate test; but the principle
of access, so crucial, had been established. The bakufu also made
54 A case in 1216, for example, embraced some sixteen disputed issues; see KB, doc. 93.
55 For example, the long-running case involving Ojika Island in Kyushu's Hizen Province.
Kamakura first heard the suit in 1196, again in 1204, and thereafter repeatedly until it was
settled with some finality in 1228; see KB, docs. 19-20; DKR, pp. 95-101.
56 For example, cases in Kyushu from 1205 and 1212; see DKR, docs. 57, 65.
57 See, in particular, the Ojika Island settlement of 1228, referred to in n. 55. A judgment in
1227/3 is the earliest of the "new" type; see KB, doc. 46.
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78 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
clear that the most extraordinary measures would be used to ferret out
the truth. Witnesses, if needed, would be sought from the most remote
corners of the land,58
and summonses would be issued ad
nauseum if it was thought they might help.59
Conversely, Kamakura
inculcated the notion that each stage in the judicial process was capable
of serving as the final stage; we see no slavish devotion to the full
reach of Kamakura's own system. The rationale here was to avoid
squandering valuable resources, whether the litigants' or the bakufu's,
and to give the system maximum flexibility. Thus, there would be
cases when merely the lodging of a suit would induce the defendant to
settle "out of court." Or perhaps the same result might occur at the
point of acceptance of a suit or the delivery of the charges or of a
summons. Under the Kamakura system, justice might be rapid or
drawn out; in many instances it was unending, as formal appeals
became possible and new suits on old subjects were commonplace.
Indeed, it was Kamakura's objective to bottle up potentially explosive
situations in litigation; that elite warriors subjected themselves to
long-running encounters on the legal field of battle rather than on
military battlefields proved to be one of the bakufu's most enduring
accomplishments.
Nor did Kamakura justice become static or excessively bureaucratized.
Soon after introducing the procedures that would serve as the
core of the system, Yasutoki became active as a legislator. Drawing on
his Confucian training and his evaluation of current realities, he became
the guiding force behind the goseibai shikimoku, a behavioral
code for gokenin that was promulgated in 1232. This formulary was
important for several reasons. As the first document of its kind by and
for warriors, it gave further evidence of Kamakura's parity with Kyoto
and indeed served as the inspiration and precedent for all future warrior
codes. Nevertheless, in the context of its own times, the formulary
was intended to do less than it has often been given credit for.60
It
represented not so much the creation of binding rules as the establishment
of standards; its underlying principle, dori, conveyed reasonableness,
not literalness. Thus, a judgment based on the particulars of a
58 For example, a suit in 1244 involving a corner of Kyushu's Hizen Province led to the
interrogation of at least twenty local persons; see DKR, doc. 144.
59 For example, the reference to seven summonses in a Bizen Province suit in 1255; see KB,
doc. 50.
60 The existence of an early English translation of the formulary (1904) caused several generations
of historians to rely unduly on this document. The potential influence of such translations
is discussed by Jeffrey P. Mass, "Translation and Pre-1600 History,"Journal ofJapanese
Studies 6 (Winter 1980): 61-88.
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BAKUFU GOVERNANCE 79
case was the closest approximation oidori; Kamakura laws, as summation
of current practice, were the next closest.
The goseibai shikimoku, then, was a sketch rather than a finished
blueprint; its general concerns were more important than its specific
content. Had the formulary, by contrast, sought to impose a uniform
set of regulations, it would have conflicted with the limitless variety of
estate-based customs. This would have rendered justice inoperable, as
governance in the thirteenth century (Kamakura's or Kyoto's) could
hardly have been reduced to formula. The shikimoku's objectives were
thus to define the parameters of the gokenin's world and to enunciate
standards that would both exalt and restrain him. Because the society
of the vassal was itself ever-changing, it was readily anticipated that
the code, like a constitution, would be supplemented by legislation.
And so it was. Hardly was the ink dry on the 1232 document when
new enactments began to pour from Kamakura's lawmakers. Some of
these dealt with topics not covered in the shikimoku, but others were
clearly corrective in nature. The latter condition was promoted by a
development that Yasutoki had not foreseen. In its efforts to reconcile
two competing social and political orders, Kamakura had forsworn
interference in the affairs of shoen proprietors, specifically in shoen in
which jitd did not hold land rights. This left non-;'ud gokenin, who
constituted the majority of the native western province vassals, legally
unprotected, and estate owners were quick to take advantage of this
situation.61
Moreover, the shikimoku, though including jitd under its
umbrella of protection, also restricted them in a number of explicit
ways. Proprietors had merely to study the formulary and then bring
suit against ajitd for alleged codal violations. Because the shoen proprietors
themselves were immune from discipline by Kamakura, there
was nothing, moreover, to prevent them from bringing trumped-up
charges.62
At any rate, the 1230s and 1240s witnessed a number of
adjustments in the bakufu's laws as inequities in the original legislation
were deemed needy of correction.
Notwithstanding such difficulties, the post-shikimoku era carried
Kamakura justice to a new plateau of excellence. From about 1230 the
Rokuhara deputyship in Kyoto became an adjunct to the system, fully
empowered to judge suits independently of Kamakura. Although in
practice Rokuhara functioned mostly as a lower court with appeal
eastward regularly used, the bakufu had diversified its judicial machin-
61 DKR, pp. 108-12, docs. 76-77.
62 For example, a case in which a proprietor ignored an earlier judgment against itself and
attempted to reopen the suit; see DKR, doc. 78.
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80 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
ery and strengthened its reputation as Japan's most prestigious court.
At the same time, Kamakura was also taking steps to improve its
efficiency and overall performance. In 1249, it added another investigative
office, the hikitsuke-shu, which gradually took its place as the
principal organ of inquiry below the hydjoshu.
As indicated earlier, dispute resolution was, from beginning to end,
Kamakura's chief contribution to the age. More than policing, the
collection of taxes, or any other of a myriad of responsibilities associated
with governments, the settlement of land suits, broadly conceived,
stood as the raison d'etre for the bakufu's existence. On the
other hand, this did not mean that Kamakura's authority was simply
one-dimensional. It did exercise, for example, certain administrative
responsibilities in its base area of the east. Yet this authority was far
from fully articulated, and few data survive on Kamakura as a territorial
power.
The explanation for this anomaly takes us back to the dual polity.
During Kamakura times, the country was not divided into discrete
territorial spheres. Authorities were overlapping within the context of
the all-encompassing estate system. This meant that shorn holders and
provincial proprietors maintained contacts with the east, whereas
Kamakura, through its shugo and jito, exercised influence in the west.
Thus, the dual polity was a thoroughly integrated polity which, however,
might be unequal. Although the bakufu had arguably the more
important contribution to make, Kyoto, it seems clear, had the more
varied. Preoccupied with its judicial burden, Kamakura eschewed
many of the complementary duties of government, which remained
the purview of traditional, court-centered authority.63
SHUGO AND JITO
The shugo and jito were the period-defining figures of the Kamakura
age, a condition that was recognized even at the time. The less significant
of the two, the shugo, was created, as we have seen, as part of the
bakufu's effort in the 1190s to inject coherence into its vassal network
and to clarify the boundaries of the emerging dual polity. The plan was
to assign a trusted easterner to each province of the country and to
have this officer represent the bakufu as its ranking agent in that
province. The shugo1
's authority was to be threefold. He was to act as
63 These views are developed by Jeffrey P. Mass, "What Can We Not Know About the
Kamakura Bakufu?" in Jeffrey P. Mass and William B. Hauser, eds., The Bakufu inJapanese
History (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 24-30.
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SHUGO AND JITO 8l
coordinator of his area's gokenin, in particular, commanding them in
war and leading them in their peacetime guard duty in Kyoto. Second,
he was to assume responsibility for controlling local rebellion and
crimes of a capital nature, both duties hitherto discharged by the older
civil governors. Finally, he was to serve as an adjunct to Kamakura's
judicial system, performing in the joint roles of investigator, enforcer,
and liaison.64
Only the first two duties breached the natural division between
Kamakura's and Kyoto's authority, and as such they required official
sanction from the court. We do not know the circumstances surrounding
this arrangement or when it was secured, but by early in the
thirteenth century shugo were active in these capacities. The Kyoto
guard service, known as obanyaku, was a legacy from the Heian period
that Kamakura inherited and made incumbent on its collective vassalage
on a provincial basis. Service periods were normally three or six
months, and the duty fell on individual provinces at irregular intervals,
sometimes twenty years or more. The obanyaku, curious as it
now seems, was the centerpiece of Kamakura's system of vassal services,
which also included tribute obligations (labor, horses, etc.) but
not regular taxes or rents. Part of the rationale for doing things in this
way derived from the bakufu's ambivalent attitude toward noneastern
vassals, relatively few of whom it honored. Although it wished to call
these westerners to service from time to time, it did not desire their
presence in Kamakura, which had its own obanyaku limited to easterners.
At all events, shugo were placed in command of the imperial guard
duty.
The shugo's constabulary authority involved them (or their deputies)
in fairly frequent conflict with estate owners, who sought immunity
from shugo entrance. Historians have not been able to agree on
the extent of the shugo's jurisdiction here, that is, the stage in the
criminal prosecution continuum to which his authority reached, or
the precise social classes covered.65
But it is noteworthy that Kamakura's
ranking peace officers in the field, like policemen in other
times and places, were the objects of censure rather than praise by
the interests ostensibly being served. In this regard, shugo were no
different from civil governors or their agents from whom estate holders
also sought immunity. We may say, at any rate, that shugo were
64 The Kamakura shugo is treated in WG, chap. 8.
65 The debate has mostly been between Sato Shin'ichi and Ishii Ryosuke; for a summary, see
WG, pp. 213-20.
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82 THE KAMAKURA BAK"yFU
least successful in this aspect of their duties and were fairly frequently
lawbreakers themselves.
These formal responsibilities of the shugo (the Kyoto obanyaku,
rebellion, and murder) were incorporated into Kamakura law under
the curious misnomer of taibon sankajo, the three regulations for great
crimes. This was in 1231, long after the three duties, minus the name,
had become an operational definition of the shugo's authority. The
notion of uniformity expressed by such a legalism goes to the very
heart of the shugo conception. The holders of this title were viewed as
public officers with responsibilities replicated in all provinces of the
country. In that regard they were like their counterparts, the civil
governors, and unlike the jito, who, following shoen custom, all were
perceived to be different. The taibon sankajo, with its slender authority,
expressed the narrow limits of the shugo's public presence.
As noted, there was a third aspect to the shugo's authority, and this
was centered on duties performed on behalf of the bakufu. In particular,
the shugo assisted Kamakura in the latter's judicial endeavors. The
range here was impressive - from interrogating local witnesses, summoning
defendants, and subpoenaing relevant documents, to forwarding
investigative reports, issuing enforcement orders, and announcing
judgments. A question arises as to whether such activity (along with
the obanyaku) allowed shugo to develop leverage over gokenin as a step
toward fashioning private vassalages. On balance, this probably did
not occur, as shugo were commonly obliged to take actions unfriendly
to jito, who were usually the defendants in legal actions, and as
Kamakura was careful to hedge the autonomy of its provincial appointees.
Shugo, for instance, held tenures that were revocable at will; they
received assignments only in provinces of which they were not natives
(save for the east); their posts were not normally identified with landholding;
and they were restricted in the number and functioning of
their deputies.66
It is hardly surprising, given these conditions, that
few shugo bothered to take up residence in their assigned provinces.
With tenures that were considered nonheritable, most appointees remained
in their eastern bases or else elected to live in Kamakura itself.
Although a handful of shugo did succeed in entrenching themselves
in their provinces, this did not mean that their relations with Kamakura
were in any way discordant. They continued to require the
bakufu's active support and patronage, in return for which they pro-
66 Among these four, the only point that has been disputed is the landholding issue. Sato
Shin'ichi argues in the negative, and Ishii Susumu takes the opposing view. I favor Sato here;
see WG, pp. 225-7.
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SHUGO AND JITO 83
vided valuable and ongoing service. No shugo could survive, much less
prosper, in isolation. In addition, as the years passed, the bakufu's
leading house, the Hojo, came to gather up an increasingly large portfolio
of shugo titles, some thirty or more, almost half the national total,
by the end of the period. We do not know enough about this development
to judge whether it constituted a setback for the shugo system or
rendered it more efficient. Certainly it limited the potential for the
autonomy of other shugo, as "Hojo neighbors" were now a reality for
everyone. Our best guess is that the Hojo aggrandizement of shugo
posts did not appreciably distort the aims or operations of Kamakura's
governance. Localism, society's larger trend, was not occurring at the
level of the shugo or province anyway and was partly obstructed by
them. Thus, far from hastening the decline of higher authority's sanction,
the institution of shugo functioned as a major support for it. As
we shall now see, the same can hardly be said for the Kamakura jtfo.
If one has to search for multiformity among shugo, that condition
was built in to the office of jito. Jito appointments could be made to
land units of any size or description - or indeed not to land at all.
Perquisites and authority were similarly diverse67
and were expected to
conform to the rights packages of the jito's predecessor, whether anotherjito
or a land manager bearing a different title, usually gesu. Once
a jito was appointed, he could look on his office as heritable property
subject only to Kamakura's probate of his will. He could also expect
immunity, as mentioned earlier, from the disciplinary authority of his
absentee landlord. If the jito committed any kind of offense against
man or property, the estate owner had no recourse but to appeal to
Kamakura for redress. This obliging of the jito to manage lands on
behalf of a proprietor exercising no direct control over him was what
made the office revolutionary. It also ensured an unending need for a
bakufu judicial authority.
In the hands of warriors, the post ofjito was trouble prone from the
start. Kamakura made its appointments without knowledge of, and
therefore without specifying, the limits of the managerial authority in
question. It admonished its new jito to obey local precedents - and left
it to the jito to discover what these were. Not surprisingly, shoen proprietors
and jito read these practices differently, which became the basis
of litigation. Early on, Kamakura thus found itself making historical
probes into the customs of remote areas. Where it erred was in not
67 For examples of the limitless variety in both physical shape and range of authority, see WG,
pp. 171-2.
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84 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
recording all its findings, not, that is, until Yasutoki's reforms. But
even then, resourceful jitd were still free to choose new areas of activity
to contest or to return to older subjects that retained ambiguities. The
problem for the bakufu was that it could hardly afford to move too
harshly against too many of its own men. Its judgments against jitd
were never wavering, but most of its decisions were admonitory rather
than overtly punitive. In Kamakura's view, dismissals were possible in
extreme cases, but establishing the limits of a jito's authority would
often be punishment enough. Henceforth, the jitd would be bound by
a legal document that included the particulars of his earlier offenses.
What were some of the specific areas of dispute?Jitd received designated
land units as compensation for their services. It was a common
practice to claim adjacent ujiits as falling within protected regions, to
assert lower tax ratios or totals, and to invoke custom as the justification
for imposing labor duties on cultivators. Points of quarrel in the
sphere of shden management centered on the extent of the jito's policing
authority, the extent of his jurisdiction over local officials, the
range of his competence to organize and oversee agriculture, and the
nature of his involvement with the collection and delivery of shden
dues. Each of these topics was the source of endemic disagreement, as
to control all of them was to dominate a shden. Typically, however, the
jitd enjoyed only a share of that authority, commonly expressed by
some kind of formula. Thus, in the area of policing competence, a jitd
might hold a one-third or one-half share,68
which meant that confiscated
property or fines in those amounts would redound to him. Or
again, in regard to a shoen's managerial corps, the jitd might control
certain titled officials, which gave him the powers of appointment and
dismissal over them.69
The normal antagonist of the jitd in all these areas was a special
appointee of the proprietor who exercised the remaining jurisdiction.
Thus, many shden had dual tracks of authority, one under the jitd and
immune from the proprietor, the other controlled by him through his
agent. These agents were of two basic origins, either long-time residents
of the area in question and possibly the original commenders of
some or all of the land composing the shden, or centrally dispatched
professional managers. In any event, this bifurcation of authority and
responsibility between jitd and custodians, as they were called,70
pro-
68 See KB, docs. 90, 89, respectively. Or the share could be total; see KB, doc. 88.
69 See, for example, the several titles under a jito's authority in estates in Satsuma and Aki
provinces; KB, doc. 78; DKR, doc. 41.
70 The term here is azukari-dokoro. By mid-Kamakura times, a second term-zauAo-was coming
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SHUGO AND JITO 85
vided the backdrop for some of the era's truly classic, long-running
battles. We know a great deal about many of these from the bakufu's
judicial edicts, which were the instruments of hoped-for settlement. In
fact, we know a vast amount about the jito in general, as they were the
primary objects of complaint and control and thus the subjects of
thousands of documents.
In their growing desperation, shoen proprietors evolved a series of
direct approaches aimed at pacifying or constraining the jito. The
initiative here was taken by the shoen proprietors, who typically offered
a compromise. Under the generic name wayo, compromises of
two types predominated. The first, called ukesho, seems unusually
remote from reality. Under it the jito were given total administrative
control of the shoen, even to the point of barring entrance by agents of
the proprietor. In return, the jito contracted to deliver a fixed annual
tax, regardless of agricultural conditions. By agreeing to underwrite
such arrangements, Kamakura was in effect promising that violations
could and would be litigated. Yet because delivery of the tax was the
jito's only obligation to the proprietor, amounts in arrears became the
sole object of suits. The worst that might happen was that the jito,
deeply in debt but with his ukesho intact, would simply be ordered to
pay, often on lenient terms.71
The second device aimed at mollifying the jito was called shitaji
chubun, a physical splitting up of shoen. As with other divisions of
authority, percentage arrangements were the norm here, and maps
with red lines through them were drawn to demarcate shares.72
The
bakufu's formal approval, symbolic of its guarantorship, was standard
here too.73
It was long assumed that shitaji chubun represented a more
advanced form of settlement than did ukesho because ownership,
rather than managerial authority, was involved. According to this
view, the jito now became Japan's first locally based holders of estatesized
properties, a revolutionary stage in the return of authority to the
land. Although the general conclusion here seems accurate in hindsight,
perceptions at the time were somewhat different. In particular,
shoen proprietors, not jito, provided the main impetus toward shitaji
chubun. Their objective was to secure an unencumbered share of a
into vogue. Sometimes they implied the same person and were used interchangeably (DKR,
doc. 103), other times not (DKR, doc. 41).
71 The institutions of wayo and ukesho are treated by Jeffrey P. Mass, "Jito Land Possession in
the Thirteenth Century," in Hall and Mass, eds., Medieval Japan, chap. 7. For actual
examples, see KB, docs. 117-25.
72 For an example, see the photograph on the jacket of Hall and Mass, eds., Medieval Japan.
73 For example, see KB, docs. 126-8.
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86 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
property legally theirs but pressured incessantly by a jito. As for the
jito, they too were thinking mostly in the present. Thus, they commonly
resisted shitaji chiibun arrangements, as the loss of an authority
embracing entire shoen would result. Or the case might be cited of a
jito seeking an ukesho over a whole shoen in place of the shitaji chiibun
agreed to by his forebears.74
History - in the concrete - did not always
move forward.
Jito titles, like other forms of property, were heritable within the
holder's family. The bakufu permitted its jito to bequeath their titles,
in unitary or partible fashion, to legitimate relatives of their own choosing.
They were not allowed to bequeath their offices to external parties.
In the early part of this period, partible practices were the norm,
with women included in the regular inheritance pool. Because distinguished
families might hold multiple jito offices, children sometimes
received individual titles and established separate lines that gained
recognition from Kamakura. Short of that, they received jito portions
entitling them to confirmation and protection by the bakufu as well as
the right to bequeath shares to their own heirs. During Kamakura
times, the tendency was strong to eschew lateral for vertical inheritance,
which meant that clannishness in property matters remained
relatively undeveloped. Even within the nuclear group there existed
the potential for tension, because fathers (and mothers) could write
and rewrite wills and progeny might be disinherited. Finally, it was
left to the house head to select a principal heir, who might be a
younger son. The possibilities were thus rife for family conflict and for
recourse to bakufu courtrooms.75
Because new jito posts could hardly be expected to keep pace with
the number of junior generation candidates for them, practices developed
that began to move warrior society toward a more unitary property
system. In place of unencumbered, alienable rights to daughters,
for example, life bequests and annuities were set up, with reversion to
the principal heir or his heir as part of an emerging system of entail.
Fathers, moreover, began enjoining inheriting sons to maintain the
integrity of family holdings and to reduce or eliminate secondary recipients.
Scholars, quite properly, have emphasized such developments.
Yet at no time during the Kamakura age did these practices
become universal; inheriting daughters and fragmented holdings can
74 The division had occurred in 1237; the attempt to replace it with an ukesho came sixty years
later; see KB, doc. 129.
75 Jeffrey P. Mass, Lordship and Inheritance in Early Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakura
Soryo System (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989).
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THE BAKUFU AT MID-CENTURY 87
always be found.76
Nor is it clear what Kamakura's attitude was toward
the new tendencies. As Seno Seiichiro has shown, the chieftain's
authority over his siblings remained undeveloped, and bakufu judgments
did not tilt toward him and thus away from his brothers.77
In
any event, the competition for control of jito posts and between these
posts and proprietorships constituted the very lifeblood of Kamakura
justice. The ambitions of jito were the bane of most everyone, but the
office itself marked the clear cutting edge of progress.
THE BAKUFU AT MID-CENTURY
Yasutoki died in 1242 at the age of fifty-nine. His death removed the
greatest of the Hojo from the helm at Kamakura and immediately
plunged the bakufu into a period of uncertainty. His successor was his
eighteen-year-old grandson Tsunetoki, who soon ran afoul of the shogun
Yoritsune, now in his twenties and desirous of ruling in his own
name. In 1244, Yoritsune was replaced by his own seven-year-old son,
Yoritsugu, but the troubles did not end here. The ex-shogun was still
present in Kamakura and began to line up support against the Hojo.
Two years later he was banished to Kyoto, though the faction that had
formed around him remained active.
In the meantime, conditions in the capital were also in flux. During
the same year that Yasutoki died the emperor also died, and the
bakufu promoted a successor, Gosaga, who was not the preferred
choice of Kyoto. Four years later Kamakura again forced an issue by
elevating Gosaga to the ex-emperorship. In the same year (1246)
Tsunetoki himself died and was followed as regent by his more vigorous
younger brother, Tokiyori. Yet even with new leadership in the
two capitals, harmony did not ensue. A rumor of rebellion by Nagoe
Mitsutoki, a branch head of the Hojo, reached Kamakura in the fifth
month of 1246, which led to the dismissal of four anti-Tokiyori members
of the hyojdshu. Events came to a head in 1247 when the Adachi, a
family allied with the main line of the Hojo, maneuvered the distinguished
house of Miura into challenging for control. The Miura were
defeated, thus eliminating the bakufu's second most prestigious house
after the Hojo, and a further housecleaning of recalcitrants followed.
As a result of the Miura disturbance, the line of Tokiyori, hereafter
known as tokuso, was more firmly entrenched than ever, though never
76 For example, an unencumbered bequest to a daughter in 1323; see Mass, Lordship and
Inheritance, doc. 147.
77 Seno Seiichiro, Chinzei gokenin no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1975), pp. 375-88.
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88 THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
wholly immune: The deaths of great leaders remained a problem in
the absence of a fixed mechanism for succession. Nevertheless, the
events of 1247 ushered in a generation cf stability, which was not upset
until the Mongol threat of the late 1260s.
It is noteworthy that even during the political infighting of the
1240s, Kamakura continued to discharge its judicial responsibilities.
After 1247, certain reforms were introduced, whose culmination was
the establishment of a new investigative organ, the hikitsuke-shu, in
1249. At the same time, with Gosaga as its accomplice, Kamakura
encouraged the court to update its own machinery, now on the model
of the bakufu. There can scarcely be a more revealing development
than the formation in 1246 of a Kyoto hyojdshu, designed as a clearinghouse
for disputes not affecting Kamakura's interests. In a sense, by
this action, the era's dual polity was given its ultimate expression. The
court now emulated the bakufu in a major structural advance, but the
lines of jurisdiction separating them remained wholly intact. Cooperation
between the country's two governments, Yoritomo's goal of an
earlier day, had entered a new stage.
In 1252, Gosaga's son Munetaka was installed as Kamakura's first
princely shogun. More than thirty years earlier, Hojo Masako had
sought a similar arrangement from a resistant Gotoba, but now at midcentury
the Hojo achieved this objective: The bakufu's leading house
secured a puppet in each capital, who were conveniently father and
son. Munetaka, indeed, is the final shogun whose name historians
remember; his successors appear in lists of bakufu chieftains but are
not considered players. The remainder of the era witnessed a number
of important developments, among them the rise of lower-class social
movements and the impoverishment or enrichment of different groups
of warriors. The effects of the the Mongol invasions would be felt at
many levels of society. But the bakufu by mid-century had reached its
full maturity. Hereafter, the age belonged to the Hojo, the future to
the warrior class as a whole.
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CHAPTER 2
MEDIEVAL SHOEN
THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF MEDIEVAL PROVINCES
In the opening chapter Jeffrey P. Mass discusses the establishment of
warrior government in medieval Japan under the Kamakura bakufu.
In an agrarian society the shoguns, regents, and warriors throughout
the country - like the emperor and nobles in Kyoto - depended primarily
on land and its produce for their support. Thus, to understand
early medieval society it is essential to understand the nature of the
land system and the subtle but far-reaching changes that were taking
place on the land.
The medieval land system is sometimes categorized as a system of
private estates, shden, and public domain, kokugaryo. The public domain
had existed since the Nara period (710-94) when all lands
throughout the provinces were subject to the fiscal and administrative
authority of the imperial court. During the Heian period (794-1185)
ibsentee proprietors, including nobles, temples, and shrines, and
members of the imperial family acquired collections of private rights,
shiki, in reclaimed or commended holdings scattered throughout the
provinces. These holdings, known as shden, were gradually sealed off
from the taxing power and administrative supervision of state officials.
Thus by the twelfth century most provinces in Japan had complex
patterns of landholding in which public and private holdings were
intermingled. This chapter will examine the shifting interaction of
shden and kokugaryo in the Kamakura period, the structure and management
of shden, the relations between shden proprietors and their
holdings, and the impact of the political emergence of warriors on the
control of shden.
In order to understand the role of the private estates {shden) which
characterized the landholding system of medieval Japan, it is important
to grasp the structure of landholding within each province, the
basic administrative unit in medieval Japan. All shden, with the exception
of Shimazu-no-sho, were created within a single province as an
individual holding (shoryd) of a central noble or religious institution.1
1 Shimazu-no-sho, domain of the Konoe family, included most of the three provinces of Hyuga,
Osumi, and Satsuma in the southernmost region of Kyushu.
89
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9O MEDIEVAL SHOEN
The holdings of these shoen proprietors (shoen ryoshu), who lived in or
near the capital, were often located in distant provinces.
Several land registers listing all the shoen of the various provinces
they cover have survived from the medieval period. These are commonly
known as provincial land registers, or otabumi, and help explain
the medieval landholding system, especially the structure of landholding
within an individual province and the relationship between private
holdings (shoen) and public domain (kokngaryo).
Noto Province: the process of shoen formation
Each otabumi has unique structural characteristics and types of entry.
The field register for Noto Province compiled in 1221 is particularly
useful in that it lists the shoen, go and ho (administrative units of public
land), and in (holdings of the cloistered emperors) in the four districts
of the province. The holdings also are classified by the year that they
were established with the permission of the central government, the
year that immunity was granted by the provincial governor (kokushi),
or the date that it was first inspected. In the case of holdings for which
only the date of inspection is listed, it is believed that at the time the
otabumi was compiled, these lacked documents of foundation or immunity
and therefore remained public domain (koryo).2
Ishii Susumu,
who first noticed this while researching the otabumi for Noto Province,
found that of a total of 2,051 cho of paddy field, more than 1,437 °ho
made up a total of twenty-eight shoen (see Table 2.1). That is, more
than 70 percent of the total paddy field area of the province had been
organized into shoen.1
According to Ishii's study, shoen began to develop in Noto Province
during the period of abdicated rule by Emperor Toba (1129-59).
Three early shoen of Noto were developed in the Hakui District: The
oldest was the Kamo-no-sho, with thirty cho of land; in 1051, Keta-nosho
was founded with eighty-five cho; and nearly a century later in
1136, Oizumi-no-sho was created with a total of two hundred cho.
These were followed by a burst of shoen formation. In the Suzu District
in 1143, Wakayama-no-sho, the province's largest shoen with five
hundred cho, was established. In 1145, two shoen were established in
the Fugeshi District, Machino-no-sho with two hundred cho and
Shimo Machino-no-sho with five cho, six tan. Several more new shoen
2 Kamakura ibun, no. 2828.
3 Ishii Susumu, Inseijidai, vol. 2 of Koza Nikon shi (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1970),
pp. 207-13.
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THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE 91
Period of
creation
Ancient shoen
1051
1136-50
1184-97
1201-75
Total
TABLE 2.1
Shoen in Noto Province
Number of
shorn
1
1
8
9
9
28
cho
30
85
1,067
197
56
1,437 cho
Area
tan
0
6
9
9
0
6 tan
bu
0
7
5
9
2
3 bu
were created in the following year. The three shoen established between
1136 and 1145 - Oizumi, Wakayama, and Machino - encompassed an
area of nine hundred cho, 44 percent of Noto's total paddy field area.
Thus, the third and fourth decades of the twelfth century marked the
height of shoen formation in Noto Province.
The situation is not as clear for the other provinces. However,
Takeuchi Rizo and Amino Yoshihiko have indicated that the shoen of
Wakasa and other provinces also began to expand rapidly between 1130
and 1155 or around the time of Toba's rule as a cloistered emperor.4
Kokuga and shoen in Awaji Province
The Awaji otabumi of 1223 lists the total field area of the province as
1,412 cho divided between two districts.5
Tsuna District contained 777
cho and Mihara, 635 cho. Both districts were further subdivided into
provincial land and private holdings. The otabumi lists the type of field
area for thirty-seven individual holdings within the province. According
to the otabumi, the provincial land in both districts was made up of
holdings designated as go and ho. The only exception was the village of
Nagatamura in the Mihara District which comprised a single independent
unit. In contrast, the private holdings were, without exception,
shoen holdings. Within the two districts, shoen made up 72 percent of
the total land, with 1,011 cho. The remaining 28 percent was
kokugaryo.
4 Takeuchi Rizo, "In-no-cho seiken to shoen," pt. 2 of Ritsuryosei to kizoku seiken (Tokyo:
Ochanomizu shobo, 1958), pp. 392-419; and Amido Yoshihiko, "Wakasa no kuni ni okeru
shoensei no keisei," in Takeuchi Rizo hakase kareki kinenkai hen, Shdensei to buke skakai
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1969), pp. 127-70. 5 Kamakura ibun, no. 3088.
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92 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
The military governor (shugo ) of Awaji Province, Sasaki Tsunetaka,
led local warriors in support of the cloistered emperor Gotoba against
the Kamakura bakufu in the Jokyu disturbance of 1221. Most of these
warriors eventually were defeated, and the victorious bakufu appointed
new military land stewards (jito). Compiled immediately following
the war, the dtabumi records the transfer of warriors and lists
the names of the proprietors of the various private holdings in its
entries for each domain. These entries are representative of the proprietorial
relationships of the entire province.
It is clear from the register that many shden in Awaji had close ties
with central temples and shrines or noble families, especially the imperial
court. The Kyoto temples and shrines acquired numerous shden
holdings, such as the Ninnaji's Mononobe-no-sho; the three shden of
Takikuchi, Hiraishi, and Torikai belonging to the Iwashimizu
Hachiman Shrine; and Namariho-no-sho and Ayuhara-no-sho of the
Upper Kamo and Katano shrines, respectively.
Many other shden in Awaji Province had ties with the four successive
generations of cloistered emperors (in): Shirakawa, Toba, Goshirakawa,
and Gotoba. Kokubunji-no-sho, for instance, was part of the
domain of Shokongo-in built by Shirakawa near Kyoto in 1101. Holdings
in Awaji connected with Toba, the next cloistered emperor, included
Ama-no-sho in the domain of the Tokuchoju-in; Yura-no-sho
and Tsukusa-no-sho in the Zenrinji Imakumano domain; and Naizenno-sho
in the domain of the Kangiko-in and Kanimori-no-sho in the
domain of the Gusei-in, both established by Toba's consort Mifu-
kumon'in.6
Among the holdings connected with Goshirakawa were
Shizuki-no-sho, belonging to the domain of the Imakumano Shrine,
and Kashio-no-sho and Fukura-no-sho, belonging to the domain of
the Koyasan Hodo-in. Among the holdings of the Saishoshitenno-in
domain of the cloistered emperor Gotoba were Hikiura and Tsuiigarino-sho.
Gotoba's personal landholdings also included the Aeka-no-sho
(Sugawara-nb-sho).7
Among the domain holdings of Shumeimon'in,
Gotoba's wife, was Yoshino-no-sho.
It is easy to see the extent to which shden clustered about the court
during the age of successive cloistered emperors. In addition to these
shden in Awaji Province, there were also shden belonging to the Fuji-
6 Naizen-no-sho, Kanimori-no-sho, Yura-no-sho, and Tsukusa-no-sho later made up the great
collection of imperial shden known as the Hachijoin domain, as it most likely passed from
Toba-in to his daughter Hachijoin.
7 Among these, the Kashio-no-sho, Fukura-no-sho, and Igari-no-shd comprised part of the
great collection of imperial shden, the Chokodo domain's shden, linked to Goshirakawa-in.
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THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE 93
wara regent family: Kuruma-no-sho in the domain of Matsudono Sojo
Jisson, the son of Matsudono Motofusa; Shiota-no-sho in the domain
of the Kanshuji in Yamashina; and Uriho-no-sho of the Rokujo Mido
domain and Hirota-no-sho of the Nishinomiya Shrine domain in
Settsu Province.
These twenty-three shden include all shden listed in the otabumi of
Awaji Province, and all were held by absentee proprietors. Moreover,
although a few of these proprietors (such as Koyasan in Kii Province
and Nishinomiya in Settsu Province) were some distance from Kyoto,
most were based in Kyoto or its environs. It has often been observed
that centrifugal tendencies were strongly evident in every social phenomenon
of medieval Japan, such as in the exercise of political power
and in the economic structure, and shden possession in Awaji Province
supports this observation.
A common characteristic of shden and kokugaryd in the Kamakura
period is that in addition to the shden proprietors,;^ and various shden
officials were appointed from the ranks of the warrior class to exert
local control over the shden. In Awaji the provincial headquarters
(kokuga) were located in the Mihara District. The core of the
kokugaryd in this district was made up of Nohara-ho, Nishijindai-go,
Higashijindai-ho, and Ueda-ho. During the wars of the Jokyu era, the
jitd appointments to all of these go and ho were usurped by the shugo
and became part of his domain. The shugo, appointed by Yoritomo,
founder of the Kamakura bakufu, thus came to control the axis of
kokugaryd in Awaji Province. The local officials (zaichd kanjin) of the
kokugaryd, however, remained active. Nohara-ho, Nishijindai-go, and
Ueda-ho, included 55 chd, 4 tan, 220 bu of zaichd betchimyd. Betchimyd
were various types of private holdings created from kokugaryd by obtaining
the civil government's official sanction to create an independent
administrative unit paralleling the go. The otabumi records a 14chd
zaichd betchimyd, known as Shichi-no-sho, in Nishijindai-go that
made up the residence site of an individual who had previously been
the most powerful local official in the province. Although not the
general case, such unusual shden existed in the medieval period, and in
terms of the land system, kokugaryd and their surroundings were at the
core of local politics.
Shoen and kokugaryo in Wakasa Province
The otabumi compiled for Wakasa Province in 1265 includes detailed
entries that outline the process by which shden were carved out of
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94 MEDIEVAL SH6EN
former kokugaryo and how the kokugaryo themselves were restructured
in the Kamakura period.8
Wakasa Province was divided into the three districts of Oniu, Oi,
and Mikata. The province's total field area of 2,217 £
hd, 6 tan was
divided between 1,036 chd of shden and 1,181 chd of kokugaryo, making
Wakasa one of the few provinces in which the amount of kokugaryo
exceeded that of shden. Most shden holdings were divided, depending
on when they were established, into two groups: original shden
(honsho) and new shden (shinshd). Kamo-no-sho, four other shden, and
two go covering an area of 129 chd were included among the honsho.
Tateishi-no-sho and ten other shden were entered as shinshd, for a total
area of 474 chd.
In Wakasa there were also holdings known as bimpo-no-ho, or ho, for
supplementing officials' income.9
These holdings were mostly controlled
by offices of the central government, such as the Oiryo,
Kuraryo, or Tomo-no-ryo. Six ho, including Kunitomo-no-ho, accounted
for 153 chd. These holdings, in cases in which the land in a
province was divided into shden and kokugaryo, can be treated as shden.
Originally, these holdings were written off the registers as not paying
the rice tax (nengu) to the various offices of the central government,
and the proprietory use of these lands was ceded to the relevant offices.
From the late Heian period the heads of the government offices
controlling such holdings ceded hereditary control over these lands to
noble families with whom they had close connections, and so the
holdings became, in practice, difficult to distinguish from shden. In
addition to the presence of officials from noble lineages, Wakasa Province
also felt the powerful influence of the two great Buddhist monastic
centers, the Enryakuji and the Onjoji, located in the neighboring
province of Omi. The Enryakuji had nine holdings, including
Tokuyoshi-ho, totaling 132 chd; and the Onjoji had three holdings,
including Tamaki-go, totaling 83 chd.10
Perhaps the most interesting entries in this dtabumi are those related
to the remaining kokugaryo which reveal the changing structure of
kokugaryo in the Kamakura period. The three districts of Wakasa Oniu,
Oi, and Mikata - each had originally comprised several go. The
Oniu District had included the four go of Tomita, Shima, Sai, and
8 Oyama Kyohei, Nihon chusei noson shi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1978), pp. 75-101.
9 On bimpo-no-ho, see Hashimoto Yoshihiko, "Oiryo ryo ni tsuite," in Heian kizoku thakai no
kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1976).
10 The area of these monastic holdings did not include the 129 cho oi honsho, 474 cho of shinshd,
or 153 cho of bimpo-no-ho.
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THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE 95
Higashi; the Oi District, the three go of Ao, Saburi, and Hon; and the
Mikata District, the two go of Mikata and Miminishi. These go had
been thoroughly restructured by the Kamakura period, and a wide
variety of different titles for domains, including go, ho, ura, shussaku,
kano, tera, sha, and miya, came into use. Some sixty-seven of such
holdings can be identified." Moreover, it can be shown that when each
of them became independent, it fell under the purview of the tax office
of the provincial headquarters (kokuga).
The restructuring of the kokugaryo of Wakasa Province centered on
the kokuga, as shown by the proximity of zaicho betchimyo. Powerful
local men, who became resident officials (zaicho kanjin) of kokugaryo,
participated in the administration of the kokuga and thus extended
their range of influence, greatly increasing in number throughout Japan
during the late Heian period. The strong provincial warrior bands
of the medieval period emerged from these local power holders. Zaicho
betchimyo were the holdings of the zaicho kanjin within the kokugaryo.
In Wakasa Province in the late Heian period, a powerful zaicho kanjin,
Inaba Gon-no-kami Tokisada, controlled the provincial tax office. He
was also the proprietor of a large betchimyo of more than fifty-five cho,
known as Imatomimyo. In addition, it is clear from the otabumi that
there were at least eleven zaicho holdings, including Okayasu-myo,
Chiyotsugu-myo, and Takeyasu-myo, located near the kokuga office.
Within the kokuga there were a number of central offices, including
a zeisho to handle taxation, a tadokoro to manage matters relating to
paddy fields, and afudokoro to handle official documents. In Wakasa,
in addition to the zeisho of Imatomi-myo, Yoshimatsu-myo was the
tadokoro-myo and Chiyotsugo-myo and Tokieda-myo were known as
fudokoro-myo. (It is also of interest to note that the officials who supervised
the fudokoro in Wakasa had the name of Hata, the name of a
Chinese clan that had earlier immigrated via the Korean peninsula.) In
any case, the duties of these kokuga offices became hereditary among
certain designated families. Kokugaryo were divided into various categories
on the basis of these duties, and it became difficult to distinguish
these once-public holdings from the private holdings controlled
by these families. Mid- and low-level officials of the kokuga and those
who worked in the kokuga workshops, such as attendants, stablemen,
servants, weavers, carpenters, and woodworkers, were also accorded
11 The go of Wakasa province seem to have originally been about 120 cho each in area. Of the
nine go mentioned, five come close to this figure. When Ao-go in the public domain and Aoho,
a s/ioen-like domain that seems to have been carved out of the former, are added together,
they too encompass a total of 120 cho.
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96 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
holdings (myo) within the kokugaryo and carried out their activities on
the basis of income derived from them.
These ancient go that had previously made up the structure of
kokugaryo in Wakasa Province continued primarily in name only. For
example, Shima-go in the Oniu District originally included 139 cho of
kokugaryo. As restructuring and division proceeded, the paddyfieldin
the go paying taxes to the kokuga fell to only 9 tan (see Table 2.2). To
the extent that public holdings in the Kamakura period still paid taxes
to the kokuga, they remained public domain. At the same time, the
growing reality was that public land was becoming the domain of
various levels of functionaries. Moreover, these holdings were becoming
the hereditary property of powerful families. In this sense, the
kokugaryo assumed many features of private shoen holdings.
We have now looked at the otabumi of the three provinces of Noto,
Awaji, and Wakasa. Although each reveals different circumstances,
they all indicate that the shoen system was spreading and becoming an
increasingly important characteristic of medieval Japan. It is probably
safe to assume that the other provinces followed a similar course.
THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY OF SHOEN PROPRIETORS
As noted, most proprietors lived in or near the capital, far from their
scattered shoen holdings. The transportation system linking the provinces
with the capital and its environs was of prime importance. The
annual tax paid in rice and other commodities and the labor services
and dues (kuji) received from shoen scattered throughout Japan had to
be transported to the proprietors in Kyoto. Through the collection of
taxes and kuji, shoen proprietors were basically self-sufficient. The
highest civil elites of noble lineage and religious institutions had to
observe a constant round of annual ceremonies and festivals. This
meant that shoen scattered across Japan under the control of absentee
shoen proprietors of the capital area had to be organized into a single
self-sufficient system in order to meet the needs of these ceremonies
that occurred throughout the year.
A study of the shoen of the Saishoko-in domain provides a glimpse
into the operation of this self-sufficient economic system. The
Saishoko-in temple was built in 1173 by the abdicated emperor
Goshirakawa in response to the prayers of his consort Kenshunmon'in
Taira-no-Shigeko. After being transmitted as imperial house domain
in 1326, it was conferred by Emperor Godaigo on the Kyoto monastery
of Toji. Prior to this bequest in 1325, a register of holdings was
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THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY 97
TABLE 2.2
Go and betchimyo in the Wakasa kokuga domain
Oi District
Ao-go
Saburi-go
Hon-go
Oniu District
Tomita-gd
Shima-go
Sai-go
T6-go
Mikata District
Mikata-go
Miminishi-go
Original paddy
(cho)
60.8
120.3
116.8
128.7
139.5
177.5
88.7
50.9
72.6
Number of
betchimyo"
5
1
0
24
28
27
10
7
0
Remaining paddies
(chof
24.7
64.2
81.0
6.3
0.9
13.5
5.4
7.1
51.2
"Belchimyo is a general term for a variety of holdings established through separation from the go.
' Remaining paddies indicates the amount of paddy remaining in the public domain and still
yielding tax revenues to the central government.
drawn up, listing twenty shoen in sixteen provinces and indicating the
nengu that each shoen was to provide. Kuwahara-no-sho in Harima
Province, for example, was required to provide rice and figured silk;
Yamanobe-no-sho in Settsu provided pine brands and assorted cypress
boxes;12
and Sakai-no-sho in Settsu provided oil.
In addition to detailing the kind and amount of dues - whether rice,
silk, silk floss, figured silk, pine brands, cypress boxes, hemp cloth for
summer kimonos, tatami, white cloth, or rice cakes - the register also
lists the burden and duration of military service imposed on each
shoen. The Saishoko-in, with the exception of the third, fifth, and
ninth months when slightly fewer warriors were needed, required the
service of ten warriors supplied in rotation by its shoen spread from
Shinano and Hitachi provinces in the east to Chikuzen Province in the
west.13
The same economic considerations can be seen on a much larger
scale in the shoen of the Chokodo acquired by the abdicated emperor
Goshirakawa. The Chokodo was a Buddha hall established in 1185 by
Goshirakawa in his Rokujo Palace in Kyoto. Goshirakawa commended
12 Dried pine branches used for hand-held torches and wooden boxes and containers made from
thin boards of cypress or cedar.
13 Uejima Tamotsu, "Toji jiin keizai ni kansuru ichi kosatsu," in Kyoto daigaku bungakubu
dokushikai, ed., Kokushi ronshu (Kyoto: Dokushikai, 1959).
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98 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
numerous shoen to the Chokodo, principally his own holdings as head
of the imperial house. According to the register of in holdings, the in
goryo chushinjo for 1191, the holdings of the Chokodo included seventy
shoen, four temples, two shrines, and thirteen non-tax-yielding hold-
ings.14
One of the largest collections of imperial holdings in the medieval
period, it subsequently passed through the hands of Goshirakawa's
daughter Senyomon'in and thence from the cloistered emperor
Gofukakusa to emperors Fushimi and Gofushimi. During the period
of rivalry between the Northern and Southern Courts in the mid- to
late fourteenth century, these holdings provided the economic basis
for the Northern Court, the Jimyo-in line.
The Chokodo, located in the Rokujo section of Kyoto, was a large
compound surrounded by streets on all four sides. Each gate to the
compound was guarded by warriors drawn from shoen who served in
rotation. A treasure house inside the compound was also guarded by
warriors supplied by the Chokodo shoen. Various services within the
temple were also performed on a monthly basis by attendants from
the various shoen. The shoen were also responsible for providing the
vegetables for the meals at the Chokodo on certain days each month.
For example, Rokka-no-sho in Higo Province was responsible for
vegetables on the first and second day of each month; Noguchi-nosho
in Tamba Province supplied them for the third day of each
month.15
The first three days of each new year were known as gansan.
Throughout Japan, special ceremonies were carried out, offering
prayers for peace in the coming year. The supplies and expenses for
these ceremonies were known as gansan zoji. The items and quantities
of goods to be provided by each shoen to support these ceremonies
were precisely apportioned among the shoen. Yamaka-no-sho in
Totomi Province, for example, provided seven bamboo blinds, five
tatami, and ten ryo of sand. The Rokka-on-sho of Higo provided four
bamboo blinds, twenty-one tatami, twenty ryo of sand, and three tan of
cloth hangings for the samurai-dokoro (Board of Retainers). In addition
to the New Year, many other ceremonies were observed throughout
the year. The shoen were expected to contribute goods and services for
such ceremonies as the Eight Stage Lectures on the Lotus Sutra in the
third month, the Buddhist festival of Higan in the eighth month, the
14 Many of these shoen were located in the eastern provinces. With Yoritomo's victory in the
wars against the Taira, many eastern shoen fell under the control of Kanto bushi.
15 These vegetables were known as megurisai.
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THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY 99
ceremonies for the ninth day of the ninth month, the seasonal change
of clothing rituals in the tenth month, and the offerings to the gods in
the eleventh month.
Additional examples of various items levied on Yamaka-no-sho of
Totomi Province and Rokka-no sho of Higo for various ceremonies
include the following: For the New Year, Yamaka-no-sho was to provide
seven ken of bamboo blinds, five tatami and ten ryo of sand; and
Rokka-no-sho was to provide four ken of bamboo blinds, twenty-one
tatami, twenty ryo of sand, and three rolls of cloth hangings. Both were
to provide sand in the third month for the Eight Stage Lectures on the
Lotus Sutra in the amount of five ryo and twenty ryo, respectively. For
the Buddhist festival of Higan held in the eighth month, Rokka-nosho
was to donate twenty tan of cloth. In the ceremonies for the ninth
day of the ninth month, Yamaka-no-sho provided one hanmonoshozoku.
In the tenth month during the seasonal change of clothing
rituals, Yamaka-no-sho was to provide three tatami. For the offerings
to the gods in the eleventh month, Yamaka-no-sho was required to
provide one-half set of himorogi. Rokka-no-sho was responsible for
providing vegetables for the first and second days of the month, and
Yamaka-no-sho was responsible for the sixth and seventh. The former
was to provide three attendants each in the first, eleventh, and twelfth
months, and the latter was to provide only three in the sixth month
and another as a storehouse guard. Rokka-no-sho was required to send
twelve people to serve as gate guards during the sixth month, and
Yamaka-no-sho was to send a single guard in the eleventh month. In
addition, Yamaka-no-sho was to provide twenty cakes of dye.
The Chdkodd also gathered various shoen dues. Of course, many
shoen supplied rice, but at the same time, six shoen in three provinces
offered silk cloth and thread, and two others gave white cloth. Three
shoen of different provinces provided paper, and others provided gold,
horses, copper verdigris, iron, sea bream, and incense. This tax system
reflected the special goods produced in the various regions of
Japan: silk and thread from Owari, Mino, and Tango; white cloth
from Izu and Kai; paper from Totomi, Tamba, and Tajima; gold and
horses from Dewa; copper verdigris from Yamato; iron from Hoki; sea
bream from Settsu; and perfumes from Noto and Yamashiro.
Among the commodities drawn from the Chokodo domain were
5,384 koku of rice, 1,216 hiki of silk, 4,274 ryo of silk thread, and
10,000 tei of iron. Although much was awarded as a stipend to the
attendants of the emperors, a considerable amount must have been
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100 MEDIEVAL SH6EN
exchanged in the markets of Kyoto and elsewhere for other necessary
commodities.16
It was customary for members of the imperial family or noble houses,
as the most powerful lineages, to hold the principal proprietorships
{honke-shiki) of shoen. Beneath the honke-shiki were the ryoke-shiki, usually
held by the middle- and lower-rank nobles who served the powerful
lineages. Even in cases in which the honke held the actual rights to shoen
management - as seen in the register of the shoen holdings of the Konoe
family dated 1253 - there were many cases in which the nobles serving
them held these shoen as the central proprietor (ryoke) or custodian
(azukari-dokoro).17
This multilayered system of proprietorships was one
characteristic of the medieval Japanese shoen system.
The basically self-sufficient character of the shoen proprietor system
began to change considerably during the late Kamakura period. This
phenomenon can be seen in many shoen, but it is illustrated clearly in
an analysis of the annual tax payments made to the Zen monastery of
the Engakuji in Kamakura, established by Hojo Tokimune in 1283.
The Engakuji's holdings at that time consisted of Tomita-no-sho in
Owari Province and Kameyama-go in Ahiru-minami-no-sho of
Kazusa Province. From these holdings the Engakuji derived 1,569
koku, 8 to in rice and 1,575 kan, 451 mon in cash, mostly from Tomitano-sho.
The necessary cash was raised through the exchange of silk or
thread for coins in local markets which were then transported to the
monastery. The Engakuji covered its annual outlay by redistributing
the rice and cash received from its shoen holdings.
On the other hand, the Engakuji had 3,960 packhorse loads of
firewood and 500 loads of charcoal directly delivered from
Kameyama-go. The Engakuji disbursed twenty-five koku of the tax
rice received from Kameyama-go to cover the costs of transporting
this firewood and charcoal to the monastery. An additional four koku
were used to provide "meals" for the charcoal makers. From distant
Tomita-no-sho, the Engakuji also received tax income in the form of
silk and thread which was converted into coins before being transported
to the monastery. In the relatively closer Kameyama-go, charcoal
makers were hired, and the large amounts of firewood and charcoal
used annually were produced locally. In Tomita-no-sho and
16 Nagahara Keiji, Nihon chusei shakai kozo no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1973), p. 61.
Takeuchi, Shoensei to buke shakai, p. 417.
17 For instance, of the Konoe family holdings, the Miyata-no-sho in Tamba Province and the
Ayukawa-no-sho in Echizen were entrusted to Chohan as azukari-dokoro; and the Tomita-nosho
in Owari, the Enami-Kami-Higashikata in Settsu, and the Shintachi-no-sho in Izumi
were likewise entrusted to Gyoyu.
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THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF SHOEN 101
nearby shoen along Japan's Pacific coast, the conversion of in-kind
dues into cash advanced rapidly starting in the late thirteenth century.
This was a major watershed in the economy of shoen proprietors.
As described, the household economy of shoen proprietors, at least
in its ideal form, assumed a self-sufficient structure. At the same time,
although there was an effort to spread the tax burden fairly over shoen
distant from Kyoto and Kamakura, in regard to the actual ability of
people on the shoen to bear the tax burden or in regard to economic
efficiency, stresses and strains appeared with the passage of time.
Moreover, market activities steadily increased. Thus, with the development
of commerce, medieval shoen proprietors came to rely more and
more on Kyoto and other markets to supply many of the commodities
they needed.
THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF SHOEN
The most useful documents for discerning the pattern of landholdings
within shoen are the shoen land registers. These registers were compiled
when shoen control was first established, when there was a generational
change, or when shoen were divided or subject to transfer of
proprietorship, and they were frequently accompanied by a survey. In
this section I shall use such land records to examine more closely the
internal structure of three shoen in the provinces of Bingo, Aki, and
Higo. Before looking at these individual shoen, however, I shall first
outline the considerable variation in shoen holdings.
The shoen's inner structure was complex. In the simplest terms,
shoen, especially those of the Kamakura period, were made up of a
number of smaller holdings, known as myo. Myo included paddy fields
(or dry fields), known as myoden. Each myo had a named holder,
usually a well-to-do peasant (myoshu). The various myoshu within a
shoen were responsible for collecting and delivering to the shoen proprietor
the annual tax rice and other dues in kind, together with the
corvee or services (kuji) assessed on each myo. Shoen proprietors levied
dues on the various myo within their shoen and saw the myoshu as the
persons responsible for the annual dues and corvee.
In practice, however, the structure of most shoen was more complex.
There were, for instance, many shoen in which a myo structure hardly
existed, and so the tax burden was borne by local farming households
(zaike). In shoen near the capital, where technological advances in
agricultural production were marked and paddy field agriculture was
dominant, myo were common. However, in shoen in Kyushu or the
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102 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
Kanto, or in mountainous areas such as Kii on the outskirts of the
capital region, where dry fields predominated, shoen were characterized
by the presence of numerous zaike holdings.
Ota-no-sho18
was located in Bingo Province on the upper reaches of
the Ashida River which runs into the Inland Sea. In the Kamakura
period it was one of many holdings of the Buddhist monastic complex
on Mount Koya in Kii Province. The structure of this shoen is particularly
clear because in 1190 the priest Ban'a Shonin of Mount Koya
wrote a detailed account of Ota-no-sho and its land system.19
According
to Ban'a, this shoen was large, its total area being about 613 chd.
Because of its size, the shoen was divided into two go, Ota-kata and
Kuwabara-kata. In addition, there were pockets of reclaimed farmland,
known as detached village fields (bessakuden), here and there
among the hills.20
Shoen officials' myo
Among the myo of shoen, there were two main types: myo held by the
agents and officials of the central proprietor (shdkan-myd) and myo held
by ordinary peasants (hyakushd-myo). In any shoen there was a hierarchy
of officials with such titles as geshi, kumon, tsuibushi, tadokoro, or
kunin. Geshi and kumon were generally found in most shoen, whereas
the tsuibushi, tadokoro, and kunin found in Ota-no-sho were not characteristic
of all shoen.
When the cloistered emperor Goshirakawa conferred Ota-no-sho on
Mount Koya, two local warriors, Ota Mitsuie and Tachibana
Kanetaka, former followers of the Heike clan, controlled Ota-kata and
Kuwabara-kata as geshi. According to Ban'a's description, there were
four geshi-myo, including their two myo: Fukutomi-myo (twenty chd),
Miyayoshi-myo (twenty chd), Uga Shigemitsu-myo (three chd), and
Tobari Miyayoshi-myo (three chd). It is apparent that from as early as
the Heian period, four individual geshi had exercised tight control over
this area.
18 The pattern of shoen landholding was like a lattice of rights (shiki), including the rights of
absentee shoen proprietors (.honke-shiki and ryoke-shiki), those of shoen officials (geshi-shiki and
kumon-shiki), and those of peasants (myoshu-shiki). Holders of shiki had divided possession at
each level of landholding. Ota-no-sho, which is discussed here, was a ryoke-shiki type ofshorn
holding. For an overview of Ota-no-sho, see Kawane Yoshihira, Chusei hokensei seiritsu shiron
(Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1971), pp. 121-52.
19 Tokyo daigaku shiryo hensanjo, ed., Dai Nikon komonjo, Koyasan monjo, vo!. 1, no. 101.
20 Ota-kata and Kuwabara-kata were called go, but as I shall explain later, within these two go
were several other go.
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THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF SHOEN I03
In addition to these geshi-myo there were five kumon-myo in Ota-nosho,
in the go of Uehara, Io, Kosera, Akao, and Uga in Kuwabara-kata
of the shoen. And because of such expressions as "the kumon of the
various go,"21
we can assume that these kumon were located within
each go. The five myo were Shigemasa, Miyamaru, Tsunenaga,
Mitsuhira, and Matsuoka. Except for Matsuoka which was two cho, all
the others were three cho in area. Because the area of the myo fields
roughly reflected the political and economic power of the person holding
the myo, it reveals the actual balance of power between the geshi
and the kumon within the shoen. In both Ota-kata and Kuwabara-kata
there was one tsuibushi-myo and one tadokoro-myo, each with an area of
one cho. There were also eleven kunin-myo, including Iyaoka-myo, at
one cho; and each of the remaining ten myo was five tan in area. It is
clear from Ban'a's report that seventy cho of land were designated as
official myo fields in Ota-no-sho.
Peasants' myo
Apart from the myo held by shoen officials there was a total of 332 cho
of myo held by peasants, comprising the largest group of fields in the
shoen. Ban'a also described this peasants' myo as land bearing corvee
obligations, or kuji-myoden. These myo were paddy fields allocated
among the ordinary peasants (hyakusho) of Ota-no-sho. In addition to
providing the daily needs of the shoen's peasants, these fields bore the
burden of the annual dues and corvee and were the largest source of
income for the shoen proprietors. Thus, it is clear why the main aim of
the proprietors' shoen management was to maintain the stability and
cultivation of these peasants' myo.
Three types of paddies
Ban'a Shonin pointed to the relationship between the burden of annual
tax and corv£e as the basis of the rice fields of Ota-no-sho. He
expressed this by using the three terms "tax-bearing fields" (kanmotsuden),
"corvee-bearing fields" (kuji-myoden), and "exempt fields"
(zojimen) to distinguish among the various fields. Kanmotsu was another
term for dues. Thus kanmotsu-den were fields requiring the annual
payment of dues. If the payment of dues is taken as the standard,
then all fields can be divided into those that were tax bearing
21 Dai Nihon komonjo, Kqyasan monjo, vol. I, nos. 100, 114.
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IO4 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
(kanmotsu) and those that were not. Not only in Ota-no-sho, but also in
all shoen, whether officials' myo or ordinary peasants' myo, all fields
designated as myoden were kanmotsu fields bearing the burden of dues.
As I shall suggest when discussing Sasakibe-no-sho in Tamba Province,
this was why those Kamakura-period warriors who had acquired
land and the official status of jito by inheriting the geshi-shiki in shoen
originally paid nengu to the shoen proprietor in the case of their jito-
shiki.
Although all myoden were tax-bearing fields, in terms of corvee
there was a big difference between the shoen officials' myo and the
peasants' myo, in that the shoen officials were usually exempted from
paying corvee dues on their own myoden. In Torikai-no-sho in Awaji
Province, during a dispute between the jito and an agent of the shoen
proprietor (zassho), the jito's proprietorial control over Yasumasa-myo
and Tsuneyoshi-myo came to be recognized. But at this time, a special
condition was added, that although the jito gained control of these
myo, the dues paid in rice, shotdmai, and the ordinary and extraordinary
corvee borne by ordinary peasants should still be paid. This
condition was added because these two myo had originally been peasants'
myo.22
Therefore, fields regarded as officials' myo were generally
not subject to corvee. Those fields that were exempt from the shoen
proprietors' corvee (also known as zoji or manzbkuji) were known as
zojimen (zdmen). In contrast, ordinary peasants' myoden that bore these
corvee dues were generally known as kuji myoden.
Detached village fields
In Ota-no-sho, in addition to the aforementioned kinds of official myo
(zojimen) and peasants' myo (kuji myoden), there were also approximately
116 chb of fields known as detached village fields, or mura-mura
bessakuden. It appears that in the early Kamakura period, land reclamation
was still advancing in the valleys of the mountainous areas of the
Chugoku region, and the detached village fields in Ota-no-sho were
probably of this kind. These lands had not yet been brought into the
myo system, nor had the shoen corvee dues been levied. For this reason,
Ban'a equated this land with officials' myo and classified it as
zojimen. It was most likely recognized that the cultivators had fulfilled
their corvee obligation by bringing the detached fields into cultivation
under difficult circumstances.
22 Kamakura ibun, no. 3088.
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THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF SHOEN I05
In addition, there were twelve cho of land known as tsukuda in Otano-sho.
The common characteristic of these fields, also commonly
called shosakuden and uchitsukuri in other shoen, was that generally
they received different treatment than did ordinary myoden. As in the
case of Sasakibe-no-sho in Tamba, seeds and foodstuffs were allocated
to cultivators.23
Again, in contrast with ordinary myoden, on which the
rate of annual nengu rarely exceeded three or four to per tan, tsukuda
were commonly taxed at the very high rate of one or more koku. In this
sense, tsukuda retained the character of fields directly managed by the
proprietor.
In addition to this brief overview of the internal land structure of
Ota-no-sho, it is necessary to explain exempted fields (joden). In all
shoen, not simply Ota-no-sho, a wide variety of people lived according
to a wide variety of life-styles. Medium and small village temples and
shrines were centers for the shoen inhabitants. Moreover, there were
many artisans and workers, such as smiths and boatmen, with specialized
skills. The maintenance and management of reservoirs and irrigation
channels were also essential, and it was common to designate
special lands to support these activities. The shoen proprietors, calling
these lands Buddha and shrine fields, salary fields, or iryoden, exempted
them from taxation. In addition to artisans and craftsmen,
such shoen officials as geshi and kumon were also recognized as the
holders of stipendiary fields that were not taxed by the shoen proprietor.
Among these excluded fields were those from which the proprietor
could not collect dues. These lands, known as kawanari, had been
destroyed by floods or abandoned for various reasons. Because of the
period's primitive agricultural technology, such examples could be
found in nearly all shoen.
Miri-no-sho24
in Aki Province was a jito holding of the Kamakura
gokenin Kumagai family. In 1235, the elder and younger brothers of
the Kumagai family fought and divided this shoen in a ratio of 2 to 1.
Judging from the documentary record of division, the Kumagai family's
resources included fifty-five cho, seventy bu of paddy field; nineteen
cho, seven tan, three hundred bu of dry field; six cho, three
hundred bu of chestnut woods; various shoen shrines; and a hunting
range (karikurayama). Among the paddy fields, dry fields, and woods
in Miri-no-sho held by the Kummagai family were "home fields"
23 Kamakura ibun, no. 5315.
24 In contrast with Ota-no-sho, which was a tyoke shoen, Miri-no-sho displays the pattern of a
jito-shiki shoen. On Miri-no-sho, see Kuroda Toshio, Nihon chusei hokensei ron (Tokyo: Tokyo
daigaku shuppankai, 1974), pp. 109-34.
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106 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
TABLE 2.3
Kumagai family holdings in Miri-no-sho
Jito "home fields" {kadota-kadobata)
Jito-myo
Kumon-shiki
Residence paddy field
Kumon-myd
Cultivators' lots
Paddy
chd
3
II
i
5
27
tan
8
4
3
3
5
field
bu
0
240
240
240
6
chd
1
7
3
6
Dry field
tan
5
2
9
9
bu
0
300
180
180
chd
0
1
3
Woodland
tan
8
2
7
2
180
240
0
0
(kadota), jito-myo, official lands known as kumon-shiki, and even cultivators'
lots (see Table 2.3).
Although not unusual, it is noteworthy that thejito Kumagai family
also held the kumon-shiki of Miri-no-sho as part of its holdings.25
The
jito's kadota-kadobata was outside the purview of the shoen proprietor
and in Miri-no-sho included rice paddies and dry fields, together with
the woods attached to the jito's main residence. The jito-myo fields,
already explained in the case of Ota-no-sho, technically bore the burden
of dues owed the shoen proprietor but were exempt from corvee.
The official holding known as kumon-shiki in Miri-no-sho included the
kadota attached to the residence of the kumon and the kumon-myd made
up of the corvee exempt ryoshu-myo (zojimen).
The paddy fields, dry fields, and woodlands of the peasants' myb
made up the core of Miri-no-sho. Fifty percent of the shoen's paddy
fields were peasants' myo; dry fields constituted 35 percent; and woodlands
accounted for 53 percent. This comprised the lands of twentyseven
peasants' myo, bearing such names as Tamenao, Takeyuki, and
Tamekage and ranging in size from several tan to two or three chd.26
It
was equivalent to the kuji-myoden described in the case of Ota-no-sho;
paddy fields, dryfields, and woodlands all were subject to the nengu
and corvee levied by the proprietor. Peasants' myo were an important
element in jito holdings. The jito not only had the right to levy small
amounts of supplementary rice tax {kachomai) at the rate of three or
five sho per tan, but through this right to levy kachomai, the jito also
25 Judging from similar cases in other shoen, it is likely that the Kumagai acquired the proprietorship
of the kumon-shiki through a successful struggle with the ryoke.
26 See Kuroda, Nihon chusei hdkensei von, p. 120.
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tan
17
3
6
6
3
1
bw
300
180
300
0
0
180
tan
3
5
4
2
bu
60
0
120
180
tan
0
2
2
1
1
1
bu
186
180
180
0
0
0
THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF SHOEN 107
TABLE 2.4
Management o/jito-kadota paddy and dry fields in Miri-no-sho
Chestnut
Paddy Dry field woods
Self-cultivated
Karabo
Kurajiro
Kurasaburo
Saburo
Mikawadono
Nakanyudo
Kajitori
Mikawadono-shitsu
Total 38 240 15
"3606U = tan.
was able to demonstrate that he was the legitimate controlling authority
over all the skoen's paddy and dry fields.
Of the five chd, three tan of kadota-kadobata belonging to the jito
Kumagai family, they directly cultivated only slightly more than two
chd of paddy and dry fields. The remainder was farmed by the cultivators
Karabo, Kurasaburo, and others. This rare piece of data illustrates
the giro's place in a rural warrior band. With regard to the;iromyd,
more than eleven chd of the jitd's mydden, except for 120 bu of
self-farmed land, was divided among peasants with such names as
Saneyori, Oyamada, Norimasa, and Kunimori. Some of these peasants,
such as Kunishige or Myozen, are mentioned elsewhere as holding
Kunishige-myo and Myozen-myo. It appears that the twentyseven
jito-myo peasants were independent myoshu within the shoen.27
As already stated, jito-myo were exempted from the zokuji levied by the
shoen proprietor. The jito, however, held the right to extract zokuji
from jito-myo peasants in place of the shoen proprietor and to retain it
as his own income. The jito-myo peasants thus paid dues to the shoen
proprietor and corvee to the jito (see Table 2.4).
In addition, the jito of Miri-no-sho controlled mountain forests as
27 An interpretation of this phenomenon in Miri-no-sho is difficult. The shoen proprietor held
the jito responsible for nengu owed on jito-myo fields. The jito held the right to allocate the
paddy fields within the jito-myo, usually on the basis of a reciprocal relationship between the
jito and the cultivators. There may have been special circumstances, but it is not certain that
peasants held peasants' myo that bore the obligation of nengu owed to the shoen proprietor.
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108 MEDIEVAL SHdEN
hunting ranges and, using the river running through the middle of the
shoen valley as a boundary, divided between elder and younger brothers
the lands on both sides of the river up to the mountains. The
significance of such hunting ranges within the shoen economy will be
discussed later in greater detail.
Hitoyoshi-no-sho in Higo Province was part of the domain of the
Rengeo-in temple in Kyoto. The holding stretched along the upper
reaches of the rapidly flowing Kuma River in Higo Province (now
Kumamoto Prefecture). The Sagara family who were jitd of the shoen
came originally from Totomi and were among those jitd who moved
west and eventually became sengoku daimyo.
The jitd-shiki of this shoen had been divided into north and south in
1244, and the northern half was confiscated from the Sagara by the
Hojo family. According to the division memorandum made at that
time,28
after the division was made, the Sagara family had more than
122 chd of paddy legally recognized as belonging in the shoen
(kishoden), more than 41 cho of paddy cultivated by shoen peasants,
which came to be regarded as part of the shoen (shutsuden), and more
than 10 cho of new paddy (shinden). They also had seventy house lots
{genzaike), twenty-nine hunting ranges (karikura), and river rights
(kawabun). Their control spread over paddy fields and dry fields,
house lots, mountains and hills, rivers, and hunting grounds. Before
the division when the eastern go was still attached, Hitoyoshi-no-sho
had more than 352 cho of kishoden paddy fields and 111 cho of
shutsuden fields and, like other shoen, established myd within its borders.
The scale of these myd was very large, and they are different from
the peasants' myd that can be seen in Kinai, the surrounding provinces,
or intermediate area. It is thought that they made up the economic
base of a small stratum of jitd characteristic of Kyushu. Consequently,
the income base of this shoen was the resident cultivators
(zaike no ndmin).
These kishoden fields were those reported in the 1197 survey; the
shutsuden fields were noted in the 1212 survey; and the remaining
shinden were new fields as of 1244. After the division, the lands of
Hitoyoshi-no-sho were separated into kishoden fields and shutsuden
fields, with an additional nineteen myd or more of shrine fields. Of
this, eleven myd were from one to five cho in scale. These were the
most numerous. However, there were a number of myd of over twenty
cho, such as the Keitoku-myd of more than thirty-five cho, the
28 Tokyo daigaku shiryo hensanjo, ed., Dai Nihon komonjo, Sagara-ke monjo, vol. I, no. 6.
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THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF SHOEN 109
Matsunobu-myo of more than twenty-nine cho, and the Joraku-myo of
more than twenty-five cho, suggesting that such myo had been the
established holdings of local proprietors in this area since the Heian
period.29
The scale can be compared with those of the zaicho betchimyo
as described in reference to the public domain of Awaji and Wakasa
provinces. Given the history of this shoen's establishment, it is believed
that the structure of myo changed little following the establishment
of the shoen out of public land.
Consequently, compared with the other shoen already discussed, the
shoen proprietor and jito of Hitoyoshi-no-sho held greater control over
local cultivator households (zaike). The shoen proprietor made these
zaike the target of various levies. In a Sagara family document it is
written: "One household. So-kumon title holder. Hemp: 7 ryo: Mulberries:
48 trees. . . . One household. Kajitori Seitoji. Mulberries: 33
trees."30
The wide variety of levies imposed on zaike were at that time
generally called zaike-yaku and were usually collected in corvee, that
is, labor that the proprietor required on mountains, open land, and
dry fields. In some cases when no similar appropriate work could be
found for corvee, the proprietor levied silk and silk floss (based on the
number of mulberry trees) or hemp in lieu of zaike-yaku. At that time,
silkworms were bred in many parts of Hitoyoshi-no-sho, and according
to the document of division there was a total of 3,775.5 mulberry
trees in Hitoyoshi-no-sho.31
As in the case of exempted paddy fields
(joden), there seem to have been mulberry trees that were also excluded
from the purview of the shoen proprietor, and these trees became
a source of income for shrines and lower-level shoen officials.
Within Hitoyoshi-no-sho there were twenty-nine hunting ranges
belonging to the jito. In outlaying areas far beyond the kishoden and
shutsuden fields that made up the myoden, these were primarily on
mountain ridges or in forests. Most ranges were located on the mountain
uplands in winter when movement was easiest, but in summer
when the trees were dense and entry was difficult, ranges were opened
up on the plains at the foot of the mountains. In addition to the upland
hunting ranges, fish traps, also tended by corvee, were installed at two
fast-flowing parts of the Kuma River. At the Munekawa fish trap three
bamboo mats were installed, and at the Oiwase trap as many as thirty
29 Under the policies of Minamoto Yoritomo, the local proprietor stratum in Kyushu was
categorized as "small jito" (shojito), whereas jito from the Kanto such as the Sagara ranked
above them, as sojito. 30 Dai Nihon komonjo, Sagara-ke monjo, no. 7.
31 The reason for the indicated fraction for mulberry trees is not clear. It could mean half of the
leaves harvested from a tree.
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110 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
mats were in use. These fish traps were stretched across the entire
width of the river, with thirty mats in line, one after the other. When
the shoen was divided, an imaginary boundary was drawn down the
middle of the river, and fifteen mats each were set to north and
south.32
THE POWER OF THE JITO
There were numerous political struggles within the shoen in the
Kamakura period, primarily between the jito and the peasants. These
disputes, including those over competing interests in paddy fields, dry
fields, uplands, commons, rivers, and the sea, were struggles for livelihood,
even for existence itself. A close study of such disputes is useful
in learning about life in the medieval shoen.
In 1207, a judgment by the bakufu (saikyo) was issued in regard to
Kunitomi-no-sho in Wakasa Province.33
In this eleven-article judgment
the bakufu listed the illegal acts committed by the jito and ordered
that in dealing with the shoen, he should respect the practices of
his predecessor, Tokisada Hoshi, and cease his illegal acts. Tokisada
Hoshi was the Inaba-Gon-no-Kami Tokisada mentioned earlier, as
well as the largest local official (zaicho kanjin) in this province in the
late Heian and early Kamakura periods. Among the actions for which
precedent was to be followed was cultivating thejito's private holdings
(tsukuda) and levying corvee for fishing and raising silkworms. Among
the practices the bakufu ordered the jito to cease were collecting
monthly expenses for the jito's official agent, levying labor service for
fishing during harvest time, imposing a levy on indigo, requiring the
provisioning of horses to be used by his and the daikan's offspring,
cutting the peasants' hemp, and imposing corvee for travel by the
wives of the jito and daikan to and from the shoen.
The judgment further ordered the following in regard to the horsefreight
levy: The freight of rice from the jito's fields was a task that
could be assigned to the peasants; an annual freight corvee could be
levied on peasants, but corvee to transport goods outside Kunitomino-sho
would be permitted only if there were a precedent; and half the
burden of the levy collected in rice in order to transport goods to the
Kanto should be borne by thejito. Finally, the judgment decreed that
32 On Hitoyoshi-no-sho, see Nagahara Keiji, "Zaike no rekishi-teki seikaku to sono henka ni
tsuite," and Oyama Kyohei, "Jito ryoshusei to zaike shihai," in Nagahara Keiji, ed., Nihon
hokensei seiriuu katei no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1961).
33 Mibu monjo, Kamakura ibun, no. 1709.
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THE POWER OF THE JITO III
the land and houses of absconded peasants would be divided equally
between the ryoke and jito. The illegal practices that the jito engaged in
within this shoen were the source of many similar disputes in other
shoen in the Kamakura period.
Rounding up shoen peasants to work on the jito's private holdings
(tsukuda) was also a major cause of conflict between the jito and shoen
residents in this period. The jito of this shoen was attempting to extend
his tsukuda. The peasants, however, resisted, and so he was ordered to
observe the customs of his predecessor. Not only in the cultivation of
tsukuda but also in many other ways, thejito tried to levy corvee on the
peasants. For example, the jito of Kunitomi-no-sho fished on rivers
flowing through the shoen.M
Although from ancient times various fishing
methods such as weirs, fish traps, and cormorants were used, it is
not clear what kind of fishing methods were used in Kunitomi-no-sho.
However, it is clear that the jito had direct control over them and that
he exacted corvee from the shoen peasants for fishing. Accordingly, the
bakufu ordered the cessation of this practice during the main agricultural
season, as the peasants' resistance to corvee that disregarded
their seasonal needs was very strong.
A similar problem arose over silkworm cultivation. The jito did not
raise silkworms himself, but rather, they were attended to by women
in the houses of the shoen peasants where silk thread, floss, and yarn
were made. Because the young silkworms consumed enormous quantities
of mulberry leaves at the height of the growing season, the peasants
appealed to the bakufu to order the jito to stop conscripting their
labor during this period.35
In response to this appeal, the bakufu
ordered that the precedent of Tokisada's day be observed.36
Corvee employed on the jito's tsukuda or in fishing contributed to
the jito's income, and household or stable services for the jito and his
followers helped meet the jito's domestic needs. Because the jito, his
family, and agents always visited the shoen on horseback, fodder for
their horses was required, as well as firewood and food for the jito and
others while they were in the shoen. Thus, in Kunitomi-no-sho, household
services in the form of provisions for the jito's wife, daikan,
34 The fishing described in this section refers to ayu fishing. Ayu is a fish similar to trout and is
found in the fast-flowing rivers of Japan.
35 The entire peasant family worked during the silkworm season. Some ten years after the jito
entered this shoen, he "insisted on service" from the peasants, "depending on need." In other
words, he demanded service at will.
36 As explained, Tokisada was a local proprietor who had been in this area for a long time, and
such a long-time local proprietor usually preserved a balance between the needs of the
peasants themselves and his own. Kunitomi-no-sho provides an early example of a new jito
disregarding the time-honored balance.
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112 MEDIEVAL SHdEN
servants, offspring, and horses were also a source of friction. Therefore,
the care of only one or two horses limited to the jitd himself was
allowed by the bakufu, and the burden was also ordered to be shared
by all the residents of the shoen. There is no specific written reference
to these household services, but the same principle most likely prevailed.
In the case of offspring of the jitd or daikan, the jitd-myd rather
than the shoen had to bear the burden. The corvee levied for the jitd's
wife's travel between the shoen and Kyoto was also stopped at this
time. For the purposes of shoen management, the jitd dispatched an
agent every month, and his monthly expenses were imposed on the
peasants. This too aroused opposition and was eventually stopped.
A third form of corvee was a "horse levy" (fumayaku) levied for
transport and freight, on coolies or horses for the transport of humans
and goods between the shoen and Kyoto or the Kanto. Fumayaku was
limited to hauling rice (shotdmai) from the jito's tsukuda. The transport
of other goods, such as produce from the jitd's myd, was known as
junyaku and fixed at one levy per year. Most shoen of the Kamakura
period to which jitd had been appointed levied freight dues to the
Kanto.37
In Kunitomi-no-sho, the rate for one coolie's fumayaku was
set at six koku of rice. But because the annual burden was too heavy,
half of it was to be paid from the;«o's income, and the remainder was
to be paid by the peasants.38
Before cotton was introduced into Japan, the peasants' clothing was
made mainly with hemp cloth. In Kunitomi-no-sho there was a distinction
between cultivated and wild hemp, although both were used in
the production of cloth. Some hemp was cultivated in specific fields by
peasant families and was known as peasants' hemp, whereas wild
hemp was most likely that growing on the mountains. A dispute involving
hemp arose between thejitd and the peasants in which the peasants
complained to the bakufu that the jitd was cutting down the peasants'
hemp. The jitd argued that he had never touched the cultivated hemp,
although he had once cut mountain hemp, but now the peasants had
come to cut it. Perhaps because thejitd was most likely from the Kanto
and because this was a distant shorn, his demands for annual rights to
mountain hemp were not granted, and the peasants of Kunitomi-no-
37 In western shoen it was customary to commute the levy into kind. Later, in the Sasakibe-nosho
in Tamba Province, peasants of the shoen paid four koku, two to in rice and 120 jo in
paper, in place of a levy of two men to serve as coolies to travel to the eastern provinces.
Higashi monjo, Kamakura ibun, no. 5315.
38 In 1299, the peasants of Tara-no-sho in Wakasa Province secured an agreement stating that
the Kanto levy would be imposed only when the jitd himself went to the Kanto. Kamakura
ibun, no. 20139.
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THE POWER OF THE JITO 113
sho were able to retain their rights to the hemp growing on the mountain
sides.
Indigo was used to dye hemp for clothing, and the plant called lade
that produced the indigo was cultivated in many provinces of Japan.
The Wakasa provincial headquarters had long imposed an indigo levy,
but in Kunitomi-no-sho the peasants had appealed for, and been
granted, an exemption from it. Later, the jito attempted to reimpose
the levy, but because the ryoke had previously exempted it, the precedent
was recognized in the court decision, and so xhzjito's indigo levy
was banned.
In the Kamakura period, peasants frequently absconded from
shoen. In such cases, the disposition of the residence lots {zaike) and
the cultivated fields was a major source of contention.39
In Kunitomino-sho
the jito not only confiscated the zaike of absconded peasants
but also incorporated their fields into his own jito-myoden. If this
occurred each time a peasant absconded, then the amount of hyakushomyo
would continually decline, and the amount of jito-myo would
increase proportionately. This situation led to disputes in shoen all over
Japan, but eventually the Kamakura bakufu established the principle
that the ryoke andjito should divide vacated holdings equally and bring
cultivators in from elsewhere to work them. On such occasions the jito
was specifically forbidden to install his own servants. The reason was
probably that if the newcomers were not independent of the jito and
ryoke, the continuity of peasants' myo would be in jeopardy. The record
from Kunitomi-no-sho is one of the earliest examples of the application
of this principle, which varied slightly among shoen. In the case
of Ishiguro-no-sho in Etchu the same principle,applied, with ryoke and
jito sharing the responsibility for bringing in new cultivators, although
such fields were administered in a special way.40
In Miri-no-sho in Aki
Province a document mentions that 3 chb, 9 tan, 240 bu of mandokoromyo
had been "absconded peasant sites," suggesting that sites vacated
by absconding peasants in this shoen were taken over by the administrative
office of the ryoke (tnandokoro).*1
The many transgressions by ihe jito of Kunitomi-no-sho indicate the
actual conditions of life in shoen during the Kamakura period. Although
local conditions changed the character of these transgressions,
similar events were occurring in shoen throughout Japan. For instance,
Sasakibe-no-sho in Tamba was a shoen of more than one hundred cho
39 In the medieval period in Japan, the houses of felons were destroyed and the timbers carried
off so that they could not be used again.
40 Toyatna ken sin, shiryd hen, chusei.
41 Tokyo daigaku shiryd hensanjo, ed., Dai Nikon komonjo, Kumagai-ke numjo, no. 16.
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114 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
of paddy fields under the proprietorship of the Matsuo Shrine in
Kyoto. Located in the mid-reaches of the Yura River which flowed
into the Japan Sea, cormorant fishing was a common activity in this
shoen. The shorn peasants, who called themselves "divinely protected
people" (jinnin), made daily offerings of fish (ayu and salmon) to the
gods of the Matsuo Shrine. The rights of the cormorant fishers of
Sasakibe-no-sho as jinnin were considerable. Sasakibe-no-sho was located
where the Yura River entered Amata District in Tamba Province,
but these cormorant fishers crossed the boundaries of the shoen
and asserted their monopoly of fishing rights on the Yura River as far
as the border with Tango Province. With the establishment of the
Kamakura bakufu, the powerful Kanto warrior Kajiwara no Kagetoki
was awarded this shoen as a geshi and deputy jito. He did not actually
enter the shoen but, rather, sent a deputy in his place. When Kagetoki
was executed for plotting against the bakufu, a regular jito was appointed.
Eventually, in 1237, ajito from the Kanto, accompanying the
shogun on a trip to Kyoto, entered the shoen and tried for the first time
to establish full control.
Immediately after setting foot in Sasakibe-no-sho, thejito attempts^
to use the labor of the peasants in the shoen to build a large new
residence. He, however, encountered stiff resistance. Of course, k is
possible that the shoen proprietor, the Matsuo Shrine, incited the peasants
to resist. This was the first in a series of incidents in which thejito
attempted to enforce his will in the shoen but succeeded only in arousing
the peasants' resistance.
The bakufu court at Rokuhara in Kyoto would not support any of
the jito's attempts to strengthen his control.42
The following jito actions
were directly contested: various forms of labor conscription,
including labor for the construction of a new jito residence in ihe
shoen, nine "permanent coolies" to provide miscellaneous labor service
at theyird's residence in Kyoto,43
and conscription for service in Kyoto
that ignored the precedent of one levy per year per household; several
additional levies, including demands for ten cords of firewood, eighty
bales of grass for fodder, and a household service levy,44
enforcement
of an extraordinary levy of three hundred mon per tan for the expenses
of residence in Kyoto, and a horse-freight corvee against the headmen
42 The Rokuhara tandai was established by the Kamakura bakufu in Kyoto to control the
western provinces and to handle administrative matters affecting the bakufu.
43 "Permanent coolies" (nagafu) were long-term servants.
44 In this matter the Matsuo Shrine was prepared to allow two cords of firewood and two bales
of grass, but it rejected outright any household service.
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THE POWER OF THE JITO 115
of the twelve groups from Sasakibe-no-sho at the rate of one horse per
person;45
the extension of jito fields (shosakuden) under cultivation to
one cho, two tan; assertion of the claim to half the fishing rights in the
Yura River; and the extension of authority over the kumon of Sasakibe-
no-sho.
Thus the basic points in dispute were the same as those in the case
of Kunitomi-no-sho. One new important point in this shoen was the
extended cultivation of shosakuden. Labor service on the jitd's own
fields was known as "hired labor" (koshi) and was required three
times a year from each individual. It included clearing the fields in
early spring, planting rice in early summer, and weeding in midsummer.
These three days of labor service were required at the busiest
times in the annual cycle of rice production. In this sense, the
management method of the jitd's fields (shosakuden) in the Kamakura
period was "hired labor" management. The;«o, in addition to distributing
seed, provided three meals on each labor day in return for the
labor. It is most likely in this sense that the character kd, meaning "to
employ," is used here. This kind of employment in return for foodstuffs
or other allowances was characteristic of the labor service in the
medieval period.46
The jito of Sasakibe-no-sho left his home province of Sagami and
went to Kyoto to assert full control over Sasakibe-no-sho. In the shoen,
however, the jito met an unanticipated degree of opposition from the
peasants. It is quite possible that the steps he wanted to take to gain
control over Sasakibe-no-sho were common in shoen in Sagami and
other eastern provinces. In medieval Japan the authority ofjito and the
actual power of the peasantry differed greatly between the eastern
provinces, where the reach of bakufu power was great, and the western
provinces.47
This is clearly revealed by the reactions of both parties
when the jito confined the peasants he had brought to Kyoto for
labor service in a hut at night to prevent them from fleeing. The
Matsuo Shrine appealed to the jito and asserted that "it is unlawful to
bind and imprison virtuous people who are protected by the gods."
The;ird responded that "confining them at night in a hut is not impris-
45 This shoen had a system of twelve peasants' responsibility groups. Instead of performing
corvee by carrying freight, the twelve headmen (Jbanto) shared the burden of a rice levy
(fukomai) and a paper levy at the set rates of three to, five sho of rice and ten jo of paper for
each group.
46 Oyama, Nikon chusei noson shi no kenkyu, pp. 194-230.
47 There were a number of reasons for the disparity between the power of the/«o in the eastern
and western provinces. Not least among them were the policies of Minamoto Yoritomo who
established the bakufu and set the/ltd system on its course.
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Il6 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
oning them. They are worthless peasants and menials (genin). They
are not 'people of the gods.' " The jito from the eastern provinces
probably did not recognize that his actions were unreasonable; the two
parties had completely contradictory opinions of the shoen peasants.
The Rokuhara court rejected the excuse offered by the jito of Sasakibeno-sho.
But many obstacles still remained to prevent the principles of
jito control, which were beginning to be partially realized in the eastern
provinces, from extending more widely throughout Japan.
Torikai-no-sho in Awaji province was a small shoen on the Inland
Sea composed of thirty cho of paddy and dry fields and a village on a
small bay. It was held by the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine located at
the confluence of the Uji, Katsura, and Yodo rivers just south of
Kyoto, enabling close communication with the Inland Sea region.
There was a branch shrine of the Iwashimizu Hachiman within the
shoen. In 1278, following a dispute between the jitd, Sano Tomitsuna,
and the chief priest of the branch shrine, a conciliation agreement
was reached, expressed in a twenty-seven-article document.48
This
agreement illustrates both the growth in the jito's powers by the
closing decades of the thirteenth century and the limitations still
placed on the jitd's authority.
Many of the western warriors who had supported the cause of the
Kyoto court were destroyed in the Jokyu disturbance of 1221 and
warriors from the east were installed in their domains as jito. The jito
positions created after the Jokyu disturbance are known as "new jito"
(shimpo jitd) and are usually distinguished from the "original jito"
(hompo jito) who had been installed before the war, although their
status as jito was equal. In principle, jito inherited the powers of their
failed predecessors, such shoen officials as geshi. In some shoen, however,
the allotments of income (tokubun) and the powers they inherited
were extremely limited. In such cases a set allotment was guaranteed.
In Torikai-no-sho the dispute arose because the jito claimed that he
was entitled to receive the income of both a hompo jito and a shimpo
jito. In the end his claim was rejected, and he was recognized as being
entitled only to the income of a shimpo jito.
The following five principles were recognized with regard to the
jitd's authority as a result of the agreement that generally followed the
prescriptions for awarding jito income (tokubun) instituted after the
Jokyu disturbance: (1) The area of rice paddy and dry fields allotted to
48 Tokyo daigaku shiryo hensanjo, ed., DaiNihon komonjo, Iwashimizu tnonjo, vol. i, nos. 217,
218. Kamakura ibun, no. 3088. On this shoen, see Inagaki Yasuhiko, Nihon chusei shakai shi
von (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1981), p. 367.
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THE POWER OF THE JITO 117
the jito should be at the ratio of one chb in eleven on the basis of the
calculations of the official survey conducted in the shoen in 1233-4; (2
)
except for special fields, the rice levy {kachomai) levied by the jito on
peasants' myo and ordinary fields should be in the ratio of five sho per
tan;*9
(3) the special allotment for apprehending criminals within the
shoen should be divided: two-thirds for the ryoke and one-third for the
jito; (4) the ryoke and the jitd should divide equally the allotment from
mountains, rivers, and the sea, apart from the annual tax (hon
nengu);5
° and (5) tokubun from levies on house lots (zaike yaku) and
mulberry trees and hemp should also be divided equally between the
ryoke and the jito.
To secure the recognition of these five principles, the jito had to
make some significant concessions. The public land that the jito had
occupied under a variety of pretexts was returned. Long-term household
labor service,51
five festival offerings, and levies of rice from the
public fields were stopped. In particular, the right that the jito had
asserted to manage the proprietor's storehouse was rejected. Likewise,
the right asserted by the jito to appoint priests and officials to the
detached Iwashimizu Shrine was denied.
The proprietor's tax rice was stored in the shoen storehouse. Before
the 1278 agreement they're was accused of constantly interfering in the
operation of the storehouse, indicating that in this shoen the jito was
actually involved in collecting the annual tax and that he used his
authority to oversee the proprietor's storehouse. For his services the
jito retained a set ratio of rice, known as kydbunmai, but this, too, was
ended at this time.
The jito was clearly trying to bring the Torikai detached shrine,
which comprised the core of the shoen, under his own control. To this
end the jito attempted to exert the power of appointment over the head
priest (kannushi) and other shrine priests and to gain control over all
the tax income and land of the detached shrine. The jito asserted his
right to the annual tax from specially designated fields dedicated to the
Sutra of Great Wisdom belonging to the detached shrine and to the
management of the land itself. He sought hereditary appointment of
49 With regard to the income fields of the jito of Torikai-no-sho, it says: "It is laid down that
with the exception of Buddha and kami fields, and Imizoryo and ancient tax-exempt rice fields
and wells and waterways, it should be collected from the rice fields and dry fields of the
myoden." With regard to jito kachomai there is a proviso saying, "On joden." Dai Nihon
komonjo, Iwashimizu monjo, vol. I, no. 217.
50 This refers to kuji, and likewise for the following.
51 Because in Torikai-no-sho there was a levy of household service (bojiyaku) while the jito was in
the shoen, the long-term service referred to here seems to have been equivalent to permanent
service (nagafu) in Sasakibe-no-sho.
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Il8 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
the chief priest of the Yakushi hall and tried to control its fields. He
asserted his rights to cut timber in the woods immediately around the
shrine. He himself issued orders to the kannushi and other shrine
officials and tried to regulate shrine functions performed before the
gods. All these actions were directed toward monopolizing control
over the shrine and its lands.
By the 1270s, in the second half of the Kamakura period, jito power
tended to spread in all directions. In Torikai-no-sho, too, the jito even
though he had been subjected to the regulations for newjito and
denied intervention in personnel matters - actually interfered, along
with the proprietor, in matters affecting the shrine. He issued orders
to shrine officials and priests and had some say, albeit limited, in
managing the harbor which was a source of contention at this time. He
also seemed to have gained considerably more authority than had the
jito of Sasakibe-no-sho. However, thejito's fundamental aim of gaining
complete control over the detached shrine had been thwarted. Apart
from his legally authorized right to levy kachomai, the jito's claims to
rights of appointing shrine priests, collecting taxes, and taking lumber
from the shrine precincts - the basic elements for control of the detached
shrine - all were rejected.
In other ways, too, the jito's powers remained circumscribed. For
instance, although when he traveled to the capital, he was permitted
to impose levies on the peasants for horse transportation and coolies
(temba-yaku and jinpuyaku), these levies had to be "limited temba."
Again, the jito was forbidden to be lax in feeding permanent servants
and boatmen on journeys to the capital. The jito was permitted to
enforce miscellaneous household services in a "limited" way and in
accord with precedent, but miscellaneous household service for his
daikan was not recognized. The case was similar for fodder for his
horses. Arrangements in this shoen were similar to those in
Kunitomi-no-sho and Sasakibe-no-sho. That the jito was enjoined not
to monopolize control over irrigation water in the shoen and direct it
only to his own myoden suggests that this was a common situation.
In the medieval period, belief in divination and yin-yang thought
flourished, and people were governed by many taboos. Depending on
the daily inclination of the stars, there were certain fixed directions
from which danger could arise. In order to avoid these inauspicious
directions, people frequently traveled via the house of a third party, in
what was known as "changing direction" (katatagae). The jito of
Torikai-no-sho also followed this practice and often seems to have
forced his way into the homes of peasants, who bitterly objected to this
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THE POWER OF THE JITO 119
kind of intrusion. Thus, one of the conditions of the 1278 agreement
was that he cease this practice.
In 1237, the jito of Sasakibe-no-sho was ordered to pay within three
years over 300 koku of unpaid annual tax on the jito-myo that had
accumulated unknown to him, though its administration had been left
to the daikan. In contrast, in the case of the jito of Torikai-no-sho in
1278, although there were many illegalities - such as the jito's seizing
shrine rice at the shoen harbor52
or detaining 310 koku of shotomai from
various myo - all were canceled under the terms of the conciliation
agreement. Although there is no doubt that shoen were subjected to all
kinds of changes, with the advance of the medieval period, conditions
tended to favor the jito. At the same time, in the Kamakura period,
severe limits were still in effect against the jito's full control of shoen.
Within individual shoen there were constant struggles between the
jito and the proprietor. Eventually, the jito contracted to collect the
proprietor's annual tax (Jito uke) and, in practice, came to monopolize
actual authority over shoen land. The system of tax contracting was
adopted commonly from a fairly early period in many eastern shoen
where the jito tended to have an extremely powerful position vis-a-vis
the shoen proprietor. For instance in Tomita-no-sho in Owari Province,
where the jito-shiki was conferred by the Hojo family on the Zen
monastery of the Engakuji, z jito-uke contract was renewed in 1327.
According to this contract, the Engakuji, as the jito, was required to
pay 110 kan of cash to the proprietor in Kyoto in the eleventh month
of each year. The jito's income from this shoen in 1282, however,
amounted to 1,248 koku, 8 to of rice and 1,596 kan, 868 mon in cash.
This disparity shows that under jito-uke contracts, the authority of the
shoen proprietors could not help but be diluted. Although the amount
of the annual tax contract is unknown, in Tomita-no-sho the jito-uke
contract itself had been established as early as 1211. In the eastern
provinces the dilution of the shoen proprietors' authority advanced
rapidly from an early period.53
Tomita-no-sho was an eastern shoen having close ties with the Hojo
and thus was a special case. A similar situation, however, developed in
other shoen, such as Oyama-no-sho in western Japan, .a holding of the
Toji domain in Tamba Province. In 1266, a. jito from eastern Japan,
Nakazawa Motosada, exchanged an agreement with the Toji that he
52 The annual tax was loaded for transport to the Iwashimizu Shrine in the harbor.
53 See Oyama, Nihon chusei noson shi no kenkyu, p. 324. Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The
Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1981), pp. 255-63.
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120 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
would submit annually, without fail, two hundred koku of tax rice and
four hundred go of fruit and other commodities as a supplementary
tax. However, in 1295, because the jito continually failed to pay the
annual tax, the two parties agreed to divide the shoen's land (shitaji
chubun) and not to interfere in the other party's holdings. At this time,
fourteen cho, four tan, ten shiro of paddy fields and three cho of dry
fields in Ichiidani, one cho, eight tan, thirty-five shiro of paddy fields in
Kamokukidani, and eight cho, seven tan, five shiro of paddy fields and
two cho of dry fields in Nishitaimura were left to the Toji. The Toji,
therefore, was able to maintain its reduced proprietorial rights until
the early sixteenth century. The jito, through shitaji chubun, was able
to exceed substantially the hitherto narrow framework of the land
specifically allotted to him and to gain much more extensive control
over a wider area of shoen in which the shoen proprietor had no authority.
This kind of holding was known as "a complete jito holding" (jito
ichien-chi) and shows a new development in feudal landholding. However,
in the Kamakura period the appearance ofjito ichien-chi was still
only sporadic.54
In 1318, the proprietor of Oyama-no-sho exchanged a tax contract
(hyakusho-uke) for an annual tax payment with the peasants of
Ichiidani in order to end their continual appeals for its reduction. The
amount of tax for which the peasants contracted was slightly less than
62 percent of what they were nominally paying before the agreement.
This shows that by the early fourteenth century the peasants' political
power had greatly expanded, a development that presaged the beginning
of a new age.55
SOCIAL STRATA IN SHdEN
Because the surviving documents do not reveal everything, it is not
always easy to understand the actual living conditions of the shoen
residents in the Kamakura period. However, from observations of the
various representative shoen, it is clear that the shoen peasants could act
fairly freely and that on occasion they both allied with and resisted the
jito and shoen proprietors.
With these shoen residents in mind, the bakufu promulgated the
goseibai shikimoku, which stated that "peasants who have paid their
annual tax can decide for themselves whether they will stay in the
54 Tokyo daigaku shiryo hensanjo, ed., Dai Nihon komonjo, Toji monjo, sec. ni, nos. 2, 41.
55 Toji hyakugo monjo, sec. ya, nos. 3-5. Oyama, Nihon chusei noson shi no kenkyu, pp. 256-64.
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SOCIAL STRATA IN SHOEN 121
shoen or leave."56
To the extent possible, the bakufu clearly wanted to
stop jito and local proprietors from binding peasants to the land or
from asserting complete proprietorial control over them. If local proprietors
became too powerful and independent, they would threaten to
undermine the very existence of the bakufu. Thus, the medieval peasant
was basically a "freeman" (jiyumin). Under bakufu law, this kind of
freeman was denned as a hyakusho,51
as distinguished from those who
were not free, such as servants (geniti) and retainers (shojii).
However, there were many kinds of hyakusho. Because they lived in
shoen and kokugaryo, the pattern of their existence was determined by
their relationship with the particular holding, and especially their relationship
with the prevailing system of landholding. Some enjoyed
greater independence than others did.
One distinguishing factor in defining social stratification within
shoen was whether in shoen domains in which hyakusho-myo existed,
peasants had achieved the status of myoshu. This is shown most clearly
in the case of Tara-no-sho in Wakasa Province. According to the land
register, the holdings in this shoen included fields known as isshikiden
(discussed later) and others known as hyakusho-myo or myobun, that is,
myoden. There were five myoshu who held myoden and part of the
isshikiden. The majority, however, was allocated to twenty-seven other
cultivators with names such as Shigenaga, Sotsui, and Shinjiro.
Clearly there were two distinct classes in Tara-no-sho: myoshu and
cultivators. Each member of the myoshu group was allotted two cho,
one tan of myoden and one tan of land controlled directly by the proprietor.
In addition, each had a portion of isshikiden, for a total holding of
a little less than three cho.58
The allocation of myo in Tara-no-sho at
this time was controlled by a Toji monk named Joen who was responsible
for managing the shoen. As explained earlier, a myo was not only
the unit of taxation in a shoen but was also the unit for such shoen
officials' proprietory myo as jito-myo and geshi-myo. Whereas shoen
were originally established through set legal procedures on the basis of
an official connection with the state, there was no such state connection
in the establishment of myo.
56 This was the basic legal code of the Kamakura bakufu.
57 Hyakusho can be translated as "peasant" or "farmer." In this book, "peasants" is used. Hyaku
literally means "various," whereas sho or sei means "family name."
58 To be exact, Tokiyasu and Muneyasu had half of other myo. They were originally allocated
what should have been single myo. Within Tara-no-sho, apart from this, there was Suetakemyo,
about which there was a dispute as to whether it was azukari-dokoro-myo or peasants'
myo. Also, there was Antsui-myd which enjoyed special circumstances and did not accord
with the preceding pattern.
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122 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
Myo were established on the basis of a more private relationship
between the shoen proprietor and the small-scale local proprietors and,
beneath them, the farming managers and upper-level peasants. As
mentioned in regard to the otabumi for Wakasa Province, myo had
begun to develop through various private connections within the provincial
headquarters (kokuga), as tax units of the public domain. During
the Kamakura period this kind of private relationship between myo
and the public domain was generally carried over into shoen, although
it changed in form and diffused more widely as it matured. In this way
it was possible for several types of shoen to exist. Most of them were
established when the shoen was formed, on the basis of the relationship
between the shoen residents and the proprietor. The myo created by
Joen and listed in the Tara-no-sho agricultural register were almost
certainly this kind of myo. Even so, the peasants' rights to cultivate
myo were protected, and the fields could be passed on to their descendants
as heritable myoden.
In the case of isshikiden, or partially exempt fields, the cultivator's
rights were extremely unstable. This land was also called "floating
exemption" (ukimen). Unlike peasants working myo, the cultivators of
such land did not enjoy secure tenure but, rather, could be displaced at
any time, depending on the proprietor's interests. In practice there
were certainly some cultivators who had settled tenure, but from the
proprietor's point of view it was easier to control the land by renewing
annual contracts. In this period, when a proprietor permitted a cultivator
to work a piece of land for a specified period, it was called a "scattering
of fields" (sanden). Thus, the isshikidenformallywas cultivated on
an annual basis by the proprietor's "scattering offields."In Tara-no-sho
there were as many as twenty-seven peasants cultivating only isshikiden,
a far greater number than the number ofmyoshu. However, all the fields
they cultivated were, with the exception of a scattered plot held by
Shigenaga, limited to two, three, or at the most four tan in size. Joen
clearly treated the two types differently, and the peasants of Tara-no-sho
were thus divided into the two classes of myoshu and sanden cultivators.
For other shoen in the Kamakura period, the limitations of the
documentary record prevent us from getting such a clear picture of the
division of peasants. However, it is certain that in each shoen, in
addition to the myo held by myoshu, there were a variety of cultivators
of the different scattered fields. In some places these cultivators were
called mbto, and their status in the shorn was marginal. Indeed, in
times of hardship or distress they tended to move from shoen to shoen.
In the shoen of the Kamakura period there were many holdings that
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COURTIERS AND WARRIORS 123
did not take the form of peasants' myo. The cultivators of such holdings
were, as in the case of Hitoyoshi-no-sho, controlled as individual
zaike. In Kyushu, zaike were also known as sono. In a deed referring to
the Sagara;«o family and the Naritsune myo in Buzen Province, there
are several references to sono. For example, one entry reads, "One
holding: Imayoshi-sono."59
In early research on this period, zaike were
regarded as dependent peasants originally without land who were
units in the proprietor's register of family resources and who could be
bought and sold or conveyed by deed. With the passage of time,
however, in such documentary references as "zaike attached to fields,"
zaike were mentioned in connection with paddy fields.
This fact has been interpreted by some historians to indicate that
zaike peasants had strengthened their hold on their fields and means of
production and that they had become more independent. That the
zaike were treated separately from the land at the time of transfer of
domain holdings was probably because historically their role had been
that of direct producers rather than landholders of the hyakusho-myo
type. However, there is still some question as to whether any direct
conclusions can be reached regarding the subordination of peasants in
Kyushu or eastern Japan. In the deed of transfer for the Naritsune myo
in Buzen Province, fourteen zaike houses were attached to twenty-two
chb, nine tan of paddy fields. As internal units of Naritsune myo, six
myo are mentioned: Imayoshi-myo, Shoya-imayoshi-myo, Inoue-myo,
Taromaru-myo, Iwamaru-myo, and Yoshihiro-myo. Among the fourteen
zaike residences, seven principal zaike (honzaike) are listed, including
Imayoshi-sono and seven branch zaike (waki zaike), such as
that of the bowmaker Jobu Saburo-sono, showing the existence of the
two strata of hon and waki zaike in this area. At the same time, of the
six myo, including Imayoshi-myo but not Tera-sono, they are exactly
the same as the names of the six honzaike lot titles, suggesting a
connection between the myo and the zaike. In any case, although the
pattern of existence of myo arid zaike is the most important problem of
the land system underlying the shoen system, many elements still remain
unclear, and no certain conclusions can be offered.
COURTIERS AND WARRIORS
Two land systems overlapped in the Japanese medieval period: the
shoen system (or the shoen-kokugaryo system) and the local proprietor
59 Dai Nihon komonjo, Sagara-ke monjo, vol. 1, no. 26.
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124 MEDIEVAL SHOEN
system {zaichi ryoshusei). Whereas the shoen system supported the nobility,
the system of local proprietorships supported the warriors.
The earlier studies of the characteristics of medieval Japanese society
reveal a shifting interest between European and Asian comparisons.
The local proprietor system has been compared with medieval
European feudalism, and many specialists have attempted to find a
similar feudal structure in Japan's medieval period. In contrast, the
shoen system has been linked with the long and brilliant cultural tradition
of the medieval court nobility and with the politics of civilian
bureaucratic primacy. The early research on the shoen system tended
to focus on the failure of medieval institutions to break out of an
"ancient" state structure. More recently, there has been considerable
interest in the Japanese medieval period in its own right. This period is
increasingly being viewed as embodying non-European structural characteristics,
with the medieval emperor system (tennosei) at its apex.
Thus the theme of the shoen system in Japanese medieval history is
enmeshed with the persistence of tennosei in Japanese history. At the
same time, students of the Japanese medieval period continue to debate
the maturity of the feudal structure in Japan or the "Asian structural
characteristics" of medieval society. Although it may seem to.
have grown weaker with Japan's recent high level of economic growth,
the problem of whether medieval Japan resembled in any significant
way feudal Europe has been of great interest to the Japanese, who
constantly try to catch up with European civilization.50
It may seem that everything in medieval society can be expressed as a
struggle between warriors (local proprietors) and courtiers (shoen proprietors).
This effort to portray medieval Japanese society as a struggle
between kuge and buke is a common approach. However, it should be
remembered that the central proprietors (ryoshu) and the local proprietors
(jito) shared proprietory interests in the shoen. And at the same
time, both had to deal with the peasants living in the shoen from and
with whom they continued to collect and divide the annual taxes and
levies. One interpretation that has recently attracted attention in the
Japanese scholarship on medieval Japan has been to see kuge and bushi,
together with the power of the Buddhist religious institutions, as a
60 Having said this, for Japanese historians to deal freely and directly with the historical character
of the unno remained taboo even in the period of openness that followed World War II.
In this sense, Amino Yoshihiko's recent work, Chusei tenno-sei to hi-nogyomin (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1984) is a major contribution to medieval historical studies even though it
deals only indirectly with shoen.
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COURTIERS AND WARRIORS 125
single complementary power structure controlling the peasant class.
This view, though stressing the non-European development of medieval
Japanese society, is seen as offering a new agenda.6
' In practice,
cooperation between the central and local proprietors in controlling a
single shoen was not uncommon.
This tendency was particularly strong in the Kamakura period. In
Kunitomi-no-sho in Wakasa Province and Sasakibe-no-sho in Tamba
Province, the bakufu often took steps to stop illegal jito acts in cases of
conflict between central and local proprietors. I believe that Minamoto
Yoritomo's bakufu was instrumental in establishing the pattern of
historical coexistence between medieval local proprietorship and the
shoen system.
The Gempei War was a great crisis for the kuge class, although some
researchers see it as a temporary phenomenon brought about by civil
disturbance that eventually, when peace returned, disappeared. However,
the connection between crisis and stability in history is important
here. The deeper the roots of civil conflict are, the more deeply the
stability that is restored must be defined by the process of that conflict.
The effects that the Gempei War, which involved most of the
country from Kyushu in the west to the tip of Oshu in the north, had
on contemporary Japanese society cannot be measured.
In 1185, the cloistered emperor Goshirakawa, who did not favor the
aggrandizement that Yoritomo had achieved through his victory over
the Taira, granted to Minamoto Yoshitsune an edict ordering the overthrow
of Yoritomo. Goshirakawa hoped to create internal discord
within the Minamoto by setting brother against brother. When this
attempt ended in failure with the destruction of Yoshitsune, the political
position of the cloistered emperor became very tenuous. Yoritomo,
who had once dispatched troops to dislodge Yoshinaka from Kyoto,
again sent warriors to occupy the city where Yoshitsune was believed
to be in hiding and brought pressure to bear on Goshirakawa.
Yoritomo forced him to grant the provinces of the Kinai and western
Japan to Hojo Tokimasa and other vassals and to recognize Yoritomo's
right to collect a levy of rice to support his troops in the war
(hydrdmai), at the rate of five sho per tan from both shoen and
kokugaryo, and to treat such lands as fief (chigyo).
This is known as the appointment of provincial jito to each province
(kuni-jito) of the Bunji era. Unlike the civilian provincial governors
61 Kuroda Toshio's theory of Hi-tyoshuteki lenkai advances this thesis. See his Nihon chusei no
kokka to unno (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1975).
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126 MEDIEVAL SH6EN
(kokushi), the warriors who were appointed as kuni-jito actually governed
the assigned province. However, the situation in 1185 did not
last for long. In 1186, on the judgment of Yoritomo himself, two of the
aforementioned three powers, namely, the collection of hydromai and
the right to treat lands asfief,on which the kuni-jito depended, were
retracted. As a result, the shoen system and the local proprietor
{zaichi-ryoshu) system coexisted in the Kamakura period, although it
is important to note that briefly between 1185 and 1186, shoen throughout
Japan faced a crisis in the startling recognition of the local proprietors'
destructive power.
I have already alluded to this case in another essay.62
In 1185, Doi
Sanehira, the kuni-jito of Bingo Province, sent his son Tohira to govern
the province. At this time, Tohira, as the governor of the province,
recognized the claims of the geshi of Ota-no-sho, Tachibana
Kanetaka and Ota Mitsuie, to control more than one hundred cho of
land in Ota-no-sho. Kanetaka and Mitsuie had been powerful local
proprietors in Bingo Province since the Heian period. During the
conflict, they forced their way into several hundred cho of partially
tax-exempted paddies {zomen). They also asserted control over several
hundred zaike and night and day used a hundred or so ordinary families
as servants. Furthermore, they collected kachomai rice at the rate
of two shdyfivego per tan. And in mountain plains where the killing of
game was prohibited, they hunted wild boar, deer, fish, and birds.
As we learn from an appeal from Koyasan in 1190, the shoen control
policy of these two geshi toward the shoen residents during the period
of civil unrest was a determined policy to try to make them into
servants. It was also a policy that attempted to convert the shoen's
paddy fields and dryfieldsinto land of their own, or zomen. Under the
kuni-jito system of 1185-6, Doi Sanehira and Tohira pressed for
zaichi-ryoshu control. In response to these actions, Koyasan stated: "It
is customary in the various shoen that stipendiary paddies {kyuden) and
zomen are everywhere from two to three cho. Moreover, as customs of
the five home provinces and seven circuits [i.e., throughout the entire
country] that the exempted houses of shoen officials number from four
or five to ten houses." It further stated: "Everywhere, shoen officials,
having servants with exempt houses, oblige them to offer corvee.
Kanetaka's and Mitsuie's use of ordinary peasants night and day,
ordering them around, should not be allowed." These kinds of preda-
62 Oyama Kyohei, "Bunji kuni-jito no sonzai keitai," in Shibata Minoru sensei koki kinenkai,
ed., Nihon bunka shi ronso (Osaka: Shibata Minoru sensei koki kinenkai, 1976).
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COURTIERS AND WARRIORS 127
tory activities by Kanetaka and Mitsuie in Ota-no-sho continued for
six or seven years after 1184 when the civil conflict was at its worst.
This shows clearly that the development of the local proprietor
system undermined the shorn proprietor system. The fact that from
the time of Yoritomo there was ajito policy in effect constantly acted as
a brake on illegal acts committed by jito in shoen. After Kanetaka and
Mitsuie were executed for siding with the Heike, Miyoshi Yoshinobu,
who became the jito of Ota-no-sho, laid down in 1217 the following
principles for managing the shoen:
1. A rice levy of kachomai on fields graded at a yield of two to and
three to per tan should be three sho per tan and on fields of lesser
quality, one sho per tan.
2. Kanto coolie corvee should be four persons per year.
3. Long-term vegetable offerings should be borne by peasants where
the jito's exemption from corvee is recognized by the proprietor;
they should not levied on holders of hyakusho-myo.
4. The myoden fields of peasants who have absconded should not be
absorbed into the jito's myo. If they are included, they should pay
annual taxes and other dues (kuji) to the proprietor.
5. Intrusions into peasants' homes to avoid inauspicious directions in
travel (katatagae) should be stopped.
6. With regard to mulberries, the precedent of Kanetaka's and
Mitsuie's time should be followed.63
7. The jito's paddies (tsukuda) should be allocated to corvee-exempt
peasants. The myoden of peasants (hyakusho-myo) should not be
taken.
8. Farming should be encouraged by the deputy jito (jito-dai), who
must discuss all matters with the representatives and azukaridokoro
of Koyasan.
9. The jito-dai should not impose fines.
10. Prohibitions against the taking of life should be observed.
This is much the same procedure as seen in shoen in other provinces,
such as Kunitomi-no-sho in Wakasa. Here, because of the consolidation
of the Kamakura bakufu's jito policy (which was at the same time
a shoen policy), there is none of the rough quality of local proprietorship
as in the period of civil conflict. It was thus confirmed that the
shoen landholding system began to break down during the civil wars of
the Nambokucho period and concluded under the cadastral surveys of
Hideyoshi in the sixteenth century.
63 This meant to comply with precedents set before the civil disorder.
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CHAPTER 3
THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA
BAKUFU
INTRODUCTION
The 1260s marked the beginning of a decisively new period for the
Kamakura bakufu as it faced a set of increasingly complex problems
caused by changing conditions both at home and abroad.1
The political
structure of the bakufu was about to undergo a major change after
1 I have used the following sources in writing this article: (1) the Azuma kagami, a historychronicle
in diary format written from the viewpoint of the bakufu and covering the years 1180
to 1266. Nothing replaces it after that date. (2) The "Kamakura nendai ki" and "Buke nendai
ki" are helpful, albeit partial, substitutes. I also used other diaries such as (3) "Kenji sannen
ki" and "Einin sannen ki." These and other diaries can be found in Takeuchi Rizo, comp.,
Zoku shiryo taisei, 22 vols. (Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 1967). For political conditions within the
bakufu, documents in (4) "Kanezawa bunko komonjo," which include letters exchanged
among members of the Kanezawa (H6jo) family, are important. The most inclusive document
collection for the Kamakura period is (5) Kamakura ibun, komonjo hen (thirty-six volumes to
date), compiled by Takeuchi Rizo. Other sources such as (6) Kanagawa ken shi, shiryo hen,
vols. 1 and 2; and (7) Seno Seiichiro, comp., Kamakura bakufu saikyojo shu,j5, andge (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1970) are useful. A comprehensive description and i.idax to these and
other published documentary sources can be found in (8) pt. 2 of Jeffrey P. Mass, The
Kamakura Bakufu: A Study in Documents (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976).
There is no index of this magnitude anywhere else. For the Kyoto side of Xa i.akura history,
diaries by nobles are important historical sources. The following are well kiiown for this
period: (9) "Kitsuzokki" by Yoshida Tsunenaga ?nd "Kanchu ki" by Fujiwara Kanenaka both
in Sasagawa Taneo, ed., Shiryo taisei (Tokyo: Naigai shoten, 1937) - "Sanemikyo ki" by
Sanjo Sanemi (unpublished); and "Hanazono Tenno shinki" by Emperor Hanazono, in
Sasagawa, ed., Shiryo laisei. Historical chronicles such as the "Masukagami," "Godai teio
monogatari," and "Horyakukan ki" are also helpful. Many of the documents mentioned hers
are included in the fifth edition of (10) the Dai Nihon shiryo, though the volumes covering the
Kamakura era have reached only 1248. In the meantime, readers are referred to (11) Tokyo
daigaku shiryo hensanjo, ed., Shiryd soran, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1965).
Although there are many secondary works, the following are especially noteworthy: Miura
Hiroyuki, Kamakura jidaishi, vol. 5 of Nihon jidashi (Tokyo: Waseda daigaku shuppanbu,
1907, 1916), reprinted as Nihonshi no kenkyu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1982) Ryo
Susumu, Kamakura jidai, jo, ge (Tokyo: Shunshusha, 1957); Sato Shin'ichi, "Bakufu ron," in
Shin Nihon shi koza, 7th series (Tokyo: Chud koronsha, 1949); Sato Shin'ichi, "Kfmakura
bakufu seiji no senseika ni tsuite," in Takeuchi Rizo, comp., Nikon hokensei seiritsu no kenkyu
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1955), pp. 95-136; Kuroda Toshio, "Moko shurai," Nihon no
rekishi, vol. 8 (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1965); Amino Yoshihiko, Moko shurai, vol. 10 of Nikon
no rekishi (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1974); Amino Yoshihiko, "Kamakura makki no shomujun," in
Rekishigaku kenkyukai and Nihonshi kenkyukai, comps., Koza Nihonshi, vol. 3 (Tokyo:
Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1970), pp. 21-56; and Nitta Hideharu, "Kamakura koki no seiji
katei," in Jwanami koza Nihon rekishi, vol. 6 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1975), pp. 1-40.
Though dated, Miura Hiroyuki's Kamakura jidaishi has not lost its value. During the postwar
period, Sato Shin'ichi's work led the field, and most recently, Amino Yoshihiko's "Moko
shurai" merits special attention as an innovative history.
128
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INTRODUCTION I29
the death of Hojo Tokiyori in 1263, which in effect ended the "Golden
Period" characterized by the regency (shikken) system. At the same
time, changes in the social, economic, and technological spheres were
beginning to shake the shoen system, which had been flourishing since
the eleventh century. As examples of these changes, improved agricultural
technology increased arable acreage, and the technique of double
cropping - planting wheat after harvesting the rice - also enhanced
productivity. The greater surplus in turn led to the diversification of
agriculture, and as witnessed by the opening of periodic markets, commerce
and trade likewise became more important. Simultaneously, peasants
with free time or surplus means produced various handicrafts to be
sold at market. A cash economy made advances as a large quantity of
coins was imported from China, giving rise to financial middlemen and
the practice of paying shoen taxes in cash.
These changes could not have taken place without influencing the
overall social fabric. In various regions, cultivators rose up against the
local jito or shoen proprietors. In the meantime, the jito and proprietors
themselves began to compete, the worst of such confrontations occurring
in the home provinces and the west, often involving military
forces. Various groups of marauders, called akuto, whether of peasant
or warrior origins, upset the peace and undermined the bakufu's original
stabilizing aim.2
These domestic troubles were compounded by the precarious political
conditions prevailing in the neighboring countries of East Asia,
which eventually led to an extensive takeover by the Mongols and then
to a series of attempted invasions of Japan, the greatest external attack
on Japan in premodern times. The bakufu responded to this threat by
consolidating its own power, by extending its hitherto weak political
influence in western Japan, and by tightening its hold on the affairs of
the court in Kyoto. This expansion of power presented an ideal opportunity
for factions within the bakufu to strengthen their influence.
The Hojo clan, especially its main (tokuso) line, confirmed its already
dominant position, whereas the miuchibito (private vassals of the
tokuso) also enhanced their power. The period of so-called autocratic
rule by the tokuso began after the Shimotsuki incident of 1285, in
which a group of powerful gokenin represented by Adachi Yasumori
was eliminated.
At first, the rise of the tokuso and the miuchibito factions, accompany-
2 The most recent work on the topic of akuto is by Koizumi Yoshiaki, Akuto (Tokyo: Kyoikusha,
1981).
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130 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
ing the strengthened national position of the bakufu seemed to mark
the peak of Kamakura political power. However, this proved to be
illusory, as the general trend was toward greater internal strife and
dissatisfaction which soon mushroomed into a serious antibakufu
movement. There were, in fact, many causes for the warriors' dissatisfaction,
one being the lack of reward land in the aftermath of the
Mongol invasions. Already by the time of the invasions many gokenin
were impoverished, owing to the continued parcelization of landholding
under the divided inheritance system, as well as to their involvement
in the growing cash economy, which undermined their traditional
economic base. Because the warriors were expected to bear the
expenses of their military service, the invasions compounded their
financial difficulties, and many ended up losing their lands, by either
selling or pawning them. The presence of a large number of landless
gokenin thus posed a major problem to the bakufu.
To rescue the small and medium-sized gokenin houses in the last
stages of collapse, the bakufu used a radical measure, ordering the
cancellation of the gokenin's debts and the return of their pawned land
at no cost. But this emergency relief measure saved the financially
strained gokenin only temporarily, and many houses were subsumed by
others - the shugo, miuchibito, or even akuto warriors who acquired
wealth through commerce, trade, orfinancialactivities.
Each warrior house was being reorganized as well, adding to the
dissatisfaction of the displaced family members. This transformation
was characterized by two concurrent patterns. First, the divided inheritance
gradually gave way to unitary inheritance, which granted the
entire family holding to the head, to whom his siblings were then
required to subordinate themselves. Second, the link between the
family's main line (honke) and its branch lines (bunke) gradually weakened,
as the latter formed strong ties with other warrior houses in their
geographical areas, becoming in the process more independent of their
former blood relations.
Set against this turbulent background, the Hojo's autocratic rule
further intensified the warriors' dissatisfaction. But the greatest crisis
for the bakufu occurred when a worsening intracourt rivalry propelled
the emperor, Godaigo, to take the lead in an antibakufu movement.
The imperial line had split into two branches which competed for both
the imperial title and rights to shoen. Placed in the role of arbitrator,
the bakufu resolved to have the two branches reign in alternate succession.
The bakufu's involvement in these matters allowed it tighter
control over the inner workings of the court but at the same time
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 131
caused bakufu enmity and resentment from the losers in this competition.
Emperor Godaigo, in particular, resented the bakufu's intervention
in court affairs, which heightened his desire to return the country
to atenno-centerednational governance. Godaigo thus took every opportunity
to fan the anti-Hojo and antibakufu sentiments manifested
in the gokenin's unrest and the akuto's spreading activities. Godaigo's
plan to topple the bakufu was not immediately successful, however,
and its failure in 1331 led to his exile to Oki Island. But once this
movement was under way, the rebellion spread quickly from the home
provinces to the rest of the country. In 1333, the Kamakura bakufu
was overthrown.
THE MONGOL INVASIONS AND THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
The arrival of diplomatic messages from the Yiian
By the early 1260s, Kublai Khan, grandson of the great Genghis
Khan, headed the Mongol tribes which had by then built an extensive
empire encompassing a large portion of Eurasia.3
To the Mongols,
Japan was desirable owing to its proximity to Korea and its relations
with the Southern Sung. In 1266, Kublai made his first overture to
Japan by sending a letter through the king of Koryo, who was ordered
to dispatch an intermediary to accompany the Yiian messenger. This
first messenger, however, was prevented from crossing to Japan and
3 Much has been published on topics related to the Mongol invasions. A recent publication,
Moko shurai kenkyii shi ron, by Kawazoe Shoji (Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 1977) contains a nearly
complete bibliography that is concisely annotated. Here, I shall list only works of particular
importance or those used in this essay. For nonspecialists, the following works are useful:
Kawazoe Shoji, Gen no shurai (Tokyo: Popurasha, 1975); Yamaguchi Osamu, Moko shurai
(Tokyo: Josha, 1964, 1979); Hatada Takashi, Genko-Moko teikoku no naibujijo (Tokyo: Chuo
koronsha, 1965); Abe Yukihiro, Moko shurai (Tokyo: Kyoikusha, 1980). The works of
Yamaguchi and Hatada are important for their view from a wider East Asian perspective.
Abe's work is the most recent, but because it is not entirely reliable, I would recommend
Kawazoe's work more highly. As for document collections, Yamada An'ei's Fukuteki hen, 2
vols. (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1981) is still an extremely useful classic, unsurpassed by
any later publications. The best compilation of materials related to the defense effort per se
appears in Kawazoe Shoji, Chukai, Genko borui hennen shiryo-Ikoku keigo banyaku shiryo no
kenkyii (Fukuoka: Fukuokashi kyoiku iinkai, 1971). This is an important work that includes
many useful notes.
Several monographs should be mentioned. A treatment of the Mongols from an East Asian
perspective was attempted by Ikeuchi Hiroshi in his Genko no shin kenkyii, 2 vols. (Tokyo:
Toyo bunko, 1931). A quarter of a century later Aida Niro wrote Moko shurai no kenkyii, which
analyzed the invasions from the angle of Japan's internal political conditions (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1971) This book had an immense impact on later research. In English,
there is an article by Hori Kyotsu, "The Economic and Political Effects of the Mongol Wars,"
in John W. Hall and Jeffrey P. Mass, eds., Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History (New
Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1974).
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132 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
thus returned to China without accomplishing his diplomatic task. In
the following year an angry Kublai issued a strict order to the king of
Koryo to take responsibility for getting the Yuan letter to Japan.
Given no choice, the Korean king attached a letter of explanation to
the letter from the Yuan and provided, as before, a guide for the Yuan
messenger. The group arrived in Dazaifu, Kyushu, in the first month
of 1268.
The letter carried by the Yuan envoy contained roughly the following
message:
From time immemorial, rulers of small states have sought to maintain
friendly relations with one another. We, the Great Mongolian Empire, have
received the Mandate of Heaven and have become the master of the universe.
Therefore, innumerable states in far-off lands have longed to form ties with
us. As soon as I ascended the throne, I ceased fighting with Koryo and
restored their land and people. In gratitude, both the ruler and the people of
Koryo came to us to become our subjects; their joy resembles that of children
with their father. Japan is located near Koryo and since its founding has on
several occasions sent envoys to the Middle Kingdom. However, this has not
happened since the beginning of my reign. This must be because you are not
fully informed. Therefore, I hereby send you a special envoy to inform you of
our desire. From now on, let us enter into friendly relations with each other.
Nobody would wish to resort to arms.4
At this time, the man governing Dazaifu was Muto (Shoni)
Sukeyoshi, the shugo of three northern Kyushu provinces. Upon receiving
this message, Sukeyoshi forwarded it to Kamakura.
Changes in the bakufu
The letter from Dazaifu reached Kamakura in 1268. But before examining
the bakufu's response, I shall first discuss certain internal
changes in Kamakura in the years following Hojo Tokiyori's death in
1263. In the judicial sector, a new post, the osso bugyo, was created to
examine judgments that might be appealed. The first appointees were
Hojo (Kanezawa) Sanetoki5
and Adachi Yasumori, both former heads
of courts in the bakufu's main investigatory agency, the hikitsuke.
4 Readers are referred to the writings left by the contemporary monk Sosho of Todaiji (called
'Moko koku cho jo'), as well as the following published works: Yamada, An'ei, ed., Fukuteki
hen, and Takeuchi Rizo, comp., Kamakura ibun, vol. 13 (Tokyo: Tokyodo, 1977) doc, 9564.
5 The son of Saneyasu, who was in turn the youngest son of Hojo Yoshitoki. He was called
Kanazawa because he had had a villa built in Kanezawa District (Musashi Province) just to the
east of Kamakura. Sanetoki is particularly well known for the Kanezawa bunko (Kanazawa
archive), a library housing a large number of Japanese and Chinese publications that he
established at his villa.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 133
Sanetoki was a brother of the new regent, Tokimune's mother, and he
had been highly regarded by the late regent Tokiyori. Yasumori was
the head of the Adachi family which for many generations had maintained
close ties with the Hojo. He was also the father of Tokisume's
young wife. Thus the two men who represented the lines of
Tokimune's mother and wife became leading figures in the reorganized
bakufu. Inasmuch as they had played dominant roles in the
bakufu under Tokiyori, their continuing positions of importance reflected
the bakufu's desire to maintain Tokiyori's basic policies, which
were strengthening the Hojo grip over the bakufu's consultative structure
and securing the gokenin's trust by improving the operations of
the judicial system. The appointments of Tokimune, Sanetoki, and
Yasumori fulfilled the first goal, and the establishment of the osso
bugyo sought to satisfy the gokenin who demanded fair judgments.
In general, these efforts were designed to counter certain internal
conflicts that began to surface after Tokiyori's death. The Nagoe line
of the Hojo, descended from Yoshitoki's second son, was now in a
position to challenge the main Hojo line, the tokuso. The pattern of
appointments to major bakufu positions illustrates this internal friction.
For instance, in 1264, Tokiaki, the head of the Nagoe, secured
the position of chief of the hikitsuke, the third most important job in
the bakufu following those of regent and cosigner (shikken and rensho).
Nevertheless, Tokiaki was not granted a post in the newly formed osso
bugyo. Moreover, the hikitsuke itself was abolished suddenly in 1266/3,
and its responsibilities were diverted to the regent and cosigner, assisted
by the Board of Inquiry (monchujo). This action effectively removed
Nagoe Tokiaki from his primary base of power in the bakufu.
Several months later a private conference held at Tokimune's residence
revealed the composition of a new power bloc. Itself an extension
of the yoriai, a secret meeting initiated by Tokiyori years earlier
to discuss critical matters, the conference was attended by Tokimune,
Masamura, Sanetoki, and Yasumori. At the meeting the four men
decided to replace the shogun, Prince Munetaka, with his three-yearold
son Koreyasu. Although we do not know the motive behind this
decision (an alleged affair between the shogun's wife and a certain
monk was reported), the explanation given to Kyoto was simply a
"rebellion by the shogun." More plausibly, the bakufu's leadership
may have sensed a potentially threatening tie between the shogun
and the opposition group and so took the offensive to foreclose any
trouble.
It was just at the point when Kamakura was astir with rumors
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134 T H E
DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
regarding the shogun's forced return to Kyoto that the messenger
from Koryo arrived bearing the letter from the Mongols.
The bakufu's response to the Yuan letter
The Mongols' demand for a peaceful relationship with Japan posed a
serious problem to the bakufu. The text of their letter did not seem
threatening: It called for peace, not subjugation. In addition, the appended
letter from the king of Koryo stressed that Kublai's goal was
prestige for his dynasty rather than conquest. Yet at the same time, the
wording of the Mongol letter could be interpreted more ominously,
and thus the bakufu had to contemplate its response carefully.
Kamakura's first consideration may indeed have been Japan's ability
to handle diplomatic negotiations. Even though Japan and the
Southern Sung maintained commercial ties, formal diplomacy between
the two countries had been in abeyance since the late ninth
century, which meant that Japan lacked the necessary skill and confidence
to assess international conditions. Second, it is likely that Japan's
perception of the Mongols was extremely biased, inasmuch as
the information it received about China came from either its Sung
trading partners or from Buddhist monks, both of whom regarded
the Mongols as unwelcome invaders. In particular, the Zen monks,
many of whom were patronized by the Hojo,6
had come from Southern
China and must have been vocal in their opposition to the Yiian
request.
Moreover, the bakufu was not the ultimate diplomatic authority in
Japan. The Yiian letter had been addressed to the "King of Japan,"
not to the bakufu, and thus in the second month of 1268 the letter was
sent to Kyoto, where it was ignored. This decision, ostensibly made
by the ex-emperor Gosaga, probably complied with the bakufu's own
view of the matter.
In the meantime, the implementation of actual defense measures
rested with Kamakura. Even before the court had reached its formal
decision, the bakufu issued a directive to the shugo of Sanuki Province
in Shikoku, stating: "Recently, we learned that the Mongols have
become inclined toward evil and are now trying to subdue Japan.
6 Hojo Tokiyori was a devout follower of Rankei Doryu, a Chinese Zen monk who migrated to
Japan in 1246 and built the Kenchoji in Kamakura. Tokiyori also patronized Gottan Funei,
who arrived in Japan in 1260. In subsequent years, both Tokiyori and Tokimune invited Zen
monks from the Southern Sung. Among the monks who came to Japan, Mugaku Sogen came
to be highly respected among the Ji sect believers. Interestingly, he had been a victim of Yuan
suppression in Sung China.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 135
Quickly inform the gokenin in your province, and secure the nation's
defense." Even though this is the only such directive that survives, we
may assume that all shugo in the western region received a similar
order.
The Mongols, of course, were active during this period. In the fifth
month of 1268, Kublai ordered Koryo to construct one thousand
battleships and to conscript ten thousand men, explaining that such
preparations were necessary because of the possibility of rebellion by
either the Southern Sung or Japan. Despite their public, diplomatic
posture, the Mongols were in fact proceeding with their preparations
for armed conflict. Nevertheless, Kublai continued to dispatch envoys
and letters to Japan via Koryo. After the first envoy was forced to
return to Koryo empty-handed, Kublai sent a second in the eleventh
month of 1268. Together with a Korean guide, the Yuan envoy arrived
in the second month of 1269 at the island of Tsushima. Instead of
completing his mission, however, he had a confrontation with the local
Japanese and so returned to Korea, taking with him two Japanese as
captives.
The Japanese were taken to the Mongol capital to meet with the
khan who stressed once again that his only desires were to have official
representatives visit the Japanese court and to have his name remembered
for generations thereafter. Kublai then ordered the return of the
two Japanese, to be accompanied by another envoy carrying an imperial
letter. Koryo was again made responsible for delivering the letter,
and in the ninth month of 1269, this group arrived in Tsushima. The
overture was no more successful than its predecessors - yet the Mongols
persisted on the diplomatic front. For example, drafts of letters
dated the first and second months of 1270 stated: "The use of military
force without reason runs counter to Confucian and Buddhist teachings.
Because Japan is a divine country [shinkoku], we do not intend to
fight with force." Nonetheless, the bakufu advised the court not to
respond, and as before, the envoy returned empty-handed.
The invasion's imminence
The timing and actual execution of a plan to invade Japan were closely
tied to changing conditions in Koryo, which, from the sixth month of
1269, was in disorder, owing to the king's dethronement and reinstallment,
and a civil war. By taking advantage of this situation, the
Mongols were able to strengthen their hold on Koryo and thus facilitate
their advance into Japan. In the twelfth month of 1270, Kublai
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I36 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
appointed Chao Liang-pi as a special envoy to Japan and simultaneously
stationed an army in Koryo. This led to Kublai's final campaign
to induce a peaceful settlement. In the meantime, he launched a
major offensive against rebel elements in Koryo itself, using a combined
force of Mongols and Koreans. In the fifth month of 1271, these
rebel elements were defeated, though some of them relocated to the
south and continued their resistance.7
In 1271, Japan received a message from Koryo that warned of the
Mongol advance and requested reinforcements of food and men. Recently
discovered evidence suggests that the messenger carrying this
letter to Japan was a member of the rebel force. It is evident that the
rebels tried to retaliate against the Mongol expansion by warning Japan,
even as their own country was serving as Kublai's agent. Although
this overture did not yield concrete results, it does reveal the
complex international relations of that time.
For their part, the Japanese were now induced to step up their
defense by mobilizing even more warriors to protect Kyushu. Accordingly,
the bakufu issued an order in the ninth month of 1271 that
stated: "We have received news that an invasion is imminent. All
gokenin who hold land in Kyushu must return to Kyushu immediately,
in order to fortify the land and pacify local outlaws [akuto]."* Before
this order was issued, only the gokenin living in Kyushu had been held
responsible for preparing that island's defense.
Shortly thereafter, the Mongol envoy, Chao Liang-pi, arrived in
Dazaifu with a letter. Although its message repeated much of what
the previous letters had stated, Chao added the warning that unless
Japan replied by the eleventh month, the Mongols were prepared to
dispatch their battleships. The court's inclination was to issue an
official response, but by the new year Chao was forced to return to
Koryo without having obtained a reply. It seems that the bakufu had
once again vetoed that court's decision to respond - even in the negative.
After two more attempts to elicit a response (in 1272/5 and
7 Ishii Masatoshi, "Bun'ei hachinen rainichi no Koraishi ni tsuite - Sanbetsusho no Nihon
tsuko shiryo no shokai," Tokyo daigaku shiryo hensanjo ho 12 (March 1978): 1-7.
8 It is important to note that the bakufu's order emphasized both the national defense and the
suppression oiakuio. Eastern warriors who were ordered to their holdings in Kyushu did not,
however, leave immediately. For example, Shodai, a gokenin from Musashi Province, moved to
his Higo Province holding only in the fifth month of 1275, and comparatively speaking, this
was probably one of the earlier cases. At the end of 1286, the bakufu complained that there
were still those who had not made the move. See Gomi Katsuo, "Nitta-gu shitsuin Michinori
gushoan sonota," Nihon rekishi, no. 310 (March 1974): 13-26. Those warriors who held
powerful positions within the bakufu were not obligated to move to Kyushu but were instead
to send men of ability in their place.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 137
1273/3), Chao finally notified Kublai of his failure. The Mongols
subsequently gave Japan seven more opportunities to change its
mind, but Japan's hard-line policy was already fixed. The Mongols
eventually realized that force was the only means left for fulfilling
their diplomatic goal.9
The Kamakura bakufu's response
As invasion seemed more and more inevitable the bakufu decided to
consolidate its internal structure. First, it attempted to ease the split in
the Hojo family by reinstituting the hikitsuke system in the fourth
month of 1269, three years after its abolition. The five units of the
hikitsuke system now were made to include both main-line and antimain-line
Hojo members: Nagoe Tokiaki (head of the first unit),
Kanazawa Sanetoki (head of the second unit), Adachi Yasumori (head
of the fifth unit), and two other Hojo members. Each unit head represented
a branch of the Hojo, and together they formed a system similar
to a coalition government. Nevertheless, the intrabakufu antagonisms
intensified and exploded in 1272 in the form of the Nigatsu
disturbance, in which many warriors and courtiers who opposed the
tokuso were murdered. In Kamakura, the victims included Nagoe
Tokiaki, his brother Noritoki, and a number of courtiers who had
come from Kyoto to serve the shogun. In Kyoto itself, the most prominent
person executed was Hojo Tokisuke, who was the the Rokuhara
tandai (a shogunal deputy stationed at Rokuhara in southeastern Kyoto
to supervise the political, military, and judicial affairs of southwestern
Japan) and an aggrieved elder brother of the regent Tokimune.
Soon after Tokiaki's death, the incident took on a new twist: Tokiaki
was declared innocent, and instead, the five Hojo miuchibito actually
responsible for the murder were eliminated. The murderer of Noritoki
received neither praise nor punishment, only ridicule. In sum, the
incident was a concrete manisfestation of the serious instability within
the bakufu. As far as we can determine, in the wake of the purge of the
anti-main-line Hojo by the miuchibito, the miuchibito themselves became
the targets of condemnation and were accordingly eliminated.
This bizarre episode was described as follows by an observer,
9 Some historians interpret the bakufu's rigid attitude toward this matter as a conscious policy to
intensify the external crisis in order to deflect the impact of internal problems, such as the rise
of akuto. This theory implies that the bakufu consciously invited the Mongols to attack Japan.
For an example of this view, see Abe Yukihiro, Moko shurai. I would argue that this interpretation
reflects too much the view of the world today.
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138 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Kanazawa Akitoki: "After 1269, life became disorderly for one reason
or another. Mine or yours, one's life was never safe."
Once the Nigatsu disturbance had been settled, the bakufu issued
an order to the provincial authorities to submit land surveys (dtabumi)
detailing the names of owners and the dimensions of local lands used
as the basis for taxation and the conscription oigokenin. The timing of
this order suggests that the bakufu wasfinallybeginning to investigate
the human and economic resources that could contribute to Japan's
military potential. As early as 1267, the bakufu had issued an order
prohibiting the sale, pawning, or transfer of gokenin land to nonrelatives
and had authorized the return of holdings already sold or pawned
in exchange for repayment of the original price. This order was rescinded
in 1270, but a year after the submission of the dtabumi, a new
regulation was put into effect guaranteeing the return without cost of
any pawned gokenin land. The bakufu further attempted to improve
its vassals' situations by ordering the submission of lists containing the
names of lands that had been lost as well as those of the new owners.
The invasion 0/1274
In the second month of 1273, the Southern Sung defense line fell to
the Mongols, and a collapse seemed close at hand. In the fourth
month, the rebel elements of Koryo were finally put down. It had
been two years since Kublai had changed the name of his dynasty to
Ta Yuan in the Chinese style, and he was now ready to expand his
empire even further. There remained no geographical obstacle to his
moving forcefully against Japan.
Accordingly, the khan appointed joint commanders of an expeditionary
force that was to sail in the seventh month of 1274. Koryo was
likewise given an order to build and dispatch a fleet of nine hundred
battleships and an army of five thousand men. Even though many of
the ships of extremely poor quality - the product of hasty workmanship
in response to the conqueror's order - the required number was
prepared in time.
On the third day of the tenth month, three months later than the
original plan, the expeditionary force consisting of 15,000 Yuan soldiers,
8,000 Koryo soldiers, and 67,000 ship workers sailed toward
Japan. Departing from Koryo, they attacked Tsushima two days later
and defeated So Munesuke, the deputy shugo, and about 80 other
mounted soldiers. On the fourteenth day, they attacked Iki Island
where the deputy shugo, Taira Kagetaka, fought valiantly with a force
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 139
of IOO mounted soldiers but was eventually defeated. Two weeks later,
the Yuan-Koryd allied force settled in Hakata Bay and began landing
in the western area of the bay around Imazu, Sawaraura, and
Momojibara. From these points, they planned to move east, eventually
to attack Hakata.
On the Japanese side, two powerful shugo, Otomo Yoriyasu and
Muto (Shoni) Sukeyoshi, the bakufu's twin Kyushu deputies (Chinzei
bugyo), commanded a gokenin defense force. The sources do not tell us
the size of the Japanese army, but we can assume it was much smaller
than the Yiian-Koryo expeditionary force. The figure of 100,000 that
appears in a Chinese account is obviously exaggerated.10
Fatigue from the long voyage seems not to have reduced the skill of
the Yiian-Koryo soldiers in the art of collective fighting. Moreover,
they used poisoned arrows and exploding devices, which the Japanese
had never seen before. The Japanese warriors' one-to-one fighting
method had little effect here. Despite some minor successes, the defenders
were therefore forced to retreat, although in the end they
escaped defeat because of a great storm that struck the harbor and
destroyed a large part of the Yiian-Koryo fleet.
A vivid depiction of this war comes from a picture scroll commissioned
by a small-scale gokenin, Takezaki Suenaga of Higo Province, to
illustrate his meritorious acts. The scroll, called Moko shurai ekotoba,11
notes that on the twentieth day of the tenth month, Suenaga mobilized
his followers to join the battle of Hakozaki Bay, but because he heard
that Hakata was being attacked, he and his men quickly headed there.
When they arrived at Okinohama in Hakata, they found that many
other warriors were already there. At this point, the commander,
10 We know of roughly 120 warriors who received rewards in 1275. Large bands such as those of
the Kikuchi and Shiraishi supplied over 100 soldiers and horses, but smaller-scale warriors
(like Takezaki Suenaga) could contribute only a handful. If we take the number 50 as a
hypothetical average of mounted fighting men per house, the total would have been something
over 6,000 defenders. But if we take 30 as the average, then the total would be only
3,600.
11 This is the standard name for the scroll, though Takezaki Suenaga ekotoba would be more
appropriate, as it reflects Suenaga's point of view exclusively. He commissioned the scroll
quite late, around 1293. Over the centuries it has received some damage, and accordingly I
have used only those sections whose interpretations are not open to dispute. Several reproductions
of the scroll are available: Gyobutsubon, Moko shurai ekotoba (fukusei) (Fukuoka:
Fukuokashi kyoiku iinkai, 1975), which is a reproduction at three-fourths the original size;
Moko shurai ekotoba, in Nihon emaki taisei, vol. 14 (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1978); Heiji
monogatari emaki, Moko shurai ekotoba, vol. 9 of Nihon emaki zenshu (Tokyo: Kadokawa
shoten, 1964). The first two are in color, and the last two contain descriptions and research
notes that are extremely useful. As for the pronunciation and interpretation of the main text
of the ekotoba, see Ishii Susumu et al., eds., Chusei seiji shakai shiso, jo vol. 21 of Nihon shiso
laikei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1972), pp. 415-28.
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140 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Muto Kagesuke (Sukeyoshi's second son), ordered a joint operation to
push back the enemy force. Inasmuch as Suenaga had only five
mounted soldiers under him, he determined that the situation at
Okinohama provided little opportunity for glory, and thus he took his
small force to another battle area called Akasaka. There the powerful
warrior of Higo Province, Kikuchi Takefusa, was pushing the enemy
into retreat, and Suenaga saw his chance. He joined the attack, but
soon one of his men was shot, and Suenaga himself and the three
others received heavy injuries and lost their horses. He was saved by
Shiraishi Michiyasu of Hizen Province, who galloped in at this point at
the head of a force of more than one hundred men.
Suenaga's performance exemplified the Japanese manner of fighting,
which contrasted markedly with that of the enemy. The soldiers
of Yiian-Koryo moved collectively in an orderly fashion with spears
lined up, following the beat of drums and signals. But this is not to say
that all Japanese fighting men were as eager as Suenaga to place personal
distinction first. After the invasion, the bakufu complained that
some warriors, though present, refused to fight or, in other cases,
refused to change locations.
The war reached a climax at dusk on the twentieth day. The Japanese
army abandoned the Hakata and Hakozaki areas and retreated to
the remains of an ancient fortress at Mizuki in order to defend
Dazaifu, located some sixteen kilometers from the shore. The YiianKoryo
force, however, had also suffered losses. In particular, the deputy
commander of the Yuan army, Liu Fu-heng, had been wounded
by an arrow shot by Muto Kagesuke. The Mongol leaders made a
fateful decision to withdraw, because of manpower and supply problems.
By the next morning a major portion of their fleet had simply
vanished. It is not clear whether the storm struck while the ships were
still in Hakata Bay or when they were passing the Islands of Iki and
Tsushima on their way back to Koryo. In any case, the force's return
trip took more than a month. On the twenty-seventh day of the eleventh
month, after spending more than twice the time normally required
to cross the channel, the fleet arrived back in Korea. A surviving
record shows that more than 13,500 persons, roughly one-third of
the entire expeditionary force, did not return. Contemporary Japanese
sources called the great storm that saved Japan kamikaze, the "divine
wind."12
12 The accepted theory of Japanese historians in the post-Meiji era is that the Yuan-Kory6 fleet
encountered the storm on the night of the twentieth day of the tenth month. But in 1958, a
meteorologist, Arakawa Hidetoshi, published a controversial article entitled, "Bun'ei no eki
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 141
Japan after the Bun'ei invasion
The aftermath of any major premodern war in Japan was the occasion
for granting rewards for meritorious service. Although this had been
an external invasion that did not produce enemy lands to be distributed,
the warriors who participated in the defense submitted their
demands anyway. In 1275, the bakufu rewarded some 120 deserving
warriors for their services in the recent righting, though for many
other there were disappointments. The case of Takezaki Suenaga is
illustrative.
In the sixth month of 1275, Suenaga left his home in Higo Province
for Kamakura. Despite his brave participation in the defense effort,
his deeds had not even been reported to the bakufu. His trip was thus
to make a direct appeal. It is interesting that his relatives opposed the
plan and refused to give him the needed material support to make the
trip. Because he had earlier lost land in litigation and had become
otherwise impoverished, he had to sell his horses and saddles in order
to earn sufficient traveling money.
In the middle of the eighth month, Suenaga finally reached Kamakura
and immediately attempted to contact various officials of the
bakufu. But perhaps because of his unimpressive attire he was not
even granted an audience. Luck did turn his way, however. In the
tenth month, Suenaga succeeded in making his appeal to Adachi
Yasumori, chief of the bakufu's rewards office (go'on bugyo). Yasumori
pressed hard with various questions to which Suenaga replied as
follows: "I am not appealing merely because I want a reward. If my
claim to having fought in the vanguard be proved false, please cut off
my head immediately. I have only one wish: for my merit to be
known to the shogun. That would serve as a great encouragement in
the event of another war." In the face of such unwavering insistence,
Yasumori acknowledged Suenaga to be a loyal servant of the bakufu
and promised to inform the shogun and to assist in the matter of
rewards.
Suenaga's scroll vividly portrays this meeting, noting that Yasumori
apparently kept his word: Among the 120 warriors rewarded, Suenaga
was the only one who received the personal investiture (kudashibumi)
no owari o tsugeta no wa taifu dewa nai" (It was not a typhoon that ended the Bun'ei war),
Nihon rekishi, no. 120 (June 1958): 41-45. This article caused a reevaluation of the traditionally
accepted theory, and as a result, many new views were introduced. For an introductory
summary and critique of these views, see Tsukushi Yutaka, Genko kigen (Fukuoka: Fukuoka
kyodo bunkakai, 1972); and Kawazoe, Moko shurai kenkyu shiron.
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142 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
of the shogun. In addition, Yasumori presented Suenaga with a prize
horse, an act of benevolence that the recipient did not forget. In the
testament that Suenaga left to his heir, he admonished his descendants
to continue to honor their noble benefactor.13
Anticipating a second invasion, the bakufu quickly moved to
strengthen its defense program. In 1275, vassals of the Kyushu region
were ordered to organize into combined units of two to three
provinces, each of which would serve a defense tour of three months
per year. This service, called ikoku keigo banyaku,14
constituted a
heavy burden for the warriors of Kyushu, even more so as they had
to mobilize instantly - in the event of a crisis - during their off-duty
periods.
Aside from the shoreline defense duties, the bakufu enforced a
series of measures designed to fortify the nation. Many of these programs,
however, were intended at the same time to boost the power of
the bakufu vis-a-vis the court, as well as the power of the tokuso vis-avis
other warrior families. An earlier illustration of this double program
dates from 1274, just before the withdrawal of the Mongol fleet
in the Bun'ei invasion. Taking advantage of the emergency situation,
the bakufu ordered the shugo of the western provinces to mobilize both
gokenin and non-gokenin alike. This represented a clear expansion of
the limits of bakufu jurisdiction nationally and shugo jurisdiction locally.
Thus, to cite one example, the shugo of Aki Province requisitioned
more than one hundred ships and confiscated a shipment of rice
that had been prepared as a tax (nengu) payment to a Kyoto shoen
owner. Moreover, the bakufu ordered the eastern gokenin who held
lands in the western part of the Sanyo and San'in areas to proceed to
their holdings. This was a further attempt by Kamakura to concentrate
more men in the strategic war zones. However, the Mongols
retreated before any of these vassals might have been sent to the battle
front.
After the Bun'ei invasion, politically influential warriors replaced
the shugo of certain strategically located provinces. In eight of the
eleven cases confirmed by historians, Hojo family members were appointed
as shugo. In the other three provinces, Adachi Yasumori and
his allies were appointed as shugo. This allowed the Hojo to increase the
number of shugo posts under their control and meant that the nation's
13 The relevant section was appended to the Moko skurai ekotoba under the title "Yasumori no
onkoto" (Honorable matters pertaining to Yasumori).
14 On this topic, see Kawazoe, Chukai, Genko borui hennen shiryo.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 143
defense fell more and more under the direct supervision of the key
figures occupying the center of the bakufu.'5
Kamakura also made new arrangements for protecting the capital. It
dispatched to Kyoto the elderly and respected Hojo Tokimori and
other warriors of renown. At the same time, allfightingmen - gokenin
and non-gokenin - of Yamashiro Province were made responsible for
Kyoto guard duty (obanyaku), whereas warriors from Kyushu were
now exempted. Moreover, so as not to burden the populace unnecessarily,
the bakufu encouraged both warriors and courtiers to live frugally.
Kamakura also ordered the country's shugo to urge provincial temples
and shrines to dedicate special prayers for the defeat of the enemy and
for protection of the divine land.
Finally, the plans for defense included a retaliatory strategy to attack
Koryo, the Yuan base for invading Japan. Extant documents from
Kyushu and Aki Province show that orders were issued from the last
part of 1275 through the following spring to mobilize warriors and
prepare battleships, as well as to recruit ships' crews for an expedition.
Those recruited included not only jito and gokenin but also warriors
that were not vassals of the bakufu. From available sources we cannot
determine the extent to which these plans were put into effect, although
of course there was no actual attack on Koryo.
The monument that testifies to the bakufu's effort to secure the
country is a series of stone walls along the coastline around Hakata
Bay. Although only a portion of the original structure remains today,
the walls stretched 20 kilometers east and west of Hakata and generally
stood 50 meters inland from the shoreline and were approximately
1.5 to 2.8 meters high and 1.5 to 3.4 meters wide at the
bottom. The official schedule for the wall's construction stipulated
the third month of 1276 as the beginning date and the eighth month
of the same year as the completion date. However, it seems that the
construction did not proceed as quickly as planned. For instance,
Satsuma Province did not complete its contribution to the project
until early in 1277. The responsibility for constructing the wall fell
not only on Kyushu gokenin but also on various shoen officials, the
extent of the duty corresponding to the size of individual landhold-
15 See Sato Shin'ichi's classic study, "Kamakura bakufu seiji no senseika ni tsuite," in Takeuchi
Rizo. ed., Nihon hdkensei seiriisu no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1955). Subsequently,
it was Murai Shdsuke who confirmed that the transfer of these shugo occurred in the
latter part of 1275. See Murai Shosuke, "Moko shurai to Chinzei tandai no seiritsu," Shigaku
zasshi 87 (April 1978): 1-43. I have followed Murai's theory.
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144 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
ings. One document from Osumi Province records a ratio of one
shaku of wall for each cho of land held.16
In this way, the national mobilization effort permitted the bakufu an
unprecedented right of command over officials hitherto outside its
jurisdiction. The following example shows Kamakura's changing position
in the nation's power balance: In order to provide strong leadership
for the Inland Sea defense zone, Hojo Muneyori, the younger
brother of the tokuso, was appointed shugo of Nagato Province. In
1276, he recruited for service all warriors in the Sanyo and Nankai
circuits, irrespective of their vassal status.
At the center of the bakufu during this period were Hojo Tokimune
and Adachi Yasumori. Hojo Masamura and Kanazawa Sanetoki, the
two other prominent figures in the post-Tokiyori era, had already
died. Yasumori was Tokimune's father-in-law and had a major impact
on policymaking in Kamakura. Miyoshi Yasuari recorded in his diary,
Kenji sannen ki,17
that twice during 1277 (in the tenth and twelfth
months), Tokimune held private conferences (yoriai) at his residence.
Tokiyori had started the practice of yoriai, which continued during
Tokimune's rule, replacing the hyojdshu (deliberative council) as the
key arena for decision making. According to the Kenji sannen ki, the
most important political and personnel decisions were made at the
yoriai, which were attended by the most influential men of the era. In
the same year, the right to recommend gokenin for traditional court
offices was withdrawn from the hyojdshu and became instead the shogun's
sole prerogative. Thus, Tokimune and Miyoshi Yasuari (head of
the monchujo) are listed in the Kenji sannen ki as having attended four
times; Adachi Yasumori, twice; Taira Yoritsuna (who headed a group
of miuchibito), three times; and two other powerful gokenin, twice. The
strength of a certain group of miuchibito at this time can be attributed
to the influence of Adachi Yasumori who, at the conclusion of the
Nigatsu disturbance, succeeded in promoting the status of such men
despite his initial opposition to them. However, this harmonious balance
of interests did not last long, as antagonisms were already beginning
to surface between Yasumori and Taira Yoritsuna.
16 Kawazoe Shoji summarizes concisely the present state of research on :he wall construction;
see his "Kaisetsu," in Chukai, Genko borui hennen shiryo.
17 The main text of'Kenji sannen ki" appears on Gunsho ruiju, bukebu, vol. 421, though with a
few errata. A better text is Takeuchi Rizd, comp., Zoku shiryo taisei, vol. 10 (Kyoto: Rinsen
shoten, 1967). Ryo Susumu gives a detailed analysis of this diary in "Kenji sannen ki ko," in
Kamakura jidai, jo, pp. 217-31.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 145
The second Mongol invasion, 1281
Overtures from the Yuan did not cease after the Bun'ei invasion. In
the fourth month of 1275, an envoy arrived in Muronotsu in Nagato,
instead of at Dazaifu. The bakufu's response to this mission was
harsher than before. The bakufu summoned the entire Yuan entourage
in the eighth month and in the following month summarily executed
them in the suburbs of Kamakura. In the meantime, the Yuan
destroyed the capital of the Southern Sung in 1276 and captured the
reigning Chinese emperor. By early 1279, the Southern Sung empire
was completely destroyed. At this time, the invasion of Japan was once
again put at the top of the Yuan agenda. Destruction of the Sung
provided the Yuan with a new approach route to Japan. Instead of
going through Korea, the Mongols could use the surrendered Sung
navy dispatched from China itself. Another favorable condition for the
Yuan was that Koryo was growing more complacent as the Yuan
expanded their borders ever closer to Korea itself. This new set of
circumstances formed the background for the Yiian's plan to attack
Japan a second time.
The old Sung territory provided many of the resources for the
invasion. In 1279, Kublai ordered the people of the lower Yangtze area
to construct six hundred warships and consulted a commander of the
Sung army regarding specific plans of action. On the advice he received,
the khan sent another envoy to Japan, carrying a message
warning that if Japan failed to submit, it would suffer the same fate
that had struck the Sung. This envoy arrived in Japan in the sixth
month, but as before, the court and bakufu refused to receive him. All
the members of his mission were executed in Hakata.
During this period, Koryo continued to bear the burden of preparing
battleships and their crews. This time, Kublai ordered 900 ships.
In China proper, Kublai reinforced his plan administratively by establishing
a new governmental organ, the Ministry for Conquering Japan.
The official order to attack came in the first month of 1281. The entire
army was divided into two divisions - the Eastern Route Division
dispatched from Koryo and the Chiang-nan Division dispatched from
southeast China. The Eastern Route Division had a combined force of
10,000 Koryo soldiers and 30,000 Mongols. Some 900 battleships
carried 17,000 crew members in addition to the soldiers. The Chiangnan
Division was composed of 100,000 previously defeated Sung soldiers
sailing on as many as 3,500 battleships. The two divisions were
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146 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
to merge in Iki and then proceed together to attack Japan proper.
Before their departure, Kublai, who was aware of the potential disunity
of this invasion plan, strongly emphasized the necessity for co-
operation.
Preparations were also under way in Japan. Evidence indicates that
Japan knew of the impeding invasion. According to a letter the bakufu
sent to the shugo Otomo Yoriyasu in Kyushu, Kamakura was anticipating
the attack before the fourth month of the following year and
warned the shugo to consolidate their defense strategies. In the same
letter, the bakufu noted that there had been a recent tendency for
shugo and gokenin not to cooperate effectively.
The pattern of mobilization in Japan was the same as for the Bun'ei
invasion. Kyushu warriors assembled around Hakata Bay. Using the
newly constructed stone walls as barriers, they were to fight under the
command of the Otomo and Muto. Although the exact size of the
Japanese force is unknown, we can assume that this one was larger
than the previous one.'8
Adachi Morimune (Yasumori's second son)
and the Shimazu of Southern Kyushu also served as generals, and the
powerful miuchibito Ando and Goda came down from Kamakura to
serve as military officials. It is clear that the Hojo main line was
attempting, as before, to consolidate its control. Overall, we can surmise
that the proportionate growth in size was much greater for the
combined Yuan armies than for the Japanese force.
On the third day of the fifth month of 1281, the Eastern Route
Division left Koryo and by the end of the month attacked Tsushima
and Iki. The original plan had called for the Eastern Route Division to
meet the Chiang-nan Division there on the fifteenth day of the sixth
month. But in violation of this agreement, the Eastern Route Division
moved on toward Hakata Bay early in the sixth month, though owing
to the stone walls, it was unable to land and thus occupied Shiga Island
instead.
The Japanese army did not hesitate tc pursue this fleet that was
stationed just off the coastline. By using small boats or running up
the causeway connecting the island to tit.2 mainland, the Japanese
mounted an offensive. Takezaki Suenaga was again present and
fought at the forefront of the Higo Province army, and his meritori-
18 No extant record reveals the size of the Japanese army in 1281. However, we can identify the
names of most warriors who received awards from some seven surviving award listings.
During the third granting session alone, Kanazaki estate in Hizen was the site of awards to
more than four hundred warriors, a figure that already exceeds by a factor of three the
number of known rewards in the Bun'ei war.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 147
ous deeds were recognized by his commander, Adachi Morimune.
Before the middle of the sixth month, the Yuan force abandoned
Shiga Island and retreated to Iki. The Japanese army chased them,
and thus the fighting continued.
In the meantime, because of the death of the Chiang-nan Division's
commanding general, it was not able to leave Ningpo until the middle
of the sixth month. The plan to merge with the Eastern Route Division
was redirected from Iki to Hirado. In the seventh month the two
divisions met, and from Hirado they headed toward their original
destination, Hakata Bay. By the end of the seventh month, they had
arrived at Takashima Island near Hizen Province where they confronted
the Japanese army.
But just before the Yiian-Koryo force was about to launch its final
offensive, a devastating storm hit the bay on the night of the thirtieth
day of the seventh month. The generals of the Yuan army commandeered
the remaining ships in order to return to Koryo, leaving large
numbers of stranded soldiers to the mercy of the Japanese. Takezaki
Suenaga took part in this phase of the fighting, and the record he
commissioned testifies to his gallantry.
In the second Yuan expedition against Japan, the Mongol army lost
69 to 90 percent of its men, a total of more than 100,000 dead. Japan's
success was attributed once again to the intercession of the gods.
During the crisis, the bakufu continued to strengthen its authority. It
received permission from the court to collect a commissariat tax from
the public and private estates of Kyushu and the San'in provinces of
western Honshu. Moreover, on the ninth day of the intercalary seventh
month, the bakufu requested imperial approval to the conscript
warriors from nonbakufu lands. Because the news concerning the
Mongol retreat reached Kyoto at precisely the same time, this latter
request was not immediately granted. However, the bakufu continued
to press the emperor on the point, and on the twentieth day, an imperial
edict was issued granting the bakufu this new authority. Interestingly,
however, the edict was dated the ninth day, instead of the twentieth
day, in order to legitimize the bakufu's purported need to expand
its control in the name of national security.
Immediately following the defeat of the Yuan-Koryo army,
Kamakura revived its earlier plan to attack Koryo. The plan stipulated
that either the Muto or the Otomo would lead a fighting force of
gokenin from three northern Kyushu provinces as well as akuto from
the Yamato and Yamashiro provinces. Extant records do not disclose
how far this interesting strategy was pursued, but there is no evidence
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I48 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
of a counterinvasion. In fact, Japan itself remained under the threat of
attack,19
and as a result, additional Hojo were dispatched as shugo to
Kyushu and the Sanyo areas. The gokenin of Kyushu, however, were
prohibited to travel to Kyoto and Kamakura without the bakufu's
authorization. Moreover, the vassals of Kyushu were expected to continue
to serve regular defense duty, which now included three to four
months of guard service in Kyushu or Nagato, the construction and
repair of stone walls, and the contribution of military supplies such as
arrows, spears, and flags. These responsibilities now fell on all warriors
from Kyushu and not merely the gokenin. Some shoen proprietors
apparently resisted this change, for in 1286 the bakufu decreed that in
the event of noncompliance, Kamakura would appoint a jito to the
offending estate.
JAPAN AFTER THE MONGOL WARS
The bakufu in the postcrisis period
The years immediately following the second Mongol attack were characterized
by innovative regulations, judicial reform, and increasingly
intense factional conflicts. In 1284, the regent Hojo Tokimune died
suddenly at age thirty-four and was succeeded by his fourteen-year-old
heir, Hojo Sakatoki. The new regent's advisers immediately enacted
changes by issuing new codes and restructuring the judicial organ. In
the fifth month of 1284, the bakufu issued a thirty-eight-article "new
formulary" (shin shikimoku) and then followed this collection of behavioral
standards with eighty specific regulations based on these codes.
The new legislation dealt with a wide range of concerns. For example,
the shogun was to observe propriety and frugality in all aspects of
his life and to devote himself to proper learning. The shogun's lands
(the kanto goryo) were to be supervised more tightly, and the country's
official provincial shrines and temples (ichinomiya and kokubunji) were
to be protected, promoted, and repaired. In Kyushu, not only
ichinomiya but all shrines received special attention; for instance,
shrine land that has been pawned was to be returned to the shrine at
19 In 1283, Kublai established the Office for Advancing East and, at the same time, sent another
envoy to Japan who unfortunately encountered a storm and was forced to return to China.
After suppressing a rebellion in the Chiang-nan area, Kublai dispatched another envoy in
1284 who got only as far as Tsushima before he was killed. Further plans for an advance
against Japan were complicated as the Mongol Empire became increasingly embroiled in
domestic rebellions. Kublai's death in 1294 ended further expeditionary attempts. Nevertheless,
Japan did not abandon its defense measures until the end of the Kamakura era.
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JAPAN AFTER THE MONGOL WARS 149
no cost, as an expression of gratitude for the prayers that had been said
at the time of the Mongol invasions.
Land rewards were to be granted to those Kyushu shoen officers
and smaller holders (myoshu) who, despite their service during the
wars, had not yet received compensation. The regulation further
stipulated that land that had been sold or pawned be returned to
them without penalty. To implement this provision, the bakufu dispatched
a special envoy of three hikitsuke magistrates to Kyushu.
These officials were called tokusei no ontsukai (agents of virtuous rule)
and were viewed as the administrators of a rescue mission. There is
evidence that around the same time, gokenin outside Kyushu were
given similar protection.20
These tokusei measures of 1284 were considerably
more inclusive than the one issued in 1273, which guaranteed
only pawned property.
With respect to the akuto, the bakufu dispatched special agents to
suppress their activities in the Kinai and neighboring provinces.
These agents were to cooperate with local shugo in maintaining peace
and order in especially troubled areas.
Nevertheless, in 1284 the bakufu focused primarily on consolidating
its rule in Kyushu. Until the 1260s, the powerful shugo families
of Muto and Otomo had jointly held the title of Chinzei bugyo. But
under the changed circumstance of the invasion era, it was now
deemed necessary to establish an autonomous judicial authority in
Kyushu to prevent local gokenin from traveling to Kyoto or Kamakura
to file lawsuits. Thus, the three tokusei agents, together with the
Muto and Otomo families and Adachi Morimune, came to form a
three-unit judicial structure in which each unit was responsible for
judging cases from three provinces each. This court was housed in a
building in Hakata,21
and this office served as the governmental organ
responsible for enforcing tokusei measures as well as delivering
judicial decisions.
The judicial system of Kamakura was also reformed in this year. In
the eighth month, the bakufu issued an eleven-article code that enjoined
the hikitsu-keshu and its magistrates to carry out their jobs faithfully
and attempted to remove the influence of powerful persons in
judicial decision making. Interestingly, much consideration was given
to poor gokenin who needed to be rescued by the courts. There were
some procedural changes as well. Previously, the hikitsuke official who
20 Kasamatsu Hiroshi, Nihon chusei-ho shiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1979, p. 104.
21 Sato Shin'ichi, Kamakura bakufu sosho seido no kenkyu (Tokyo: Meguro shocen, 1946), pp.
287-91.
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150 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
was assigned a suit drafted two or three alternative verdicts that were
then presented to the hydjoshu for thefinaldecision. But under the new
procedure, only a single verdict was forwarded to the hydjoshu, and the
authority of the hikitsuke was dramatically increased.22
Adachi Yasumori, the maternal grandfather of the young regent
Sadatoki was influential in promoting these reforms. Since his initial
appointment to the post of appeals magistrate (osso bugyo) after
Tokiyori's death, he had consistently sought to maintain the support of
the gokenin through efficient administration of the judicial system.23
Moreover, although the Adachi family had built a strong power base
by acting in concert with the Hojo, they had always stressed as well
their continuing close, ties with the shogun.24
In opposition to
Yasumori and his followers was a group represented by Taira
Yoritsuna, who was a partisan of both the tokuso and the miuchibito.
Before his death, it had been the regent Tokimune who acted as the
arbiter between these two contending groups, but after the accession
of the youthful Sadatoki in 1284, conditions deteriorated rapidly.
The Shimotsuki incident: the fell of Adachi Yasumori
In the eleventh month of 1285, Taira Yoritsuna suddenly attacked
Adachi Yasumori and his followers, claiming to have been ordered to
do so by the regent. For half a day a fierce battle was fought in
Kamakura, but Yasumori and his followers were surprised in the attack
and were soon killed. Because this disturbance occurred in the
month of the "frosty moon," a contemporary record referred to it as
the "Shimotsuki" incident. The events leading up to the incident are
not clear, but according to one theory, Adachi Munekage, Yasumori's
heir, was accused of plotting to usurp the shogun's seat on the pretext
that his ancestor Kagemori was actually a son of Yoritomo. In view of
the traditionally close ties between the Adachi and the Minamoto
families, Munekage's decision to change his surname to Minamoto
cannot by itself be interpreted as masking some ulterior motive. It is
22 Sato Shin'ichi stresses this point in ibid., pp. 69-76.
23 Yasumori was not only the most remarkable political figure of his era; he was also a learned
scholar of the Confucian classics and of Buddhism. For a biographical sketch, see Taga
Munehaya, "Akita J6-no-suke Adachi Yasomuri," in Taga Munehaya, Kamakura jidai no
shiso to bunka (Tokyo: Meguro shoten, 1946), pp. 247-79.
24 The sister of Yasumori's grandfather Kagemori was the wife of Yoritomo's younger brother
Noriyori. Kagemori took Buddhist vows after the death of Sanetomo, the third shogun, and
Yasumori himself was highly, regarded by Sanetomo's widow. On one occasion, Yasumori
found a sword named Higekirimaru that had been left by Yoritomo in Kyoto, and he respectfully
returned it to Kamakura.
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JAPAN AFTER THE MONGOL WARS 151
safer to assume that the confrontation between Yasumori and Yoritsuna
had simply attained a level at which an armed struggle could no
longer be avoided.
The impact of this incident was deep and long lasting. According to
extant documents, more than fifty men committed suicide after the
incident. Among these were various members of the Adachi family
and a branch line, the Osone, as well as warriors from other influential
houses.25
The sources also tell of many gokenin from the Musashi and
Kozuke provinces committing suicide and one entry in the record
mentions as many as five hundred victims. But the latter were probably
attacked on suspicion of partisanship with Yasumori.
It is understandable that many Kozuke gokenin should have died
along with Yasumori, who held the fourth generation shugo post there.
However, the large number of deaths in Musashi, with which the
Adachi had no prior association, deserves special attention. Musashi
Province had long contained several small-scale warrior bands, which
leads us to conclude that Yasumori enjoyed a strong following among
houses of this size. Moreover, Yasumori's ties with those close to the
shogun can be surmised from the suicide of Fujiwara Sukenori, a
courtier in service to the shogun. Thus, by identifying the dead we can
help clarify the overall network of support. Yasumori's partisans consisted
mostly of small-scale gokenin and those close to the shogun.
Some men who had been on Yasumori's side escaped death but lost
political power. A well-known example here is Yasumori's daughter's
husband, Kanazawa Akitoki, a member of a branch of the Hojo. He
had been serving as head of the fourth hikitsuke unit and held the
third-ranking position in the hyojoshu. Accused of complicity, Akitoki
was removed from his positions and exiled to Shimosa. The day before
his exile, he sent a letter to a monk of the Shomyoji, a temple that
might be called the Kanazawa clan temple. He stated, "For the last
decade or so, since 1269, I have lived as though stepping on thin
ice."26
This statement vividly conveys the degree of insecurity at the
center of the bakufu's political structure. Others who fell from power
included Utsunomiya Kagetsuna and Oe Tokihide, both members of
the hyojoshu and the husbands of Yasumori sisters. Indeed, we can
25 Kanagama ken shi, shiryo hen vol. 2, nos. 1016-20. For example, the Ogasawara, the maternal
line of Yasumori, lost its chieftain (soryo) and several others. Other suicides and persons
disgraced included the powerful Sagatni family of Miura; the Ito of Izu; the Kira, a branch
family of the Ashikaga; Nikaido Yukikage, a hikitsuke member and the hereditary holder of
the mandokoro shitsuji post; Muto Kageyasu, another hikitsuke; the Hatta, shugo of Hitachi;
and the Oe, Kobayakawa, Amano, Iga and others. Many of these were famous gokenin.
26 Kanagawa ken shi, shiryo hen vol. 2, no. 1023.
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152 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
gauge the extent of Yasumori's influence by noting that five out of
sixteen hydjoshu members and seven out of thirteen hikitsuke elected to
join with the Adachi.27
The repercussions from this incident were felt throughout Japan. In
Hakata, the second son of Yasumori, Adachi Morimune, who had
replaced his father as the deputy shugo of Higo, was murdered. Also,
in the scattered provinces of Hitachi, Totomi, Shinano, and Harima,
Yasumori's sympathizers were killed. Not long after, Muto Kagesuke,
the commander who had led Takezaki Suenaga, rebelled at Iwato
Castle in Chikunzen, which had been built as a fortress against the
Mongols. The Muto, along with many warriors from northern
Kyushu, were defeated in the battle of Iwato.28
Autocratic rule by Taira Yoritsuna, a miuchibito representative
The immediate outcome of the Shimotsuki incident was the concentration
of political power in the hands of Taira Yoritsuna, the leader of the
miuchibito. A courtier's diary described the situation: "Yoritsuna alone
holds power and all live in fear."29
Yoritsuna himself was said to be a
great-grandson of Taira Morikuni who had served Kiyomori during
the latter's period of ascendancy. At the time of the Taira defeat,
Morikuni was taken to Kamakura as a hostage and placed in the
custody of the Miura. Subsequently, Yoritsuna's father, Moritsuna,
served Hojo Yasutoki and wielded significant power as manager of the
Hojo household. Yoritsuna rose by serving Hojo Tokimune, and his
wife was the wet nurse to Tokimune's son Sadatoki. Yoritsuna thus
held all the requisite qualifications to be the head miuchibito.
Who were these miuchibito?*0
From the time of Hojo Yasutoki, the
notable miuchibito houses were the Bito, Ando, Suwa, Nanjo, and
Seki. Their residences were located inside Yasutoki's mansion. The
families themselves came mostly from outside the east and were originally
incorporated into the Hojo household during the early thirteenth
27 Taga Munehaya was the first to focus on the Shimotsuki incident and analyze it in detail. See
"Hojo shikken seiji no igi," in his Kamakura jidai no shiso to bunka, pp. 288-320. Sato
Shin'ichi clarified the incident's historical significance in his Kamakura bakufu sosho seido no
kenkyu, pp. 76-78, 96-97. Also see Ishii Susumu, "Shimotsuki sodo oboegaki," in
Kanagawa ken sin dayori, shiryo hen vol. 2 (Yokohama: Kanagawa ken, 1973), pp, 1-4.
28 For a detailed study of this battle, see Kawazoe Shoji, "Iwato gassen saihen - Chinzei ni
okeru tokuso shihai no kyoka to Muto shi," in Mori Katsumi hakase koki kinen kai, ed.,
Taigai kankei to seiji bunka, vol. 2 of Shigaku ronshu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1974),
pp. 217-49. 29 "Sanemi kyoki," 1293/4/26.
30 The classic study of miuchibito appears in Sato, Kamakura bakufu sosho seido no kenkyu, pp.
104-21.
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JAPAN AFTER THE MONGOL WARS I53
century.31
Later, a new group of eastern miuchibito appeared with base
lands in areas once held by shogunal gokenin.
This new group of eastern miuchibito included the Kudo, Onozawa,
Soga, Shibuya, Uji, Shiaku, Aihara, and Homma, among others. The
function of these private vassals centered on the management of lands
held by the tokuso or lands controlled by other Hojo who were shugo.
In addition, the miuchibito exercised certain administrative duties in
Kamakura, for instance, overseeing the paperwork for the Hojo's
growing portfolio of holdings.
As a category, miuchibito differed from gokenin in several significant
ways, as the case of Ando Rensho shows.32
Rensho was born at the end
of Yasutoki's tenure as regent, and he died in 1329, shortly before the
fall of the bakufu. He was a near contemporary of Taira Yoritsuna.
One of Rensho's special achievements was his patronage of the
Kumedadera, a temple in Izumi Province, where his portrait still
hangs. Rensho is credited with reviving the temple in 1277, by commending
to it three plots of land in Izumi and another in Tajima. With
other temples, however, Rensho's activities led to trouble. His inability
to collect a loan he had made to a priest of the Ninnaji caused him
to seek the assistance of a usurer-monk of the Enryakuji, who in turn
attempted to seize certain rents in default of the loan. The affected
chapel in Ninnaji brought a suit against Rensho with the bakufu.
In his service to the Hojo, Rensho held administrative posts in the
Tada-in estate of Settsu Province and in three other shoen, all belonging
to the tokuso. He also held the deputy shugo post for Settsu. As it
happened, two of the three shoen under his administrative control
bordered Osaka Bay and probably functioned as ports. The port of
Fukudomari in Harima Province was constructed in large part by
expenditures borne by Rensho alone. The project required more than
fifteen years of labor and cash running into the several hundreds of
kan. Ultimately, Fukudomari developed into a port that was as significant
as the older harbor town of Hyogo in Settsu was. For his part,
Rensho collected high rents and dallied in commerce.
Ando Rensho, therefore, was not simply a man of arms but was also
a crafty entrepreneur deeply involved in transportation and usury.
31 Like Taira Moritsuna, the Seki were descended from Taira Morikuni. The Bito came from a
family that had lost its holdings at the time of the Gempei War and sought refuge with
Yoritomo in Kamakura. The Suwa were Shinto priests from a shrine of the same name in
Shinano Province. The only prominent miuchibito house originally from the east appears to
have been the Nanjo.
32 A number of articles describe Ando Rensho and his activities. For a concise description, see
Amino, Moko skurai, pp. 115-16, 296-300.
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154 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Other members of the Ando clan managed additional tokuso holdings
along the Inland Sea, in Kyushu, and in northern Tohoku (the
Tsugaru peninsula). Members of the Ando family in Tsugaru served as
deputies for Ezo (Ezo daikan) from the time of Hojo Yoshitoki and also
controlled the premier northern seaport, Tosa, in the same area. Other
port towns from Tosa south through Wakasa to Kyoto were likewise
controlled by the Hojo.33
The leader of the miuchibito, Taira Yoritsuna, occupied the dominant
position in the bakufu in the post-Shimotsuki era. He encountered
many problems, however, the greatest of which was winning the
trust and support of the disaffected gokenin class. Instrumental to this
effort was the distribution of the post-Mongol reward lands. The reward
program began in 1286 when some twenty-five Kyushu warriors
(including shugo and members of the Hojo house) were chosen as the
first recipients, with the shogun personally administering the operation.
Lists of names and rewards were sent down to the Otomo and
Muto, but processing them proved complicated, and there was a delay
of two years. The rewards themselves were of three sizes - paddy
grants of ten, five, and three cho, along with proportional awards of
residence areas and dry fields.
To solve the problem of land shortages, the bakufu adopted several
measures: It utilized a share of the shogun's personal holdings (called
kanto goryo); it confiscated the landed interests of some shoen proprietors;
and it exchanged lands outside Kyushu for those located within.
Another source of rewards was land confiscated from warriors implicated
in the Shimotsuki incident. Because it was the bakufu's policy to
confine the grant program to Kyushu, a major shift resulted in the
pattern of landholding there. Unfortunately, small-scale warriors were
helped little. The greatest tracts of land went either to the Hojo or to
warriors who .supported them. It is even possible that for most reward
lands, the Hojo came to hold a superior authority for holdings distributed
at a lower level to gokenin.
Under Yoritsuna, offices in the bakufu tended to go to persons
friendly to the Hojo, and policymaking was similarly compromised.
Thus the tokusei measures of 1284, which were aimed at rescuing
shrines, shoen officials, and myoshu (shoen cultivators) in Kyushu,
were, in effect, nullified when another order was issued to return
33 A flag with the Hojo family emblem that survives from 1272 authorized free passage for ships
passing through Tagarasu Bay in Wakasa. Another record from 1306 shows that twenty large
ships from the Tsugaru area carried the bakufu's authorization to enter the port of Mikuni in
Echizen Province, loaded with salmon and kimono.
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JAPAN AFTER THE MONGOL WARS I55
conditions to their pre-1284 status. The bakufu also replaced the system
of justice by the three tokusei agents in Hakata with a new office,
the Chinzei dangijo, in 1285. This office, staffed by the Muto and
Otomo families, Utsunomiya Songaku, and Shibuya Shigesato, was to
function as the new central judicial and administrative organ for the
entire Kyushu region. Even though the latter two were gokenin, their
interests were evidently closely tied with those of the tokuso.34
At any
rate, the Chinzei dangijo was established as a judicial center in Hakata
that could handle land-related disputes and criminal cases.
These structural reforms were accompanied by the appointment of
miuchibito to an ever-increasing number of key positions within the
bakufu. For instance, in 1291, two miuchibito received supervisory
posts in the Chinzei dangijo; whereas several other miuchibito, from the
hikitsuke, were given responsibility for justice pertaining to temples,
shrines, and courtier landowners. Five powerful Hojo vassals, including
two of Yoritsuna's own sons, came to function in the hikitsuke.
Tokuso autocracy
Yoritsuna's leadership, however, proved in the end to be ephemeral.
In the fourth month of 1293, less than ten years after his rise, he was
accused of attempting to advance his son Sukemune to the position of
shogun, and so he was killed along with more than ninety of his
sympathizers by forces of the regent Sadatoki. This incident, called
the Heizen-Gate disturbance after the gate at which the armed conflict
took place, ended Yoritsuna's era and ushered in a period of tokuso rule
by the then-twenty-four-year-old Sadatoki.
Within a month's time, Sadatoki had collected oaths from the membership
of the hydjoshu, hikitsukeshu, and bugyonin corps. In particular,
the last were required to swear that they would not take bribes. Overall,
Sadatoki's aim was to assist struggling gokenin and to extend favor
to honest persons. He thus reconfirmed as vassals those warriors
whose great-grandfathers had been recognized as such, irrespective of
the present condition of their holdings. In other words, gokenin were
theoretically secured in that status even if they had pawned or sold
lands granted to them by the bakufu.
Contemporary records also called these new measures tokusei measures,
suggesting an awareness of their similarities to the 1284 policy
34 Utsunomiya Songaku came to serve as the deputy shugo of Higo Province under a tokuso-he\d
shugo post. Also, various members of the Shibuya came to be recognized as miuchibito.
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156 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
changes of Adachi Yasumori. There was even a restoration to favor of
some of Yasumori's sympathizers. For example, the previously disgraced
Nagai Munehide was appointed as an appeals magistrate (osso
bugyo) along with Hojo Munenobu. Moreover, in the tenth month,
Sadatoki abolished the hikitsuke organ and created a system of six "reporters"
(shisso) in its place, assigning three Hojo who were previously
hikitsuke unit leaders, Utsunomiya Kagetsuna, Kanazawa Akitoki, and
Hojo Munenobu, who doubled as osso bugyo.35
In addition Settsu Chikamune,
who had been head (shitsuji) of the monchujo since the end of
1285, was replaced by Miyoshi Tokitsura, another ofYasumori's sympathizers.
Finally, the mandokoro leadership was shifted from Nikaido Yukisada
to Nikaido Yukifuji, who had similarly been close to Yasumori.36
This revival of Yasumori's sympathizers, however, proved to be
superficial. The new post of shisso, for example, was wholly subservient
to Sadatoki, with responsibilities limited to the submission of
details or reference materials with bearing on cases being litigated. By
contrast, the former hikitsuke unit heads had had much greater freedom
of action under Yasumori's reform measures.
In 1294, Sadatoki decreed that no further awards or punishments
would be imposed for participation in the Shimotsuki incident. To
Sadatoki, then, the prior affiliation of warriors was less important than
their current absolute submission to him. In this year also, he extended
the face-to-face confrontation procedure to cover a larger number
of suits. Moreover, in the tenth month of 1294 he revived the
hikitsuke but retained the power to issue independent judgments.37
He
did make one important concession, however, by recognizing second
hearings for cases that he himself had judged, a reversal of his prior
position on the subject.
Despite Sadatoki's efforts to eliminate factional strife within the
bakufu, pressures continued to mount from the miuchibito collectively
and from the more disadvantaged members of the gokenin class. A
diary written by Miyoshi Tokitsura in 1295, the Einin sannen ki,i8
35 Both Kagetsuna and Akitoki were at one time supporters of Yasumori.
36 For further details, see Ishii Susumu, "Takezaki Suenaga ekotoba no seiritsu," Nihon rekishi,
no. 273 (1971): 12-32. The year 1293 was also when Takezaki Suenaga, another supporter of
Yasumori, began to promote his plan of producing 3 scroll that depicted his own military
valor. The timing of this effort following the Heisen-gate disturbance could hardly have been
mere coincidence.
37 The Kamakura nendai ki dates the revival of the hikitsuke as 1295, and many historians have
adopted this. However, the correct date is 1294/10, as first pointed out by Sato Shin'ichi, in
"Kamakura bakufu seiji no senseika ni tsuite," pp. 121-22.
38 As noted, Miyoshi Tokitsura was monchujo shitsuji. The text was published and introduced for
the first time in 1953 by Kawazoe Hiroshi, "Einin san'nen ki kosho," Shicho 50 (January
1953): 33—51. It also appears in Takeuchi, ed., Zoku shiryo laisei, vol. 10.
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JAPAN AFTER THE MONGOL WARS I57
describes this strife through the following incident: a report by a
miuchibito of blunders committed by the hydjoshu led to Sadatoki's
punishment of his own vassals rather than the perpetrators of the
error. Although it can be argued that the tokuso's ultimate aim was to
alleviate the suffering of the gokenin class, his policies also characteristically
promoted his own autocratic rule. This ambiguity is best illustrated
by the famous tokusei edict of 1297, which stipulated (1) abolition
of the appeal suit system (osso), (2) prohibition of further pawning
or sale of gokenin property and a guaranteed return of previously sold
property to the original owner at no cost,39
and (3) refusal by the
bakufu to accept any litigation involving the collection of loans, in
order to curtail excessive usury practices.
The second and third items represented a bold remedial measure for
financial depressed gokenin, going one step beyond Yasumori's tokusei
edict. Responding to these regulations, gokenin from many regions
demanded the reform of their surrendered lands, and the bakufu regularly
supported their claims.40
The first item, however, was more
clearly a device to enhance Sadatoki's rule, for it overturned his authorization
of three years earlier confirming the right to appeal. The
1297 tokusei edict, at any rate, is symbolic of the ambiguity that characterized
this period.41
These policies, in fact, remained highly fluid. In the following year,
the system of appeal was once again revived, and litigation bearing on
the collection of loans was recognized as a legitimate cause for complaint.
Only the measure guaranteeing the return of previously
pawned or sold gokenin land was maintained.
The appeal system underwent further changes. In 1300, two years
after its revival, the appeal magistrate's office (osso bugyo) was abolished,
and instead five miuchibito took over that responsibility. Here
was an attempt to maintain the appeal system itself while concentrating
authority in the hands of the tokuso.42
One year later, however, the
osso bugyo was reinstituted, a testimony to the difficulties that Sadatoki
encountered in seeking to consolidate his rule.
However imperfect this "autocracy," the bakufu under Sadatoki
39 Except for land already possessed for twenty years or more.
40 For a more detailed study of this tokusei edict, see Miura Hiroyuki, "Tokusei no kenkyu," in
Miura Hiroyuki, Hoseishi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1919), pp. 767-835.
41 See Kasamatsu Hiroshi, "Einin tokusei to osso," in Kasamatsu, Nihon chusei-ho shiron, pp.
103-21.
42 According to Kasamatsu, the miuchibito decided whether a case warranted reexamination, but
the actual review was carried out by the hikitsuke. In other words, the miuchibito did not
handle the entire osso process themselves.
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158 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
was experiencing its most complete domination to date. In 1285, immediately
after the Shimotsuki incident, Hojo house members controlled
twenty-nine of the country's sixty-eight shugo posts, whereas other
families held twenty-two. Five provinces had no shugo, and the identity
of shugo in the twelve remaining provinces is unknown. At any
rate, more than half of the known shugo posts were held by the Hojo.
By 1333, that family held thirty-six shugo titles; other families held
twenty-one; five provinces had no shugo; and the figures for six provinces
are unknown.43
The provinces in which the Hojo held their titles
were widely distributed.
Not all the jito posts held by the Hojo have been identified by
historians,44
but most seem to have been concentrated in the Tohoku
region, the eastern part of the Tokaido (especially Izu and Suruga),
and Kyushu. In Kyushu at least sixtyjito posts constituting 22,000 cho
of paddy land, or about 20 percent of the entire paddy total for
Kyushu, were under Hojo control.45
The overall strength of the Hojo
house derived largely from this ever-expanding portfolio of land.
The akuto
One of the serious problems confronting the bakufu in the late thirteenth
century was the rise of the akuto. Shoen were increasingly requesting
Kamakura to suppress this banditry, and in 1296, proprietors,
the bakufu ordered the shugo to construct policing stations on all
major roads and to employ gokenin in the growing suppression effort.
In 1300, the bakufu dispatched a powerful warrior to each of the
provinces of Kyushu, to help the shugo maintain the peace. In 1301, to
control the pirates, all ships in Kyushu were required to display the
name of the shipowner and the port of registry. In 1303, night attacks
and piracy, which had previously been punishable by exile, were redefined
as crimes punishable by death. Thieves, gamblers, and arsonists
were also to receive stricter punishments.
The bakufu's akuto control measures did not yield quick results. In
1308, for example, Kono Michiari, a magnate from Iyo Province posted
43 These statistics are based largely on Sato Shin'ichi, Zoho Kamakura bakufu shugo seido no
kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1971). I have made some minor adjustments.
44 There is currently much local study being done on the landholding patterns of the Hojo. The
most comprehensive study is by Okutomi Takayuki, Kamakura Hojoshi no kisoteki kenkyu
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1980), especially the section entitled "Hojoshi shoryo
gairyaku ichiran," pp. 258-78.
45 These figures represent an update of my "Kyushu shokoku ni okeru Hojoshi shoryo no
kenkyu," in Takeuchi Rizo hakase kanreki kinenkai, ed., Shoensei to buke shakai (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1969), pp. 331-93.
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JAPAN AFTER THE MONGOL WARS 159
to Kyushu, was ordered home to assist in the effort to control pirates in
the bays of western Japan and especially in Kumano. A year later,
warriors from as many as fifteen provinces were mobilized to fight
against these same Kumano pirates.46
On another occasion, in 1301,
five akutc from Yamato Province refused to submit to the bakufu's
conscription order, thereby forcing the bakufu to call out gokenin from
Kyoto and seven other provinces to attack their fortifications.47
Kamakura's increasing reliance on the use of military force came to
be reflected in its criminal codes. For example, in 1310, karita rozeki
(the pilfering of harvests from property in dispute at court), which had
frequently been treated as a land-related issue, was placed under the
jurisdiction of the criminal courts. Similarly, in 1315, roji rozeki (the
theft of movables as payment for uncollected debts) was also placed
under criminal jurisdiction, also a departure from past practice.
Sadatoki continued to attend hydjoshu meetings and maintained his
role as the central figure of the bakufu, even after taking Buddhist
vows in 1301. His tenure as tokuso, however, was beset with internal
rivalries. For example, Hojo Munekata, a member of the tokuso line
and a cousin of Sadatoki, placed himself in the same functional category
as the miuchibito, in disregard of his family background, and
attempted to steal political power by assuming the position of uchi
kanrei, an officer of the samurai-dokoro. In 1305, Munekata murdered
his rival, Hojo Tokimura, who was cosigner (rensho) at the time. Soon
thereafter, Munekata himself was killed by a conspirator. This "FifthMonth
disturbance," named after the month of Munekata's death,
reveals that even Sadatoki was not able to eliminate the factional disputes
among members of the Hojo. When Sadatoki died, at the age of
forty-one in 1311, a contemporary remembered him in his later years
as a tired politician but also as a man who had decreed innumerable
death sentences.
During Sadatoki's leadership, the bakufu continued to prepare for a
Mongol invasion by consolidating its Kyushu region's administrative
and judicial organs. In 1292, at the end of the Taira Yoritsuna period,
two sets of communications arrived from China: a document from a
Yuan official entrusted to a Japanese merchant ship and a messenger
from Koryo carrying an order from Kublai Khan. Interpreting these
messages as premonitory signs of another invasion, the bakufu urgently
dispatched Hojo Kanetoki, a cousin of Sadatoki and a
46 Amino Yoshihiko, "Kamakura bakufu no kaizoku kin'atsu ni tsuite - Kamakura makki no
kaijo keigo o chushin ni," Nihon rekishi, no. 299 (April 1973): 1-20.
47 "Kofukuji ryaku nendaiki," in Zoku gunsho ruiju, no. 29, ge, p. 172.
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l6o THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Rokuhara tandai, and Nagoe Tokiie, another Hojo member, to
Hakata. These two men were granted the authority to judge court
cases as well as to command military forces. To facilitate the exercise of
their authority, the bakufu established the Chinzei sobugyo sho in 1293.
Scholars differ as to whether this agency should be regarded as the de
facto beginnings of the Kyushu deputyship (Chinzei tandai).48
Kanetoki and Tokiie returned to Kamakura in 1294. Then
Kanazawa Sanemasa, who had been shugo of both Nagato and Suo
provinces, was delegated to Hakata to judge gokenin suits in Kyushu.
This transition marked the final step toward full establishment of the
Chinzei tandai, a powerful political organ in Hakata that administered
defense measures against external attack and executed judicial decisions
for the entire Kyushu region. Although the scale of the office
was smaller than those of the main headquarters in Kamakura or of
the Rokuhara tandai, the judicial structure of the Chinzei tandai came
to be equipped with the same lower-level accoutrements, such as a
hydjoshu, hikilsukeshu, and bugyonin.
Parallel to this development was the strengthening of shugo authority
in Suo and Nagato provinces on the western extremity of Honshu.
The shugo in those provinces, who were Hojo, were granted more
extensive authority than that enjoyed by other shugo and were sometimes
referred to as the Nagato and Suo tandai.
The Chinzei tandai administered the defense service rotation (ikoku
keigo banyaku). From 1304, the provinces of Kyushu were divided into
a total offiveunits, with service for each based on one-year tours. This
change from the previous mode of duty was implemented in hopes of
lightening the service burden, and this system continued until the end
of the Kamakura period.
THE FALL OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Conflicts in the court
Although Tokuso Sadatoki's high-handedness contributed to the general
malaise of the late Kamakura era, the more immediate cause for
48 Two contrasting theories regarding the establishment of the Chinzei tandai are represented by
Seno Seiichiro in Chinzei gokenin no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1975), pp. 391-2;
and Sato, Kamakura bakufu sosho seido no kenkyu, pp. 304-11. Seno argues that because the
power of Kanetoki and Tokiie did not include a definitive authority to issue decisions, the
Chinzei tandai as such did not yet exist. Sato, on the other hand, advances the notion that
even without this definitive authority, the possession of adjudicative powers themselves was
tantamount to the beginnings of the Chinzei tandai.
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THE FALL OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU l6l
the bakufu's demise was the instability at court.49
In the second month
of 1272, immediately after the elimination of the anti-tokuso elements
in Kamakura, the retired emperor Gosaga died. He (r. 1242-6) had
been enthroned at the pleasure of the bakufu and, after a brief reign,
had ruled as ex-sovereign for almost thirty years. During this period,
the bakufu was dominated by the regents Tokiyori and Tokimune, and
court-bakufu relations remained relatively peaceful. The appointment
of Gosaga's own son, Prince Munetaka, as shogun in 1252 reflected
this absence of tension.
In policymaking as well, there was substantial cooperation between
the two capitals. As early as 1246, Gosaga had complied with the
bakufu's demand for a general administrative restructuring that included
the expulsion of the influential Kujo Michiie. The reforms
adopted followed the Kamakura model. Thus, five nobles came to
staff a hydjoshu, which served as the highest-ranking organ at court.
Two nobles of ability were appointed as "liaison officials" (denso), each
of whom attended to court business on alternative days. They had the
power to decide on daily political matters but were to defer important
decisions to the discretion of the Kyoto hydjoshu. Matters concerning
court-bakufu relations fell under the authority of the kanto moshitsugi,
to which Saionji Saneuji was appointed, replacing the discredited
Kujo Michiie. From this time on, the office became a hereditary position
within the Saionji family. Reforms initiated by Gosaga set a standard
for future retired emperors, and his tenure was known later as
the "revered period of Gosaga-in."5
° His death thus caused considerable
consternation in both Kyoto and Kamakura.
The first of many problems to develop was the matter of the imperial
succession. In many ways this dispute was of Gosaga's own making.
Before his death he had shown great affection for his second son,
the future emperor Kameyama (r. 1259-74), and had arranged for him
to succeed his eldest son, the emperor Gofukakusa (r. 1246-59).
Gosaga, moreover, indicated his desire to perpetuate the line of
49 Some of the more prominent works describing conditions at court are the following: Miura
Hiroyuki, "Kamakura jikai no chobaku kankei," in Nihonshi no kenkyu, vol. i (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1906, 1981), pp. 14-115; Miura Hiroyuki, "Ryoto mondai no ichi haran,"
in Nihonshi no kenkyu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1930, 1981), pp. 17-36; Yashiro
Kuniharu, "Chokodo-ryo no kenkyu," in Yashiro Kuniharu, ed., Kokushi sosetsu (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1925), pp. 1-115; Nakamura Naokatsu, Nihon shin bunka shi, Yoshino
jidai (Tokyo: Nihon dentsu shuppanbu, 1942), pp. 41-144; and Ryo Susumu, Kamakura
jidai, ge: Kyoto - kizoku seiji no doko to kobu no kosho (Tokyo: Shunshusha, 1957).
50 For this description of Gosaga's government, I have relied greatly on Hashimoto Yoshihiko,
"In no hyojdsei ni tsuite," in Hashimoto Hoshihiko, Heian kizoku shakai no kenkyu (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1976), pp. 59-84.
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162 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Kameyama by naming the latter's son crown prince (the later emperor
Gouda.) Gosaga, however, had failed to designate which of his two
sons (Gofukakusa or Kameyama) should control the succession and
instead deferred this decision to the bakufu. Inasmuch as Gosaga owed
his own enthronement to Kamakura's recommendation, he may have
believed that the bakufu should once again intervene.5
' Instead, however,
Kamakura asked Gosaga's empress about her late husband's true
wish, and in the end Kameyama was chosen. Throughout, the bakufu
had attempted to act prudently rather than to risk conflict by making
an independent selection.
In this way, the young twenty-four-year-old emperor became the
"senior figure" in Kyoto. Although the political center at court was
transferred from a retired emperor to a reigning emperor, the administrative
structure remained virtually unchanged. The hydjoshu, under
Gosaga was renamed the gijoshu, but its function remained the same.
Likewise, both the kanto moshitsugi and the denso continued to operate
as before. At the apex of this system stood the chiten no kimi (supreme
ruler), who could now be either a reigning or a retired emperor. Thus
for the first time since the eleventh century, a sitting emperor
(Kameyama) came to be recognized as dominant over a retired sovereign
(Gofukakusa),52
marking the first in a series of adjustments that
eventually led to Godaigo's Kemmu restoration.
In 1274, the year of the first Mongol attack, Kameyama yielded his
emperorship to his son Gouda.53
Gofukakusa registered clear dissatisfaction
with this and in 1275 announced his intention to take Buddhist
vows. At this point the bakufu suddenly abandoned its earlier indifference
and proposed that Kameyama adopt Gofukakusa's son and name
him as crown prince. We do not know the exact motive behind this
proposition; perhaps Kamakura intended to perpetuate the friction
between the two brothers and thereby attenuate the court's potential
power. Or perhaps it was the doing of Saionji Sanekane (the kanto
moshitsugi) who had close ties with the bakufu. He may have wished to
exploit this friction in order to undermine the Toin, a branch of the
Saionji recently set up by Sanekane's uncle Saneo, who was wielding
much influence through his ties to Kameyama. But the most plausible
51 This sentiment is recorded in "Godai teio monogatari," a historical writing of Emperor
Fushimi. See Yashiro, "Chokodo ryo no kenkyu," pp. 50-52.
52 In 1273, Kameyama issued a twenty-five article edict (the "Shinsei" edict) pronouncing this
change. See Miura Hiroyuki, "Shinsei no kenkyu," Nihonshi no kenyu, vol. I, pp. 614-18.;
and Mitobe Masao, Kuge shinsei no kenkyu (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1961), pp. 232-41.
53 At this point, the new gijoshu organ reverted to a hydjoshu, marking the shift back to a retired
emperor.
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THE FALL OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU 163
reason for this sudden intervention was the increasing need of the
bakufu, confronted by the Mongol threat, to bring Japan as much as
possible under its control. Juggling the imperial succession was just
another weapon aimed at national control.54
Kameyama complied, but in so doing, he was in fact sowing the
seeds of even greater problems. After securing the position of the
prince, the supporters of Gofukakusa then demanded that Kamakura
enthrone this prince as emperor after Gouda's retirement. In the
meantime, perhaps knowing that his own line would not always occupy
the imperial seat, the retired emperor Kameyama energetically
implemented new policies. In the eleventh month of 1285, Kameyama
issued a twenty-article regulation that, for example, prohibited
the transfer of temple and shrine land to other temples and shrines or
to lay people.55
This and other articles marked an important advance
in the development of legal procedures bearing on land transfers and
also marked a radical progress in the formulation of courtier law
(kuge ho).
In the following month, the hyojoshu of the retired emperor made
public a code of behavior prescribing the proper etiquette for inside
and outside the palace. It was called the koan reisetsu and included the
appropriate format for writing documents. The purpose of these various
regulations seems to have been to freeze the hierarchical status
system of the day by legalizing the decorum required of each social
and official level.56
A further reform of Kameyama was to bring courtier justice even
more in line with the Kamakura system.57
Thus in 1286, the hyojoshu
classified its responsibilities as follows: (1) tokusei sata, for which it
met three times a month, to deal with problems relating to religious
matters and official appointments, and (2) zasso sata, for which it met
six times a month, to investigate litigation. Regarding the latter, the
hyojoshu set up a system of face-to-face meetings between litigants in
an office called fudono, at which a judgment might be issued immedi-
54 Murai, "Moko shurai to Chinzei tandai no seiritsu," p. n .
55 This edict appears in printed form in Iwashimizu monjo, no. i, doc. 319. Recently it was
included in Kasamatsu Hiroshi, Sato Shin'ichi, and Momose Kesao, eds., Chusei seiji shakai
shiso, ge vol. 22 of Nikon shiso taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1981), along with notes and its
Japanese reading, see pp. 57-62. As for analysis of the content of this edict, see Kasamatsu
Hiroshi, "Chusei no seiji shakai shiso," in Kasamatsu Hiroshi, Nihon chusei-ho shiron (Tokyo:
Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1977), pp. 178-9.
56 The Koan reisetsu appears in Gunsho ruiju, zatsu bu, no. 27. For its historical significance, see
Kasamatsu, Nihon chusei-ho shiron, pp. 191-2.
57 See Kasamatsu, Nihon chusei-ho shiron, pp. 157-202; also Kasamatsu Hiroshi, "Kamakura
koki no kuge ho ni tsuite," in Kasamatsu et al., eds., Chusei seiji shakai shiso, ge, pp. 401-16.
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164 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
ately. Before this, the fudono had served as a management bureau for
retired emperors' documents, though now it was transformed into a
full-scale judicial organ.58
The Daikakuji andJimyo-in lines: a split in the court
Just as the retired emperor Kameyama was reorganizing his government,
a rumor spread that he was plotting against the bakufu. The
rumor may have originated with the supporters of Gofukakusa at court
or with the bakufu itself which may have feared the ex-emperor's
potential power. At this time, the bakufu was in the hands of the
miuchibito under Taira Yoritsuna. At any rate, in 1287 Kamakura
demanded the enthronement of Gofukakusa's son as the emperor
Fushimi. Although Kameyama pleaded against this, Emperor Gouda
was forced to resign and was replaced by Fushimi (r. 1288-98).
Gofukakusa then took the position of "supreme ruler" in place of
Kameyama. Two years later, at the bakufu's insistence, :he son of
Fushimi was named crown prince. It was in the same year, 1289, that
the shogun, Prince Koreyasu (the son of the former shogun Munetaka,
himself the son of Gosaga), was accused of plotting against the bakufu
and was sent back to Kyoto. "The prince was exiled to Kyoto," people
in Kamakura gossiped. At this point, the thirteen-year-old son of
Gofukakusa, Prince Hisaakira, was made the new shogun.
In both Kyoto and Kamakura, then, the Taira Yoritsuna clique
succeeded in filling the top hierarchy with members of Gofukakusa's
line. The Yoritsuna-Gofukakusa connection was underscored by
Yoritsuna's dispatching of his second son, Iinuma Sukemune, to
Kyoto to receive the new shogun.
Resentment was felt in many corners. Having been stripped of any
real power, Kameyama took Buddhist vows in 1289. For a different
reason, Gofukakusa also took Buddhist vows in the following year and
yielded his political power to emperor Fushimi. At around this time, a
member of a warrior house purged in the Shimotsuki incident attacked
the imperial residence and attempted to murder the emperor.
Kameyama ultimately was blamed for this intrigue, and he was very
nearly confined at Rokuhara, following the example of the Jokyu
disturbance. Only a special plea allowed him to escape this fate.
Unlike his father Gofukakusa, who was a compromiser and follower
of precedents, Fushimi, the new supreme ruler, proved to be an ener-
58 Hashimoto, Heian kizoku shakai no kenkyu, p. 77.
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THE FALL OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU 165
getic reformer.59
In 1292 he issued a thirteen-article code regulating
judicial procedures.60
In 1293 a new appeal system called teichu was
adopted by one of the court's traditional tribunals, the kirokujo. Teichu
proceedings were heard by six courtier judges (shokei), six legal experts
{ben), and sixteen assistants (yoriudo). Shokei and ben were each
organized into six rotating units, and yoriudo into eight rotating units.
Each of these units heard appeal cases in rotation for twenty-eight days
each month.
At the same time, regularized court sessions were held six times a
month to hear new cases. These were attended by three rotating units
of the gijoshu and three other rotating units of ben and yoriudo who
belonged to the kirokujo.61
Fushimi's reforms reflected once again
Kamakura's own judicial system and marked a significant advance in
court judicial practices.
Fushimi's personal position at court did not remain secure, however,
mainly because of a split among those close to him. One of the
courtiers closest to Fushimi was Kyogoku Tamekane. Grandson of the
famous poet Fujiwara Teika, Tamekane was a gifted and innovative
waka poet himself. But this poet had another side. He was notorious as
a narrow-minded, unscrupulous politician with extraordinarily high
self-esteem.62
He was resented for having managed to become the
husband of the wet nurse to the emperors Fushimi and Hanazono, a
position of great influence at court. Among Tamekane's enemies, the
most significant was Saionji Sanekane, the kanto moshitsugi. To undermine
Tamekane, Sanekane withdrew from Emperor Fushimi and
joined Kameyama's supporters. This change in Fushimi's support
network in turn endangered his position. Soon enough, Fushimi, too,
became the object of the same kind of rumor that caused Kameyama's
fall. To counter his precarious position, Fushimi wrote a religious
supplication that read, "There are a few who are spreading an unfounded
rumor in order to usurp the imperial seat."63
By this time, the composition of the bakufu had changed; Taira
59 At this time, the emperor's court set up a gijoshu, following the precedent of Emperor's
Kameyama in the years 1272-4. A gijoshu was equivalent to a retired emperor's hydjoshu.
Subsequent governments under incumbent emperors followed this basic pattern.
60 Miura Hiroyuki discusses this edict in "Shinsei no kenkyu," pp. 619-22; also see Mitobe,
Kuge shinsei no kenkyu, pp. 241-4. Goto Norihiko gives a full translation in "Tanaka bon
Seifu - bunrui o kokoromita kuge shinsei no koshahon," Nempo, chuseishi kenkyu, no. 5 (May
1980): 73-86. 61 Hashimoto, Heian kizoku shakai no kenkyu, p. 78.
62 Kyogoku Tamekane has tended to receive fuller treatment as a poet than as a politician. A
representative work is by Toki Zenmaro, Shinshu Kyogoku Tamekane (Tokyo: Kadokawa
shoten, 1968), which contains a bibliography of related works on Tamekane.
63 Quoted in Miura, Kamakura jidaishi, p. 567.
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166 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Daikakuji line Jimyoin line
(Hachijoin) (Chokodo)
Gosaga (88)
Kameyama (90)- • Gofukakusa (89)
i n
Prince Tsuneakira Gouda (91) Fushimi (92)
I I
I l_ I I
Godaigo (96) Gonijo (94) Hanazano (95) Gofushimi (93)
I . I
Prince Kuniyoshi Kogon (97)
Figure 3.1 System of alternate succession between Gofukakusa and
Kameyama lines. (Order of succession is given in parentheses.)
Yoritsuna had fallen, and the autocratic rule of Hojo Sadatoki was well
under way. In 1297, the bakufu arrested Tamekane and exiled him to
Sado. Having eliminated this troublemaker, the bakufu then arranged
for the resignation of Fushimi and the enthronement of Fushimi's son
Gofushimi (r. 1298-1301). The grandson of Kameyama and son of
Gouda (the future emperor Gonijo) was designated as the new crown
prince. Subsequently, the bakufu began to consider seriously a system
of alternate succession between the lines of Gofukakusa and
Kameyama.64
Figure 3.1 shows their lineage and order of succession.
In order to implement the practice of alternate succession, the
bakufu demanded Gofushimi's resignation in 1301, only four years
after his enthronement. Gonijo, the grandson of Kameyama, then
succeeded him. The selection of the crown prince became a major
issue, but the bakufu adhered to the practice of alternate succession
by designating the younger brother of Gofushimi (later Emperor
Hanazono) as the heir apparent.
By this time, the antagonism between the Kameyama and
Gofukakusa lines had lasted for thirty years, and it had become a
significant part of the imperial institutional tradition. Not only immediate
family members but also nobles at court became embroiled in
this conflict. The antagonism, moreover, applied to more than just the
question of imperial succession. The economic interests of each line,
which affected holders of land rights at all levels of the shorn hierarchy,
deepened the rapidly growing tension at court.
64 Miura, Nihonshi no kenkyu, pp. 98-100.
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THE FALL OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU 167
The two lines were identified by the location of their private residences.
The line of Kameyama was called the Daikakuji line, taking
the name of Gouda's residence, whereas Gofukakusa's line was known
by the residence of Fushimi, the Jimyo-in. As many as one hundred to
two hundred shoen supported each line. Shoen units held by each line
were collectively named the Hachijo-in-ryo for the Daikakuji line and
the Chokodo-ryo for the Jimyo-in line.65
If the two lines were to share the imperial seat alternately, their
economic resources would need to be balanced as well. But sometimes
the death of a large property holder could easily upset the balance. In
1300, for example, the ownership of nearly one hundred shoen became
subject to dispute after Muromachi-in, the previous holder of these
lands, died. Muromachi-in's mother had been a member of the Jimyoin,
and after her son's death, her daughter inherited the whole share.
But the land slipped out of the Jimyo-in line's possession when this
daughter became a wife of Gouda, a member of the Daikakuji line.
Fearing further problems of this kind, the bakufu arranged to have the
entire portfolio divided in half and assigned to each line.66
The deepening hostility between the two lines, which had first begun
as a succession dispute, now affected the entire court structure.
Even in the cultural and religious spheres, the split was apparent.
Whereas the Daikakuji line patronized the new Chinese cultureSung-style
Confucianism, Zen Buddhism, and the Chinese style of
calligraphy - the Jimyo-in line preferred the traditional Japanese
(Heian) culture in literature, calligraphy, and Buddhism.67
The situation at court worsened as the waves of antagonism among
courtiers went beyond the original gulf that separated the two camps
and caused further splits in each line. In the Jimyo-in line, the retired
emperor Gofushimi and his younger brother (the future emperor
Hanazono) were showing signs of hostility. The situation was far more
grave for the Daikakuji line, however. Initially, the retired emperor
Kameyama favored Emperor Gonijo's younger brother, Prince
Takaharu (the future emperor Godaigo), as the next emperor. But in
1303, when the daughter of Saionji Sanekane bore Kameyama a son
65 The patterns of transfer and division of imperial family holdings, such as the Chokodo-ryo
and the Hachijo-in-ryo, have been much studied. Among the more important works are the
following: Yashiro, "Chokodo-ryo no kenkyu"; Nakamura, Nihon shin bunka shi, Yoshino
jidai; Ashida Koreto, Gotyochi-shiko (Tokyo: Teishitsu Rinya kyoku, 1937); Nakamura
Naokatsu, Shoen no kenkyu (Kyoto: Hoshino shoten, 1931, 1978); and Okuno Takahiro,
Koshitsu gokeizai shi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Unebi shobo, 1942).
66 Nakamura, Shoen no kenkyu, pp. 382-85.
67 A detailed discussion of this point appears in Miura, Nihonshi no kenkyu, pp. 106-7.
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168 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
(Prince Tsuneakira), Kameyama changed his mind and began to promote
this young son for the throne. This change of heart caused those
affiliated with the Daikakuji line to split into three smaller factions,
supporting Gonijo, Prince Takaharu, and Prince Tsuneakira.
The internal strife at court worsened after the successive deaths of
Gofukakusa and Kameyama in 1304 and 1305, followed by the death of
Gonijo in 1308. Before these three died, the Saionji family had hoped to
enthrone Prince Tsuneakira by forcing Gonijp's abdication. But this
proved unnecessary; with Gonijo dead, the principle ofalternate succession
allowed Emperor Hanazono of the Jimyo-in line to occupy the
throne. In the meantime, the retired emperor Fushimi, also of the
Jimyo-in line, actually dominated the court and ruled from the office of
in. The Daikakuji line retained the position of crown prince. With the
understanding that the imperial rank and lands would be transferred to
the son of Gonijo, Gouda designated Prince Takaharu (Gonijo's brother
and the future emperor Godaigo) as the heir apparent.
Godaigo's reign
Fushimi's rule an ex-sovereign was just as energetic as that as emperor.
He delegated much responsibility to Kyogoku Tamekane, who by this
time had returned to Kyoto from exile. The organs of justice were
further reorganized, and an appeals court (teichu) was incorporated
into the fudono.6
* However, the earlier friction between Tamekane and
Saionji Sanekane- resurfaced and reduced the effectiveness of
Fushimi's rule. Once again, in 1315, Tamekane was accused of plotting
against the bakufu and was arrested by the Rokuhara tandai. As
before, he was exiled to Tosa.
The fall of Tamekane naturally affected the well-being of Fushimi.
A rumor spread that Fushimi, too, was involved in an antibakufu plot,
and the ex-emperor was forced to prove his innocence by writing a
letter of denial in his own hand. It seemed that both the bakufu and
Saionji Sanekane were giving greater support to the,Daikakuji line
than to Fushimi's Jimyo-in line.
In 1317, the bakufu sent a message to the court that recommended
Hanazono's resignation and the selection of a new crown prince by
way of agreement between the two lines. But the rival lines could not
so easily reach an accord. Before a decision could be made on the new
crown prince, the retired emperor Fushimi died, leaving the Jimyo-in
68 Hashimoto, Heian kizoku shaken no kenkyu, pp. 82-83.
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THE FALL OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU 169
line powerless without a central figure. In the following year, 1318, the
bakufu proposed to designate the son of Gonijo as the heir apparent
and to place Godaigo on the throne. Gouda, the father of Godaigo and
Gonijo, thus began his rule as retired emperor. The Daikakuji line
thus came to dominate the highest levels of the imperial hierarchy.
But it was not the bakufu's intention to tip the balance permanently.
At the same time as the Daikakuji surge, Kamakura set down specific
conditions for that line to follow. Later documents reveal the terms of
this "bumpo mediation": (i)The next succession was to be secured for
the Jimyo-in line by designating the son of Gofushimi, Prince Kazuhito
(later Emperor Kogon), as crown prince as soon as the incumbent
Prince Kuniyoshi became emperor; (2) the reign of each emperor was
not to exceed ten years; and (3) the offspring of Godaigo were not to
seek the throne.69
At his enthronement, therefore, Godaigo faced several
limitations. It was particularly unsatisfactory that Godaigo, then
in his prime at age thirty-one, should have to surrender all hope of
having an imperial heir. And he feared that without an heir, his grandiose
plans for reviving "the golden age" of Daigo, an early Heian
emperor, would not bear fruit. His strong personality only reinforced
the dissatisfaction caused by the circumstances surrounding him. As a
first step out of this quandary he sought to become the supreme ruler
himself. The resignation of Gouda-in from active politics in 1321 gave
Godaigo the opportunity to both reign and rule.
Godaigo began his rule by staffing his court with men of ability.
His interest in Sung Confucianism led him to select such famed
scholar-politicians as Yoshida Sadafusa and Kitabatake Chikafusa,
both of the Daikakuji line, and Hino Suketomo and Hino Toshimoto,
men of less prestigious family backgrounds but of equal ability. Moreover,
reflecting the changed conditions after Gouda's withdrawal
from public life, Godaigo shifted the teichu appeals court from the
fudono of the retired emperor's government back to the kirokujo of
his own imperial government. Here, Godaigo himself sometimes participated
in judging cases.70
A noteworthy aspect of the Godaigo's rule was his attempt to consoli-
69 For an extensive description of the "Bumpo no wadan," see Yashiro, "Chokodo-ryo no
kenkyu," pp. 72-81.
70 A number of works treat topics such as these as the essential historical ingredients presaging
the Kemmu restoration. See, for example, Miura, Kamakura jidaishi; Tanaka Yoshinari,
Nambokucho jidaishi (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1922), pp. 23-82; Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, "Nihon
chuko," in Kemmu chuko roppyakunen kinenkai, comp., Kemmu chuko (Tokyo: Kemmu
chuko roppayakunen kinenkai, 1934), pp. 1 —177; and Nakamura Naokatsu, "Godaigo tenno
no shinsei," in Nakamura Naokatsu chosaku shit, vol. 3: Nancho no kenkyu (Kyoto: Tankosha,
1978), PP. 55-67Cambridge
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I7O THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
date imperial power by tapping the growing commercial sector as a
source of revenue. In 1322, for example, he ordered imperial officials
to collect taxes from sake brewers in Kyoto on a regular basis, the first
time that this was ever attempted.71
The emperor's court, moreover,
demonstrated concern over fluctuating prices. During a famine in
1330, he accordingly issued an edict stabilizing prices and also decreed
that merchants who were hoarding rice would be required to sell it at a
special market. All tariffs were suspended for three months.72
Approaching crisis in the bakufu
Meanwhile, Sadatoki's autocratic rule in Kamakura was giving way to
renewed miuchibito dominance. In 1311, Sadatoki died, and his nineyear-old
son Takatoki became tokuso. The young tokuso had two advisers:
Nagasaki Enki (the son of Taira Yoritsuna's brother), who had long
been serving as uchi kanrei, and Adachi Tokiaki (the grandson of Adachi
Yasumori's brother and Takatoki's father-in-law). In 1316, when he was
fourteen, Takatoki assumed the post of regent (shikken), but he proved
to be an effete politician. A contemporary chronicle, the "Horyaku
kanki," noted that Takatoki was "weak-minded and unenergetic . . . it
was difficult to call him shikken."73
As a result, the real political power
fell to the new uchi kanrei, Nagasaki Takasuke, Enki's son. In alliance
with other miuchibito, Takasuke began to dominate the bakufu.
Takatoki's resignation from the post of regent in 1326 encouraged
internal disunity. Nagasaki Takasuke immediately forced Kanazswa
Sadaaki (Akitoki's son), who had been serving as cosigner (rensho), to
become the next shikken. This greatly angered Hojo Sadatoki's widow,
who had planned to elevate Yasuie, the younger brother of Takatoki,
to the regency. After only a month of service as shikken, Sadaaki was
forced to resign his post when Sadatoki's widow attempted to have
him murdered. In the meantime, Takatoki preoccupied himself with
cultural pursuits and completely ignored politics. However, in 1330
Takatoki ordered Nagasaki Takayori and another miuchibito to murder
Nagasaki Takasuke. Perhaps Takatoki was angered by Takasuke's
domination of the bakufu. The plot, nonetheless, was discovered, and
Takatoki was forced to pretend complete innocence.
71 Amino Yoshihiko provides a detailed treatment of this subject in "Zoshushi kojiyaku no
seiritsu ni tsuite - Murotnachi bakufu sakayayaku no zentei," in Takeuchi Rizo hakase koki
kinenkai, comp., Zoku shoensei to bukeshakai(Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1978), pp. 359-
97-
72 Hiraizumi, "Ninon chuko," pp. 93-100; and Nakamura, "Godaigo tenno no ichi rinji," pp.
76-79. 73 The "Horyaku kan ki" appears in Gunsko ruiju, zatsu bu.
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THE FALL OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU I7I
At the same time that conspiracies were rife in the bakufu's capital,
the most conspicuous problem in the provinces continued to be the
akuto. According to records from Harima Province and to the chronicle
"Mineaiki," the akuto at the turn of the century - whether pirates,
mountain bandits, or robbers - were spreading rapidly. They wore
outrageous clothing and were equipped with pitiful-looking swords or
long bamboo poles, and they also congregated into small groups, gambled
regularly, and were talented petty thieves.74
The bakufu officially set out in 1318 to bring these people under
control in twelve provinces of western Japan (the Sanyo and Nankai
regions). Three miuchibito of renown were dispatched to each province
where they demanded oaths from the shugo, deputy shugo, and jitogokenin
to destroy existing akuto bases. According to the "Mineaiki,"
in Harima alone, over twenty stone forts were destroyed, and a number
of akuto members killed. In addition, although arrest warrants for
fifty-one famous outlaws were issued, the "Mineaiki" tells us that
none was actually captured. At the same time, the bakufu mobilized
those warriors holding land along the Inland Sea coastline to defend
against pirates and to protect important ports.75
These efforts produced
some positive, but not lasting, results. In Harima, for instance,
the akuto activities diminished for two or three years but then started
up again with even greater vigor.
The style and behavior of the Harima akuto changed over the years.
In the latter part of the 1330s, previously small and unimpressive
akuto elements began to appear in large groups of fifty to one hundred,
magnificently outfitted men all riding splendid horses. Many of these
men came from neighboring provinces to form a band (to) through
mutual pledges of loyalty. They were highly imaginative in the violent
methods they employed to effect their ends, and most shoen in Harima
fell prey to their depredations. The "Mineaiki" reports, indeed, that
more than half of all warriors in that province sympathized with the
akuto.
It is now apparent that many of these akuto were none other than the
local warriors themselves, not "bandits" in the original sense of the
word. It is thus understandable that the bakufu's effort to control them
by issuing pacification orders would have had little effect. For example,
the bakufu's threat in 1324 that it would confiscate shorn that failed to
hand over captured akuto to the shugo failed to have much impact.
74 The "Mineaiki" appears in Zoku Gunsho ruiju, Shakuka bu.
75 Amino, "Kamakura bakufu no kaizoku kin'atsu ni tsuite."
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172 THE DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
In the northeast the problem was not one of akuto but of antibakufu
rebellions in a region of the country largely dominated by the Hojo. In
Ezo, for instance, a rebellion that started in 1318 became aggravated
two years later when the hereditary officials of the area, the Ando,
suffered a severe internal split. Although Kamakura attempted to
quell the disturbance by dispatching a large army, the fighting continued
unabated.76
The demise of the Kamakura bakufu
Because the bakufu was faced with a variety of problems, Emperor
Godaigo began to contemplate bringing it down by force. His initial
task was thus to tap various sources for potential allies. The monks of
the large temples in the Kyoto region were the first to be approached.
In particular, Godaigo recognized the potential military power of the
Enryakuji monks and accordingly placed his sons, the Princes
Morinaga and Munenaga, at the top of the clerical hierarchy, as Tendai
zasu. Outside the religious orders, Godaigo's close collaborators Hino
Suketomo and Toshimoto made contacts with dissatisfied warriors and
with akuto in the Kinai and neighboring provinces. Gradually, an
antibakufu movement began to develop. Sympathizers often assembled
in the most casual attire without regard to rank or status and held
banquets to discuss strategy and logistics. These meetings were called
bureiko, that is, discussions without propriety.
There were setbacks at times. In the ninth month of 1324, for
example, a plan to mobilize Kyoto warriors under the leadership of the
Toki and Tajimi warrior houses of Mino Province was exposed, and a
bakufu army dispatched by the Rokuhara tandai captured the ringleaders.
Significantly, Hino Suketomo and Toshimoto were also implicated
and arrested in what became known as the Shochu disturbance.
Godaigo himself fell under suspicion and had to defend his innocence
in the matter. The bakufu, at any rate, failed to heed the warning
signals in this incident and satisfied itself with blaming Hino
Suketomo for the trouble and exiling him to Sado.
Meanwhile at court, a further development in the ongoing imperial
succession dispute provided Godaigo with another reason to challenge
the bakufu. Crown Prince Kuniyoshi died suddenly in 1326, and there
were disagreements as to who should succeed him. There were three
76 Kobayashi Seiji and Oishi Naomasa, comps., Chusei oshu no sekai (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
shuppankai, 1978), pp. 80-82.
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THE FALL OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU 173
candidates: the son of Kuniyoshi, the son of Godaigo, and Prince
Kazuhito of the Jimyo-in line. Much to the frustration of the emperor,
the bakufu chose Kazuhito, who later became Emperor Kogon.
In the fourth month of 1331, a second antibakufu conspiracy was
exposed, and this time Hino Toshimoto and his followers were arrested.
Having lost his commanders, the emperor himself now took
the lead in the antibakufu movement, and at the end of the eighth
month, he left Kyoto for Nara, where he fortified himself on Mount
Kasagi. Godaigo's personal involvement sparked additional support,
such as that of Kusunoki Masahige from neighboring Kawachi Province
and that of other warriors from the more distant Bingo Province.
Responding to this emergency, Kamakura took the offensive and by
the end of the ninth month had captured the emperor. This Genko
incident, as it was called, seemed to mark the end of Godaigo's hopes
to destroy the bakufu. In the meantime, Prince Kazuhito had already
been enthroned as the new emperor Kogon, and the retired emperor
Gofushimi now became active, restoring power to the Jimyo-in line.
Because Godaigo was no longer emperor or an active retired emperor,
the bakufu exiled him to Oki, the same punishment meted out to
Gotoba for his antibakufu Jokyu disturbance in 1221. Also following
the precedent set by the Jokyu disturbance, the bakufu punished
many of Godaigo's followers with death or banishment. Yet unlike that
earlier episode, such forcefulness by Kamakura did not succeed in
eradicating all of the antibakufu elements. In the absence of his father,
Prince Morinaga, the former Tendai zasu, now assumed leadership of
the movement.
For some time actually, Morinaga had been secretly encouraging
akuto in the southern sector of the home provinces. But beginning in
1332, his activities suddenly became overt, and by the eleventh
month, he was openly mobilizing warriors in the Yoshino area of
Yamato Province. Hearing this news, Kusunoki Masashige came out
of hiding and reorganized his army in Kawachi. At the same time, the
akuto followers of Prince Morinaga became active in the vicinity of
Kyoto. By the first month of 1333, Kusunoki advanced from Kawachi
into Settsu and there, around Shitennoji, defeated an army of the
bakufu's Rokuhara tandai.
The bakufu had hardly been routed as yet, and in the second month
it took a strategically located castle (Akasaka in Kawachi), seized earlier
by Masashige, and then moved its army into Yoshino. In the
meantime, Morinaga eluded capture and continued to organize
antibakufu forces on his way to Koyasan in Kii, whereas Masashige
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174 T H E
DECLINE OF THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU
fortified his troops at Chihaya Castle on Mount Kongo and - using
techniques typical of the akuto - fired rocks and branches from the
mountaintop on the bakufu army below.
The forces of rebellion now snowballed everywhere. For example, a
wealthy local warrior of Harima, Akamatsu Norimura, took up arms
late in the first month, whereas the Doi and Kutsuna of Iyo Province
rebelled in the second month. The Sanyodo and Inland Sea areas thus
became major battlefields. Continuing their offensive, the Akamatsu
moved in the direction of Kyoto and soon pushed into Settsu.
Having been informed of the improving situation, Godaigo escaped
from Oki in the second month, arriving on the shores of Hoki Province
where he was welcomed by the influential warrior Nawa
Nagatoshi. By the third month, the Akamatsu, leading the warriors
and akuto from Harima and other home provinces, entered Kyoto but
were unable to occupy it. A month later reinforcements were provided
by Chigusa Sadaaki, a close collaborator of Godaigo, but even then the
bakufu succeeded in preventing the imperial loyalists from taking the
capital.
At this time the leadership in Kamakura dispatched a new army to
Kyoto, led by Ashikaga Takauji. Chief of a distinguished eastern warrior
house, Takauji had long held an antipathy toward the Hojo tokuso
and his miuchibito, and even before entering Kyoto, he was in touch
with Godaigo. At first he attacked Kamakura's enemies but soon
switched sides, returning to Kyoto to attack the Rokuhara deputyship,
which fell early in the fifth month. In disarray, the warriors of
Rokuhara fled to Kamakura, carrying Emperor Kogon with them, ov.:
they ran into blockades set up by various akuto. On the ninth day of
the fifth month, the imperial entourage was captured by these akuto,
and numerous bakufu fighting men committed suicide.
Exactly one day before this incident, Nitta Yoshisada of Kozuke
Province mounted a challenge against the bakufu in the east, and by
the twenty-first day of that month the city of Kamakura fell. There
were numerous suicides by the Hojo and their miuchibito, and for all
practical purposes the Kamakura bakufu had been destroyed. Four
days later the Muto and Otomo families in Kyushu led a successful
campaign against the Chinzei tandai, and on the same day, Godaigo,
who was now heading toward Kyoto, issued an order rejecting Kogon
as emperor. Atop the debris of Japan's first shogunate, the restoration
was about to begin.
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CHAPTER 4
THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
INTRODUCTION
The Muromachi bakufu, the second of the three military governments
that held power in Japan from 1185 to 1867, was founded between
1336 and 1338 by Ashikaga Takauji (1305-58). The name Muromachi
was taken from the district in Kyoto where the Ashikaga residence and
administrative headquarters were located after 1378. The end of the
regime is dated either 1573, when the last Ashikaga shogun was ousted
from Kyoto, or 1597, when the ex-shogun died in exile.
The period in Japanese history defined by the existence of the
Muromachi bakufu has been judged in two quite contradictory ways.
Measured on the basis of effective centralized rule, it has been seen as
a time of political weakness and social unrest. Yet in cultural terms it
has been recognized as one of Japan's most creative periods of artistic
achievement. There is, of course, no necessary contradiction between
political instability and cultural brilliance. And modern historians
have tended to play down the apparent paradox. They stress instead
the significant social and institutional changes of the time: when military
government (the bakufu system) came into its own, when the
military aristocracy (the buke or samurai estate) became the real rulers
of the country, and when profound changes were wrought in the distribution
of rights over land and in the organization of the cultivating
class. Recent assessments have suggested that even with respect to
government effectiveness, the Ashikaga should not be dismissed too
lightly. After all, the Muromachi bakufu lasted for more than two
hundred years. At the height of its power, under the third and sixth
shoguns, a military government for the first time gained possession of
all aspects of secular authority. It was only in the exercise of that
authority that the Ashikaga shoguns had difficulty.1
1 Beginning in the late 1940s, Japanese scholars literally transformed the field of Muromachi
studies, along four main lines. (1) Studies by Matsumoto Shimpachiro, Sato Shin'ichi,
Ishimoda Sho, Nagahara Keiji, and Kuroda Toshio explored the political institutions of the
period to comprehend the balance of power between civil and military, central and local
175
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176 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
In extending its influence beyond its Kamakura headquarters, the
first shogunate had relied on a network of military land stewards (jito)
and provincial constables (shugo), whose reliability was presumably
guaranteed by their enlistment, when possible, into the shogun's band
of vassals. The Kamakura bakufu's authority, though limited to certain
aspects of military recruitment, judicial and police action, and the
expediting of estate payments, was exercised effectively within what
remained of the legal institutions of imperial provincial administration.
The Ashikaga shoguns, however, had less support from this
inheritance and were required to depend more upon institutions of
their own making; hence their reliance on the provincial constables to
whom they delegated much local authority. Under the Muromachi
bakufu, the shugo acquired political influence by combining the authority
the post had commanded under the Kamakura bakufu with that
customarily available to the civil provincial governors under the imperial
system. The chain of command among shogun, shugo, and provincial
retainers now carried almost the entire burden of government,
both nationally and locally.
But the Ashikaga contribution to the evolution of Japanese government
has not been easy to define. Although the Muromachi bakufu
handled a greater volume of administrative, judicial, and military
transactions than the Kamakura system had done, neither shogun nor
shugo acquired the capacity for enforcement needed to fully exercise
their legal authority. The command imperative and the balance of
power on which the Ashikaga house rested its rule was weakened by
the fact that the Ashikaga shoguns were not able to perfect either a
fully bureaucratic administrative or a fully "patrimonial" delegation of
lord to vassal. As chiefs of the military estate, the Ashikaga shoguns
did maintain a private bureaucracy and a guard force drawn from their
extensive but individually weak yifd-grade vassals. But these direct
retainers were limited in number, and in regard to serious military
action, or to the staffing of important bakufu offices, the Ashikaga
were heavily dependent on the shugo support. And because the ability
interests; (2) studies such as those by Sato Shin'ichi who, in yet another dimension of his work,
began analyzing the inner workings of the Muromachi bakufu as a central government - a lead
that has been followed most notably by Kuwayama Konen; (3) studies by Nagahara Keiji and
Sugiyama Hiroshi began the serious exploration of shugo local administration and its articulation
with bakufu interests above and with lesser military houses at the provincial level below;
and (4) those studies, beginning with Sugiyama Hiroshi's pioneer analysis of the Muromachi
bakufu's economic structure, and more recently those by Kuwayama Konen, give a more
accurate picture of the fiscal practices and policies of the Muromachi regime. Close on the
heels of such Japanese historians have come a number of Western specialists in Muromachi
history. References to their writings will appear in the later pages of this chapter.
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THE RISE OF THE ASHIKAGA HOUSE I77
TABLE
Ashikaga
Name
1. Takauji (1305-58)
2. Yoshiakira (1330-67)
3. Yoshimitsu (1358-1408)
4. Yoshimochi (1386-1428)
5. Yoshikazu (1407-25)
6. Yoshinori (1394-1441)
7. Yoshikatsu (1434-43)
8. Yoshimasa (1436-90)
9. Yoshihisa (1465-89)
10. Yoshitane (1466-1523)
11. Yoshizumi (1480-1511)
12. Yoshiharu (1511-50)
13. Yoshiteru (1536-65)
14. Yoshihide (1540-68)
15. Yoshiaki (1537-97)
4.1
shoguns
Reign as shogun
1338-58
1359-67
1368-94
1394-1423, 1425-8
1423-5
1429-41
1441-3
1443-73
1473-89
1490-3,1508-21
1493-1508
1521-46
1546-65
1568
1568-73 (abdicated 1588)
to hold the loyalty of such support shifted over time and circumstance
and from shogun to shogun, it is necessary to start any inquiry into the
Muromachi bakufu by first looking at the Ashikaga house, its rise as a
prominent shugo family under the Kamakura bakufu and its role in
destroying the Hojo and in establishing a new bakufu.
THE RISE OF THE ASHIKAGA HOUSE
The Ashikaga house, as seen in Figure 4.1 and Table 4.1, was descended
from the same Seiwa branch of the Minamoto lineage as was
Yoritomo (1147-99), the founder of the Kamakura shogunate.2
The
name Ashikaga was derived from the family's original landholding,
Ashikaga-no-sho in Shimotsuke Province. The Minamoto house began
its association with estates, or shoen, in Shimotsuke under Yoshiie
(1039-1106). His grandson Yoshiyasu (?—1157), after receiving the
estate manager's rights (gesu shiki) of Ashikaga-no-sho, took the estate's
name to identify his newly established branch line. Proprietary
rights to the estate were held by the retired emperor Toba (1103-56).
Throughout the Kamakura period Ashikaga-no-sho remained an important
holding of the estates controlled by the "junior," or Daikakuji,
2 The following description of the Ashikaga house and its early rise relies on Toyoda Takeshi,
"Genko tobatsu no shoseiryoku ni tsuite," in Ogawa Makoto, ed, Muromachi seiken, vol. 5 of
Ronshu Nihon rekishi (Tokyo: Yushodo, 1975).
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I. The early years
rYoshikiyo-
(?-1183)
Yoshiyasu -
(Ashikaga)
(?-1157)
- Yoshizane -Sanekuni
(Niki)
• Yoshisue (Hosokawa)
(M199)
~ Yoshizumi
"" (Hatakeyama)
(1176-1210)
(1189-12551
— Yoshitane
(Momonoi)
- Nagauji
(1211-90)
^— Yasuuji
(1216-70)
•— Mitsuuji (Kira)
'—Kuniuji (Imagawal
r~- leuji (Shiba)
V- Yoshiaki (Shibukawa
-1— Yorishige (Ishido)
V- Koshin (Isshiki)
I— Yoriuji
(1258-80)
11. The Muromachi shogunate years
Yoriuji-letoki-Sadauji
(?-1289) (1273-1331)
I— Takauji (1)—
(1305-58)
*— Tadayoshi
(1306-52)
r- Tadafuyu (1327-1400;
adopted by Tadayoshi)
r-Yoshimitsu (3)
(1358-1408)
-Yoshiakira (2)
(1330-67) L
Mitsunori
—Motouji Ujimitsu —
(1340-67) 11359-98)
(Kamakura kubo)
rYoshimochi (4) - Yoshikazu (5!
(1386-1428) (1407-29)
-Yoshitsugu
(1394-1418)
-Yoshinori (6) [see
(1394-1441) below]
Mitsukane
(71378-1409)
i - Yoshikatsu (71
(1434-43)
- Yoshimasa (8) — Yoshihisa (9)
(1436-90) (1465-89)
Yoshinori (6) —
— Yoshimi -
11439-911
- Masatomo
(1435-91)"
• Yoshitane (101
(1466-1523)
r- Chachamaru
L
Yoshizumi (11)
(1480-1511) l_-T
Yoshifusa Yoshihide (14)
(1538-68)
- Yoshiteru (13)
11536-65)
Yoshiharu (121—(-Shukei
"5
"-50)
LYosniaki(,5)
Yoshitsuna
(1540-68)
(1537-97)
III. The Kanto branch
Mochiuji —
(1398-1439)
— Shigeuji
(1438-97)
(Koga kubo)
Masauji
(1466-1531)
Takamoto
(1485-1535)
Haruuji
(?-1560)
Yoshiuji
(?-1583)
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THE RISE OF THE ASHIKAGA HOUSE I79
branch of the imperial house. As a consequence, the Ashikaga family
observed two loyalties: one to the shogun and the Hojo regency and
the other to the imperial house. Ashikaga Takauji, whose defection led
to the demise of the Kamakura shogunate, made his move in part in
the name of Godaigo (1288-1339), head of the Daikakuji line.
It was Yoshiyasu's son, Yoshikane (?-H99), who joined Minamoto
Yoritomo's cause in 1180 and thereby brought the Ashikaga family
into the service of the Kamakura military government. Before 1180,
Yoshikane had married one of Hojo Tokimasa's daughters. Another
daughter, Masako (1157-1225), had married Minamoto Yoritomo.
Thus Yoshikane found himself married to the sister of the wife of
Yoritomo, the first shogun. The Hojo connection was actively maintained
thereafter, so that during the Kamakura period, of seven generations
of Ashikaga chiefs, five took Hojo wives. Takauji, at the time of
his defection, was married to the sister of the last regent. It is significant,
however, that Takauji did not have a Hojo mother; his father had
married into the Uesugi, an important military house based in Tamba
Province, west of the capital.
In the third generation after Yoshiyasu, the Ashikaga lineage began
to segment and spread out beyond the home province. Two of
Yoshikane's sons were the first to move out of Shimotsuke. One went
to Kozuke and took the name Momonoi and the other went to
Musashi and took the name Hatakeyama. Three members of the next
generation moved into Mikawa Province, where they took the place
names Niki, Hosokawa, and Togasaki as their own. Then, other
members of the lineage established three more branch families, the
Kira, Imagawa, and Isshiki in Mikawa. This concentration of holdings
in Mikawa probably explains why the head of the house was appointed
shugo of Mikawa in 1238. The Ashikaga were awarded Kazusa
as well, in 1259, but Shimotsuke, the locus of their ancestral holding,
remained in the hands of the long-entrenched Koyama family.
Although there is some information about the number of branch
families and the location of their holdings, there are. almost no data on
the size and value of these possessions. Collateral families constituted a
first line of support for the chief of the Ashikaga line. By Takauji's
generation, these included the Momonoi, Hatakeyama, Niki,
Hosokawa, Kira, Imagawa, Isshiki, Ishido, Shibukawa, and Shiba
Figure 4.1 Ashikaga lineage genealogy. (Shoguns are underlined and
numbered; names in parentheses are branch family names adopted
from location of primary landholding.)
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180 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
families. Another family that played an important role in the Ashikaga
fortunes was the Uesugi, the only family other than the Hojo that had
provided wives for the Ashikaga chiefs. The collaterals provided much
of the manpower of the Ashikaga armies. The area of their greatest
concentration, Mikawa and adjoining provinces, was clearly a pivotal
base, close, but not too close, to Kyoto. Added to this was the
fortuitious circumstance that the Uesugi's ancestral holding was in
Tamba, just to the west of the capital. It is no accident that Takauji
should have started his attack on the Hojo from Tamba.
Another group that contributed importantly to the Ashikaga power
base was the household retainers. Referred to generically as hikan,
they occupied subordinate positions on the Ashikaga lineage chief's
landholdings, serving as estate managers and providing military service.
There is little information about this group of families, bui r.
significant piece of documentation in the Kuramochi archives lists
what is believed to be the landholdings (goryo) of the main Ashikagc
house and the stewards serving on them.3
The document is undated,
but internal evidence shows it was drafted between 1293 and 1301.
The Kuramochi document lists thirty-five landholdings located in
ten provinces. There is no indication of the size of any of these properties
or the income they produced. The locations of those that can be
identified are indicated on Map 4.1.4
As the map shows, the holdings of the Ashikaga main line were
more widely scattered than were the base holdings of its collateral
branch families. A correlation between these two sets of holdings
makes it clear that the lineage chief could not have depended on his
collateral branches to oversee his lands but, rather, had to have them
managed by intendants drawn from his own hereditary retainers. The
Kuramochi document lists twenty-one such intendants, bearing nineteen
surnames.
1° J
333> Ashikaga Takauji was called to arms against the threat
posed by Emperor Godaigo's machinations. Takauji had already contemplated
Godaigo's defection, but Takauji's motives were mixed.
First, being of the Minamoto lineage, he felt abused by the Taira
Hojo, who relied on his military support but nonetheless treated him
as a vassal, ordering him to commit his troops in defense of Kama-
3 The initial analysis of these documents, now held by Tohoku University, is by Kuwayama
Konen, "Muromachi bakufu no sosoki ni okeru shoryo ni tsuite," Chusei no mado 12 (April
1963): 4-27.
4 Of the thirty-five pieces referred to in the documents, only some twenty-five can be identified
by location.
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THE RISE OF THE ASHIKAGA HOUSE 181
8
9 Kp^ul^E i SHO
10 SHIMOJSUKE
Map 4.1 The Ashikaga house, ca. 1330
kura and requiring him to take a special oath of loyalty. Takauji's
complaint against Hojo Takatoki, as reported in the Taiheiki, was at
first personal:5
Takatoki is but a descendant of Hojo Tokimasa, whose clan long ago came
down among the commoners, while I am of the generation of the house of
Genji, which left the imperial family not long since. Surely it is meant that
Takatoki should be my vassal instead of contemptously handing down orders
such as these!6
Once Takauji made public his resolve to defect, however, more
justification was needed. He, of course, had every right to consider
Godaigo's call a superior one, particularly as the emperor still held the
proprietary rights to Ashikaga-no-sho. But Takauji could claim a still
5 The Taiheiki, written presumably by a priest attached to Godaigo's exiled court in 1345 and
added to as late as 1370, covers events from about 1318 to 1368. Its historical reliability is
moot, but its content is not by any means fictional. Passages quoted in translation are taken
from Helen C. McCullough, trans., The Taiheiki: A Chronicle of Medieval Japan (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1959). Hereafter cited as Taiheiki.
6 Taiheiki, pp. 237-38.
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182 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
higher cause which was publicized in his prayer to Hachiman, the
patron diety of the Minamoto lineage. Passing through the village of
Shinomura in Tamba on his way to attack the Hojo at Rokuhara in
1333, Takauji stopped at a shrine to Hachiman and stated his case. His
purpose, he protested, was to destroy the "Eastern descendants of the
house of Taira . . . [who] wickedly for nine generations have walked
in the ways of violence."7
But such propagandistic expressions were
merely rationalizations. Japan in the 1330s was disturbed by more
than private or family rivalries.
Toyoda Takeshi, in his treatment of the forces that undid the Hojo
regency, began with the so-called akuto (evil band) phenomenon.8
The
term evil band was applied to various types of illegal activities, but the
most significant, from the point of view of this analysis, was the work of
purposefully organized groups of local warriors who resorted to violence
in disputes, usually over land rights. A classic example of such a
dispute is that over the Todaiji estate of Kuroda in Iga Province. The
trouble on this estate was caused by the temple's estate manager {gesu).
During the 1260s the gesu joined with thejito that the bakufu assigned to
Kuroda in opposing the temple, withholding dues payments, and the
like. The temple appealed for redress to Rokuhara, the bakufu headquarters
in Kyoto. To settle the case, Rokuhara called on the deputy
shugo of adjoining Omi Province and a Kamakura gokenin in Iga. But
the order had no effect, and Rokuhara was eventually obliged to mobilize
a punitive force on its own. Kuroda-no-sho continued to experience
trouble periodically until the end of the Hojo regency.
In the Kuroda case, there is a pattern of growing conflict between
central authority and local autonomy. The fact that Rokuhara was
unable to suppress the Kuroda akuto by calling on the bakufu's regional
agents bespoke a growing antagonism between the jito-type of
vassals of Kamakura and the Hojo family that monopolized more r.nd
more of these high appointments. In central Japan in particular, local
bushi houses like these found connections in the imperial court to be a
useful device for legitimizing their defection from the Hojo. Thus,
when Godaigo began the plot to rescue the imperial government from
domination by the Kamakura bakufu, he received strong support
from dissident military houses in all quarters of the country.
Akuto behavior was symptomatic of the two great themes of disaffec-
7 Ibid., p. 250.
8 Toyoda, "Genko," pp. 1-5. For a recent study in English, see Lorraine Harrington, "Social
Control and the Significance of Akuto," in Jeffrey P. Mass, ed., Court and Bakufu in Japan:
Essays in Kamakura History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982).
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THE FOUNDING OF THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU 183
tion that led to nearly eighty years of civil war, beginning with the
destruction of the Hojo-dominated Kamakura bakufu in 1333. On the
one hand, Godaigo awakened among the court nobility and the major
religious establishments the hope that the mounting encroachment of
military houses on local administration and land-derived wealth could
be stemmed. On the other hand, in the provinces the pressure was
toward the reverse - the continuing effort by local houses as estate
managers to avoid having to serve the Kyoto nobility and to be able to
retain the estates' income for themselves. These two movements were
not compatible, and in the final analysis, the second was destined to
win out as the powers of lordship passed into the hands of those who
could defend them at the village level. During the first half of the
Muromachi era, however, the Ashikaga shoguns, by occupying the
middle ground between these two positions, managed to stave off the
demise of the shoen-based nobility for yet another two centuries.
THE FOUNDING OF THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
Emperor Godaigo, who began his reign in 1318, gave early evidence of
his determination to recapture the powers lost by the throne to both
the high court nobility (kugyo) and the Kamakura bakufu. In 1321,
Godaigo discontinued the system of government in which political
control was exercised by the retired emperor (insei) and by the Fujiwara
regency (sekkan). Instead, he proposed to engage directly in the
affairs of state. As a first step in this direction, he revived the office of
land records (kirokusho), first established in 1069 to oversee the documentation
of shorn and to regulate the illegal acquisition of land by
noble houses and religious institutions in an effort to prevent the flight
of taxable land from the purview of court-designated local officials.
Godaigo's plots against the Hojo came to the attention of the bakufu,
and in 1331, he was exiled to the remote island of Oki. But Godaigo
had set in motion more than a privately motivated attack on the Hojodominated
bakufu. When in 1333 he managed to escape from Oki, he
found himself at the center of a broadly based movement of resistance
against the Hojo. Among the many provincial military leaders who
came to his support were Ashikaga Takauji and Nitta Yoshisada.
In the winter of 1333, upon word of Godaigo's return to the mainland,
Ashikaga Takauji was dispatched from Kamakura in command
of a large army to safeguard the Hojo headquarters at Rokuhara in
Kyoto. Already he intended to change his allegiance if the opportunity
presented itself. Upon reaching Omi Province, he received a written
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184 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
commission from Godaigo that legitimized his defection. Bypassing
Kyoto, Takauji marched directly to Tamba, the home province of the
Uesugi house. There, in the fourth month of 1333, Takauji raised the
banner of Minamoto resistance to the Hojo and called for supporters.
He was joined immediately by warrior bands from all parts of the
country. As the Taiheiki narrates, a force of twenty thousand in Tamba
had swelled to fifty thousand by the time that Takauji was at the gates
of Kyoto.9
To take a local example, in Harima the head of a leading
local warrior house, the Akamatsu, destined to be named shugo of
Harima, was one of the first to join Takauji. Along with him came a
band of local samurai families from the neighboring Bizen and Bitchu
provinces, among them the Matsuda, who later became shugo of western
Bizen. Sporadic but fierce fighting ensued, but Takauji had little
difficulty in destroying the Hojo establishment in Kyoto and in capturing
the city for Godaigo. At nearly the same time, Nitta Yoshisada led
his forces to the destruction of the Hojo in Kamakura. Thus, the two
men were destined to become rival leaders in Godaigo's service.
Godaigo returned to the capital intent on setting himself up as a true
monarch. To that purpose he activated the records office and established
an awards commission (onsho-gata). Through these and other
organs of government, he began to make appointments to central and
provincial posts and to distribute titles to landholdings. Almost immediately
there was a falling out with Takauji. Although they had fought
to destroy the Hojo and to return Emperor Godaigo to the throne,
neither Takauji nor his followers were prepared to go along with the
emperor's plan to create a government centered on the throne in which
military leaders would be of equal or lower rank than the court nobles,
men without experience in warfare or statecraft. Takauji personally
was well treated by Godaigo. Designated "first to be rewarded," he
received the fourth court rank junior grade, the privilege of using one
of the characters from the emperor's private name, the governorships
of two provinces and the position of shugo of another, and numerous
landholdings. Takauji, however, had already petitioned for the posts
of seii tai shogun (literally, "barbarian-subduing generalissimo)" and sotsuibushi
(constable general), the positions that would give him the
authority to establish a new bakufu. Although Godaigo did name
Takauji chinjufu shogun (general of the northern pacification command)
and, later, sei-to shogun (general of the eastern pacification command),
he refused during his lifetime to grant Takauji's request. In-
9 Taiheiki, p. 151. All such figures are, of course, conjectural.
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THE FOUNDING OF THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU 185
stead, he successively named his sons, the princes Morinaga and
Norinaga, to the post, thus giving form to a polity in which civil
authority would outrank or displace the military.
Godaigo's conception was bold, but the execution of his plan was
inept and highly prejudiced. As the Taiheiki records, although men
like Takauji and Yoshisada received special attention, "the offices of
shugo and governor in more than fifty provinces were received by
nobles and court officials; likewise confiscated estates and great estates
were given them until they became . . . rich and powerful. . . . "I0
Following the destruction of the Hojo, a considerable amount of vacated
land and a large number of provincial posts were available for
award to those who had assisted in Godaigo's return to the throne. But
by including court nobles among the recipients, the emperor ran out
of resources with which to reward his military supporters. Among
those poorly treated were local leaders such as Akamatsu Norimura,
who, once having been appointed shugo of Harima, later had the appointment
withdrawn. Such arbitrary action led to a general disillusionment
among military leaders in the provinces. Takauji, aspiring
chief of the military estate and potential shogun, became the most
prominent alternative to Godaigo. But he was not alone, as his rivalry
with Nitta Yoshisada was to prove.
In 1333, after crushing the Hojo in Kyoto, Takauji set up a secretariat
(bugyo-sho) to administer the city in the manner of the recently
destroyed Rokuhara headquarters. As the winning general, Takauji
assumed the right to reward his followers with grants of confiscated
landholdings and to make appointments to the posts of shugo and jito.
Obviously there was a conflict of authority and jurisdiction here that
could not long remain unresolved. During most of 1334 Takauji and
Godaigo managed a precarious coexistence in Kyoto. The emperor
publicly announced his plan, called the Kemmu restoration, and established
various organs of central government. Takauji did not take
office in any of these, nor did he disband his own secretariat. When
Godaigo dispatched his young son Prince Norinaga to Kamakura in an
effort to assert the imperial presence in the Kanto, Takauji had his
brother Tadayoshi appointed military guardian to the prince. When
Takauji complained to Godaigo that the newly appointed shogun,
Prince Morinaga, was plotting his death, the emperor had Morinaga
sent to Kamakura to be placed in Ashikaga Tadayoshi's custody.
10 Taiheiki, p. 365. In this case, there is good evidence that the Taiheiki gives an accurate report.
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186 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
In 1335, Hojo remnants recaptured Kamakura and drove out
Tadayoshi and Prince Morinaga. In the confusion5 Tadayoshi had
Prince Morinaga killed. Takauji now led his own army, without imperial
orders, to the Kanto and quickly retook Kamakura. This time
Takauji remained in Kamakura for a year and began to put on the
mantle of shogun, giving out land patents and confirmations. When it
was clear that Nitta Yoshisada was siding with Godaigo, Takauji declared
Nitta's lands confiscated and began to distribute them to his
followers. Godaigo retaliated by declaring Takauji an "enemy of the
throne" (choteki) and stripping him of his titles and honors. He commissioned
generals loyal to his cause, among them Nitta Yoshisada and
Kitabatake Akiie, to recapture the Kanto.
Takauji was now in full rebellion against Godaigo, and his break
with rival military leaders like Yoshisada was complete. Taking to the
field again, he fought his way back to Kyoto in the second month of
!336, against heavy opposition from forces supporting Godaigo's
cause. Takauji managed to hold the city for only four days before
being driven out toward the western provinces. His retreat was not
complete until he had reached the island of Kyushu.
Although Kyushu and the western Honshu provinces were not areas
in which the Ashikaga had many direct military connections, Takauji
used to his advantage a commission of chastisement against Nitta
Yoshisada that he obtained from the retired emperor Kogon-in, head
of the senior branch of the imperial house. Also, by representing the
Minamoto cause and professing to champion basic warrior interests in
the event of his becoming shogun, Takauji was able to build up a
considerable following along the path of his retreat. When possible, he
found opportunities along the way to place his collateral followers in
favorable positions, promising the most powerful local families and
the heads of Ashikaga collateral branches who supported him the
military governorships of various provinces and districts, depending
on the success of his cause. To the Hosokawa he promised the entire
island of Shikoku; to the Imagawa, Bitchu; to the Akamatsu, Harima;
and to the Niki, Tamba. By the time he arrived in Kyushu, Takauji
had already won over most of the local military lords, such as the
Shimazu, and only a brief military campaign was needed to gain the
support of the remainder.
By the fifth month of 1336, with some of his house retainers and
collateral commanders and contingents led by his newly won allies
from western Japan, Takauji began the countermarch toward Kyoto.
His forces moved by both land and water. At the critical battle of
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THE FOUNDING OF THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU 187
Minatogawa in Settsu, the Ashikaga won a decisive victory, forcing
Nitta back to Kyoto and Emperor Godaigo to take refuge with the
monks of Hieizan. Takauji entered Kyoto in the company of Prince
Yutahito, the brother of Kogon-in who had previously given Takauji
his imperial mandate. Takauji generously endowed the Kogon-in faction
with lands and guarantees of protected income. Somehow the
imperial regalia was obtained from Godaigo. These emblems, which
were given to Prince Yutahito, became the basis for his installation as
Emperor Komyo. Takauji began the construction of a new imperial
palace, the first permanent one in many years, which was completed
the following year. Takauji had now played the supreme role of having
installed an emperor with his military power. He further legitimized
himself by taking high court rank and adopting the role of chief of the
warrior estate. The secretariat he had established three years before
had remained in operation and was now turned into a bakufu in all but
name. Takauji's public posture was further enhanced when he promulgated
the Kemmu shikimoku (the Kemmu injunctions), making public
the policy he proposed to follow when named shogun." But the appointment
did not come until 1338.
There was work yet to be done. Kyoto was still not safely in
Ashikaga hands, nor would the enemies of the new bakufu leave the
field. Godaigo, claiming that he had given up only replicas and that he
still possessed the authentic regalia, kept his cause alive from the
mountainous region of Yoshino. There he set up a court in exile,
which, because it was located south of Kyoto, was called the Southern
Court. The court that remained in Kyoto, which served to legitimate
the Ashikaga shogun, was, by the same token, called the Northern
Court. Fighting in the name of these two courts continued until 1392,
when a settlement was arranged. The existence of two imperial courts,
each claiming legitimacy, each calling on the warrior houses throughout
Japan to fight for its cause, justified the resort to arms, often for
purely private objectives. The basic motivations were not always apparent,
but in the years to follow intense rivalries for power among the
most powerful military houses in the provinces were fought out.
Takauji's two primary military rivals from the beginning were Nitta
Yoshisada and Kitabatake Akiie, both of whom had their largest bases
11 For a translation of this document and the 452 supplementary laws {tsuikaho) that succeeded
it, see Kenneth A. Grossberg, ed., and Kenneth A. Grossberg and Nobuhisa Kanamoto,
trans., The Laws of the Muromachi Bakufu: Kemmu Shikimoku (1336) and the Muromachi
Tsuikaho (Tokyo: Momtmenta Nipponica and Sophia University, 1981). Herewith cited as
Kemmu Shikimoku and Tsuikaho.
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188 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
of support east and north of the capital. Although both men were
killed in battle in the summer of 1338, and despite Godaigo's death in
the summer of 1339, the fighting did not end. Godaigo's son Prince
Norinaga succeeded to the "junior" line under the name Gomurakami.
In the central provinces, Kusunoki Masatsura, shugo of Kawachi, kept
the Ashikaga forces on the defensive. In Kyushu, Godaigo's other son,
Prince Kanenaga, succeeded in establishing himself at Dazaifu as the
chief agent of the capital. The divided polity and the civil war it
engendered continued. But the main issue regarding the establishment
of a bakufu in Kyoto had been settled.
For a few years the capital area remained sufficiently quiet, so that the
work of organizing the new bakufu could move ahead. The Kemmu
shikimoku was followed by supplementary orders (tsuikaho) that sought
to resolve the many problems that had been left unsettled during the
years of heavy fighting." But in 1350, events took another sudden turn,
this time brought on by conflicts within the Ashikagk leadership. For
several years, a rift over basic policy had been growing between Takauji
and his brother Tadayoshi. This was the consequence of the division of
responsibilities that had been worked out between the two men. The
division was a natural one to make: Takauji was responsible for military
strategy and personnel, and Tadayoshi concerned himself with the
bakufu's administrative and judicial organs. But policy differences soon
developed between the brothers. Takauji, more sensitive to the interest
of the local military houses on whose support he depended, tended to be
soft regarding the military encroachment on civil estates. Tadayoshi was
more inclined to permit the bakufu courts, staffed to considerable extent
by hereditary legal experts, to support the proprietary interests of
the capital elite.13
Eventually factions among the Ashikaga collaterals
formed behind the brothers.
In 1349, Takauji, having been persuaded of Tadayoshi's disloyalty,
dismissed his brother from his bakufu assignments, withdrawing the
expectation that he would be next to inherit the title of shogun. The
next year Takauji was forced to take to the field against Tadafuyu, his
own troublemaking natural son who had been adopted by Tadayoshi.
12 Kemmu Shikimoku and Tsuikaho, pp. 25-41. Fourteen tsuikaho were issued between 1336 and
1345. But in the year 1346 alone, forty such orders were issued.
13 This analysis was first made by Sato Shin'ichi, "Muromachi bakufu kaisoki no kansei taikei,"
in Ishimoda Sho and Sato Shin'ichi, eds., Chusei no ho to kokka (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
shuppankai, i960). For a statement in English, see Shin'ichi Sato, with John Whitney Hall,
"The Ashikaga Shogun and the Muromachi Bakufu Administration," in John Whitney Hall
and Takeshi, Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1977), pp. 4J-52.
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THE PATH TO ASHIKAGA LEGITIMACY 189
In the winter of 1351-2, Tadayoshi was captured and killed, presumably
by poisoning on Takauji's orders. But Tadayoshi's death only
increased the anti-Takauji sentiment in the Kanto. It was not until the
spring of 1355 that Takauji, after perhaps the most destructive battle
of the civil war, in which several sections of the city were destroyed,
retook Kyoto conclusively.
Takauji died in 1358 and was succeeded as head of the Ashikaga
house and shogun by Yoshiakira, then in his twenty-eighth year. As
might be expected, the second shogun at first had trouble keeping the
Ashikaga forces in line, but the intensity of the civil war had subsided.
The most powerful shugo houses capable of opposing the Ashikaga the
Shiba, Uesugi, Ouchi, and Yamana - had settled their differences
and had joined forces with the bakufu. Yoshiakira died in 1368, to be
succeeded by his ten-year-old son Yoshimitsu, who lived to preside
over the most flourishing era of the Muromachi bakufu.
THE PATH TO ASHIKAGA LEGITIMACY
One of the major accomplishments of the Ashikaga house was its
success in legitimizing the post of shogun within a polity still legally
under the sovereign authority of the emperor. We have already noted
that Minamoto Yoritomo, the first shogun, did not depend solely on
the title of shogun to establish his legitimacy.14
Rather, it was the Hojo
regents who built up the importance of the title as a device through
which to exercise leadership over the bushi class. After Yoritomo's
death, the office of shogun became identified with the powers that
Yoritomo had acquired both as the foremost military leader and by
virtue of the high ranks and titles bestowed on him by the court.
Although the office of shogun never received written definition or
legal formulation, under the Ashikaga the title was recognized as giving
to its recipient and holder the status of chief of the military estate
(buke no toryo), the keeper of the warriors' customary law, and the
ultimate guarantor of the land rights of the bushi class.
The concept of buke rule, in the context of the imperial tradition of
civil government, was the subject of considerable discussion in
fourteenth-century Japan. Political philosophers in both Kyoto and
Kamakura were fully aware of the issues raised by the emergence of
military rule. Godaigo's Kemmu restoration, and the long drawn-out
14 Jeffrey P. Mass, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakura
Bakufu, Shugo, and Jito (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974). Also see his
chapter in this volume.
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190 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
civil war that followed, naturally stimulated attempts at special pleading
on both sides. One of the foremost efforts to address the issue of
imperial rule was the Jinno shotoki, written between 1339 and 1343 by
Kitabatake Chikafusa, a supporter of Godaigo in exile.
Chikafusa began with the premise that the tenno line, by means of
correct succession from the Sun Goddess, was "a transcendent source
of virtue in government, which was above criticism."15
On the other
hand, individual emperors were accountable for their private acts and
could be criticized if their intrusion into political and military affairs
should have unfortunate results. According to Chikafusa, not even
Godaigo was above criticism. Having failed to recognize the changed
nature of the time, his appointments to office and his rewards to
courtiers and military leaders had been capricious, and the results
proved harmful to the state.
Statements justifying military rule, written from the point of view of
the buke class, were even more direct. The court aristocracy, they
claimed, had had their day and had failed. It was the destiny of the
samurai estate, through its ability (kiryd), to bring the state back to a
peaceful and well-administered condition. This essentially was what
Ashikaga Takauji asserted when he prayed publicly before the
Shinomura Hachiman Shrine of Tamba. The same premise underlines
the preamble to the Kemmu shikimoku of 1336.16
Neither statement
was critical of the emperor or his court but, rather, of the maladministration
of the Hojo regents. As to what constituted good government,
the obvious answer was the maintenance of peace, law, and order, a
condition in which all the people could prosper. The basic intent of the
Kemmu shikimoku was to offer guidelines on how to achieve good
government.17
Even more philosophically explicit on what constitutes good government
is a document known as Toji-in goisho (Takauji's testament) and
written in 1357, though most likely not by Takauji.18
This document
sets forth in a Confucian manner the proposition that the state (tenka)
is not the possession of any person, neither emperor nor shogun, but
of itself and that rulers must conform to the "essence of the polity"
(tenka no kokoro). Within the tenka, the task of the shogun and his
followers is to ensure peace.
15 H. Paul Varley, Imperial Restoration in Medieval Japan (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1971). 16 Shigaku kenkyu n o (April 1971): 72-97.
17 Henrik Carl Trolle Steenstrup, "Hojd Shigetoki (1198-1261) and His Role in the History of
Political and Ethical Ideas in Japan" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1977), p. 236.
18 Ibid., p. 234.
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THE PATH TO ASHIKAGA LEGITIMACY I91
One is struck by the pragmatic spirit of these general statements on
government and statecraft. They clearly stand on a middle ground in
placing military rule into the context of a polity that included both an
emperor and a large court (kuge) community. No model excluded the
emperor. Nor was there any thought to bring kuge and buke together
into a single ruling class. Buke remained a separate branch of the
aristocracy. The shogun, though recognized as chief of the warrior
estate, was never conceived of as a self-proclaimed or self-appointed
official. The office of shogun was an imperial appointment. Even
though the emperor personally might be a creature of the military
hegemon, having been assisted to the throne by a victorious military
leader, investiture as shogun was an act that only the emperor and his
courtiers could perform.
Political ideas of this sort were reflected in the real world. The
struggle that preceded the final Ashikaga military victory shaped the
complex interdependence between buke and kuge interests. Takauji
had depended on the imperial patent to legitimate his chastisement of
Nitta Yoshisada, his own brother, and his natural son Tadafuyu. He
had installed Emperor Komyo, who in turn had named him seii tai
shogun. In the years that followed, the court community became almost
totally reliant on military government to preserve its livelihood;
yet military leaders avidly competed for apparently hollow court ranks
and functionally meaningless court titles. No matter how powerful a
military hegemon, if he aspired to recognition as ruler of the entire
country, he needed more than a conquering army. He needed also a
sufficiently high court status to demonstrate publicly his right to rule.
Having settled in Kyoto, the Ashikaga house was quickly assimilated
into the high aristocracy, that is, into the select group of families
of third court rank and above who were known as kugyo. The third
shogun, Yoshimitsu, best illustrates the capacity of the Ashikaga leaders
to penetrate court society. Having attained the first court rank in
1380 at age twenty-two, he received successively higher appointments
until attaining in 1394 the highest court title available, that of prime
minister (daijd daijin). Yoshimitsu's successive steps up the ladder of
court rank were accompanied by his adoption of a commensurate life-
style.
In 1378, the Ashikaga house had built a residential palace in the
grand manner at Muromachi, soon referred to as the Palace of Flowers
(Hana no gosho). This complex of buildings occupied twice the space
of the imperial palace that had been built for the emperor by Takauji
as a grand gesture of patronage. When in 1381 Yoshimitsu managed to
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192 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
entertain Emperor Goenyu in his own residence, the occasion confirmed
his status as kugyo. That Yoshimitsu fully understood this is
revealed in his conscious adoption of two separate ciphers, one for use
as a member of the military aristocracy and the other as a courtier.
Increasingly from this time on, he used the latter almost exclusively.
After his successful reconciliation of the rival branches of the imperial
house in 1392, Yoshimitsu was in the most exalted position in both
the kuge and the buke worlds. A supreme patron of the arts, he is best
remembered for his Kitayama villa and its centerpiece, the Golden
Pavilion, built between 1397 and 1407. In 1408 he made known his
hopes of having his son Yoshitsugu receive a ceremonial standing comparable
to that of an imperial prince, thus setting in motion the rumor
that he intended to gain for the Ashikaga house access to the imperial
throne itself. But Yoshimitsu died shortly thereafter.
Historians continue to debate whether Yoshimitsu did in fact intend
to usurp the throne and whether he could have succeeded. There is
not enough documentation to settle the issue on the basis of written
evidence. The fact that he did not do so and that his son and successor
Yoshimochi dissuaded the court from bestowing on his father the
posthumous title of daijo-hoo (priestly retired monarch) indicates that
an overt act of usurpation would have been difficult, if not impossible,
to carry out.
But whether or not Yoshimitsu intended to displace the emperor, he
and his successors as shogun did preside over the demise of the tradition
of imperial rule as it had been up to that point. As Nagahara Keiji
pointed out so clearly, by this time, the warrior aristocracy had absorbed
the functions of the imperial government over which the tenno
and the kuge had presided. Yoshimitsu possessed all the formal rights
of rulership: to grant or withdraw holdings in land, to staff posts in
central and provincial administrations, to establish central and provincial
courts, and to maintain the flow of taxes. Yoshimitsu as chief of
the buke had achieved a general takeover of the functional organs of
government.19
Can it then be said that Yoshimitsu had attained the status of monarch?
As shogun, and hence chief of the buke estate, and as prime
minister, and thus the highest-ranking official of the noble estate, he
held the credentials of ultimate authority in both. Under the Ashikaga,
19 Nagahara Keiji, "Zen-kindai no tenno," in Rekishigaku kenkyu 467 (April 1979): 37-45. In
English, see Peter Amesen, "The Provincial Vassals of the Muromachi Bakufu,"in Jeffrey P.
Mass and William B. Hauser, eds., TheBakufu inJapanese History (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1985), pp. 125-6.
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SHOGUN, SHUGO, PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION 193
the shogun had become more powerful than any previous secular
official. But he was not sovereign, nor were his peers likely to have
permitted him to become such.
The monarchical issue is raised in yet another context. Yoshimitsu's
acceptance in 1402 of a mission from China that brought to the shogun
documents investing him as "King of Japan" and calling on him to
adopt the Ming imperial calendar. How did Yoshimitsu justify his
break with the Japanese tradition of refusing to acknowledge the sovereignty
of a foreign country? Certainly trade was a major consideration.
But a final assessment of the encounter may not rest in the field of
trade. Tanaka Takeo, for instance, suggests that involvement in trade
with the continent was a conscious effort by Yoshimitsu to project
Japan into the mainstream of East Asian affairs, an effort to gain
recognition as a member of the wider East Asian community. Within
Japan, the shogun's successful negotiations with China became a
means to confirm the principle that as chief of the military estate, he
had full control of Japan's foreign affairs. Yoshimitsu had in fact
shielded the emperor from facing the actuality of a letter of investiture
from the Ming emperor. But he also made clear that the emperor need
not be troubled by diplomatic affairs in the future.20
SHOGUN, SHUGO, AND PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION
It is sometimes claimed that Takauji, in his effort to attract and hold
shugo-giadc warriors in his command, gave away resources vital to the
sustenance of his own position as shogun. But the reverse is more
likely true. By adding to the stature ofshugo as provincial administrators,
he added equally to the reach of the bakufu's authority. And as
long as they worked together in a context that admitted the shogun's
primacy, the growth of shugo power in the provinces was to the advantage
of the bakufu's rule.
At the outset of his attack on the Hojo, Takauji depended primarily
on members of the Ashikaga house, cadet branches, and direct retainers
for support in the field. His first appointments to shugo were
picked from among house retainers like the Ko brothers and were
placed over provinces in the Kanto where the Ashikaga already had
some reliable bases. As the war spread and Takauji was widely opposed
by rival military houses, he was obliged to name trustworthy
20 Takeo Tanaka, with Robert Sakai, "Japan's Relations with Overseas Countries," in Hall and
Toyoda, eds., Japan in The Mwromachi Age, p. 178.
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194 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
TABLE 4.2
Control of provinces by Ashikaga collaterals and otherfamilies, ca. 1400
Province
Yamashiro
Yamato
Kawachi
Izumi
Settsu
Iga
Ise
Shima
Owari
Mikawa
Totomi
Suruga
Omi
Mino
Hida
Shinano
Wakasa
Echizen
Kaga
Noto
Etchu
Echigo
Tamba
Family
Bakufu
Kofukuji
Hatakeyama
Niki
Hosokawa
Yamana
Toki
Toki
Shiba
Isshiki
Imagawa
Imagawa
Kyogoku
Toki
Kyogoku
Shiba
Isshiki
Shiba
Togashi
Hatakeyama
Hatakeyama
Uesugi
Hosokawa
Province
Tango
Tajima
Inaba
Hoki
Izumo
Iwami
Iki
Harima
Mimasaka
Bizen
Bitchu
Bingo
Aki
Suo
Nagato
Kii
Awaji
Awa
Sanuki
Iyo
Tosa
Family
Isshiki
Yamana
Yamana
Yamana
Kyogoku
Yamana
Kyogoku
Akamatsu
Akamatsu
Akamatsu
Hosokawa
Hosokawa
Shibukawa
Ouchi
Ouchi
Hatakeyama
Hosokawa
Hosokawa
Hosokawa
Kawano
Hosokawa
collaterals and friendly allies to all the provinces.21
Between 1336 and
1368 the composition of the Ashikaga house band changed dramatically
as a number of the cadet houses who joined the Tadayoshi faction
were destroyed and as new allies were put in places of trust. Naturally
Takauji sought to bring as many provinces as possible under shugo
appointed from among Ashikaga kinsmen. By the end of the fourteenth
century, of the provinces of central Japan, twenty-three were
held by Ashikaga collaterals, twenty by noncollaterals, and two by
institutions, as can be seen from Table 4.2" (see also Maps 4.2 and
4-3).
It is natural to assume that the collateral houses were the most
important in the eyes of the shogun. But as events proved, the
21 Imatani Akira, "Koki Muromachi bakufu no kenryoku kozo - tokuni sono senseika ni
tsuite," in Nihonshi kenkyukai shiryo kenkyu bukai ed., Chusei Nihon no rekishizo (Osaka:
Sogensha, 1978), pp. 154-183 reveals how in certain strategic but precariously held provinces
in central Japan, like Settsu, Yamato, and Izumi, shugo were appointed by kori (districts) for
strategic reasons.
22 These figures were developed from the listings of shugo appointments by Sugiyama Hiroshi in
Dokushi soran (Tokyo: Jimbutsu oraisha, 1966), pp. 115-18.
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H050l<A>/A .SHIBUKT^WA. SHIBA^
.21 gCWZEN
22. OWA.RJ
23 SHIN^NO
Map 4.2 Provinces in central bloc held by Ashikaga collateral shugo,
ca. 1400.
nuci-ji
1 NAfyyjo
Z. 5U6
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4- IZJJHP
5 ON\l
YA.^\AJ\I^
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6 HOK^I
9 IMA.BA,
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11 1 ^
^ ^ ^ ^
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i^liliiiir^v
V A
12. BIZEM
15
15
;<» ^ %
5-<I
/^•~S
IS
IS
17
18
19
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IS
YAtycic
(AINO
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5 3D g»IGp
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CTK(
IP 1>Jis 0 1*^
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o
Map 4.3 Provinces in the central area held by noncollateral shugo
houses, ca. 1400.
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196 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
noncollateral shugo, all being to some extent "creations" of the
Ashikaga and having been confirmed or put in place by Takauji or one
of his successors, often were even more reliable. The Ashikaga naturally
had greater difficulty with entrenched military houses from the
Kamakura period that could not be dislodged from their provinces.
Among the noncollateral creations, the Akamatsu house of Harima
is typical of the first type.23
The Akamatsu had served as Kamakuraappointed
stewards of the Sayo estate in Harima Province. In 1333,
Akamatsu Norimura joined Godaigo and assisted in his escape from
exile. In reward Akamatsu was named shugo of Harima, but at a later
date the reward was withdrawn. Norimura subsequently changed his
loyalty to Ashikaga Takauji, and his support in the battles that led to
the recapture of the capital placed him high on Takauji's reward list.
In 1336 he was appointed shugo of Harima, and shortly thereafter his
sons were appointed to Settsu and Mimasaka. As the bakufu organization
was formalized in the years of the third shogun, Yoshimitsu, the
Akamatsu house held the posts of shugo in Harima, Bizen, and
Mimasaka and was recognized as one of the four families from which the
heads of the bakufu's Board of Retainers (samurai-dokoro) were chosen.
The Ouchi of Suo are a good example of the second type of shugo
house.24
As the shugo of Suo under the Kamakura regime, Ou;hi
Nagahiro joined the Ashikaga cause in 1336 and assisted in the recapture
of Kyoto that year. As reward, Takauji confirmed his possession
of Suo. Thereafter the Ouchi were to serve the Ashikaga house, and at
the time of its greatest expansion it held six shugo posts.
The post of shugo had not been fully developed under the Kamakura
bakufu. In the provinces the civil governor's office (kokuga) and the
attached resident officials still provided the machinery of administration
and judicial process, and except for the Kanto, these facilities
remained accountable to civil officials based in Kyoto. As the power of
these civil authorities declined, the need for a greater bakufu presence
in the provinces became apparent. The agency through which this was
accomplished was the office of shugo. When in the later years of their
regency, the Hojo openly attempted to monopolize the shugo appointments
(they succeeded infillingtwenty-eight of thefifty-sevenappoint-
23 See John Whitney Hall, Government and Local Power in Japan, 500-1700: A Study Based on
Bizen Province (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 137-206 fora description
of the Akamatsu as shugo of Bizen. Kishida Hiroshi offers a detailed study of the
Akamatsu rule in Harima. See his "Shugo Akamatsushi no Harima no kuni shihai no hatten
to kokuga," in Ogawa, ed., Muromachi seiken, pp. 139-76.
24 See Peter Arnesen, The MedievalJapanese Daimyo: The Ouchi Family's Rule in Suo andNagato
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 139-76.
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SHOGUN, SHUGO, PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION I97
ments), it was clear that the importance of the post was being recognized.
In the Kanto, where the bakufu possessed broad powers of
appointment, the practice of awarding remaining provincial "public
lands" to incumbent shugo was gaining currency, and Godaigo continued
the practice. From the beginning, the Ashikaga shoguns conceived
of the provinces as administrative units to be governed by shugo
who were freely appointed by the shogun.25
Article 7 of the Kemmu code of 1336 equated the office of shugo
with that of provincial governor in the imperial bureaucracy.26
To that
end the Muromachi bakufu sought to make the provincial headquarters
and their attached lands (kokugaryo) available to the shugo. The
size of these lands varied widely, but whether or not they were of
significant economic value, authority over the seat of provincial government
had important political implications. For example, the
Akamatsu, as newly appointed shugo in Harima, worked steadily to
obtain control over the provincial headquarters, by reducing local
resident officials to vassalage. By the 1360s they were being referred to
as kunikata, a recognition that as shugo they were the "ruling authority
of the province."27
Contemporary documents record that the
Akamatsu chiefs granted land to their subordinates. For a house like
the Ouchi, with a long history of serving as resident officials, the
advent of the new bakufu did not demand a radical departure from
customary practice.28
Most of the newly posted shugo in central and western Japan appointed
by the first two Ashikaga shoguns were brought in from outside
the provinces to which they were assigned. These early appointees
did not have ready-made and secure positions in which to settle. The
Muromachi bakufu soon realized that it had to give its shugo greater
administrative, judicial, and fiscal authority. Between 1333 and 1346,
important changes were made in the legal nature of the office of shugo.
Godaigo's policy of naming courtiers as shugo or of appointing the
same individual (most often a military leader) to both the office of
shugo and provincial governor had the effect of fusing the two offices
into one.
Under the Kamakura bakufu, shugo had been given three specific
functions: (1) enrolling bakufu retainers for guard duty at Kyoto and
Kamakura, (2) suppressing major crimes like murder and piracy, and
25 Kurokawa Naonori, "Shugo ryogokusei to shoen taisei," in Ogawa, ed., Muromachi seiken,
pp. 107-22. 26 Kemmu Shikimoku and Tsuikaho, pp. 18-19.
27 Kishida, "Shugo Akamatsu," p. 165.
28 Arnesen, Ouchi Family's Rule, pp. 99-115.
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198 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
(3) punishing treason. In 1346, the Muromachi bakufu added two
more important powers. The first conferred the right to deal with the
unlawful cutting of crops - a favorite act of akuto bands. The second,
in practical terms, meant the right to carry out the bakufu's orders to
confiscate or redistribute land rights. Together, these legal provisions
gave the shugo the authority to exercise major judicial and fiscal powers
that heretofore had been exercised by organs of the central govern-
ment.29
But a number of specific military privileges were still to be
defined.
Considering the amount of warfare that accompanied the establishment
of the Muromachi bakufu, it is not surprising that the acquisition
of supply and support resources would be a primary concern.
Those military leaders who, like Takauji or Yoshisada, commanded
large house bands, were under constant pressure to underwrite the
military expenditures of their followers. Takauji's practice was either
to dip into his own family holdings or to promise grants from future
acquisitions by conquest. Neither of these sources was fully reliable,
nor were land grants in themselves easily or quickly converted into
economic products-in-hand. A more immediate source of support thus
was needed. The answer was to invoke the precedent of the wartime
commissariat surtax.
It had been customary for some time for warriors in the field, or
after an extended engagement, to receive from the central authority
the right to collect commissariat rice (hydro-mai) from designated areas.
For example, after his victory over the Taira in 1185, Minamoto
Yoritomo was empowered to use the newly created military land stewards
to collect a nationwide tax of three sho per tan of cultivated land about
a 3 percent charge on the annual harvest - for commissariat
support. When Takauji recaptured Kyoto in 1336, he issued permits
to some of his followers to collect extraordinary imposts on certain
types of land in areas in which warfare had actually taken place. These
permits were issued specifying the lands to which the tax right pertained
as military provisions (hyoro-ryosho). The permits were to be
temporary. But privileges of this sort were more easily granted than
withdrawn. Before long, the taking of the "military's share" of the
country's annual product was institutionalized through the practice of
the shugo-levied half-tax (hatvzei).
The adoption of half-tax procedures illustrates the conflicting demands
placed on early Muromachi bakufu policy. The first supplemen-
29 Kurokawa, "Shugo ryogokusei,", pp. 117-19.
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SHOGUN, SHUGO, PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION 199
tary law, issued in 1337, shows that the bakufu's principal concern was
to recall the previously awarded "temporary" tax powers to protect the
interests of the most highly placed noble and priestly proprietors. It
demanded that lands held by shugo and other military officers for
commissariat support "be immediately returned to the estate agents of
the civil proprietors."30
A directive issued in 1338 accused the shugo of
abusing this privilege, by taking permanent possession of lands occupied
for military support and even distributing them among their own
retainers. The bakufu was clearly in a bind. Its primary interest in the
provinces was to build up the strength of its shugo; yet it could not
deny entirely the interests of the capital nobility and priesthood.
In 1352, in Supplementary Article 56, the bakufu began to protect
certain limited and specified proprietary interests.31
The bakufu order
of 1368 singled out for protection "properties of the emperors and
empresses, of fully protected shrines and temples, and the hereditary
properties of the Fujiwara regents." Moreover, those parts of the estates
to which jito rights (shiki) had been awarded to the civil proprietor
by the bakufu were to remain protected.32
This policy thus protected
the estate incomes of the most prestigious of the court nobility
and religious institutions, whose preservation was of vital concern to
the Ashikaga. Furthermore, because such a policy of selective application
of the half-tax at the provincial level could be carried out only by
the shugo, the court nobility accordingly became dependent on the
shogun as the only authority capable of dealing with the shugo.
Already the shugo had become involved in another fiscal practice
that increased the court's dependence. This was the practice of tax
contracting (shugo-uke). Under this system, Kyoto-based absentee proprietors
entrusted the shugo with collecting and delivering the taxes
due from their provincial holdings. The amount was generally agreed
upon in the abstract as a set figure or quota. Once a proprietor entered
into such a relationship, he relinquished all direct contact between
him and the estate.
Another fiscal device that derived from the practice of the civil
governors was the right to collect provincewide extraordinary taxes
(ikkoku heikin no yaku). The most common of these, known as tansen,
were imposts levied to pay for certain special events such as imperial
30 Kemmu Shikimoku and Tsuikaho, pp. 25-26; Prescott B. Wintersteen, "The Muromachi
Shugo and Hanzei," in John Whitney Hall and Jeffrey P. Mass, eds., Medieval Japan: Essays
in Institutional History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 212; Shimada
Jiro, "Hanzei seido no seiritsu," in Ogawa, ed., Muromachiseiken, pp. 61-65.
31 Kemmu Shikimoku and Tsuikaho, p. 48. 32 Kemmu Shikomoku and Tsuikaho, pp. 64-65.
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200 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
enthronements and abdication ceremonies or for the rebuilding of
palaces or important temples. Under the Muromachi bakufu, the
shugo first served simply as executors of the bakufu's orders to collect
such taxes.33
But gradually the practice was extended so that shugo
could authorize tansen on their own initiative and even convert the tax
from an occasional impost to a regular one. The importance of this
development cannot be overemphasized. The collection of tansen had
become a private right. Beyond that it became possible for a shugo to
grant the use of this right to a subordinate as a "fief," instead of land,
to cement a lord-vassal relationship.34
The expanded authorities acquired by the shugo under the
Muromachi bakufu provided them not so much with power in hand as
with the tools with which to accumulate such power. A shugo could be
appointed to a whole province whether or not he possessed a power
base in that province. Even if a shugo did have such a power base, as in
the case of the Ouchi, many of the proprietary rights in his province of
assignment would still be held by court nobles, religious organizations,
other shugo houses, and other lesser military houses.
The most prevalent practice by which shugo sought to gain control
of their provinces was not the acquisition of private landholdings but,
rather, the enlistment of local warrior families as vassals.35
In order to
accomplish this the shugo had to be accepted as the primary lawgivers
of the provinces and have the capacity to make, or pass on, grants of
office or land to the local warrior families. It is for this reason that the
added authority to carry out judicial actions involving land transfers
and the awards of hanzei or tansen privileges were so important to the
shugo. The ultimate objective of shugo policy was to reduce, when
possible, all lesser warrior families in the province to a subordinate
status.36
The trend toward the privatization of superior-inferior relations
at the provincial level eventually resulted in the appearance of
what Japanese of the time called daimyo and what modern historians
call shugo daimyo, a condition in which shugo authority had been
translated into a considerable amount of actual regional power.
Up to a point, the increase in local influence that the shugo acquired
was beneficial to the bakufu. But there were limits to the amount of
independence that the bakufu could, or should, tolerate from its
33 During 1346, a large number of tsuikaho dealt with the problems of the violent seizure of
crops and property in the provinces. See Kemmu Shikimoku and Tsuikaho, pp. 33-47.
34 Arnesen, Ouchi Family's Rule, pp. 165-9.
35 Ibid., p. 23.
36 Sugiyama Hiroshi, "Muromachi bakufu," in Nihon rekishi koza, vol. 3 (1957): 51; Arnesen,
Ouchi Family's Rule, pp. 182-4.
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THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER 201
shugo. In many instances, the interests of shogun and shugo were at
odds with each other, and the bakufu would have to assert its primacy.
Of course, in principle the shogun himself, or the collective will of his
main shugo supporters, had the authority to exercise discipline. The
Ashikaga shoguns had a number of means for directly intervening into
provincial affairs. Unfortunately, we do not yet have sufficient information
concerning the shogun's own vassals' serving as jito-gokenin in the
provinces, but it does appear that the shogun could go over the heads
of his shugo by relying on less powerful but more directly controlled
provincial houses.37
THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER
Once the battles of consolidation were over, the major shugo houses
were put in place, and the division between the Northern and Southern
Courts was brought to an end; that is, in the years immediately
after 1392 when Shogun Yoshimitsu was in full command of the
bakufu, a reasonably stable balance of interests appears to have been
achieved among shogun, court, and shugo. This condition held for
roughly three-quarters of a century. The balance had both territorial
and political dimensions.
The usual impression is that the Muromachi bakufu, being located
in Kyoto, maintained a more or less uniform hold over the entire
country. In actuality, however, the bakufu had to accept a considerable
amount of regional variation in its political reach. The debate within
the Ashikaga leadership over whether to establish the bakufu in Kyoto
or Kamakura had been an issue of real consequence. It was recognized
that the Kanto, with its history of separatism from Kyoto and its
reputation as the place of origin of the buke estate, would be hard to
govern from Kyoto. And so it turned out to be. Takauji tried to set up
a branch bakufu for the Kanto area at Kamakura but never really
succeeded. The bakufu, however, had even greater problems in two
other areas: the Ou district in the far north and Kyushu in the south
west. The separatist tendencies of these regions were not caused onl>
by their distance from the capital alone but by political and economic
factors as well. The dominant military houses in these regions, left to
their own devices, tended to form their own local coalitions through
which they tried to ward off outside interference. The difficulty that
37 Arnesen, "Provincial Vassals," in Mass and Hauser, eds., Bakufu inJapanese History, pp. 99-
115.
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2O2 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
the Ashikaga shoguns had in maintaining control over the more distant
regions of the country was a consequence of their failure both to
develop the necessary machinery of government and to acquire the
power to impose a full military hegemony. Each area had its special
problems.
The Kanto area
It was clearly the intent of the early Ashikaga shoguns to retain direct
control of the Kanto provinces from Kyoto.38
But this was easier
wished than done. The destruction of the Hojo regime had been
achieved by men like Takauji, heads of provincial warrior families,
who were seeking to extend their landholdings and their regional influence.
Those who survived the lengthy civil war had gained both land
and a sense of local independence. The central authorities were no
longer able to control the provinces by directive or by posting a deputy
there.
As the system of provincial administration by bureaucratic extension
from a central authority failed, other forms of command had to be
found. Godaigo had tried to extend his political reach by capitalizing
on the imperial house's charisma. Fortunately for him, eight of his
sons survived into adulthood. In 1334 he sent his son Norinaga to
Kamakura as governor of Kozuke Province. In this instance, Takauji
insisted on supporting with military authority the prestige adhering to
the imperial person, by dispatching his brother Tadayoshi with the
prince to serve as guardian. This practice of combining the prestige of
royalty or of nobility with the enforcement capacity of a powerful
military family was a favorite device. But Tadayoshi lost Kamakura,
making it necessary for Takauji to lead his own forces into the Kanto
to restore the primacy of the Ashikaga house.
When Takauji returned to Kyoto, he left behind his young son,
Yoshiakira, then four years old, as his own representative in the
Kanto. As guardians he appointed three kinsmen related by blood or
marriage: Hosokawa Kiyouji, Uesugi Noriaki, and Shiba Ienaga. It
was expected that this combination of a main-line member of the
Ashikaga house backed by powerful military kinsmen could control
the Kanto. In 1349 Takauji sent his second son, AiOtouji, to Kama-
38 The main source for this section is Ito Kiyoshl, "Muromachi ki no kokka to Togoku,"
Rekishigaku kenkyu (October 1979): 63-72. More recent is Lorraine F. Harrington's study,
"Regional Outposts of Muromachi Bakufu Rule: The Kanto and Kyushu," in Mass and
Hauser, eds., Bakufu in Japanese History, pp. 66-88.
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THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER 203
kura with the title of Kanto kanrei and under the guardianship of
Uesugi Noriaki. The jurisdiction of the branch shogunate, now called
Kamakura-fu, included the "eight Kanto provinces" plus Izu and Kai.
Within these provinces the Kanto kanrei was given broad administrative
and judicial powers. These included the authority to raise military
forces, to make or withdraw grants of land, to make appointments to
local offices (including the naming of shugo), and to superintend the
affairs of temples and shrines. The Muromachi bakufu apparently
reserved for itself only the authority to approve succession in the
Uesugi house. To carry out its functions, Kamakura-fu created a full
assemblage of administrative offices based on the model of the
Muromachi headquarters.
Despite these efforts to keep the Kanto subservient to Kyoto, the
arrangement never worked well and ultimately failed. The sense of
separation remained strong in Kamakura, and this was kept alive by
the fact that among the leading Ashikaga collaterals on whom the
bakufu had to rely, many had been supporters of Tadayoshi and remained
resentful of the manner in which Takauji had brought about
his death. Furthermore, after Motouji's death in 1367, members of the
Kamakura branch of the Ashikaga house proved ill inclined to take
directives from Kyoto. Before long, the head of the Kanto Ashikaga
house had adopted the style of kubo (an honorific title reserved for the
shogun) and had passed the office of kanrei to the head of the Uesugi
house who had served up to that point only as guardian and chief
officer. The Kamakura kubo Ujimitsu and his successors, far from
keeping the Kanto tranquil, aggressively tried to expand their influence,
thereby provoking a series of disturbances. The wide gap between
the two branches of the Ashikaga house is symbolized by the
Kanto kubo's eventual confiscation of Ashikaga-no-sho. Differences
between Muromachi and Kamakura came to a head between the sixth
shogun, Yoshinori, and the fourth Kamakura kubo, Mochiuji (1398-
1439). Mochiuji, who spent much of his time in Kyoto, had hopes of
being named shogun himself, to succeed Yoshimochi. He resented the
selection of Yoshinori and created trouble by refusing to use the era
name (gengo) that was identified with Yoshinori's shogunate. Finally,
in 1432 Yoshinori felt obliged to send a punitive force into the Kanto
to punish Mochiuji for insubordination. Mochiuji was killed and
Kamakura-fu destroyed.
The Muromachi bakufu, however, was not prepared to lose the
Kanto. In 1449 and again in 1457, members of the Ashikaga shogunal
line were sent to the Kanto to reestablish a branch shogunate. But
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204 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
Kamakura-fu could not be revived. The Uesugi house, having taken
the title of Kanto kanrei, exerted as much of a centralizing force as was
possible under the circumstances. But this was exerted less and less on
behalf of Kyoto.
Ironically, despite the Kanto origin of the Ashikaga house, once
Takauji had pulled out of the area, he left behind remarkably few
supporters. Around 1400, shugo appointments in the Kanto provinces
were held by eight houses, not one of which was a cadet branch.
Clearly, the Kanto was too distant a region to be controlled by proxy
from Kyoto, given the means of communication and the military technology
of the day. Failure to control the Kanto, however, did not
greatly affect the staying power of the Kyoto-based Muromachi
bakufu.
The Ou area
The two large undeveloped provinces of Mutsu and Dewa, known
together as the Ou region, north of the Kanto, suffered even more
from its remoteness from Japan's political center.39
Under the
Muromachi bakufu, neither province was brought under the shugo
system. Yet because the region lay "behind" the Kanto, no government
based at Kamakura could ignore its existence and its potential as
a place of military buildup or of refuge for enemies of Kamakura.
Minamoto Yoritomo had struggled with this problem in the aftermath
of the Gempei War and had posted agents there to keep the peace. The
provinces played a considerable role in the military action of the
Kemmu era, which began when Godaigo sent Kitabatake Chikafusa,
one of his important courtier generals, to the region as governor of
Mutsu. Takauji countered by naming Shiba Ienaga as the supreme
commander of Ou (Ou sotaisho.) In 1335 Takauji dispatched another
of his collateral generals, Ishido Yoshifusa, to the Mutsu provincial
office as protector (Mutsu chinjo). In the next few years, Yoshifusa
distinguished himself in battles with Southern Court adherents of the
region. In 1345, Takauji established the office of governor general for
the two provinces, to which he named two house generals,
Hatakeyama Kuniuji and Kira Sadaie. But the two generals proved to
have irreconcilable differences, having been on opposite sides of the
Tadayoshi quarrel. Muromachi next sent Shiba Iekane and Uesugi
39 Endo Iwao, "Nambokucho nairan no naka de," in Kobayashi Seiji and Oishi Naomasa, eds.,
Chusei Ou no sekai (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1978), pp. 84-124.
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THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER 205
Noriharu to serve jointly as kanrei. At one time there were four tandai
designates in Mutsu contesting for the office. In 1392, the Kanto kubo,
Ashikaga Ujimitsu, brought Mutsu and Dewa into the jurisdiction of
Kamakura-fu and named his son as kanrei. But with the end of
Kamakura-fu, the office of kanrei lost its political meaning and its
strategic importance to the Muromachi bakufu.
The Kyushu area
Kyushu presented the Ashikaga with quite different problems of con-
trol.40
Western Japan as a whole had never been securely dominated by
military regimes based in central or eastern Japan. Historically, the
provinces of Kyushu and of the western end of Honshu had been the
domains of strongly entrenched military houses like the Shimazu of
Satsuma and Osumi; the Shorn of Higo, Buzen, and Chikuzen; the
Otomo of Bungo; and the Ouchi of Suo. Takauji and his successors
had little choice but to leave these powerful houses in place as shugo.
Yet even though the western provinces had their own history of
independence from control from either Kyoto or Kamakura, it had
been customary to place a representative of the central government in
northern Kyushu as an outpost for the conduct of foreign affairs.
Since Nara times the Hakata region had been the location of Dazaifu,
an office of the central government with authority over foreign relations
and trade. The Kamakura bakufu established the post of
Kyushu commissioner (Chinzei bugyo) to deal with local affairs and to
keep peace among the Minamoto vassals. In 1293, in the wake of the
Mongol invasions, the office of military governor of Kyushu (Chinzei
tandai) was created and given powers similar to those of the Rokuhara
tandai. The office was abolished at the end of Hojo rule. But during
the period of rivalry between the North and South Courts, both sides
used these Kyushu regional offices to establish their presence in the
western provinces.
As a result of Takauji's retreat to Kyushu in 1336, we find him
establishing a regional office, the Kyushu intendant (Kyushu
tandai).41
To this office he appointed a succession of collateral family
heads, starting with Isshiki Noriuji. But there was strong support for
the Southern Court cause in Kyushu, and this was not easily overcome.
Emperor Godaigo had managed to send one of his many sons,
40 See Kawazoe Shoji, "Chinzei kanrei ko," in Ogawa, ed., Muromachi seiken, pp. 77-106.
41 This office was given a number of names such as Chinzei kanrei, Chinzei tandai, and Chinzei
taishogun. See ibid., pp. 78-79.
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206 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
Prince Kanenaga, to Kyushu with the title of general of the western
pacification command (sei-sei shogun). During the next thirty years the
Northern Court faction was kept on the defensive against forces mobilized
by Prince Kanenaga from local shugo families like the Kikuchi
and Aso. When envoys sent from China by the Ming emperor reached
northern Kyushu in 1369, it was with this office that they negotiated.
In 1371 the Muromachi, recognizing its weakness in the west, sent one
of its ablest generals, Imagawa Ryoshun, to Kyushu as intendant.
After strenuous fighting, in 1381 the Imagawa chieffinallymanaged to
defeat the local partisans of the Southern Court. In 1395 he was replaced
by Shibukawa Mitsuyori who had less success in maintaining
military command. But the office itself remained in the hands of this
family for the rest of the Muromachi period. Kyoto was never fully
able to rule the western end of the Inland Sea, so critical to the foreign
trade that flourished from the fourteenth century on. On the other
hand, the shugo of Kyushu were more apt voluntarily to support the
shogun, taking up residence in Kyoto in order to take part in the
cultural life of the capital.
The central provinces
Between the Kanto and northern Kyushu lay the forty-four provinces
of central Japan over which the Muromachi bakufu exerted its most
direct and effective control. When historians write about the
"Muromachi state" or the "Muromachi government" they are usually
referring to this more limited portion of the country. Shugo appointments
to these provinces were drawn from some twenty-two houses.
Of these, the majority were collateral branches of the Ashikaga house;
the rest were allies by marriage or pledge of loyalty, and as such were
considered "outside lords" (tozama).*2
A stable balance among shugo appointments was not easily achieved.
The war between the Northern and Southern Court factions, which
continued for more than fifty years after the founding of the
Muromachi bakufu, encouraged flux. The shugo were intensely competitive
and frequently switched allegiances to pursue their private
interests.43
Even Yoshimitsu was forced to put down rebellions of
trusted shugo, among them the Akamatsu in 1383, the Yamana in
1394, and the Ouchi in 1399. Yoshimitsu's successful termination of
42 Sugiyama, "Muromachi bakufu," pp. 58-59.
43 Ogawa Makoto, Ashikaga ichimon shugo haiten shi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan,
1980), presents the most insightful account of the early competition among the shugo.
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THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER 207
the rift between the court factions in 1392 removed a major obstacle to
the achievement of a general cooperation between the shogunate and
the shugo of central Japan. The bakufu by that time was functioning
effectively as a central government, and the shugo found it to be in
their best interests to join with, rather than compete against, the
bakufu.
Besides the shogun's capacity as chief of the warrior estate to generate
superior military force, two administrative practices proved crucial
to maintaining this climate of cooperation: One was the requirement
that the shugo of the central provinces take up residence in Kyoto, and
the other was the kanrei system of decision making. Given the difficulty
of communication in fourteenth-century Japan and the lack of
enforcement power in what remained of the court-based institutions of
provincial administration, any would-be hegemon was dependent on
direct, ideally face-to-face, contact with his subordinates to ensure
that his commands were carried out.
Yoshimitsu used various combinations of military force, political
manipulation, and intimidation in his efforts to keep the shugo in line.
His military actions against the Akamatsu, Yamana, and Ouchi have
been noted. His less militant displays of power took the form of grand
provincial progresses in the guise of religious pilgrimages, such as his
journey in 1389 into the western provinces to visit the Itsukushima
Shrine in Aki and, incidentally, to put pressure on the Ouchi house.
The private forces readily available to the shogun, though insufficient
to defend unassisted against a determined attack by a major shugo,
were large enough to turn the balance in the capital area and to impress
local military houses. Of course, in the case of punishing a
recalcitrant shugo or quelling provincial unrest, the shogun had to call
on contingents from his shugo. The ability of a shogun to assemble
mixed armies of this sort depended on his continued success in motivating
a sufficient number of shugo to obey his commands. And to this
end the kanrei system proved to be of great value.44
During the first few years of the Muromachi bakufu, Takauji and
Tadayoshi had used the post of general manager (shitsuji) as chief
administrative officer, to which a succession of hereditary retainers
like K6 Moronao were assigned. In 1362 this office was upgraded and
renamed kanrei (deputy shogun). The new post was assigned to the
heads of some of the most powerful of the shogun's cadet houses in
44 Sato, with Hall, "The Ashikaga Shogun," in Hall and Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi
Age, pp. 48-49.
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2O8 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
hopes of pulling the shugo of the central bloc more closely together
behind the shogun. In 1367 Hosokawa Yoriyuki was named deputy
just as Yoshimitsu became shogun. Because Yoshimitsu was only thirteen
years old, Yoriyuki's first years as kanrei resembled a regency. But
unlike what happened in Kamakura after Minamoto Yoritomo's line
ran out, the kanrei was not permitted to dominate the Ashikaga shoguns.
Nor was the post of kanrei allowed to become monopolized by a
single family until the end of the fifteenth century. Rather, it became
the practice to pass the appointment among the three foremost shugo
houses of Shiba, Hosokawa, and Hatakeyama. These houses, known
as the Sankan (the three kanrei), among them held seventeen provinces
in Yoshimitsu's day. Together they formed an inner bloc of shugo
committed to support the Ashikaga house. The kanrei functioned in
two directions. As head of the assembly of senior shugo (yoriai), he
gave to the shugo a sense of involvement in bakufu affairs. To the
shogun, the kanrei was able to present the shugo's points of view and
advise against extreme action that they would resent.
In the early years the shugo were naturally preoccupied with establishing
their presence in the provinces to which they had been assigned.
But by the start of Yoshimitsu's rule, most of the shugo of the
central bloc had taken up more-or-less permanent residence in
Kyoto.45
Although unlike the sankin-kotai requirement of the Tokugawa
shogunate, shugo residence in Kyoto was not mandated by written
precept, by the end of Yoshimitsu's rule such residence had become
compulsory in practice. If a shugo left his Kyoto residence for his
home province without the shogun's permission, it was considered
tantamount to an act of rebellion. This obligation of residence in
Kyoto appears to have fallen only on the shugo of the central provinces;
the shugo of the Kanto bloc were expected to live in Kamakura.
In western Japan, the Kyushu tandai, being simply another form of
shugo, made no residence demands on the other shugo. But although
not compelled to do so, most of the shugo of the Kyushu provinces
built residences in Kyoto, both to keep in touch with affairs at the
center and to participate in the cultural life of the capital.
Enforced residence away from their assigned provinces meant that
the shugo themselves had to administer their provinces indirectly
through subordinates. The most common practice was to establish one
or more deputy shugo (shugo-dai) from among the shugo's closest retain-
45 Masaharu Kawai, with Kenneth A. Grossberg, "Shogun and Shugo: The Provincial Aspects
of Muromachi Politics," in Hall and Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age, pp. 68-69.
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THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER 209
ers to manage local affairs in his absence. Frequently, even the deputy
shugo was called to Kyoto, thus necessitating the appointment of a
subdeputy (shugo-matadai). As can be imagined, shugo residing in
Kyoto found it difficulty to develop a reliable chain of command
between capital and province. Vassal shugo-dai could play a critical role
in either expanding and safeguarding the shugo's local authority or
undermining it. The problem was especially acute in situations in
which the shugo were exercising jurisdiction over an unfamiliar province.
In such cases, the shugo were often forced to depend on the head
of a prominent local family, a kokujin, to serve as deputy. In many
cases, these families eventually turned against their Kyoto-based superiors
so as to grasp local military hegemony.46
Contact between shugo and shogun was at first personal and direct.
But with the adoption of the kanrei system, the shogun's relations with
the shugo were mediated through the kanrei, and certain decisions were
made subject to the assembly of senior shugo. There was, of course, an
inherent contradiction in a procedure that put the deputy and the
assembly between the shogun and his vassal shugo. A strong-minded
shogun, like the mature Yoshimitsu or Yoshinori, resented the restrictions
this imposed on his freedom of command. The kanrei-yoriai
system as a check on shogunal absolutism worked well up through the
time of Yoshikazu, the fifth shogun. And even the sixth shogun, the
strong-willed Yoshinori, was forced to accept from time to time the
collective will of the kanrei and yoriai.
The third shogun, Yoshimitsu, had brought the status and power of
the office to its highest level. Yet his grandiose behavior and autocratic
rule were tolerated, even admired, by the shugo, who were themselves
caught up in the heady experiences of aristocratic life in Kyoto.
Yoshimitsu's two successors retreated from this autocratic posture and
acknowledged a greater acceptance of the kanrei-yoriai system.
Yoshikazu, living with the knowledge that his father, Yoshimitsu, had
intended to pass over him as his heir, was not inclined to offer personal
leadership to the bakufu, and so died without naming his own successor.
As a result, his successor was determined by lot by the Ashikaga
family council, and Yoshinori, Yoshimitsu's sixth son, was chosen.
Yoshinori was at the time a mature man of thirty-four. Early in his life,
with no apparent hope of becoming shogun, he had entered the priesthood,
and at the time he was named shogun he was serving as chief
abbot (zasu) of the Enryakuji and head of the Tendai sect on Mount
46 Hall, Government and Local Power, pp. 227-33.
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210 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
Hiei. He immediately showed himself to be a leader who intended to
become personally involved in bakufu affairs. He was a good politician
and was determined to increase the power of the Ashikaga house.
Yoshinori's first move was to change bakufu administrative procedures
by reorganizing the Corps of Administrators (bugyonin-shu) and
instituting what was called the shogunal hearing (gozen-sata).47
Under
this procedure, briefs on policy matters were prepared by the administrators
and brought directly to the shogun for decision. This meant
that in most instances the kanrei was not consulted, as evidenced by
the appearance of bugyonin directives that expressed the shogun's will
without the customary countersignature of the kanrei. This change
was correctly perceived as a move toward greater shogunal personal
rule.48
Another line of action that Yoshinori pursued proved even more
disquieting, for it involved the shogun's effort at directly interfering in
shugo domestic affairs. Using his authority to approve shugo appointments
and inheritances, Yoshinori began to manipulate the lines of
succession among shugo houses so as to bring to Kyoto shugo more
amenable to his direction.49
One device in particular available to
Yoshinori was his authority to enlist the lesser members of shugo
houses into his private military force as guardsmen. Such appointments
were usually of second or third sons in shugo families, men not
normally in line for the family headship. But as a result of the personal
relationship between shogun and guardsmen, the shogun was able to
intervene on behalf of those he favored to ensure their succession.
This was the motivation for a series of seemingly arbitrary actions
taken by Yoshinori that came to a head in 1441. In that year, the
shogun appeared to be taking steps to block the appointment of
Akamatsu Mitsusuke's chosen heir to the post of shugo in Harima and
Bizen. It was to forestall this move that Mitsusuke killed Yoshinori
while the shogun was being entertained in the Akamatsu residence in
Kyoto. This incident, known as the Kakitsu affair, marks a turning
point in Muromachi bakufu history. That a prominent shugo could
murder the shogun who was a guest in his own house was disquieting
enough but that the murderer could survive the incident and return to
his provincial base without suffering an immediate punitive attack
47 Kuwayama, with Hall, "Bugyonin," in Hall and Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age,
pp. 58-61. Tsuikaho numbered 183, 184, 189, and 190 to 197 issued in 1428 dealt with this
issue.
48 Imatani Akira, Sengokuki no Muromachi bakufu no seikaku, vol. 12 (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten,
1975)5 PP- 154-6- 49 Arnesen, Ouchi Family's Rule, p. 187.
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THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU 211
implies that there were strong feelings of sympathy for the Akamatsu
leader's actions.50
Mitsusuke, however, was finally chastized. Having
fortified himself in his provincial headquarters, he fought to the finish
against a shogunal army led by the Yamana, the shugo of several nearby
provinces. The Yamana invasion was not in reluctant compliance with
bakufu orders, for the Yamana had long coveted the Akamatsu provinces
of Mimasaka, Bizen, and Harima. As expected, the Yamana
received these provinces as a reward for Mitsusuke's destruction.
The Kakitsu incident brought an end to a brief period of what some
have called "shogunal despotism." But the weakening of shogunal
power did not lead to a return to kanrei-shugo council ascendancy
either. As a result of Yoshinori's meddling, one of the three kanrei
houses, the Shiba, was greatly weakened, and the house served as
kanrei only once in the ensuing years. In the aftermath of the Kakitsu
incident, competition over the post of kanrei was largely confined to
the Hosokawa and Hatakeyama houses. Moreover, the nature of the
post itself changed. After 1441, the post of kanrei carried little of its
former responsibility of supporting the shogun and mediating with the
shugo. Rather, the post was regarded as a means to exercise private
influence over the bakufu. Because such influence could result in
tangible benefits to both the kanrei and his favored shugo, there was a
tendency for the shugo houses to divide into factions behind the two
remaining kanrei houses. How this situation led to the weakening of
the bakufu power base became clear during the time of Yoshimasa, the
eighth shogun. But before I turn to the events of this period, I shall
discuss in more detail the bakufu rule.
THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU: INSTRUMENTS OF
ADMINISTRATION AND ENFORCEMENT
The Kemmu shikimoku, by announcing the Ashikaga's intent to follow
in the footsteps of the previous regime, implicitly laid claim to whatever
powers that had accrued to the post of shogun under the Hojo
regents. By 1350, the Ashikaga government had assumed a reasonably
stable form in which many of the organs of administration bore the
same names as used by the Kamakura shogunate. But identity in name
did not necessarily mean identity in function. The Ashikaga leaders
approached quite pragmatically the task of building a bakufu.
50 Sugiyama Hiroshi, "Shugo ryogokusei no tenkai," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi (chusei 3)
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963), pp. 109-69.
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2 1 2 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
Takauji •
(shogun)
- shitsuji -
(manager)
Tadayoshi ' • hyojo •
samurai dokoro
(board of retainers)
onshokata
(office of rewards)
• andokata
(office of land titles)
"— hikitsukekata
(office of adjudicants)
• zenritsu-kata
(commissioner for Zen
and Ritsu monasteries)
- kantobugyo
(office of court
appointments)
- monchujo
(office of records)
Figure 4.2 Organization of the bakufu, 1350. (Solid horizontal line
indicates formal authority relationship; solid vertical line, a more or
less equal formal status; and dashed line, an informal equality or
division of authority.)
As of 1350, when Tadayoshi was still working closely with his
brother, the organization of the bakufu followed the form outlined in
Figure 4-2.5
' Sato Shin'ichi has emphasized the importance of the
division of responsibility that had been worked out by the Ashikaga
brothers.52
Takauji, the elder brother, as shogun and head of the buke
estate, assumed the direction of the bakufu organs dealing with such
functions as the appointments to military posts, the distribution of
rewards for military service, the enlistment of vassal followers, and the
management of Ashikaga lands. Sato described these powers as basically
feudal. By contrast, Tadayoshi was in charge of what Sato called
the more "bureaucratic," or administrative and judicial, functions of
government. Under Tadayoshi was organized the deliberative council,
consisting of selected professional bureaucrats, and a number of offices
that kept land records, adjudicated lawsuits, and handled relations
between the bakufu and the imperial court and the religious
orders.
51 Imatani, Sengokuki, pp. 151-81. 52 Sato, "Kaisoki," pp. 472-86.
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THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU 213
kanrei - - —- —- — - — - — - shugo yoriai — - — - —— shugo
(deputy) (council of shugo)
• samurai-dokoro
(board of retainers)
• hikitsukeshu
(office of adjudicants)
shogun ————
I
hokoshu
(shogunal guards)
• mandokoro
(board of administration)
• monchu/o
(records office)
Figure 4.3 Changes in bakufu structure after Tadayoshi's expulsion,
1352. (Lines same as in Figure 4.2; double dashed line indicates an
informal authority relationship.)
With Tadayoshi's expulsion from Kyoto in 1352, the bakufu structure
underwent a significant change, and many of the offices inherited
from Kamakura were either abolished or drastically modified in function.
The most important such change, as seen in Figure 4.3, was the
conversion of the office of shitsuji (the bakufu's chief of operations)
into that of kanrei (deputy shogun) and the creation of the shugo council
(shugo yoriai).53
The top of the Muromachi shogunal government was characterized
by both a greater direct involvement in the affairs of state by the
shogun and a more influential participation by the shugo houses in the
decision-making process and in the bakufu administration.
The main bakufu offices with specialized functions were the Board
of Retainers (samurai-dokoro), the Office of Adjudicants (hikitsukeshu),
the Board of Administration (mandokoro), and the Office of Records
(monchujo). Of these, at the outset the Board of Retainers was the
most important. It alone was headed by a major shugo house. Charged
with controlling the shogun's direct retainers, the Board of Retainers
was made responsible for securing the capital area from lawlessness
and administering the home province of Yamashiro. With the establishment
of the office of kanrei, the samurai-dokoro lost much of its powers
of control over the shogun's household retainers and over the shugo
houses. But its administrative and judicial functions in the capital area
continued to expand. The board, for instance, took over the powers of
the Imperial Capital Police (kebiishi) and became the main police and
53 Sato, with Hall, "Muromachi Bakufu Administration," in Hall and Toyoda, eds., Japan in the
Muromachi Age, pp. 47-49.
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214 THE MUROMACHI 3AKUFU
judicial authority in Kyoto.54
In 1385, moreover, the chief (shoshi) of
the Board of Retainers was given the added duty of serving as shugo of
Yamashiro Province. It became customary to rotate this assignment
among four major shugo houses: the Yamana, Isshiki, Akamatsu, and
Kyogoku.
The actual day-to-day running of the Board of Retainers was delegated
to a deputy chief (shoshidai), appointed by the chief from among
his own private retainers. Hence the identity of the deputy changed
according to who served as chief. As a bureaucratic entity, the board
was given a certain stability and continuity of operation by its permanent
administrative staff, a group of individuals composed independently
of the chief and his deputy, drawn from a class of hereditary
administrators or professional bureaucrats, which will be described
later.
Despite the many important functions of the Board of Retainers,
after the Onin War (1467-77), it lost its central importance to the
Administrative Council.55
At first the council was almost exclusively
concerned with the shogun's household and its fiscal management.56
Its first chief officer was a hereditary administrator carried over from
the Kamakura bakufu, a member of the Nikaido house. In 1379, the
Nikaido were replaced by the Ise family, a line of hereditary retainers
who, among other duties, had traditionally served as guardians of the
Ashikaga shogun's heirs. The council came into its own as the
bakufu's main administrative office when the shogun Yoshinori began
to use it as the organ through which to bypass the kanrei. As the
sphere of shogunal government narrowed, however, this single
agency was able to handle nearly all of the shogunate's administrative
functions. Moreover, as the shogun found fewer and fewer opportunities
to assert political initiative, procedures in the bakufu became
increasingly routinized under what Kuwayama Konen has called the
"bugyonin system."57
Throughout the Muromachi period there were more than fifty families
of professional administrators available for service, many of whom
had served the imperial court and the Kamakura bakufu. Such families
were now brought into Ashikaga service because of their special
54 Haga Norihiko, "Muromachi bakufu samurai dokoro ko," in Ogawa, ed., Muromachi seiken,
PP- 25-55-
55 Imatani, Sengokuki, p. 165. 56 Haga, "Samurai dokoro," p. 50.
57 Kuwayama, with Hall, "Bugyonin," in Hall and Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age,
PP- 53-54Cambridge
Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU 215
administrative skills. In time they formed the Corps of Administrators,
the bugyonin-shu. At any one time, between fifteen and sixty
members might be assigned to the finance, justice, and administrative
organs of the bakufu.58
A study of thefluctuatingnumbers of administrators
retained by the Muromachi bakufu shows that in the period
before the Onin War, the numbers reflected the shifting balance of
power between the kanrei-yoriai system and the shoguns' effort to
exert their own influence on the bakufu. Thus the fewest numbers
were in evidence under Yoshimitsu, Yoshikatsu, and Yoshimochi, all
of whom followed the kanrei principle.59
Yoshinori's efforts to exert his
direct shogunal prerogative was reflected by an immediate increase in
the size of the corps. This upward trend continued until Yoshimasa's
death. Thereafter, the number of members declined, to remain at
around fifteen until the end of the Muromachi bakufu. Members of
the corps were drawn from the following eleven families: Iio, Suga,
Saito, Jibu, Eno, Sei, Nakazawa, Fuse, Matsuda, Yano, and Ida.
The drop in staff numbers reflected, first of all, a loss of power by
the Ashikaga house and also a change in function. Perhaps because of
the shogun's weakening power, the administrators increasingly became
an entrenched and self-perpetuating group of families that, more
than any other single factor, accounted for the continued existence of
the bakufu during its last hundred years. These families became the
agents through which members of the capital elite establishment dealt
with one another. For instance, administrators serving as members of
the Office of Adjudicants were assigned specifically to handle the
affairs of important shrines like the Iwashimizu Hachiman Gu or
Tsurugaoka Hachiman Gu, and great temples like the Enryakuji,
Todaiji, Kofukuji, Toji, and Tenryuji. In other words, these hereditary
administrators had begun to serve as agents of these institutions in
case of litigation before the council, receiving retainer fees for serving
as their spokesmen.60
This was obviously a profitable arrangement. To
keep it alive, it was to the advantage of all concerned to maintain the
prestige of the shogun and the efficacy of the bakufu's remaining
organs of adjudication. That this happened is revealed by the fact that
the Ashikaga's supplementary laws continued to be issued into the
58 Haga, "Samurai dokoro," p. 27; Kuwayama, with Hall, "Bugyonin," in Hall and Toyoda,
eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age, pp. 56-60.
59 Kenneth A. Grossberg, "Bakufu and Bugyonin: The Size of the House Bureaucracy in
Muromachi Japan,"Journal of Asian Studies 35 (August 1976): 651-4.
60 Kuwayama, with Hall, "Bugyonin," in Hall and Toyoda, eds., Japan in theMuronmachi Age,
p. 62.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
2l6 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
1570s and that there are many records of action taken by the Office of
Adjudicants in the last decades of the Ashikaga regime.61
But to say that the Muromachi bakufu continued to function until
the mid-sixteenth century is also to say that the scope of its competence
narrowed. By the time of the last shogun, the scope of the
bakufu's control had been reduced almost solely to the city of Kyoto
and its close environs. Control of Kyoto, in and of itself, was an
important achievement, and the fact that Kyoto became subject to
bakufu administration was of major significance for the Ashikaga
house's staying ability.
At the time the Ashikaga established their bakufu in Kyoto, the city
was still under the control of the civil and religious nobility. Takauji's
claim of chieftainship of the military estate gave him the authority to
exercise military, judicial, fiscal, and appointment powers over bushi
but not over the civil elite. The organs of imperial administration that
had been revived by Godaigo were soon in disarray. Yet the establishment
of the Muromachi bakufu did not automatically rectify the situa-
tion.
In Kyoto the imperial house, the high court nobility, and the great
religious institutions remained free to govern, through their own
house staffs, their estates and other dependent groups like the merchant
and craft guilds. In fact, these groups and organizations can be
conceived of as a distinct power structure with remarkable staying
power, to which modern historians have applied the term kenmor,
seika.62
Essential to this condition was the maintenance of a secure
capital area, a functioning judicial process, and a reasonably effective
machinery for the delivery of tax payments. The chief instruments
available for this were the Imperial Capital Police (kebiishi) and the
various management systems maintained by the Kyoto-based headquarters
(honjo) of the major civil and religious proprietary interests.
In its early policy, the bakufu sought only to assist in maintaining law
and order in the capital, in order to protect the provincial interests of
the most important civil and religious proprietors. Kyoto was administered
under what was essentially a dual polity.63
61 Kuwayama Konen, Muromachi bakufu hikilsuke shiryo shitsei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kondo
shuppansha, 1980).
62 This concept, most closely associated with Kuroda Toshio, is best described in English by
Suzanne Gay in "Muromachi Bakufu Rule in Kyoto: Administration and Judicial Aspects" in
Mass and Hauser, eds., Bakufu in Japanese History, pp. 60-65.
63 Prescott B. Wintersteen, "The Early Muromachi Bakufu in Kyoto," in Hall and Mass, eds.,
Medieval Japan, p. 202.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU 217
Tension between the bakufu's Board of Retainers and the capital
police was quick to develop, especially in matters of conflicting jurisdiction.
The failure of the court-maintained police to carry out their
duties effectively induced the bakufu to claim the need to increase its
police role in the capital. And the court was inclined to agree. A court
decree of 1370, noting the capital police's ineffectiveness in curbing
violence against the nobility by religious bill collectors, invited the
bakufu to provide assistance. Once the bakufu began enforcing the
court decrees, it began also to move into the court's economic affairs.
By decree in 1393 the bakufu took over the collection of dues from
brewers and moneylenders.
The bakufu relied on several types of personnel to enforce its will.
One already noted was the body of professional bureaucrats who
served as administrators. The shogun also had at his disposal armed
forces with which to ensure compliance with his decisions. Both the
kanrei and the chief of the Board of Retainers relied on their own
armed retainers to provide a military presence in the capital. Resident
shugo also kept on hand contingents of a few hundred mounted
men. In addition, the shogun and the bakufu offices not headed by
shugo military houses could call on the services of a category of
personal retainers of the shogun known as hokonin (see Maps 4.4 and
4-5)-64
Those men for whom we might use the term guardsmen were direct
Ashikaga retainers settled on shogunal lands (goryosho) and accountable
to the shogun alone. Their use was political and economic as well
as military. The largest number were from lesser branches of Ashikaga
cadet and nonkin shugo houses. Such were the Hosokawa, Hatakeyama,
Isshiki, or Shiba among the cadet houses, and the Sasaki, Toki,
Ogasawara, Ouchi, and Kyogoku, but not the Akamatsu, among the
nonkin shugo houses. From these houses the shogun selected individuals
who may have borne the same surname as the main house but who
were not in line to succeed to the family headship. Another group was
recruited from houses that had long served the Ashikaga as hereditary
retainers. An outstanding family of this type was the Ise. Finally, some
members of provincial houses rose to local prominence, the kind of
military proprietor referred to as kokujin. The best known of such
appointments was the Kobayakawa of Aki Province.65
64 Fukuda Toyohiko, "Muromachi bakufu no hokoshu," Nihon rekishi 274 (March 1971). 46-
65.
65 See the analysis of the Kobayakawa by Arnesen, "Provincial Vassals," in Mass and Hauser,
eds., Bakufu in Japanese History, pp. 106-112.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Map 4.4 Location of hokonin, 1444—9. (Shaded areas indicate number
of families per province.)
PROVINCES
1
Z
3
4-
5
G
7
S
9
10
t
(S
^ V
/
/
IZUMO
erp-iu
SEJT6U
OM,
11 M\\
13 KAp,'
14- ejch
15 ^INC
16 OVMf
^ - v - ^
r
\5/\ 17 f\l^\W/^
2£N 16 TCTOMI
\
>
5 - 8
-3-4
Wi
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:
z
— 1
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s /
Map 4.5 Location of hokonin, 1565. (Shaded areas indicate number
of families per province.) f
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
BAKUFU FISCAL AND MANPOWER SUPPORTS 219
Once they reached the capital the guardsmen were mustered into
five groups (ban) headed by officers drawn from the Hosokawa,
Hatakeyama, Momonoi, and Odate houses. In the 1450s, guardsmen
administered holdings located in thirty-two of the forty-four provinces
of central Japan. These were concentrated in the central region,
stretching from Mikawa westward to Tango.66
Interestingly, there
were virtually no placements in the closest of the home provinces,
such as Yamashiro, Iga, Yamato, very few in Harima, Settsu, Izumi,
Kawachi, or Kii, and none at all in Shikoku. The numbers of guardsmen
varied over time and circumstances. Takauji is said to have employed
30; Yoshimitsu, 290; and Yoshinori, 180. Sato Shin'ichi estimated
that these numbers enabled the shogun to muster at a given
time between 2,000 and 3,000 mounted fighters.67
All guardsmen were totally dependent on the shogun's favor for the
status they held in his service. Thus the guardsmen, like the administrators,
comprised an element in the bakufu that was identified with
the well-being and continued existence of the Ashikaga house. Although
the guardsmen did not constitute a force capable of imposing
the shogun's will on even a single hostile shugo, in situations in which
there was a balance of power, they could swing that balance in the
shogun's favor or, as in the years of the Onin War, help maintain the
shogun's neutrality.
BAKUFU FISCAL AND MANPOWER SUPPORTS
Historians have sought to explain the economic foundations of the
Muromachi bakufu in terms of land and landed income. It is troublesome,
therefore, not to be able to draw a clear picture of the bakufu's
landholdings that might account for the shogunate's fiscal operation.
It is on the basis of only a single document in the Kuramochi archives
that it is known that as of around 1300 the Ashikaga possessed some
thirty holdings (gotyosho) located in twelve widely scattered provinces.
Beyond this, there is almost no information on what happened to this
portfolio in subsequent years. No effort to document a continuous
analysis of Ashikaga landholdings has yet succeeded. This failure is
partially a result of insufficient diligence on the part of historians and
not on the absolute lack of documentation. In the last few years, for
66 Fukuda Toyohiko, "Muromachi bakufu hokdshu no kenkyu: sono jin'in to chiikiteki
bumpu," in Ogawa, ed., Muromachi seiken, p. 231.
67 Sato Shin'ichi, "Muromachi bakufu ron," in Iwanami koza Nikon rekishi (chusei 2) (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1963), p. 22.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
220 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
instance, the number of identifiable Ashikaga holdings at the end of
the fourteenth century has risen from sixty to some two hundred, as
reported by Kuwayama Konen.68
And the count is still rising. But
how these items came into existence, how they related to earlier holdings,
and what theirfiscalvalue was is not at all clear. All the evidence
so far has had to be extrapolated from documents that were not drafted
to answer such questions directly.
First, as a result of its defeat of the Hojo, the Ashikaga house's
estates were presumably augmented by a package of forty-five pieces
in twenty provinces given to Takauji and Tadayoshi by Godaigo. Recent
studies have confirmed the retention of a number of these holdings
into the 1390s, but not much beyond.69
A list of sixty holdings
dating from shortly before the end of the fifteenth century does not
coincide with earlier lists. Clearly, there was a great deal of movement
in the bakufu's land base.
The latest scholarship suggests that the search for a "land base" to
explain the finances of the Ashikaga house has put its emphasis in the
wrong place.70
The Ashikaga did not create, as did the Tokugawa
house, a large bloc of centrally administered lands from which revenues
were collected to benefit central bakufu storehouses. Rather, it
was the practice to assign landholdings to others to be administered on
behalf of the bakufu and also as a means of private support. By far the
greatest portion of the goryosho appears to have been allotted in this
way to members of the guards. Such grants tended to beccir.e hereditary
possessions. But up to the end of the regime, the close relationship
between the shogun and his provincial housemen guaranteed at
least some return to the shogun from this practice.
Fortunately, there are three sets of documents covering the activities
of the shogunal guards for the years 1444 to 1449, 1450 to 1455, and
1487 to 1489. Fukuda Toyohiko, in his careful study of these documents,
concludes with the following table (Table 4.3), in which he lists
the number of guardsmen holdings, by province.71
In this table he
offers two sets of figures based on the three sets of documents, Column
I being a more conservative count than Column II. Column HI is
based on a roster of guards under Shogun Yoshiteru before his death in
1565 (see Maps 4.4 and 4.5).
The lists of guardsmen's holdings demonstrate graphically the shift-
68 Kuwayama Konen, "Muromachi bakufu keizai no kozo," in Nihon keizaishi taikei (chusei 2)
(Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1965), pp. 193-9. 69 Kuwayama, "Sosoki," p. 18.
70 Imatani, "Sengokuki," pp. 18-22; Kuwayama, "Keizai no kozo," pp. 219-20.
71 Fukuda, "Hokoshu," p. 231.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
BAKUFU FISCAL AND MANPOWER SUPPORTS 221
TABLE 4 . 3
Guardsmen holdings by province
Province
Omi
Mikawa
Owari
Mino
Tango
Etchu
Kaga
Wakasa
Tamba
Ise
Inaba
Bingo
Settsu
Mimasaka
Harima
Izumo
Echizen
Totomi
Bitchu
Tajima
Izumi
Kii
Aki
Noto
Yamashiro
Iwami
Suo
Hida
Awaji
Hoki
Bizen
Kawachi
I
2
II
25
17 44
1(3 19
15 30
9 18
9 10
9 10
i$ 9
7 11
•
•
•
7 9
7 9
7 7
6 7
C
(
t
<
i
;
I
:
A
I
> 9
> 6
> 5
> 5
L 6
! 4
! 3
3
I 3
4
! 3
2 2
-
2
I 2
1
1
1
I 1
1
186 270
III
8
1
2
2
2
3
4
7
5
_
3
—
2
3
2
2
2
1
1
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
-
-
_
-
50
ing distribution of the bakufu's provincial connections. It is surprising
to find such a large number of holdings up to and after the Onin War
and even more surprising to note how many remained as late as 1565.
Of course, distribution alone tells us little about the nature and size of
revenues that the bakufu derived from these lands. A number of
scattered case studies, however, indicate the pattern of estate management
of the goryosho by the guardsmen.
The guards normally resided in Kyoto, and so like the shugo, they
were obliged to entrust local administration to deputies {daikan). A
document of about 1450, referring to a shoen in Etchu Province, is
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
222 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
typical.72
Out of a total annual tax assessment of 780 kan, 340 kan were
lost through poor harvest and the illegal encroachment of neighbors,
leaving 430 kan as the reduced tax base. Of this, one-fifth (86 kan) was
absorbed for managerial services by the guard and his agents, and
another one-fifth was spent in transportation fees, leaving three-fifths
(250 kan) for delivery to the bakufu. No claim can be made that a
hard-and-fast rule of one-fifth for the guardsmen and three-fifths for
the shogun was enforced. But clearly, besides guard duty the guards
were expected to facilitate the delivery of a tangible amount of income
to the bakufu. Because these holdings, as seen in Column III, tended
increasingly to cluster near the capital, the capacity of the Kyotobased
guards to hold on to them and to derive income from them for
their own support and for that of the shogun was relatively high.
Yet another category of land that could benefit the shogun were
those that had been donated to patronized temples, like the Gozan.
Many properties that the shogun gave to temples as pious gestures
were in later years called on to help support the bakufu. In certain
locations it appears that members of the Zen monasteries'fiscaladministrations,
the tohanshu, served as managers of lands that were held in a
manner not unlike the regular goryosho.n
The fiscal base of the Muromachi bakufu was not limited to income
from the goryosho. A growing portion was derived as a consequence of
the shogun's authority to levy taxes on special groups and activities in
the city of Kyoto and the commercial community at large.
One feature of the Muromachi bakufu's fiscal structure was that
several bakufu agencies were supported by direct endowments in land
or in rights to income for specific services rendered. For example, as
the Administrative Council took over more of the burden of administration
in Kyoto, sources of support were sought within the city. In
turning to this "inner" source of income, the bakufu took advantage of
the urban commercial tax base that had been the historical preserve of
the civil and religious aristocracy. One of the main sources of such
income came from the categories of merchants known as sakaya (sake
brewers) and doso (storehouse keepers). The right of the capital police
to tax these organizations had been recognized for years on the basis
that those responsible for maintaining law and order in the city should
be supported by the recipients of this protection. The practice began
with the collection of special contributions for special events, such as
72 Morisue Yumiko, "Muromachi bakufu goryosho ni kansuru ichi kosatsu," in Ogawa, ed.,
Muromachi seiken, pp. 254-5. 73 Imatani, Sengokuki, pp. 11-60.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
BAKUFU FISCAL AND MANPOWER SUPPORTS 223
imperial enthronement ceremonies or the rebuilding of temples and
palaces. A levy in 1371, to cover the enthronement expenses of Emperor
Goenyu, imposed a payment of thirty kan per warehouse and
two hundred mon in cash per vat on the breweries. In 1393, having
taken over control of the city's administration, the bakufu made imposts
of this kind a regular practice. The 1393 order issued from the
council refers to a figure of six thousand kan as the amount customarily
paid to the monks of the Enryakuji and states that this now
should come to the bakufu.74
Kuwayama suggests an even closer relationship between the
mandokoro and the doso. The latter were at first not so much moneylenders
as storehouse keepers, whose fireproof storage houses were
used for safekeeping by the aristocracy. Later, as an extension of such
a service, doso began to serve as fiscal managers, extending credit on
the basis of stored goods. Doso also appear to have been appointed as
officials of the shogun's treasury (kubo mikura). Hence they became
both the objects of taxation and the means of tax collection.75
The
bakufu in time developed a number of other commercial and transport
taxes derived from the patronage of merchant guilds, the establishment
of toll barriers on highways, and the sponsorship of foreign
trade. The importance of trade with Ming China to the political,
cultural, and economic life of Muromachi Japan has been dealt with
extensively elsewhere. It has been suggested that in addition to the
"enormous profits" derived from it, the trade gave to the bakufu
monopoly control over the Chinese coins imported into Japan and
thereby a status equivalent to that of a central mint.76
But the various
benefits that accrued to the bakufu from this trade are still not wholly
understood.
Another complex area of bakufu and shogunal house income pertains
to revenues derived from the shogun's aristocratic and military
status. For instance, the shogun could count on the support of his
shugo vassals for both military and nonmilitary assistance. For a given
military action, it was generally the responsibility of one or more shugo
to mobilize private forces on the shogun's behalf. Of course, this
meant the prospect of tangible reward if the action proved successful.
The 1441 Yamana attack on the Akamatsu referred to earlier is a case
74 Prescott B. Wintersteen, "The Early Muromachi Bakufu in Kyoto," in Hall and Mass, eds.,
Medieval Japan, pp. 208-9.
75 Kuwayama Konen, "Muromachi bakufu keizai kiko no ichi kosatsu, nosen-kata kubo okura
no kino to seiritsu," Shigaku zasshi 73 (September 1964). 9-17.
76 Takeo Tanaka, with Robert Sakai, "Japan's Relations with Overseas Countries," in Hall and
Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age, p. 170.
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224 T H E
MUROMACHI BAKUFU
in point. As a result of the successful campaign, Yamana was made
shugo of two provinces vacated by the Akamatsu.
In the area of nonmilitary expeditions, the shogun had the right to
requisition from his shugo contributions for public works, such as the
building of shogunal residences. The 1437 requisition often thousand
kan for the shogun's residence was imposed differentially on shugo
according to the number and size of the provinces that each held. The
impost was distributed among twenty-two shugo on the basis of two
hundred kan for those who held only one province and one thousand
kan for houses holding three or more. Other forms of contribution
from shugo were the standard practice that shugo build their residences
in Kyoto, that they maintain their own armed forces of from three
hundred to five hundred horsemen, and that when appointed to a
bakufu office, such as the Board of Retainers, they staff their offices
with their own men. One notable example is the case of Ashikaga.
Yoshimasa's project to build the Higashiyama villa, the central structure
of which was the Silver Pavilion (Ginkaku). The actual fund
raising began in 1481, only four years after the termination of the Onin
War. Yet shugo were dunned for contributions as part of their duty
toward the shogun. Despite the war-torn condition of the country, the
money was collected. As Kawai Masaharu writes, the shogun himself
was a person of charismatic prestige who could still expect support of
this kind even in the aftermath of a ten-year war that he himself had
brought on. It remained a matter of political value for an aspiring
provincial daimyo to contribute toward, or build himself, palaces for
the tenno or shogun in the capital.77
Another source of income for the shogun resulted from his powers
of appointment. Among aristocratic circles it was standard practice for
those appointed to a high court or temple rank by the shogun to pay
him a gratuity. Imatani Akira estimates that the flow of treasure into
the bakufu coffers from this practice was a major source of support for
the bakufu, especially in its declining years. The income from appointments
alone has been estimated at 3,600 kanmon annually.78
Of course,
this flow of wealth within elite circles was not all in one direction. The
shogun himself was obligated to give gifts and to contribute funds for
the building of palaces and temples and for the performance of various
rituals such as imperial enthronements and funerals. In such situations
the shogun was more apt to use his powers to require national compli-
77 Kawai Masaharu, Ashikaga Yoshimasa (Tokyo: Shimizu shoin, 1972), pp. 147-50.
78 Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 235.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS 225
ance with bakufu requisitions rather than to draw funds himself from
the bakufu's stores.79
Such requisitions generally took the form of a
provincewide tansen tax.
For much of the Muromachi period, tansen represented a major
source of income for the bakufu, to the point that the Administrative
Council (mandokoro) maintained an officer in charge of tansen revenues.
The hokoshu were used as collecting agents in the provinces. The
picture that emerges, therefore, is one in which land, by being dispersed
as private enfeoffments, served mainly to support the many
families and institutions that constituted the "governing establishment."
The resources that powered the actual functions of government
appear to have come from general taxes, like tansen, whose
collection depended on the continuing prestige of the Ashikaga house
as a charismatic entity within what essentially was a structure inherited
from the imperial bureaucracy.
THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS
The final century of Muromachi bakufu rule has given historians a
number of difficult interpretive problems. During these years the
bakufu was obviously in decline, and the shogun was increasingly
inconsequential as a political force. In fact, Japanese historians commonly
divide the time from the outbreak of the Onin War in 1467 until
Oda Nobunaga's entrance into Kyoto in 1568, as the Sengoku period,
the era of warring provinces, thus shifting the main focus of their
attention from the capital and the shogun to the provinces where the
daimyo successors to the shugo fought among themselves for territorial
hegemony. But it is increasingly apparent that the ground swell of
change in Japanese government and society that took place in the years
following the Onin War should not be described simply in terms of
denouement or breakdown. The bakufu, as separate from the shogun
as person, did retain a function throughout the last hundred years.
And although these were times of instability, they gave rise to the
structures and institutions that were to support a new, and in many
ways revolutionary, centralized order.80
Although the political and social order of the mid-Muromachi period
may have appeared to differ fundamentally from what it had been
79 Nagahara, "Zen-kindai," pp. 39-40.
80 Mitsuru Miyagawa, with Cornelius J. Kiley, "From Shoen to Chigyo: Proprietory Lordship
and the Structure of Local Power," in Hall and Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age,
pp. 89-105.
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226 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
at the end of the Kamakura era, the main premises on which Japanese
government rested remained basically unchanged. Despite the "encroachment
of military government" on civil authority, the polity at
large, the tenka, was still conceived as before. The same touchstones of
legitimation were recognized, and authority was still regarded as a
legal right granted or justified from above.
But by the end of the fifteenth century, this order was being challenged
by the appearance of groups or communities that sought, from
the higher central authority, autonomy in their local affairs. At the
upper level, this took the form of "kokujin lordships" (zaichi ryoshu)
whereby local buke families became the sole proprietors of their own
lands, managing to protect themselves from higher authority by their
own strength of arms or by the formation of leagues or compacts (ikki)
with neighboring kokujin. At first, these compacts were small in scale,
but as in the case of Aki Province, some were able to counter the
interference of both the bakufu and neighboring shugo. The revolutionary
aspect of such compacts was that they were organized on the basis
of territory and were held together by mutual agreement for the purpose
of self-defense. By the end of the fifteenth century, local military
lords emerged out of the ranks of kokujin, many of them heads of ikki
leagues, whose territory was made large enough to give them the status
of daimyo. This, as Kawai has shown, was a major impetus for the
formation of the so-called sengoku daimyo.81
Unlike the shugo daimyo whose legitimacy was derived from the
bakufu, the sengoku daimyo drew their primary authority from their
ability to exercise power and to maintain local control over the other
kokujin and peasant communities within their sphere of command.
They might on occasion, however, declare themselves successors to
shugo or other provincial officials. But their main reliance, besides
their own military strength, was on their capacity to secure the loyalty
of their military followers and to convince the other inhabitants of
their territories of their ability, or at least intent, to work for the good
of the territorial community. This situation was reflected in the large
body of legal codes issued by sengoku daimyo, in which the daimyo
territory was conceived of as an organic entity, a kokka, over which the
daimyo exercised public authority (kogi).*2
81 Kawai, with Grossberg, "Shogun and Shugo," pp. 80-83.
82 Shizuo Katsumata, with Martin Collcutt, "The Development of Sengoku Law," in John
Whitney Hall, Keiji Nagahara, and Kozo Yamamura, eds., Japan Before Tokugawa: Political
Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500-1650 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
i98l)>PP. " 4 - 1 7 Cambridge
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THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS 227
The trend toward local autonomy was evident at the lower levels of
Japanese society as well, as the cultivator class underwent a major
transformation during the late Muromachi period.83
One aspect of this
was the increased freedom won by agricultural villages to organize
their lives according to the community's desire. This was reflected in
the appearance of village assemblies (yoriai) and village-established
codes for internal regulation. It was reflected further in the success of
some communities in winning from higher authority the rights to
water use, autonomy of internal administration, and adjudication of
disputes. Some even earned the right of immunity from entrance by
officials of higher authority, as long as an agreed-upon annual tax was
delivered. Many of these concessions were won by the use of the only
weapons the villages possessed: the organization of village compacts
and mass demonstrations, both called ikki. It was in this context of
local unrest that the incipient daimyo of the Sengoku age recognized
the need to accommodate the demands of the peasantry and thus
declared themselves the protectors of all classes within their realms
(kokka). By professing their regard for the common good, they
claimed the right to govern their territory on the strength of the support
they received from those they governed. Thus they invoked a new
legitimacy, not derived from tenno or shogun, but established by the
implied consent of the public will. This was the making of a new
rationale for government, a radically new tenka.8
*
Although these changes were taking place in the provinces, their full
impact did not reach the capital region until after the mid-sixteenth
century. The capital and the surrounding agricultural lands in the provinces
of Yamashiro, Omi, Kawachi, Settsu, and Yamato and a few other
locations made up a central region that retained its own configuration
throughout the last century of Ashikaga rule. And in this region in
which the economy and society were still dominated by the interests of
the court nobility and the central religious orders, the bakufu still had a
role to play. During the last century, though the bakufu may have lost its
ability to affect national affairs, it still was an important mechanism
through which the noble houses, the great temples, and the wealthy
merchant houses integrated their interests. Thus the bakufu continued
to adjudicate disputes and to issue decrees until 1579.8s
83 Keiji Nagahara, with Kozo Yamamura, "Village Communities and Daimyo Power," in Hall
and Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age, pp. 107-23.
84 Ibid., pp. 121-3.
85 Ashikaga legislation, as revealed in the supplementary orders (tsuikahd), increasingly narrowed
its scope to the capital city and its environs. See items 400-530 (1520-1570) in Kemmu
Shikimoku and Tsuikaho, pp. 145-64.
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228 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
The event that so dramatically started the downward slide of the
Muromachi bakufu was the "War of Onin and Bummei," (1467-77),
usually referred to simply as "Onin." A war that involved nearly all of
the shugo houses of central Japan, it was doubly destructive because it
was fought out in the streets of Kyoto. The issue that brought on the
war was a conflict between the Hosokawa and Yamana families over
the choice of heir to the shogun Yoshimasa. In the fighting, much of
central Kyoto and the northern fringe of the city was destroyed, and
many courtiers and priests fled the capital for the provinces. The
shogun Yoshimasa remained aloof, maintaining his usual standard of
aristocratic life.
If Yoshimitsu emerges in Muromachi history as the heroic model of
the noble military ruler, Yoshimasa is generally pictured as the tragic
ruler whose effete behavior brought on the declining fortunes of the
ruling house.86
Yoshimasa, the second son of the murdered Yoshinori,
was named shogun in 1443 at the age of eight. Being a minor at the time,
he was placed under the guardianship of the kanrei, Hosokawa
Katsumoto. He was declared of age in 1449 and served as shogun until
1473, when he retired in favor of his son Yoshihisa. He lived on until
1489. In Yoshimasa's early years the bakufu had still not recovered from
the shock inflicted by the murder of the shogun in 1441. At the same
time, the country as a whole was suffering from acute economic problems.
Rural mobs frequently broke into the capital, demanding relief
from debts and taxation and forcing the bakufu to issue debt cancellation
edicts (tokusei-rei). Widespread famine conditions during the 1450s
led to death by famine in parts of Japan. Yet Yoshimasa and his kuge and
buke colleagues engaged in politics as usual, building costly residences
and bickering over court preferment and family inheritance. In 1458,
Yoshimasa rebuilt the shogunal palace at great expense.
Meanwhile, political tension among the shugo was building up to the
point of general warfare.87
Yet during thefightingthat started in 1467,
Yoshimasa built a special residential palace for his mother. He had
started in 1465 a retirement residence in the eastern foothills but had
dropped the project when war broke out in Kyoto. In 1482, however, he
began in earnest to build the Higashiyama villa that was to contain his
monument, the Silver Pavilion (Ginkaku). In 1483, Yoshimasa moved
to Higashiyama where he lived out his life as a patron of the arts, setting
a style that was to leave an enduring mark on Japanese cultural history.
86 Kawai, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, offers the most complete modern biography.
87 Iikura Kiyotake, "Onin no ran iko ni okeru Muromachi bakufu no seisaku," Nihcnshi kenkyu
(1974). 139-5'•
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THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS 229
By the end of the Onin War, most shugo had abandoned Kyoto and
returned to their provinces to consolidate their forces. Kyoto itself was
no longer a source of power for them. That was to be found in the
provinces. As the shugo belatedly returned their attention to their
provincial bases, most found that the times had already passed them
by. Their vassals, being close to the real sources of military support
and having for many years served as deputies for their Kyoto-based
and increasingly remote shugo overlords, were showing signs of insubordination.
Under these conditions, only the provincial daimyo domainal
lord could survive. Shugo houses either were forced to adapt to
these conditions or were quickly displaced by stronger provincial leaders.
From this point on, affairs in the capital were conditioned on the
struggle for power in the provinces.
But the capital and its government, the bakufu, retained some of its
importance.88
Although the last four or five shoguns had no personal
power, the Hosokawa family that monopolized the office of kanrei
managed to give a certain stability to the capital area, at least until the
1530s. During the Onin War, the bugyonin had sided with the
Hosokawa cause, and after the end of the fighting they remained
cooperative with the Hosokawa. The pattern displayed in these years,
in which a figurehead aristocratic house was kept alive by provincial
military leaders as a means of acquiring national influence, was not
new to Japanese history. The story of the last shogun, Yoshiaki, the
emperor Ogimachi, and the rising military hegemon, Oda Nobunaga,
reveals how a "puppet shogun" could prove useful and yet cause trouble
for his puppeteer.89
By the 1560s, the aristocratic houses of Kyoto were faced with more
than the usual crises. The last kanrei, Hosokawa Ujitsuna, had been
ousted by former vassals, the Miyoshi and the Matsunaga. In 1565,
this group had assassinated the shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru, and had
substituted Ashikaga Yoshihide as their puppet shogun. Another potential
heir to the Ashikaga shogunate, Yoshiaki, at the time abbot of a
subtemple of the Kofukuji, escaped to the east to find support for his
own cause. Oda Nobunaga seemed a likely candidate on whom to rely.
Although still unproven as a national leader, he had had a string of
notable military successes, especially the defeat in 1560 of a great army
led by Imagawa Yoshimoto of Suruga. By 1565, Nobunaga was being
88 Ibid., pp. 142-3.
89 The remainder of what follows relies on Hisashi Fujiki, with George Elison, "The Political
Posture of Oda Nobunaga," in Hall, Nagahara, and Yamamura, eds., Japan Before Tokugawa,
pp. 49-93Cambridge
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230 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU
courted by both tenno and shogunal claimants to offer his military
support on their behalf. Nobunaga responded to these offers in 1568,
entering the capital in force "in the interest of" the emperor and "as
champion for" Ashikaga Yoshiaki.
Once Nobunaga was in control of the city, the emperor, Ogimachi,
named Yoshiaki as the shogun and gave orders that both Yoshiaki and
Nobunaga aid in the restoration of the estates lost by the imperial
family. Nobunaga's status was left uncertain, but it appears that
Yoshiaki wished to name him as kanrei. Had Nobunaga accepted this
appointment, he would have become a party to a return to the triangular
balance of power that had existed among tenno, shogun, and kanrei
a century or so earlier. But Nobunaga refused to subordinate himself
to the shogun. He rejected the offer and instead attempted to dominate
the shogun through sheer force. From what transpired during the
next few years, it is clear that the shogun was not powerless in such a
situation. He could still count on the services of the Ashikaga house
retainers, the civil administrators, and the guardsmen. The bakufu
continued functioning as a legal office, affirming land grants and inheritances.
Moreover, through his staff, the shogun still exercised
considerable behind-the-scenes influence by playing factional politics
among the provincial daimyo.
In early 1573, Yoshiaki sent out letters to nearby daimyo and religious
institutions hostile to Nobunaga, calling for military action
against him. He took refuge in a fortification south of Kyoto and
waited for developments. Nobunaga made short work of the shogun's
move. Yoshiaki was defeated, but not killed, and was allowed to live
out his life in exile. But for all intents and purposes, the Ashikaga
shogun and the Muromachi bakufu had ceased to exist.
Within a week after disposing of Yoshiaki, Nobunaga managed to
have the emperor change the era name to Tensho as a sign of legitimation
for a new political order. Nobunaga's tenka differed fundamentally
from that of the Ashikaga shoguns. Yoshimitsu's or Yoshimasa's
tenka had envisioned a fusion of kuge and buke rule conducted through
the provincial administration of the shogun's shugo vassals. But by the
time of Yoshiaki, the Ashikaga mandate to rule had been reduced to
the narrowest of private interests, the shogun's simple desire to stay
alive. Against this, Nobunaga was able to pose a broader conception of
tenka, one that included a place for not only the kuge and buke but also
the common people. It was this larger tenka that Yoshiaki proved unfit
to govern.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER 5
MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT:
SHUGO AND KOKUJIN
INTRODUCTION
In contrast with that of the Kamakura bakufu, the authority of the
Muromachi bakufu expanded rapidly following its establishment in
1336, and the Ashikaga shogun became almost an absolute monarch.1
In the provinces, shugo (military governors) were installed in sixty-six
administrative units, or provinces. In Kyushu and in the area from
the Kanto eastward, shogunal authority was delegated to regional
bakufu headquarters with administrative control over large areas,
called the Kanto kubo and the Kyushu tandai. An intermediate area
encompassing the Kinai, or central provinces, was under direct shogunal
rule. The authority of the shugo, in addition to their three
major duties inherited from the Kamakura period - punishing murderers,
putting down rebellions, and providing men for guard duty was
enhanced by the addition of jurisdiction over land-related matters.
Besides holding nearly all military and administrative authority over
the provinces, the shugo organized local overlords, called kokujin, into
retainer bands. This process, called vassalization, progressed as the
shugo gradually suppressed kokujin resistance. In an attempt to contain
the increasing power of the shugo, the bakufu used control measures
such as appointing members of the shugo's collateral family to the
shogun's army to serve as captains of the shogun's bodyguard, but
from the time of the Onin War (1467-77), the shugo's increasing separation
and independence from the bakufu became undeniable, and the
decentralization of local authority proceeded apace. Most of the
sengoku daimyo, great sixteenth-century local warriors who controlled
their own territories, could trace their lineages back to the Muromachi
shugo or to their retainers, the deputy shugo (shugodai).
1 Sato Shin'ichi, "Shugo ryogokusei no tenkai," in Shin Nihonshi taikei (Tokyo: Asakura shoten,
1954), p. 107.
231
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232 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
REGIONAL ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICIALS: KUBO AND
TAN DAI
During the Nambokucho disturbance (1336-92), the bakufu's regional
administrative headquarters - the Kanto kubo and the Kyushu
tandai-were established and had jurisdiction over the shugo, chiefly
out of military necessity. The Kanto kubo most likely originated during
the Kanno disturbance (1350-2), when Shogun Ashikaga Takauji
left Kyoto to go to the Kanto, leaving his son Yoshiakira in his place.
In so doing, Takauji divided the country territorially between east and
west, thus creating a kind of dual government. Later, Takauji returned
to Kyoto, but he stationed his fourth son, Ashikaga Motouji,
the younger brother of Yoshiakira, in his place in Kamakura as the
first Kanto kubo.
Paralleling the bakufu in Kyoto, a shitsuji or chief steward (called
the Kamakura shitsuji and, later, the Kamakura kanrei) was installed as
an adviser to the kubo, to whom the latter delegated all governing
duties. When a serious rift developed between the two, the Kanto
region was gradually brought to a state of disruption and war. The
main line of the Uesugi clan, Yamauchi no Uesugi, came to inherit the
office of Kanto shitsuji, which included a concurrent appointment as
the shugo of Echigo, Kozuke, and Sagami provinces. Another official
under the shitsuji was in charge of litigation and day-to-day governing.
The office of the kubo was thus a smaller replica of the bakufu in
Kyoto. The eight provinces under the jurisdiction of the Kanto kubo
included Sagami, Musashi, Shimosa, Kazusa, Awa, Hitachi,
Shimotsuke, and Kozuke, but at times the provinces of Shinano, Kai,
Mutsu, and Dewa were also within the purview of the Kanto kubo.2
Among Japanese specialists, the Kanto governing authority of the
Muromachi period is called the Kamakura-/w because its administrative
offices were established at Kamakura in Sagami Province.3
The
branch of the Ashikaga family that served as the Kanto kubo maintained
an independent stance toward Kyoto, and beginning with the
reign of the third shogun, Yoshimitsu, the Kanto's military activities
were regarded with a wary eye by the authorities in Kyoto,
At the end of 1399, when the powerful western shugo Ouchi
Yoshihiro attacked the bakufu and started the Oei disturbance,
2 On the Kanto kubo system, see Watanabe Yosuke, Kanto chushin Ashikaga jidai no kenkyu
(Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 1926); Ito Kiyoshi, "Muromachi no kokka to Togoku," Rekishigaku
kenkyu, special issue (October 1979): 63-72.
3 Ito Kiyoshi, "Kamakura bakufu oboegaki," Rekishi, no. 42 (April 1972): 17-34.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
REGIONAL ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICIALS 233
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu resolved to subjugate the Kanto. The next shogun,
Ashikaga Yoshimochi, attempted to check the rebellious Kanto
kubo both openly and by coercive methods. On the one hand he pacified
the appeased shitsuji, Uesugi Norizane, and at the same time
threw his support to powerful shugo and some of the kokujin who
dominated areas of the Kanto, calling them the "stipended band of
Kyoto." Accordingly, the kokujin and shugo of the various areas of the
Kanto split into two factions: those who allied with the bakufu in
Kyoto and thus attempted to widen their own sphere of control, and
those who pledged loyalty to the Kanto kubo and broke with Kyoto.
Antagonism between the shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori and the Kanto
kubo Ashikaga Mochiuji reached a peak in 1428. Finally, in the Eikyo
disturbance of 1438, Mochiuji was defeated and killed by bakufu
troops. Two years later, nearly all of Mochiuji's descendants were
killed in the Yuki disturbance, and the Kanto was left without a kubo.
In this conflict, the Kanto shitsuji Uesugi Norizane, taking a position
similar to that of the bakufu, tried to dissuade Mochiuji from rebelling,
but he was unsuccessful, and finally he left his master and went
into seclusion.
After the Kakitsu disturbance of 1441, Shogun Yoshimasa appointed
the last remaining descendant of Mochiuji, Ashikaga Shigeuji,
to the position of Kanto kubo and dispatched him to Kamakura. Since
the Eikyo disturbance, Shigeuji had harbored a deep resentment
against Norizane and his son Uesugi Noritada, who subsequently became
the shitsuji. In 1454, Shigeuji attacked and killed Noritada in
Kamakura, and the Kanto was plunged into chaos. The next year,
Shigeuji was removed from his post as kubo and was driven out of
Kamakura by bakufu troops.
By now a rebel, Shigeuji set up his resistance headquarters at Koga
in Shimosa Province. Known as the Koga kubo, he attracted many
local military leaders as his retainers.4
In the conflict that soon broke
out, the town of Kamakura was destroyed, and the Kanto entered the
period of civil wars, the Sengoku period, one step ahead of the rest of
the country. In this way, exactly the opposite of the bakufu's intent in
delegating the Kanto's governing authority to the Kanto kubo was
accomplished: It succeeded only in hastening that area's estrangement
from the bakufu.
The bakufu did not appoint shugo to the northern provinces of
4 Sato Hironobu, "Sengokuki ni okeru Togoku kokkaron no ichi shiten - Koga kubo
Ashikagashi to Go-H6joshi o chushin to shite," Rekishigaku kenkyu, special issue (October
1979): 72-75Cambridge
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234 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Mutsu and Dewa, where in the Nambokucho period Kitabatake Akiie
had gathered a military following and the forces of the Southern Court
held sway. First, Ishido Yoshifusa was appointed tandai, and then
Shiba Iekane was appointed shogunal deputy (kanrei) of the northern
region.5
From then on, Shiba's descendants, the Ozaki family, were
the de facto shugo there. At one point in the earlyfifteenthcentury, the
region came under the jurisdiction of the Kanto kubo, and later the
kubo's family set up a residence in the southern part of Mutsu, which
became known as the Sasagawa Palace. In the early sixteenth century,
the sengoku daimyo Date was appointed by the bakufu to the office of
tandai of the northern region, but in fact he held no power, and his
office was important in name only.6
Kyushu in the Nambokucho period was an even greater stronghold
of the southern forces than was the northern region. Here, in the
Kamakura period, the Chinzei tandai, the bakufu's Kyushu headquarters,
had been located. Isshiki Toyu, a member of the Ashikaga clan,
was appointed to the Muromachi successor of the Kyushu post, now
called the Chinzei kanrei.7
Unable to attain control of it as an outpost
of the bakufu and the forces of the Northern Court, Isshiki was forced
to move his administrative offices north to Dazaifu and Hakata; by the
middle of the fourteenth century, the Isshiki family's control of
Kyushu had collapsed. There, the bakufu, in the person of the kanrei
Hosokawa Yoriyuki, appointed Imagawa Sadayo (also known as
Imagawa Ryoshun) as the shugo of Totomi, that is, the Kyushu tandai,
and he was dispatched to Hakata in 1369.
By 1371, Sadayo had obtained the support of daimyo friendly to the
bakufu, like the Matsuura band, the Shimazu and the Ouchi. Eventually
he was able to crush the military leaders of the southern forces,
like the Kikuchi, and succeeded in unifying Kyushu under the
bakufu's control. Continuing the practice of the Kamakura bakufu,
Sadayo established the office of the tandai in the Hakata, for Chikuzen
Province, and was concurrently appointed shugo of the three provinces
of Aki, Bingo, and Hyuga. But when Hosokawa Yoriyuki was killed in
the Kuryaku disturbance of 1379, Imagawa's position also became
precarious. Before long the post of tandai passed to Ouchi Yoshihiro.
And after Ouchi's downfall in the Oei disturbance of 1399, the
5 Endo Iwao, "Oshu kanrei oboegaki," Rekishi, no. 38 (March 1969): 24-66; Ogawa Makoto,
Ashikaga ichimon shugo flatten shi no kenkyu, (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1980), pp. 525-
618.
6 Fujiki Hisashi, Sengoku shakaishiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1974), pp. 342-59.
7 Kawazoe Shoji, "Chinzei kanrei ko," Nihon rekishi, nos. 205 and 206 (June-July 1965): 2-14
and 29-53, respectively.
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SHUGO DAIMYO 235
Shibukawa, a collateral line of the Ashikaga, inherited the office of
tandai. Beginning in the early fifteenth century, the powerful shugo of
northern Kyushu - the Ouchi, Shoni, and Otomo - struggled for hegemony
over northern Kyushu. The tandai office held by the Shibukawa
family ceased to function and became only a nominal position. At the
same time, Kyushu entered the Onin War and was engulfed in strife for
the next thirty years. Like the Kanto, Kyushu entered the Sengoku era
early.8
The Muromachi bakufu's regional governing mechanisms, called
the kubo and the tandai - which were established in the Kanto, the
northern provinces, and Kyushu - entered the Onin War early and
were stripped of their power before they could reach their full development.
This was an important turning point toward decentralization in
the peripheral areas and toward a general state of war.
SHUGO DAIMYO
Placement of shugo
The Muromachi shugo were the institutional heirs of the Kamakura
shugo system.9
Even the short-lived Kemmu government of Emperor
Godaigo, an attempt at resurrecting the ancient ritsuryo state, pursued
a policy of jointly appointing to each province a shugo and a governor,
the ancient ritsuryo post of kokushi. The Mongol invasions of the late
Kamakura period were an important turning point in the expansion of
the shugo's powers. Even Emperor Godaigo's political power cannot
be ignored as a factor in the system's entrenchment. In some regions,
the Muromachi bakufu, founded in 1336, continued its fight against
the forces of the Southern Court, just as before. But in areas where the
fighting had ended, the bakufu was able to install powerful military
leaders of the Ashikaga clan as shugo. To areas where the southern
forces remained relatively strong, however, especially in the provinces
around Kyoto, the bakufu dispatched "provincial generals" (kuni
daisho), military commanders quite unlike the shugo, who were basically
administrative officials. Some provinces had no shugo at all; only
kuni daisho.10
8 Kawazoe Shoji, "Kyushu tandai no suimetsu katei," Kyushu bunkashi kenkyujo kiyo, no. 23
(March 1978): 81-130.
9 Sato Shin'ichi, Zoho Kamakura bakufu shugo seido no kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
shuppankai, 1971), pp. 243-53.
10 Sato Shin'ichi, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido no kenkyu — Nambokuchoki shokoku shugo enkaku
kosho hen, rev. ed., vol. 1 (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1967), pp. 31-32.
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236 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
As in the past, in the crucial five provinces of the Kyoto area and
particularly in the militarily most strategic province of Yamato, no
shugo was appointed. Instead, those powers were held by one of the
powerful head temples of the Hosso sect of Buddhism, the Kofukuji.11
With the historically strong support of the powerful Fujiwara family,
the Kofukuji became the dominant force in Yamato Province and
owned extensive estates from which it derived great revenue. To protect
its interests, the temple maintained an army of warrior-monks
(sohei). Until the sengoku daimyo Matsunaga Hisahide conquered it in
1560, Yamato Province generally was able to resist military control.
This is not to say that the bakufu's authority did not extend to the
province at all: In military crises, shugo of the neighboring provinces
of Iga, Kochi, and later Yamashiro temporarily executed the duties of
shugo there.
Yamato was not the only province lacking shugo: In the province of
Hida, the bakufu acknowledged the presence of the aristocratic
Anekoji family in the capacity of provincial governor, and the
Kyogoku family as shugo. Likewise, the Kitabatake family, descendants
of the aristocrat Kitabatake Chikafusa, controlled the southern
half of Ise Province through the office of provincial governor.12
After
the Onin War, only they exercised shugo authority there and were even
formally appointed shugo by the bakufu.
In the Muromachi period, the governors of Ise, Hida, and Tosa
(who after the Onin War was Ichijo Norifusa, a member of one of the
aristocratic regent houses), were known as the "three provincial governors"
(sankokushi). The lack of a shugo in Yamato and the existence of
the three aristocratic provincial governors were unusual and not typical
of the Muromachi shugo system.
As the province where the bakufu itself was located, Yamashiro was
of primary importance. In the Kamakura period, no shugo had been
appointed to this province which was directly administered through
the bakufu's Kyoto branch, the Rokuhara tandai-11
This situation
continued under the Muromachi bakufu until the end of the
Nambokucho period. From the establishment of the bakufu until the
end of the Kanno disturbance in 1352, the shugo's administrative functions
were carried out by bakufu vassals in Yamashiro Province, acting
11 Nagashima Fukutaro, "Yamato shugoshiki ko," Rekishi chiri 68 (October 1936): 61-66;
Nagashima Fukutaro, Nara bunka nodenryu (Tokyo: Meguro shoten, 1951), pp. 33, 85.
12 Okamura Morihiko, Hida shiko, medieval vol. (Tokyo: Okamura Morihiko, 1979), pp. 56-
74; Onishi Genichi, Kitabatakeshi no kenkyu (Mie: Mieken kyodo shiryo kankokai, 1962), pp.
1-100; Nishiyama Masaru, "Sengoku daimyo Kitabatakeshi no kenryoku kozo," Shirin 62
(March 1979): 51-86. 13 Sato, Zoho Kamakura bakufu, p. 1.
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SHUGO DAIMYO 237
as inspection and enforcement officials. In the late fourteenth century,
the Board of Retainers the (samurai-dokoro) exercised the shugo's authority
there.14
The bakufu, however, was keenly aware of the military
importance of Yamashiro and so in 1385 divided it into two administrative
sections: Rakuchu, which included the city of Kyoto, and the
district (gunbu), which was agricultural. Rakuchu was administered by
the samurai-dokoro, and an office of Yamashiro shugo was created for
the district as part of a general assignment of shugo. Yamana Ujikiyo,
the shugo of Izumi and Tamba, was appointed to the new office.15
From then on, the board carried out police functions in most of the
capital. After Ujikiyo was defeated in the Meitoku disturbance of
1391, it became customary for the closest vassals of Shogun Yoshimitsu,
including Yuki Mitsufuji and Ko no Moronao, to fill the office of
Yamashiro shugo. But after Yoshimitsu's death, the samurai-dokoro
again took over the administration of Yamashiro.16
In the movement of
personnel that accompanied the suppression of the provincial governor
Kitabatake Mitsumasa's rebellion in 1412, the kanrei Hatakeyama
Mitsuie was appointed shugo of Yamashiro. From then on, Yamashiro
for the most part could be considered the domain of the Hatakeyama
family, who made the local kokujin and wealthy peasants their vassals.
In Omi Province as well, where, after Yamato and Yamashiro, the
power of the shoen proprietors was greatest, a special system was put
into effect whereby the shugo's authority was limited and did not
extend to the lands of the Enryakuji, the great Buddhist monastery on
Mount Hiei. In those areas the shugo's duties were carried out by the
Enryakuji's own military organization, the "emissaries of Mount Hiei"
(jsanmon shisetsu), who were even so designated by the bakufu.17
Dividing the office of shugo
The shugo of the Muromachi bakufu differed from those of the
Kamakura period in that their scope of authority was greatly increased.
Another change in the office of shugo that began in this period
was the practice of dividing it between two people. As the Kemmu
shikimoku, the legal code of the Muromachi bakufu, explained, "The
14 Haga Norihiko, "Muromachi bakufu samurai dokoro tonin, tsuketafi: Yamashiro shugo bunin
enkaku kosho ko," Toyo Daigaku Kiyo, Faculty of Letters vol., no. 16 (July 1962): 77-98.
15 Gomi Fumihiko, "Shicho no kosei to bakufu: juni-juyon seiki no rakuchu shihai,"
Rekithigaku kenkyu, no. 392 (January 1973): 1-19.
16 Haga, "Muromachi bakufu samurai dokoro," pp. 91-92.
17 Shimosaka Mamoru, "Sanmon shisetsu seido no seiritsu to tenkai: Muromachi bakufu no
sanmon seisaku o megutte," Shirin 58 (January 1975): 67-114.
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238 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
post of shugo is an office from ancient times," indicating that the
bakufu regarded the shugo as successors of the provincial governors of
the ritsuryo system.l8
The Muromachi shugo came to be regarded as the
administrators of each province's political affairs. The office of shugo
was first divided into district-level units so that several shugo could be
concurrently installed in a single province.19
They were known as
"half-province shugo" (hankoku shugo) or "divided-district shugo"
(bungun shugo) and are thought to be the forerunners of the similar
divisions of domains instituted by the Tokugawa bakufu. The initial
reason for this division of office was apparently military, and during
the Nambokucho disturbance, military administrative officials like
shugo were installed as needed. It is not clear exactly when the office of
shugo for the district level was first divided, but because the two
districts of Amata and Ikaruga were taken from the shugo of Tamba,
Niki Yoriaki, in 1342 and given to the shugo of Tango, Uesugi
Tomisada,20
this system may have been instituted immediately after
the Muromachi bakufu was established.
In the latter part of the Nambokucho period, with the rise of powerful
shugo, the bakufu used this system to check the increasing power of
specific shugo. In 1383, the bakufu restored Hosokawa Yorimoto (s::.i
of Yoriyuki), who was defeated in the Koryaku disturbance of 1379, as
the shugo of Settsu Province.21
But the kanrei Shiba Yoshimasa, fearing
the rising power of the Hosokawa, then subdivided and allotted nearly
half of the province to neighboring shugo.11
Specifically, of Sectsu
Province's thirteen districts, the districts of Nose, Kawabe, and Arima
near Harima Province, as well as Nishinari District, were assigned to
the Akamatsu family; Sumiyoshi District near Izumi Province was
assigned to the Yamana family; and Higashinari District near Kochi
Province was assigned to the Hatakeyama family. As a result, the
Hosokawa family was unable to govern all of Settsu as their own
domain or to use the office of shugo to cultivate their own military
following in order to recover their lost districts. Through political
negotiations following the Onin War, the Hosokawa regained ihese
districts, except for Arima District. Instead, the Arima family, a collateral
branch of the Akamatsu, maintained exclusive control of that
18 Sato, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido, p. 46.
19 Imatani Akira, Muromachi bakufu kailai katei no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1985), pp.
225-59.
20 Imatani Akira, Shugo ryogoku shihai kiko no kenkyu (Tokyo: Hosei daigaku shuppankyoku,
1986), pp. 307-45.
21 Sato, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido, vol. I, pp. 30-52; Ogawa, Ashikaga ichimon, pp. 285-9.
22 Sato, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido, vol. I, pp. 30-52; Imatani, Shugo ryogoku, pp. 246-94.
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SHUGO DAIMYO 239
district and indeed, were called "masters of the district" (gunshu) until
the end of the Sengoku period.23
Like Settsu, Aki was a province with several divided districts. The
bakufu attached great importance to Aki as a buffer zone between the
renowned warrior family of western Japan, the Ouchi, and the forces
of the Yamana family. During the Nambokucho period the shugo of
Aki Province was a member of the Takeda family, the great warrior
clan based east of Kamakura. But at the end of the Nambokucho
period, as the forces of the Ouchi and Yamana expanded, the province
was internally divided in the following way.
First, the three central districts located near the head of Hiroshima
Bay - Sato, Anan, and Yamagata - were assigned as divided districts
to the Takeda family. Kamo District and the four islands of Nomi,
Kurahashi, Hidaka, and Gamagari, which made up an archipelago
near Anan District, went to the Ouchi; the remaining five districts of
Sasei, Takamiya, Takada, Toyota, and Ahoku were given to the
Yamana, who were designated as the official shugo; and the Takeda
family were named "masters of the district" (gunshu).24
In provinces
where the normal shugo system was in effect, such a division was rare.
Instead, there was a "half-province" shugo system in which one province
was divided nearly in half and two shugo were installed. This halfprovince
shugo system was put into effect in the provinces of Bingo,
Tosa, Izumi, Omi, Kaga, Totomi, Suruga, and Hitachi. Except for
Tosa and Izumi, the provinces were divided in half, either north to
south or east to west, with the border running approximately through
the center.
In other words, insofar as the division of the office of shugo was
territorial, it was only a variation of the divided-district shugo sys-
tem.25
In the cases of Tosa (from 1400 to 1408 only) and Izumi,
however, a peculiar system was instituted whereby the province's military
administration was overseen simultaneously by two shugo.26
It is
unclear why such a system was devised, but in the case of Izumi, the
following explanation seems plausible: The northernmost area of the
province was the great trade city of Sakai; a strict territorial division
would have resulted in two unbalanced districts, one urban and one
agricultural. Moreover, twice during the Meitoku (1391) and Oei
23 Imatani, Muromachi bakufu kaitai, pp. 225-59.
24 Kishida Hiroshi and Akiyama Nobutaka, eds., Hiroshima ken shi, medieval vol. (Hiroshima:
Hiroshima kencho, 1984), pp. 301-49; Kawamura Shoichi, "Aki Takedashi kankei monjo
mokuroku," pt. 1, Geibi chihoshi kenkyu, no. 108 (1975): 26-31.
25 Imatani, Muromachi bakufu kaitai, pp. 225-59. 26 Imatani, Shugo ryogoku, pp. 216-45.
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240 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
(1399) disturbances, powerful shugo, using the city of Sakai as their
base, rebelled against the bakufu, and so most likely the bakufu took
this into consideration when constructing the system.
The shugo's duties and scope of authority
The Kamakura shugo's scope of authority in normal times consisted
mainly of recruiting men for guard service and handling criminal
matters. The latter included police powers in cases of rebellion, murder,
night raiding, robbery, banditry, and piracy. But with the great
expansion of the shugo's power brought on by the Mongol invasions
and the proliferation of "evil bands" (akuto) in the late Kamakura
period, the office of shugo also took on many administrative duties.
For example, the shugo had to attend to such things as establishing and
maintaining an administrative office for the temples and shrines, as
well as for the post stops (lodgings).27
The shugo of the Muromachi
period continued this trend, but they were also officially given various
powers that the Kamakura shugo had not had, such as sending an
envoy to the scene of a land dispute (shisetsu jungyoken), enforcing the
law, allocating hanzei, and levying taxes.28
The right of enforcement, also called the enforcement of landrelated
verdicts, included carrying out the litigation procedures pertaining
to existing rights over real property (shomu sown, property
deliberations), forbidding the trespass on or seizure of the disputed
land, and then installing on the land the winner of the lawsuit, that is,
the person recognized by the bakufu as the land's rightful owner. This
last step was called satashi tsuku. The Kamakura bakufu at first would
appoint two warriors as emissaries to perform this function, but by the
end of the Kamakura period, or before 1330, the shugo with jurisdiction
over the land in question usually had the duty of enforcement.29
The Muromachi bakufu also followed these procedures and generally
had the shugo implement the bakufu decisions regarding land lawsuits.
In a Muromachi bakufu decree in 1346, the right of enforcement was
added to the shugo's three basic duties.30
The legal process itself was as follows: When a verdict was handed
down, the bakufu would usually issue it in the form of a shogunal
directive stating the verdict, that is, an edict of a judicial settlement.
27 Sato, ZdhoKamakura bakufu, pp. 250-2. 28 Ibid., p. 251.
29 Sato, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido, vol. I, pp. 7-9.
30 Sato Shin'ichi and Ikeuchi Yoshisuke, Chusei hosei shiryoshu, vol. 2: Muromachi bakufu ho
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1957), pp. 23-24.
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SHUGO DAIMYO 241
Next, the kanrei would receive it and issue an enforcement decree
ordering the shugo of the province where the land was located to take
care of the matter, that is, to enforce the verdict. The winner of the
lawsuit would then receive both the shogunal directive and the enforcement
decree at the bakufu's office of litigation, take them to the
shugo's Kyoto residence, and request that the land be returned to him.
If the shugo consented, he would issue an enforcement order to the
deputy shugo residing in the province, charging him with restoring the
land to the rightful party. The victorious litigant would then take this
document to his province, present it to the deputy shugo, and await
instructions. The deputy shugo would issue an order to turn over the
land to an aide or to a district-level official to enforce the verdict on the
land itself. When the land had been restored, a guarantee of receipt of
the land, that is, a document of reply, would be issued by the deputy
shugo's aide and would take exactly the same route in reverse, up to the
highest official involved. Finally, all the documents would be handed
over to the successful litigant.31
This process contained yet another layer of bureaucracy. Many deputy
shugo, as well as shugo, lived in Kyoto, and so in such cases another
enforcement edict would be issued from the deputy shugo to the junior
deputy shugo (koshugodai) residing in the province. It was also common
for the shugo's scribe, who lived in Kyoto in the shugo's absence,
to issue an enforcement edict to the deputy shugo.32
Such cases show
that the shugo's duty of enforcement, though originally only one part
of the bakufu's administration of justice, in fact gave the shugo a great
deal of room in which to maneuver. Many shugo refused to enforce
cases that they considered disadvantageous, and many shugo collected
large fees, known as "offerings," from successful litigants as compensation
for this enforcement service.
Another new duty for the shugo was to allocate hanzei, literally "a
half-tax." This means giving to the warriors - the local supporters in
the Nambokucho disturbance - half of the nengu (rice tax) of the shoen
and kokugaryo, for their military expenses. This policy was first put
into effect in 1352 when Takauji enforced it on the shoen of Omi,
Mino, and Owari provinces. In the beginning it was to be limited to
one year, and only nengu income would be forfeited by the absentee
proprietor. What actually happened, however, was that once the warriors
were granted hanzei, they developed a vested interest in the land
31 Sato, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido, vol. I, pp. 8-9.
32 Sato, Shin'ichi, Komonjogaku nyumon (Tokyo: Hosei daigaku shuppankyoku, 1971), pp. 169-
70.
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242 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
and soon began to entertain designs on nearby lands of temples and
shrines as well. Thereafter, the hanzei decrees that the bakufu intended
to use to eradicate the warriors' incursions onto shoen met with
great resistance by the local warriors.33
In 1368, the kanrei Hosokawa Yoriyuki issued the famous Can
hanzei decree which recognized hanzei on regular shoen and exempted
only imperial lands, lands of the imperial regent houses, and consolidated
holdings of great temples and shrines. This decree was intended
to halt permanently the warriors' incursions into shoen by dividing not
the nengu but the land itself into the shoen proprietor's sector and the
local warrior's sector. This law was important in determining the basic
framework of landholding relationships in the Muromachi period.
Part of the shoen holdings of the aristocratic class were thereby protected
and supported by the bakufu, but the rights and interests of the
shugo and their vassals were also considerable. This decree thus began
the consolidation of territorial control by the shugo daimyo.34
Through this hanzei decree the shugo were able to acquire enormous
amounts of hanzei lands, and in accordance with their right to allocate
them, they awarded them to favored local warriors and vassals.35
In
1363, Shogun Yoshiakira issued a directive stating that the custody,
that is, disposal, of hanzei lands was the right of the shugo.i6
This
enabled the shugo to organize large numbers of prominent peasants
into vassal bands.
The third duty assigned to the Muromachi shugo was taxation. The
tax on the harvest was paid by the peasants to the shoen proprietor.
Consequently, the shugo could not lay claim to the harvest tax or the
miscellaneous services tax outside those of their own directly controlled
lands. But there was the precedent of the Kamakura shugo's
collecting provincewide uniform taxes for the bakufu, with the authorization
of the imperial court.37
This was a tax on temple and shrine
buildings, which was called a rice tax, replacing the corvee, as well as a
rice tax for an imperial ceremony, the daijoe. Both seem to have been
instituted in the Insei period (late eleventh through late twelfth centuries).
The proceeds from the first rice tax went ot the periodic rebuilding
of the Ise Shrine, and the second rice tax was used for the emperor's
installation ceremony.
33 Sato Shin'ichi, Nambokucho no doran, in vol. 9 oiNihon no rekishi (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha,
1965). PP- 328-9- 34 Ibid-, PP- 396-7-
35 Sato, Zoho Kamakura bakufu, p. 251. 36 Szxb, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido, vol. 1, p. 38.
37 Ishii Susumu, "Kamakura bakufu to ritsuryo kokka - kokuga to no kankei o chushin to
shite," in Ishimoda Sho and Sato Shin'ichi, eds., Chusei no ho to kokka (Tokyo: Tokyo
daigaku shuppankai, i960), pp. 135-221.
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SHUGO DAIMYO 243
The Muromachi bakufu continued this taxation procedure, securing
imperial edicts and directives from the retired emperor and then ordering
the shugo to collect the various taxes.38
Such taxes were levied on
assets; one, called tansen, was based on land accumulation, and another,
called munabechisen, was assessed in proportion to the number of posts
in one's house. The cadastral register used as the basis for the tansen levy
was called the otabumi or sudencho, a comprehensive register of paddy
fields compiled in the early Kamakura period.39
But this registry had
not been kept up to date and therefore did not include lands later
brought under cultivation. The shugo were required to submit only the
income from the lands, listed in the otabumi, but they still taxed all
cultivated land and pocketed the excess. In addition, the district or
tansen officials of the shugo routinely entered shoen lands for on-site
inspections. The shoen proprietors resented this and would often pay a
large fee to the official in return for exemption from the inspection. In
these ways the income of the shugo and his officials grew very large.40
Thus the shugo manipulated the bakufu's tansen collection orders
and at the same time imposed on the peasants a new tax to cover
provincial administrative costs.41
Japanese scholars refer to this additional
tax as shugo tansen. This was the tax that the shugo, without
clearly stating its purpose, converted into a permanent, yearly collection
of one hundred mon per tan of land. This took place roughly
around the mid-fifteenth century. The establishment of the shugo
tansen was in fact a system of tax collection that varied depending on
locale and individual shugo. This tax was similar to rent for land and
marked a new phase in the expansion of shugo authority, which now
pervaded the entire province, including shoen lands, kokujin lands, and
lands of the provincial governor's office.
In addition to the tansen and munabechisen, another important shugo
tax took the form of labor. To cover the costs of the shugo's duties in
his capacity as the provincial military and police authority, the shugo
could generally impose the necessary taxes on the villages in his province.
These taxes are referred to collectively as shugoyaku.*2
Of these,
the heaviest was the corvee, which may have originated in the warrior's
practice of commandeering peasants to transport provisions and
build defenses during the Nambokucho disturbance. But from the late
38 Sato, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido, pp. 9—10.
39 Ishii Susumu, Nihon chusei kokkashi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970), pp. 118-200.
40 Momose Kesao, "Tansen ko," in Hogetsu Keigo sensei kanreki kinenkai, ed., Nihon shakai
keizaishi kenkyu, medieval vol. (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1967), pp. 1-34.
41 Tanuma Mutsumi, "Kuden tansen to shugo ryogoku," Shoryobu kiyo, no. 17 (1965): 16-33.
42 Fukuda Ikuo, "Shugoyaku ko," in Nihon shakai keizaishi kenkyu, medieval vol., pp. 147-78.
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244 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
fourteenth century into the fifteenth, the corvee that the shugo demanded
of the villages took a variety of forms, depending on the
services provided, number of days served, number of people, and so
on. In about 1360, the Akamatsu shugo pressed the following corvee
demands on the peasants of the Toji's shoen, Yano-no-sho, in Harima
Province: transport of plaster, lumber, and salt; long-term provision of
labor services as standard bearers, armor bearers (especially for transporting
baggage for travel), and porters between Kyoto and the provinces;
and construction of defenses.
In 1388, peasants on the Toji's Tamba shoen, Oyama-no-sho, were
required to provide a very large amount of corvee to the shugo, amounting
to 263 people. When .such corvee was imposed, the shugo would
also require the shoen proprietor to pay incidental expenses for necessary
food and the like. The shoen proprietor then passed half of this
burden on to the peasants, whose burden became even heavier.43
The shugoyaku burden was not limited to human labor but extended
even to livestock such as oxen and horses and to movable property like
boats. Because it was necessary for the shugo to maintain constant contact
between their provincial office and Kyoto, they would often commandeer
horses belonging to the peasants, a practice called temmayaku.
The horses were usually expropriated for only a few days and then
returned to the peasants, but in wartime when such measures were
imposed for military reasons, they inflicted serious harm on the peasant
families' productivity.44
In provinces bordering the Inland Sea, fishing
villages' boats were apparently commandeered a number of times for
military reasons. There are even examples of peasants' everyday items,
like pots and pans, being appropriated by shugo. In villages like these,
peasants unable to endure such impositions often went through the
shoen proprietor to complain to the bakufu of the shugo's lawlessness.
All of these developments reflected the fact that the authority of the
shugo was increasing; their oppression of the kokujin and peasants was
intensifying; and the decentralization of authority in the provinces was
advancing.
Making the office of shugo hereditary
In the first half of the Nambokucho period, in the areas where the
fighting was the most severe, shugo were frequently shifted about.45
43 Sato, Nambokucho no doran, pp. 370-1. 44 Imatani, Shugo ryogoku, pp. 454-71.
45 Sato, Muromachi shugo seido, vol. 1, pp. 53, 220; Ogawa, Ashikaga ichimon, pp. 1-25; and
Sato, Nambokucho no doran, pp. 378-80.
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SHUGO DAIMYO 245
From the time of the establishment of the bakufu until after the Oei
disturbance during Yoshimitsu's shogunate (from 1336 to 1400), there
were only thirteen provinces in which the office of shugo remained in
the same family: in Satsuma, the Shimazu family; Bungo, the Otomo;
Tosa, the Hosokawa; Awa and Sanuki, the Hosokawa; Suo, the Ouchi;
Mino, the Toki; Hida, the Kyogoku; Kai, the Takeda; Suruga, the
Imagawa; Shimosa, the Chiba; Hitachi, the Satake; and Kozuke, the
Uesugi.
Two reasons that the shugo were so often moved about are probably
that in the Nambokucho disturbance, they were required to assume
military responsibilities where needed and also that the bakufu was
plagued by factionalism. In the Nambokucho period the bakufu leadership
divided into two large factions: one led by K6 no Moronao,
Ashikaga Tadayoshi, and Niki Yoshinaga and the other by Hatakeyama
Kunikiyo, Hosokawa Yoriyiiki, and Shiba Yoshimochi. Consequently,
dissension and political disturbances became chronic.46
The
first faction derived strength from the fact that they were concentrated
in the central Kinai region around Kyoto, an area in which shugo were
reappointed particularly often. The fate of the second faction, Tadayoshi's
"bureaucratic" faction, can be ascertained from the fact that in
the Kanno disturbance from 1350 to 1352 they were entirely excluded
from appointments, whereas the shugo of Hosokawa Yoriyuki's faction
were moved about in great numbers. Apart from such major uprisings,
there were smaller uprisings of powerful shugo, like the Meitoku
(1391) and Oei (1399) disturbances. These were suppressed, and the
shugo were reassigned. After the Oei disturbance, the shugo of twelve
provinces were rotated as follows: from the Shiba family to the
Ogasawara family in Shinano Province; from the Hatakeyama to the
Shiba in Owari; from the Niki to the Toki in Ise; from Imagawa
Sadayo to Imagawa Yasunori in the divided shugo office of Totomi and
Suruga; from the Ouchi to the Niki in Izumi; from the Kyogoku to the
Yamana in Iwami; from Ouchi Yoshihiro to Ouchi Hiroshige in Suo
and Nagato; from the Ouchi to the Hatakeyama in Kii; from a collateral
branch of the Hosokawa to the Yamana in Bingo; and from the
soryo house of the Hosokawa to a collateral branch of the same family
in Tosa.47
The Oei disturbance was the last large-scale movement of shugo by
the Muromachi bakufu. Subsequently, there were almost no extensive
46 Sato, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido, vol. I, pp. 60-61.
47 Imatani, Shugo ryogoku, pp. 216-45.
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246 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
reappointments of shugo. If the head of a shugo family died, a direct
heir or some close blood relative would nearly always inherit the office.
In this way, from the early fifteenth century on, the office of shugo
became heritable, which enabled shugo to become well established in
an area.48
In the past when the shugo were transferred every few years,
even when they made vassals of low-ranking warriors and prominent
peasants in their provinces, the lord-vassal relationship was necessarily
a weak one. But when the office of shugo was held continuously by
the same family, the most powerful warriors in a province became the
shugo's permanent vassals, which allowed the shugo to dominate their
provinces in fact as well as in name. At about the same time, the
shugo's vassals often assumed the duties of a shoen manager, a process
called shugo-uke.*9
Local affairs were such that without the cooperation,
direct or indirect of the shugo's vassals, even the proprietor's
control of the shoen could become precarious.
Thus in the fifteenth century, the term kunikata, which in the past
had referred to the provincial governor or the provincial office, came
to refer solely to the power of the shugo. In the late 1420s, when
Yoshimochi was shogun and the Muromachi bakufu was at the height
of its power, the shugo were positioned as follows (including the shugo
of three or more divided provinces): the Hosokawa shugo controlled
the provinces of Izumi, Settsu, Tamba, Bitchu, Awaji, Sanuki, Awa,
and Tosa; the Yamana shugo, Tajima, Inaba, Hoki, Iwami, Bingo, and
Aki; the Hatakeyama shugo, Kochi, Ise, Noto, Etchu, and Kii; the
Kyogoku shugo, Yamashiro, half of Omi, Hida, Izumo, and Oki; the
Ouchi shugo, Suo, Nagato, Chikuzen, and Buzen; the Shiba shugo,
Owari, Totomi, and Echizen; the Akamatsu shugo, Harima,
Mimasaka, and Bizen; and the Isshiki shugo, Mikawa, Wakasa, and
Tango.
The bakufu would alternate among three of the shugo houses, the
Hosokawa, Hatakeyama, and Shiba, for individuals to fill its office of
kanrei.50
From the four houses of Kyogoku, Akamatsu, Yamana, and
Isshiki, along with the Toki, the shugo of Mino, would be chosen the
head of the samurai-dokoro.51
When Yoshimochi was shogun, the
three kanrei houses plus the Yamana, Akamatsu, and Isshiki houses
constituted the bakufu's ruling council. They were senior statesmen
who made pronouncements on important government matters in response
to the shogun's questions. Among the six daimyo were par-
48 Sato, Nambokucho no doran, pp. 378-80. 49 Ibid., pp. 367-70.
50 Ogawa, Ashikaga ichimon, pp. 753-65.
51 Haga, Muromachi bakufu samurai dokoro, pp. 77-98.
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SHUGO DAIMYO 247
ticularly experienced shugo called shukuro (elders); they were deeply
trusted by the shogun, and their power exceeded that of the kanrei.52
The Muromachi bakufu's so-called coalition government {rengo
seiken) of shugo daimyo is a reference to these powerful members of
the bakufu's ruling council who ran the government through this
balance of power.
The governing structure of the ryogoku
After the Nambokucho disturbance, the shugo changed from military
commander to provincial administrator. The bakufu required the
official shugo - the current heads of the shugo houses - to take up
residence in Kyoto, the shogun's home base. In particular, the powerful
shugo who made up the governing council of elders were required
to live in Kyoto, barring some great crisis in their own domains.53
Thus, the person actually managing affairs in the domain itself was
the shugo's deputy, or shugodai. In the case of powerful shugo houses
that controlled two or more provinces, even the deputy shugo was
required to reside in Kyoto. In such cases a proxy of the deputy
shugo, called the junior deputy shugo (koshugodai), was installed in
the province. (The deputy shugo might be seen as corresponding to
the early modern Edo-period karo of the various han, whereas the
junior deputy shugo was like the early modern kokaro.)54
Many of the
shugo living in Kyoto lacked knowledge and ability, and so they often
employed officials as scribes and bureaucrats who actually handled
the administrative matters. In regard to the shugo's duty of enforcing
the bakufu's land decisions, the enforcement decree was actually
issued by the shugo's scribe, with the shugo himself simply adding his
signature. Even an individual like Hatakeyama Mitsuie, who served
as kanrei under Shogun Yoshinori and was the greatest of the elders
(shukuro), admitted in his diary that he did not completely understand
administrative documents.55
In nearly all cases in which the office of shugo was territorially divided,
it was done on a district basis. Therefore, within the divided
province, the shugo daimyo's administration was probably also divided
by district. The shugo was the successor of the provincial governor of the
52 Imatani, Muromachi bakufu kaitai, pp. 70—91.
53 Tanuma Mutsumi, "Muromachi bakufu, shugo, kokujin," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekiski,
vol. 7 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1976), pp. 1-50.
54 Imatani, Shugo ryogoku, pp. 121-39, 307-45.
55 Tokyo daigaku shiryo hensanjo, ed., Dai Nihon kokiroku kennaiki, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Iwanami
shoten, 1963), p. 91. '
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248 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
ancient ritsuryo system, and just as the provincial governor had governed
through the district official (gunji), so too the shugo's domainal
organization was the successor to the provincial office (kokuga).56
Research on provincial offices in the Heian period, however, reveals
that starting in about the tenth or eleventh century, the position of
district official, which had had great power in the ritsuryo provincial
administration, lost power because the provincial office took direct
control of the district, and gradually the district official became only
an agent for the provincial office. Thus by the Kamakura period in
most provinces the district officials of the ritsuryo system had become
mere shadows of their former selves, and in some provinces this office
had disappeared completely. In southern Kyushu, however, where the
office continued to exist both in name and in reality, the district officials
became vassals of the Kamakura bakufu and were organized into
the shugo's administrative office, ultimately being transferred into the
governing organization of the divided province.57
But in other parts of
Japan the shugo had sole authority, and they set up their own military
and administrative organizations in the provinces.
Omi is believed to be the first place where the shugo set up a governing
organization based on the district. In an enforcement decree of the
Rokuhara tandai dated 1284, the official title "deputy shugo of Asai
District" appears; again, a shugo land receipt dated 1285 contains the
expression "shugo envoy of Asai District." Thus it would appear that
envoys of the shugo were installed in each district in Omi from that
time on.58
In the Nambokucho period, in several other provinces the
shugo's enforcement envoy carried the title "district envoy" and exercised
local governing authority resembling that of the district official
under the former ritsuryo system. In 1400 a district magistrate appeared
in Yamashiro Province. In the mid-fifteenth century the same
office was called district deputy, and in nearly all provinces those shugo
vassals who held this official title were given important responsibili-
ties.59
Usually it was the district deputy who delivered to the local
officials the document of enforcement issued under the bakufu's judicial
authority. The district official's authority was most apparent in the
central Kinai provinces, such as Settsu, Kawachi, Yamashiro, Tamba..
Omi, and Harima.
56 Yoshie Akio, "Kokuga shihai no tenkai," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi, vol. 4 (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1976), pp. 43-80.
57 Tanaka Kenji, "Kamakura bakufu no Osumi-no-kuni shihai ni tsuite no ichi kosatsu,"
Kyushu shigaku, nos. 65 and 67 (1977, 1979): 1-22 and 1-18, respectively.
58 Imatani, Muromachi bakufu kaitai, pp. 225-59.
59 Imatani, Shugo ryogoku, pp. 18-71.
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1
deputy shugo
1
junior deputy shugo
1
1
district deputy
SHUGO DAIMYO
shugo
1
deputy shugo
1
district deputy
1
•district envoy
(a)
shugo
deputy shugo
district deputy
•
1
district envoy
1
junior deputy shugo
11
district deputy district deputy
1
1
junior district deputy
249
(b)
Figure 5.1 Organization of shugo authority in (a) Yamashiro and (b)
Kawachi provinces, ca. 1379
There were several reasons for the sudden prominence of the district
officials: It was at this point that the shugo truly took control of the
provinces; now that the Nambokucho disturbance had been resolved,
the shugo could install permanent administrative officials; and the
authority to tax, including provincewide taxes and tansen, had shifted
from the court to the bakufu and the shugo. (This last is said to have
occurred at the time of the Koryaku disturbance of 1379.)60
The system
and organization of the shugo's authority down to the smallest
local unit in the divided province are shown in Figure 5.I.61
As time passed, the authority of the district deputies increased.
They built strongholds on sites that gave them the best view of the
district and established substantial fortifications in areas strategic to
communication. In addition to taking over the local enforcement of
the bakufu's decisions pertaining to land, the district deputies collected
tansen and shugoyaku, and military corvee (gunyaku) as well.62
And the district deputies' role was the most crucial in the suppression
of local uprisings in the shugo's jurisdictions. In other words, the
district deputy was the official who directly enforced the shugo's military
and administrative authority. Although the district deputy domi-
60 Imatani, Muromachi bakufu kailai, pp. 225-59.
61 For Yamashiro Province, see Imatani, Shugo ryogoku, pp. 18-71; and for Kawachi Province,
see ibid., pp. 121-39. 62 Imatani, Muromachi bakufu kailai, pp. 225-59.
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250 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
nated the peasants and had military power far superior to that of prominent
local persons, he usually was at odds with these local luminaries.
The shugo held the right to appoint the members of his provincial
administration, such as deputy shugo, junior deputy shugo, and the
district deputies, and except in extraordinary cases, the bakufu did
not intervene. Indeed, in personnel matters, for the bakufu to place
restrictions on the provincial administrative structure was out of the
question.63
The district officials of the ancient ritsuryo system had been appointed
from families whose local prominence predated the Taika reforms
of the seventh century. But this was not the case with the district
deputies of the Muromachi period. Deputy shugo and district deputies,
as members of the shugo's ryogoku organization, lived permanently
in the shugo's official compound, serving the shugo. Even
among the shugo's subordinates, they constituted a special group of
insiders (uchishu).
The ordinary local wealthy peasants were called kokujin or tozama,
thus distinguishing between the two groups.64
There were cases in
which powerful kokujin who were native to a province acquired hereditary
control of the office of deputy shugo, as did the Iba family of
Omi.65
But this was an exception; more often kokujin were appointed
from outside the province. Examples include the Yusa family of
Kawachi, originally from Dewa; the Ogasawara and Kozai families of
Tamba, from Awa and Sanuki, respectively; and the Yakushiji family
of Settsu, from Musashi. The Hosokawa family, a branch of the
Ashikaga clan that took its name while still living in Mikawa, moved
to central Japan with the Ashikaga and began establishing a base
there in the Nambokucho period, centered at first in Awa and Sanuki
in Shikoku. At this point, the Hosokawa incorporated into the upper
echelons of its retainer band powerful kokujin from Shikoku, so that
at the end of the Nambokucho period when the Hosokawa set up the
administrative structure of their Kinai provinces - Settsu, Tamba,
and Izumi - kokujin from Shikoku dominated the ranks of the insid-
ers.66
This was a conscious attempt to exclude local interests from the
administration of the ryogoku, but as a result, it aggravated the divisiveness
between the uchishu (insiders) and the kokujin among the
skugo's vassals.
63 Ibid. 64 Ogawa, Ashikaga ichimon, pp. 332-58.
65 Imatani, Shugo ryogoku, pp. 372-404. 66 Ogawa, Ashikaga ichimon, pp. 332-58.
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SHUGO DAIMYO 251
The governing office of the shugo
At the height of the Muromachi period, the shugo were usually required
to reside in Kyoto, and the deputy shugo or junior deputy
shugo normally administered local matters. The locus of provincial
administration was called the shugosho.67
In the Kamakura period,
because the shugo's authority had been primarily military, the provincial
office (kokuga) governed the province. But as the shugo's power
increased, this responsibility gradually shifted to the shugosho. In
some provinces, shugosho were set up on the very site of the former
provincial office or nearby. In such cases, the former provincial office,
now transformed into the shugosho, was called the fuchu.6S
In
many areas, like Bungo, Musashi, and Hitachi, the names of the
fuchu remain even today. But often the shugosho were built at military
strategic points entirely separate from the old provincial office. For
example, in Izumi Province the old provincial office had been located
directly in the center of the province, but the shugosho was situated in
the northernmost part of the province69
so as to be near the main
roads leading to Kawachi and Yamato. As time passed and the shugo's
administrative functions expanded, the economic center of the entire
province grew in importance, and then the shugosho were frequently
located in post towns and port cities, areas of strategic importance in
communications.7
°
Shugosho were not necessarily limited to one per province. As explained
earlier, in provinces that contained divided districts, there was
a shugosho for each head of each divided district. There were two
shugosho in provinces with two deputy shugo, such as Yamashiro and
Kawachi (the latter in the Sengoku period), and in provinces under
the half-province shugo system, such as Omi and Kaga.
The ritsuryo system also provided for provincial branch offices.
Likewise, from the latter half of the Nambokucho period, local enforcement
offices were established as subordinate organs of the deputy
shugo. They were staffed by junior deputy shugo and district
officials. In this way, the shugosho was divided, and new branch
offices were established.7
' In the provinces of Yamashiro and Tamba,
there was a shugosho branch office in nearly every district. It is not
67 Matsuyama Hiroshi,Nikonchuseitoshinokenkyu(Kyoto: Daigakudoshoten, 1973), pp. 65-93.
68 Ibid. 69 Sato, Muromachi bakufu shugo seido,vo\, i,pp. 14-29.
70 Sato, Zoho Kamakura bakufu, pp. 252-3; Matsuyama Hiroshi, Shugo jokamachi no kenkyu
(Kyoto: Daigakudo shoten, 1982), pp. 56-76. 71 Imatani, Shugo ryogoku, pp. 405-53.
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252 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
clear if they were referred to at the time as the offices of the district
deputies, but in Izumi the branch offices of both Izumi Otsu and
Izumi Sano were called shugosho in reference to the shugo's main
castle at Sakai. Thus the shugosho seemed to be where the shugo's
important staff was stationed.
The names of the various shugosho of the central Kinai provinces
that we know today are listed as follows, according to province:
Yamashiro: Nishishichijo, Shoryuji, Yodo, Makishima, Saga
Kawachi: Tannami, Furuichi, Wakae, Takaya, Iimori
Izumi: Fuchu, Sakai, Otsu, Sano
Settsu: Hyogo, Ibaragi, Imazato, Hori, Sanda, Koshimizu,
Akutagawa
Tamba: Hidokoro, Yagi, Yakami, Haji
Harima: Kakogawa, Shirahata, Kinoyama, Sakamoto, Hirose,
Iwami (Muro)
This list shows that in this period, the shugosho were located in the
powerful provincial cities; indeed, the main port cities of the
Muromachi period such as Sakai, Hyogo, Yodo, and Muro were built
around shugosho.72
Also included among the shugosho were cities that
emerged as castle towns in the Sengoku period, like Yagi and Yakami,
as well as many that became early modern seats of han government,
such as Yodo, Haji (Fukuchiyama), Tannami, Sanda, Kinoyama
(Tatsuno), and Hirose (Yamazaki).
Therefore, the shugosho had an urban function as the nucleus of
provincial administration, but their economic functions were important
as well. One was the function of the district deputy's administrative
office as a centralized base for mobilizing labor for military corvee
(gunyaku) and ordinary corvee (buyaku). Post horses, too, were initially
requisitioned at the district deputy's office and then sent to the
shugosho''s main castle or to neighboring provinces, as needed. Thus
the number of people and horses that might gather at the district
deputy's office must have been considerable. The shugosho also functioned
as the central location for grain reserves from various taxes such
as tansen, tanmai, and the commissariat tax. Just as under the ritsuryo
system there had been official storehouses at the provincial and district
offices, so too storehouses containing enormous amounts of goods
72 Ibid.
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RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHUGO AND KOKUJIN 253
requisitioned from the peasants were located at the shugosho. Workshops
were also established at the shugosho, in which craftsmen, merchants,
and those involved in small industries lived and worked.
In 1388 and again in 1410, the shugo of Harima Province, the
Akamatsu family, commandeered blacksmith's charcoal from Yano
shoen and ordered that it be sent to the main shugosho castle at
Sakamoto and to the branch castle at Murozu. Thus in this province
there was a foundry or blacksmith's workshop at the shugosho, which
enabled the monopoly of military technology by the shugo.73
In addition,
the famous Shiraga family, artisans of the Shoshanan Engyoji
near Sakamoto Castle, belonged to a group of craftsmen serving the
shugo. Likewise, the Nara bansho, the carpenters of the Kofukuji, also
helped the shugo of Kawachi, Hatakeyama Yoshinari, construct his
main shugosho headquarters, Takaya Castle. These craftsmen and technicians
were not organized at the beginning of the early modern period
by kokujin but, rather, by shugo, according to their province and dis-
trict,74
a practice carried over from the Muromachi period.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHUGO AND KOKUJIN
The concept of kokujin
The terms zoku and fuzoku appear frequently in provincial gazetteers'
of the Nara period. At that time, both words were pronounced kunihito
and referred to the people indigenous to an area.75
This is the origin of
the word kokujin, which in the medieval period generally referred to
local overlords native to an area, or native-born jito gokenin. Today,
specialists of the period divide kokujin into two types, depending on
the nature of their activities: "prominent locals" (dogo) and kokujin in
general. The dogo were the powerful local overlords with the largest
administrative control over an area; some scholars separate them entirely
from kokujin.
In the Kamakura period, these local overlords, or jito gokenin, enjoyed
a feudal bond of vassalage with the shogun. As samurai directly
affiliated with the bakufu they held a much higher status than did
73 Ibid.
74 Takagi Shosaku, "Bakuhan shoki no kuni bugyo ni tsuite," Rekishigaku kenkyu, no. 431 (May
1975): 15-62-
75 Murai Yasuhiko, "Kokufu bunka no sozo to fukyu," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi, vol. 4
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1976), pp. 313-48.
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254 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
commoners. In a legal sense as well, xhcjito gokenin received protection
from the bakufu. With the rise of a cash economy, the decline of
the soryd system, and the tendency for land to be divided up into
ever-smaller pieces, many of these local overlords disappeared in the
later Kamakura period,76
and the boundaries between the classes
became even more hazy. In such an atmosphere, with the division of
offices, anyone who could reach the office ofjito, be he commoner or
even priest, could enjoy the special rights and privileges of the local
overlord.
Starting in the Nambokucho period, vassals (gokenin) in the direct
service of the bakufu were incorporated into the shogunal army,77
and
the term jito gokenin gradually became obsolete. Instead, powerful
local figures came to be called kokujin or kunishu (in Yamato Province,
kokumin), and they differed greatly from the jito of the Kamakura
period. There also was a great qualitative difference between these
local changes in the central and the peripheral areas. In eastern Japan
and in Kyushu, the shorn system was eventually dissolved, and the
kokujin who emerged as local overlords were in a relatively favorable
position. Some kokujin families later even became sengoku daimyo,
including the Date of Mutsu and the Mori of Aki. In central Japan,
however, the shoen system was reorganized and strengthened, and
because the bakufu tried to protect the shoen after reorganizing them
through the Oan hanzei decree, becoming a powerful kokujin overlord
was difficult. Kokujin were forced to coexist and to some extent compromise
with the shoen overlord, by means of such measures as exchanging
contracts in which the kokujin became the shoen manager or
stipendiary.
The formation of kokujin leagues
From the end of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the fifteenth,
the office of shugo gradually became hereditary, and the shugo
domainal system began to develop in earnest. The main problem facing
the shugo or their subordinate officials who turned their attention
to managing the domain was how to handle the kokujin who dominated
the local area. Among the kokujin were powerful local figures whose
ancestors had set down roots during the Kamakura period after being
76 Sato Shin'ichi, "Kamakura bakufu seiji no senseika ni tsuite," in Takeuchi Rizo, ed., Nihon
hokensei seiritsu no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1955). pp. 125-34.
77 Fukuda Toyohiko, "Muromachi bakufu hokoshu no kenkyu - sono jin'in kosei to chiikiteki
bumpu," Hokkaido musashijoshi tanki daigaku kiyo, no. 3 (March 1971): 1-52.
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RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHUGO AND KOKUJIN 255
granted land confirmations as vassals of Minamoto Yoritomo. And like
the Heian-period provincial governors, the shugo, by growing dependent
on the kokujin to manage the domain, suffered the repercussions
of this policy in the coming decades.
In the latter half of the Nambokucho period, the kokujin of various
areas banded together in alliances (kokujin ikki) in order to resist the
shugo appointed by the bakufu.78
Characterized by lateral ties, these
kokujin alliances even attempted to block physically the entry of shugo
into the province. The usual image of ikki is that of peasant leagues
(do-ikki) allied for some local cause. But here ikki refers to warrior
leagues that frequently battled shugo in military confrontations. The
ikki were so effective that it was not unusual for shugo appointed by the
bakufu to be forced to abandon control of their domain. A typical
example of this is the case of Shinano Province.
In this province in 1387, the forces of the Ninomiya family, resident
manager for the shugo Shiba Yoshimasa, were defeated by the local
kokujin families Ogasawara and Murakami. From that point on, this
area was dominated by an independent kokujin class. At the end of
I399> Ogasawara Nagahide (another Ogasawara family which had
been shugo of Awa in the Kamakura period) was appointed shugo in
place of the Shiba family. He raised a vassal band and in the following
year entered the province. The kokujin league led by the Murakami
family was bound by a covenant, and so they decided to fight the
shugo. They achieved a great victory against the shugo's forces in a
decisive engagement known as the battle of Oto, which resulted in the
shugo Nagahide's being forced to retreat to Kyoto.79
In 1402 the bakufu adopted a conciliatory policy toward the kokujin
by not posting any shugo to Shinano and instead designating it as a
direct bakufu province (goryogoku), thereby confirming the kokujin's
holdings. Thus the kokujin in effect were given preferential treatment,
and the matter was resolved without further incident. Kokujin leagues
that militarily opposed the shugo were not always opposed to the
bakufu. Rather, they usually formed in order to oust the shugo and
then sought direct ties with the bakufu. Indeed, this is what was
behind the bakufu's making Shinano its own domain and entrusting it
to the kokujin as a bakufu land.
The peasant class in the central Kinai provinces were particularly
78 Fukuda Toyohiko, "Kokujin ikki no ichi sokumen," Shigaku zasshi 76 (January 1967): 62-
80.
79 Inagaki Yasuhiko, "Do-ikki o megutte," Rekishigaku kenkyu, no. 305 (October 1965): 25-33;
Fukuda, "Kokujin ikki," pp. 62-80.
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256 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
successful in gaining independence. Shoen proprietors also held considerable
power there. Consequently, it was not easy for the kokujin,
caught in the middle, to become independent. For these reasons,
kokujin leagues had difficulty forming in the Kinai, and instead the
shugo's management of divided provinces developed on the basis of
compromise and balance with the shoen proprietors. However, during
and after the Onin War, particularly in the Kinai provinces of the
Hosokawa, kokujin uprisings occurred one after another, and the authority
of the shugo was gravely threatened.
In 1473 a kokujin league was organized in Izumi Province. It proved
so powerful locally that it was able to impose a commissariat tax even
on consolidated shoen. Unfortunately, the shugo's reaction to this
league is not known. But in 1479, powerful kokujin of Suita, Ibaragi,
Ikeda, and Itami in Settsu Province allied in a large league in opposition
to the shugo, the Hosokawa, who had demanded the return of
shoen taken over by kokujin in the Onin War. The kokujin, however,
refused, and they resented being excluded from the local administration
of the deputy shugo and the district deputies.
Put simply, this was a conflict between the deputy shugo class and
the kokujin. Because the kokujin requested help from Hatakeyama
Yoshinari, who had rebelled and led an army against the bakufu, the
shugo Hosokawa reacted by raising a huge army that crushed the
uprising. In 1482 he destroyed the home base of the Suita and Ibaragi
families, almost entirely annihilating both.80
Thus in contrast with the
Daimonji league of Shinano, in the Settsu uprising, the Hosokawa's
military strength was tremendous, and they suppressed the uprising
with extreme cruelty.
In 1485 the famous uprising took place in southern Yamashiro Province,
seeking to drive the shugo Hatakeyama from the province. News
of the success of this provincial league spread to Nishigaoka in
Yamashiro, a district of the Hosokawa that included the two districts
of Otokuni and Kadono. In this area, prominent local families joined
to reject the shogun's authority and establish an independent government.
Because their league had not attacked his family, Hosokawa
Masamoto, the most powerful person in the bakufu, gave it his tacit
approval in the beginning. But a large provincial uprising of 1489 in
his own province of Tamba changed his response. This time, those in
revolt were tozama kokujin who had been excluded from the
Hosokawa's local administrative system and were considered outsiders
80 Imatani, Muromachi bakufu kaitai, pp. 302-13.
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RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHUGO AND KOKUJIN 257
lacking important connections. Because this was clearly an anti-shugo
offensive, Masamoto suppressed it.
A storm of provincial uprisings then spread through the
Hosokawa's Kinai provinces of Izumi, Settsu, Yamashiro, and Tamba.
Kokujin and shugo took part in accordance with their own interests,
and it became a desperate struggle, a matter of devouring or being
devoured. During the fighting the deputy shugo, Uehara Motohide,
issued a document to the locals stating that "each district deputy shall
be consulted and shall be included in the forces suppressing the uprising."
The district deputies thus made up the core of the suppressing
force. Large numbers of troops from Kyoto also joined the fray. But
the rebels resisted, and their strongholds were not easily toppled. For
three years this standoff continued, until in 1493 all the powerful
kokujin of Shuchi and Ogino provinces were defeated, and the great
uprising finally ended.81
Hosokawa Masamoto, shocked and terrified
by the force of the kokujin uprising, turned his energies to punishing
the participants in the Yamashiro uprising. In the ninth month of
1493, he succeeded in eliminating the kokujin still resisting in
Inayazuma Castle in Yamashiro Province, thereby at last achieving
despotic control over all his Kinai provinces.82
In short, all the anti-shugo provincial uprisings of the Kinai area
during and after the Onin War were crushed, and subsequently, unaided
kokujin had great difficulty resisting the shugo. They then looked
for a new means of opposition, the Ikko league.
The shugo domainal system and the kokujin overlord system
The major contribution of the shugo domainal system was to define a
political order in which the shugo daimyo, mainly in the Nambokucho
and Muromachi periods, were the driving force in the feudal
overlord system.83
By making vassals of the kokujin, the shugo daimyo
led the shoen system to its demise, and helped establish regional
feudal authority. These conclusions, as laid out by Nagahara Keiji,
have greatly influenced later scholars. Although some may disagree
with them, they did form a conceptual framework for the shugo
domainal system.
Opposing Nagahara, Kurokawa Naonori in 1961 offered the con-
81 Ibid. 82 Ibid.
83 See especially Nagahara Keiji and Sugiyama Hiroshi, "Shugo ryogokusei no tenkai," Shakai
keizaishigaku 17 (March 1951): 103-34.
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258 MUROMACHI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
cept of "kokujin overlord."84
Kurokawa first points out that the shugo
used two methods to encroach on the shoen: The first was to obtain
funds from outside the shorn system, through such taxes as the tansen
and corvee. The other method was to interfere in the shoen system
itself and to gain control of the mechanism for collecting the yearly
dues. Next, Kurokawa analyzes the activities of the kokujin class and
postulates that authority over the provincial office's lands played a
major role in the shugo's vassalization of the kokujin. He asserts that
the shugo daimyo who could only externally control shoen or provincial
lands were defeated by the kokujin, who were essential to those systems
of land control. Thus Kurokawa concludes that it was the kokujin
overlord system, not the shugo domainal system, that formed the
power structure of the late medieval period.
Kurokawa's seminal essay, which takes issue with the Nagahara
thesis, was for a time, the most widely accepted theory among scholars.
But with more research and analysis of the shugo's control of many
different regions, it became apparent that some points of Kurokawa's
thesis were not valid. For example, his contention that the shugo
daimyo were subjugated by the kokujin does not apply to most of the
Kinai provinces, the most advanced region of the country. Rather, the
opposite tendency was common.
Another problem in Kurokawa's thesis is that he neglects the military
relationship of control between the shugo and the kokujin. This
relationship was characterized by a lack of cohesiveness or a looseness
in the feudal relationship in the domain, and it had been pointed out
by many scholars even before Kurokawa.85
When newly appointed
shugo received from the shogun the decree of appointment, they would
make a ritual tour of their new province. In this tour of each shoen,
they would be given a list of names of the local warriors on each shoen
and in each subdistrict. In this way, the shugo could choose their
vassals, and because no documents of appointment were issued - as
had been the case in the Kamakura period - it was a very expeditious
process. Thus it is possible to agree that the vassal relationship was
loose and the feudal system was weak. But on the other hand, collectively
a much larger number of warriors could be brought instantly
under the shugo's control, as compared with the process of vassalage in
the Kamakura period.
An example of this loose feudal relationship can be found in the case
84 Kurokawa Naonori, "Shugo ryogokusei to shoen taisei - kokujin ryoshusei no kakuritsu
katei," Nihonshi kenkyu, no. 57 (November 1961): 1—19.
85 Sato, Nambokucho no doran. pp. 364-8.
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RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHUGO AND KOKUJIN 259
of Akamatsu Mitsusuke, the shugo of Harima, Mimasaka, and Bizen
provinces, who had rebelled against the bakufu in the sixth month of
1441. In only two and a half months he was destroyed, owing to the
desertion of his kokujin. Another example is Yamana Mitsuyuki, the
shugo of Tango, who was defeated in the Meitoku disturbance of 1391,
again owing to the desertion of his kokujin.86
But there are also examples
of exactly the opposite situation. In the ninth month of 1460,
Hatakeyama Yoshinari, the shugo of Kawachi Province who had been
driven out of the bakufu, was able to hold out in his stronghold of
Hatakeyama Castle until the fourth month of 1463 - for two years and
eight months - owing to the solidarity of his kokujin vassals. Therefore,
the lord-vassal relationship was not always weak.
In recent years, Japanese scholars have begun to reevaluate the
shugo's authority within the entire power structure of the late medieval
period. In particular, as the research on the sengoku daimyo of nearly
all regions has become more complete,87
the difficult problem of
where to draw the line between the shugo daimyo and the sengoku
daimyo once again comes to the fore. The fact that many of the sengoku
daimyo could trace their lineage to shugo or deputy shugo has become
even more undeniable. The continuity between the Muromachiperiod
shugo and the sengoku daimyo has thus been thrown into the
spotlight. For scholars, the axis of territorial power from the late
fifteenth through the early sixteenth centuries is none other than the
shugo. Thus the power of the shugo reached its peak in the early
sixteenth century, and some even apply the term "Sengoku-period
shugo" to the daimyo authority of this period.88
At any rate, today we
are continuing to make efforts to understand better the relationship
between the shugo and the kokujin and cannot yet claim that the historical
evidence refutes the earlier analyses based on the shugo domainal
system.
86 Nagahara and Sugiyama, "Shugo ryogokusei no tenkai," p. 19.
87 See Nagahara Keiji, ed., Sengoku daimyo ronshu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1986), an
eighteen-volume study by region or sengoku daimyo.
88 Imaoka Norikazu, Kawaoka Tsutomu, and Yada Toshifumi, "Sengokuki kenkyu no kadai to
tembo," Nihonshi kenkyu, no. 278 (October 1985). 42-62; Arimitsu Yugaku, ed., Sengokuki
kenryoku 10 chiiki shakai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1986), pp. 207-32, 521-78.
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CHAPTER 6
THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN
SYSTEM
The shoen system of landholding, one of the most important institutions
for organizing the economic life of medieval Japan, was transformed
at the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth
centuries. The transformation occurred when Minamoto Yoritomo,
who established the Kamakura bakufu, created the offices of shugo
(military governor) and jito (military estate steward), introducing a
new layer of tenurial rights into the shoen hierarchy in 1185. Following
the Jokyu disturbance of 1221, the shogunate confiscated the lands of
the nobles and warriors who had taken part in the incident and appointed
its loyal retainers (gokenin) asjito to these lands.1
Both of these
events served to establish firmly a lord-vassal relationship within the
proprietary rights structure of the shoen system and marked the beginning
of a long process that saw the emerging dominance of warrior
authority and the declining power of the central proprietor over the
land, its revenues, and inhabitants.
The appointment of jito by the Kamakura bakufu was intended to
supplement rather than supplant the land rights and political authority
of the shoen proprietors who traditionally possessed full fiscal and
administrative power over these "private lands." This policy did not
completely deny the shorn as a form of land proprietorship, nor did it
mean that the jito acquired exclusive proprietary rights on the shoen to
which they were appointed. In fact, the Kamakura bakufu struggled
to preserve the shoen system and to prevent the jito from extending
their authority beyond the scope intended by the bakufu.2
Theyiw's
main duties, as envisioned by the Kamakura bakufu, were to maintain
the flow of income and services to the central proprietor and to keep
1 Following the defeat of the Taira in I185, Minamoto Yoritomo requested and received permission
from the emperor to appoint jito to shoen and kokugaryo. Jito were appointed throughout
Japan after the Jokyu disturbance of 1221.
2 Throughout the Kamakura period, matters involving the control of shoen by jito and shoen
proprietors were adjudicated by the bakufu courts. The fact that the bakufu sought to extend
forcibly that authority is borne out by the judicial decisions known as saikyojo. See Seno
Seiichiro, Kamakura bakufu saikyojo-shii, vols. 1 and 2 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1970).
260
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TURNING POINTS IN THE DECLINE 26l
peace. Once xhejito established themselves on the land, however, they
sought to extend their authority and control, usually at the expense of
the shoen officials appointed by the central proprietor to manage shoen
affairs.
At the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth
centuries, important political and military events - the collapse of the
Kamakura bakufu in 1333 and the Nambokucho disturbances between
1335 and 1392 - spurred the decline of the shoen system as the
jito took advantage of these events to extend their personal control
over the shoen. By this time neither the civil government of the nobility
nor the military government of the bakufu had sufficient power to
prevent the jito from extending their control.
I use the fourteenth-century Nambokucho disturbances, therefore,
as a springboard for examining the decline of the shoen system. Although
greatly weakened and changed in form, the shoen system did
not collapse entirely during the fourteenth century but continued to
function as a basis for land administration and control into the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. The upheaval of the Onin period
(1467-9) further eroded the shoen system, but the shoen were not
completely eliminated as a form of landholding until Hideyoshi's
cadastral surveys (Taiko kenchi) were carried out in the late sixteenth
century. Although the focus of this chapter is the events of the fourteenth
century that led to the decline of the shoen system, my examination
will extend also into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
TURNING POINTS IN THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN
Characteristics of the shoen landholding system
The shoen, which had developed by the mid-eleventh century, proved
to be an extremely successful way of securing a balance between the
demands of the ruling class for income and the demands of the populace
for a stable means of livelihood. Not only did the shoen serve as the
primary means through which the ruling class tapped the wealth of the
countryside, it also provided the residence, workplace, and source of
sustenance for peasants and proprietors alike. The organization of
proprietary rights or tenurial hierarchy in the shoen system was complex
and multilayered. The most widespread means used to expand
the shoen, and the one that had the greatest impact on the development
of tenurial relationships, was commendation.
The shoen proprietors or overlords (tyoshu) were primarily court
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262 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
nobles who resided in Kyoto (or influential religious establishments of
Kyoto and Nara patronized by the court nobility), who attained their
right to shoen revenue primarily through commendation. The local
notables who actually developed the land (kaihatsu ryoshu) were mainly
small local proprietors who held positions of influence in their area as
provincial or district officials of some sort. They used the power and
prestige of their offices to extend their landholdings. In doing so, they
faced recurrent disagreements with provincial authorities (kokuga)
over their assertion of fiscal authority over cultivators. Because of the
constant threat of provincial interference, these local proprietors
sought to protect their interests. The most common way of attaining
this protection was through the practice of commendation. The local
proprietor commended his rights of ownership to a powerful figure or
institution in the capital in return for political influence in securing
protection. Therefore, commendation was a means to bypass the
power of the provincial offices of the central government.3
The shoen proprietors were noble-bureaucrats who did not live on
the shoen under their control; instead, they were absentee landlords
residing primarily in Kyoto. From their position as central noblebureaucrats
they were able to supersede the power of the provincial
authorities on lands commended to them by a local notable. Consequently,
the proprietary rights structure of the shoen system was inseparable
from the bureaucratic structure of the central government.
The shoen held by these court nobles and religious establishments
were not necessarily located in a single region but were often scattered
throughout the country. The shoen held by the Konoe family in 1235,
for example, numbered at least 154 and were scattered from Mutsu to
Satsuma provinces.4
The local notable who developed the land typically initiated the
commendation of the shoen to the central proprietor. In turning over
the title to his lands, he gave up little in terms of income, although he
relinquished the title of lord to the central proprietor. It was customary
for local proprietors to be appointed as manager of the shoen under the
3 Land development was carried out by local notables. Even though this land was privately held,
the kokushi tried to confiscate the land and designate it as kokugaryo. The local notable, to
avoid this, commended the developed land to a central noble and labored to turn it, along with
the nearby kokugaryo, into a shoen. The local notable often was appointed as a shoen official.
Collusion between the local and central nobility resulted in the partitioning of the kokugaryo
and the spread of shoen throughout the entire country in the twelfth century.
4 Konoe-ke ryo shoryo mokuroku, 1253, in Konoe Fumimaro shozo monjo. For an analysis of this
form of landholding, see Nagahara Keiji, Nihon chusei shakai kozo no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami
shoten, 1973), p. 57.
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TURNING POINTS IN THE DECLINE 263
terms of the commendation agreement and to continue to oversee local
administration as shokan or jitd.
The court noble (or religious institution) to whom the land was
commended was known as the ryoke. The ryoke received a specified
share of the income from the estate in return for acting as the legal
protector of the shden, using his influence to maintain tax immunities
and intervening with government authorities when necessary. In order
to guarantee possession of the shden and to gain additional weight and
prestige from further shden interests, the ryoke would often commend a
portion of his income share to an even more influential court noble or
religious institution, such as the imperial family or the regents' family,
who was known as the honke, or guarantor. The honke acted mainly to
lend prestige to an estate's claim and generally took no interest in its
administration.
Although the shoen's authority structure varied widely, depending
on such factors as its location and the prestige of its proprietors, its
general organization can be viewed as a pyramid, with the peasant
cultivators at its base. Next came the shden managers who lived on the
shden, called shokan or local rydshu, who had developed and commended
the land. Above the shokan were the central proprietors, or
ryoke. At the peak of the hierarchy was the guarantor, or honke.
Thus, the shden proprietor's authority - consisting of the right to
survey the land and to determine and collect the tax, and authority
over judicial affairs - was hierarchically fragmented. The shden system,
as a means to derive economic profit from the land, was not based
on direct proprietary control of the land but on its revenue. The total
income of the shden, which included all the goods and services provided
by the cultivators, was divided according to the relationship of
each level in the hierarchy. These shares were called shiki and represented
a specific amount of income due each rank in the shden hierarchy.
Shiki were classified as honke shiki, ryoke shiki, gesu shiki, and so
forth, according to who owned the shiki right.
The shiki system was based on a relationship in which the holder of
a superior shiki right granted inferior shiki rights, although shiki could
change hands through sale, inheritance, or donation without disturbing
the shoen's economic function. Because shiki were alienable and
divisible, it was possible for the income from the shden to be widely
distributed. Although the shiki system was based on a hierarchical
structure, it was neither bureaucratic nor feudal but was a comparatively
flexible union of superior and inferior rights that did not define
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264 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
a lord-vassal relationship regarding terms of duty and obligation.5
Therefore, a resident shden manager (gesu) appointed to the gesu shiki
' by the rydke could, at the same time, be a gokenin of the Kamakura
bakufu.
It was difficult for the central proprietor, who usually accumulated
numerous shiki in many geographically scattered shden, to maintain
direct control over each shden. This system of proprietary rights differed
dramatically from that of the daimyo of the Edo period, who
controlled contiguous domains and whose authority was backed up by
independent military forces. The central proprietors, lacking their
own military force, were forced to rely on powerful, local officials
(shokan). They also relied on the family structure and the state structure
formed by the nobility and the bakufu and the legal apparatus of
the civil and military governments to maintain the shiki system. Hnjitd
committed unlawful acts within the shden, the shden proprietor would
usually attempt to resolve the conflict through a legal appeal to the
court or bakufu.6
Stages in the collapse of the shoen
The collapse of the shden system was closely connected to the tenurialproprietary
structures that characterized the system. As the shiki
gradually became divorced from the specific tenure function to which
they were originally attached and changes occurred at the top of the
shden hierarchy, important shifts were taking place at lower levels as
well.
Jitd and shokan gradually began to develop their own lordlike authority
within the shden, bypassing the shiki structure and undermining the
shden proprietor's authority. The shugo began to usurp the power of the
provincial offices and to transform provincial lands (kokugaryd) into
lands under their personal control (shugo tyd). The shugo also attempted
to extend their authority into the shden of their respective
provinces. These two interrelated trends constituted a major shift
away from the fragmented shiki structure toward regionally contiguous
domains.
At a more basic level, the economic relationships that comprised the
5 For a more complete description of the shiki structure, see Nagahara Keiji, Nihon chusei shakai
kozo no kenkyu, pp. 28-55.
6 For a general introduction to the shoen system, see Nagahara Keiji, Shden (Tokyo: Hyoronsha,
1978). Also, for a general introduction to the social structure of shden, see Kuroda Toshio,
Shoen-sei shakai, vol. 2 of Taikei Nihon rekishi (Tokyo: Nihon hyoronsha, 1967).
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THE GROWTH OF THE JITO AND SHOKAN 265
foundation of the shoen system were changing. This was most visible
in the actions of the shoen cultivators, the most conspicuous actions
being cultivator disputes known as do-ikki. In addition, shugo and jito
recruited upper-level members of the cultivator class as their military
vassals (hikan). The economic development of the village was at the
root of these changes.
As the shoen proprietors' control over the shoen became more tenuous
and the amount of tax rice (nengu) they actually collected declined,
they began to borrow money from moneylenders (doso) using the next
year's taxes as collateral. To collect even these reduced tax receipts,
the shoen proprietors enlisted local warriors or moneylenders, which
led to the development of a system of tax contracting called ukeoi and a
further decline in the shoen proprietors' authority. Their loss of control
over the shoen proper and the decline in tax receipts were critical
factors leading to the collapse of the shoen system.
The pattern of the shoen system's decline differed among regions.
In general, the expanding sphere of authority of the shugo and jito,
which undermined the position and authority of the shoen proprietor,
was more constrained in the Kinai region where cultivator rights
were most developed and cultivator protests prevalent. In the more
remote regions of eastern Japan and Kyushu, the shoen proprietor's
authority was undercut relatively early, and the jito., shokan, and
shugo succeeded in taking control of contiguous parcels of land. In
the Hokuriku, Tokai, Chugoku, and Shikoku regions, the strength of
the shoen proprietor was more balanced with that of the shugo and
jito. In those areas, shugo often made the transition to daimyo, but
the shoen system was maintained for. a comparatively long time.7
Regional differences, therefore, must not be overlooked when examining
the decline of the shoen.
THE GROWTH OF THE JITO AND SHOKAN AS RYOSHU
The expansion of the jito's shoen control
Jito shiki were established on shoen and kokugaryo in large numbers ir.
two stages. After the Gempei War (i 180-5), the emerging Kamakurs
7 The regional differences in the shoen system roughly followed the order of economic development,
with the Kinai, western Japan, and Kyoto being the most developed. In addition tc
economic development, the strength of the central government in a particular region was also a.
decisive factor. The authority of the ritsuryo state penetrated least in eastern Japan.
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266 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
shogunate secured authorization from the court to appoint jito, called
hompo jito, to the lands confiscated from warriors associated with the
Taira. After the Jokyu disturbance of 1221, the shogunate again appointed
jito to confiscated lands and termed them shimpo, or newly
appointed, jito. The authority of the hompo jito was not completely
systematized but instead was inherited from the gesu who managed the
shoen. The shimpo jito, on the other hand, were granted benefice land
(kyuden). amounting to the income produced by one-eleventh of the
land under their jurisdiction, in addition to the right to collect a
military surcharge (kachomai) offivesho per tan of paddy.
This authority was not necessarily standardized. Although thejito's
authority was based on a shiki right, the jito did not have complete
control over the shoen or kokugaryo to which they were appointed.
Moreover, powerful bakufu retainers were often granted geographically
scatteredjito shiki. In order to maintain these scattered rights, the
gokenin often dispatched family members to serve as deputies {daikan)
in overseeing the shoen. They might choose a particular shoen to be
their home base and move their household there. After the Jokyu
disturbance and throughout the Kamakura period, eastern warriors
would often acquire jito shiki to shoen in western Japan. The Shibuya
family, for example, whose ancestral holdings were located in Sagami
Province, transferred to Satsuma's Iriki-in. The Mori family of
Sagami similarly moved to Yoshida-no-sho in Aki Province.
When jito moved to a new shoen, they held the rights indicated by
their shiki within an existing authority structure. They often came into
conflict, however, with the daikan dispatched by the shoen proprietor,
if they tried to increase their share of shoen revenue or assume other
elements of shoen control, such as police and judicial authority.
In one such confrontation between a jito and a shoen official, which
took place in 1238 on Sasakibe-no-sho in Tamba Province, which was
a holding of the Matsuno Shrine, the shoen official appealed to the
Rokuhara tandai - shogunal deputies stationed at Rokuhara in southeastern
Kyoto by the Kamakura bakufu who supervised the political,
military, and judicial affairs of southwestern Japan - in regard to
illegal acts committed by the jito. The appeal charged that in order to
construct a new residence, the jito levied unreasonable labor corvee
on the shoen cultivators; he forced peasants to accompany him to
Kyoto under a levy known as the kyojofu; he forced cultivators to
work on his private lands without compensation, not even foodstuffs;
and furthermore, the jito was delinquent in his annual payments of
twenty-five koku of nengu from his jito myb, a delinquency that the
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THE GROWTH OF THE JITO AND SHOKAN 267
appeal said amounted to a total of over three hundred koku over
seventeen years.8
A similar confrontation between a jito and a shorn official occurred
in 1243 on the Daigoji's Ushihara-no-sho in Echizen Province. In this
case, the jito disregarded custom by infringing on the traditional authority
of the shoen proprietor by assuming criminal jurisdiction.9
Criminal jurisdiction was an important component of the shoen proprietor's
authority; therefore, the jito's actions were a direct attack on
ryoshu control over the shoen.
Incidents of this kind occurred repeatedly throughout the country.
In many cases, the shoen official appealed directly to the bakufu. The
bakufu generally sought to suppress these acts by jito that were outside
the bounds of jito shiki. Also, because the acts increased the friction
with the nobility in Kyoto, who were often the target of these illegal
actions, the bakufu's policy was aimed at controlling the jito's actions.
Despite the bakufu's policy, the jito continued to expand their control
within the shoen. As a result, the shoen proprietor, gradually losing
control of the shoen to the jito, would often turn to settlements known
as wayo (literally, "peaceful giving"), an out-of-court settlement between
shoen proprietors and jito regarding the distribution of revenue
from the shoen.
Two other forms of conciliation, shitaji chubun and ukesho, posed an
even greater threat to the shoen proprietor's authority.10
Shitaji chubun
involved the physical division of shoen lands into a part over which the
jito would have full authority and derive revenue, and a part under the
control of the central proprietor. In 1318, on Koyasan's Kanzaki-nosho
in Bingo Province, in order to resolve an ongoing dispute between
thejito and the shoen proprietor, the land was divided equally, and each
controlled a half of the shoen." Although half of the shoen was handed
over to the jito, the remaining half was left free from jito interference.
This system of land division could be carried out in different ways but
was generally on a fifty-fifty basis, a major gain for the jito who was
originally entitled to only one-eleventh of the revenue.
Ukesho, also called jito uke, often represented an extension of the
8 Rokuhara saikyojo, 1238, in Higashi monjo.
9 Rokuhara gechijo, 1243, in Hoon-in monjo. •
10 For more information on shitaji chubun, see Shimada Jiro, "Zaichi-ryoshusei no tenkai to
Kamakura bakufu ho," in Inagaki Yasuhiko and Nagahara Keiji, eds., Chusei no shakai to
keizai (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1962); and Yasuda Motohisa, Jito oyobi jito
ryoshusei no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1961), pp. 426-60.
11 Ryoke jito wayojo, 1318, in Kongo sanmai-in monjo.
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268 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
jito's control after shitaji chubun. In this instance the jito contracted
with the shoen proprietor to send annually a fixed amount of revenue
and services to him, regardless of the tax yield actually collected that
year. The actual control of the shoen was left to thejito and moved him
one step closer to being an autonomous local proprietor.12
On Chibino-sho
in Bingo Province, the jito Yamanouchi Sudo, who had transferred
to the shoen from the Kanto, had long been in dispute with the
shoen proprietor over restoration of the authority to commend land
{shitaji shinshi-ken). In 1308, Sudo contracted to pay forty-five kan
annually to the shoen proprietor as jito uke.13
The practice of jito uke
began early in the Kamakura period in the eastern provinces where the
bakufu's authority was strongest. By the end of the period, however,
ukesho was increasingly being practiced on shoen in the western provinces
as well.
The jito's method of expanding their power over the shoen relative to
that of the shoen proprietor, by means of shitaji chubun or ukesho,
changed over the course of the Kamakura period. During the early to
middle Kamakura period, the;ito basically operated within the framework
of the shiki structure: They attempted to expand the amount of
benefice land granted to them as part of their shiki; in order to improve
the irrigation on their private lands, they altered the waterways for
their personal benefit, or they appropriated labor for the cultivation of
their private land. Shitaji chubun and ukesho, on the other hand, gave
the jito the means to acquire their own proprietorlike authority over
the shoen's land and residents.
The shokan's revolt
Thejito were not the only ones to aggrandize the authority of the shoen
proprietor. The shokan, especially the powerful gesu, also attempted to
usurp greater control over the shoen. On Kuroda-no-sho in Iga Province,
a holding of the Todaiji, the gesu, a family named Oe, had held
the gesu shiki since the twelfth century. At the end of the Kamakura
period, Oe Kiyosada, the current gesu of the shoen, began to increase
his military strength by enlisting local warriors. Kiyosada then seized
control of taxation on the shoen. The Todaiji appealed this act to the
Rokuhara tandai, and Oe Kiyosada was arrested and exiled to Izumo
province. The Todaiji's control over the shoen, however, depended on
12 Concerning ukesho, see Yasuda, Jito oyobijito ryoshusei, pp. 339-55.
13 Rokuhara geckijo 1308, in Yamanouchi-Sudo monjo.
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THE GROWTH OF THE JITO AND SHOKAN 269
this locally powerful Oe family. Therefore, the temple subsequently
appointed Oe Kanshun to the post of gesu and Oe Toshisada to the post
oikumon, a local shoen official below the gesu in rank.
The new appointees, Kanshun and Toshisada, disregarded the
Todaiji's orders and continued to commit the illegal acts. In response,
the Todaiji appointed the son of the former gesu Kiyosada, Yasusada,
to the gesu post. Spared by this appointment, Kiyosada returned from
his exile in Izumo, and both father and son undertook seditious actions
against the Todaiji. Moreover, the residents of the shoen community,
united with the Oe family, took action against the Todaiji, demanding
a reduction in their tax and corv6e responsibilities and undermining
the Todaiji's authority.
In response to this crisis in shoen control, the Todaiji desperately
requested that the gokenin warriors of the area and the shugo deputy of
Iga Province put pressure on the Oe family. They too, however, only
conspired with the Oe. The Rokuhara tandai, finally recognizing the
seriousness of the situation, sided with the Todaiji. Members of the
Oe family were arrested and its two leaders banished, Kiyosada to
Bingo Province and Kakushun to Tango Province. Kiyosada and
Kakushun did not remain in exile, however, but returned to plague
the Todaiji by withholding some three thousand koku of nengu from
the temple.
The Oe family came to be called akuto, a term used by shoen proprietors
in the Kamakura period to describe lawless groups who banded
together for such purposes as forcibly seizing tax rice and other wealth
from shoen proprietors.14
Akuto were present on many shoen and included
among their members, shokan, shoen cultivators, and bushi
(warriors). The akuto were not successful in attaining complete control
over Kuroda-no-sho, however, owing to the vigor of the Todaiji's
response. Elsewhere, however, the akuto pursued a course of aggrandizement
similar to the efforts of the jito to increase their personal
control over shoen.
The growth of the kokujin-ryoshu
The speed with which the jito and shokan usurped the authority of the
shoen proprietor increased dramatically with the fall of the Kamakura
bakufu. Like the Kamakura bakufu, the Muromachi bakufu adopted a
14 Concerning the Kuroda akuto, see Ishimoda Sho, Zoho chuseiteki sekai no keisei (Tokyo:
Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1950), pp. 181-302; and Koizumi Yoshiaki, "Iga no kuni
Kuroda-no-sho no akuto," in Inagaki and Nagahara, eds., Chusei no shakai to keizai.
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270 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
policy of suppressing these jito incursions. The Muromachi bakufu
lacked the power of its predecessor, however, and was unable to enforce
its judicial decisions. The acts by the jito and shokan committed in
defiance of the bakufu's judicial decisions were not limited to those
against the holdings of the nobles and religious establishments that
supported the Southern Court against the bakufu; they extended also to
the holdings of the Northern Court which was allied with the bakufu.
Because of the unsettled conditions of the period, those who held
rights to widely scattered shoen found it difficult to maintain their
rights and began to concentrate their power in a single location. In this
process, the holder of thejito shiki would choose a particular shoen and
attempt to make it into a contiguous holding. In addition, he also
sought ukesho contracts on public lands (koryo) and shoen with which
he had no prior connection, in order to build a local power base.
The gokenin family of Mori, for example, whose ancestral holding
was the M6ri-no-sh6 in Sagami Province, also held the jito shiki of
Sahashi-no-sho in Echigo Province, Kagata-no-sho in Kawachi, and
Yoshida-no-sho in Aki. At the beginning of the Nambokucho period,
the main line of the Mori family entrusted the control of Sahashi-nosho
to a branch family and moved their household to Yoshida-no-sho
where they established a new home base. During the Muromachi
period, the Mori created a local power base by means of ukesho on
koryo and shoen in the Takada district of Yoshida-no-sho, They also
became daikan.'5
Whenjito such as the Mori turned their attention to the formation of
a regional power base, they were forced to abandon their rights to their
other scattered holdings. In the case of the Mori, they relinquished
their shiki held in Kagata-no-sho and Sahashi-no-sho. In another case,
a Musashi gokenin family by the name of Abo held numerous jito shiki
in the provinces of Musashi, Shinano, Dewa, Bitchu, and Harima.
During the upheaval of the Nambokucho period, however, their jito
shiki in Bitchu Province was wrestled away from them by locals.16
The
shiki structure of the shoen began to disintegrate rapidly in the war:
torn conditions of the fourteenth century; this involved not only the
upper-level shiki held by the nobility and the religious establishments
but also the scattered jito shiki.
The weakening of the shiki structure and the formation of contiguous
local power bases during the fourteenth century represented a new
15 Mori-ke monjo, in Takada-gun shi (Takada-gun shi hensan iinkai, 1972).
16 Abo Milsuyasu okibumi, 1340, in Abo monjo.
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THE GROWTH OF THE JITO AND SHOKAN 27I
trend in landholding - a national reorganization of the landholding
system. Changes in landholding patterns were paralleled by changes in
inheritance and military organization. In order to construct a system of
control over the residents of their newly formed power base, the jito
sought to make vassals of the upper-class cultivators. The military force
of the Kamakura-period warriors was strongly based on familial
relations - unrelated vassals were still quite rare. Under the soryo system,
the main family forced branch family members (ichizoku) to reside
in the villages under their control. In peacetime these branch families
managed and developed agricultural production, and in wartime, the
head of the main family {soryo) mobilized and led these collateral family
members into battle. Unrelated followers called shoju and genin were
often employed but were not part of the military nucleus.17
After the
Nambokucho period, thejuo-level warriors discarded the soryo system
and developed a new system of military organization.
Warrior families also discarded the practice of divided inheritance
carried out under the soryo system, in order to prevent the opposition
from within the family that often accompanied the division of landholdings.
An inheritance system under which a sole heir acquired all
the land was adopted by many jito families during the Nambokucho
period. Thus the branch family members no longer received a share of
the inheritance and were gradually reduced to a position of dependence
on the main family. At the same time, the soryo made vassals of
the powerful peasant leaders (dogo) and upper-class cultivators in their
territory, by requiring military service in exchange for a reduction in,
or exemption from, nengu payments.
The jito's transition to kokujin-ryoshu (local notables who became
local or regional overloads) was characterized by three trends: (i)
They no longer held scattered shiki but controlled contiguous holdings
in a single location; (2) they no longer practiced divided inheritance
but, rather, switched to the. practice of single inheritance in order to
avoid diluting their wealth by dividing their landholdings; and (3) they
militarized the upper-class cultivators in their area in order to
strengthen their military force. The local warriors (zaichi-rydshu) who
followed this path were called kokujin-ryoshu. The term kokujin appears
in the documents of the period and refers to those warriors who
had deep roots in the provinces.18
17 See Haga Norihiko, Soryosei (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1966).
18 Concerning the Kokujin-ryoshu, see Nagahara Keiji, Nikon kdkensei seiritsu katei no kenkyu
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1961), pp. 346-56; and Nagahara, Nikon chusei shakai kozo no
kenkyu, pp. 367-93.
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272 THE DECLINE OF THE SHdEN SYSTEM
In contrast with the shoen proprietors, the kokujin controlled the
shoen through their own power. Even so, direct power alone proved
insufficient to control the shoen residents. The kokujin found it essential
to persuade the residents that their control was appropriate and that
they had a public right to power. Consequently, the kokujin did not
completely sever their relationship with the shoen proprietors, but continued
to recognize their position and deliver nengu to them, although in
reduced amounts. The amount of arable land that had been publicly
surveyed and recorded (koden) - on which the kokujin based their calculation
for nengu to be delivered to the central proprietor - however, was
far less than the amount of land from which the kokujin themselves
collected taxes. Moreover, because the kokujin assumed the actual control
of the shoen, the shoen proprietor lost all substantive authority over
the shoen except for the right to collect the tax delivered by the kokujin.
The shoen proprietor of the Mori family's Yoshida-no-sho was a
Kyoto shrine, Gikansha. The amount of koden on which the nengu was
computed at the beginning of the fifteenth century was generally no
more than forty chobu. The amount of land that the Mori controlled
and on which they levied such imposts as rinjizei (a temporary tax),
however, exceeded six hundred chobu.19
The growth of the kokujin took place within the framework of the
shoen system. The kokujin usurped the right to administer the shoen,
which included the promotion of shitaji, the collection of nengu, and
police authority (kendan). The shoen proprietor, recognizing his loss of
authority, appointed the kokujin as an overseer (daikan) and took delivery
of a fixed amount of nengu, as determined by contract. Disputes
between shoen proprietors and kokujin at this time were seldom referred
to the legal organs of the Muromachi bakufu. These disputes
were not over fragmented rights held by the various ryoshu, as we saw
in the Kamakura period; instead, soryo was a problem that concerned
the proprietor authority itself. In this regard, the growth of the kokujinryoshu
decisively changed control of the shoen.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHUGO DOMAINAL SYSTEM
The expansion o/shugo authority
At the same time that jito and shokan were developing into kokujinryoshu,
the shugo was also changing. Under the Kamakura bakufu, the
19 Mdri-ke monjo, docs. 28, 29, 47.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHVGO 273
shugo's authority was circumscribed by the daibon sankajo, empowered
only to punish the crimes of murder and rebellion and to muster the
imperial guard. In addition, the shugo held a power known as monjo
choshin noyaku, which gave him the right to request land registers for
a province within the jurisdiction of the kokuga,20
The registers proved
to be indispensable to the shugo in his mobilization of material and
manpower, because they listed the amount of public land still held by
the kokuga within the individual shoen, as well as the identities of the
jito and gesu.
The power of the shugo also increased during the Mongol invasions
of Japan (1274-81) when the bakufu was forced to mobilize nongokenin
warriors and place them under the shugo's command.21
Normally,
the bakufu controlled the shugo's vassalization of the provincial
warriors through a policy of making them direct shogunal retainers.
But by the end of the Kamakura period, the shugo's own vassalization
of the provincial warriors had become common.
The Muromachi bakufu, formed in 1336 after the collapse of the
Kemmu restoration, followed its predecessor's policy of limiting the
shugo's authority to the daibon sankajo.22
During the fighting in the
Nambokucho period, however, the bakufu had little choice but to
grant appropriate powers to the shugo so that they could strengthen
their military forces by enticing the locally powerful kokujin into their
vassal organization.
Based on a Muromachi bakufu law issued in 1346, the shugo were
granted two powers in addition to the daibon sankajo - karita rozeki
and shisetsu jungyo.2i
Karita rozeki gave the shugo the authority to
suppress provincial warriors who entered shoen unlawfully to harvest
rice. Shisetsu jungyo gave the shugo authority to enforce the bakufu
judicial decisions in land disputes. Before the 1346 law, the shugo's
power was limited mainly to military and police oversight. These new
powers, which concerned the resolution of land disputes, increased
their political and economic authority.
The bakufu promulgated a hanzei law in 1352 that allowed the shugo
to collect from the shoen special tributes for military expenses. The
bakufu was divided at this time because of a dispute between the
shogun Takauji and his brother Tadayoshi, a division that extended
down into the warrior ranks. The bakufu declared that "half of the
honjo-ryo (lands of the court nobles) in the three provinces of Omi,
20 Azuma kagami 1187/9/13. See also Ishii Susumu, Nihon chusei kokkashi no kenkyu (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1970), pp. 179-94. 2 I
Kamakura bakufu tsuika ho, no. 463.
22 Muromachi bakufu isuika ho, no. 2. 23 Ibid., no. 31.
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274 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
Mino, and Owari was designated as commissariat land for the support
of the military {hydro ryosho) and that one harvest from this year alone
may be given to their troops."24
Honjo-ryo referred to land to which a
jito had been appointed, to distinguish it from land belonging to temples
and shrines (jisha honjo ichienchi) and land not under the jurisdiction
of ijito. This law allowed the shugo to appropriate one-half of the
annual tax from the honjo-ryo, but for one year only, and to give it to
their troops as commissariat rice in order to conduct war. This hanzei
order was carried out in a total of eight provinces: Omi, Mino, Owari,
Ise, Shima, Iga, Izumi, and Kawachi.25
In 1368, hanzei authorization was extended to permit the partitioning
of land on a regular basis through the entire country, in contrast
with the "from this year alone" status of the earlier hanzei order.26
Because shugo and kokujin were absorbing shoen as their own landholdings
at this time, the fact that hanzei was limited to honjo-ryo and
excluded the lands of temples and shrines must be considered part of
the policy that the bakufu was then adopting to protect the shoen. The
national hanzei law concerned more than just the collection of rice to
meet military needs. Because it loosened restrictions on the partitioning
of land from a single harvest a year to allow it on a more frequent
basis, the shoen proprietors suffered a great setback ir; their hold over
the shoen.
Under the hanzei law, the shugo partitioned the shoen and koryb
within their province and granted them to their kokujin vassals. Although
the provincial warriors were the direct beneficiaries of the
hanzei law, it was the shugo who had the power to exercise it. This was
one means by which the shugo incorporated the kokujin into his vassal
organization. The hanzei law did not mean that the Muromachi
bakufu had abandoned its policy of supporting the shoen system. Instead,
the bakufu pragmatically responded to the shugo's and kokujin''s
demands for land and, in turn, compelled the shoen proprietors to
sacrifice their own interests.
Shugo usurpation of the kokuga
The shugo rapidly expanded their public authority during the
Nambokucho period, a trend underlined by the shugo's usurpation of
the kokuga's authority and position. Originally, the kokuga held the
24 Ibid., no. 56. 25 Ibid., no. 57. 26 Ibid., no. 97.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHUGO 275
most important position of local control in the centralized structure of
the ritsuryo state. Officials below the fourth rank were appointed as
provincial governors for a period of six (and later four) years. In the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, powerful indigenous families
(zaichi-ryoshu) made significant inroads into the kokuga structure by
thrusting themselves upon the kokuga as zaichi kanjin, local officials of
provincial kokuga. The provincial governors fought back by appointing
their own trusted retainers as higher officials (mokudai) and poured
their strength into organizing their own military power through the
use of warriors that the governors themselves retained (yakata no
tsuwamono). Thus although the ritsuryo state changed greatly in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, the kokuga remained the base of local
control for the state.
The kokuga office was not fundamentally changed even into the
Kamakura period. The shiki structure, common to both the shoen and
the koryo, was maintained by the power of the kokuga. The shugo's
power, still based on the daibon sankajo in the Kamakura period,
limited his ability to interfere directly in kokuga affairs. After the midKamakura
period, however, the shugo's power increased relative to
that of the kokuga. Although their purpose and function differed, the
kokufu, which served as the kokuga's seat, and the shugo-sho, which
served as the shugo's seat, were often located in close proximity or even
adjacent to each other. Both positions were a link in the state's public
authority. Backed by his superior military power, the shugo gradually
began to infringe on the kokuga's sphere of control and to insinuate
himself with the officials of the kokuga.
From a 1257 document issued by the shugo of Osumi Province in
Kyushu, the shugo office was found to include such posts as the osuke
kensaisho (vice-governor), oryoshi (military/police functionaries), and
chosho and shosho (administrative and secretarial assistants), in addition
to the shugodai (shugo deputy) post. From as early as the Heian
period, these posts had been positions attached to the kokuga office,
indicating that in this case the kokuga's posts and functions had been
taken over by the shugo.27
From other such examples, it appears that the
shugo's usurpation of the kokuga office proceeded gradually after the
middle of the Kamakura period. Although the shugo made inroads into
the kokuga's authority, they were limited by the Kamakura bakufu's
deliberate policy of restraining them. In contrast, the Muromachi
27 Tanaka Kenji, "Kamakura bakufu no Osumi no kuni shihai ni tsuite no ichi kosatsu,"
Kyushu shigaku, nos. 65 and 67 (1977, 1979): 1-22 and 1-18.
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276 THE DECLINE OF THE SH6EN SYSTEM
bakufu was unable to hold the reins on the stronger shugo, and the
balance of power shifted even further in the shugo's favor.
The shugo's ascendancy was evidenced by their acquisition of the
right to collect a temporary tax levied for such state purposes as the
rebuilding of the Ise Shrine's main building every twenty years and
the tansen (cash tax per tan of paddy field) levied to meet the expenses
of the emperor's coronation and abdication ceremonies. These ad hoc
levies had formerly been collected by the kokuga, but they later came
under the shugo's purview.
The kokuga carried out arbitration and enforced the judicial decisions
handed down by the court regarding land disputes. The kokuga
customarily chose a provincial representative (kunizukai) who was dispatched
to the site of the dispute. When the bakufu assumed those
judicial functions previously held by the court, the authority of the
kokuga in this area was transferred to the shugo, and the shugo's representative
(shugozukai) replaced the kunizukai as the local representative
of justice.28
Under pressure from the shugo, the kokuga office lost most of its
substantive power by the fifteenth century. Although it is impossible
to detail the kokuga's fall from power province by province, the loss of
power was certain. Even in Harima Province where the kokuga maintained
power for a relatively long period of time, the shift in the
balance of power between kokuga and shugo was evident by the end of
the fourteenth century. The post of ko-mokudai (resident deputy of the
provincial governor), for example, previously assigned to the kokuga,
was taken over by the shugo, and the holder of the office, Ogawa,
became a vassal of the shugo.19
Even in the Kamakura period, this
trend was apparent in Harima Province where the power of the central
government was relatively secure. It is likely, therefore, that the situation
in provinces where the central government's authority was weak
was even more advanced.
As the kokuga were losing their power in the provinces, the court
was losing its control over central Japan. The court's independence
had not been severely limited by the establishment of the Kamakura
bakufu and military government; it had retained its role as one pillar
of the state throughout the Kamakura period. In the Nambokucho
28 Concerning the expansion of the shugo's authority, see Sato Shin'ichi, "Shugo ryogokusei no
tenkai," in Toyoda Takeshi, ed., Shin Nihonshi laikei dai san kan, chusei shakai (Tokyo:
Asakura shoten, 1954), pp. 81-127.
29 Kishida Hiroshi, "Shugo Akamatsu-shi no Harima no kuni shihai no hatten to kokuga,"
Shigaku kenkyu, nos. 104 and 105 (1968).
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHUGO 2J7
period, however, the court lost its base of control and was rendered
powerless in the provinces. This was evidenced by the court's reliance
on the shugo to collect the tansen. By the end of the fourteenth century,
the court's authority had been so reduced that even its police authority
over the environs of Kyoto was taken over by the bakufu's Board of
Retainers (samurai-dokoro).
Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu achieved a degree of political consolidation
at the end of the fourteenth century when he stepped down in
favor of his son Yoshimochi. Yoshimitsu then assumed the post oidaijo
daijin, symbolizing that he stood supreme over both the warriors and
the nobility. Furthermore, Yoshimitsu sent an envoy to Ming China,
opened formal diplomatic and trade relations, and signed himself
"King of Japan" in a letter to the Ming court.
The court lost its independence and authority as a separate state
entity. Its powerlessness was indicated by the fact that it was no longer
asked to resolve land disputes involving shoen. Regardless of the nature
of the dispute and the persons involved, the court had no recourse
but to rely on the bakufu for its resolution. The bakufu was caught
between the desire to preserve the shoen system and the need to placate
and reward its military supporters. On the one hand, many of its
policies encouraged the decline of the shoen system such as the issuance
of the hanzei authorizations that expanded the shugo's authority.
On the other hand, the bakufu tried to suppress the shugo and adopted
a protective policy toward the shoen as a means to legitimate its position
as the preeminent organ of state. Thus the shoen system deteriorated
greatly under the Muromachi bakufu, but it was not completely
dismantled.
The growth of shugo domains
Yoshimitsu used the shugo to achieve his goal of political consolidation.
He granted them expanded authority and acknowledged their vassalization
of the kokujin.
In the fifteenth century, the shugo developed into daimyo, powerful
regional lords possessing semiautonomous control of a domain
(ryogoku). The process of domain building followed many paths. One
of the most noteworthy was the shugo's incorporation of "public land"
(Jkokugaryo) into his own shugo holdings. Although the shorn system
was the primary form of landholding throughout Japan, it is estimated
that kokugaryo constituted approximately 40 to 50 percent of the total
arable land in some provinces. The entire country was not converted
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278 THE DECLINE OF THE SHdEN SYSTEM
into shoen during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as might be
mistakenly believed. Although the shoen had its effects throughout
Japan, kokugaryo were maintained at the aforementioned ratio and
were reorganized into units called go, ho, or befu. Furthermore, nengu
and zokuji collected from kokugaryo provided income for the chigyo
kokushu - the nobility and powerful religious establishments appointed
as the "governor" of a province for the sole purpose of receiving
income from it. In other provinces, the kokugaryo provided income
for the central government. As the shugo absorbed the authority of the
kokuga office, however, the kokugaryo increasingly fell under the
shugo''s control.
The transformation of the kokugaryo began in the Kamakura period
in the provinces of eastern Japan and Kyushu where the authority of
the Kamakura bakufu was strongest. But even in those provinces
where the authority of the Kyoto nobility was relatively strong, the
process quickly accelerated during the Nambokucho period. Amidst
the desultory fighting of the fourteenth century, the shugo took control
of the kokugaryo through the kokuga shiki, and it became part of their
own landholdings.30
In the fifteenth century, many shugo also began to levy tansen, once a
temporary provincial unit tax, as discussed earlier. The shugo, however,
did not levy tansen as a state tax in their substitute role as a
provincial official (kokushi); instead, the shugo levied tansen on the
basis of their own political authority. Moreover, although it was originally
a temporary levy, it became a permanent tax symbolizing that
authority.31
In order to strengthen their public authority throughout the entire
province, the shugo built up their personal military power, primarily
by organizing the province's local powers (kokujin-ryoshu) as their vassals.
The above-mentioned hanzei was the most convenient means by
which to make vassals of the kokujin. The shugo also held the right to
grant to their kokujin vassals the land confiscated from an enemy
defeated in battle, as a means to retain or strengthen their loyalty.
Thus both hanzei and confiscated land provided a source of fief
(chigyo) by which the shugo enticed military service from the kokujin.32
The relationship between the shugo and their kokujin vassals was a
30 Uesugi-ke monjo, vol. I, no. 56.
31 Tanuma Mutsumi, "Muromachi bakufu, shugo, kokujin," in Iwanami koza, ed., Nihon
rekishi (chusei 3) Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1976), pp. 33-40.
32 Kasamatsu Hiroshi, Nihon chusei-ho shiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1979), pp.
203-38.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHUGO 279
tenuous one, as the hanzei and confiscated land proved insufficient as a
source of chigyo. Furthermore, the kokujiris original landholdings had
not been granted by the shugo. Consequently, the lord-vassal relationship
established between the shugo and the kokujin was not an unbreakable
tie, nor did all kokujin in a province become shugo vassals. Some
kokujin even tried to avoid becoming shugo vassals as in the case of a
kokujin league (ikki) formed in 1404 in Aki Province in order to resist
the newly appointed shugo, Yamana.33
The shugo failed to make vassals of all the kokujin in their province,
but because the kokujin were usually much less powerful than the
shugo, they were unable to prevent the formation of the lord-vassal
relationship. This relationship with the kokujin was the military foundation
of the shugo's provincial control that has been called the shugo
domainal system (shugo ryogokusei). During the Muromachi period,
many of the shugo came to be called great lords or daimyo, even by the
bakufu.
The shugo also extended their control over the shoen in their province
by means of provincewide levies such as tansen. The collection of
the hanzei, too, as described earlier, was made only in the lands that
the shugo controlled directly (honjo-ryo) and not in the holdings of the
religious establishments. In the fifteenth century, however the shugo
levied ad hoc taxes and labor corvee called shugo yaku, first on the
honjo-ryo and then on the holdings of temples and shrines. The shugo
also made vassals of the shoen officials. Once this was accomplished,
the shugo then proposed shugo uke (literally, "shugo contract"). Rather
than the payment of a small fixed amount of tax to the central proprietor,
the shugo uke gave the shugo complete control over the locale. One
case involved Ota-no-sho in Bingo Province, a large shoen of at least six
hundred cho of paddy land under the proprietorship of Koyasan, a
Buddhist monastic complex of the Shingon sect on Mount Koya. In
1402, the shugo, Yamana Tokihiro, contracted to pay 1,000 koku in tax
to Koyasan. Tokihiro failed to honor the contract, however, and during
the Eikyo period (1429-41), the shugo was delinquent on the
payment of 20,600 koku.14
Destruction of the shoen system was not the express purpose of the
shugo uke, but the shugo's acquisition of actual control over the shoen
greatly aided their rise to the status of daimyo. The shugo assigned
their vassal kokujin to xhes^shden on which the former held shugo uke,
33 Aki no kuni kokujin doshinjojo vol: i: 1404, no. 24, in Mdri-ke monjo. See also Nagahara Keiji,
Chusei nairanki no shakai to minshu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1977), pp. 129-57.
34 Muromachi shogun-ke migyosho, vol. 1: 1402, no. 373, in Koyasan monjo.
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280 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
giving the latter authority over the shoen. Although not a case oishugo
uke, members of the shugo clan were often installed as daikan on shoen.
In a 1393 case involving Miwa-no-sho in Suo Province under the
proprietorship of the Toji, a Suo shugo retainer of the Ouchi, Hirai
Nyudo, acted as an intermediary, and another person, Kutsuya
Saemonshigemori, became daikan on the shoen. Kutsuya, probably a
local notable connected to the Ouchi, was granted the daikan shiki for
the ten-year period at a fixed salary of forty kanmon.35
This was not,
technically speaking, a case of shugo uke, but it constituted the same
thing.
What kind of attitude did the Muromachi bakufu adopt toward the
development of the shugo domainal system? From its inception, the
bakufu followed the policy inherited from its predecessor and sought
both to maintain the shoen system and to control the shugo and thejito.
Both the shugo andjito chafed at this policy. Their combined demands
for greater power and more land eventually forced the bakufu to retreat
from its original stance. It was during the Kanno disturbances in
the mid-fourteenth century that the bakufu issued the hanzei laws in
reaction to the growing dissatisfaction of the shugo and kokujin. Although
the bakufu increased its control during the Nambokucho period,
it was unable to resist by force the shugo's efforts to construct a
domainal system, as the shugo played a critical role in the bakufu's
internal politics.36
PEASANTS' PROTEST AND GROWTH
The development of the myoshu kajishi
In addition to the actions of the shugo and kokujin, the shoen system
was undermined by the actions of the cultivators and changes in the
structure of the village.
An important development in this regard was the establishment of
the myoshu kajishi. The myoshu kajishi was a mid-level right to receive
income (tokubun), unrelated to the shoen proprietor's right to collect
nengu. In 1385, for example, Fujimatsume of Shimokuze-no-sho in
Yamashiro Province sold three tan of myoshu shiki to a person named
Jibukyohoin. According to the contract, the Toji's nengu was set at 742
sho of rice and four hundred mon in cash,«and the buyer received 1.5
35 Saishoko-in-kaia hikitsuke, 1393/7/10 and 1393/4/7,111 Toji hyakugo monjo.
36 Nagahara Keiji, "Muromachi bakufu shugo ryogokusei ka no tochi seido," in Nihon chusei
shakai kozo no kenkyu, pp. 426-87.
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PEASANTS' PROTEST AND GROWTH 281
koku of rice as his myoshu kajishi.31
How the myoshu kajishi that became
prevalent during the Nambokuchd period was originally established is
still unclear. As a result of rising agricultural productivity, when the
nengu obligation and subsistence portion for the cultivators were subtracted
from the total yield, the surplus was set aside as the myoshu
kajishi. This was possible because the nengu remained fixed and did
not eat away the surplus. A certain amount of surplus remained under
the control of the shoen proprietor, but as that control weakened, it is
thought that the myoshu kajishi were bought and sold. The amount of
kajishi per unit of land was often the same as the nengu standard of
three to five to of rice per tan of land.
Under these conditions, well-to-do peasants often bought and accumulated
these myoshu kajishi rights, and peasants in strained circumstances
often became responsible for paying the myoshu kajishi in addition
to the usual nengu. In a 1407 document from the Toji's
Kamikuze-no-sho in Yamashiro Province, we see such notations as the
following: I. Heishichi-myo, one tan; myoshu Horindono; and (sakunin)
Yagoro; and II. Echigo-myo, one tan; myoshu sakunin Rokurogoro.38
In
the first entry, Horindono, who held the myoshu kajishi right, and the
sakunin Yagoro were two different individuals. In the second entry, the
distinction seen in part I between mybhu and sakunin had not
emerged - Rokurogoro alone was responsible for the nengu to be paid
by a sakunin and myoshu.
The myoshu kajishi right was not necessarily limited to persons living
on the shoen. Wealthy peasants on neighboring shoen, religious establishments,
sake brewers, and moneylenders also bought kajishi rights.
For example, it is known that a prominent sake brewer by the name of
Saikyo Umezakaya acquired in 1434 two tan of the myoshu kajishi right
on Shimokuze-no-sho located southwest of Kyoto.39
The control of the
shoen proprietor was inevitably shaken by such transactions. Even
though it was called myoshu kajishi, if the authority to increase it
relative to the nengu was acquired by persons outside the shoen, then
the authority of these outsiders was bound to increase within the shoen
itself. Consequently, shoen proprietors tried to prohibit the sale of
kajishi rights outside the shoen. As early as the mid-fourteenth century,
the Toji proclaimed to the shoen manager (azukari-dokoro) of Kannono-sho
in Yamashiro Province that "the sale of lands must be strictly
37 Fujimatsume Shimokuze-no-sho nai myoshu-shiki baiken, 1385, me 11-19, 'n
Toji hyakugo
monjo.
38 Kamikuze-no-sho kumon chushinjo, 1407, wo 17 and ge 18, in Toji hyakugo monjo.
39 Asahara kannonjijuji keiho moshijo, 1435, wo 16, in Toji hyakugo monjo.
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282 THE DECLINE OF THE SHdEN SYSTEM
forbidden without exception" and declared that the mydden would be
confiscated in cases in which the law was broken.40
Shoen proprietors were unable to stop the transfer of mydshu kajishi
rights by such restrictions alone. The shoen proprietors, most of whom
resided in Kyoto or Nara, maintained private administrative headquarters
(mandokoro) in order to control the shoen but had no military force
of their own. Thus, their power to stop the increasing sales of rights to
income from paddies was negligible. As a result, even though agricultural
productivity was rising, they were unable to increase the nengu,
conduct land surveys, or exert control over outsiders who held kajishi
rights.
The practice of mydshu kajishi and its transfer to persons outside the
shoen were most widely developed on the shoen of the Kinai region.
The reason for this was that even though these shoen were more able to
control the growth of thejitd and kokujin, owing these shoen's proximity
to Kyoto and Nara, an independent cultivator class developed in
this region and in larger numbers than elsewhere. As I shall describe
further later, the shoen proprietors, who faced opposition from cultivators
in the form of disputes between the proprietors and the cultivators,
had to contend with stronger opposition from the cultivators in
the shoen of this region. And such opposition tended to succeed in
gaining more of the agricultural surplus for cultivators in the form of
mydshu kajishi.
The mydshu kajishi developed elsewhere as well, particularly in the
provinces near Kyoto. In the mid-fifteenth century the Fun'yoji, a
temple located in the Muki District of Mino Province, boughtfivetan
of paddy from a person named Nakanishi Hachiro. The temple received
four kanmon of nengu from the sakunin and from that amount
paid 2.913 kanmon for what was known as kubo nengu - dues paid to a
high-ranking noble (kubo) proprietor.4
' In a separate transaction, the
temple collected one koku, three to of rice in nengu from two tan of
paddy, from which it paid six to in the form of kubo nengu.*1
The kubo
nengu was paid, but the balance remained in the hands of the Fun'yoji
in the form of mydshu kajishi. The seller of the kajishi right to the
Fun'yoji, Nakanishi Hachiro, was probably a mydshu, meaning that
well-to-do peasants and religious establishments were selling their accumulated
kajishi rights. In the mid-fifteenth century, a wealthy peasant
by the name of Hatamura Gorozaemon conducted numerous finan-
40 Gakushu bugyo hikitsuke, hokyo shinyu shojo, mu, in Tdji hyakugd monjo.
41 Nakanishi Hachiro denchi baiken, 1460, no. 50 in Fun'yoji monjo. 42 Ibid., no. 51.
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PEASANTS' PROTEST AND GROWTH 283
cial transactions and rapidly accumulated landholdings in the Obe-nosho
in Harima Province, a proprietorship of the Todaiji. The purchase
of myoshu kajishi rights was an important source of this new wealth.43
Thus over time, the levying and trading of rights to myoshu kajishi
became increasingly prevalent in the Kinai and neighboring provinces,
and this development raised the critical issue of how to guarantee the
collection of the kajishi and what to do in cases in which the payment of
kajishi was delinquent. Because the kajishi was anathema to the shoen
proprietors, they could not be expected to lend their authority to ensure
payment. Those who held kajishi rights were generally well-to-do peasants
or religious establishments who, unlike the kokujin, did not possess
the military power needed to ensure payment. As a result, it proved
difficult for the holders of kajishi rights to enforce payment. In order to
ensure collection of the myoshu kajishi, therefore, they developed an
organization for this outside the framework of the shoen system. Thus,
the custom of gojichi ("debt of a village") became prevalent. This custom
recognized that the debt of one villager was the responsibility of all
villagers and that creditors were allowed to seize the property of villagers
other than that of the delinquent debtor himself.44
These practices
and customs were not within the control of the shoen proprietors and so
served to weaken their control over the shoen, whose residents established
their own method of administration.
The formation of the so-mura
The establishment of myoshu kajishi, in addition to nengu, was
prompted by the rise in agricultural productivity brought about by
improvements in agricultural techniques, such as the increased use of
fertilizer, the development of new strains of rice appropriate to different
natural conditions, and the more sophisticated use of land. In the
medieval period, significant efforts were made to improve the methods
of storing the water necessary to minimize the effect of drought. Agricultural
productivity was also spurred by the actions of individual
cultivators who sought to manage and protect their land, even though
it was also subject to myoshu kajishi, which was assessed at a rate
roughly equal to the nengu.
43 Konishi Mizue, "Harima no kuni Obe-no-shd no nomin," Nihonshi kenkyu, no. 98 (1968);
and Konishi Mizue, "Kyotoku sannen no Obe-no-shd do-ikki ni tsuite," Hyogo shigaku, no.
65 (1976).
44 Concerning gojichi, see Katsumata Shizuo, Sengoku-ho seirilsu shiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
shuppankai, 1979), pp. 37-60.
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284 THE DECLINE OF THE SHdEN SYSTEM
Until these improvements had begun to be made in the thirteenth
century, land was often left uncultivated when damaged by flooding,
drought, or breaches in the irrigation system.45
Under these conditions,
the situation of the poorer peasants was extremely tenuous.
They borrowed foodstuffs and seed rice from the richer farmers and
were able to eke out a living by proffering their labor. If they experienced
a disastrous harvest, they were often forced to leave their homes
and become indentured agricultural laborers or servants (genin) to
wealthy peasants.46
Agricultural productivity rose, nonetheless, and as conditions improved
in the fourteenth century, the number of peasants who accumulated
myoshu kajishi increased. Even many of the previously insecure
peasants gradually improved and strengthened their lot as independent
cultivators. That the number of independent cultivators increased
was evident in the petitions that the villagers signed. During
the stable years of the shoen system - the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries - appeals to the shoen proprietor requesting a reduction in
the tax were commonly signed by relatively small number of the
myoshu who were responsible for collecting the tax and corvee and who
acted as the proprietor's representative. It was quite natural then that
the myoshu were the signatories of these appeals.
But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries these petitions came to
be signed by all resident cultivators (sobyakusho), not just the myoshu.
Petitions for a reduction in tax or corvee and complaints against the
illegal actions of shoen officials often took the form of sobyakusho petitions
(moshijo).47
In order to determine whether the demands were in
fact those of all the peasants and to force them to take joint responsibility,
the shoen proprietor had all concerned make a pledge and swear the
veracity of their petition before the divine. Despite the shoen proprietor's
demands, this new form of petition in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries indicated the growing self-reliance of the cultivators
below the myoshu class, that is, the small cultivators (kobyakusho) who
would not have been signatories in the petitions that had been submitted
to the shoen proprietor during the thirteenth century.
A petition, dated 1334, from Ota-no-sho in Wakasa Province, a hold-
45 Land was often left fallow (nen-are) in twelfth-century Japan. For a discussion of the amount
of land cultivated relative to the total amount of existing arable land, see Nagahara Keiji,
Nihon no chusei shakai (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1968), p. 160.
46 The cultivators of this period were frequently transients and without a permanent residential
structure. See ibid., p. 158.
47 Sato Kazuhiko, Natnbokucho nairan shiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1979), pp.
13-43Cambridge
Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PEASANTS' PROTEST AND GROWTH 285
ing of the Toji, charged that the daikan illegally assessed an additional
labor corvee on the residents for work on his private lands and then
seized the myoden of the villagers. The beleaguered villagers drew up a
detailed list of the daikan's transgressions and then gathered at the
shoen's shrine where they "drank the divine waters of unity" as an
indication of their sincerity. The names of fifty-nine sobyakusho were
affixed to the petition and sent to the Toji.48
The petition was headed by
the names of persons with surnames, such as Oyama Sadashige; below
that were the seals of seven persons without surnames, such as Tojiro;
and below there were more than fifty names in abbreviated, simple
signatures. The former were myoshu, and the latter were of the kobyakusho
class. The status distinctions between myoshu and kobyakusho
were clearly indicated by the use or absence of a surname or seal.
In 1367 on Yano-no-sho in Harima Province, another holding of the
Toji, the residents demanded a reduction in tax from the shoen official
and asserted that if their demands were not met, they would let the
land revert to an uncultivated condition. The petition was entitled "an
appeal submitted regarding a great loss" and was signed by forty-six
myoshu led by the myoshu of Yoshinori-myo.49
Kobyakusho and others
participated as well, and this villagewide unrest was called a "rising of
all of the so (village)" (sosho ikki). In response to the petition, the
daikan enlisted the help of the shugo and brought additional pressure
to bear on the petitioners. The daikan threatened to arrest thirty-five
myoshu and others involved, but despite the threat, the petitioners did
not give in and soon succeeded in forcing the daikan's dismissal.
This kind of unified cultivator action appeared as early as 1298
when the villagers of Tsuda and Okushima in Omi Province drew up a
pact (kimon) that pledged their unity.50
This pact involved an agreement
over fishing rights on Lake Biwa. A total of thirty-nine persons
from Kita-Tsuda village and fifty-eight from Okushima jointly signed
the agreement, pledging that they would treat those who broke it as
traitors and that those who conspired with the enemy would be banished
from the shoen. The diversity of the signatories' class origins is
indicated by the presence of kobyakusho without surnames, such as
Tairagoro. This dispute was not directed against the shoen proprietor,
but it was an instance of unified action by all levels of cultivators.
From these examples, it is clear that unified cultivator action developed
in the central provinces of Wakasa, Harima, and Omi. The
48 Ola-no-sho hyakusho moshijo narabi ni kishomon, ha 116, in Toji hyakugo monjo.
49 Yano-no-sho hyakusho moshijo, 1367, kei 28—37, in Toji hyakugo monjo.
50 Okushima okutsushima monjo, 1298, in Okushima-no-sho murabito ichimi doshin okibumi.
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286 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
cultivators' increased unity lent strength to their defiance of the shorn
proprietors. This new development, in turn, reflected changes in the
villages' social structure that accompanied the social and economic
growth of the kobyakusho, mainly the establishment of the so-mura villages
that overcame the political, economic, and even geographical
constraints imposed on the cultivators by the eroding shorn system.
The development of the so-mura indicated that a fundamental
change had occurred in the village structure to the extent that even the
newly emergent kobyakusho acquired membership in the village com-
munity.51
The so-mura customarily held general conferences (shuchu
dangb) or meetings (yoriai) to determine the village consensus for collective
actions and to draft regulations (okite) to maintain peace in the
community. These regulations determined how fields and mountains
were to be used, prohibited gambling to preserve the peace of the
village, and prohibited the lodging of travelers, among other things.
The village meetings to draw up these regulations were often held at
the local Shinto shrine under the auspices of the various types of
"guilds" (miyaza) associated with the shrine or Shinto priests, who
were also members of the greater village community. The developing
autonomy of the greater village community was inextricably connected
to such unified cultivator actions as the submitting of petitions
{hyakusho moshijo) to the shoen proprietors or the jitd. These developments
caused a further weakening of the shoen proprietors' control
over the shoen and their residents.
Cultivators' protests
The emergence of the so-mura as a foundation for the cultivators'
action strengthened their position against the shoen proprietors. In the
fifteenth century, a variety of cultivator protests erupted in the central
provinces, and the strength of these protests ultimately led to the
collapse of the shoen system.
The demands for nengu reductions by the cultivators of Kamikuzeno-sho,
a holding of the Toji situated four kilometers southwest of the
temple, became more strident in the fifteenth century. In 1408, residents
of the shoen requested a waiver of nengu for that year because of
drought damage to their fields. The Toji granted a reduction of 8
koku, but the residents were still dissatisfied and presented another
51 Ishida Yoshito, "Goson-sei no keisei," in Iwanami koza Nikon rekishi, vol. 8 (1963); and
Nagahara Keiji, "Chusei koki no sonraku kyodotai," in Nagahara, Chusei nairanki no shakai
to minshu.
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PEASANTS' PROTEST AND GROWTH 287
demand. In 1419, 20 koku of tax was excused because of wind damage;
in 1420, after they thronged to the Toji, the cultivators received a tax
exemption of 12 koku because of drought. Over twenty years, the
residents of Kamikuze-no-sho demanded and received tax reductions
of various amounts: In 1423, wind and water damage resulted in a 22koku
reduction; in 1425, 18 koku was excused when the cultivators
threatened to abandon their fields if their demands were not met; in
1426, they received another iS-koku reduction; in 1427, a 31-koku
reduction was granted; in 1430, by daily visiting the temple with their
demands, the cultivators managed to receive a jo-koku reduction because
of water damage; in 1435, the cultivators obtained a 62-koku
reduction; and in 1437, sixty myoshu and others from Kamikuze-nosho
negotiated with the Toji and won a 60-koku reduction.52
The tax
previously paid by the shoen amounted to nearly 230 koku, but as these
reductions generally became customary, the proprietor was unable to
collect the legally established tax.
The most important characteristic of these tax-reduction protests
was that they included both the upper-class cultivators, sometimes
called satanin, who stood at the front of the group, and the lower-class
cultivators, the kobyakusho, who strongly demonstrated their newfound
power. These tax protests, however, were not incited solely by
impoverished cultivators. They were often led by powerful individuals
in the shoen whom the shoen proprietor had no choice but to recognize.
This gave a political quality to the process. At the same time, the
direct participation of lower-class cultivators in the negotiations with
the proprietor indicated that the movement included all strata of the
cultivating population. These fifteenth-century protests encompassed
the upper-class cultivators' desire to obtain as much wealth as possible
and the lower-class cultivators' efforts to protect their newly gained
agricultural surplus.
In 1428, there was a widespread peasant uprising (tsuchi-ikki)
throughout the provinces of Omi, Yamashiro, and Yamato.53
This
tsuchi-ikki was not in itself a cultivator protests against the shorn proprietor.
The leaders of the insurrection were teamsters, called bashaku,
who transported rice and many other goods between Kyoto and Otsu.
The cultivators of the Kyoto region joined the teamsters and poured
52 For more discussion of the actions of the cultivators of Kamikuze-no-sho, see Nagahara Keiji,
Nihon hokensei seiritsu kalei no kenkyii, pp. 422-41; and Uejima Tamotsu, Keiko shoen sonraku
no kenkyu (Tokyo: Hanawa shobo, 1970), pp. 318—34.
53 Concerning the Shocho do-ikki, see Nakamura Kichiji, Do-ikki kenkyu (Tokyo: Azekura
shobo, 1974), p. 156.
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288 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
into Kyoto, wrecking storehouses (doso), destroying loan papers, reclaiming
pawned articles, and demanding that the bakufu issue a
tokuseire - an edict abrogating debt obligations.
Because the ikki was composed of cultivators, the uprising was
called a tsuchi-ikki or do-ikki (the character meaning "land" or
"ground" can be pronounced both do and tsuchi in Japanese). It has
also been called a tokusei-ikki because it centered on the demand for an
abrogation of debts. Other such tokusei-ikki occurred repeatedly
throughout the fifteenth century. At first glance, the tokusei-ikki and
the cultivators' protests against the shoen proprietor appear unrelated,
but such was not the case.
The shoen proprietors, hard-pressed by the sharp decline in tax
receipts as a result of the cultivators' demands and the shugo' s and
kokujin' s incursions into the shoen, borrowed money from moneylenders,
using the following year's tax as collateral. In order to collect the
tax, the moneylenders themselves became daikan on the mortgaged
shoen. Such daikan vigorously collected the tax and, in some cases,
treated the delinquent portion of the tax as if it were a cultivator's
personal debt.54
Consequently, a highly antagonistic relationship developed
between the cultivator and the moneylender, differing from the
usual creditor-debtor relationship. The tokusei-ikki, therefore, interfered
in the collection of the shoen taxes and took on the characteristics
of a cultivator revolt. Thus the frequent outbreak of tokusei-ikki threatened
the moneylenders as well and, by destroying the creditworthiness
of the shoen proprietor, threatened his already precarious economic
position. In this way, the tokusei-ikki represented the cultivators' protests
against the shoen system itself, even though the uprising were
ostensibly directed against the moneylenders.
The incidence of the cultivators' protests and do-ikki also served to
strengthen the position of the upper-class cultivators in the village. As
the shoen system weakened, the upper-class cultivators cemented their
economic position by accumulating myoshu kajishi rights. As a result of
the cultivators' protests, the amount of tax paid to the shoen proprietors
declined, and proportionately more of the wealth remained on
the shoen in the hands of the well-to-do cultivators. These wealthy
cultivators, using their increased wealth, armed themselves and took
more vigorous actions against the shoen proprietors. They often became
low-level retainers of the shugo or kokujin and lent their assis-
54 For a discussion of the ukeoi daikan system and the doso, see Suma Chikai, "Doso ni yoru
shoen nengu no ukeoi ni tsuite," Shigaku zasshi, nos. 80-86 (1971); and Suma Chikai, "Doso
no tochi shuseki to tokusei," Shigaku zasshi, nos. 81-83 ({
972
)
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THE COLLAPSE 289
tance to the warriors incursions into the shorn. These upper-level
cultivators became known as jizamurai, or warriors of the land.
The cultivators' recalcitrance did not go unnoticed by the bakufu.
The Muromachi bakufu kept a vigilant eye on Kamikuze-no-sho and
Shimokuze-no-sho as likely places for a do-ikki to form. In 1459, the
bakufu investigated the shoen residents so as to suppress such an incident.
According to the investigation, eleven residents of the two shoen
were listed as samurai and eighty-nine persons from Kamikuze-no-sho
and fifty-six persons from Shimokuze-no-sho as cultivators.55
Those
listed as samurai in the investigation most likely were retainers of the
shugo who had been recruited into the shugo's military organization.
This trend also meant that the cultivators' protests against the shoen
proprietors were taken up with an armed vigor. In fact, the agrarian
protests of this period were gradually connected with the shugo's actions
and had a distinctly political flavor.
In 1441, a tokusei-ikki composed of cultivators from the Kyoto region
succeeded in forcing the bakufu to issue a tokusei edict. The
outbreak of this ikki followed immediately on the heels of the assassination
of Shogun Yoshinori by the Harima shugo, Akamatsu Mitsusuke,
and was tied to the conflict between two powerful shugo daimyo, the
Hosokawa and Hatakeyama. Vassal warriors connected with the
Hatakeyama lent their support to the ikki and used it in their battle
with the Hosokawa.56
Given these circumstances, it is inappropriate to view do-ikki as
purely agrarian protests, as they also involved the military and political
actions of the jizamurai. Instead, it was the very complexity of
these events that was the primary characteristic of the do-ikki and
agrarian protests and that shook the foundations of the shoen system.
THE COLLAPSE OF THE SHOEN PROPRIETORS'
AUTHORITY
The loss of domain and reduction of tax receipts
We shall next examine development relating to tax collection and control
of the shoen, in order to show how both were undermined by the
agrarian protests that contributed to the increased intrusions of the
55 Kamikuze-no-shdlShimokuze-no-sho hyakusho kishomon, 1459, wo 14-jo, in Toji hyakugo monjo.
56 Concerning the relationship between the Kakitsu tokusei-ikki and the struggle between the
shugo daimyo Hosokawa and Hatakeyama, see Nagahara Keiji, "Kakitsu tokusei-ikki no
seikaku ni tsuite," in Nagahara, Nikon chusei shakai kozo no kenkyu, pp. 394-425.
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290 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
kokujin and shugo into the shoen system. Specifically, we shall look at
shoen under the proprietorship of the Toji and their transition during
the Nambokucho period. The Shingon sect's Toji was a large temple
built at the end of the eighth century in Kyoto. It received strong
imperial support as well as the protection of the Muromachi bakufu,
which recognized the temple's military importance. Located in the
southern section of the capital, the temple could control the crucial
southern approach to Kyoto. In contrast with the holdings of the
nobility, those of religious establishments such as the Toji were to
some extent insulated from the incursions of the kokujin and shugo
because of respect for and fear of their religious role. Consequently,
the erosion of the Toji's control over its shoen proceeded at a slower
pace than did that of the nobility.
The Toji had at least seventy-one shoen at the beginning of the
Nambokucho period. Among them were shoen for which Toji held
only the honke shiki and not administrative authority, such as the
twenty shoen of the Saishokoin-ryo,57
and the twelve shoen of the
Hoshogon' in-ryo,58
which originally had been imperial lands. The
Toji also held more comprehensive authority over some of its shoen.
When the Kamakura bakufu was overthrown, Emperor Godaigo confiscated
the jito shiki of such shoen as Tara-no-sho in Wakasa Province
and granted them to the Toji. Thus there were no warriorjito on these
shoen. There were also cases in which the Toji held only the ryoke shiki
following a shitaji chubun settlement with a jito, as in the case of
Oyama-no-sho in Tamba Province and Niimi-no-sho in Bitchu where
shitaji chubun had been carried out in the Kamakura period. Thus the
Toji held various types of authority over the shoen under its proprietorship.
With this in mind, the shoen of the Toji can be divided into three
categories: those held by the Toji in name only, those from which the
delivery of tax rice continued despite the weakening of proprietor
authority, and those from which tax rice was regularly collected and
authority was maintained.59
Of the Toji's domain, thirty-two of its seventy-one shoen were held
in name only. The majority were shoen to which the Toji held only the
honke shiki donated by the imperial family, as evidenced in a 1371
appeal from the Toji to the bakufu that stated, "In recent years the
57 Saishoko-in was built by Emperor Goshirakawa for Empress Kenshunmon-in and was
granted numerous shoen.
58 Hoshogon-in was built by Emperor Toba and was granted many shoen.
59 For a detailed discussion of the Toji's shoen, see Nagahara Keiji, "Shdensei kaitai katei ni
okeru Nambokucho nairanki no shioki," in Nagahara Nihon chusei shakai kozo no kenkyu, pp.
284-366.
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THE COLLAPSE 29I
honke have not been paid by any of our shoen."60
Apart from the dues
to the honke shiki, nobles and religious establishments were also ryoke
with the right to administer the shoen. The honke's relationship to the
ryoke was based on the receipt of a limited amount of tax rice from the
ryoke. When the ryoke had difficulty in collecting taxes, the role of the
honke as guarantor was rendered meaningless, and the honke shiki
became a right in name only. The shiki structure no longer operated
under these conditions. As explained at the beginning of this chapter,
the shiki system developed in response to the geographically scattered
and hierarchically ordered structure of shoen and kokugaryo. Consequently,
the emasculation of the honke shiki, the pinnacle of the shiki
structure, symbolized the collapse of the shoen system.
Based on a number of documents from the Nambokucho period, it
can be established that the proprietor's authority on some shoen was
imperiled, but the delivery of tax rice did not completely cease. In the
case of Shida-no-sho in Hitachi Province during the Kamakura period,
the seizure of tax rice by the jito became a severe problem.
Because the Toji's receipt of tax rice was based on a contract with a jito
(ukesho) in the case of its Okuni-no-sho in Ise Province, as the power
of thejito increased, the temple received less and less tax rice. Warfare
decreased the tax collected by the Toji from its Shihi-no-sho in
Echizen Province and Himono-no-sho in Omi. The Toji's authority on
these shoen was generally based on the ryoke shiki. The temple had the
right to administer the shoen, but income from it fell because of the
actions of the on-site jito. The Toji sent appeals to the bakufu and
dispatched envoys to the shoen in an attempt to regain its control, but
these attempts proved futile. There was little the temple could do to
regain its authority over the income from these shoen.
Some of the shoen under the Toji's proprietorship remained comparatively
stable, and receipts were fairly well maintained during the
Nambokucho period. Although none of these shoen continued to deliver
nengu in the amount stipulated, the Toji retained its administrative
rights. No warrior jito were installed on four of the fourteen shoen
in this group (Tarumi in Settsu Province, Hirandono in Yamato, and
Hayashi and Kanno in Yamashiro), which were part of the Toji's core
holdings located near the temple. Although shitaji chubun had been
carried out in the Kamakura period in several shoen - Oyama in Tamba
Province, Yugejima in Iyo, Yano in Harima, and Niimi in Bitchu - the
remaining portions of each of these shoen continued to be important
60 Toji moshijo, 1371, e 17-22, in Toji hyakugo monjo.
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292 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
holdings of the temple. The Toji also held both thejito shiki and ryoke
shiki of Wakasa's Tara-no-sho and Yamashiro's Kamikuze-no-sho and
Shimokuze-no-sho. The Toji managed to protect its interests in these
holdings - crucial to maintaining its economic base - even during the
Nambokucho period.
On these shoen, warriors had been unable to undermine the Toji's
authority. But the temple could not collect nengu from these shoen in
the amount stipulated. Despite the cessation of hostilities and the
establishment of the Muromachi bakufu, the trend of declining nengu
continued. As we saw earlier in the case of Kamikuze-no-sho, the
cultivators' protests resulted in an annual reduction of nengu.
After the Nambokucho period, the Toji's Oyama-no-sho frequently
paid only a part of the nengu stipulated and even none at all. This
development was not unrelated to the great increase in shugo imposts
such as the shugo busen or shugo tansen, paid in cash in lieu of corvee or
as an assessment per tan of paddy. The amount of nengu collected by
the shugo after the first quarter of the fifteenth century exceeded that
of the Toji.61
The developments on Kamikuze and Oyama, even
though they were shoen from which the Toji still collected some nengu,
indicate that the Toji's control was seriously threatened during the
fifteenth century.
As demonstrated in the developments on the Toji's shoen, only the
honke shiki was rendered completely meaningless during the
Nambokucho period. Even so, viable control was maintained only on
those shoen that were part of the temple's core holdings. There were
exceptions, of course, in the rate of decline in shoen control. The Zen
religious establishments of Kyoto's gozan (literally, "five mountains,"
the temples at the apex of the Zen sect's official hierarchy), two of
which were the Nanzenji and Shokokuji, received special support
from the Muromachi bakufu in the form of shoen donated as temple
domain (jiryo). These donations to the Zen sect were part of the
bakufu's plan to oppose the strong political influence of Hieizan which
was traditionally connected to the courtier government. During time
of financial crisis, the bakufu turned to these Zen temples and forced
them to make donations from the income derived from the donated
shoen which, in this manner, also served as bakufu domain
(chokkatsuryo).62
As a result, the shoen of the Zen temples were protected
from outside aggression through their relationship with the
61 Oyama son-shi, hombun hen (Tokyo: Hanawa shobo, 1964), p. 199.
62 Concerning the economic ties between the bakufu and Zen temples, see Imatani Akira,
Sengokuki no Muromachi bakufu, vol. 12 (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1975), pp. 11—18.
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THE COLLAPSE 293
bakufu. But the Toji, which did not have such a relationship with the
bakufu, was not protected in this way.
Even shorn that were part of the shogun's domain, however, suffered
intrusion by the local kokujin and shugo during the fifteenth
century. The course of decline differed greatly by region. In eastern
Japan, for example, the power of the local notables (zaichi ryoshu)
made it impossible for the shoen proprietors to retain administrative
control over the shoen, even in the Kamakura period. In the provinces
around the capital, however, shoen continued to survive even into the
fifteenth century. Proximity to the capital alone did not guarantee
security. Control depended on whether the shoen was under the proprietorship
of a religious establishment or a noble family and whether or
not the shoen was the most important part of the proprietor's, such as
the Toji's, holdings. Generally, those shoen holders who made the
transition from holding only a part of the multilayered shiki rights in
geographically scattered shoen to those holding most of the shiki rights
in shoen located in geographical proximity succeeded in retaining at
least a part of their authority over their holdings and continued to
receive some income from them.
The ukeoi daikan system
As the power of the shugo and kokujin increased during the fifteenth
century, so did their control over the shoen. It became more difficult
for the shoen proprietors to exert their personal authority over the
shoen, and the shiki structure was rendered meaningless. In response to
these worsening conditions, the shoen proprietors chose "contract stewards"
(ukeoi daikan) to represent their interests on the shoen. These
stewards worked outside the shiki structure and were chosen for their
special talents such as the ability to negotiate with the shugo or kokujin
or for their contacts with bakufu officials who often received money
for their sympathetic attention. Basically, ukeoi daikan were collectors
of nengu who differed from the shugo and kokujin ukesho discussed
earlier.
Frequently, a monk from a Zen temple or Hieizan would be
chosen to act as an ukeoi daikan. This practice may seem somewhat
strange, but many monks of the religious establishments of this period
were skilled in the conduct of economic affairs. Those with a
Hieizan link often managed storehouses which also acted as pawn
shops (doso) in such places as Kyoto or Otsu, and among them were
moneylenders.
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294 T H E
DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
In the Zen temples were men skilled in conducting both the shoen's
and the temple's financial affairs.63
In addition to managing the temple's
finances, they built up personal fortunes and often lent money to
nobility and became ukeoi daikan on shoen held by the nobles. On the
back of stationery used to record daily financial entries, a courtier
named Madenokoji Tokiyoki, who became inner minister (naidaijin) in
1145, recorded loans made by a Zen monk, Genyu. According to this
record, the monthly interest on the loans was as high as 8 percent.64
These financially inclined monks contracted the amount of nengu to
be collected and, when appointed as ukeoi daikan, decided when it was
to be delivered to the shoen proprietor. They customarily took 20
percent of the contracted nengu as their own profit. After the contract
was drawn up, the daikan went to the shoen and negotiated with the
shugo and kokujin to collect the nengu which was then sold to local
merchants for cash and the shoen proprietor was paid his share.65
When using this method of tax collection, the shoen proprietor depended
completely on the daikan's services for the collection of the
nengu and the receipt of his share in cash. His share depended primarily
on whether the daikan honored the contract and his effectiveness at
collecting the nengu. If the contract was broken, the proprietor's only
recourse was to replace the daikan or, abandoning the ukeoi method, to
manage the shoen directly. The latter option, however, differed little
from the ukeoi daikan method, as the shoen proprietor still had to send
an individual to negotiate with the shugo or kokujin.
As the shoen proprietors lost power and nengu receipts began to fall,
both the nobility and the religious establishments turned to moneylenders.
Typically this meant that the proprietor mortgaged the shoen,
using the following year's nengu as collateral. Because the shugo's and
the kokujin's intrusion into the shoen was not yet complete, both the
proprietor and the moneylender expected to be able to collect the
nengu. Even so, the moneylender did not wait passively, hoping that
the shoen proprietor would collect the nengu and pay back the debt he
owed to the moneylender. In cases in which payment was not forthcoming,
the moneylenders themselves did their best to the collect the
nengu from the mortgaged shoen. In one case, an influential Kyoto
shrine, Kamo, had a long-standing financial relationship with a money-
63 Ibid., pp. 47-60.
64 Nitta Hideharu, "Muromachi jidai no kuge-ryo ni okeru daikan ukeoi ni kansuru ichi
kosatsu," in Hogetsu Keigo sensei kanreki kinenkai, ed., Nikon shakai keizaishi kenkyu,
medieval vol. (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1967).
65 The proprietors typically lived in Kyoto ; thus, this ukeoi was often known as kyosai, meaning
to be paid at the capital, or Kyoto.
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THE COLLAPSE 295
lender named Yasui. Near the end of the fifteenth century, the Kamo
Shrine mortgaged its Tsuchida-no-sho in Noto Province. One result
was that Yasui became the daikan on the shoen and collected the nengu
negotiated with the shugo.66
Warriors also became ukeoi daikan. In 1401, a kokujin named Niimi
Kiyonao, a retainer of the Hosokawa shugo, contracted for 60 kanmon
of the income that the proprietor was to receive in Kyoto from Niimino-sho,
a holding of the Toji.67
The ryoke's share of the nengu had
previously been 370 kanmon. The kokujin, therefore, had reduced the
ryoke's share to only 60 kanmon, from 185 kanmon: 370 kanmon minus
185 kanmon which had been lost as hanzei to the shugo. The Toji
repeatedly had problems with warrior daikan and frequently dismissed
them. For example, over the twenty years from 1441 to 1460, a retainer
of the Hosokawa named Yasutomi Tokiyasu, who became
daikan, failed to deliver most of the 150 kanmon contracted per year.
The records show that he delivered only 791 kanmon over the twenty
years out of the 3,000 kanmon (150 times 20) that the proprietor was to
receive under the contract.68
The ukeoi daikan here was a warrior;
neither monks nor moneylenders were involved.
The ukeoi daikan system, as a method of nengu collection that
replaced the eroding shiki structure in the fifteenth century, was the
last attempt of the shoen proprietors to stave off the inevitable. The
monks, moneylenders, and warriors, in their role as ukeoi daikan,
further threatened the shoen proprietors' authority and income.
The daimyo domainal system and the shoen
The shoen system was further undermined by the eleven years of the
Onin War (1467-77). The power of the bakufu was undercut amidst
the fighting which originated over a succession dispute within the
Ashikaga family and also one involving such powerful kanrei (shogunal
deputy) houses as the Shiba and Hatakeyama. Even the powerful
shugo daimyo proved unable to control the seditious actions of the
shugo-dai and kokujin in their domains. In order to weather the storm,
the shugo daimyo left Kyoto and returned to their respective provinces,
pouring their energies into strengthening their military power.
Several political and social developments marked the period follow-
66 See Suma, "Doso ni yoru shoen nengu no ukeoi ni tsuite"; and Suma, "Doso no tochi shuseki
to tokusei."
67 Niimi-no-sho ryoke-kata shomu-shiki buninjo, 1401, yu 14-21, in Toji hyakugo monjo.
68 Niimi-no-sho nengu mishin chumon, 1461, kei 16-24, in Toji hyakugo monjo.
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296 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
ing the Onin War. The shugo daimyo divorced themselves from the
bakufu structure and attempted to emerge as powerful, independent
sengoku daimyo. Some kokujin ryoshu emerged from the chaos of the
Onin period as regional overlords who succeeded in making vassals of
many of their kokujin peers and rose as sengoku daimyo. Regional
leagues composed of kokujin, jizamurai, and cultivators were formed,
as in Kaga Province, which were called ikko-shu. These organizations
were united by an underlying religious belief that fueled their resistance
to the shugo. In short, various paths were taken in pursuit of the
goal of regional control.
Even though the paths chosen were diverse, they all undermined
the shden system of land proprietorship. The sengoku daimyo, the
center of the new trend toward regional control, attempted to organize
as many kokujin and jizamurai as possible into their feudal retainer
organizations. In order to determine the amount of military service
(gunyaku) owned by each retainer, many sengoku daimyo used a
method whereby the retainer's fief (chigyo) was expressed in
kandaka.69
Kandaka — an amount of cash expressed in kanmon — was a
means of designating the nengu imposed on agricultural land; the retainer's
military obligation was also based on this figure.
The sengoku daimyo consequently attempted to assign as high a
kandaka figure as possible to the retainers' land. The retainers, along
with the shden proprietors, resisted this drive by the sengoku daimyo
toward comprehensive control of the region. The daimyo, in an attempt
to establish a hierarchical system of land control in which their
superior political authority would be based on the right to grant fief,
conducted cadastral surveys of the lands of the kokujin and religious
establishments. At the village level, the daimyos' surveys established a
new nengu unifying the old nengu and the kajishi into a single tax. In
those cases in which a wealthy cultivator's right to continue to collect
kajishi was recognized, it was granted by the daimyo as benefice land
(kyuon). In return, such cultivators were organized into the bottom
segment of the daimyo's retainer band and were known as
gunyakushu.70
In addition, uncultivated land came under the aegis of
the daimyo. New fields that resulted from land development became
the daimyo's personal domain (chokkatsuryo), even if the fields were
69 Concerning the kandaka system, see Nagahara Keiji, "Daimyo ryogokuseika no kandakasei,"
in Nagahara Keiji, John Whitney Hall, and K020 Yamamura, eds., Sengoku jidai (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1978), pp. 1-21.
70 Katsumata Shizuo, "Sengoku daimyo kenchi no shiko gensoku," in Katsumata, Sengoku-ho
seiritsu shiron, pp. 199-232.
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THE COLLAPSE 297
located in the retainer's fief. These new fields, in turn, served as a new
supply of land with which to grant fief.71
These surveys were not carried out systematically, as most daimyo
did not have sufficient power to intrude their own survey teams onto
lands held fief by their vassals or by powerful religious proprietors.
There was, however, a significant variation in the success of these
surveys. In eastern Japan where the shoen system had all but collapsed,
sengoku daimyo such as the Gohojo, Takeda, and Imagawa
thrived. These daimyo conducted comprehensive cadastral surveys
and imposed their control throughout the entire domain. In western
Japan, however, daimyo such as the Mori of Aki Province found it
much more difficult to conduct such surveys. Kokujin in the Mori
domain managed to maintain a relatively high degree of independence,
and furthermore, the shoen proprietors' rights had not been
totally eradicated.72
In the central provinces where the shoen system was most strongly
rooted, shoen continued to survive even into the civil war of the sixteenth
century. In many cases, warrior jito shiki had not been established
on these shoen, and the shoen proprietors maintained direct
control of the shoen throughout the medieval period. Even in those
cases in which local notables were present, they often were organized
into samurai status in service of a religious establishment or noble who
continued to hold shoen in these provinces. Thus daimyo such as the
Rokkaku of southern Omi, Matsunaga of Yamato, and Miyoshi of
Settsu tried to established a daimyo domainal system on the order of
their stronger eastern counterparts but proved incapable of developing
a sufficiently durable foundation.73
Consequently, the shoen in central
Japan stubbornly persisted.
The sengoku daimyos' acquisition of comprehensive political authority
in their domains struck hard at the shoen system. This development
encountered important regional variations connected with the health
of the shoen in the area concerned. Despite the rise of the daimyo
domainal system in the sixteenth century, shoen continued to exist in
some form.
The rise of the sengoku daimyo not only struck at the proprietary
71 Nagahara Keiji, "Daimyo ryogokusei no kozo," in Iwanamikoza Nihon rekishi, vol. 8 (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1976), pp. 211-60.
72 Matsuoka Hisato, "Saigoku no sengoku daimyo," in Nagahara, Hall, and Yamamura, eds.,
Sengoku jidai, pp. 22-48.
73 For a discussion of the sengoku daimyo Rokkaku of Omi Province, see Katsumata Shizuo,
"Rokkaku-shi shikimoku no shomu rippo," in Katsumata, Sengoku-ho seiritsu shiron, pp.
153-74Cambridge
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298 THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
rights of the shoen system but also undermined its social and economic
foundations, as seen in their organizations of craftsmen and their control
of markets.74
Under the shoen system, the markets' administration
was under the firm control of the religious establishment or zaichi
ryoshu. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there was a
strong movement toward the local control of the markets in the hands
of the kokujin or temples. The sengoku daimyo, on the other hand,
established markets at locations under their direct control, such as the
main and satellite castles. By inviting merchants to the domain and
assuring them of market activities free of various restraints, the
daimyo undermined the local control of the markets by the kokujin and
religious establishments. Furthermore, the daimyo granted exemptions
from trade imposts in order to attract merchants from other areas
of the country. In this way, merchants gradually came under the control
of the daimyo.
Similar developments occurred with regard to craftsmen. Under the
shoen system, craftsmen were granted benefice land by the shoen proprietors
as a means to both protect and control them. This benefice land
system, however, declined along with the shoen system in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, and craftsmen became more independent.
In contrast, the sengoku daimyo granted fief to the foremen of
the various crafts, making them vassals who then controlled the rest of
the domain's craftsmen. Rather than grant them an exemption from
the payment of nengu, the daimyo required the craftsmen to deliver a
fixed amount of their specialty goods. As in their control over the
land, the sengoku daimyo exceeded the authority achieved by the shoen
proprietors and kokujin over the merchants and craftsmen - the daimyo
achieved direct control over their actions throughout the domain. Consequently,
the self-sufficient shoen or land held by kokujin was replaced
by the daimyo domain, which became a single, self-contained economic
unit. This meant that the shoen lost their capacity for survival under the
daimyo domain system in all respects: the right to administer, land
ownership, and market control.
CONCLUSION: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SHOEN
The waning of the shoen system advanced in several stages between the
fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Ths first stage was the beginning
74 Fujiki Hisashi, Sengoku shakai shiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppanki, 1974);' and
Nagahara, "Daimyo ryogokusei no kozo."
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CONCLUSION 299
of the decline of the shoen system during the Nambokucho period. As
a result of the conflict after the fall of the Kamakura bakufu, the civil
government lost its political viability. It lost the ability to guarantee
the scattered, hierarchical shiki rights of the shoen, and so the honke
shiki, the pinnacle of this structure, became untenable. At the same
time, local powers focused their authority on a single, contiguous piece
of land and, in so doing, were transformed into kokujin ryoshu with
independent control over the area. The shugo increased their judicial
authority and land control while incorporating the kokujin and
jizatnurai into their vassal organization. The shugo developed a provincial
system based on a feudal lord-vassal power structure, namely, the
shugo domainal system (ryogokusei).
The second stage proceeded from the political consolidation under
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu at the end of the fourteenth century until the
Onin War. During this period, the shoen system experienced a slight
respite from the buffeting forces when the Muromachi bakufu
adopted a protective policy toward the shoen. Despite this policy, the
maintenance of the shoen system depended on the ukeoi daikan system
and on the offices of the shugo, kokujin, and doso. In this period the
shoen proprietors lost their ability to administer the shoen independently.
Furthermore, this period was notable for the appearance of
agrarian protests supported by the development of the so-mura and the
social and economic growth of the kobyakusho class which further
spurred the fall of the shoen system.
The third stage in the decline of the shoen system was the period
of civil war in the sixteenth century. The domainal system of the
sengoku daimyo - the culmination of the kokujin ryoshu and shugo
ryogoku system - categorically suppressed the shoen. The kandaka
system established by the sengoku daimyo was premised on the superiority
of the daimyo's political rights throughout the domain. By
means of this system, the daimyo implemented a unified measure
for nengu and the correlation of chigyo to the amount of military
service owed by the retainer. As a result, the daimyo succeeded in
organizing the kokujin and jizamurai in their domains into a feudal
lord-vassal structure.
The shoen system passed through these three stages, but there were,
as mentioned, significant regional variations in the rate of decline.
Shoen continued to exist even into the sixteenth century in the Kinai
and neighboring provinces where noble and religious authority was
most firmly rooted. Although in decline, the shoen of those areas
resisted the onset of the daimyo domainal system of the Sengoku
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3OO THE DECLINE OF THE SHOEN SYSTEM
period. The death knell for these last surviving shoen was sounded by
the cadastral surveys conducted by Hideyoshi (Taiko kenchi).
Hideyoshi's surveys drew a curtain on the turbulence of the Sengoku
period. Between 1582 and 1598, Hideyoshi conducted cadastral surveys
throughout Japan. These surveys measured nengu and chigyo by a unified
standard called kokudaka (an assessed base of nengu measured in
rice). Along with the complete rejection of the collection of kajishi by
the cultivating class, the surveys eliminated the shoen as a unit of land
ownership.75
Even the surviving shoen of the nobles and religious establishments
in Yamashiro and Yamato provinces were eliminated. In exchange,
their new holdings were assessed at a fixed amount of kokudaka
somewhat lower than the previous amount.
Under the Taiko kenchi, the village became the lowest locus of control
throughout the country. The village unit existed widely under the
shoen system, but it was not the exclusive unit, as other administrative
units such as myo and go were also used. Hideyoshi's surveys completely
rejected these other units and replaced them with the village
and its functional social value as a rural community as the building
block of control. As a result, the shoen was rejected as an element of
control. In the case of Tara-no-sho in Wakasa Province, a single village
community already existed on the shoen, which was more and more
often referred to as Tara village. The practice of designating an area by
the previous shoen name continued in some areas even into the Edo
period, but this was strictly a popular, unofficial practice.
Hideyoshi's cadastral surveys were inextricably linked to the separation
of warriors and cultivators {heino bunri). Heino bunri made a sharp
distinction between warrior and peasant {hyakusho) status and required
that all those of warrior status assemble at the daimyo's castle
town. This policy brought an end to the zaichi rydshu system, the
hallmark of medieval society. Persons who served as retainers, even
though originally of hyakusho status, were forced to choose either to
remain in the village as hyakusho or to leave the village and move to the
daimyo's castle town and become warriors. The separation of warrior
and cultivator made it possible to establish a permanently mobilized
army stationed at the castle and to assemble a ruling class based on
centralized power. The emperor, nobility, and religious establishments
were consequently pushed out of power, and at the same time, their
economic and social foundation, the shoen, was eradicated.
75 For a discussion of the Taiko kenchi, see Araki Moriaki, Taiko kenchi to kokudakasei (Tokyo:
Nihon hoso shuppan kyokai, 1969); and Miyagawa Mitsuru, Taiko kenchi ton (Tokyo:
Ochanomizu shobo, vol. 1,1959; vol. 2, 1957; vol. 3, 1963).
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CHAPTER 7
THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
Historians generally date the medieval period in Japanese history as
starting at the end of the twelfth century when the Kamakura bakufu
was established, marking the emerging dominance of warrior government
over aristocratic rule. In peasant history, however, the latter half
of the eleventh or early twelfth century, however, is a more appropriate
point of division between the ancient and medieval periods. The shden
system of land control had extended throughout Japan around that
time, bringing entirely new conditions for the peasants and making
them henceforth truly "medieval." The introduction and development
of the shden system had a much greater impact on the living conditions
of peasants in Japan than did the founding of the Kamakura bakufu
nearly a century later. The shden system, therefore, is of great significance
in peasant history and is the central defining characteristic of the
medieval period.1
The momentous changes for the peasants brought about by the
shden system must be understood in the context of the earlier conditions
pertaining to the land of the ritsuryo system in the eighth century.
Under the ritsuryo system, the central government claimed ownership
of all land; cultivators were allotted paddies on an equitable basis; and
taxes were collected according to specific categories of goods; for example,
grain, labor, and silk. But these conditions began to break down
rapidly early in the tenth century and had disintegrated entirely by the
time the shden system had spread throughout Japan in the late eleventh
and early twelfth centuries. Under the shden system, the peasants
exhibited characteristics different from those of the earlier ritsuryo
system. For this reason, the medieval peasant I describe in this chapter
can be regarded as simply the shden peasant.
Similar to the controversy among scholars concerning the beginning
i For a comprehensive discussion of the shden system, see Amino Yoshihiko, "Shden koryosei no
keisei to kozo," in Takeuchi Rizo, ed., Tochi seidoshi, vol. i (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan,
'973). PP- 173-274; Nagahara Keiji, Shden (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1978); and Kudo Keiichi,
"Shoensei no tenkai," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1975),
pp. 251-98.
301
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302 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
of the medieval period in Japan, the date marking the end of this period
is also debated. Political historians designate 1573 as the beginning of
the early modern period, the year Oda Nobunaga defeated Shogun
Ashikaga Yoshiaki and destroyed the Muromachi bakufu. By this time,
the sengoku daimyo had divided Japan into individual domains, but with
Nobunaga's victory over Ashikaga Yoshiaki, the unification process
began. Of more importance to the peasants, however, was Toyotomi
Hideyoshi, Nobunaga's successor, who undertook to unify the country.
In 1582, Hideyoshi ordered a national cadastral survey, the Taiko
kenchi.2
This comprehensive system of land registration completely
revolutionized land administration and tenure practices in Japan and
swept away all previous systems of landholding. I contend that this
event and the changes it brought marked the end of the medieval period
and the beginning of the early modern period for the peasants in Japan.
Although most scholars of peasant history agree that the medieval
period began with the spread of the shoen system throughout Japan
and ended with the Taiko kenchi, it would be an oversimplification to
define the entire medieval period, spanning the early twelfth century
to 1582, solely in terms of the shoen system and its effect on peasant
life. For nearly five centuries, until the fall of the Kamakura bakufu in
I
333J
t n e
shoen system was remarkably stable. During the
Nambokucho period (1336-92), however, the shoen order began to
break down, and in the subsequent Muromachi and Sengoku periods,
territorial rule was established by a class of independent local overlords
(tyoshu) who began by serving as jito (military estate stewards)
and shoen officials within the shoen system. At the same time, the shugo
(provincial military governor) in each province consolidated their control
as military and civil authorities over these local overlords. These
developments in territorial control culminated in the emergence of the
shugo daimyo in the fifteenth century and the sengoku daimyo in the
following century. Therefore, the peasants of the latter half of the
medieval period - the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries are
defined less by the shoen system than by the territorial authority
system built up by these local overlords. Agricultural productivity
increased dramatically in the second half of the medieval period, providing
the economic foundation on which to base territorial rule. For
this reason, the study of the medieval peasant must consider, in addition
to the shoen system and its effects on the peasant, the later system
2 For a more complete description of the Taiko kenchi, see Araki Moriaki, Taiko kenchi to
kokudakasei (Tokyo: Nihon hoso shuppankyokai, 1969).
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STATUS DIFFERENCES AMONG PEASANTS 3O3
of territorial control, which took its most mature form as the daimyo
ryogoku system of the Sengoku period.
Even in the early medieval period there were local overlords. They
were closely tied to the shoen system, however, as jito or officials.
Thus, although there were clear distinctions between the authority
systems of the early and late medieval period, there was also continuity
in that a local overlord system existed throughout the entire period, if
at greatly different levels of development. The life of the peasants was
defined by the continuities and changes in the authority systems of the
medieval period.
Variations in medieval peasant life can be attributed not only to
these changes during the medieval period but to geographical location
as well. Agricultural productivity in the central Kinai area was considerably
higher than in the peripheral areas in eastern Japan and
Kyushu, implying a higher standard of living for the peasants of this
region. Proximity to large cities, Kyoto and Nara in particular, also
played a role, in that residing near these cities enriched the lives of the
peasants both economically and culturally. The life of the peasants in
the Kinai region, therefore, differed dramatically from that of those in
eastern Japan or Kyushu.
With these variations in mind, I shall portray the medieval peasants
mainly as they existed under the shoen system in the central Kinai
region. The development of the shoen system in this region was stable
and, therefore, the most appropriate setting for a study of peasant
activities. I shall also consider regional differences within the peasant
class, as well as changes during the medieval period.
STATUS DIFFERENCES AMONG PEASANTS IN THE SHOEN
SYSTEM
The shoen as a place to live
The first shoen emerged in the mid-eighth century, chiefly in the form
of newly opened lands that aristocratic families and the religious establishment
developed with the assistance of the state. A grain tax on
these lands had to be submitted to the central government, but possession
of the land itself was recognized as a private right. By contrast,
the shoen that spread throughout Japan in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries - the so-called commended shoen - were lands opened by
prominent local families who then commended them to aristocrats or
great religious establishments. It was common practice not only to
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304 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
commend such newly opened lands but also to divide up and absorb
into the shoen the adjacent vast holdings of the provincial office - land
still subject to public taxation. Therefore, both cultivated fields and
uplands and peasant settlements were part of the commended shorn,
creating a contained, comprehensive environment for daily life. The
well-known Tara-no-sho of Wakasa Province under the Toji's proprietorship
was located in a mountainous area and included thirty-two
cho of cultivated land, uplands, and a fairly contained community.3
Ota shoen, a Koyasan holding in Bingo Province, included the eastern
half of Sera District and comprised six hundred cho of paddy land,
over ten communities, and extensive uplands.4
Although the early
shoen were simply privately owned cultivated fields, by the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, commended shoen constituted an all-inclusive
setting for medieval peasant life.
In nearly all cases, shoen proprietors were high-ranking aristocrats
or representatives of powerful temples and shrines in Kyoto or Nara.
These proprietors held rights to numerous shoen scattered throughout
Japan and collected taxes from them with which to support themselves.
Taxes took the form of rice (nengu) and miscellaneous dues in
the form of nonrice products and labor (zokuji). The actual administration
of individual shoen was left to local shoen officials. Most local shoen
officials were members of prominent local families who owned their
own land and often had held the rank of subdistrict head on the lands
of the provincial office before the establishment of the shoen. Although
they often commended their privately held land to aristocrats or religious
establishments, these local officials converted into shoen the land
of the provincial office on which they held official posts, and they
themselves became shoen managers responsible for administering shoen
affairs and consolidated their power in the area. Shoen were thus
established within the local power structure and, through high-level
aristocratic or religious patronage, avoided taxation by the provincial
office.
The central layout of a typical shoen is represented by concentric
circles in Figure 7.1. Section A includes the house and the land immediately
surrounding (usually two or three cho) belonging to the local
shoen official. These immediate lands included dry and wet fields and
3 For more information on Tara-no-sho, see Amino Yoshihiko, Chiisei shoen no yoso (Tokyo:
Tachibana shobo, 1966); and Kozo Yamamura, "Tara in Transition: A Study of a Kamakura
Shoen,"Journal ofJapanese Studies 7 (Summer 1981): 349-91-
4 For more information on Ota-no-sho, see Kawane Yoshihira, "Heian makki no zaichi
ryoshusei ni tsuite," in Chiisei hokensei seirilsu shiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai,
1970. PP- 121-52.
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STATUS DIFFERENCES AMONG PEASANTS 305
Figure 7.1 Conceptualization of a typical shoen
were usually surrounded by a moat or earthen embankment. They
were exempt from the taxes exacted by the central proprietor and were
cultivated by genin (lowly people). The shoen official, as well, held
allotted fields that were also tax exempt and cultivated by peasants.
These privately held lands varied greatly in size, depending on the
official's real power, but most were larger than the lands immediately
surrounding his house.
Section B includes the shoen official's allotted myo and miscellaneous
exempt lands; both were subject to nengu but not zokuji. The size of
this section also varied, depending on the official's power; large ones
were some tens of cho or more. These allotments were not necessarily
concentrated in one geographical location. The miscellaneous exempt
lands were privately developed holdings and the base of the shoen. The
peasants who lived in this section were called zomenbyakusho (cultivators
of miscellaneous exempt lands) and menke (exempt households),
to distinguish them from other cultivators. These cultivators were
obligated to pay dues in kind {zokuji), including labor, to the shoen
official.
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306 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
Section C comprises the core of the shoen. Originally part of the
public lands of the provincial office before the establishment of the
shoen, these lands were brought under the direct control of the shoen
proprietor. This section was usually divided into one tofivecommunities
(denoted C, through C5 in Figure 7.1). The peasants living on these
lands were required to submit both nengu and zokuji to the shoen
proprietor. Although they were not privately subordinate to the local
official but, rather, directly under the control of the shoen proprietor, it
was within the local official's authority to oversee the land and peasants
of Section C.
The shoen was home not only to the local official and peasants but
also to the artisans, craftsmen, and merchants who submitted their
commodities as taxes. Grant lands were set aside for these people, and
each plot was designated by function; for example, pottery, leather
goods, carpentry, metalwork, and boat transportation. The craftsmen
supported by these lands did not necessarily live on the shoen but
might live elsewhere and produce goods for the shoen in return for
income from these lands. Markets served as places of exchange on the
shoen and on large shoen were held on prescribed days each month.
Through these grant lands and markets, the shoen acquired the commodities
it did not produce. It is clear that shoen were not selfsufficient
and that the division of labor was quite advanced.5
Status subdivisions of the peasantry
The peasants living on the shoen were divided into subgroups based on a
complicated status system. These subgroups included myshu, kobyakusho,
zomenbyakusho, tnoto, and genin, each indicating the group's
relative degree of freedom or subordination. These status levels reflected
the great economic variation within the peasant class and the
various rights of the peasants and the duties they owed to the shoen
proprietor and local official.
Myoshu were powerful peasants who held much of the cultivated land
in Section C of the shoen. The proprietor divided this land into myoden
(the basic unit of land on which the yearly tax was calculated, also called
hyakushomyo), consisting of one or two cho or sometimes more. The
myoshu had to submit a tax on each myoden. For example, the Toji's
Tara-no-sho in Wakasa Province had six myoden on a total of thirty-two
5 Concerning the problems surrounding markets and craftsmen on shoen, see Sasaki Ginya,
Shoen no shogyo (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1964).
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STATUS DIFFERENCES AMONG PEASANTS 307
cho of arable land, and the Toji's Kamikuze-no-sho in Yamashiro Province
had thirteen myoden on a total of about sixty cho of cultivated land.
Most of the myoden were lands held by myoshu, but some were held by
other peasants. For convenience in tax collection, however, the proprietor
often consolidated the individual peasant-held lands into a single
myoden and appointed a prominent peasant as myoshu. In this sense,
myoshu were similar to low-ranking officials in the shoen administrative
organization. But primarily, myoshu were powerful peasants administering
their own lands, part of which were cultivated by other peasants.
Kobyakusho were small cultivators living in Section C of the shoen.
In addition to the myoden, the shoen's cultivable land was organized
into isshikiden, land from which only nengu was exacted, but at a
relatively high rate. As wet paddy land exempt from zokuji, these
lands were under the proprietor's direct administration. The actual
labor on isshikiden was provided mostly by small cultivators who also
worked part of the myoden. Compared with the myoshu, these cultivators
had little economic power, and because their ownership rights to
isshikiden were not guaranteed, their financial condition was precarious.
Small cultivators generally outnumbered myoshu, as evidenced
by Kamikuze-no-sho southwest of Kyoto. This shoen was divided
into thirteen myo but in the mid-fourteenth century had fifty-two
households. In the mid-fourteenth century, Tara-no-sho had six
myoshu households out of a total of fifty, the remaining belonging to
small cultivators. Kobyakusho were weak compared with myoshu, insofar
as rights over land or agricultural administration were concerned,
but they shared with the myoshu the status of hyakusho, peasants
directly subordinate to the shoen proprietor.6
Zomenbyakusho lived on and cultivated the exempted lands of Section
B of the shoen allotted to the shoen official. These peasants were
also called menke no genin, or lowly people of exempted households.
They were obligated to submit zokuji to the shoen official and were
directly subordinate to him and not to the proprietor. Zomenbyakusho
were not so numerous as myoshu or small cultivators, amounting at
most to only a few households on each shoen. In the late twelfth
century, an official on Koyasan's Ota-no-sho in Bingo Province was
chastised by the proprietor for using questionable methods to increase
the number of zomenbyakusho under his direct jurisdiction. In attempt
to justify the increased number of zomenbyakusho, this official stated
that these cultivators consisted of "lowly people" and were "exempted
6 On some shoen, this hyakusho status was referred to as heiminbyakusho.
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308 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
households for free use, morning and night." In other words, the
official freely imposed taxes in goods and labor on them and considered
them his own personal subordinates. Ordinarily, peasants of exempted
households could be used by the skden official as personal
subordinates only with the proprietor's permission. Thus, genin rather
than hyakusho best expresses the status of such peasants.
The peasants' subordinate character was especially evident in peripheral
areas in eastern Japan and Kyushu. In these remote areas,
powerful peasants did not become myoshu. Instead, the higher-ranking
local shoen official designated as one myo, the area over which his own
control extended, and himself became the myoshu. In such cases the
myo - the land unit under myoshu control - was subject to taxation
(nengu) but was exempt from zokuji. The zokuji collected from peasants
living on the myo was kept by the shoen official himself. In other
words, for the myoshu, the myo was entirely tax exempt. In that respect,
the peasants living on the myo were strongly and personally
subordinate to the myoshu. This type of myo is distinct from
hyakushomyo or proprietor myo, from which zokuji was submitted to
the proprietor. The peasants' subordination to local officials in peripheral
areas was widespread, and proprietors unable to oversee administration
directly had no choice but to recognize that fact.7
Myoshu, kobyakusho, zomenbyakusho and menke no genin differed in
degree of administrative control and subordination, but all were
clearly sedentary peasants. By contrast, the fourth level of peasant, the
mow, were transients whose relations with the ruling class were not
clearly defined. Mow did not necessarily remain on any one shoen;
those who did were unusual. In documents concerning Tara-no-sho
there is a reference to "a mow who arrived yesterday or today," implying
that he had drifted in from another place or had not lived there for
long.8
The mow had probably settled on a shoen at one time, living in a
hut, developing a bit of wasteland, and making ends meet by working
for a well-to-do peasant family. Such mow were most likely disdained
by the sedentary peasants. For example, on Tara-no-sho, a mow was
arraigned by the jito for taking in a beggar who had wandered into the
shoen and stolen from the residents.9
From this it can be surmised that
mow were similar to beggars and were similarly despised.
7 For more information on the myo of remote areas, see Nagahara Keiji, Nihon hokensei seiritsu
katei no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 1961), pp. 243-62.
8 Amino, Chusei shoen noyoso, pp. 76-79.
9 Beggars (kojiki) were a despised group in medieval Japan. See Nagahara Keiji, "Fuyu na
kojiki," in Nihon chusei shakai kozo no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1973), pp. 280-3.
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STATUS DIFFERENCES AMONG PEASANTS 309
In the case of famine or natural disaster, when cultivation was
difficult if not impossible, transients were not an unusual phenomenon.
Faced with bleak prospects for the future, many were forced
to move on to another place and settle down for a time in a corner
of a community, appealing to various connections and human sympathies.
Whether or not the term mow was used uniformly throughout
Japan, it is evident that temporary residents of agricultural communities
who were neither vagabonds nor sedentary were probably
quite common.
Genin occupied the bottom level of the peasant class and had no
independent control over land. These peasants served shoen officials as
well as myoshu. Household bequests of shoen officials indicate that
genin were inherited as part of the estate. Genin of either sex were often
bought and separated from their parents while still children or were
sometimes left with their mother. Even when a husband and wife of
this status had children, they were not normally allowed to live as a
family unless they had been in service to a master for many years. In
such cases they would often be lent a small amount of land to support
their family, in addition to serving their master.
The life of a genin could take a variety of forms, but they were
basically manual laborers of a master household. They were virtual
slaves and could be bought, sold, or inherited at their master's will.
Often they would escape. Although they could be treated as chattel,
they were not accumulated in great numbers of forced to work under
cruel conditions but, rather, were treated as part of the family in the
patriarchal system. It is not clear why most medieval shoen officials
and myoshu owned genin, but they were generally used for large-scale
agricultural work and land development.
These five categories constitute the major status divisions of the
medieval peasant class. In addition, there were eta, hinin, and sanjo, all
of whom suffered social discrimination.10
Eta were primarily involved
in catching birds, disposing of animal carcasses, and making leather
goods - activities generally considered "unclean." Hinin were people
expelled from their communities for committing a crime. Neither
group can be included in the peasant class. Sanjo were involved in
transporting water or cleaning temples, shrines, or the residences of
aristocrats. They, too, strictly speaking, were not peasants. However,
10 On social discrimination in the medieval period, see Buraku mondai kenkyujo, ed.,
Burakushi no kenkyu, premodern vol. (Kyoto: Kenkyujo, 1978); and Keiji Nagahara, "The
Medieval Origins of the Eta-Hinin," Journal ofJapanese Studies 5 (Summer 1979): 385-403.
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310 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
these groups formed communities on the outskirts of villages and were
often closely connected with village peasant life.
LAND DEVELOPMENT AND AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS
Forms of land development
In the medieval period most of Japan, with the exception of the central
Kinai region, was still undergoing land development. In the ancient
period, the provincial and district offices of the ritsuryo estate organized
large-scale projects using peasant labor as a form of tax to open
paddy land on nearby level ground. The government maintained that
this land was state owned because it was public (kdden), publicly
irrigated (kosui), and developed with state-organized labor (koko). Peasants
were allotted parcels of paddy land but in return could be forced
to participate in state land-opening activities. Powerful peasants often
abandoned their public paddy land and opened their own lands in the
mountainous back country. It was not difficult to maintain private
rights to such lands, and in doing so, they easily avoided the labor
demanded by the state. Tiny pockets of valley land tucked away
among the hills were suitable for such individual development because
water was readily available from springs and streams. This paddy
land, calledyachida, is found throughout Japan.
Leading peasant families chose land suitable for development near a
water source in the valley, where the wind was light and there was no
danger of flooding. Powerful peasants would gain control of the water
source and then develop paddy lands, extending from the area nearest
the water source deep in the valley to the level land below. They would
also maintain dry fields in the hilly areas adjacent to the valley in order
to supplement their diet by raising buckwheat and other grains besides
rice. Even in the early shorn period, these valley paddy lands were not
beyond the proprietor's reach but were organized into myoden, and
leading peasant families were usually given the status of myoshu.
Local shoen officials undertook activities similar to the mydshu's land
opening, although they had access to more labor and capital. These
officials developed large areas of land suitable for cultivation with the
labor of peasants. These lands were then divided among the relatives
in the area, and with the combined strength of the family group, the
peasants were pressed into zomenbyakusho status. On Koyasan's Otano-sho
in Bingo Province, the shoen official's exempted lands were
generally in low, damp areas along a large river, whereas nearly all the
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LAND DEVELOPMENT 311
myoden of ordinary peasants were yachida scattered throughout the
valleys. Shoen officials most likely reclaimed the low, damp lands that
had first been opened in the ancient period and had since fallen into
neglect. These they designated as privately opened lands with exemption
rights.
Both yachida - the paddies in the valleys - and the low-lying
paddy land had their disadvantages. The yachida, dependent on local
water sources, frequently suffered drought. The low-lying lands, on
the other hand, were often flooded when the river overflowed its
banks. Therefore, even though crops had been planted, in some
years there was no harvest, and in especially bad years planting itself
was impossible. Documents from this period contain expressions like
eifu (former paddy land unusable for some time) and nenfu (land on
which planting did not take place in that year)." The term kata
arashi was used frequently to refer to infertile paddy land, part of
which was left fallow.12
For these reasons, the dependability of developed, arable lands was
important to the medieval peasant. On the central Kinai plain in
Yamato and Yamashiro provinces, many reservoirs and irrigation and
drainage ditches were built under the direction of the ritsuryo state or
shoen proprietors. As a result, agricultural conditions in this area
were particularly stable. In other areas, land-developing communities
strove to make the water supply more dependable by pooling their
resources to build irrigation ponds near springs in high and middlelying
areas to offset the water shortage on the flood plain at the foot
of the valley. On the Toji's Ota-no-sho in Tamba Province, the problem
was solved by creating an irrigation pond to store water in the
center of the valley. Even today an irrigation pond called Hoshimaruike
can be found there. It was built by peasants in the late
thirteenth century to alleviate the water shortage problems of the
lower portion of the valley.'3
Land development began in earnest in the twelfth century in eastern
Japan, the part of Japan slowest to develop. Here, the local warrior
overlord class, with its strong ties to the provincial office, took a
leading role. The Kanto plain was covered by natural forests, and
small peasant communities were usually unable to clear it. The local
11 For a more detailed discussion of the low cultivation rate of arable land, see Nagahara Keiji,
Nihon no chusei shakai (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1968), pp. 160-1.
12 For more discussion of the term kata arashi, see Toda Yoshimi, Nihon ryoshusei seiritsushi no
kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1967), pp. 168-91.
13 Oyama Kyohei, Nihon chusei nosonshi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1978), pp. 231-87.
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312 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
overlords adopted two approaches. They would develop paddy lands
in the alluvial valleys of the plain and cut down forests to establish
agricultural settlements. Most peasants were subordinate to the local
overlord and were granted cultivation rights to the newly opened lands
as members of the community. These warriors, who later became
vassals of the Kamakura bakufu, were almost without exception the
center of such land development communities.14
Those peasants who
became subordinate to these local developers could not establish independence
as myoshu.
Local warrior overlords and powerful peasants were central to medieval
land development and reclamation, although the actual labor was
generally carried out by small communities of peasants. Medieval
land-opening communities were quite different from early peasant
society which was characterized by large-scale agricultural communities
under one leader. These later medieval "communities" were
hardly worthy of the name, generally being small villages of a few
scattered cultivator households under the direction of a powerful peasant
or local overlord. Shden were an amalgamation of many small
communities and were not in themselves organic groups. The myoshu
at the center of each small community cooperated with the shden official
in punishing unlawful behavior on the shden, but daily functions
were for the most part carried out within the individual community.'5
Gradually, the peasants of these small communities became more independent
and increased in number. As a result, community relations
became more tightly knit. In the fourteenth century, village communities
called soson were formed, in which even the small cultivators had
membership rights.
Agricultural operations and techniques
Because they had access to labor, the local overlords and powerful
peasants were able to gain control of fertile, well-irrigated paddy land.
As a result, their agricultural operations were generally stable and
prosperous, unlike those of the small cultivators. The peasants' first
obligation was to furnish labor to the local overlord and myoshu, in
14 The Miura family, which became a powerful vassal (gokenin) of the Kamakura bakufu,
divided the entire Miura peninsula in Sagami Province among its members. They controlled
the highly developed valley lands throughout the peninsula and continued the process of
development. They often took place names as surnames, for example, Ashida, Owada, Wada,
Nagai, and Nobi.
15 On the situation in small communities, see Nagahara Keiji, "Shoensei shihai to chusei
sonraku," in Nihon chusei shakai kozo no kenkyu, pp. 169-254.
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LAND DEVELOPMENT 313
return for which they could borrow food, seeds, and, in lean years,
rice.
Wet paddy lands were very important to the agricultural operations
of powerful peasants who were prosperous enough to use oxen for
spring plowing. For weak, poor peasants, however, the wet paddy
lands were of little consequence, and dry fields or yakihata were the
most common form of cultivable land.16
Wet paddy lands were developed
using a compost of grass trampled by oxen and horses and cut
grass containing saplings and young leaves. During the second half of
the medieval period, they also discovered that the crop yield improved
when ashes from burnt trees were used. The average yield of one tan of
paddy land cannot be accurately estimated, but uplands generally
yielded about one koku, two or three to of rice. Dry fields were usually
planted with barley, and yakihata were usually planted with millet and
buckwheat. Paddy land with much richer soil and higher productivity
was planted with rice.
Various technological advances improved the agricultural output
starting in about the second half of the thirteenth century. New and
improved varieties of wetland rice were developed, and depending on
the climate, even triple cropping was possible. Run-off ditches were
built in both valley lands and moist lowlands. After the wetland rice
was harvested, the water was drained off, and barley was planted as a
second crop. Needless to say, the productivity of wet paddy lands
increased with such concentrated usage.17
A variety of crops were planted in dry fields: grains such as barley
and soybeans, vegetables, hemp, mulberry for sericulture, and the
perilla plant. Until the mass production of cotton began in the sixteenth
century, hemp was the most widely used fabric for clothing.18
Sericulture, including removing the silk from cocoons and making silk
floss and silk goods, was another endeavor of the peasants, although
strictly a luxury line. Silk floss was referred to as gofukumen (dry goods
cloth) and was taxed as nengu in many areas. The raising of cocoons
was difficult because in some years disease killed all the silkworms.'9
16 On yakihata, see Kuroda Hideo, "Chusei no kaihatsu to shizen," in Seikatsu, bunka, shiso,
vol. 4 of Ikki (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1981), pp. 91-130.
17 Double cropping was already being practiced in some areas by the end of the Heian period,
but in the late Kamakura period the problem arose concerning whether nengu should be
exacted in the form of barley, the second crop on wet paddy lands.
18 Echigo Province was noted for its hemp thread in the Muromachi period, and hemp cloth was
one of its major products. The production of hemp, however, was not limited to Echigo but
took place throughout Japan.
19 The ritsuryo government required that mulberry, along with lacquer trees, be cultivated in
orchards and taxed the silk thread taken from the cocoons. In the medieval period, however,
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314 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
Oil for lamps was increasingly produced as a commodity in the fourteenth
century because of its expanding demand in the cities.20
In order to prepare dry fields for planting, wood was burned on top
of the soil. Later, millet, buckwheat, and soybeans were sown. A
single plot was planted for a period of two or three years before rotating
to another plot. The first plot was then burned again in preparation
for another planting. Because these lands were not under the
proprietor's control and were outside the tax structure, such practices,
believed to have been common in the medieval period, were rarely
mentioned in shoen documents. Small and marginal cultivators
(kobyakusho and genin) with families relied on these fields as a crucial
source of food.
Medieval agriculture took place on a combination of wet paddy
lands, dry fields, and yakihata. In addition to drought and flood damage,
which was unavoidable given the peculiar characteristics of medieval
cultivable land, insects and animals were also a frequent cause of
crop damage. The worst, and unpreventable, insect damage was suffered
when great swarms of locusts ate the water-planted rice seedlings.
Sparrows ate rice seedlings, and wild boars and deer caused
much damage as well. Devices such as clappers and deer fences were
used to combat the problem, but these methods by no means eliminated
the loss of crops caused by these animals.21
Such unpredictable catastrophes often destroyed small cultivators
and zomenbyakusho. On Koyasan's Ategawa-no-sho in Kii Province, a
1246 document records that only one-sixth (three or four) of the households
on the entire shorn were living with plenty, whereas untended,
fallow myb numbered thirteen in the upper village and eight in the
lower village.22
In addition to being located on inferior mountain land,
this shoen was cursed with an abusivejito who engaged in illegal activities.
At the same time, it provides a good illustration of the volatile
agricultural conditions of the time. Peasants whose crops failed were
called mibiki (literally, "thinning") and were often forced to sell themselves
and their families and become genin of a local overlord or powermulberry
was gathered mainly in the wild. It was again cultivated in orchards during the Edo
period.
20 Starting in about the fourteenth century, the production and sale of the oil extracted from the
perilla plant were a specialty in several areas of the central Kinai region, such as Oyamazaki in
Yamashiro Province, Yagi in Yamato, and Abiko in Settsu.
21 Locusts, birds, and leafhoppers (unka), a rice insect, caused great crop damage. In mountain
fields where damage by boars and deer was great, deer fences made of bamboo and twigs were
erected around the fields.
22 Kdyasan monjo, vol. 6, Yuzoku hokanshu, no. 1433 (1276) in Shiryo hensanjo, ed.,DaiNihon
komonjo, iewake, vol. 1, pt. 6 (Tokyo: Tokyo teikoku daigaku, 1906), pp. 501-2.
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THE PEASANTS, OVERLORD RULE, TAXATION 315
ful myoshu. Or they might become transients and drift into lodgings
for hinin. The unpredictability of agricultural conditions in the medieval
village also created the peasant equivalent of ronin, or "masterless
samurai."
THE PEASANTS, OVERLORD RULE, AND TAXATION
Nengu, zokuji, and labor service
The medieval peasant was required to submit two types of taxes to the
shoen proprietor: zokuji and nengu. Zokuji is generally understood to
include labor service (buyaku), in addition to miscellaneous dues on
various nonrice products. To avoid confusion, zokuji will be defined
more narrowly here as additionally taxed products and separate from
labor service. Nengu, on the other hand, was the tax paid by the
myoshu to the proprietor on myoden, locally held rice fields constituting
the major part of the shoen's cultivable land. The usual rate of taxation
per tan of wet paddy land was three to five to of rice.23
This form of
taxation differed greatly from that of the ritsuryo system, in which
peasants were taxed by categories of goods, and each tan of land was
assessed a grain tax amounting to no more than 3 percent of its total
yield.
The state depended on a tax on various products levied on individuals
for income and on a labor tax called zbyo, about sixty days' service
per year for adult males. The household registry system, however,
declined along with the ritsuryo system, and the assessment and collection
of taxes on individuals became impossible. Gradually, both labor
taxes and taxes on goods came to be calculated according to the area of
arable land. In addition, in the tenth century the provincial office
renewed efforts to collect taxes in kind, especially in rice. As a result,
the basis of taxation was changed from imposts estimated by categories
of goods to miscellaneous labor and rice submitted to the officials. The
latter, in most cases, amounted to three to of rice per tan of land. The
labor tax came to encompass a wide variety of goods and services. The
shoen system of taxation, including nengu, zokuji, and buyaku, descended
from this Heian system of taxation by the provincial office.
This was a natural development, given that most shoen were created
23 One medieval tan was equivalent to 360 bu or about 12 are. (An are, a French unit of measure,
is equal to 100 square meters.) In Hideyoshi's cadastral survey, 1 tan was redefined as equal to
300 bu; 1 tool rice is equal to about 15 kilograms.
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3l6 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
when the lands of the provincial office were partitioned, and the overlord's
right of control over the shoen evolved from the provincial governor's
right of control over the province.
The nengu tax rate of three to five to of rice per tan of land
probably comprised, on average, one-third to one-half of the assessed
total yield, which was a rather high rate considering that yields were
often reduced by natural disasters and other conditions. On the other
hand, the land from which nengu was collected was by no means all
the land under cultivation. The shoen proprietor formally recorded in
his land registries the amount of cultivable land based on surveys.
But in shoen documents, the phrase "land on which nengu is not
assessed" appears frequently, suggesting that there were "hidden
lands" whose entire yield went directly to the peasants. In addition,
dry fields were not taxed comprehensively. The ritsuryo government
considered dry fields to be an extension of immediate residential
lands and, thus, were privately owned and not directly taxed. Given
this precedent, the shoen proprietor could not be excessively strict
about taxation in such areas. Under these circumstances, peasants of
the myoshu class could make ends meet, even though the nengu rate
was high. The life of the small cultivators, however, was difficult.
For the most part, they worked land on which only nengu was collected,
but at a relatively higher rate than myoden and usually
amounted to seven or eight to per tan. Many small cultivators also
worked part of a myoden and were therefore unable to avoid the labor
tax. In addition, they were often required to perform private labor
services for the myoshu.
In most cases nengu was collected in rice, but it could take the form
of other products as well. For example, on shoen in eastern Japan,
nengu was often exacted in silk or cotton. The reasons were both the
paucity of paddy lands and the relatively undeveloped state of the
eastern transportation routes, particularly the water routes, which
made the transportation of heavy items like rice difficult. Nengu from
shoen in the Inland Sea area often took the form of salt, marine products,
or lumber. The form of nengu was often determined by the
products of the particular region and by the condition of the transportation
routes.
The shoen proprietor also collected income from zokuji. In the
Kamakura period, zokuji on the Toji's Oyama-no-sho in Tamba Province
took a surprising number of forms, for example, vegetables, chestnuts,
barrels, and oil. It differed from nengu in that anything from the
village could be taxed, produce as well as finished goods, such as
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THE PEASANTS, OVERLORD RULE, TAXATION 317
thread, fabric, and confections. Thus zokuji consisted of important
items of daily consumption exacted by the proprietor from his various
shorn. From shoen on the Chokodo lands belonging to the imperial
family, for example, products such as vegetables, fruit, sake, flowers
used for dying, pine torches, and bamboo blinds were collected for the
annual New Year's ceremonies.24
The type of product demanded depended
on such factors as the specialized product of the region, distance
from the shoen to the capital, and the state of the transportation
system. These products collected from individual shoen made the proprietor
virtually self-sufficient. There were a variety of ways to apportion
this burden on the peasants. A common method, called
myobetsukuji, was to collect zokuji from each myoden, although this was
a cumbersome method.
The typical shoen proprietor was an urban aristocrat who lived in the
capital. He almost never lived on the shoen itself, nor did he demand
large amounts of labor for operations on directly managed lands. One
exception was land called tsukuda, found on shoen near the capital.
Tsukuda were under the proprietor's direct control, although he did
not generally manage them personally. Instead, he forced the peasants
to cultivate them at a high nengu rate of one or two koku per tan of
land. Normally, the proprietor did not require labor service of the
peasants, but they were often required to transport zokuji to his residence
in the capital or to serve guard duty there on a rotating basis.
According to the diary Yamashina keraiki, even in the early fifteenth
century when the proprietor's authority was at its lowest, peasants
from shoen in areas relatively near the capital, such as Settsu and
Mino, took turns serving the proprietor at his Kyoto residence.25
Peasants also provided customary labor service. Peasants often accompanied
shoen officials on extended stays in the capital and provided
three-day service, which involved ministering to the needs of the proprietor's
representative when he visited the shoen. But compared with
the labor service exacted by shoen officials andyiro, the burden was not
heavy.
In addition to the nengu, zokuji, and labor demanded by the shoen
proprietor, there were also exactions by shoen officials and jito. As
explained earlier, shoen officials were allotted paddies that were ex-
24 The Chokodo was a private chapel erected by the retired emperor Goshirakawa at his residence.
Numerous shoen lands were subsequently attached to it. Most imperial shoen were of
this type.
25 Yamashina keraiki, edited and annotated by Toyoda Takeshi and Iikura Harutake, 5 vols.
(Tokyo: Zokugunsho ruiju kanseikai, 1967-73).
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318 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
empt from the proprietor's nengu and zokuji, as well as myo from which
only nengu was required. Shorn officials also had the right to collect a
set amount of income from the shoen as a whole. This included
kachomai, a tax in addition to nengu, amounting to about one-tenth of
the nengu, or about three tofivesho per tan. By comparison, there was
a great deal of labor service required. As stated earlier, shoen officials
were free to exploit zomenbyakusho, and they could also exact a set
amount of labor from the myoshu and peasants directly subordinate to
the proprietor. A local official of the Kangiji's Wasa-no-sho in Kii
Province demanded that shoen inhabitants provide agricultural labor
ranging from spring planting to fall harvest, including plowing, weeding,
cutting grass, and pounding the rice.26
This labor service could be
demanded "as needed."
With the establishment of the Kamakura bakufu, limits were set on
the rights of jito on a case-by-case basis, but generally they were
determined by the limits established by those administering the shoen
on behalf of the proprietors. In reality, however, because tht jito was a
warrior, he could make oppressive labor demands. According to documents
of 1238, the jito of Sasakibe-no-sho, a holding of the Matsuno
Shrine in Tamba Province, made the peasants serve him in a wide
variety of ways. He forced the peasants to cultivate the land without
giving them food or land in return; he used nine peasants daily as his
servants; he made the peasants build his residence; and he requisitioned
peasants to accompany him on a journey to the capital.27
Because
relations between jito and peasants were strained by such demands,
in 1262 the Kamakura bakufu ruled that although thejito's use
of peasants for cultivation and farmwork could continue within the
bounds of custom, during the three summer months (four to six
months in the lunar calendar), peasant labor could not be used privately
by the jito.28
In addition, shoen officials and jito frequently
collected various commodities resembling the zokuji of the shoen proprietor.
Therefore, small cultivators and myoshu under the proprietor's
direct control were subject to two tiers of taxation, one by the proprietor
and the other by the local shoen officials and jito.
26 A 1327 income report by the recordkeeper (kumon) of Shimomura on Wasa-on-sho, in Kangiji
monjo.
27 This 1238 account of a dispute between the shoen administrator (zassho) and the jito on
Matsuno Shrine's Sasakibe-no-sho is found in Higashi monjo, vol. 1.
28 Kamakura bakufu supplementary law no. 424, in Sato Shin'ichi and Ikeuchi Yoshisuke, eds.,
Chiisei hosei shiryoshu, vol. 1 (hereafter cited as CHS) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1955; reprinted
1978), p. 222.
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THE PEASANTS, OVERLORD RULE, TAXATION 319
Governance 0/shoen
The rule of the shoen proprietor over the peasants may be divided into
three broad areas: collection of taxes, jurisdiction over land, and jurisdiction
over criminal matters. The first category, the collection of
taxes, has already been described. Taxes were originally collected by
shoen officials, but once jito were installed, they usually became the tax
collectors.29
The authority to collect taxes gave the shoen officials and
jito close personal control over the peasants. When peasants did not
pay their taxes, the proprietor would exert various types of pressure expressed
as "delivering a reprimand" (kenseki 0 kuwaeru) - and if
that did not produce results, he would physically restrain the defaulting
peasant. This was known as "binding one's person" (ntigara 0
karametoru). In some cases, the jito would make the delinquent cultivator
his genin. The jito, as tax collectors, applied physical restraint to
myoshu as well as to small cultivators and restricted their freedom of
movement. The peasants had previously had little freedom of movement
anyway, but if taxation became too severe and official control too
oppressive, they would often abscond. Thejito would then forbid such
behavior and bind the peasants to the land, collecting taxes and labor
by force. Because this was a major cause of conflict between jito and
peasant, the legal code of the Kamakura bakufu, the goseibai
shikimoku, stipulated that once they had paid the nengu, peasants were
to be allowed freedom of movement.30
The second area of proprietor rule, jurisdiction over land, refers to
the right to administer the land within the shoen. The proprietor had
the right to survey the cultivated land in the shoen in order to measure
the area of land from which nengu would be exacted, reorganize
locally held peasant lands, and reassign the lands of peasants who
had fled.
Because jurisdiction over the land was an important component of
the proprietor's control, once jito were installed on shoen, severe conflicts
arose between proprietor and jito concerning this right. According
to a 1247 decree of the Kamakura bakufu:
There are many conflicts in which jito insist that though nengu must be
submitted to the shoen proprietor from local lands of shoen officials and
peasants, the right of jurisdiction over land is the jito's. Meanwhile, shoen
29 On the various limitations on jito controlling shoen, see Yasuda Motohisa, Jito oyobi jito
ryoshusei no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1961).
30 Goseibai shikimoku, art. 42, in CHS, pp. 24-26.
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320 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
officials hold that the jito's allotment fields are under his jurisdiction but that
lands in local possession (myoden) are under the shoen proprietor's. However,
"originally appointed jito" [those appointed to lands that had hadjtw before
the Jokyu disturbance] must abide by the limitations set on their rights long
ago, and "newly appointed jito" are limited to one cho for every eleven cho as
allotment fields.31
In this way the Kamakura bakufu attempted to restrain the jito's
increasing power over land jurisdiction.
Such repeated clashes between shoen officials andjito over matters of
land jurisdiction, as well as. over the right of jurisdiction in criminal
matters, had a decisive effect on peasant control. These were, for
instance, various ways to dispose of fields abandoned by absconding
peasants. Such fields could be allotted to other peasants or absorbed
into the jito's holdings. Or they might be given as my5 to a so-called
ronin, someone who was not a regular resident of the shoen. Because
the disposal of such land was based on the right of jurisdiction over
land, the person who held this right had considerable authority. In
1185 Minamoto Yoritomo incurred the wrath of the aristocracy and the
religious establishment when first reporting to the emperor the installation
of jito, he negotiated to be allowed to grant jito the right of
jurisdiction over land.32
Throughout the Kamakura period, there was
nothing uniformly regarded as embodying jito authority, and so the
importance of possessing the right of jurisdiction over land cannot be
underestimated.
The right of jurisdiction in criminal matters, the third area of proprietor
rule, combined police and judicial powers. This included the
authority to take punitive action against shoen peasants who violated
the law. In addition, it allowed the proprietor to enforce criminal
sentences, including acquiring confiscated land and property for himself.
According to contemporary law, in some cases the guilty party
could be driven off the shoen, his land confiscated, and his dwelling
destroyed. The right of acquiring confiscated land and property was
recognized as belonging to the person who exercised the right of criminal
jurisdiction. For this reason, there was intense rivalry among shoen
officials and jito for the right of criminal jurisdiction.
A Kamakura bakufu law of 1223 designated that items confiscated
in a criminal case were to be divided between the shoen proprietor
31 Kamakura bakufu supplementary law no. 259, in CHS, p. 162.
32 The aristocrat Kujo Kanezane of the regency house expresses his surprise over this matter in
his diary, Gyokuyo: "Not only will they impose a military rice tax, but they will also gain
complete control over the land."
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THE PEASANTS, OVERLORD RULE, TAXATION 321
and the jito, with the former receiving two-thirds and the latter one-
third.33
The jito, however, attempted to take over by force the entire
right of criminal jurisdiction. When a peasant defaulted on taxes and
absconded, the wife and children left behind were made genin. Even
in the case of a very small theft, a large penalty was often imposed.
There were many cases of penalties of unprecedented severity. In
Yamada and Befu villages in the Taniyama District of Satsuma Province
in 1300, the 71**0 and district head clashed over peasant control.
The jito invoked the right of criminal jurisdiction in forty-one separate,
minor incidents involving peasants, such as stealing potatoes,
committing slander, killing dogs, and stealing horses. He seized the
culprits, their wives, and children and exacted overly harsh penal-
ties.34
Such extreme enforcement of the right of criminal jurisdiction
by the jito was denounced by the peasants and shoen oficials as "new
and illegal practices" or unprecedented, illegal acts. By applying such
pressure, the jito was attempting to gain direct and personal control
over the peasants.
Jito and shoen officials competed for control of the peasants in all
three of the areas discussed: the collection of taxes and jurisdiction
over land and criminal matters. The jito attempted to monopolize local
control over the shoen's land and peasants; the shoen officials tried to
prevent the private subordination of the peasants to the jito; and the
peasants were caught in the middle of this conflict.
Peasant resistance
Control over peasants in the shoen system was divided between the
proprietor, in his ability to collect all the taxes, and the local shoen
officials and jito, in their jurisdiction over land and criminal matters.
In the fourteenth century, the peasants began to demand a reduction
in, or even an exemption from, nengu. On shoen near Kyoto, in many
cases even the local shoen officials united with the peasants to press
these demands on the proprietor. However, at this point the shoen
system itself had begun to decline amidst antiproprietor movements
led by shoen officials in league with shugo. Demands for reductions or
exemptions from taxes were due less to the peasants' inability to pay
them than to their desire to deny the proprietor's right to collect
them.
33 Kamakura bakufu supplementary law no. 14, in CHS, p. 66.
34 The judicial decree of 1300 of the Kyushu office of the Kamakura bakufu is found in Yamada
monjo.
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322 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, by contrast, there were
virtually no peasant movements demanding tax relief from the proprietor.
Rather, the peasants' dissatisfaction and resistance were turned
against the arbitrary rule of the shoen officials and jito. This early
medieval peasant resistance to oppressive jito rule most typically took
the form seen in a 1275 peasant complaint (sojo) on Atekawa-no-sho,
directed against the proprietor, the Jakurakuji temple in Kyoto.35
This
shoen was located in the mountains on the upper reaches of the Arita
River in Kii Province. A powerful provincial family, the Yuasa, had
come to dominate thejito office, and its power spread accordingly. The
Yuasa's methods of control over the peasants were so crude that the
peasants rose up and submitted a thirteen-article protest to the proprietor
written in their own faltering handwriting. The following matters
were brought to light in this document.
Upon discovering that the peasants had concealed the existence cf
certain fields from him, thejito levied his own nengu, even though this
was a privilege of the proprietor alone. In addition, he imposed a fine
of two hundred mon in copper coins per year per tan of land. On cne
occasion, thejito dispatched over twenty people from his own house to
collect hemp and cotton from the peasants. He also mobilized the
peasants to cut and transport trees, imposing on them many hours of
arduous labor. Most seriously, he hunted down and forcibly returned
fleeing peasants, whom he then punished by making them sow barley
on their recently abandoned land. He furthermore threatened that if
they did not comply, he would take their female children and cut off
their ears, slice off their noses, cut their hair like nuns, tie them up,
and then parade them around. He forced the peasants to take care of
his horses morning and night and required them to submit one to,
three sho of hay as fodder for them. He totally ignored precedent in his
dealings with the peasants and displayed no concern for the stability of
their lives but thought only of his own gain. He required an inordinate
amount of service from the peasants and showered them with abuse.
These are few documented cases of peasants directly protesting the
jitd's actions, but from those that exist it can be inferred that around
the thirteenth century, peasants were no longer content either to accept
abusive treatment or to flee but began to resist harsh rule by jito
by pressing complaints against them.
35 The petition by the peasants of Ategawa-no-sho, dated the tenth month of 1275, can be found
in Koyasan monjo, vol.6,yuzoku hokanshu, no. 1423, pp. 486—90.
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THE PEASANTS, OVERLORD RULE, TAXATION 323
In a similar example in 1334 on Tara-no-sho, a Toji holding in
Wakasa Province, peasants protested the illegal activities of a shoen
official, Wakibukuro Hikotaro.36
The appeal document, signed by all
fifty-nine myoshu and small cultivators of the shoen, requests
Wakibukuro's dismissal. According to their complaint, he was guilty
of numerous outrages. He mobilized six hundred people yearly for
agricultural labor on his directly managed lands (over three cho). He
dispatched peasants daily to work in a place called Wakibukuro near
the shoen where his residence was located, required twenty peasants to
serve and accompany him when he went to Kyoto, and confiscated
peasant holdings and incorporated them into his official lands. In
addition, he failed to submit dues on myo as required, used peasant
labor to build a fortress, destroyed peasant dwellings, and engaged in
countless other illegal activities.
The peasants in these two examples were no longer willing to bear
the excesses of the jito and shoen officials and therefore appealed directly
to the proprietor. But this is not typical of the early medieval
period. In general, if the;ird exceeded the legal bounds of his office,
the shoen officials would lodge a complaint with the Kamakura
bakufu. In such cases, the wrath of the peasants was obscured in the
litigation of the shoen officials and failed to surface directly.
Another point merits attention here. Although the jito and local
officials lived on or near the shoen, the proprietor lived far away in
the capital and, therefore, did not appear to the peasants to be their
tormentor. For this reason, the peasants persisted in seeing the jito as
a villain whereas the proprietor was considered a force for good.
Even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the shoen system
was declining and peasant struggles were increasing, the peasants
usually opposed the local warriors who were gaining dominance
over the shoen by taking control of taxation. On the other hand, the
peasants welcomed direct rule by the shoen proprietor. This does not
imply that the proprietor's rule over the shoen was particularly enlightened,
but only that it was weak and much more lenient, and
therefore, the peasants preferred it to warrior rule. A major reason
that the shoen system survived longer than conditions would have
predicted was that peasants resisted warrior incursions while they
supported the proprietor.
36 The petition and deposition submitted by the peasants of Tara-no-sho in the eighth month of
1334 are found in Shiryo hensanjo, ed., Toji hyakugo monjo, vol.i, ha, no. 116, Dai Nihon
komonjo, iewake, vol. io, pt. I (Tokyo: Tokyo teikoku daigaku, 1925), pp. 709-13.
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324 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF THE PEASANTS
Clothing, food, and shelter
There is still a dearth of research regarding specific aspects of medieval
peasant life, including their clothing, food, and shelter, but I shall
present a summary of what little is known to date.
Clothing. The fabric most widely used for clothing by medieval peasants
was hemp or ramie (karamushi). Hemp was a perennial plant that
could be cultivated anywhere in Japan. The process of producing
thread from the plant was not difficult, and so it was widely used as a
component in peasant clothing. Several steps, however, were involved
in producing the fabric. The hemp stalk had to be finely shredded,
tied together, and twisted into thread. Then, it had to be placed on a
wooden stand, a pulling block, and beaten with a mallet to soften it.
This work was usually done at night during the winter season. In the
late medieval period, Echigo Province became a center of hemp production,
and a za (guild) was established there that monopolized the
production of blue hemp (aoso). Its guarantor was the aristocratic
Sanjonishi family. This za also produced Echigo crepe, a high-quality
product made of blue hemp, aimed at the city market.
Other fabric used for clothing included fabrics made from raw silk
thread from either cultivated or wild silkworms. Sericulture, however,
was technically quite difficult, and compared with that of hemp, the
process of making silk thread and weaving fabric was much more timeconsuming.
Consequently, peasants did not commonly use silk fabric.
Silk floss and silk wadding, however, easily produced by boiling the
cocoons and then spreading them out to dry, offered good insulation
and was most often used as a winter fabric. It is known that in the
Muromachi period, silkflosswas often among the products carried by
merchants selling in peasant markets.37
In eastern Japan in particular,
a method known as tsumugi was developed, whereby silk floss was
twisted by hand into a thick thread and woven on a primitive loom
instead of being spun into raw silk thread. Because it was thick and
sturdy, this fabric provided excellent insulation. Of all the silk fabrics,
fabric produced in this manner was the most likely to be used by the
peasants.
37 For example, it is known that in order to sell it in local markets the merchants of Imahori
village in Omi Province kept fabric (gofukusen) from Ise in stock. See Nakamura Ken, ed.,
Imahori Hiejinja monjo (Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 1981).
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THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF THE PEASANTS 325
Cotton, which offered the best insulation and was the most pleasing
to the touch, was produced in Korea in the fifteenth century and
subsequently exported to Japan. The cultivation, spinning, and weaving
of cotton did not begin in Japan until the sixteenth century.
Therefore, cotton fabric was not available to medieval Japanese peasants.
Similarly, sheep were not raised in Japan, and so there was no
wool.
It is clear that the choice of fabrics available to the medieval Japanese
peasant for clothing was limited, although there may have been
other self-subsistent fabrics that do not appear in the sources. For
example, it is quite likely that deer and antelope hides were used for
clothing. And the seeds may have been stripped off cattails and inserted
into cotton bedding as wadding. Folk studies of mountain communities
have revealed that a fabric made from wisteria vines was
widely used in clothing. This natural fiber, gathered in the wild, may
have been a common component in medieval clothing as well. In any
case, there were few fabrics that were produced in mass quantities in
the medieval period.
Food. Since the beginning of sedentary agriculture in Japan, food
production has centered on rice cultivation, for several reasons. The
nutritional properties of rice are excellent compared with those of
other grains; the preparation and maintenance of rice paddies are
relatively easy; a large amount of fertilizer is not necessary for cultivation;
consecutive planting is usually feasible; and the harvest is quite
dependable. Given these attributes, it is understandable that the ancient
ritsuryo state considered rice paddies central to its policy on the
control of cultivable land. Later, shoen proprietors too put most of
their efforts into maintaining their control over rice paddies, whereas
dry fields were of only secondary importance.
But despite the emphasis on rice production, rice was not the primary
staple in the peasants' diet. The state's and later the proprietor's
control over the paddies meant that the peasants did not have reliable
access to rice. In addition, small cultivators could not secure enough
paddy land in the first place to ensure a stable rice income. Consequently,
only the privileged myoshu class had enough rice for a year
after paying their taxes. In addition, most of the small cultivators did
not have time to maintain their own paddies while providing mandatory
labor service to the proprietor, as well as to their direct overseer,
the local myoshu. Cultivators also incurred debts of food and seed each
year at a high interest. As a result, there were precious few days in the
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326 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
year when peasants ate rice. Most of the time they ate inferior grains
such as millet and wild grasses. In medieval lists of items submitted as
zokuji, the term tokoro appears frequently. Tokoro was a wild plant
similar to a yam; its stalk and root were edible once cooked to remove
the bitterness. These plants were evidently part of the proprietors'
diet. It is possible that tokoro also figured prominently in peasants'
diet. According to the Myohoji ki, a late medieval journal kept by the
priests of a mountain temple in Kai Province, the peasants raised rice,
barley, wheat, and millet, but by spring they had usually consumed
these harvested foods. After that, ferns and plant roots kept them alive
until the summer barley harvest.38
They also ate fish, birds, and other
animals when available. Food brought in from the outside, however,
was limited to salted fish a few times a year.39
Shelter. The residential lands of shorn officials andjitd occupied an area
of about one hundred square meters surrounded by an earthen embankment
with a moat or ditch along the outer slope. Archaeological
digs of medieval structures, as well as scroll depictions of warrior
houses (such as the Honen shonin eden of the late Kamakura period),
suggest that there were outbuildings for servants and animals in addition
to the main residence. The house of the average small cultivator,
in contrast, consisted of two small rooms without a partition which
opened onto a dirt-floored room used for cooking and storing farm
implements. Such peasant houses are depicted in the Komyo shingon
ekotoba, dated 1398, and in the thirteenth-century he shinmeisho utaazvase
emaki.40
Foundation stones were not used; instead, support
posts were placed directly into holes dug in the ground. Only the
homes of well-to-do peasants had wooden flooring; poor households
had only straw mats or straw spread on the bare ground. The roof was
built with oblong planks of lumber cut short and split, instead of tile.
The outside walls of the house were constructed of mud or stacked
logs and mud plaster. Making boards was difficult, and not until the
Muromachi period were there craftsmen who specialized in making
boards by splitting logs lengthwise with a large saw. Before that,
wooden panels were not used in peasant houses, and carpenters were
38 Zatsu no bu in zoku gunslw ruiju.
39 Refers to salt curing, fish markets, and the like, dealing mostly in salmon and yellowtail
(bun).
40 These picture scrolls are reproduced in Nihon emakimono zenshu, 32 vols. (Tokyo: Kadokawa
shoten, new ed., 1977-81); and Nihon emaki laisei, 29 vols. (Tokyo: Chud koronsha, 1977-
81).
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THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF THE PEASANTS 327
rarely found on shoen. Instead, members of the village communal
organization got together to build the necessary dwellings. Sources
from this period frequently cite incidences of shoen officials and jito
dismantling the houses of peasants banished for illegal activities, because
lumber was a precious commodity in the medieval village and
old boards were reused repeatedly.
The peasants and the market
The preceding account portrays the economic existence of the medieval
peasant as nearly self-sufficient; however, trade was also important
to obtaining such necessary items as salt, iron implements used in
farming, and pottery to store and water. Many of these items had to be
purchased from those specializing in producing them. Markets where
such items could be bought were held three times a month on prescribed
days, such as those with numbers containing a three or six.41
Markets held six times a month proliferated in the fifteenth century.
In some cases, markets were located on shoen, but it was not unusual
for them to be held in remote areas as well. In general, markets were
located near the residence of a jito or shoen official, in a conveniently
located place, or adjacent to a temple.42
Markets were originally the means by which shoen officials and jito
sold part of all of the nengu they received and acquired luxury goods
such as fabric and swords from the capital. Until the early fourteenth
century, nengu was usually sent in kind to the capital, with part of it
first exchanged at the market to defray local expenses. In later periods,
however, all the nengu was sold to merchants in the local market,
and the proceeds were sent in currency to the proprietor in the
capital.43
Peasants, too, used these markets to exchange modest
amounts of rice, barley hemp, and other fabrics for other necessary
items.
In the fourteenth century, beginning in Yamato and Yamashiro provinces,
it became common in the villages of central Japan to manufacture
products for sale in cities like Nara, Kyoto, Sakai, and Otsu. Such
41 A market held three times a month is called sansai ichi, and that held six times a month,
rokusai ichi.
42 According to a late-Kamakura-period map of Okuyama-no-sho in Echigo Province, found in
the archives of Chujocho of Niigata Prefecture, a market was located near the jito's family
residence.
43 Sasaki Ginya, "Shoen ni okeru daisennosei no seiritsu to tenkai," in Chusei shohin tyutsushi no
kenkyu (Tokyo: Hosei daigaku shuppankyoku, 1972), pp. 250-362.
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328 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
products included noodles made from wheat flour, rice derivatives
such as vinegar and malt, lamp oil produced from the perilla plant, and
blinds crafted from bamboo.44
The peasants who made such products
often formed za and placed themselves under the protection of a powerful
religious patron. The za submitted a business tax in return for
monopoly rights over their product. Eventually some za members
made their way to cities like Kyoto to sell their goods. In the late
medieval period, the production and sale of such commodities were
not limited to central Japan but could be found in all areas linked with
a port city or a castle town of a daimyo.
As peasants became involved in market activities, their use of coins
also increased. The ancient ritsuryo state had borrowed the T'ang
monetary system, minted coins, and encouraged their circulation.
However, the actual area where coins were in circulation was extremely
limited and, in time, all but disappeared. Until near the end of
the twelfth century, barter was the rule. Even land transactions between
aristocrats and priests were conducted in rice.45
In the thirteenth century, coins imported from Sung China gradually
came into common usage, and by the end of the century, this
practice had spread to the village level. Merchants from the capital
purchased with coins products from the villages. In the fourteenth
century it became common practice to exchange nengu for coins and
submit it to the proprietor in that form. Individual peasants, however,
did not submit nengu in coins by selling their rice and products to
merchants. Rather, the shoen officials or an agent contracted by the
proprietor sold the nengu rice in the local market at a profit and then
submitted it in coins to the proprietor at a lower conversion rate. Local
officials benefited from the lucrative conversion arrangement and
therefore welcomed merchants to markets in areas under their control.
As a result, the peasants were involuntarily exposed to the market and
gradually acquired coins with which they could purchase goods. Not
only in the economically developed villages of central Japan but even
in the poorer villages it became possible for peasants to acquire coins
by producing woodwork and charcoal and collecting firewood for
sale.46
Even in the late-developing villages of eastern Japan in the
44 Wakita Haruko, Nihon chusei shogyo hattatsushi no kenkyii (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1969),
pp. 419-522.
45 A cursory survey of twelfth-century bills of sale for cultivated land reveals that outside one or
two exceptions, transactions were conducted in rice, silk, and hemp. See Nagahara Keiji,
"Heian makki kohi baiken no bunseki," in Nihon chusei shakai kdzo no kenkyii, pp. 159-68.
46 Oyama Kyohei, Nikon chusei nosonshi no kenkyii (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1978), pp. 288-
319Cambridge
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THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF THE PEASANTS 329
fifteenth century, there were cases of local temples' collecting from the
cultivators the land rent in cash.
Land as property
In the early medieval period, peasants did not hold land as private
property in the true sense of the word. The shoen proprietor formally
registered myoden and isshikiden in the land registry, and because this
land was the basis for nengu and zokuji, peasants were forbidden to buy
and sell it without permission. This was not the only reason that such
land was not privately owned, however. From the peasant's point of
view, cultivable land was not always a highly valued "possession." The
peasants invested a great deal of labor in opening arable land, and even
if initially compensated, once the proprietor began to exact taxes and
labor service, the property value of such land was indeed low. Cultivation
rights were not in high demand for land burdened with excessive
imposts, particularly in the case of famine or natural disaster.
In villages near Nara and Kyoto, the sale of the peasants' right to
possess arable land began early. This included selling land outright,
using it as collateral for a loan, and, in many cases, becoming a
tenant on the land as a result of debt default. In most areas, however,
even if the peasants left the land because it no longer provided a
sufficient income, there were not the changes in ownership commonly
seen later. Instead, in the early medieval period, entire families
would pack up and start wandering as mibiki, or they would
become genin. For this reason, land abandoned and left vacant was
common. It was the task of the shoen official to see that vacant land
was not left fallow for long. To that end, it was necessary to install on
the land, as quickly as possible, another transient cultivator. Under
these circumstances, it is unlikely that such land could have maintained
much property value.
In the mid to late medieval period in central Japan and other nearby
economically advanced areas there was a great change in the perceived
value of land. A bill of sale dated 1381, found in the document collection
of the Daitokuji, records that a person named Meuko of Settsu
Province sold two tan of land of the Takehisa myo in Guke District for
five kanmon to one Anshu of Naruo.47
Subsequently, Meuko paid one
koku of rice yearly as a cultivation fee (kajishi) to Anshu, and the
47 Bill of sale dated 1381, intercalary ninth month, for land referred to as Meuko, in Daitokuji
monjo, vol. 3, in Tokyo daigaku shiryohensanjo, ed., Dai Nihon komonjo iewake, vol. 17
(Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1954), pp. 328-9.
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33° THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
contract stated that in addition he was to submit the nengu directly to
the Daitokuji. In other words, Meuko sold his land to Anshu and each
year paid Anshu one koku in order to continue to cultivate the land. It
is probable that Meuko, the cultivator, even though he was bearing
both the nengu and the cultivation fee, derived some profit from this
arrangement. One koku was paid as a cultivation fee for two tan of
land; the nengu probably amounted to about the same. Even given
such a heavy tax burden, if the cultivator could be assured of productivity,
the land would have real salable property value. For Anshu, too,
the situation had definite advantages. Precisely because the land was
highly productive, he bought it for the income derived from the
kajishi. In other words, he bought it as property with value to him as
its landlord. Meuko and Anshu, then, each had rights to land with
definite property value, in contrast with the early medieval peasant
who could be brought to ruin by a combination of unstable agricultural
and economic conditions.
Therefore, as land productivity rose, its value to the peasant as
property increased commensurately. When land was sold, an economic
relationship was established between the lowly peasant cultivator
who paid the cultivation fee and the myoshu landlord who received
the fee. In the early medieval period, myoshu expanded their agricultural
operations by using collateral family members and genin. Then,
they gradually reduced the amount of land under their direct management
and became primarily landlords who exacted a fee from the
peasant cultivators. Many former relatives or genin of myoshu who had
never been independent became peasant cultivators, thereby achieving
some economic stability. By the fifteenth century, such changes in the
real value of land as property meant that shoen officials no longer had
to worry about land lying fallow.
THE REGIONAL CONSOLIDATION OF PEASANT SOCIETY
The village and peasant self-rule
Great economic and social changes took place during the medieval
period, especially during the crucial fourteenth century. The conditions
that encouraged widespread abandonment of land by peasants
were alleviated, and it became possible for the village to retain a
certain portion of wealth. Along with these developments came the
establishment of a surtax relationship between the upper and lower
strata of the peasant class. Small, weak peasants subordinated themCambridge
Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE REGIONAL CONSOLIDATION 33I
selves to powerful peasants of the myoshu class; indeed, only by placing
themselves in this position of dependence were they able to survive.
This arrangement was not without benefit to the poor peasant; it
gradually stabilized his livelihood and strengthened his ties to the
land. This social trend was national in scope, but it was particularly
pronounced in central Japan. In the 1334 case cited earlier, both
myoshu and small cultivators submitted a petition to protest the illegal
actions of the shoen official, Wakibukuro. This indicates that even
small cultivators were major, independent participants in activities
against their overlords.
In 1346, on Sugaura-no-sho on the northern shore of Lake Biwa in
Omi Province, twelve people issued a joint statement on the disposal
of local land: "Concerning the dry fields of Hisashi and Morokawa, for
a limited period of one to two years there is no objection to buying and
selling, but selling in perpetuity is forbidden. Anyone who goes
against this will cease to hold membership in the village communal
organization (so-mura)".48
At this time there was a bitter dispute between
Sugaura-no-sho and the neighboring Oura-no-sho over the jurisdiction
of Hisashi and Morokawa. The statement was issued by the
residents of Sugaura, who were most likely members of the myoshu
class and its "main residents" (honzaike), to prevent the sale of these
lands to the other shoen. According to other sources, such honzaike
generally kept two or three families of subordinate cultivators who
were "subsidiary residents" (wakizaike). The statement, however, applied
to all residents of what they referred to as the "place" (tokoro) and
threatened transgressors with expulsion from the village communal
organization (so).
The use of the terms tokoro and so should be noted here. Tokoro
means "place" but also connotes "that land" and corresponds to an old
word frequently used in Kansai region even today, zaisho. This word is
used by people of an area to indicate closeness to their land, regardless
of local politics. The use of the word tokoro in this sense came into
being only in the late medieval period. The term tokorojichi, having the
same connotation, also came into widespread use in the late medieval
period.
Tokorojichi is nearly synonymous with gojichi, which refers to situations
in which a creditor, faced with a reneging debtor, could, in
retaliation, seize the property of a person living in the same area or
48 The 1346 village okibumi (property testament) of Sugaura-no-sho can be found in Shiga
daigaku Nihon bunka kenkyujo shiryokan, ed., Sugaura monjo (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1960-7),
vol.i, no. 180, p. 67.
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332 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
district as the debtor.49
In the medieval period, even if a person were
not the cosigned guarantor on the written debt agreement, simply by
living in the same area or district, he could be required to repay the
debt. This practice clearly presupposes the communal nature of the
local unit. It was generally accepted that people in the same communal
group must bear mutual responsibility for the debts of their neighbors.
A more positive way of characterizing this late medieval communal
relationship is an expression of the local communities' close landbased
ties. The so was also the communal expression of social solidarity
of the people of an area. In the Sugaura statement, the phrase
"membership in the so" clearly refers to a social organization. The
more specific meaning of the word so here is not clear, but it most
likely refers to a regional communal organization in which all the
people of an area could take part. (The character with which so is
written can also mean "all.")
One of the day-to-day functions of the so was to solve problems of
common concern. In 1367, on the Toji's Yano-no-sho in Harima Province,
forty-six peasants jointly issued a pledge swearing by the deities
that the harvest that year had failed and therefore were requesting a
survey of damage by the proprietor in order that a reduction in, or
exemption from, the nengu could be granted. Later in 1377, the
myoshu and small cultivators staged a shden-wide uprising and denounced
the shoen officials. Concerning the uprising, one myoshu complained:
"When some tens of myoshu of the entire shoen press their
complaints and sign jointly, 'of one intent' (ichimi doshin), how could I
alone raise an objection? If I should resist the uprising, I would without
a doubt be attacked."50
As can be seen from this example, once the
so arrived at a decision by group consensus, the members were bound
by it. Anyone who went against the decision "of one intent" would not
be tolerated and would most likely be killed.
In addition to bringing action against the proprietor, the village
communal organization dealt with internal affairs. In the Nambokucho
period, for instance, in Imabori District of Omi Province, the
peasants established a communal religious organization called a miyaza
(shrine guild) for holding religious ceremonies at Imabori Hie Shrine,
the village shrine. In 1383, the group established rules governing
responsibility for a ceremony held on the fourth day of the first month
49 Katsumata Shizuo, "Kunijichi gojichi ni tsuite no kosatsu," in Sengoku-ho seiritsu shiron
(Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1979), pp. 37-60.
50 Sato Kazuhiko, "Sosho ikki no tenkai," in Nambokucho nairan shiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
shuppankai, 1979), pp. 73-124Cambridge
Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE REGIONAL CONSOLIDATION 333
each year. In 1403, it was decreed that those who did not pay guild
dues, which covered the shrine's operating expenses, would be barred
from membership. In 1448, again, a six-article regulation was handed
down. In addition to matters of a purely religious nature, general
matters of village life were also addressed. Examples of the articles
include: "Do not give lodging to travelers," and "No villager shall
perform the coming-of-age ceremony of a child brought in from the
outside with the intent of making the child a village resident." In
1489, a longer, twenty-article regulation was issued that dealt with
local matters of daily life: "Outsiders without a guarantor are not
allowed in the village"; "Keeping dogs is forbidden"; and "Adopted
children over the age of seven will not be accepted into the guild."
Many of the articles concerned the use of the so's communally owned
mountain. Taken as a whole, these regulations range broadly over the
communal affairs and daily life of the people of Imabori District and
provide a comprehensive look at village law.51
To the extent that the 50 created such regulations, as the village
communal organization it also assumed judicial powers in the event of
a transgression. Sugaura provides a case in point. Lake Biwa lay to the
south and the mountains to the north, leaving only the east and west
for access to the village. Gates that survive to this day were erected at
these points of entry, clearly defining the village's boundaries. Anyone
who disobeyed the so communal regulations and committed an illegal
act was banished outside these gates and thus effectively isolated from
the village. Under the shoen system, officials frequently banished residents
who had committed illegal acts, but in this case it was the so, not
the officials, that imposed the punishment. Sugaura's local law code of
1483 also contains a regulation stating that if a person commits an
offense and is put to death or banished, it is acceptable and tolerable if
his child is allowed to inherit his property. From this it can be surmised
that the so not only banished offenders but could even put them
to death.
The so's ability to impose sanctions on offenders was a clear sign
that the proprietor's power of jurisdiction in criminal matters had
declined and that the so had, in effect, assumed that right. In 1568, the
leaders of the Sugaura so posted a decree impeaching four so members.
In it they wrote, "Though thejitd may not enter Sugaura and we claim
jurisdiction in all criminal matters ourselves, these four have in the
51 Nakamura, ed., Imahori Hiejinja monjo.
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334 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
name of the jito behaved improperly toward the so."52
By refusing
entry to shugo, Sugaura-no-sho was exerting its right of selfjurisdiction
in criminal matters. The so usurped this important right
from the proprietor and severely limited his power. This shift in power
constituted a dramatic expansion in so self-government.
The development of so leagues
So self-rule, as a means of protecting community interests, developed
from first gaining the right of self-jurisdiction in criminal matters. As
time went on, the so increasingly took other matters into its own
hands, including such economic concerns as debt amnesties and declarations
of local cancellations of debts.53
On the Okushima and
Kitatsuda shoen on the eastern shore of Lake Biwa, such an amnesty
was granted in the eight month of 1441. A six-article decree was
issued, requiring that pawned items be returned to debtors even if
only one-tenth of the debt had been repaid. All rice and cash loans
were to be written off.54
In the same month, rebellions demanding the
cancellation of debts erupted in many villages in the Kyoto area. The
bakufu was thrust into the controversy and, in the following month,
issued a debt-abrogation decree for the entire Kyoto area. Shortly
thereafter, the bakufu issued a more comprehensive nationwide decree,
the historic Kakitsu debt abrogation.55
There was most likely a connection between the circumstances of
the uprisings of the shoen of Okushima and Kitatsuda and those leading
to the Kakitsu decree. The connection, however, should not be
overemphasized. After all, the Okushima-Kitatsuda regulations were
issued a month before the bakufu decided to issue the Kakitsu debt
amnesty. Moreover, those who signed the earlier decree were local,
powerful peasant leaders of Kitatsuda and Okushima who took the
lead in the uprising and then issued the local amnesty. Unlike internal
matters decided by the village communal organization, debt amnesties
affected entire regions within which creditors operated. There must
have been at least some communications among the groups in the area
demanding amnesty. This was certainly the case in the documents
cosigned by so leaders of both Okushima and Kitatsuda shoen. Local
52 The 1568 decree posted in the village of Sugaura can be found in Sugaura monjo, vol.2, no.
925, p. 126.
53 Seta Katsuya, "Chusei makki no zaichi tokusei," Shigaku zasshi 77 (September 1968): 1-52.
54 This debt cancellation decree is found in the archives of Oshima Okutsushima jinja.
55 Nagahara Keiji, "Kakitsu tokusei ikki no seikaku ni tsuite," in Nihon chusei shakai kozo no
kenkyu, pp. 394-425Cambridge
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THE REGIONAL CONSOLIDATION 335
representatives of the two shoen reached an agreement and put into
effect a debt amnesty applying to both. This illustrates the scope of so
self-government and how it expanded to the extent of infringing on the
proprietor's traditional sphere of authority. As this occurred more
often, the need arose for an organization - a so league - that could
deal with the peasants' social and political problems, transcending the
bounds of a single shoen to encompass a larger region.
In 1494, forty-six prominent peasants in Oyamato District of Ise Province
signed a pledge, whose gist was that "if there is a dispute among
us, we shall together come to a decision after examining all sides of the
case." This document was presented to the priest Shinsei of the
Joganji, the major temple and focal point of the district.56
In the Edo
period, Oyamato Province encompassed twelve village administrative
units. Therefore, this agreement represents the decision of several sd
organizations. The forty-six delegates were leaders of several so in
Oyamato District who formed a collegial organization that agreed to
avoid confrontation by solving problems as a group.
At the same time, another pledge containing five articles related to
communal matters of village life was signed by 350 peasants from the
entire district. The pledge contained five prohibitionary regulations
such as "there shall be no falsifying boundaries for paddies, fields,
mountains, or forests," "no taking another's right of cultivation," and
"no stealing of crops." It appears that the so leagues of Oyamato
District encouraged cooperation in order to resolve matters of common
concern. It is likely that the district's leaders who signed the first
pledge had issued a ruling to all the peasants of the area and, to make
sure they complied, had them sign the latter, five-article pledge. In
other words, in establishing self-rule throughout the district, not all
district residents participated directly and equally to draw up these
articles. Rather, a group of leaders together controlled the peasants as
a whole. In Oyamato District, there was a local debt amnesty in the
mid-sixteenth century, and a group of local elders arbitrated the matter.
It is probable that the forty-six signers of the first pledge were also
such elders.
The so leagues went beyond the single village communal organization,
and as regional alliances sprang up, the scope of the problems
they faced expanded. As a result the leagues needed leaders to take
charge of the central operations. As can be seen clearly in the Oyamato
56 Seta, "Chusei makki no zaichi tokusei."
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336 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
case, this led to distinction among the leadership group and the rest of
the peasants, as illustrated by the so of Koga District in Omi Province.
The so was made up of the Yamanaka, Minobe, and Ban. Local warriors
and small-scale village overlords, who lived in the vicinity of the
shoen belonging to the Kashiwagi Shrine. Each family formed its own
organization, called a domyo-so, or a so whose members shared the same
surname. They then formed the Kashiwagi sanboso, a three-member
league, and established a districtwide so by allying with similar local so
organizations.57
This Koga District so took charge of the communal
management of waterways for the regional irrigation of wetlands and
served a military function in defending the area and preserving peace.
There are other examples of so organizations expanding to encompass
entire provinces. An undated petition submitted by peasants of a
provincewide so in Yamato Province most likely some time in the late
fifteenth or early sixteenth century, contains a request for a debt moratorium
owing to extensive drought damage throughout the province.58
The request was directed to the Kofukuji, the great Nara temple that
held the shugo office of Yamato at the time. If their request was not
granted, the peasants threatened to stop working. The request is
signed, "respectfully submitted by the peasants of the Yamato provincial
so," but the handwriting is of a quality far superior than that of
ordinary peasants. Most likely a member of the local overlord class
organized the movement and wrote the document as representing the
entire province. The provincial so was also found in Yamashiro and Iga
provinces. The village so expanded into leagues to encompass entire
districts and provinces, the local administrative units of ancient times.
In this sense, the so came to control public matters in a given region.
From being the village's basic unit, the so expanded into leagues
and, from the fifteenth through the sixteenth centuries, grew particularly
strong in the central provinces. These organizations were led by
small-scale village overlords (jizamurai) and contained the seeds of new
hierarchical relationships.59
Nevertheless, they had a strong popular,
democratic flavor not found in the rule of the bakufu, shugo, or
sengoku daimyo. Phrases used constantly by the so, like shuchu dango
57 Ishida Yoshito, "Soteki ketsugo no shoruikei," Rekishi kyoiku 8 (August i960); Murata
Shuzo, "Chiiki masu to chiiki kenryoku," in Sh.irin 55 (1972); and Murata Shuzo, "Yosui
shihai to shoryoshu rengo," Narajoshi daigaku bungakubu kenkyu nempo, no. 16 (1973).
58 Hdryuji monjo.
59 These small-scale overlords lived in the village, and although only of peasant (hyakusho)
status, they privately dominated the village communal organization by means of their economic
and social power. Based on my research, I have found that they constituted the upper
stratum of the peasant class yet had overlord characteristics.
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THE REGIONAL CONSOLIDATION 337
(mass discussion) and ichimi shinsui (group pledge), are symbolic of the
organization's communal workings. Figuratively speaking, the so was
an original democratic institution distinctive of Japan.60
Peasant entertainment
The development of the village communal organization gave life to
peasant culture in the form of festivals and public entertainment.
Literary sources like kyogen plays provide a glimpse into peasant life in
the Muromachi period. Villagers would often meet to compare regional
varieties of tea and engage, in linked-verse (renga) parties. The
immense popularity of such village cultural recreation was characteristic
of the Muromachi period. It is interesting to note that these all were
group activities. Indeed, the collective aspect cannot be ignored.
A leading form of village entertainment was Yamato sarugaku, a
kind of drama that had already evolved to a high degree of perfection
by the Nambokuchd period. Originally a service in the religious festivals
of the Kasuga Shrine and the Kofukuji, sarugaku became a form
of peasant entertainment performed in Yamato villages. It gradually
attained great popularity and received widespread acclaim. In time,
four schools of sarugaku were established - Kongo, Konparu, Hosho,
and Kanze - and great masters like Kan'ami and Zeami emerged under
the patronage of the shogun Yoshimitsu.
The dance {kagura) troupes and other accomplished performers in
the village formed guilds (miyaza) under the protection of a village
shrine and performed in shrine festivals. Until the Sengoku period,
Hine-no-sho in Izumi Province was a major holding of the Kujo family,
one of the five regency houses. A local overlord, Kujo Masamoto,
who saw the kagura performed at the Hine Shrine festival was so
impressed by its quality that he remarked, "This entertainment by
country folk is not to be sneered at."61
Hine-no-sho was located in an
agriculturally advanced area, and each village had a so council that
enjoyed the right of self-jurisdiction. It is not surprising that an area
with well-established so would also be a center of peasant culture.
Village women of this period also took part in group activities.
Official documents offer little on the life of peasant women, but contemporary
illustrated scrolls suggest that nearly all the spring planting,
the fall threshing, and the hulling were done by women. The women
60 Nagahara Keiji, "Gekokujo to shuchu dango," in Chusei nairanki no shakai to minshu (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1977), pp. 158-88.
61 Kunaicho Shoryobu, ed., Kujo Masamotoko tabi hikizuke (Tokyo: Yotokusha, 1961).
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338 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
of villages in the Kyoto area also went out to sell vegetables, firewood,
and farm products.
Several kyogen plays in which peasant couples appear depict the
husbands as good-for-nothings who do nothing but carouse, whereas
the wives are dependable and hardworking. Evidence from central
Japan shows that lowly peasants, fearful of the ever-present possibility
of ruin, began to seek improvements and stability in their lives. As
they became more active, women also shared this ambition. The
Imabori so of Omi Province, for instance, had a wives' guild apart
from the all-male shrine guild.62
Its specific function is not clear from
the sources but was most likely in part for recreation, with the members
bringing food to religious functions and spending the whole day
at the shrine gossiping. Although these groups may seem trivial, they
represented a degree of independence for medieval peasant women not
found among the women of the strongly patriarchal warrior class.63
Ikki and religion
Ikko ikki were the base on which the so leagues were built and were
representative of peasant solidarity. Located mainly in central Japan
and the Japan Sea coast region from L:e late fifteenth through sixteenth
centuries, ikko ikki were concentrated forces of peasants and
local warriors, linked by their belief in the True Pure Land (Jodo
Shinshu) sect of Buddhism and united in their struggle against shugo
and sengoku daimyo. This religious and social movement constituted
the largest organized peasant struggle in Japanese history.64
A problem
that historians face is determining the nature of the peasants' religious
faith in the early medieval period. In regard to the new forms of
Buddhism that emerged in the thirteenth century, it is certain that
Shinran of the True Pure Land sect and Ippen of the Ji sect, a mendicant
order of Pure Land Buddhism, vigorously proselytized among
the peasants.
Around the mid-fourteenth century, just before the Onin War, these
religions were putting down roots among the peasants, and their members
were beginning their struggle against the ruling authorities by
forming ikki leagues. Rennyo, the head priest of the True Pure Land
62 Imahori Hie jinja monjo.
63 Nagahara Keiji, "Joseishi ni okeru Nambokucho Muramachi ki," in Nihon joseishi, medieval
vol. (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1982), pp. 137-71.
64 Kasahara Kazuo, Ikko ikki no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1962); and Inoue
Toshio, Ikko ikki no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1968), are representative works.
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THE REGIONAL CONSOLIDATION 339
sect, was persecuted by the Tendai monks on Mount Hiei. As a result,
he moved to adjacent Omi Province where he began to spread his
teachings. In 1471, Rennyo again moved his headquarters, this time
from Omi to Yoshizaki in Echizen Province on the Japan Sea. There
he pursued even more vigorous proselytization. The key to Rennyo's
success lay in taking over the sd organizations of the peasant villages of
Omi Province. Believers in the True Pure Land sect were organized
into groups or congregations called ko, which meshed well with the
existing so organizations. A meeting place, called a dqjo, was established
at the home of a powerful village resident, and every month the
believers assembled there to discuss their complaints against the proprietor,
in addition to religious matters. Rennyo himself said at the
time that the most important thing for the sect's survival was to have
the village elders at its center. To this end, the so was absorbed to the
extent possible without change into the ko organization. Likewise,
establishing dqjo at the homes of powerful peasants, instead of building
conventional temples, was an excellent way to organize a popular
religion.
Concentrations of True Pure Land peasant believers proliferated in
rapid succession in Echizen and Kaga provinces on the Japan Sea.
Many of these religious groups were led by members of the local
overlord class, who organized the members militarily into a true peasant
movement. Even more threatening to the ruling establishment was
the fact that when the peasants joined the religion, they believed that
by making contributions to the head temple of the sect, the Honganji,
they would be saved. This made them less willing to pay taxes to their
own proprietor or warrior overlord. For this reason, the conflict between
the shugo and the ikko ikki was particularly intense in Kaga
Province. In 1488, the ikko ikki went so far as to force the jito to
commit suicide. This incident dealt a blow to the ruling establishment,
including the Muromachi bakufu and the shugo domain system. The
ikko ikki peasant organization was held together to a great extent
through religious faith, but it also achieved impressive political gains.
In Kaga Province the ikki toppled the shugo's authority, seized power,
and created a provincewide so.
By the sixteenth century, ikko ikki were no longer limited to the
Japan Sea area but had spread to Hida, Mikawa, and other areas near
Nagoya. The movement also spread rapidly throughout central Japan
to Owari, Ise, Omi, Settsu, and Kawachi. Later, Mikawa Province
produced Tokugawa Ieyasu, who established the Tokugawa bakufu.
His father, Matsudaira Hirotada, was dealt a severe blow by the ikko
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34° THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
ikki of Mikawa. Even Oda Nobunaga, the first of the national unifiers,
was continuously harassed by the ikko ikki of Nagashima on the border
of Owari and Ise provinces; his younger brother was killed in one of
the confrontations. The aggravation of the ruling class was expressed
by Rokkaku, initially the shugo of Omi and later a sengoku daimyo,
who lamented, "The ikko ikki do not make the slightest effort to pay
taxes, and if pressed to do so, each district and village threatens to
abandon cultivation. They are thoroughly uncontrollable!"65
To the
sengoku daimyo and leaders like Nobunaga and Ieyasu, the ikko ikki
had developed into a most fearsome force.
One reason for the ikko ikki's prominence was that many mid-level
members of the warrior class - kokujin and jizamurai - became True
Pure Land adherents and played a major role in organizing the peasants.
However, a more fundamental reason was that in the ikki, religious
conviction and communal self-government (so leagues) neatly
coalesced, bestowing great power on the peasants. The emergence of
the ikki coincided with expanding village industry and commerce, and
thus the ikki could bring this economic power to bear in a sustained.
long-term manner against the shugo and daimyo authorities.
Proselytization in the True Pure Land sect was aimed not only at the
peasants but also at those with social power. In some cases, it was even
aimed at the most despised of merchants and craftsmen. One explanation
for this is that all the main bastions of ikko ikki strength Nagashima
in Ise, Saikai in Kii, and Ishiyama (Osaka) where the
Honganji was located - were situated at the mouth of a large river
where such merchants and craftsmen tended to congregate. In addition,
the areas in front of the gate of great True Pure Land temples in
central Japan were gradually built up as temple towns (jinaimachi)
whose merchants gravitated toward membership in the sect.66
The
temple towns originated from the markets held on specified days of
the month. These towns developed close economic ties with the surrounding
villages, providing a link between peasant and merchant
believers. Thus the religious ikki, in combination with the merchant
community and the so leagues, cemented the area's economic and
social solidarity.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were the most noteworthy in
Japanese peasant history. The development of village and regional selfgovernment
and ikko ikki allowed the peasants to oppose successfully
65 Rokkakushi shikimoku is a basic primary source showing the territorial control of the sengoku
daimyo Rokkaku. See CHS, vol. 3, pp. 259-76.
66 Wakita Osamu, "Jinaimachi no kozo to tenkai," Shirin 41 (1958): 1-24.
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THE SENGOKU DAIMYO AND THE PEASANTS 34I
the ruling authorities, and the ikkd ikki's collective strength played an
immense role.
THE SENGOKU DAIMYO AND THE PEASANTS
The increasing strength of the ikkd ikki posed a great threat to the
sengoku daimyo. Although ikki rebellions appeared to be occurring
haphazardly in various parts of Japan, the Honganji in fact acted as a
central headquarters, which enabled the local ikki to maintain contact
with one another and to coordinate their activities. Even Oda
Nobunaga was virtually trapped after entering Kyoto, because of the
ikki of Settsu and Omi provinces. Consequently, the sengoku daimyo
were extremely cautious in their dealings with the ikkd ikki. The
daimyo of Aki, Mori Motonari, adopted a tolerant policy toward True
Pure Land proselytizing. In fact, he extended his protection to the sect
in opposing Nobunaga. When he moved into Etchu and Noto provinces,
Uesugi Kenshin of the adjacent Echigo Province clashed with
the ikkd ikki there and continued to be tormented by them. Seeing
this, Takeda Shingen of Kai, Uesugi's rival, established contact with
the ikkd ikko of Etchu and Noto in an attempt to topple Uesugi. In the
Kanto, Hojo Ujiyasu took an extreme step and suppressed True Pure
Land proselytization in his domain.
As these examples illustrate, the sengoku daimyo adopted various
tactics in an attempt to deal with the ikkd ikki. They all were aware,
however, of the ikki's power. Although the ikkd ikki can be seen merely
as a religious group, its essence was the peasant league with its wellestablished
roots in the village communal organization. The daimyo
were aware that a well-organized peasant class brought with it the
threat of rebellion.
In order to stamp out the peasant ikki, it became necessary for the
daimyo not only to suppress the ikki militarily but also to create an
alternative institution to rule the peasants. The sengoku daimyos' policy
toward the peasants had three major components. First, to reestablish
control of the land, cadastral surveys were carried out, and a
system was set in place for the daimyos' income which included nengu,
labor service, and tansen (a daimyo impost on lands directly controlled
by the daimyo and the allotment lands of retainers). Many peasants,
disliking the higher taxes levied by the daimyo, fled to the cities or to
other domains. The daimyo sought to prevent this, both to avoid the
loss of tax revenue from the peasants and to strengthen the status
system of which the peasant was a vital part. In doing so, the daimyo
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342 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
bound the peasants to the land and restricted the peasant movement to
an extent not seen under the rule of shoen proprietors or warrior
overlords.
Second, the daimyo sought to destroy the source of leadership in the
peasant movement by including in their band of retainers the upper
stratum of the peasantry, thejizamurai. As we have already seen, these
well-to-do peasants had acquired the right to collect kajishi and, in
addition to becoming landlords or small-scale overlords, were also the
leaders of the village communal organization and, frequently, of peasant
ikki as well. The daimyo, by means of cadastral surveys and reports
submitted by the peasants, closely investigated the kajishi relationship
within the peasant class. Instead of allowing the situation to
continue, the daimyo began to look upon the kajishi as a grant to rich
peasants and required public military service of them in return. In
other words, the sengoku daimyo usurped control over this kajishi
relationship, which had hitherto been solely between rich and poor
peasants, without interference from the shoen proprietor or daimyo.
Once the sengoku daimyo seized control of the kajishi and made it an
obligatory payment, their control of land became pervasive. Upperclass
peasants became low-level retainers of the daimyo and were often
enlisted as military subordinates. Although they normally performed
only agricultural labor, in time of war, the daimyo mobilized these
peasants as warriors.
The third component of daimyo policy included using peasant labor
to build river embankment and irrigation works and to encourage
agriculture, including the opening of new paddy lands. The shoen
proprietor had been an aristocrat living in the capital who had shown
no interest in encouraging agriculture. By contrast, the sengoku
daimyo, in an attempt to promote a stable agricultural sector in his
domain, encouraged agriculture and actively mediated disputes over
water use. Such actions were tantamount to public rule by the sengoku
daimyo over the peasants' livelihood. To the peasants, the sengoku
daimyo were not simply "privileged robbers" but were rulers who
offered valuable assistance in agricultural development. The sengoku
daimyo themselves frequently referred to their rule as kogi, the highest
public authority in their territories. Their control of peasant labor and
encouragement of agriculture reinforced their authority.
The three main components of sengoku daimyo policy toward the
peasants strengthened the daimyo's control by organizing them into a
hierarchical power structure. At the same time, this policy destroyed
the so leagues by transforming upper-class peasants into low-level reCambridge
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THE SENGOKU DAIMYO AND THE PEASANTS 343
tainers of the daimyo and by encouraging agriculture, it gave the
daimyo's authority over the peasants a public aspect. By means of
various strategems, then, the daimyo gradually eliminated the threat
of the peasant ikki. Peasants became mere agricultural producers under
the daimyo's control, a trend dominant under Oda Nobunaga's
and Toyotomi Hideyoshi's regimes. With Hideyoshi's national
cadastral survey of 1582, the Taiko kenchi, the history of the medieval
peasant came to an end.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER 8
THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE IN
MEDIEVAL JAPAN
Japanese society changed in many significant ways between the midtwelfth
century when the Taira were reveling in the final decades of
their power and the close of the fifteenth century when the tenth
Ashikaga shogun Yoshiki was ignominiously forced into a long exile.
One of the most important changes was the rapid growth of commerce
which affected in myriad ways both daily lives and the course of
history.
This chapter describes and analyzes how market activities began
and grew, leading to specialization among merchants, artisans, those
engaged in transportation, and others and, as a result, raising the
efficiency of both production and distribution. This chapter will pay
special attention to the emergence and growth of several important
economic institutions such as markets and guilds; the rise of Kyoto as
the center of medieval commerce; the appearance of cities, port towns,
and other urban centers and the increase in both their number and
size; and other consequences of market activity and monetization that
caused political and economic conflict between recipients and payers
of dues and between lenders and borrowers.1
THE INITIAL CONDITIONS
This section discusses (i) the extent and nature of market activities
during the late Heian and early Kamakura periods in agricultural
communities; (2) such activities in the "capital trade region" of Kyoto,
Nara, and several smaller satellite cities and port towns; (3) the emergence
of guildlike institutions called za during the eleventh and
twelfth centuries; (4) the growth of cities and port towns, in both their
1 Because the subject of this chapter is a large one on which numerous works already exist in
Japanese, not all of the important topics can be discussed as fully as desirable, and some
significant developments will receive only passing attention. Readers wishing to pursue a
specific topic or an analysis of a specific development are advised to consult the sources cited in
the following footnotes. Note also that this chapter is written assuming that readers are
familiar with the history of the period that it discusses.
344
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THE INITIAL CONDITIONS 345
physical dimensions and the institutional capabilities necessary for the
growth of commerce; and (5) the increasing inflow and use of coins
from China before the end of the twelfth century, presaging the significant
effects monetization had on medieval Japan's economy.
The agricultural communities
Even as late as the early decades of the thirteenth century, most cultivators
continued to live on what they planted and could obtain from
nearby mountains, forests, and waters. But compared with their ancestors
in the preceding century, cultivators were now acquiring more
nonagricultural goods, such as pottery, agricultural implements and
household items made of iron (hoes, pots and pans, and the like), and
some wooden products (such as kegs, bowls, and tubs). These goods
required skills to produce, and cultivators bartered for them with rice,
cloth, local products, and possibly even their own services. Coins were
not unfamiliar, but in agricultural communities they were still scarce
and little used in daily life.2
Who provided these nonagricultural products to the cultivators?
The answer, deduced from documents written for and by government
officials or by the elites who were receiving dues from the shoen, is that
three principal groups of artisans and traders provided nonagricultural
goods and services in agricultural communities on "public land"
{kokugaryo) and in the shoen.
Perhaps the most important of these three groups were the artisans
who produced specialized products in exchange for stipendiary
paddies from the provincial governors of the kokugaryo. We know,
for example, that as late as 1255 the governor of Iyo Province was
2 No scholarly monograph has been written by a Western scholar on the growth of commerce or
the economy of medieval Japan. However, we have in English several textbooks and a dozen
research monographs on political and institutional aspects of the period that contain informative
descriptions and discussions of various aspects of the growth of commerce. Among the
textbooks, those most useful for readers interested in the subject of this chapter are by John
Whitney Hall, Japan from Prehistory to Modem Times (New York: Dell, 1970); Edwin O.
Reischauer and Albert M. Craig, Japan: Tradition and Transformation (New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 1973); and George Sansom, A History ofJapan, 1334-161 s (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1961). Also containing several essays valuable as background to the topics
discussed in this chapter is the book by John Whitney Hall and Takeshi Toyoda, eds.,Japan in
the Muromachi Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). For
research monographs, readers are referred to the Introduction to this volume.
There are many important or useful books and scholarly articles in Japanese on several
aspects of the growth of commerce during the medieval period. The most important among
them are referred to in the footnotes of this chapter. Those readers wishing to obtain a more
comprehensive bibliography of the Japanese works on the growth of commerce and economy
in the medieval period are referred to my articles cited in footnotes 14, 21, 32, and 98 which
present full citations of nearly two hundred Japanese works.
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346 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
providing stipendiary paddies to artisans, including several weavers,
a plasterer, a dyer, a singing puppeteer, a few carpenters, and a
dozen artisans making leather, paper, saddles, umbrellas, pottery,
and copper products. The amounts of the stipendiary paddies given
to these artisans were very large by the standard of the period.
Whereas many cultivators would have considered themselves fortunate
to work half a cho, the weavers jointly received as much as 25
cho; carpenters and their assistants together were given 5 cho; and
the stipendiary paddies of the rest of the artisans ranged from 3 tan
to 4.5 cho, with most receiving 1 to 2 cho. All told, the governor
was providing a total of 52 cho to these artisans for their specialized
products and services.
On the strength of this evidence and similar documents found for
Wakasa and Tango provinces, which show that they respectively gave
about forty cho and slightly more than thirty-four cho to their provincial
artisans, Sasakai Ginya speculates that most provincial governors
must also have allocated paddies to their artisans in amounts roughly
proportional to the size of each province. We have no mscns to establish
exactly when such paddies began tc be provided or whether the
artisans actively engaged in their cultivation. Because it is known that
artisans traveled throughout the province, or even to other provinces,
offering their services and products, it is likely that their paddies were
worked by local cultivators.3
The fact that these artisans traveled suggests that during the twelfth
century, if not earlier, they produced more specialized products than
the provincial governor required. That is, the artisans were allowed to
trade a part of what they produced to cultivators in exchange for
agricultural products, shelter, or labor.
Artisans and others given stipendiary paddies by the shokan (the
shoen administrator) or the jito were a second source of specialized
products and services. In this case too, we have only a few documents
concerning these artisans, and all are for shoen belonging to temples.
However, according to documents regarding the Todaiji's Niimi-nosho
in Bitchu Province, in 1271 a jito administering half the shoen
provided stipendiary paddies ranging in amounts from one to eight
tan, amounts far smaller than those given to artisans by provincial
governors. The recipients of these paddies included a smith, a
founder, carpenters, persons engaged in shipping, and others who
3 Sasaki Ginya, Chusei shohin ryutsushi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Hosei daigaku shuppankyoku, 1972),
pp. 146-58.
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THE INITIAL CONDITIONS 347
provided "miscellaneous services from morning to night." These documents
show that the artisans' paddies constituted only between 3.6
and 26.5 percent of the total amount of paddy that each was then
cultivating. Records relating to other shoen provide similar evidence.
The mix of artisans receiving stipendiary paddies differed slightly in
each shoen - a few had potters, dyers, and other artisans, but no shippers
or founders.4
Clearly, only a few paddies were offered, because these artisans were
primarily cultivators who produced their specialized products and provided
their skilled services on a part-time basis and only for the benefit
of the jito, the shokan, and the shoen proprietor. Here, too, we can
assume that the cultivators, in exchange for their goods and services,
obtained the products and services of these specialists.
The last group of artisan-traders were those known to travel long
distances. Some undoubtedly were still receiving or had received stipendiary
paddies from a province, but clearly many were not. All the
artisans receiving paddies and/or under the protection of the court,
nobles, or temples were skilled and gradually became more independent
of this protection. This meant that these highly skilled smiths,
founders, sword makers, and many others had both the need and the
freedom to sell their products, which were likely to be superior in
quality to those offered by the local artisans.5
Among these traveling merchants, some of those who changed the
cultivators' lives were the peddlers of pots, pans, needles, hoes, plows,
knives, sesame oil, various household items made by the skilled carpenters
and potters, and other goods. Many of them were skilled
producer-merchants from the capital region who, during the twelfth
century, traveled to more and more distant provinces.6
Some of them
undoubtedly had been under the protection of the court, nobles, and
temples. Although no direct evidence exists, it is most likely that
many of these merchants traded their goods for cash in and around the
capital during the twelfth century and the early decades of the thirteenth
century.
In regard to the period before the second half of the thirteenth
4 Ibid., pp. 155-6. Also see Sasaki Ginya, "Sangyo no bunka to chusei shogyo," in Nagahara
Keiji, ed., Chusei: Nihon keizaishi laikei, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1965), pp.
145-50.
5 Toyoda Takeshi and Kodama Kota, Ryutsushi (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1969), pp. 46-
54-
6 Ibid., pp. 47-54; and Ishii Susumu, Kamakura bakufu, vol. 7 of Nihon no rekishi (Tokyo: Chuo
kdronsha, 1971), pp. 459-72.
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348 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
century - for which there are more historical sources concerning commercial
activities in agricultural communities - we have only limited
information about the means by which the cultivators obtained specialized
products. Cultivators, artisans, and merchants left little record of
their daily lives.
The capital trade region
In and around the capital, some goods and services were traded during
the Heian period, and trade is known to have increased steadily during
the twelfth century. Even for this region, much of our knowledge of
commercial activities is restricted to those of court members, highranking
nobles, and monks of major temples - the authors of most of
the medieval documents. Although we can obtain various important
facts from these documents concerning some groups of artisans and
merchants, they tell us little about the nature and extent of market
activities. We know even less about the economic lives of the warriors
and the many other residents of the region. What follows therefore is a
summary of what the documents and the fragmentary evidence tell us
about the late Heian and early Kamakura periods.
The elites living in and around the capital - the members of the
court, the nobles, and the monks - obtained their food and other daily
necessities from shoen dues paid in kind; from those artisans, fishermen,
and others under their protection; and from the markets offering
an increasing variety of goods. Though the proportion of daily necessities
obtained from the market must have risen slowly over time, there
is little doubt that many of the elites' needs were met by the shoen.
For example, we learn from the records of the Todaiji, a major
temple in Nara, that as late as 1250 it was receiving many goods from
Oyama-no-sho in Tamba, one of the many shoen belonging to the
temple. The dues consisted of 142.4 koku of rice; 10 koku of barley;
varying quantities of several kinds of paper, cloth, nuts, fruits, and
vegetables; carefully specified quantities of roasted barley, rice cakes,
dried persimmons, mushrooms, sesame oil, hemp, Japanese lacquer,
dried bracken, yams, burdock, horsetails, wooden buckets and ladles,
straw mats, firewood, and thread; and half a dozen other items.7
Although such a detailed record is not available for other shoen of the
Todaiji, there is no doubt that the temple obtained various combina-
7 Oyama Kyohei, Kamakura bakufu, vol. 9 oiNihon no rekishi (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1974), pp.
214-16.
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THE INITIAL CONDITIONS 349
tions of the goods it required from all of its shoen, adjusting the dues
from each in regard to the climate and other limitations, as well as the
distance of each shoen from Nara. The existing documents show that
shoen far from the temple paid a large part of their dues with more
readily transportable and nonperishable items such as rice and cloth,
and a shoen on the Inland Sea even paid all of its dues in salt.8
The Daigoji, another large temple in Nara, not only varied the dues
according to each shoen's distance from Nara and its climatic limitations
but also rotated by month and year which shoen, among those
located near Nara, was to supply the temple with vegetables, other
perishable products, and the labor services required for various ceremonial
occasions. The products supplied to the temple from its shoen,
scattered around the capital and to the north in the Hokuriku region,
included sake, seaweed, earthenware, straw mats, charcoal, lumber,
straw, hay, and several other items.9
Most of the records for shoen held by the emperor and nobles are
less informative. However, an unusually detailed record concerning
some of the seventy-six shoen belonging to the Chokodo - a temple
built by the cloistered emperor Goshirakawa - reveals that the dues
included such items as oxen, silk, and cotton batting, in addition to
vegetables, rice, and many of the goods listed in the preceding examples.
In this case, too, the mix of dues varied according to distance and
presumably the ability of each shoen to produce various products.10
These and other examples show that even in the mid-thirteenth
century, the elite were still obtaining most of their daily necessities
from their shoen. This, however, did not mean that markets were not
becoming more important. In fact, the evidence indicates that these
markets gradually developed from sometime in the eleventh century to
satisfy the needs of lesser nobles, warriors, and various commoners
residing in the capital region.
One group of producer-merchants who began to sell goods in the
market were kugonin, persons supplying the court with such daily
necessities as fish, vegetables, fruit, charcoal, straw mats, and the like
in exchange for exemption from taxes and corvee. Even after they had
begun to sell some of their products in the market sometime in the late
Heian period, they continued to provide their products to the court."
8 Nagahara Keiji, "Shoen ryoshu keizai no kozo," in Nagahara, ed., Chusei, pp. 57-70.
9 Ibid., pp. 75-80. Also see Sasaki, "Sangyo no bunka to chusei shogyo" in Nagahara, ed.,
Chusei, pp. 151-2.
10 Nagahara, "Shoen ryoshu keizai no kozo," in Nagahara, ed., Chusei, pp. 60-63.
11 Wakita Haruko, Nihon chusei shogyo hallatsushi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1969),
pp. 112-22; and Toyoda and Kodama, Ryutsushi, pp. 78-79.
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350 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
Another group of producer-merchants who used the market were
those former part-time cultivators who had supplied, in exchange for
reduced shoen dues and corvee, specific goods to the elite of the capital
region. These producer-merchants were allowed to sell their goods in
the market as long as they continued to supply goods to the elite. As
these part-time suppliers of daily necessities began to sell more of their
products in the market, they eventually became full-time producermerchants
permitted to provide the nobles and temples with the products
they produced in order to compensate for the dues (often rice) and
corvee that they no longer paid.
There was yet another group of persons who sold goods in the
capital region. These were the fisherman and cultivators of the region
who, while remaining primarily fishermen and cultivators, came to
Kyoto, Nara, and other satellite towns to sell their goods. Although we
learn more about the activities of these part-time merchants as they
begin to play a more important role in the region's commerce after the
mid-thirteenth century, all we know of them until then is that they
were one of the groups of producer-merchants who came to trade their
products in the region.12
To summarize, the elites living in the capital region were obtaining,
even in the mid-thirteenth century, most of their daily necessities from
the shoen located in and around the capital region. However, shoen
dues and what was supplied by the kugonin and others as a part of the
dues were not the only source of many of the goods that these elites
consumed. As the kugonin and others, including nearby fishermen and
cultivators, began to sell their goods in the markets, the elites could
acquire more goods more easily to supplement what they were receiving
from the shoen, the kugonin, and others.
Little is known of how warriors and commoners in the capital region
obtained their daily necessities. But we can surmise, from what
we have just observed, that they too acquired a significant and increasing
portion of these goods from the markets, where more and more
goods were being sold in response to the residents' growing demands.
However, as with the elites, an increasing number of warriors residing
in the capital region also undoubtedly obtained many items from
shoen, the portion of output they were entitled to as shugo or jito. It is
also quite likely that some warriors living or staying for a limited time
in and around the capital must also have received dues in kind from
cultivators working their lands located some distance from the capital.
12 Wakita, Nihon chusei shdgyd, pp. 116-20.
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THE INITIAL CONDITIONS 351
These dues in kind from distant landholdings must have consisted of
rice, cloth, and other products that could be readily transported to
Kyoto and exchanged in the market for numerous goods that the
warriors consumed daily. We can be reasonably certain that by the
early decades of the thirteenth century, warriors - and elites - in the
capital region used cash more frequently than they had in the late
twelfth century.13
The artisans under the protection of elites obtained their daily
necessities in the form of in-kind payments from elites and by using
their products to barter among themselves or with cultivators in the
region. Beginning in the early thirteenth century, they may have
received some cash from the elites and others through their market
transactions, and they may have used money to buy the goods they
consumed.
In contrast with the market activities, which were growing only
slowly, trading in specialized products grew more visibly throughout
the twelfth century. By the early decades of the thirteenth century,
elites in the capital region could acquire many specialized products
from artisans and merchants. The reason was that market activities
expanded steadily in the twelfth century as artisans and others who
had been providing their products and services exclusively to the elites
began to sell more of their products and services in the capital region
and even in the surrounding provinces. And a growing number of
commoners were becoming, albeit slowly, consumers of these products
and services.
The emergence of the za
The producer-merchants of these specialized products, who first appeared
in the capital region far ahead of those who later appeared in
the agricultural communities, were also the first to give birth to the
za, a counterpart to the European medieval guild, which played an
increasingly important role in the growth of commerce in medieval
Japan.'4
The origins of the capital region's producer-merchants can be
traced to the groups of artisans and others who, sometime during the
13 Takenaka Yasukazu and Kawakami Tadashi, Nihon shogydshi (Tokyo: Minerva shobo, 1965),
pp. 42-43; and Oyama, Kamakura bakufu, p. 378.
14 Because the za has long been studied by many Japanese specialists, there are numerous works
on the subject. See Kozo Yamamura, "The Development of Za in Medieval Japan," Business
History Review 47 (Winter 1973): 438-65, and the works cited in this article.
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352 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
eleventh century, had begun to be "protected" by the most powerful
elites. The protection of artisans began because the weakened central
government had become unable to provide the desired goods and
services to the elites. This protection may also have been offered
because the elites, whose political and economic powers had been
increasing at the expense of the government, had the power to protect
or exempt artisans and others from government taxes and could
supply them with food, shelter, and even cash payments. The elites
holding high positions in government were able to "privatize" groups
of artisans so that both patrons and artisans could benefit at the
expense of the government.
Such actions by the powerful elites are exemplified in the wellknown
case of the sekkanke, the several collateral lines of the highestranked
nobles. Sometime during the eleventh century they created,
for their respective lines, workshops and offices that oversaw the activities
of artisans who had previously provided specialized services to the
government. The workshops were for smiths, founders, and other
artisans who worked with metals; carpenters, several groups of weavers
and those who made silk, cloth, thread, and the like; makers of
Buddhist statues and other goods used in religious services; scroll
makers and painters; papermakers; dye makers and dyers; and several
other groups of artisans. Offices were established to oversee porters
and litter bearers, cooks, those who tended horses and orchards, those
responsible for acquiring fish and other food products (perhaps those
not directly obtained from shoen dues), cleaners and sweepers, and the
like.15
Though few records remain for other high-ranked and well-off
nobles, we know that they too created such workshops and offices fewer
in number and smaller in scale than those of the sekkanke - to
meet their needs.
By the twelfth century, the elites had much less need to rely on their
"protected" artisans. One reason for this was that more of the protected
artisans began to produce more goods for sale in the market in
addition to those supplied to their protectors. Recent studies by Japanese
scholars show that as early as the mid-eleventh century such
artisans as papermakers, weavers, scroll painters, smiths, founders,
and several other highly skilled specialists who had been protected by
the government and the highest-ranked nobles began to produce their
products "privately" and to sell them in the market.16
The other rea-
15 Wakita, Nihon chusei shogyd, pp. 199-234, contains an excellent description of the za's
origins. 16 Ibid., pp. 204-5.
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THE INITIAL CONDITIONS 353
son was that an increasing number of other artisans in and around the
region began to produce for the markets. Though the origins of these
artisans remain obscure, many had probably produced their products
in exchange for the stipendiary paddies given to them by temples and
shoen administrators.
As soon as these artisans began to sell their goods in the markets, za
began to appear under the protection of the court, high-ranking nobles,
and temples, because such protection benefited both the patrons
and the producer-merchants. The protection consisted of using the
patrons' political and religious power to reduce or eliminate the competition
that each za might face and to enable the za merchants to engage
in their market activities in the region, and even in nearby provinces,
with a minimum of hindrance (such as the levying of various taxes in
kind or in cash by the government, provincial governors or other
nobles, and temples). This meant that the za enabled merchants to
enjoy substantial monopolistic or monopsonistic power that could increase
their income and ability to engage more freely in market activities
in the capital region and nearby provinces. The benefit to the
patrons was that they could share in the za's economic gains, by
continuing to receive the goods they required from the za. The patrons
also could demand more goods as the za's profits rose.17
Although the historical evidence does not indicate a precise date
when the first za emerged, it seems certain that they began to appear
during the last decades of the eleventh century and throughout the
twelfth, initially in and near the capital and then elsewhere. The
oldest-known description of a za occurs in a petition requesting a
reduction in woodcutting dues, written in 1092.l8
According to this
source and others dated later, woodcutters belonging to the Seiren-in
temple voluntarily formed a group that was allowed to sell firewood in
the capital in exchange for providing litter-bearing services to the
temple. This group, the Yatsusesato-za, apparently had been formed
to increase the income of its members, by selling firewood in Kyoto.
Further, the presumably exclusive privilege of doing so was granted by
the temple, which then received litter-bearing services in addition to
17 Japanese specialists discussing the za do not consider the gains that the consumers of the
products sold by the za might have realized. However, it is important to note that the za, not
being literal monopolists who could price their products at will (as if facing a totally inelastic
demand), would in most cases have increased output and caused the price to fall. Thus, to ihe
extent that this occurred, the consumer would have gained what economists call "consumers'
surplus"; that is, consumers could have obtained a product at prices below those that they
would have been willing to pay.
18 For the original document relating to this za, see Yamamura, "The Development of Za," p.
441.
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354 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
the woodcutters' usual work (i.e., cutting wood and supplying firewood
in lieu of shoen dues).
There is no doubt that several za, similar in origins and functions to
the one just described, existed by this period. Two za, one for selling
charcoal and the other for selling needles, were authorized by the
Shirakawa-in before 1095. The first record of a za belonging to the
Todaiji is dated 1097; this was a za for the temple's woodcutters.
There is mention of a za for lamp oil in Kyoto and another in Kyushu,
but the records are too sketchy to establish much more than their
existence. Documents from the mid-eleventh century also state that
some groups of sanjo residents "ceased to pay shoen dues" and "entered
into the protection of the powerful." The sanjo, which grew in number
throughout the Heian period, reflecting the growth of shoen, literally
meant "scattered places" in regard to the honjo, the "main place"
where the shoen administrators resided. The sanjo referred to the residences
of those persons providing the shoen, often on a part-time basis,
with various nonagricultural products and specialized services. Because
of the tasks that these persons at the sanjo performed, sanjo were
usually located at local nodes of transportation, and they grew in
number, first in and around the capital and then in Kinai and elsewhere.
We cannot be certain whether de facto za were created betwee::
the sanjo residents and "the powerful" who protected them. However,
it appears that the protection was quite similar to that of the producermerchants
of the capital region.19
The most important fact for this chapter, however, is that the number
of za grew during the twelfth century. A document written in 1127
indicates that two lamp-oil za - one belonging to the Daigo temple in
Kyoto and the other sanctioned by a branch shrine of the Hachimangu
in Kyushu - functioned as bona fide za. The evidence indicates that
miyaza (za formed by those providing services to shrines) and some
groups in the sanjo formed za during the twelfth century.
The powerful temples and court nobles also sanctioned more za as
the twelfth century progressed. For example, a large temple, the
Gionsha, had cotton batting, cloth, lumber, and tangerine za by 1185.
The total number of za at the end of the century cannot be established
precisely, but a reasonable estimate would- be a few dozen. In any
event, by the end of the twelfth century the za had developed to the
point that an entry in a court noble's diary referred to a demand made
by a rush-mat za of Yamato that competitors be restrained. In addi-
19 Japanese specialists also often refer to the residents of the sanjo as sanjo, as well.
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THE INITIAL CONDITIONS 355
tion, in 1195 the members of a za of mercury sellers in Ise petitioned
that competition by "many" outsiders be restricted.20
To understand the historical setting in which the za emerged and
grew in number during these centuries, we should note that two
closely related and historically significant changes - one political and
the other economic - were taking place between the mid-eleventh century
and the end of the thirteenth century. The political change consisted
of the gradual rise of the warrior aristocracy, which gained
sufficient strength to form the Kamakura bakufu in 1185. The rise of
the warriors was accomplished at the expense of the central government
and of those court nobles and temples whose political power was
derived from the legitimating authority of the throne.
The economic change resulted mainly from a slow but steady rise
in agricultural productivity and was spurred by the growing number
of myoden (paddies registered in the name of the head of a patriarchally
organized group of cultivators, or myoshu, within a shoen), a
significant step toward increasing the rights of cultivators in specific
strips of paddies.21
The myoshu, who could share more effectively in
any increases in output, had additional incentives to raise productivity.
They therefore began to hasten the process of improving seeds,
irrigation, and agricultural management. Double cropping began to
be practiced during the early Kamakura period. These developments,
in turn, helped augment the economic power of the warrior
class, as many of them were also myoshu or myoshu-turned-warriors.
Many were also shoen administrators and thus were in positions to
share in the increasing agricultural output at the expense of the shoen
owners in Kyoto. Thus, what both enabled and motivated these
warriors to join forces to establish the Kamakura bakufu was an
increase in their economic power and the desire to legitimate their
hold on that power.
During the early stage of these changes, that is, during the latter
half of the eleventh and most of the twelfth century, most of the shoen
belonging to court nobles and temples remained basically secure. The
challenge to the shoen proprietorship by local military powers had
begun, but it did not yet seriously threaten the existence of the shoen
or the economic well-being of the shoen owners. Increases in productiv-
20 The diary referred to is Sanchoki by Sanjo Nagakane. See Yamamura, "The Development of
Za," p. 442.
21 On the rise of agricultural productivity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and for further
discussion of the myoden as an important institutional development contributing to the
growth of productivity, see Kozo Yamamura, "Tara in Transition: A Study of a Kamakura
Shoen,"Journal ofJapanese Studies 7 (Summer 1981): 349-91.
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356 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
ity also proceeded slowly, and a marketable surplus was just beginning
to appear.
However, these political and economic changes were sufficient to
enable the court nobles and the temples to recognize the emerging
trend: a decline in their political power and thus a decline in their tax
revenues. At the same time, in the economically most advanced capital
region, some producers began to see that they could earn larger incomes
if they specialized in the production of certain goods and limited
their competition. The za thus emerged as an institutional means
by which to raise the income of the producers and to compensate for
the falling income of the patrons.
Cities, ports, and markets
To encourage market activities in the capital trade region, the number
of marketplaces in Kyoto rose, and various economic activities in the
several satellite towns and ports increased. In Kyoto, the east market
of the Heian period, located in the eastern half of the city (the Sakyo),
became the principal marketplace. That is, a larger number of artisans
and traders came to trade in the Sakyo, especially on Sanjo, Shichijo,
and Hachijo, the major east-west avenues enjoying easy access to major
thoroughfares to other parts of the region and located close to the
warrior residences to the south. The Sakyo was also more conveniently
situated for several important and economically active temples on the
eastern edge of the city that had long held small markets, the
monzenmachi (literally, "markets in front of the temple gates").22
What we know of the economic activities of Nara, the city of temples,
is limited to the fact that it was a city consisting principally of the
monzenmachi of two powerful temples: the Todaiji and the Kofukuji.23
Although there are few medieval documents referring to port towns,
we know that many of them - such as Katsura and Toba adjacent to
the capital; Yodo and Kizu on the Yodo River; Imazu, Otsu, and
Sakamoto on Lake Biwa; and Hyogo on the Seto Inland Sea - played
important roles in the economic activities of the capital trade region
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These were centers for
transshipping government taxes and shoen dues to the capital and for
some market activities.
22 A good discussion of medieval cities can be found in Wakita Haruko, Nihon chusei toshiron
(Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1981).
23 Takenaka and Kawakami, Nihon shogyoshi, p. 25; and Endo Moto, Nihon chusei toshiron
(Tokyo: Hakuyosha, 1940), pp. 108-9.
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THE INITIAL CONDITIONS 357
Many port towns were also important because it was there that elites
had their own toi who engaged in shipping and even perhaps in some
trading on their behalf in exchange for stipendiary paddies or stipends
in kind.24
These toi were the precursors of the toimaru (shippers who
also engaged in other activities), who will be discussed later in this
chapter. Although supporting evidence is even more scarce, there is
little doubt that market and other economic activities steadily increased
in the cities outside the capital trade region during the late
Heian and early Kamakura periods. The most important of such cities
was Kamakura, which grew rapidly after it became the seat of the
newly established bakufu. Yoritomo and his retainers in Kamakura
received most of the dues from the paddies of the nine surrounding
provinces, and combined with the fact that Kamakura was blessed
with an excellent harbor, commerce in that city could not but
expand - as did the population - to serve the warriors' needs. Although
we have no details, we do know that seven (or nine, depending
on the source) "marketplaces" were authorized by the bakufu by the
beginning of the thirteenth century to facilitate the expanding market
activities. Several za had already appeared, though little is known of
their origins and activities.25
Coins must also have become an increasingly
prevalent medium of exchange in commercial transactions
among the merchants and warriors in Kamakura.
We should not underestimate the extent of commercial activities in
Kamakura by the early decades of the thirteenth century. After all,
this was a city in which the bakufu had to destroy as many as 32,274
sake jars when it temporarily prohibited the sale of sake in 1252. We
also know that Kamakura's population had grown so rapidly that the
city had to be subdivided into ho, as was Kyoto, beginning in 1240 and
that an earthquake in 1293 was reported to have killed 23,024 of its
inhabitants.26
Throughout the twelfth century and into the early decades of the
thirteenth, virtually all other important cities outside the capital region
were also port cities having access to shipping services. Some
became points of transshipping for the provincial taxes and shoen dues
headed to the capital region. Given that the principal means of transportation,
especially for agricultural products, was by water, many
cities became both important ports and centers of commerce, includ-
24 Even today, the best discussion on toimaru is still Toyoda Takeshi's Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no
kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1952), pp. 194-263.
25 Ishii, Kamakura bakufu, pp. 472-86. 26 Ibid., p. 474.
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358 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
ing Hakata, Hakozaki, Urado, and a few others in Kyushu and Akamazeki
(Shimonoseki), and Yamasaki, Onomichi, Wakasa, Naoetsu, and
a dozen others in western to northern Honshu. There must have been,
as well, other smaller nodes of transportation, including provincial
capitals in which commercial activities were increasing, but no reliable
records for them exist.27
Finally, it is known that following the establishment of the Kamakura
bakufu, nearly thirty shukuba - towns that grew up around
inns for travelers - developed on the Tokaido, the main route for
those making the two-week journey between Kyoto and Kamakura.
Although the increased traffic on the Tokaido diminished travel on the
Sanyodo (the route connecting Kyoto and Hakato), the latter route too
is known to have had fifteen to twenty shukuba.2
*
Sung coins and trade with China
Throughout the late Heian and early Kamakura periods, trade with
the continent - Sung and Southern Sung - continued, and two results
of this trade are especially significant in the context of this chapter.
One was that trade with China offered elites many products unobtainable
in Japan; the other was that the trade brought in a large quantity
of Sung coins. The latter was by far more important because it led to
the monetization of the Japanese economy, which in turn had profound
effects on the political, economic, and social history of Japan
during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods.
By the late Heian period, the power of the Dazaifu to control trade
with the continent had diminished, reflecting the weakened government
in the capital. Thus, the trade, conducted primarily through
ports in northern Kyushu, was mostly private trade carried on by
elites for their own economic gains. After the Kamakura bakufu was
established, private trade continued because Yoritomo chose not to
impose restrictions on it. During this period, as well as into the second
half of the Kamakura period, Japan exported gold, pearls, mercury,
sulfur, scrolls, folding screens, fans, and other craft products and
imported several kinds of luxury cloth; numerous varieties of incense
and fragrances; writing materials (brushes, ink sticks, and ink stones);
various art objects and decorative furnishings made of ivory, gold,
27 Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu, pp. 226-38.
28 Ishii, Kamakura bakufu, p. 459.
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THE INITIAL CONDITIONS 359
silver, and precious stones; Buddhist writings of many kinds; and a
large number of Sung coins.29
Although there are no reliable data on the quantity of coins imported
through private trade, there is no doubt that the amount was
extremely large - large enough to cause Sung China to issue, in 1199,
an unsuccessful decree to prohibit the export of its coins to Japan. It is
also known that Saionji Kintsune, a high-ranking noble, imported as
many as 100,000 kan of Sung coins in 1242, an amount equivalent in
that period to the cost of building the complex of a dozen or so
buildings needed to establish a major Buddhist temple.30
The effects of the continuing inflow of coins in such magnitudes
were felt throughout the twelfth century and even more so in the early
decades of the thirteenth. This is perhaps best illustrated by the fact
that a series of decrees prohibiting the use of coins was issued by the
court in 1179, 1187, 1189, and 1192. The futility of these decrees is
evident in that although the first two prohibited the use of imported
coins, the second two attempted only to limit their use in marketplaces
in the capital.31
The reasons stated for the prohibition included such
inconsistent facts as that imported coins were no more legal than the
prohibited, privately minted coins and that the use of coins caused
undesirable price fluctuations. However, the real reason must have
been that the large inflow of coins was causing both inflation, an
unwelcome development for the elites who had to buy more and more
goods and services in the markets, and a drop in the relative value of
the coins that the elites received when selling a part of the shorn dues
paid in kind, thus reducing the real income of the court and the
elites.32
However, such official reactions began to change in the beginning of
the thirteenth century. As the inflow of Chinese coins continued to
increase, the use of money - the "money sickness" as contemporaries
called it - spread rapidly. Nobles, and later the bakufu, had no choice
but to come to terms with the fact that coins were far more convenient
than was bartering or using cloth or rice as a medium of exchange.
29 Oyama, Kamakura bakufu, pp. 370-81, describes the trade with Sung China and the effects
of a large inflow of Sung coins. 30 Ibid., pp. 379-80. 31 Ibid., p. 379.
32 Of course, an empirical verification is required to establish the observation made in the text.
However, given the quantity of Sung coins then flowing into Japan, there is little doubt that
inflation was occurring during this period. See Kozo Yamamura and Tetsuo Kamiki, "Silver
Mines and Sung Coins: A Monetary History of Medieval and Modern Japan in International
Perspective," in J. F. Richards, ed., Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modem
Worlds (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1983), pp. 329-62.
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360 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
Thus, the court declared in 1226 that exchange using coins was to be
encouraged in preference to that using cloth. And by 1240, the use of
coins was prohibited by the bakufu only in the northernmost Ou
region, effectively conceding to the use of coins in all other parts of the
nation.33
Simply put, as trade - commercial activities - grew, this convenient
medium became a necessity.
Foreseeing the various difficulties to arise as a result of the economy's
continuing monetization, in 1239 the bakufu was forced to issue
a decree prohibiting the appointment of monks, merchants, and moneylenders
to the position of deputy jito (jito-dai). Some in the warrior
class had begun to appoint these men to collect dues directly from the
shoen so that those who had lent money against the warriors' land
could be repaid. To prevent such a development, the bakufu in 1240
admonished its retainers living in Kyoto not to indulge in luxury
beyond their means.34
These developments, however, were only the
harbinger of the much more serious consequences of monetization.
ACCELERATION OF COMMERCE AND MONETIZATION
From the mid-thirteenth century, the pace of commercial activities
accelerated first in the large cities and then in the provinces. In and
around the capital and in a few larger cities, including Kamakura,
the number of shops selling specialized products and daily necessities
rose; an increasing number of merchants and artisans selling specialized
products frequented the cities from nearby towns and villages as
well as from distant provinces; and the za steadily grew in number.
More markets appeared in ports, towns, and at other nodes of transportation
in most parts of the nation, and as a result, cultivators too
were able to participate in commerce. Although the cultivators' participation
was limited during the second half of the Kamakura period,
there can be no doubt that their economic lives were changing
fundamentally as their visits to local markets grew more frequent and
they traded more goods at these markets. And to facilitate the expanding
trade between the largest cities and the provinces, transportation
capabilities, over both land and water, improved, thereby increasing
the number of teamsters, porters, and other specialists engaged in
shipping.
A no less visible and significant change that accompanied these
33 Oyama, Kamakura bakufu, p. 379; and Takenaka and Kawakami, Nikon shogyoshi, p. 42.
34 Takenaka and Kawakami, Nikon shogyoshi, pp. 42-43.
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ACCELERATION OF COMMERCE 361
commercial activities was the continuing monetization of the economy,
which spread from cities to villages with profound effects. The use of
coins made trading much more efficient: When coins were used as a
medium of exchange, the relative values of goods could be established
more readily, and the desired mix of what one consumed could be
obtained far more easily than through bartering. In short, what economists
call transaction costs were significantly reduced. Another effect
was the rapid spread of commutation (payment of dues in cash), enabling
the cultivators to plant more efficient mixes of grains, vegetables,
and other cash crops. No longer forced to plant specific mixes of
products in order to pay their dues, cultivators could make better use
of their resources. Another effect common to all monetized economies
was the emergence of borrowers and lenders of money, forcing the
bakufu to adopt policies to aid the borrowers, many of whom were
warriors.
Commerce and the za in Kyoto
In the latter half of the Kamakura period, the growth of commerce
was nowhere more evident than in Kyoto. Although most shops were
located in the city's commercial section, between Sanjo and Hachijo in
the Sakyo, small shops selling such daily necessities as rice, fish, and
the like could be found throughout the city. Many of these merchants
were former kugonin and artisans who had once supplied the needs of
the court and the nobles but who, throughout the Kamakura period,
gradually became more independent. The court and elite had no need
to discourage their growing independence. As independent suppliers,
the kugonin and artisans required no economic assistance, and as they
produced more for the market, their productive efficiency and skills
also rose. Furthermore, there was an additional economic incentive for
the patrons in permitting, if not encouraging, such independence: In
many cases, these newly independent producers formed za of their
own and paid more dues in kind and services in exchange for their
patron's protection.35
The residents of the capital also enjoyed many goods and services
supplied by artisans, fishermen, and cultivators who came to sell their
wares from both the surrounding regions and distant provinces. By
the mid-Kamakura period, more and more merchants - those special-
35 Endo, Nihon chusei toshiron, pp. 99-103; Wakita, Nihon chusei toshiron, pp. 77-84.
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362 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
izing in trading and not those selling what they produced, as was often
the case before the mid-thirteenth century - appeared in Kyoto.
The growth of commerce in Kyoto can also be confirmed by the
greater number of za during the thirteenth century. We can establish
from documents written in the 1220s that at least a dozen za were
organized, including those for selling lamp oil, lumber, straw mats,
and several types of cloth. Many were sponsored by the Kofukuji,
Todaiji, Hachimangu, other temples and shrines, and some court nobles.
During the mid-thirteenth century za were organized to sell
firewood, fish, dried fish, roof tiles, and various "metal products," as
well as za for various skilled craftsmen such as carpenters, painters,
and smiths. And during the final decades of the century, za were
established among the sellers of dyes, sickles, silk, "birds" (the Buddhist
euphemism for small game), and others. Although we cannot be
sure of the exact number of za in Kyoto at the end of the Kamakura
period, it was easily more than a few score. We also know that by the
end of the century, a few za began to appear in regional urban centers
as well.36
The za continued to increase in number when, as suggested earlier,
they discovered that they could make a higher profit if potential competitors
were prevented from infringing on their monopolistic or
monopsonistic rights. The case of the Oyamazaki-za, organized in
Yamashiro to sell lamp oil under the protection of the Hachiman
Shrine, is an example of how a za emerged under the protection of a
patron.
This za was initially sanctioned to permit a group of men providing
various services to the shrine to sell lamp oil in the capital in
exchange for dues paid in kind. But because these men found that
they could earn more profits by becoming full-time merchants, they
began to expand their markets from Kyoto to the regions on both
sides of the Yodo River and into Hyogo. Such expansion was possible
because the shrine's political power extended to many regions
through its branch shrines and its shoen holdings. The fact that the
shrine exempted members of the za from tolls (which were beginning
to be levied by various court nobles and temples during this period)
in exchange for higher dues paid in lamp oil also helped discourage
potential competitors.37
The za of this period emerged and grew in similar ways. However,
36 Toyoda and Kodama, Ryulsushi, pp. 80-87; ar
>d Wakita, Nihon chusei shogyd haitatsushi, pp.
235-74- 37 Takenaka and Kawakami, Nihon shogyoshi, pp. 39-40.
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ACCELERATION OF COMMERCE 363
from the mid-thirteenth century, the circumstances encouraging the
za's continued development became more pronounced. Many skden
proprietors - temples and nobles - suffered a continued decline in tax
revenue owing to the rising power of the warriors, and at the same
time, the marketable surplus was steadily rising because of the higher
agricultural productivity that occurred primarily as a result of more
intensive land cultivation. That is, just when the shoen owners felt the
need for additional income from the za, the producers of marketable
goods and the merchants were able to meet that need at a profit. Under
such circumstances, the za, benefiting all concerned, could not but
proliferate.
One might wonder why the warriors allowed the court nobles and
temples to capture the lion's share of the income earned by the za. The
answer to this puzzle can be readily found. As evidenced by Minamoto
Yoritomo's desire for a formal appointment to the Kyoto-based government,
the bakufu had to remain within the legitimate framework of
the imperial government in order to maintain the delicate balance
between Kyoto and Kamakura. This meant that the Kamakura
bakufu still had to respect the interests of the court nobles and the
temples, whose political power reflected the waning but still substantial
power of the throne. In other words, the warriors had to allow the
court nobles and the temples to profit from the za as the price for
supporting the imperial authority in this delicate balance. Of course, it
is also true that some temples had enough military power to rebuff all
but a major attempt by warriors to wrestle away the benefits being
realized by the za. In short, the power of the ascending warrior class
was still insufficient during the thirteenth century to permit it to
capture the gains from the za's expanding activities.
Finally, it is important to note that despite their monopolistic or
monopsonistic activities, the za undoubtedly contributed to the
growth of commerce during the Kamakura period. Given the stilllimited
demand, free entry and the consequent competition would
have caused specialization to occur more slowly. Although most of the
benefits resulting from specialization - increased efficiency in production
and marketing - were undoubtedly shared by the sponsors and
the za members, some of those benefits must have been shared by the
consumers as well.
One reason for making this speculation is that the za sponsors,
usually collecting only a fixed sum from the za, left the benefits of
increased specialization to be shared by za members and consumers.
Another reason is that to the extent the za monopoly was not yet
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364 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
securely established and consumers could exercise their prerogative to
buy fewer products sold by za if prices were raised, consumers enjoyed
some of the benefits of the za's increased efficiency. Even the
economic gains accruing to the za's members were not totally private
because such gains would help improve skills and the efficiency of
production and distribution, thus benefiting the society as a whole in
the long run.
The growth of markets, towns, and transportation
There is no doubt that the number of markets - most of them having
only three market days per month (sansai-ichi) - steadily increased
across the nation during the second half of the Kamakura period.
When we count the number of local markets mentioned in historical
records, we find that there were only six between 1200 and 1250,
increasing to nineteen between 1250 and 1300, and to twenty-one
between 1300 and 1331.38
Such data, though limited, are a useful
indicator of the rise in the number of local markets. These markets
frequently sprang up at or near the nodes of transportation - ports
and the more important crossroads - and in such places as provincial
capitals and the larger local temples.
Reflecting the importance of sea transportation in commerce, port
towns continued to proliferate. The most important among them were
those located on the Seto Inland Sea and Lake Biwa. These port towns
developed as the entrepots for goods bound for the capital region. For
example, Otsu and Sakamoto in Omi Province grew in importance as
the transshipping centers of such products as rice, lumber, salt, paper,
and fish brought from the eastern provinces in the Togoku and
Tokaido regions. Hyogo, Sakai, and Yodo on the Yodo River were
active ports for many goods shipped to the capital region from Kyoto
and several ports on the Inland Sea. Most of the products coming from
San'in and Hokuriku passed through Wakasa to ports around Lake
Biwa and then to the capital region. By the end of the Kamakura
period, the capital region, the local markets, and these port towns
constituted a commercial network.39
The foregoing shows that transportation, especially over water, was
38 Sasaki, Chusei shohin ryuisushi, pp. 74-97; Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu, pp.
112-18; and Takenaka Yasukazu and Sakudo Yotaro, Nihon keizaishi (Tokyo: Gakubunsha,
1972), pp. 29-30.
39 Takenaka and Sakudo, Nihon keizaishi, pp. 26-28; and Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no
kenkyu, pp. 254-7.
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ACCELERATION OF COMMERCE 365
indispensable, and specialists in both sea and land transportation
helped improve this capability. Those specialists meriting our attention
were the toi, more frequently referred to as toimaru during the
Kamakura period, who performed managerial functions (including
the supervision of ship captains, crew, and stevedores) and also engaged
in the warehousing and delivery of cargo (including dues in rice
or other products).40
Many of the toimaru were either large enterprising myoshu, minor
retainers, or relatives oijito and shokan who received, for performing
these roles, rights to yields of rice and other crops from designated
rice paddies within a shden or a kokugaryo.41
The toimaru were also
responsible for supervising porters (many of whom were cultivators
discharging their corvee obligations) and other specialists of land
transportation.
Also contributing to transportation capabilities in the thirteenth
century was the gradual increase, beginning in mid-century, of kaisen,
literally, "ships making rounds." These ships were chartered to carry
cargo on consignment or were used by their owners for trading of their
own. They were most frequently found in the Seto Inland Sea, but
during the second half of the Kamakura period, many traveled from
distant northern ports to ports on the Japan Sea near Lake Biwa.
Though some of these ships were manned by fishermen, as were those
of Sugaura on Lake Biwa, by the end of the Kamakura period, many
others were operated by full-time specialists. The growing importance
of kaisen in the commerce of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
can be confirmed by frequent references to them in contemporary
records.42
Perhaps because most bulk goods were transported by water, there
are few historical records of the Kamakura period that refer to specialists
in land transportation. This does not mean, however, that these
specialists did not exist. It is known that by the mid-thirteenth century
the shoen administrators and proprietors were beginning to engage the
services of shariki (teamsters using carts) and others because the cultivators
were not providing all of the necessary land transportation. The
need for these specialists, however, rose only slowly. Even by the end
of the Kamakura period, the scale of their business was such that most
merchants and artisans were still able to transport their wares without
40 Toyoda's Chmei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu, pp. 196-354, still is one of the best sources on
toimaru. For a good description, also see Kodama and Toyoda, Ryuisushi, pp. 57-62.
41 Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu, pp. 196—206.
42 Ibid., pp. 221-5; and Kodama and Toyoda, RyuBusAi, pp. 103-11.
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366 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
their assistance. It was not until the Muromachi period that the number
of specialists in land transportation rapidly increased.
Monetization and commutation
The importation and use of Chinese coins, which had begun to
increase in the early decades of the thirteenth century, accelerated
from mid-century. Japan's importation of Sung coins indeed became
so large that copper coins frequently disappeared from the cities of
the T'ai-chou region of China within a day after Japanese traders
came in search of them. In an attempt to stem this outflow, Sung
China issued decrees that prohibited the export of coins and in 1254
limited the number of Japanese ships allowed to call on its ports to
only five per year. But these measures did not succeed, because
"forty to fifty Japanese ships, coming every year to exchange lumber,
sulphur, and other products for coins, were helped by inspectors who
took bribes, hid coins at the bottom of ships . . . or loaded coins
after the inspection."43
Although trade between Japan and China declined sharply after the
collapse of Southern Sung in 1279, and especially because of the Mongol
attempts to invade Japan, the importation of Chinese coins continued,
albeit at a reduced level. Unauthorized Japanese merchant ships
continued to trade with the coastal cities of China and brought back
coins well into the fourteenth century.44
The largest amount of these
coins were imported during the century or so preceding the demise of
the Southern Sung. According to a study of large (non-overlapping)
collections of Chinese coins found in Japan, approximately 85 percent
consisted of Sung and Southern Sung coins.45
There is no doubt that by the middle of the thirteenth century, coins
were being used daily by residents of the capital and other large cities
as the principal medium of trade. The use of coins also grew in towns
and villages throughout the second half of the Kamakura period. With
Kyoto at the center, the use of money expanded from Kinai to the
distant provinces and from the nobles and the temples to the cultivators.
The record shows that even as early as the 1240s, coins were used
in the remote Ou region in the north.46
The monetization of the econ-
43 Kobata Atsushi, Nihon kahei ryutsushi (Tokyo: Toko shoin, 1969), p. 48.
44 Takenaka and Kawakami, Nihon shogyoshi, pp. 48-49.
45 For a discussion and analysis of these studies, see Yamamura and Kamiki, "Silver Mines and
Sung Coins," pp. 336-8. 46 Takenaka and Kawakami, Nihon shogyoshi, p. 42.
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ACCELERATION OF COMMERCE 367
omy was proceeding in response to, as well as promoting, the development
of markets in provinces throughout the nation.
Attesting to the degree of monetization achieved by mid-century,
documents show that nobles and temples paid cash for most wages,
stipends, clothing allowances, ceremonial costs, some transportation
costs, and the like. For example, Todaiji documents dated between
1261 and 1279 confirm that by this time most of the temple's allowances
to its monks were paid in cash and only a small part in kind.47
As well-known study of land sales records in the Kinai region shows
that the use of cash became more important as a medium of exchange
throughout the Kamakura period. This study found that between
1186 and 1219, of a sample of 187 land sales, 139 were conducted
using rice as the medium of exchange, 7 using cloth, and the remaining
40 using cash. Between 1220 and 1283, of a sample of 331 land
sales, cash was used in 143 cases, rice in 181, and cloth in 7. Finally,
between 1284 and 1333, of a sample of 189 land sales, 124 used cash,
64 used rice, and only 1 sale used cloth. In short, over these three
periods, the proportion of the transactions conducted in cash went
from 21 percent to 42 percent and then to 66 percent.48
The importance of money for residents of large cities and even for
others is also evident in the appearance of bills of exchange and moneylenders.
Bills of exchange began to be used sometime during the second
half of the thirteenth century to alleviate the costs and risks of
transporting cash over long distances for trading, paying dues in cash,
and meeting expenditures incurred by litigants forced to remain in
Kamakura for the duration of court proceedings.
The oldest surviving evidence of a bill of exchange - called variously
kawashi, saifu, or warifu - is dated 1279. This bill enabled the
holder, a local power (a person who had reclaimed some amount of
land and exercised political and military authority in the region) in Kii
Province (modern Wakayama Prefecture) to receive cash in Kamakura.
Although most of the remaining documents show that these bills
were used by litigants and by jito and shoen administrators sending
dues to the capital, there are a number of documents, especially during
the final decades of the Kamakura period, demonstrating that bills
47 Sasaki, Chusei shohin ryutsushi, p. 262.
48 This study was made by Tamaizumi Tairyo and is described and discussed in Kobata, Nihon
kahei ryutsushi, pp. 40-46. Also see Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyii, pp. 101-8;
and Nagahara Keiji, "Shoen ryoshu keizai no kozo," in Nagahara, ed., Nihon keizaishi taikei,
vol. 2, pp. 80-85.
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368 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
were also used for trading between sellers (producers and merchants)
of specialized products and buyers (nobles and temples).49
However, an even more important result of the rapid monetization
was, as noted in an official bakufu document issued in 1255, a visible
increase in the number of moneylenders, beginning in the middle of
the thirteenth century. These moneylenders, who were called kashiage
or kariage and who usually took pawns, consisted of sanso (literally,
"mountain monks," monks of the powerful Enryakuji temple on
Mount Hiei in Kyoto), some toimaru of larger port towns, some monks
from other temples, and a number of richer merchants. The sanso
became moneylenders because of the availability of a large and steady
cash income from shoen dues owed to the temple and collected in cash
and donations of coins from worshipers and because the sanso were in
a position to remind borrowers that failure to repay the loans could
bring about the wrath of God. The toimaru began to engage in
moneylending as a natural sideline to their occupation. The larger
among them had enough cash income and warehouses in which to
store the pawns and were strategically located in port towns where the
need for loans was greater.50
This proliferation of moneylenders reflected
the degree to which the economy's monetization had pro-
ceeded.
Yet another important development brought about by monetization
was daisenno (paying dues in cash instead of in kind; commutation)
which became prevalent during the latter half of the Kamakura period.
The following data are useful as a quantitative indicator of the
popularity of commutation.
Sasaki Ginya collected 170 historical records of the 1230-1350 period
containing references to at least partial commutation and classified
them by date. He found that only 6 of these records belonged to
the 1230-50 period, 38 to the 1251-1300 period, and 126 to the 1301-
50 period. Although we cannot assume that these records accurately
reflect the speed with which commutation increased, this study provides
valuable evidence indicating how quickly commutation became
popular during the final decades of the Kamakura period.51
An exami-
49 Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu, pp. 264-30x3, contains an excellent description of
numerous original documents. Takenaka and Sakudo, Nihon keizaishi, pp. 30-31, provides a
useful example showing how a specific kawase was used.
50 See Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu; and Kodama and Toyoda, Ryutsushi.
51 The data were first presented and analyzed by Sasaki Ginya, "Shoen ni okeru daisenno-sei no
seiritsu to tenkai," in Nagahara Keiji and Inagaki Yasuhiko, eds., Chusei no shakai 10 keizai
(Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1962), which was later expanded and published in
Sasaki's Chusei shohin ryutsushi.
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ACCELERATION OF COMMERCE 369
nation of Sasaki's original sources also reveals that commutation began
early and was practiced most frequently in Owari and the surrounding
provinces on the Tokaido route, in Harima and nearby provinces on
the Sanyodo route, and in the northern provinces of Kyushu. The
number of shoen practicing commutation also continued to rise most
rapidly in those provinces into the fourteenth century.
There is an ongoing debate among Japanese specialists concerning
why commutation began to be practiced and why it increased during
the thirteenth century. The older generation of specialists generally
explain the increase in commutation as the inevitable outcome of the
fact that as local markets developed, enabling the dues payers to obtain
cash, the dues recipients in the capital demanded commutation.
The relatively early and more extensive growth of the local markets in
shoen located on the major routes and in the northern provinces of
Kyushu is offered as evidence supporting this view. Toyoda Takeshi,
one of these specialists, also cites the relative difficulties and higher
costs of transporting bulky dues in kind as contributing to the increase
in commutation.52
In more recent studies, however, a few Japanese historians have
begun to argue that these explanations are unsatisfactory and leave
several questions unanswered. First, if the dues recipients' demand
for cash was the reason for commutation, why does a recent examination
of nearly a dozen shoen reveal that commutation was initiated by
the jito or even the cultivators themselves? Second, if the relative
difficulties and higher costs of transporting dues in kind was a factor
in encouraging commutation, would not the same factor inhibit the
ability of local merchants to buy products from dues payers, inasmuch
as most of what they bought would have to be transported to the
capital and other centers of consumption? That is, the authors of the
recent studies assert that the difficulties and costs of transporting
bulky goods could also have reduced market activities in the provinces,
and this in turn would have made it more difficult for the
cultivators to obtain the cash needed to pay dues. Third, although the
earlier generation of historians assumed that rice - the most important
product that the cultivators sold to obtain cash - was transported to
Kyoto for sale, was there sufficient demand for rice in the capital
where many recipients of dues were still receiving rice from their shoen
located in neighboring provinces? Finally, if local markets had been
52 On this debate, the best sources are Kodama and Toyoda, Ryutsushi, pp. 71-74; and Sasaki,
Chusei shohin ryutsushi, pp. 250-362.
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370 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
developing across the nation, why did the shoen of more distant regions
not pay dues in cash, which would have been easier and less costly
than bulky dues in kind to transport over long distances?53
Those historians who question the long-accepted views readily concede
that their own answers are still far from satisfactory, primarily
because of the few case studies that they have been able to make (in
part because of the scarcity of pertinent historical records). However,
the results of their case studies and subsequent analyses are worthy of
attention.
In regard to the first question, Sasaki's study of six shoen that
adopted partial commutation at the insistence of the jito and his analysis
of this development are important. These shoen were located in the
eastern and central provinces and belonged to such proprietors as the
highest-ranked nobles (including the Fujiwara) and the Todaiji.
Sasaki establishes that commutation was adopted between 1240 and
1331 against the proprietors' wishes when the bakufu ruled in favor of
the jito, who demanded that cash payment of dues be allowed. Why
did the jito opt for commutation? Sasaki posits that the jito demanded
commutation either because the cultivators themselves were demanding
cash payment or because the jito, acting as middlemen, could
benefit from commutation. The dues payers might demand commutation
for two reasons. First, the proprietors were demanding dues in
kind in a mix of products not produced by the cultivators themselves
(thus forcing them to incur the costs of selling the products they
produced and buying the mix of products the proprietor demanded).
Second, paying cash was more advantageous, as the jito would have
made certain that the conversion rate between the products was paid
in kind and that their cash value was set in favor of the cultivators (the
prices of rice, cloth, and other in-kind dues in the local markets were
higher than those used in there's conversion rate).54
One obvious question that Sasaki felt obliged to answer was why the
jito (except when they demanded commutation for the obvious reason
of increasing their own income as middlemen) battled the proprietors,
to the point of necessitating the bakufu's intervention on behalf of the
cultivators. His answer is that the^tfc's economic welfare depended on
having cultivators better able to meet the jito's demands, even at the
53 See Kodama and Toyoda, Ryutsushi; Sasaki, Chusei shohin ryutsushi; and Kamiki Tetsuo,
"Chusei shohin ni okeru kahei," Kokumin keizai zasshi 120 (1963): 50-65, for an analytic
discussion.
54 See Sasaki, "Shoen," in Nagahara and Inagaki, eds., Chusei no shakai to keizai; Kodama and
Toyoda, Ryutsushi; and Sasaki, Chusei shohin ryutsushi.
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ACCELERATION OF COMMERCE 37I
proprietors' expense. Even if the jito did not benefit economically by
the adoption of commutation, they would have fewer political problems
if the cultivators felt indebted to them because of the jito's actions
on their behalf. Sasaki recognizes that he is not, based on only a few
case studies, in a position to refute the long-accepted interpretation
that commutation was initiated by the shoen proprietors. He thus suggests
that what is needed is a careful reexamination, and not a refutation,
of the old views.55
On the second question concerning the relative costs and difficulties
of transporting goods versus cash, the existing empirical evidence is
far from sufficient to settle the issue. Although there are a few specific
historical references to the high cost of transporting goods, which are
emphasized by the older historians, a careful examination by Sasaki of
a dozen historical documents citing the costs of transporting goods and
cash demonstrates that it is not possible to conclude that the cost of
transporting cash was lower than that of shipping various products.
Thus, Sasaki is prepared to argue on the analytic ground noted earlier
that the relative costs of transportation need not and should not be
considered a factor in the increase of commutation.56
On this point, however, the older view has not gone undefended.
More recently, Toyoda responded to Sasaki's criticism by contending
that those merchants and specialists of transportation engaging in
long-distance trade were more experienced in overcoming the difficulties
of transporting goods over both land and sea; they knew how to
bribe the pirates and brigands and how to protect their wares. They
might also have been better organized in the use of ships and manpower
so that their costs and risks would have been lower than those
incurred by the nonspecialists retained by the shoen owners. Because
Toyoda's rebuttal is based on assertions, the controversy on this point
must also remain unresolved, awaiting further case studies and analyses
of quantitative evidence.57
The third question regarding Kyoto's ability to consume the large
quantity of rice transported there, owing to the prevalence of commutation,
also cannot be answered unequivocally. Even the recent studies
recognize that rice as a proportion of the total dues paid to the
proprietors residing in Kyoto was falling, whereas the population of
Kyoto was rising. Therefore, the answer to this question depends on
each historian's educated assessment as to whether the amount of rice
55 Sasaki, Chusei shohin ryutsushi, pp. 350-2.
56 Ibid., pp. 329-30. 57 Kodama and Toyoda, Ryutsushi, p. 72.
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372 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
being transported to Kyoto from the local markets exceeded the
demand.58
The last question pertaining to the regional distribution of shoen
that practiced commutation must also remain unsettled because this
also concerns the relative costs and risks of transporting goods versus
cash. Furthermore, there have not been enough case studies to establish
the validity of the assertion, made in recent critiques of the old
view, that local markets in distant regions were sufficiently developed
by this time to enable dues payers to obtain the necessary cash by
selling their products.
Abrogation of debts
The continuing growth of commercial activities, accompanied by the
accelerating use of cash and adoption of commutation, had familiar
and predictable effects on the cultivators. Trading in markets gave
them opportunities to increase their income. They could now produce
more of those products in which they had a comparative advantage
and make more efficient use of labor, land, and osher resources
in response to changes in the prices of various products.
Commutation, to the extent that it was adopted, freed them from the
burden of producing predetermined, often disadvantageous, mixes of
products.
Involvement in a cash economy, however, subjected the cultivators
to price fluctuations. Inevitably there were pe?iods of low prices that
forced some to borrow money at a high interest rate, often more than
25 percent per year, in order to pay cash dues. The market-oriented
economy, on the other hand, tended to favor the large myoshu and
others who worked a large amount of land; they could better withstand
the risks of price (and yield) fluctuations and even take advantage
of them. They were also able to augment their economic resources
by becoming village moneylenders. The most successful among them
were beginning to accumulate enough cash to acquire more kajishishiki
(the right to receive rents from paddies).
However, even in the second half of the Kamakura period, market
activities, monetization, and commutation affected the lives of cultivators
only to a limited extent. Market days were still few; commutation
was far from universal; many cultivators were still paying all or part of
their dues in kind; and the paddies of most cultivators did not yield
58 Sasaki, Chiisei shohin ryuisushi, pp. 328-30.
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ACCELERATION OF COMMERCE 373
large or reliable surpluses that could be sold. Most of the cultivators'
lives were still dictated more by the rhythms of nature than by the
widening ripples of the cash nexus.
The situation was quite different for an increasing number of warriors,
to whom cash with which to buy goods and services was becoming
indispensable by the early decades of the thirteenth century. This
was one reason that some warriors in their capacity as jito took the
initiative in adopting commutation and that some with more than one
landholding (shotyo) began to appoint monks (sanso), merchants, and
other commoners "wise in the ways of cash" as daikan (magistrates) to
collect the cash dues from their lands.59
It did not take long for some warriors to spend more than their
income. By the early decades of the thirteenth century they began to
borrow, often mortgaging their lands, so that they could buy the
goods and services that the markets offered. But this was a development
that the bakufu could not allow to continue, especially when it
saw that more and more of the gokenin - the direct retainers of the
shogun - were beginning to incur large debts. In 1239, therefore, the
bakufu issued a decree prohibiting jito, many of whom were gokenin,
from appointing moneylenders to the position of daikan or jito-dai for
the purpose of collecting dues. The bakufu issued this edict because
a part or even all of the dues that the moneylenders collected were
being retained by them as payments on loans they had advanced to
the jito. In the following year the bakufu, hoping to eliminate the
problem at the source, issued another decree forbidding the gokenin
from mortgaging or selling land to any non-gokenin or any commoner,
as well as from indulging in such luxuries as riding in oxdrawn
carriages.60
Obviously, these admonitions and prohibitions had little effect, and
many gokenin continued to lose their lands. As a result, the bakufu
issued yet another decree in 1267 to undo the damage already done.
The decree gave the gokenin who had lost their mortgaged land the
right to regain it by repaying the loans in cash or kind. That is, the
decree forced the lenders, who had acquired land from the gokenin, to
accept overdue repayment on the loans. Furthermore, the decree repeated
the prohibition against all sales of land by gokenin and added
new restrictions disallowing former wives and widows of gokenin to
59 Amino Yoshihiko, Moko shurai, vol. 10 oiNihon rekishi (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1974), pp. 112-
16.
60 Takeuchi Rizd, ed., Tochi seidoshi, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa shuppansha, 1973), pp. 286-
301.
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374 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
transfer land received from their husbands to new husbands and voiding
the ownership of land by any women except the wives and daughters
of gokenin. Also in 1267, the bakufu abolished its office in charge
of appeals concerning decisions made on cases involving sold or mortgaged
land.61
Not surprisingly, this decree caused great confusion and created
many problems. Even the few surviving records show that the problems
thus created were widespread and serious. For example, the
Todaiji vigorously protested a gokenin's demand to regain possession
of his land by making an overdue payment; some gokenin took possession
of the land they had lost, without repaying their debt; and bitter
disputes arose concerning the ownership of crops growing on land
whose ownership was forcibly changed by the decree.62
It quickly
became apparent that the bakufu's decree had seriously undermined
the sanctity of the contracts on which these economic transactions
were based. In order for the bakufu to preserve the political structure,
however, the gokenin, who occupied a central position, had to be
"saved" from the undesirable effects of accelerating monetization, despite
the consequences.
The dilemma grew even worse after the Mongol invasions in 1274
and 1281. The invasions themselves and the threats of future attack
forced the gokenin to carry an extremely heavy economic burden, first
in fighting the Mongols and then in waiting, combat-ready, for nearly
two decades in fear that another invasion could come at any time.
What made this economic burden on the gokenin such a grave crisis for
the bakufu was that unlike in civil wars, it could not in this case
confiscate land from defeated enemies in order to reward the gokenin,
now even more hard-pressed because of the newly incurred debts. The
bakufu thus once again came to the aid cf the gokenin by issuing a
limited decree in 1284 and another, more sweeping decree in 1297.
The decree of 1284 was issued only for the benefit of the gokenin in
northern Kyushu, where the effects of the invasion were especially
noticeable. The decree ordered that the myoshu-shiki (rights to dues
from myoden) acquired from gokenin be returned immediately and
unconditionally. Throughout the remainder of the century, more and
more gokenin went into debt and lost their lands owing to the costs of
maintaining a defense against the Mongols and living beyond their
means - borrowing in order to acquire desired goods and services
from the market. Thus, by the end of the century, the bakufu realized
61 Amino, Moko shurai, pp. 136-60. 62 Ibid., pp. 141-2.
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ACCELERATION OF COMMERCE 375
that it had no choice but to issue a decree to prevent further deterioration
of the gokenin's economic condition.63
The result was the Einin tokuseirei of 1297. The three articles of this
decree that survive today made the following provisions: Appeals of
decisions concerning the ownership of land would no longer be accepted
(the same prohibition against appeals issued in 1267 had just
been lifted in 1294, causing a flood of appeals). One appeal was permitted
to nobles and temples, and the litigation for those cases for which
appeals were already in process was allowed to continue. The gokenin
were prohibited from selling or pawning their land, and all the land
that the gokenin lost, by sale or by failure to redeem pawned land, was
to be returned to the gokenin, even of they were unable to repay the
money they had received. The only exceptions to this article were
cases in which more than twenty years had elapsed since the land in
question had been lost and cases in which the land transactions occurred
under the bakufu's explicit written permission. Finally, the
bakufu court would henceforth no longer accept any legal case concerning
the nonpayment of loans. The only exceptions were those cases in
which pawns were currently held by the lenders.64
Although with apparent political concessions to the interests of the
nobles, temples, and moneylenders (in whose economic well-being the
nobles and temples were very much interested), the decree was an
undisguised application of bakufu power to protect the gokenin. Important
also is the fact that the decree's third article - the nonacceptance
of legal cases concerning loans - applied, unlike all previous decrees,
to everyone, including both warriors and commoners. The reason for
this was that the bakufu, in its apparent attempt to justify its protection
of the gokenin and to call this decree tokusei, benefiting all, felt it
necessary to allow "all those impoverished" to come under this article's
protection.
Again, a predictable amount of confusion ensued that forced the
bakufu to issue detailed directives concerning the sale of crops, uses of
promissory notes, goods borrowed or kept for safekeeping, and numerous
other circumstances. Worse still, the decree allowing the gokenin to
regain ownership of land without repayment caused the nobles, temples,
moneylenders, and many commoners to appeal to the court in
Kyoto, forcing the bakufu to negotiate specific cases and to make
exceptions.
63 Ibid., pp. 325-34.
64 Ibid., pp. 329-34. Hall, Japan; Reischauer and Craig, Japan; and Sansom, A History of
Japan all contain discussions of these major wkuseirei.
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376 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
The bakufu was forced to rescind the decree in February 1298; it
had been in effect for only eleven months. The repossession of land
that had occurred during these eleven months, however, remained
valid, and so the gokenin who were able to take advantage of the decree
gained from it.65
No more tokuseirei were issued during the Kamakura
period, not because the need declined but because the bakufu was too
weak by the end of the thirteenth century to defy the dictates of a
monetized economy. For the Kamakura bakufu in the final decades of
its power, monetization acted like an illness suffered by an already
deteriorating body. The illness made the effects of the Mongol invasion
even more grave, and the warriors' greater dependence on the
markets too became a truly debilitating affliction. In thefinaldecades,
the bakufu, further weakened by this illness, was not even able to use
the anodyne called tokuseirei.
COMMERCE AND CITIES IN THE NAMBOKUCHO AND
MUROMACHI PERIODS
Building on the momentum generated in the latter half of the
Kamakura period and, more importantly, on the continuing rise in
agricultural productivity, the economy in the Nambokucho and
Muromachi periods continued to grow. This momentum continued
unabated into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, scarcely slowed
by the demise of the Kamakura bakufu and the prolonged political
and military disturbances that culminated in the rise of the Ashikaga
bakufu. The increasing market activities in these periods led to further
specialization, which in turn made production and distribution more
efficient, and the resultant gains were shared, though not without
conflicts, by all classes.
The growth of agricultural productivity was the foundation OA
which the commerce of these periods flourished. Japan during this
ume specialized more and more in products in which each cultivator
and region had a comparative advantage; it improved its irrigation,
used more fertilizer, and adopted new varieties of rice and other crops.
A new variety of rice, known as Champa, reached Japan frcm
Indochina by way of China in the Muromachi period and was especially
important to raising productivity. This rice, which was more
resistant to both drought and insects than were existing varieties,
65 Amino, Moko shurai, pp. 332-3; and also see, for a useful discussion of the political background
of these tokuseirei, Nitta Hideharu, Kamakura koki no seiji katei, vol. 6 (chusei 2) of
Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1975), pp. 1-40.
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COMMERCE AND CITIES 377
enabled cultivators in western Japan to double crop and even triple
crop their paddies.66
The market forces exerted an ever-stronger hold
on the cultivators, forcing as well as motivating them to become more
efficient.
Growth of commerce and za in Kyoto
From the short-lived Kemmu restoration to the fall of the Ashikaga
bakufu, Kyoto remained the seat of power. This meant that during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Kyoto grew both in population and
wealth, and its commerce expanded even more rapidly. But the protracted
civil wars of the Nambokucho period and the Onin War in the
second half of the fifteenth century made the city a battleground,
intermittently slowing or even halting its commerce. Recurring famines
and disease, especially during the 1440s, also eroded both population
and commerce.
Even with civil war, famine, and disease, the population of Kyoto is
estimated to have grown to more that 200,000 by the time of the Onin
War. If this estimate is correct, it was, in the mid- to late fifteenth
century, one of the largest cities in the world. London, for example,
had no more than 50,000. The large population and commercial sector
gradually transformed the capital. In the Sakyo, from Sanjd in the
north to Gojo and Shichijo in the south, more and more merchants and
artisans engaged in trade, and an increasing number of za, to which
most of them belonged, congregated. Where the major north-south
and east-west roads crossed, machi - administrative units enjoying a
degree of self-government - appeared in the Nambokucho period and
continued to proliferate throughout the fifteenth century. The bestknown
and largest machi were Sanjo, Rokkaku, Nishikoji, Shijo,
Gojo, Shichijo, and Kujo-Omiya.67
Although most of the merchants and artisans were small and their
establishments humble, some merchants became quite wealthy during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, so much so that the Ashikaga
bakufu began to depend on their wealth to meet its fiscal needs.68
It is
66 Kuroda Hideo, "Chusei nogyo gijutsu no yoso," in Nagahara Keiji and Yamaguchi Keiji,
eds., Nogyo to nosan kako, vol. i of Nihon gijuisu no shakaishi (Tokyo: Nihon hyoronsha,
1983). PP- 67-76.
67 Wakita, Nihon chusei toshi ton, pp. 280-317; Endo, Nihon chusei toshi ron, pp. 99-108; and
Akiyama Kunizo and Nakamura Ken, Kyoto "machi" no kenkyu (Tokyo: Hosei daigaku
shuppankai, 1975), which describes the growth of Kyoto from the Heian period to the
eighteenth century.
68 This is a well-known fact discussed in all textbooks. See also Wakita Haruko, Muromachi-ki
no keizai hatten, vol. 7 (chusei 3) of Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
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378 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
known that in 1393, the bakufu began to collect an annual due of six
thousand kanmon - a huge sum considering that the cash value of the
total annual dues of many shoen was less than one hundred kanmon from
the doso and sakaya in and around Kyoto.69
The magnificent cultural life during this period would not, of
course, have been possible without this wealth. The most prosperous
among these merchants were the doso who were pawnbrokers and
moneylenders and who also engaged in warehousing and other commercial
ventures; the sakaya, who sold sake and used their earnings
for moneylending; and other merchants who accumulated wealth by
importing luxuries from the continent and controlling profitable za.
These most successful merchants, led by about 370 sakaya and 300 to
400 doso, came to be called utokunin (literally, "men of virtue"). In this
age of commerce in which the langage des holies commanded respect,
"virtue" was an appropriate and mellifluous synonym for wealth.
The services and products provided by the majority of the humbler
merchants, artisans, and other specialists expanded throughout the
Nambokucho and Muromachi periods. By the mid-fifteenth century, a
roster of their occupations was long indeed. Toyoda Takeshi, who
examined the composition of the population in a part of Kyoto, using
various local records, wrote:
One cannot but be surprised by the large number of small merchants and
artisans. In 1460 . . . onefindson both sides of the Gion 071 [a central northsouth
main road] a very large number of persons serving the needs of the
temples and shrines . . . their occupations included, among the artisans,
carpenters, keg makers, smiths, tatami makers, makers of Buddhist statues,
and others, and among the merchants, those selling rice, brooms, combs,
needles, rice cakes, dyes, oils, threads, and sakeV0
Toyoda's observation can be applied to the entire city because we
have learned from the documents how rapidly the number of za in
Kyoto multiplied in the Nambokucho and Muromachi periods. The
growth of za, called "new " za as opposed to "old" za that had existed
since the previous century, was especially noticeable during the
Nambokucho period. Although it is impossible to ascertain the precise
increase in the number of these za in both periods, there is no doubt
that it was large.
1976), pp. 88-93; a n
d Sasaki Ginya, Muromachi bakufu, vol. 13 of Nihon rekishi (Tokyo:
Shogakkan, 1975), pp. 129-38.
69 Inoue Micsusada et at., eds., Nihon rekishi taikei, vol. 2 (chusei) (Tokyo: Yamakawa
shuppansha, 1985), p. 622. See pp. 621-26 for a good general description of the utokunin of
this period. 70 Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu, pp. 363-4.
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COMMERCE AND CITIES 379
One example useful in demonstrating the greater number of za is
the case of the Shifu litter bearers who had formed a few za during the
thirteenth century under the protection of the nobles in charge of the
imperial guards. The number of za that they organized in and around
Kyoto rose to no fewer than twenty by the end of the Nambokucho
period. Although not by such a large number, similar increases of za
continued in the Muromachi period under the protection of a dozen
high-ranked nobles and the Hachimangu, Gionsha, Todaiji, and other
temples, as has been documented by Japanese scholars. The products
of these new and old za in Kyoto included salt, silk, cotton batting,
dyed cloth, fresh fish, dried fish, salted fish, dyes, candies, leather,
sickles, lamp oil, lumber, bamboo, noodles, a few types of clothing,
various vegetables, and a dozen other products. No better evidence
exists than such a "mushrooming" of the za to indicate that Kyoto in
the Muromachi period dominated commerce more than it had at any
time in the past.71
Cities, towns, and markets
Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, cities and towns
increased in both number and size. Many were located in and around
the capital region, but the number of towns on the coastlines and in
the countryside grew even more, so much so that there is little exaggeration
in saying that most of the cultivators in Muromachi Japan
could reach and return from a town within a day.72
Because the principal impetus for the growth of cities and towns
came from the growth of commerce, many of these urban centers were
port towns and the monzenmachi of temples. Those port towns that
grew fastest during these centuries were the best-located and betterestablished
towns of Yodo and Yamasaki to the south of Kyoto on the
Yodo River; Sakamoto, Otsu, Funagi, Imazu, and a few others on
Lake Biwa; Hyogo, Sakai, and Amagasaki on the Inland Sea; Obama,
Tsuruga, Mikuni-Minato, and Noetsu on the Japan Sea coast;
Kuwana, Oiso, Ominato, Numazu, Shinagawa, and Matsuura on the
Pacific coast; and Hakata on the northern coast of Kyushu.73
There
also were some new port towns, although it is difficult to date exactly
when some of them emerged. One can, however, assume that at least a
71 Yamamura, "The Development of Za," pp. 447-54, and the Japanese sources cited therein.
72 Toyoda, Chiisei Nikon shogyoshi, pp. 364-86; Sasaki, Muromachi bakufu, pp. 260-71; and
Nakamura Kichiji, ed.,Shakaishi, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1974), pp. 328-44.
73 Ibid.
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380 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
score of them were established sometime in the fourteenth century.
Many were satellite towns of the larger urban centers that appeared on
or near the principal water-transportation routes.
Most of these old and new towns grew mainly because of the rising
volume of interregional trade, owing to the interregional specialization
in agriculture and crafts. Some of the port towns' trade was mainly with
the continent. In all of these towns were the toimaru managing theflowof
goods and providing warehousing and other necessary services, as well
as the merchants and artisans, captains, crews, and stevedores. The port
facilities, such as wharves, also improved over those of the past.74
The mozenmachi were another group of towns that grew in both
number and size. The main reason for this was the higher incomes of
the cultivators, merchants, and artisans, giving them the necessary
wherewithal and leisure to make pilgrimages to the temples and
shrines, a favorite pastime during the medieval period. By the end of
the Muromachi period, prospering monzenmachi included, in addition
to Nara, such towns as Sakamoto and Uji-Yamada in the capital region
and Zenkoji and Suwa in Shinano province. The jinaimachi, towns
that grew up within the temple grounds, should perhaps be regarded
as a variant of monzenmachi. Most jinaimachi were located in and
around the capital region, the best known being six in Osaka-Ishiyama
and others in Yamashina, Imai, and Tondabayashi.75
Za also began to appear outside Kyoto, Nara, and Kamakura.
These za, first recorded in the Nambokucho period, were called satoza
or inaka-za, the za of the villages and countryside. Most of them
first were started near the capital and, later, during the fifteenth century,
in towns around the nation. Records of some za dating from the
fifteenth century, have been found for towns in Omi, Bizen,
Chikuzen, and Kaga provinces. By mid-century, several za had appeared
in the larger towns of a dozen other provinces as well.76
The emergence and growth of za are evidence that market activities
were increasing in most towns as well as at other nodes of transportation,
the principal crossroads, and in more established towns at or near
the administrative centers of local governments. More villagers were
going to markets and more frequently. To respond to this need, by the
mid-fifteenth century, market days, which had typically been three
74 Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu, pp. 238-42; and Sasaki, Muromachi bakufu, pp.
172-3.
75 See Wakita, Nihon chusei toshi ron; Endo, Nihon chusei toshi ron; Akiyama and Nakamura,
Kyoto "machi" no kenkyu; Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu; Sasaki, Muromachi
bakufu; and Nakamura, Shakaishi, vol. I.
76 Yamamura, "The Development of Za," pp. 447-51.
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COMMERCE AND CITIES 381
times a month, had expanded to six in many markets thereby creating
the rokusai-ichi. Both pieces of unequivocal documentary evidence we
have for these markets are dated 1469: one for the Oyada market in
Mino Province and the other for Uji-no-go Rokkado-ichi in Yamashina
Province. One specialist, however, speculates on the strength of indirect
evidence that the earliest six-day market was likely to have been
held as early as the mid-fourteenth century in the capital of Hitachi
Province.77
In short, although we cannot be certain either of the date
when six-day markets first appeared or when they began to spread
throughout Japan, no one doubts that they became prevalent in many
parts of the nation by the end of the fifteenth century.
The increase in six-day markets indicates that with the market activities,
the local towns were also growing. The number of towns with
populations of less than 1,000 was rising steadily, and those with more
than 1,000 were also increasing. Although reliable data are not available,
we can, using various contemporary descriptions, offer reasonable
"guesstimates" of the population of the following cities during the
second half of the fifteenth century: Nara, 10,000 to 15,000; Tennoji
in Kawachi Province, 35,000; Sakai, at least 20,000; Sakamoto in Omi
Province, 15,000; Kuwana and Ominato in Ise Province, 15,000 and
5,000, respectively; Yodo near Kyoto, 5,000; and Hakata in northern
Kyushu, 30,000 to 50,000. If we use the contemporary sources of the
early sixteenth century, we can easily add a score of cities and port
towns with populations in excess of 10,000 and even more urban
centers with at least 5,000 residents.78
Development of a transportation network
The growing commerce of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries led to
the development of a better organized and more systematic transportation
network on both land and sea. This network was served by specialists
consisting of toimaru, captains, crew, teamsters, carters, and the
like.
The heart of the network was the part that linked Kyoto with the
rest of Japan. From western Japan, rice, paper, salt, lumber, fish,
sesame, sumac, and many other products were shipped to Kyoto via
Hyogoseki, Amagasaki, and Sakai, with the Yodo River the main
waterway between these ports and Kyoto. From the east, fish, silk,
77 Sasaki, Chusei shohin tyutsushi, pp. 10-26.
78 See Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu, Sasaki, Muromachi bakufu; and Nakamura,
Shakaishi, vol. I.
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382 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
seaweed, lumber, cotton cloth, and other products of the Tohoku and
San'in regions were brought to the capital through the ports of
Obama, Tsuruga, and others. These products then were carried overland
to Imazu and Umizu on Lake Biwa and shipped south across the
lake to Sakamoto and Otsu which were only a short distance from
Kyoto. Prized products of the neighboring, commercially active provinces
of Mino and. Owari - paper, china, lumber, and a variety of
cloth - were brought in on roads.79
Most goods that needed to be transported across the nation were
carried over water when possible. This is why as many as nine major
sea routes were established during these periods. An examination of
these routes makes it clear that not only was Kyoto linked with all
parts of Japan but even distant Kyushu, Hokuriku, and Ou enjoyed
ready sea access to the capital region, the Kanto basin, and other
commercially active provinces on the Inland Sea.80
Such a network called for more toimaru, whose roles in the seaborne
transportation became even more important. Thus, these maritime
entrepreneurs were found in those port towns mentioned earlier and in
Katsura, Toba, Kizu, Uji, and Settsu on the Yodo River; Kiinada and
Onomichi on the Inland Sea; Nagahama, Yawata, Funagi, and several
others on Lake Biwa; Mikuni, Tsuruga, Izumo, Noetsu, Oya-minato,
and a few others facing the Japan Sea; and Mikawa, Ominato,
Kuwana, Shinagawa, and a half-dozen others on the Pacific coast.8
'
Along with the development of ocean-transportation capabilities,
Muromachi Japan improved its ability to transport goods over land.
The major participants in overland transportation were teamsters using
carts (shariki) or horses (bashaku). 1.; addition to performing these
crucial functions, they constituted a potent economic and political
force. Teamsters were capable of inciting mass uprisings, demanding,
for example, the abrogation of debts or the abolition of trade restrictions
imposed by za, and of manipulating the prices of rice and other
important products in Kyoto by disrupting delivery and otherwise
affecting the flow of products to and from the capital.
As can be expected, the teamsters were most commonly found in
the port and satellite towns in the capital region. Records also establish
that each port town around the nation had a number of teamsters
79 Sasaki, Muromachi bakufu, pp. 171-7. Also see Tokuda Ken'ichi, Chusei ni okeru suiun no
hatlatsu (Tokyo: Gannando shoten, 1966). 80 See ibid.
81 See Wakita, Nihon chusei toshi ron; Endo, Nihon chusei toshi ron; Akiyama and Nakamura,
Kyoto "machi" no kenkyu, Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi, Sasaki, Muromachi bakufu; and
Nakamura, Shakaishi, vol. 1.
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COMMERCE AND CITIES 383
commensurate with the size of the port. Some scholars believe that
these teamsters were most likely to have originated from the sanjo,
destitute kawaramono (literally, "those living on river beds"), and
other persons displaced from villages for various reasons who had little
choice but to become teamsters or carters.82
Some small cultivators
living in agricultural villages along transportation routes also became
part-time teamsters who carried freight in the off-season.
Some transportation over land was provided by the merchants themselves.
Many merchants traveling long distances organized themselves
into caravans (taisho), chiefly to increase the security of their travel.
The most famous of these caravans were those of the Omi merchants
who traveled from Omi to Kyoto and other more distant regions.
These caravans typically consisted of tens and sometimes hundreds of
merchants. Itinerant peddlers, traveling shorter distances, carried
their wares in backpacks. Such groups of peddlers were called renjaku
for the packs they carried or takani for piling many packs on their
backs.83
Some of them also traveled in large groups for protection from
thieves, mutual assistance, and greater leverage in negotiating lower
market taxes from local lords.
The swelling tide of commerce was such that even the toll barriers
(sekisho) failed to discourage it. These barriers, which began to increase
in number in the early fourteenth century, were erected mostly
by nobles, temples, and shrines whose shoen income had dwindled and
by the toimaru and others who collected tolls on behalf of local powers,
including some shugo and jito. The number of barriers continued to
grow throughout the fifteenth century. In some instances, the tolls
imposed by these sekisho were so heavy it was impossible for merchants
and others to pay them. Thus, for example, the bakufu forced a
temple in 1471 to abandon its toll barriers, which were causing a
substantial hardship for the bashaku of Sakamoto; and Omi merchants,
angered by the increasing burden of these tolls, set fire in 1512
to new barriers in northern Omi.84
Monetization and commutation
In the 1430's, a Korean envoy was surprised to discover the prevalent
use of money in Muromachi Japan. Even those traveling from one end
82 For descriptions of these specialists of land transportation in the Muromachi period, see
Sasaki, Muromachi bakufu, pp. 164-71; and Kodama and Toyoda, Ryutsushi, pp. 107-9.
83 Kodama and Toyoda, Ryutsushi, pp. 107-8.
84 Toyoda, Chusei Nihon shogyoshi no kenkyu,,p. 403.
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of the country to the other, he noted, did not carry provisions because
coins were accepted everywhere at inns and post stations and even by
toll collectors at bridges, who were accepting "five mon or ten mon
depending on the length of the bridge." He was especially amazed to
find that people were paying fees in cash for public bathhouses.85
With this high degree of monetization, commutation, too, spread
even more widely. All Japanese specialists agree that commutation,
either for a part or all of the dues, was being practiced in virtually all
regions of Japan by the mid-fourteenth century. However, as in the
debate concerning the reasons for adopting commutation, important
questions above commutation in the Muromachi period remain unanswered.
The reasons for this are similar to those accounting for the
other ongoing debate. There still are few case studies, and the analytic
methods remain restricted to asking who among those in a position to
coerce dues payers - shoen owners, shokan, local powers, and the
bakufu - gained the most by adopting or not adopting commutation.86
As a result, no consensus has emerged among specialists to answer
such questions as why commutation grew more prevalent. And why
do there seem to have been so many differences, across regions and
over time, in the specific terms of commutation?
What is needed to answer these questions is an economic analytic
perspective. That is, if we are to understand why commutation became
more prevalent in the ways it did during the Muromachi period,
we must ask (1) who converted dues in kind to cash (cultivators,
myoshu, or shokan); (2) how the amount of commutation was specified
(in market prices or in fixed money terms); (3) how prices were determined
in local markets (freely or under some degree of manipulation
or control by local powers or shoen administrators); (4) what differences
existed in the prices of commodities between markets in Kyoto
or elsewhere (where the recipients of dues resided) and local markets
(where the same commodities produced by dues-paying cultivators
were sold); (5) how large the costs of transportation of dues in kind
(determined by distance and availability of sea transport) were relative
to the price differences; and (6) what the price trend was - the rate of
exchange between cash and goods - prevailing in this period. A diffi-
85 Kodama and Toyoda, Ryutsmhi, p. 74.
86 In contrast with this established analysis of daisenno, emphasizing the coercion or "exploitation"
by the dues recipients, Wakita Haruko was the first in 1976 to state that the prevailing
view is erroneous in not recognizing that the daisenno "began responding to the demand made
for it by the local powers and the cultivators." Wakita, "Muromachi-ki no keizai hatten," p.
53. She also makes it clear that she is aware of needing to raise economic analytic questions in
discussing the issues involved in daisenno (pp. 53-61).
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COMMERCE AND CITIES 385
cult task is weighing the relative importance of, and assessing the
relationships existing among, each variable in these questions.
The significance of such questions becomes apparent when we
learn, for example, that in 1438 the Toji in Kyoto demanded payment
of dues in rice from its shoen located in and near the capital, because
the rice price in Kyoto was then nearly double that in the markets
where the shoen were located.87
With such an incentive, the temple
was willing to go against the tide of commutation and shoulder the
costs of selling and transporting rice. We must remember, however,
that from the early fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth, the
prices of rice and other major products were steadily falling and that in
such a period of chronic deflation, anyone with political power would
be demanding dues in cash.88
Thus, though there were many exceptions caused by economic and
political circumstances, commutation became widely practiced by the
beginning of the Muromachi period. Even with the deflationary trend,
dues payers generally preferred commutation because it enabled them
to raise their income by planting those crops that made the most
profit. But this motivation on the part of the cultivators would, of
course, be lost - as happened in many cases studied by the participants
in this debate - if the shoen administrators or local powers (who
became more powerful politically during the fifteenth century) fixed
the dues in money terms thereby ignoring the changes in market
prices caused by deflation or price manipulation.89
The reason for presenting this short discussion of commutation in
the Muromachi period is only to describe the current state of study by
Japanese specialists and to indicate how much more study is needed to
understand the real economic and political significance of the commutation
that so affected the lives of both the collectors and the payers of
dues.
Even in this brief summary of monetization and its effects in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there remains one more important
question to ask. Why did the bakufu not mint coins, especially when
the need for them was obvious and when Japan had both the raw
materials and the technological capability to do so? Japanese specialists
have offered two answers to date. One is that Japan in the medieval
87 Ibid., pp. 53-54.
88 Because of the limits placed on importation of coins from China (i.e., restrictions on the
"tally" trade) and an increasing demand for cash (owing to the growth of the economy and
monetization), the shortage of coins (deflation) was chronic during the fifteenth century. See
Yamamura and Kamiki, "Silver Mines and Sung Coins," pp. 339-42.
89 This refers to the erizeni decrees discussed later in the text.
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386 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
period was not yet a full-fledged nation-state in the international community
and was only a member of the East Asian political economic
sphere dominated by China; thus it was to be expected that Japan
would use Chinese coins as its medium of exchange. The other, a more
recent answer, is that no government after the ninth century, even the
Muromachi bakufu at its zenith, had the political power, thus "the
power that commanded commerce on a nationwide basis," necessary
to have coins accepted and used nationally.90
The partial validity of both these answers cannot be denied.
Muromachi Japan was a part of the East Asian political order maintained
by a much more powerful China, and the bakufu perhaps did
not have the political power necessary to have its own coins accepted
nationally. These answers also appear to be supported by a later historical
development: It took the strong unifying power of the Tokugawa
bakufu to accomplish what the Ashikaga bakufu was unable to do.
These answers, however, are not completely satisfactory. Explanations
that depend on "sufficient" or "necessary" political power cannot
escape the charge of being tautological. Furthermore, there are
many examples of European cities, small "states," and others that had
less political power than did the bakufu, that were located near much
stronger neighbors, that issued their own monies, and that used them
within their boundaries as well as in surrounding cities and states.
Clearly, further explanations are needed to answer the question adequately.
Thus, not to replace but to supplement the explanations offered
by Japanese specialists, let me offer the following hypothesis:
Because a large number of Chinese coins had already been in circulation
and had been accepted for over two centuries, the bakufu and
those who supported the Muromachi polity - the shugo and other local
powers (many of whom also were shoen administrators) - found it
economically advantageous to have a large variety of coins. It was
advantageous because using both varying qualities of Chinese coins
and illegal (privately minted) Japanese coins enabled the recipients
and collectors of dues to maintain or increase their income by dictating
or manipulating the acceptable mix of coins. For the dues recipients,
demanding a more lucrative mix of coins (containing a larger proportion
of higher-quality coins) on an ad hoc and incremental basis was
usually easier and required less political power than did imposing
higher dues on the cultivators.
90 The former view was first expressed by Sato Shin'ichi in his "Muromachi bakufu ron," vol. 7
(chusei 3) of Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1965); and the latter is
found in Wakita, "Muromachi-ki no keizai hatten," p. 91.
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COMMERCE AND CITIES 387
More specifically, changing the real burden of dues by changing the
acceptable mixes of coins either explicitly (formally) or in an ad hoc
fashion had the following advantages over raising the dues by changing
the rates on rice yields: (i) The political and economic costs would
be lower because no cadastral survey was required, as there usually
would have been if new dues rates were imposed; (2) changing the mix
of coins would offer flexibility in changing the real burden of the dues
in small increments, in order to respond to changing economic conditions
(to the extent that local economic conditions differed, this advantage
was especially significant to the shugo and other local powers in
the late Muromachi period); (3) changing the mix of coins could act as
a quasi income tax in that the mixes of acceptable coins could be
changed so as to share in the gains realized by dues payers from their
increasing involvement in commercial activities (because the degree of
market activities differed by region, this advantage made the second
advantage even more significant); and (4) dues payers would have
difficulty in accurately assessing how much their real dues burden was
rising over time and whether they were paying more dues than were
others living on lands taxed by neighboring shugo or local powers. This
difficulty of obtaining accurate comparative information would make
it easier for a shugo or a local power to impose a desired level of dues
with less risk of upsetting the dues payers.
In short, coins of more uniform quality issued by the bakufu would
have robbed the dues recipients of opportunities to increase their
income by dictating or manipulating the acceptable mix of coins for
dues payment. Furthermore, increasing the supply of coins - adding
bakufu-minted coins while Chinese coins were slowly withdrawn from
circulation - would have reversed the deflationary trend of these centuries.
When dues were paid in coins, it was to the advantage of the
dues recipients not to inflate the economy.91
As noted, the foregoing is only a hypothesis. It should be examined
for both its political and its economic ramifications and it should
consider the erizenirei - decrees issued, beginning in the late
Muromachi period, by the bakufu and regional and local powers,
91 There was a large difference among the values of copper coins in Japan and China, which
might have contributed to Japan's continued importation of Chinese coins in large quantities.
For more discussion and evidence, see Yamamura and Kamiki, "Silver Mines and Sung
Coins," pp. 352-8. For those interested in monetization and its effects during the medieval
period, this article contains a bibliography of all relevant English and Japanese sources. Also
see Kenneth A. Grossberg, Japan's Renaissance: The Politics of the Muromachi Bakufu (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 82-83. This is the only recent source in
English that asks why the Muromachi bakufu did not mint coins and offers speculative
answers similar to those I present in this text.
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388 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
specifying the acceptable mixes of "good" and "inferior" coins of
varying values for paying dues - and informal practices adopted by
the dues collectors in order to achieve the same goal.92
However, doing
all this will be difficult for the same reason as for the study of commutation.
That is, the studies to date by Japanese scholars of the erizenirei
and other methods of specifying the acceptable mixes of coins also
need further empirical and analytic research.93
Commerce and political change
From the turbulent Nambokucho period to the Onin War that soon
engulfed Japan in civil war, the prolonged political conflicts and the
rise and gradual decline of the bakufu could not help but affect the
course of history. What follows is a brief discussion of the tokuseirei
issued by the bakufu and the change in the relationship between a za
and its patron, in order to illustrate how the political reality of the
period interacted with the growth of commerce.94
As in the Kamakura period, the tokuseirei (debt-abrogation decrees)
of the fifteenth century were issued by the bakufu to relieve the debt
burden of commoners and warriors. However, reflecting both the
degree of monetization achieved and the decline in the bakufu's
power, the demand for these decrees, made more and more frequently
beginning in the early decades of the fifteenth century, was more
intense and came from a much larger number of commoners. It was
common for the demand to take the form of do-ikki (uprisings of
cultivators and other commoners) involving several thousand persons.
To illustrate these do-ikki, I shall describe one of the biggest which
occurred in 1428 to demand a tokuseirei.
The uprising was begun by the teamsters of Omi Province whose
meager livelihood were readily affected by the value of the goods they
92 Takizawa Takeo, "Erizeni," in Nagahara Keiji et al., eds., Chuseishi Handbook (Tokyo:
Kondo shuppansha, 1973), pp. 67-69, explains what is meant by erizeni (also called erisen and
semen) and summarizes how the issues involved in erizeni and erizenirei have been analyzed to
date by Japanese specialists. Issues relating to erizeni of the Muromachi period receive far less
attention from the Japanese specialists than do those of the Sengoku period, as indicated by
the fact that Sasaki's Muromachi bakufu does not even mention this topic at all.
93 Wakita was again the first to suggest the need for an analysis of the erizenirei from both a
political-institutional perspective and an economic analytic perspective. However, such an
analysis has yet to be made. See Wakita, "Muromachi-ki no keizai hatten," p. 91.
94 Tokuseirei and ikki (uprisings) are described in all English textbooks. For an especially interesting
and insightful discussion of them, see Katsumata Shizuo, Ikki (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
1982)Cambridge
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COMMERCE AND CITIES 389
transported to Kyoto.95
They were quickly joined by several thousand
cultivators from Omi and neighboring provinces. Although no historical
document tells exactly why this uprising began and spread so
quickly, there is no doubt that the main reason was the poor harvest of
the previous year that caused disease to spread and the debt burden of
the teamsters and cultivators to become even heavier. The cultivators
involved in the uprising "took the records of their debt and burned
them" and "attacked, in the name of tokusei [virtuous rule], sakaya,
doso, and temples and robbed them of valuables." They had to be
subdued by the warriors dispatched by several daimyo in response to
the urgent request of the shaken bakufu.96
Although only a few ikki were as large as this one,97
there were
twenty-six large ikki each involving at least a few hundred people,
between 1428 and the end of the century. A dozen or so of the later
uprisings involved more and more warriors, indicating both the effects
that monetization and the growth of commerce had on their economic
lot and the further weakening of the bakufu. The tokuseirei of the
fifteenth century were perhaps the offspring of a marriage between a
growing commerce that made money even more essential to the daily
lives of all and a central political authority that was gradually becoming
less central and less authoritative.
The Kitano sake-malt (kdji) za demonstrates the effects of the changing
political reality of the period on commerce in general and on the za
in particular.98
Sanctioned by the Kitano Shrine, a branch of the powerful Enryakuji,
by the mid-fourteenth century, this za was actively engaged in
selling malt. Documents written during the 1390s, however, show that
its exclusive right to supply malt to about 350 sake makers in most
parts of Kyoto was no longer "protected" by the shrine alone. In 1388,
the bakufu began to levy taxes in exchange for a decree supporting the
za's continued monopoly rights. Clearly, even with the backing of the
Enryakuji, the shrine by this time had become unable to prevent the
bakufu from sharing in the za's profits.
Then, during the early decades of the fifteenth century, the za
95 This is the so-called Seicho do-ikki. An excellent description of it can be found in Sasaki,
Muromachi bakufu, pp. 178-81. 96 Ibid., p. 179.
97 Another major ikki occurred in 1441 and is called Kakitsu do-ikki. A short but good summary
of it can be found in ibid., pp. 181-3.
98 For descriptions of this za, see Yamamura, "The Development of Za," pp. 454-63, and the
works of Japanese scholars that it cites.
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390 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
found that many sake makers were providing their own malt instead of
buying it from the za. This apparently occurred because the demand
for sake had risen so that it became more profitable for each sake
maker to build a malt chamber rather than to buy malt from the za and
because the sake brewers evidently judged the Enryakuji's power to
have so declined that they could safely challenge the za's monopoly
rights.
The sake makers had, however, underestimated the bakufu's reluctance
to become involved at this time in open conflict with the
Enryakuji. In 1419, the bakufu affirmed its support of the za and
allowed it to destroy nearly fifty malt chambers that had been constructed
by the sake makers. But as the bakufu continued to show
signs of increasing strength and stability in the early decades of the
fifteenth century, the sake makers, motivated by the possibility of
larger profits, continued to build malt chambers as if to test the limits
of the delicate balance of political power then existing between the
bakufu and the large temples. Between 1420 and the mid-i44Os, the
bakufu continued to allow the za to destroy malt chambers when they
were discovered, thus indicating that the bakufu, at least on the surface,
was still maintaining its political stance of not challenging the
Enryakuji's hold on the za.
The sake makers saw the bakufu's actions as an indication of less
than wholehearted support for the za and assumed that sooner or later
the bakufu would choose to support them. They knew that they were a
more lucrative source of tax income for the bakufu than was the za
which owed its primary allegiance to the temple. Meanwhile, malt
chambers continued to be built and destroyed.
This, then, was the background of the celebrated malt incident of
1444-5. 1° the fall of 1444, the sake makers openly disregarded the
za's monopoly rights and ceased to buy malt. The za members immediately
petitioned the bakufu to enforce their monopoly. They locked
themselves in the Kitano temple to await a favorable decision. Despite
this drastic measure, the occupation of a sacred temple, the bakufu
wavered. To abandon the za was the more profitable alternative, but
the bakufu was uncertain whether it wished to risk an uprising of
temples, which could prove costly to subdue. After sixty days ofindecision,
the bakufu resolved to support the za. However, because the
bakufu had clearly shown by its delay that it might be persuaded to
rule against the za, the sake makers of eastern Kyoto presented a
counterpetition asking for permission to make their own malt. Hearing
of this, the members of the za again locked themselves in the
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COMMERCE AND CITIES 391
temple, vowing not to leave until the bakufu reaffirmed its decision
favorable to the za.
This time it was the za that miscalculated the remaining power of
the Enryakuji and the extent to which the bakufu could be coerced.
Angered by the za's action, the bakufu ordered one of its leading
supporters, Hatakeyama, to drive the za members out of the temple.
Hatakeyama's troops clashed with the za members, who failed to win
the support of the Enryakuji's well-known soldier-monks. The skirmish
left forty dead, and the surviving za members fled the temple.
Some of the za members fleeing the conflict set fire to large structures
in western Kyoto, causing a major blaze that reduced much of the
western half of the city to ashes. The za was abolished, and it was not
until after the Onin War that some of its members were allowed to
return to Kyoto. This episode tells us that a political force powerful
enough to secure the profits from the increased sale of a product or
from increased commerce in general found it more profitable to forgo
a share in the monopolistic profits of a za that had clearly become
detrimental to the growth of commerce.
To be sure, many za in Kyoto continued to operate by paying more to
the bakufu, and many survived because they did not have a competing
group able to promise more to the bakufu. In many regions, this century
of transition was a period of ad hoc arrangements that depended on
the strength of the regional warrior class, on the degree to which the
bakufu's authority was felt, and on the residual strength of court nobles
and temples. In many cases, as the price for survival, the za paid more
dues to the bakufu or to the regional power, and in others, temples and
court nobles were forced to forgo dues from some regions while continuing
to receive income from others. The trend, however, was
unmistakable - the amount of dues that the za received from temples
and court nobles was fast diminishing. This happened simply because
as the fifteenth century progressed and the za monopolies were more
often challenged, each za had to appeal to the bakufu or a regional
power for the support that its original sponsors could no longer provide.
Finally, as the growth of commerce continued, integrating more markets
within a region and even across regions, the political powers and
all who traded in the markets came to realize that the varying measures
of weight, length, and volume being used seriously impeded market
transactions. The absence of a uniform measure of volume (cubic
measure) was especially troublesome.
Even though nearly a dozen measures of weight and length were
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392 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
used (to measure land and such widely traded commodities as silk,
cloth, and iron), this problem could be overcome: All these measures
could, if necessary, be converted and made comparable. In most cases,
these were measures used since the ritsuryo period, and the specialized
use of some measures, such as those for cloth and iron, were pertinent
to only a few specialists.
But the same was not the case for a cubic measure, which was
important during this period because it was used by all who measured
rice in paying and receiving taxes and rents and also in trading generally.
Stated simply, the cubic measure of rice, the tnasu (square wooden
container), had grown over time; that is, for measuring the same
nominal quantity of rice, the tnasu increased by a factor of approximately
2.5 during the medieval period. For example, in terms of the
measure used in the Tokugawa period, one sho of rice had changed
from approximately 0.4 sho in the tenth century to almost 1.0 sho by
the mid-fifteenth century. And to compound the problem, any precise
conversion was virtually impossible because the size of the tnasu grew
gradually from the tenth century to the early sixteenth century by
region and even by shoen. Some large temples also used differing sizes
of tnasu, depending on the purposes for which each was used.
It is not difficult to speculate why this occurred. Because rice was
principally a means of paying dues, it was to the advantage of each
dues recipient to enlarge the tnasu used in measuring those dues.
Undoubtedly the rate and rapidity of the increase in size closely reflected
the political or military power cf each recipient.
Here, it is useful to recall the hypothesis offered earlier to expls±i
the use of erizeni by various levels cf political powers to increase ne
real burden of dues with minimal political costs. This situation is
analogous in that enlarging the size cf tnasu gradually over time was
also a means to enlarge the real burden of the dues with minimal
political costs. Such a hypothesis also explains why the effort made by
Emperor Gosanjo in 1072 to standardize the size of the tnasu - an
attempt to require the use of the "decreed tnasu" (senji-tnasu) - had
little effect and why no political power, either the bakufu or the shugo
daimyo who were in positions to standardize the measure, did not
make a similar effort.
It is unlikely that the dues payers failed to detect the change in the
size of the tnasu by which their dues were measured. Possible explanations
for their accepting the larger tnasu from dues payers range from
the dues recipients' power over the dues payers, to the latter's willingness
to accept this means of increasing dues rather than more explicit
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COMMERCE AND CITIES 393
and potentially more burdensome means such as increasing the rate of
dues or resurveying the arable land. Or it might have been a mixture of
these two reasons. The second reason should not be rejected, because
agricultural productivity was rising from the mid-thirteenth century
on and dues payers were better able to accept the de facto increase in
the dues through the larger size of the masu. And there is no record of
uprising or petition expressing dissatisfaction with the bigger dues
resulting from the masu's increased size.
However, by the mid- to late fifteenth century and into the sixteenth
century, more and more shugo daimyo and then sengoku daimyo began
to try to standardize such measures. Their motivation was to encourage
the growth of commerce, as typified by their adoption of rakuichirakuza
(promotion of less impeded commerce and limitation of the ,
za's power), a policy they adopted beginning in the mid-sixteenth
century. And it is known that before an effective nationwide standardization
of measures of weight and length was adopted in the Tokugawa
period, several shugo daimyo and sengoku daimyo actively promoted
standardized measures their respective domains.
Again, the cubic measure was the most difficult to standardize.
Although limited historical evidence makes it difficult to make any
definite observations, it appears that from the mid-fifteenth century
on, the regional powers and especially Nobunaga, the first of the
unifiers, encouraged the use of kyo-masu (Kyoto masu), the masu that
by then was widely used in the capital, the center of commerce as well
as the seat of the Muromachi bakufu. The kyo-masu differed slightly in
size (with a maximum margin of nearly 5 percent), but one sho of kyomasu
was roughly equivalent to one sho by the Tokugawa measure (the
kyo-masu later became the basis on which the Tokugawa cubic measures
were established).
In addition, because of the problems with cubic measures in this
period, in virtually no cases is it possible to ascertain correctly the
exact amount of dues collected in rice. If an estimate is to be made over
any length of time, even for a single shoen, let alone broader interregional
and intertemporal comparisons, one must allow for the
growth in the size of the masu at differing paces and magnitudes
throughout most of the medieval period."
99 The most useful source on the medieval measures is by Hashimoto Mampei, Keisoku no
bunkashi (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1982), pp. 269-334. The seminal study on the subject
is by Hogetsu Keigo sensei kanreki kinenkai, ed., Chusei ryoseishi no kenkyu (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1961). The latter contains analyses of all of the significant historical
evidence relating to the medieval measures.
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394 THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
CONCLUSION
This chapter has examined the growth of commerce in medieval Japan
and how the many changes that resulted from it transformed the
economy from one with only limited market activities in the capital
region into an economy with an increasing number of six-day markets
throughout the nation.
This transformation was accompanied by such readily visible results
as an increase in both the size and number of urban centers; significant
institutional developments typified by the rise and growth of za and
toimaru; the spread of monetization from the capital to villages
throughout the nation; increased specialization of merchants and artisans
who produced more and more products; and the development of a
transportation network linking all parts of the nation and including a
growing number of persons engaged in transporting goods by both
water and land.
Less visible but fundamental to this transformation was a steady and
at times rapid increase in agricultural productivity which began in the
second half of the thirteenth century. This was enabled principally by
the more intensive use ofpaddies, including double cropping and even
triple cropping in some regions, and to a decreasing number of paddies
lost to flooding or drought, owing to improvements in irrigation
and water control. In addition, the economy as a whole was more
productive and efficient. People became much more aware of the effects
that changes in prices could have on their lives, of markets where
they could buy many more goods that others produced more efficiently
than they themselves could; and of the many ways that they
could increase their income, by selling products or services or lending
money.
To be sure, the benefits of commercialization and monetization also
produced conflicts of interest between the za and their challengers,
between lenders and borrowers, and between dues recipients and payers.
Such conflicts took many forms. The za sought protection from
would-be competitors, and the za patrons attempted to gain a greater
share of their profits. Through tokuseirei, bakufu tried to protect warriors
indebted to moneylenders, and dues payers and others who felt
victimized by the changes in the economy expressed their dissatisfaction
and demands through ikki. The prevailing political realities of
these three and a half centuries played a crucial role in determining the
specific forms these symptoms would take and the degree to which
their costs would affect the polity's future course.
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CONCLUSION 395
Sengoku Japan inherited a highly commercialized and monetized
economy, but one that was still coping with rapid political and economic
change and the symptoms and costs of such growth. The most
interesting aspect of sixteenth-century Japanese history is how the
sengoku daimyo, who reaped the benefits of the growing commerce,
were forced to deal with both.100
loo On the erizeni issues and other politicoeconomic developments in the Sengoku period, see
Kozo Yamamura, "Returns on Unification: Economic Growth in Japan, 1550-1650," in
John Whitney Hall, Nagahara Keiji, and Kozo Yamamura, eds., Japan Before Tokugawa
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 327-72.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER 9
JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
In this chapter I shall describe and analyze Japan's relations during
the Kamakura and Muromachi periods with various countries of East
Asia and their governments, including the Sung, Yuan, and Ming
dynasties of China, the Koryo and Yi dynasties of Korea, and the
Ryukyu Islands. My descriptions and analyses focus primarily on
Japan's international political relations, particularly Japan's relationship
with its Asian neighbors, the effect of this relationship on Japan's
internal political developments, and, conversely, the influence
of Japan's internal politics on its international relations.1
Because my
research interests lie mainly in the Kamakura period, I shall discuss
developments of that period more extensively than those of the later
Muromachi period.
JAPAN'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN EAST ASIA
Around the tenth century the motive force in East Asia shifted from
the Han People of China to the northern nomadic tribes, often called
the conquest dynasties. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
East Asian history centered on the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire.
The Southern Sung (i 127-1279) was reestablished after China's territory
was reduced by the consecutive invasions of the Liao and Chin,
which generated a financial crisis owing to the massive military expenses.
The Southern Sung, whose resources and level of productivity
were lower than those of northern China, inherited the developments
that took place in various industries during and following the domi-
1 There are a number or works on the methodology of studying East Asian relations; the
following cover the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries: Nakamura Hidetaka, "Jusan,
yonseki no Toa josei to Mongoru no shurai," in Iwanami koza Nihon no rekishi, vol. 6 (chusei
2) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963), pp. 4-9; Nissen kankeishi no kenkyu, vol.i (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1965), pp. 2-7 (reprint of the preceding); Toma Seita, Higashi Ajia
sekai no keisei (Tokyo: Shunjusha, 1966); Tanaka Takeo, Chusei laigai kankeishi (Tokyo: Tokyo
daigaku shuppankai, 1975), pp. 10-20; Sasaki Ginya. "Higashi Ajia boekiken no keisei to
kokusai ninshiki," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi, vol. 7 (chusei 3) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
'976), pp. 100-10.
396
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JAPAN'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 397
nance of the Northern Sung (960-1127) and vigorously promoted
foreign trade in hopes of resolving itsfinancialcrisis.
Japan did not have official diplomatic relations with either the Southern
Sung or the Koryo (918-1391) dynasties. But it did enjoy close
cultural and economic ties with both China and Korea, especially the
Southern Sung dynasty, through its commercial maritime activity
along the China seacoast which formed one link in the East Asian
trading sphere. This was the reason that the Mongols - who had dominated
Koryo in creating a new international order in East Asia after
their conquest of Southern Sung - tried first to entice Japan into the
new order and then to conquer it. Thus, the Mongol invasions were
attempts to force Japan to enter international politics.
The Kamakura bakufu assumed diplomatic powers during the invasions
and undertook official trade with the Yiian dynasty of China
(1279-1368) in response to the Mongol's official intensification of its
trade policy during the late Kamakura period. This presaged the diplomacy
of the succeeding Muromachi bakufu which received investiture
from China's Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and was included in the
Sinocentric international order. The Mongol invasions strengthened
the authoritarian tendencies of the Hojo family, which held the real
power in the Kamakura bakufu, and presented the Hojo with a number
of problems beyond their administrative capabilities, finally causing
the bakufu to topple in 1333.
The Kemmu regime, which destroyed the Kamakura bakufu and
lasted only two years, led Japan into the protracted internal conflict
between the Northern and Southern Courts during the Nambokucho
period (1333-92). During this sixty-year period Ashikaga Takauji
founded the Muromachi bakufu. The war between the courts during
the fourteenth century served to consolidate the power of the
Muromachi bakufu. During this struggle in 1350, the attacks of Japanese
pirates (wako) began in earnest, spreading from the Korean peninsula
south along the China coast.2
The wako's activities spanned four
centuries and occurred in two phases.
The early phase of wako activity began in the thirteenth century and
extended to the second half of the fourteenth, corresponding to the
Nambokucho and early Muromachi periods in Japan, the late Koryo
2 There are many works dealing with the wako, and a number of works on Koryo, Choson, and
Ming relations with Japan also touch on the wako. See especially Tanaka Takeo, Chusei kaigai
koshoshi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1959) and Wako to kango boeki (Tokyo:
Shibundo, 1961); Kobata Atsushi, "Kango boeki to wako," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi,
vol. 7 (chusei 3) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963); and Ishihara Michihiro, Wako (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1964).
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398 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
and early Yi (i392-1910) in Korea, and the late Yuan to early Ming in
China. Although the Korean peninsula was their main theater of activity,
the wako reached the China coast as well. During the first phase of
wako activity, the indigenous Chinese Ming dynasty emerged in China
after destroying the intruding Mongol Yuan dynasty, and on the Korean
peninsula, the Yi dynasty succeeded the Koryo dynasty. The
wako problem was a force in the founding of both these dynasties in
China and Korea, and it is evident that relations among Japan, Korea,
and Ming China were established as a result of the wako problem. In
Southeast Asia, several new kingdoms were established in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, ushering in an era of revolution and
disorder previously unknown. The second major phase of wako activity
occurred in the early to mid-sixteenth century.
The different stages of political, economic, and cultural development
in these Asian countries occurred within a unified international
order revolving around Ming China. This order was referred to as the
tribute system and involved the exchange of tribute and largess between
China and other "barbarian" nations. Ming policy forbade Chinese
citizens to leave the country as part of this tribute system, but this only
stimulated the development of a flourishing trade in the newly risen
Ryukyu kingdom (present-day Okinawa) and the overseas Chinese
communities to the south. The Ryukyus achieved unmatched prosperity
as an intermediary in the trade among Southeast Asia, Japan, and
Korea. The Ming policy forbidding overseas travel failed, and in the
sixteenth century during the Chia-ching era (1522-66), wako flourished
along the southeastern China coast. But with the arrival of European
ships, East Asian international relations underwent a dramatic
change.
FOREIGN RELATIONS AT THE FOUNDING OF THE
KAMAKURA BAKUFU
Kyushu had been a base of political power for the Taira family. During
the Gempei War (1180-5), however, Minamoto Yoritomo's younger
brother Noriyori overthrew the Heishi forces in Kyushu. In 10/1185
Noriyori left Kyushu to return to Kamakura and presented the retired
emperor Goshirakawa and Yoritomo with many gifts imported from
the mainland to Kyushu, reconfirming for both men the importance of
Kyushu in foreign trade.3
Although initially an eastern power, the
3 These gifts included Chinese brocade, damask, silks, Sung silver coins, tea, ink, utensils, and
matting. There is also mention of the Southern Court in a deed of sale of some land belonging
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: KAMAKURA BAKUFU 399
Kamakura bakufu sought quite early to establish Kyushu as a base for
foreign trade, by gaining control of Dazaifu, which handled both
internal politics and foreign relations in Kyushu. This control, however,
was not achieved quickly.
Nakahara Hisatsune and Kondo Kunihara were sent earlier in the
same year (7/1185) as envoys from Kamakura bearing an order from
Goshirakawa to check the malicious actions of the warriors in
Kyushu.4
In addition, Amano Tokage went to Kyushu as commissioner
for the subjugation of Kyushu.5
Tokage was appointed to serve
with influential officials at Dazaifu, and so his authority did not extend
to the entire administration there.
The chronology is not entirely clear, but Tokage's involvement in
foreign affairs began soon after his move to Kyushu, with Dazaifu's
unprecedented seizure of the cargo of a Chinese vessel that had landed
in Shimazu-no-sho, an estate belonging to the Fujiwara clan's main
line, the Konoe house.6
Shimazu estate officials complained to the
Konoe house, which in turn requested that Yoritomo intervene.
Yoritomo ordered Tokage to return the goods to the Konoe house.
Shimazu-no-sho was an enormous estate that encompassed land in the
three provinces of Hyuga, Osumi, and Satsuma. Bdnotsu, located
within Shimazu-no-sho on the southwest coast of the Satsuma peninsula,
was one of Japan's principal trading ports.
The foreign trade centering on Bonotsu was of considerable economic
importance to the estate.7
Tokage attempted to usurp the right
to control trade from the central noble proprietor of Shimazu-no-sho,
in the name of Dazaifu. But Minamoto Yoritomo overruled Tokage's
action, choosing instead to recognize and protect the right of the
central proprietor to control the estate's trade. The Kamakura bakufu
had just been established and had not yet officially assumed authority
over foreign relations and trade. Thus, it could not deny the trade of
to the priest Eisho in Fukuoka's Aoyagi monjo, dated 5/3/1226. The Aoyagi monjo is included in
Fukuokashi kyoiku iinkai, Iimorijinja kankei shiryoshu (Fukuoka: Fukuokashi kyoiku iinkai,
1981).
4 Azutna kagami, 7/12/1185, 8/13/1185, in Shinleizoho kokushi laikei, vol. 32 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
kobunkan, 1932), pp. 162, 164. Hereafter cited as.i4Af.
5 AK, 12/15/1186, 11/5/1187, 1/15/1191. pp. 249,281,432.
6 Shimazu-ke monjo, vol. I, no. 298, 5/14. "Minamoto no Yoritomo kahan Taira no Moritoki
hoshoan," in Dai Nihon komonjo, lewake 16, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shiryo hensanjo,
1942), p. 257.
7 For example, according to the 11/10/1147 entry in Fujiwara Yorinaga's diary (Taiki), Regent
Fujiwara no Tadamichi presented a peacock and a parrot from Shimazu-no-sho to ex-Emperor
Toba. See Zoho shiryo taisei, vol. 23 (Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 1975), p. 232.
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4OO JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
the court nobility, in this case the trading of the shoen officials of
Shimazu-no-sho, as it did not yet control Dazaifu.
In 6/1182, Yoritomo canceled the jito appointments in thirty-seven
provinces, but he adopted special measures in Kyushu directing the
provisional governor general of Dazaifu, Fujiwara (Yoshida) Tsunefusa,
to administer the area, quell any rebellions, and rectify mis-
deeds.8
Yoritomo's action thus must be seen in the light of his close
relationship with Tsunefusa; his decision limited Tokage's authority
and reaffirmed the court's previous control over Dazaifu. Dazaifu,
thus, was under the dual control of the nobles of Kyoto and the
warriors of Kamakura.9
Fujiwara Noriyoshi became senior assistant governor general in the
first month of 1190.10
During his tenure in 1191, the following incident
took place:11
A Dazaifu report to the court stated that two Sung
traders, Yang Yung and Chen Ch'i-t'ai, had committed a crime in the
Southern Sung and that the Sung court had issued an order stating
that henceforth anyone traveling from Japan to Sung China would be
arrested. This presented an alarming situation for Japan. Consequently,
Dazaifu recommended that Yang and the others be severely
punished and that a report of their punishment be sent to the Sung
court. The nationality of Yang and the other traders presented a problem,
however. Yang had been born in Japan, and it was clear that he
could be punished in Japan. But Chen had been born in Sung China,
and so the court felt that it might be inappropriate to punish him in
Japan. The exact crime committed, the decision reached by the court,
and the punishment meted out are not known. It is clear, however,
that Sung traders born in Japan, most likely in Hakata, were important
to the trade between the two countries. Questions regarding an
international legal order, including matters of territorial jurisdiction
and trade, had now been raised, and Japan became a much stronger
force than before in the development of East Asian history.
The authority to resolve this kind of foreign-policy issue lay not
8 In fact, from 1186 to 1190, we can point to at least six Dazaifu actions, that is, acts by
Fujiwara no Tsunefusa, in which Amano Tokage was not involved. See Takeuchi Rizo,
"Chinzei bugyo ni tsuite no ichi, ni no kosatsu," in Uozumi-sensei koki kinen kokushxgaju ronso
(Osaka: Kansai daigaku, 1959), p. 423.
9 Seno Seiichiro, Chinzei gokenin no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1975), p. 38. Fujita
Toshio, "Kamakura shoki no Dazaifu kiko ni tsuite," Kumamoto shigaku 55 (May 1981).
10 The following are useful source material collections on Dazaifu during the establishment of
the Kamakura bakufu: Takeuchi Rizo, ed., Dazaifu, Dazaifu temmangu shiryo, vol. 7
(Fukuoka-ken: Daizaifu temmangu, 1971).
11 Gyokuyo, vol. 3, 2/15/1191, 2/19/1192, 6/12/1192 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1907), pp.
660-61, 710.
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: KAMAKURA BAKUFU 401
with the Kamakura bakufu but with the court. Dazaifu, which handled
its own foreign relations directly, was divided between its responsibility
to the court and that to the bakufu. It seems, however, that
Tokage did not play a decisive role in managing foreign-policy is-
sues.12
During an earlier discussion of matters involving commodity
prices in 7/1179, the court had prohibited trade in Sung coins, regarding
them as equivalent to privately minted coins.13
In 7/1193, the court
further forbade the circulation of Sung coins, in order to stabilize
prices.14
This was an attempt to manage foreign relations in a very
broad sense of the term. Both the 2/1227 Koryo affair15
and the 4/1240
communique from Koryo were discussed in council at the court.16
How did the incident involving Yang and the other Sung traders
arise? A better understanding of the incident requires a discussion of
Sung residents in Japan. A number of persons from Sung China had
formed relationships with the great Japanese temples and shrines as
yoriudo (outside laborers) and jinin (shrine dependents), carrying out
trade and accumulating wealth. The Hakozakigu shrine, located in
present-day Fukuoka City, is a good example.17
According to a 1219
document, Sung people owned twenty-six cho of paddy field, and
these fields were exempt from taxes and levies.'8
We know that the
Sung provided Chinese goods such as saddles and silk cloth to the
Hakozakigu. In addition, these Sung traders were responsible for paying
various levies to the shrine. The Hakozakigu formed this relationship
with foreign-trading merchants residing in Hakata and received a
portion of their profits. This trade was further connected to the main
shrine, Iwashimizu Hachimangu.
In 1218 an absentee official of the main shrine, Gyohen, and his son,
Mitsusuke, killed Chang Kuang-an, a. yoriudo of Dazaifu and a jinin of
the Daisenji, as well as a translator and a boat captain. The motive for
the murder is unknown, but we can deduce that it was somehow
12 Kawazoe Shoji, ed., Umi kara yomigaeru wako (Fukuoka: Asahi shimbum seibu honsha
kikakubu, 1981), p. 39. 13 Gyokuyo, vol. 2, 7/25/1179, 7/27/1179, pp. 290-91.
14 "Hoso shiyosho," suiko, in Gunsho ruiju, vol. 4, (Tokyo: Keizai zasshisha, 1898), p. 873.
Takeuchi Rizo, ed., Kamakura ibun, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Tokyodo, 1972), p. 78. Hereafter cited as
KI.
15 Kokusho kankokai, comp., Meigetsuki, vol. 3, 2/18/1227 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1912),
p. 14.
16 Hyankurensho, 1240I4I3, vol. 11 of Shituei zoho kokushi taikei (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan,
'939)> P- 187. Heidoki, 1240/4/12-14, 17, vol. 32 in Zoho shiryo taisei (Kyoto: Rinsen shoten,
1975). PP- 48-49. 52-53-
17 Mori Katsumi, Shiniei Nisso boeki no kenkyu (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1975), pp. 245-51.
Kawazoe Shoji, Chusei Kyushu no seiji to bunka (Tokyo: Bunken shuppan, 1981), pp. 62-66.
18 This was written on the reverse side of the 6/1219 entry in the Ruiju kokushi owned by
Iwashimizu Hachimangu. SeeKI, vol. 4, pp. 339-40.
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402 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
related to a dispute over trade profits. Gyohen was the deputy of Sosei,
the provincial governor of Iwashimizu. The priests of the Enryakuji,
the Daisenji's main temple, threatened the court with the sacred palanquins
of the Hie, Kitano, and Gion shrines, demanding that Sosei be
handed over to the Enryakuji and that the ports of Hakata and
Hakozaki be made possessions of the Enryakuji. There was also a
conflict within Iwashimizu Hachimangu between Sosei and Yusei.
The affair ended with some underlings being jailed, but nothing more.
It was a bold attempt by the Enryakuji to check the power of the
Iwashimizu Hachimangu, to place the Hakozakigu under its own control,
and to seize the profits from foreign trade.
Also in 1218, Hsiu-an, a translator and ship captain, and an estate
official of Kanzaki-no-sho in Hizen attacked the deputy administrator
of the Hakozakigu and an envoy of Dazaifu. This incident was
related to another in n/1219, in which estate officials of Kanzaki-nosho
requested that Chang Kuan-an's death place, Hakata, and its
holdings be made possessions of Kanzaki-no-sho. It appears that
Chang had some sort of profit arrangement in Kanzaki-no-sho. He
had holdings in Hakata and clashed with the Hakozakigu over a
matter of rights, thus beginning the fight between the Daisenji's
main temple, the Enryakuji, and the Hakozakigu's main shrine,
Iwashimizu Hachimangu.19
Another case illustrating the life of the Sung Chinese in Japan was that
of Hsieh Kuo-ming, who built the Jotenji in Hakata.20
The temple was
founded by Shoichi Kokushi En'ni Ben'en (1202-80) and built in the
late thirteenth century adjacent to the Shofukuji, which Eisai had built
in Hakata. En'ni was the first priest in Japan to be given the title of
national teacher (kokushi). The temple's chief financial supporters
were the trader Hsieh Kuo-ming and a member of the Muto house,
claimed to be Muto Sukeyori, who served as junior assistant governor
(shdni) of Dazaifu. The temple was constructed against a background
of connections between these twofinancialbackers in the Japan-Sung
trade. En'ni was a native of Suruga Province who had received his
ordination at the Todaiji. After entering the service of Eicho at the
Chorakuji in Kozuke, he moved to Hakata in 1233 in preparation for a
trip to China. He stayed in Hakata for two years, and it was probably
during those years that he came to know Hsieh Kuo-ming and the
19 See Takeuchi, ed., Dazaifu, Dazaifu Temmangu shiryo, vol. 7, pp. 344ff.
20 Hirowatari Masatoshi, Hakaia joienjishi (Tokyo: Bunka shuppan, 1977) and Hakatajotenjishi
(Fukuoka: Fukuoka-ken bunka kaikan, 1981).
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: KAMAKURA BAKUFU 403
Muto (Shoni) family. In 1235 he went to China and entered the service
of Wu-chun Shih-fan at Mount Ching-shan in the northern part of
Linan-fu of Kang-chou in Chiekiang Province. He returned to Japan
in 1241 with many Chinese volumes and made an important contribution
to Japanese religion and arts. En'ni was in Hakata for about three
years and became known to Fujiwara no Michiie, under whose protection
he opened the Tofukuji, establishing the foundation for the rise of
Zen Buddhism in Kyoto.
En'ni went to the capital after his stay in Hakata, but he soon
returned to China where he was in close contact with his teacher, Wuchun
Shih-fan. En'ni played a major role in the cultural interchange
between Sung China and Japan. For example, at the urging of people
like Hsieh Kuo-ming he contributed to the restoration of Ching-shan,
which had suffered a calamity. And when the Jotenji caught fire in
1248, he quickly returned to Hakata and rebuilt the temple with
Hsieh's assistance.
The Muto family was a Kanto gokenin family based in Musashi
with special bakufu authority over Kyushu. Because the family
served in the Dazaifu post of shoni, they came to be called the Shoni
family. Family members concurrently held shugo posts in Chikuzen,
Buzen, Hizen, Tsushima, and Iki. The Muto family is said to have
been the patron family of the Jotenji, to which they commended
certain lands, but there are no extant documents confirming this.
However, as the Dazaifu officials directly responsible for foreign relations,
the Muto were most likely involved with En'ni's trips to Sung
and the Sung-Japan trade of Hsieh Kuo-ming. Therefore, the claim
that the Muto cooperated with Hsieh to build the Jotenji is quite
likely true.
Hsieh Kuo-ming, known variously as "trade leader," "boat captain,"
and "Japanese trade envoy" (Nihon goshi), was a Hakata-based
merchant active in the Sung-Japan trade. His extraordinary wealth is
attested to by his construction of the Jotenji and the restoration of
Ching-shan, although he probably had help from other Sung merchants
like himself. We know that Hsieh held the jito-shiki for certain
lands in Oro-no-shima belonging to the Munakata Shrine (Munakata
District, Fukuoka Prefecture). This reveals part of his economic base
as a trader. When the Jotenji was built, Hsieh bought land owned by
the Hakozaki Hachimangu in the Aka District of Chikuzen and donated
it to the temple. This indicates both Hsieh's wealth and his
dependent relationship with the Hakozakigu. He enjoyed close connections
with the Munakata and the Hakozakigu shrines, both occupying
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4O4 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
important positions in foreign trade. It is said that in 1242 Hsieh
restored the Jotenji after it was destroyed by fire, rebuilding eighteen
structures in one day. There is also a letter from Wu-chun Shih-fan
addressed to Hsieh, thanking him for contributing lumber to the reconstruction
of the Ching-shan. Built by Chinese trade leaders to revive
the faith of their homeland, the Jotenji was an entirely appropriate
Zen temple for Hakata, a center of foreign trade.
The construction of the Jotenji is significant in the context of cultural
interchange between Japan and Sung China. The Shofukuji,
supposedly built by Eisai, marks the appearance in Hakata of Sungstyle
Zen garan, the first step in a change in the city's urban landscape.
But the subsequent construction of the Jotenji brought the powerful
styles of Sung's Tendai Zen and accelerated urban Hakata's
sinofication. Along with the Dazaifu's Sofukuji and the Hizen's
Manjuji, the Jotenji formed the center of the Rinzai sect's development
in northern Kyushu. Temples and shrines represent the culture
of medieval Hakata, and the majority of these institutions were centers
of foreign trade. Consequently, it was from that quarter that the culture
of Hakata took its direction. The remarkable roles played by
En'ni and Hsieh Kuo-ming in the history of cultural interchange between
Sung China and Japan indicate the tremendous significance of
the founding of the Jotenji in the history of Japan's adoption of a
foreign culture.
FOREIGN RELATIONS DURING THE HOJO REGENCY
Muto (Shoni) Sukeyori came to Kyushu shortly after 3/1196 to govern
the island for the bakufu. He inherited Amano Tokage's position of
leadership over the influential local officials at Dazaifu and also established
the Dazaifu shugo-sho, with jurisdiction over the constabulary
provinces of Chikuzen, Buzen, and Hizen. It was only after his ap-
pointment21
as Dazai no shoni (junior assistant governor of Dazaifu) in
10/1226 that Muto Sukeyori became the ranking local official in
Dazaifu.
Sukeyori had gradually accumulated power within the Dazaifu structure
before this appointment. Furthermore, his appointment as shoni
(the post with the highest authority over foreign contacts at Dazaifu)
21 Takeuchi, ed., Dazaifu, Dazaifu temmangu shiryo, vol. 7, p. 390.
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: HOjO REGENCY 405
was related to the bakufu's consolidation after the Jokyu disturbance
under Hojo Yasutoki. Succeeding his father Yoshitoki as regent,
Yasutoki" moved toward a councilor type of rule, first by appointing
one of his most trustworthy kinsmen, Hojo Tokifusa, as cosigner, and
then by designating eleven men to serve on a board of councilors in 12/
1225. Muto Sukeyori, a bakufu gokenin, became Dazai no shoni ten
months later. During this interval the bakufu had successfully negotiated
Sukeyori's appointment with the court. Although, Sukeyori's
appointment was connected with the Kamakura bakufu's political consolidation,
foreign policy considerations made the court's approval
mandatory.
The 5/1223 entry in the twenty-second kwon of the Koryosa23
states
that "Japanese (pirates) attacked Kumjo." This is the first textual
reference to wako. The 4/1225 entry states further that Koryo dispatched
troops and captured two wako boats that had attacked the
coast of Kyongsangdo. These accounts are quite detailed, indicating
Koryo's increasing concern about piracy. Wako again attacked the
coast of Kyongsangdo in the first month of the next year, 1226, and in
the sixth month again invaded Kumjo. These raids were on a smaller
scale than those beginning in 1350 and are best thought of as a prelude
to those later attacks.24
Nevertheless, their impact was significant.
Especially troublesome was the 6/1226 attack, in which the majority of
pirates were Tsushima islanders. Koryo complained strongly to
Dazaifu in 2/1227,25
and Fujiwara Sada'ie expressed fear of a Koryo
attack.26
It was because of this sense of foreign crisis generated by the
wako problem that the court agreed to the appointment of Muto
Sukeyori as shoni, because he enjoyed special authority for bakufu
control of Kyushu and moreover he was shugo of Chikuzen, Chikugo,
Buzen, and Hizen.
Sukeyori became shoni under confused circumstances, but how he
dealt with the foreign problem in Dazaifu is relatively clear from the
sources. In his diary, Meigetsuki, Fujiwara Sada'ie relates in a 10/17/
1226 entry that because the Matsura-to, a pirate band from Kyushu,
had attacked Koryo with several dozen warships, Koryo had raised a
force and taken revenge by burning some Japanese ships used for
22 Uwayokote Masataka, Hojo Yasutoki (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1958).
23 For the Koryota, see Tokyo, Kokusho kankokai, 1908 ed.
24 Tanaka, Wako to kango boeki, p. 3. 25 AK, 1227/5/14, vol. 33, p. 56.
26 Meigetsuki, vol. 2, 1226/10/16-17, pp. 544-5.
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406 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
travel to Sung China. This was the 6/1226 raid attributed to the inhabitants
of Tsushima. In 2/1227 Koryo vehemently complained of this in
a communique, to Dazaifu. In response, Muto Sukeyori opened the
Koryo communique, had ninety pirates beheaded in front of the
Koryo envoy, and secretly sent back his own reply.27
In the twentysecond
kwan of Koryosa an entry for 5/17/1227 records that "Japan
sent a letter apologizing for the crime of the pirate ship invasions and
seeking to improve relations." The entire matter was debated in council
at court, where Sukeyori's actions were considered "an embarrassment
to our nation," and the Koryo communique, a breach of etiquette.
Muto Sukeyori tried to restore good relations by controlling
the pirate attacks through severe reprisals, but the Kyoto nobles,
placing great value on honor, criticized him.
By the middle of the eleventh century, the relationship between
Japan and Koryo had progressed from merely returning each other's
shipwrecked sailors into a full trading relationship. However, in the
twelfth century there were no diplomatic relations at all. The goods
that Koryo exported to Japan consisted of basic raw materials, whereas
Japan's exports to Koryo werefinishedgoods requiring detailed craftsmanship.
The reason that the Japan-Koryo trade rose to a peak and
then declined rapidly can be attributed to an imbalance in the levels of
the countries' productive capacities. Koryo's relationship with Japan
into the thirteenth century soured and was limited, as we have seen,
by the agreement on annual trading missions. The primary reason for
this was Koryo's low level of productivity and lack of commercial
development.28
In addition, the wako problem limited cultural interchange
between Japan and Koryo in the thirteenth century. Through
foreign-policy negotiations with Dazaifu and Muto Sukeyori, Koryo
hoped to control Tsushima and the Matsura-to, to limit trade as far as
the Shoni were concerned, and to stabilize its own economy, whose
productive capacity was as yet undeveloped.
Although Japanese pirate attacks against Koryo decreased after the
6/1226 raid on Kumjo, they did not cease. Koryo's Ungjin District was
raided in the fifth month of the following year,29
the same month in
which Muto Sukeyori beheaded the criminals in front of the Koryo
27 Takeuchi, ed., Dazaifu, Dazaifu lemmangu shiryo, vol. 7, pp. 399-400.
28 Aoyama Koryo, Nichirai koshoshi no kenkyu; (Tokyo: Meiji daigaku bungakubu bungaku
kenkyusho, 1955), p. 25. Tamura Hiroyuki, Chusei Nitcho boeki no kenkyu (Kyoto: Sanwa
shobo, 1967), p. 13.
29 Source materials on Japanese-Koryo relations are collected in Shiryo shusei hensankai,
Chugoku-Chosen no skiseki in okeru Nihon shiryo shusei, Sankoku, Korai no bu (Tokyo:
Kokusho kankokai, 1978).
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: HOJO REGENCY 407
envoy. In 1232, residents of Kagamisha in Hizen Province invaded
Koryo and stole many rare treasures. The azukari-dokoro of Kagamisha
complained of interference by the shugo, but the Kamakura
bakufu ordered the shugo-sho of Hizen (Muto Sukeyori's son Sukeyoshi)
to investigate the criminals, as well as their vessels and contra-
band.30
In 9/1243, Japan offered goods to Koryo and also returned
some Koryo castaways; this was in all likelihood the work of the Muto.
Likewise, the Muto order to Shigehisa, said to be the founder of the
So clan, to attack the Ahira family of Tsushima in 1245 or 1246 was
probably an attempt to control pirate activity.
In the latter half of the reign of Koryo's King Kojong, there were
fewer Japanese pirate raids on Koryo because of both Koryo's increased
diplomatic pressures on Japan and its strengthened defense.
But it was after 1231, when Koryo was invaded by the Mongols, that
the pirate attacks declined most significantly. In 11/1251, Koryo prepared
for pirate raids by constructing a castle at Kumju,31
and immediately
after surrendering to the Mongols in 7/1259, Koryo sent an
envoy to Japan requesting that the pirates be suppressed.32
The
Koryosa entry for 2/1260 records that Sung merchants and "island
wae" (meaning Japanese from Tsushima) continued to visit Koryo,
and as a result Koryo dispatched a defense commissioner to prepare
for emergencies. In 1263 a number of priests and secular people
entering Sung China in search of the Buddhist law came to Koryo
ports, and merchant vessels returning to Japan from Sung also
docked in Koryo. Koryo sent these travelers away and strengthened
its defenses.33
In 2/1263, Japanese wako again at Ungjin, seizing cloth and rice
from tribute vessels from various administrative centers. Koryo sent
an envoy bearing a communique to Japan strongly protesting this
action and requesting that the pirates suppressed. Koryo maintained
that Koryo-Japan relations were limited by agreement to two ships
per year and that the Japanese pirate activities were in flagrant violation
of this.34
Thus pressured, Japan's negotiators (most likely from
the Muto family) reconfirmed the policies of limiting trade and prohibiting
piracy. A Dazaifu investigation of the raid established clearly
that the guilty parties were Tsushima people, and so the Koryo envoy
confiscated rice, horse fodder, and leather before returning to Korea.
The Aokata monjo contains a fragmentary document pertaining to
30 AK, vol. 33, 1232/9/17, p. 121. 31 Shiryo shusei hensankai, Nihon shiryo shusei, p. 266.
32 Ibid., p. 69. 33 Ibid., p. 70. 34 Ibid., p. 70.
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408 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
this affair that indicates that the Matsura-to was at the center of
things.35
The Mongols, having terrorized Koryo for thirty years, enthroned
Kublai Khan, who then dealt less harshly with Koryo because of its
political instability at the time of his accession. But in 7/1265, the year
after Koryo entered into tribute relations with the Mongols, the Japanese
attacked the coasts of Koryo southern provinces. Koryo defended
against these attacks by employing its most powerful military force,
the sampyol'cho (third special unit).36
These problems surrounding the
wako were related to the Mongol invasions of Japan, which I shall
discuss later in this chapter.
From late Heian to early Kamakura times, the court had forbidden
metal currency and prohibited the circulation of "new coins,"37
that is,
Southern Sung coins, in order to control prices. In 7/1199, the year of
Minamoto Yoritomo's death, the Southern Sung also prohibited the
export of Sung copper coins by Japanese and Koryo merchants.38
At
that time copper coins were not used as money in trade transactions
but were exchanged for goods of equivalent value. Southern Sung
intellectuals, lamenting the flow of Sung coins out of the country,
made numerous plans and proposals. The severe outflow of copper
coins during the Southern Sung resulted in deflationary conditions
referred to as "scarcity of money" (ch'ien-huang). In Japan, prices had
previously been calculated in amounts of cloth, but in 1226 the
Kamakura bakufu abolished the cloth equivalence and ordered the use
of copper coins.39
Money had not been minted in Japan since the
twelve imperial coins (kocho junisen) of Nara times, and from late
Heian, Sung coins circulated unchecked by legislative action. However,
with the development of various forces of production and the
expansion of commerce, the demand for a circulating currency increased.
The court was thus forced to recognize the great importance
of the Sung coins, whose circulation had been prohibited until early
Kamakura.
It was said that traffic between Sung and Japan was nevep less than
forty to fifty ships annually and that the Japanese especially desired
35 Seno Seiichiro, ed., Aokata monjo, vol. I (Tokyo: Zoku gunsho ruiju kanseikai, 1975), p. 68.
36 Shiryo shusei hensankai, Nihon shiiyd shusei, p. 71 37 Gyokuyo, vol. 3, 1187/6/13, p. 375.
38 The following section on the flow of Sung coins into Japan relies on Mori Katsumi, Shintei
Nisso boeki no kenkyu (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1975); and Sogabe Shizuo, Nissd kinkahei
kdryushi (Tokyo: Hobunkan, 1949). 39 AK, 1226/8/1, vol. 33, p. 45.
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: HOJO REGENCY 409
copper coins. The money that was imported and circulated was predominantly
Northern Sung coins; that from Southern Sung comprised
an insignificant amount. In 1242, a merchant vessel belonging to
Saionji Kintsune returned from Sung China carrying 100,000 kan
worth of coins, along with parrots and water buffalo. This 100,000 kan
of Sung coins was equivalent to the entire amount of coins minted
annually in the Southern Sung. Thus, the importation of these coins
had a significant impact on the economies of both Sung China and
Japan.
The tremendous outflow of Sung coins to Japan as well as to various
parts of Asia aggravated the economic crisis throughout the Southern
Sung, causing the government to adopt stringent regulations to curtail
theflowof copper coins to Japan. The excessive exporting necessary to
obtain the Sung coins also disrupted the Japanese economy. For example,
according to the Teid kennenki,40
the export of rice from the western
provinces mentioned in the edict probably means most of it was
Chinzei mai (Kyushu rice), which was favored by the Kyoto nobles.
Because of Japan's chronic natural disasters and frequent famines, this
measure was most likely adopted out of fear that the export of rice to
China would exceed productive capacity and so reduce the income
from the shoen and koryo.
While the history of foreign relations to the mid-thirteenth century
was evolving around these problems, the power structure of the
Kamakura bakufu was consolidated; the Hojo family regency system
was secured; and the bakufu's control over the western provinces the
base for foreign relations - was strengthened. The transport route
for the continental goods from Hakata along the Seto Inland Sea to
Kyoto expanded to reach the warrior stronghold at Kamakura, which
became the terminus. Kamakura received a large amount of material
goods from the continent by two routes: from Kyoto and from Hakata
through the Inland Sea. This movement of goods increased from midto
late Kamakura times, and economic circulation and regional culture
developed throughout the entire century.
The Kaidoki of 1223 records that Yuihama in Kamakura was
crowded with houses and had several hundred ships anchored there.
Ten years later, in 1232, during the regency of Hojo Yasutoki, a small
island - Wake no shima - was constructed with contributions solicited
by the priest Oamidabutsu to facilitate ship docking, and it became
a base for both domestic and foreign trade. Subsequently, the
40 Shinlei zoho kokushi taikei (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1932), p. 409.
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4IO JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
importation of continental goods into Kamakura increased further.
And along with the consolidation of water routes - the opening of the
Asahina canal between Kamakura and Musashi Matsura in 1241, for
example - the warrior government at Kamakura increased in prosperity,
supported by wealth acquired through trade. When we consider
the growth of the cities during the Kamakura period in the light of
Japan's relations with East Asia, we must take special note of the
prosperity of the port cities along the Inland Sea, such as Hakata,
Kamakura, and Kusado Sengen,41
which, is contrast with Kyoto,
served as entrepots for foreign trade.
The bakufu issued legislation to limit foreign traffic on the Inland
Sea linking Hakata and Kamakura when it became too active. In 4/
1254 a bakufu document addressed to Nikaido Yukiyasu and Ota
Yasutsura prohibited the possession of more than five Chinese vessels
ordered the destruction of ships beyond that number.42
According to
the Kento hybjoshu-den, Yasutsura was a member of the Council of
State {hydjoshu) and head of the Board of Inquiry {monchujo) and
Yukiyasu administered the fifth hikitsuke and head of the Administrative
Board {mandokoro). If we accept the interpretation that "suits by
commoners and nonhousemen in Kamakura were administered by the
mandokoro and suits by such individuals from the provinces were handled
by the monchujo," then this law must have been intended to limit
private trade among trading merchants in both Kamakura and the
provinces.43
Thus, the earlier interpretation that this ordinance was
addressed to Dazaifu requires reexamination. If we consider the way
the law was transmitted, as well as the state of communications between
Japan and the continent, then the law must have extended even
to Dazaifu and Hakata.
What exactly was this ordinance? Koryo and Sung China were suffering
from wako attacks and an excessive outflow of coins. Japan
faced several problems: an international legal order44
necessitated by
the residency of foreigners in Japan; an outflow of rice exceeding
productive capacity which was destroying the income structure of the
shoen and koryo and fanning the crisis of famine; and the rapid increase
of Chinese imports into Kamakura. Furthermore, Japan's internal
41 Murakami Masana, Maboroshi no Kusado Sengencko (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1980).
42 AK, 1254/4/29, vol. 33, p. 561.
43 For the various theories about the 1254 regulation, see Osa Setsuko, "Kencho rokunen
'tosen' seigenryo ni kansuru shomondai," in Chukyo tanki daigaku ronso 1 (March 1966).
44 Along with this we must also consider that there were then a rather large number of Japanese
residents in Ningpo. See Sogabe, Nisso kinkahei kmyushi, pp. 166-67.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 411
politics were shifting toward Hojo authoritarianism. These problems
were probably considered when writing the ordinance.
We must recognize, however, that this law was an attempt by the
Kamakura bakufu (the Hojo) to protect its own official trade vessels
and to strengthen its own control over trade while limiting trade with
Sung China in general. We should also consider the course leading
toward the bakufu's monopolization of public trading vessels in the
late (post-Mongol invasion) Kamakura period. Although the limitation
ordinance certainly is significant to the history of Kamakura foreign
relations, this does not mean that it was immediately and permanently
enforced. Judging from later conditions, it did not seem to limit
private foreign trade. But in 4/1264 the bakufu did order Dazaifu to
stop the official trade vessels.45
This action was probably taken in light
of the Mongols' imminent conquest of the Southern Sung.46
THE MONGOL INVASIONS
In 1206 the Mongol unifier, Genghis Khan (1162-1227), unleashed a
stormlike campaign of warfare, utilizing incomparably powerful cavalry
forces. The campaign lost force by the mid-thirteenth century,
but in the process it created a new political situation. A great new
empire emerged, encompassing the nomadic pasture lands of the
northern plains, the Islamic cultural sphere, large parts of East Asia,
and even a portion of Europe. By the era of the fourth khan, Mongke
(1208-59), control of the Mongol Empire had shifted from the Ogotei
line to the descendants of Tului, exacerbating a tendency toward disintegration.
When Kublai (1215-94) succeeded his brother Mongke as
Great Khan, the situation became critical. Mongke appointed Kublai
as commander in chief with authority to rule northern China; of all the
Mongol leaders, Kublai was the most friendly toward China. After
Mongke's death, Kublai fought for the position of Great Khan with
his younger brother Arighbugha (P-I266) who placed primary importance
on the Mongol homeland. Calling together the great council
(Khuriltai), Kublai proclaimed his own succession. Thus, at least in
name, Kublai became the leader of the Mongols. But in reality he had
45 Sato Shin'ichi and Ikeuchi Yoshisuke, eds., Chusei hosei shiryoshu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
1955). P- 222.
46 Concerning the cultural interchange during the Kamakura period, see Kawazoe Shoji,
"Kamakura jidai no taigai kankei to bunbutsu no inyu," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi, vol. 6
(chusei 2) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1975).
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412 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
to create his own authority, the Yuan dynastic order, whose political
base lay in the Chinese agricultural region.47
The Yuan dynasty attacked Japan twice - first in 1274 and then
again in 1281. The attackers were called Yuan pirates {genko). In this
chapter, I shall call these attacks Mongol invasions {Moko shurai), as
they are referred to in contemporary sources. The two wars themselves
are known from the era names as the Bun'ei and Koan campaigns.
One can consider the significance of the Mongol invasions in
Japanese history in two ways. The first is to look at them in the context
of East Asian history, using a time frame from the Mongol invasions
themselves to the end of the Kamakura period, during which the
bakufu, fearing yet another attack, kept its defense structure intact.
This would be, in other words, a cross-sectional analysis. But such an
approach has two problems: how to regard the Mongol invasions from
the standpoint of Japan's relations with Yuan, Koryo, and Southern
Sung and how to analyze Japan's internal situation in terms of politics,
economics, society, thought, and culture. The second approach reveals
how this unprecedented foreign attack functioned in terms of the
Japanese consciousness of foreign peoples, that is, in the formation of
a national consciousness. This is a sort of vertical analysis.48
Because I
cannot use both approaches here, I shall first describe the international
situation leading to the Mongol invasions, and then explain the
reasons behind them.49
Because the Japanese-Mongol negotiations were initiated through
Koryo, the relationship between the Mongols and Koryo requires
some clarification.50
This relationship began when the Mongols attacked
the Tungusic Jurchin kingdom of Chin (1115-1234). The
Chitan people, previously subject to the Chin, had revolted and ravaged
the northern area of Korea; consequently, in 1219, Koryo joined
the Mongols to subdue them. Later, however, Mongol envoys periodically
visited Koryo, demanding and collecting large amounts of tribute.
But in 1225, when Ogotei (1168-1241) succeeded Genghis Khan,
47 Murakami Masatsugu, "Mongoru teikoku no seiritsu to bunretsu," in Iwanami koza sekai
rekishi, vol. 9 (chusei 3) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970).
48 There are numerous studies dealing with the Mongol invasions, and for a history of these
studies, see Kawazoe Shoji, Moko shurai kenkyu shiron (Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 1977).
49 The following discussion is based mainly on Kawazoe, Chusei Kyushu no seiji to bunka, pp.
103—33. Consequently, I have not listed each document. Two representative works on the
Mongol invasions are by Ikeuchi Hiroshi, Genko noshinkenkyu (Tokyo: Toyo bunko, 1931);
and Aida Niro, Moko shurai no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1971). For more
details, see Kawazoe, Moko shurai kenkyu shiron.
50 The following discussion of Japanese-Koryo relations is based on the first two chapters of
Ikeuchi, Genko no shin kenkyu.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 413
Mongol ambassadors returning to China with Koryo tribute goods
were attacked and murdered. Under the pretext of punishing the murderers,
Ogotei appointed Sartag as commander in 1231 and sent him
to invade Koryo. Thus began the Mongol invasions of Koryo which
continued for the next three decades. Koryo moved its capital to
Kanghwa Island and continued a heroic resistance. But the people and
land of Koryo were trampled under the hooves of the Mongol cavalry;
corpses covered the fields; and after the Mongols passed through,
nothing was left behind.
At the time of the fourth Mongol ruler, Mongke, the Koryo court
left Kanghwa and surrendered to the Mongols. Prince Chon departed
for an audience with Mongke, but Mongke died suddenly at his battle
headquarters in Szechuan Province, and the prince instead met
Kublai, who was proceeding north. In order to defeat his younger
brother Arighbugha, Kublai found it necessary to win over Koryo. So
he altered his earlier policy of successive attacks and adopted a moderate
policy toward Koryo, while continuing to rely on the success of
those raids.
Koryo's King Kojong died after hearing that the fortress on
Kanghwa Island had been destroyed by the Mongols, and Crown
Prince Chon succeeded as King Wonjong, securing his position with
Mongol backing. Peace seemed to have returned to Koryo. However,
when Kublai defeated Arighbugha and consolidated his position as the
Mongol ruler, he reversed his moderate policy and instead demanded
strict compliance with the heavy obligations he imposed on the Koreans.
Thus the Mongols assigned to Koryo the responsibility of negotiating
with Japan. As the base for the invasion of Japan, Koryo was
forced once again to face difficult times.
While Kublai and Arighbugha were fighting each other, a man
known as Li T'an held sway in Shantung Province. In 1262 the Southern
Sung persuaded him to raise a rebellion against the Mongols.
However, Li's rebellion was put down in only half a year, and the
Southern Sung's calculation that they could weaken Mongol power
proved inaccurate. Before that, just a month after his accession,
Kublai dispatched envoys to the Southern Sung, demanding the formal
establishment of peace negotiations, but the Sung imprisoned the
envoys. With this they had assisted Li T'an's rebellion, which constituted
a challenge to the Mongols.
Kublai began to raise an army to invade the Sung. In 1268 he
attacked Hsiang Yang in Hupei and, after a five-year assault, finally
forced its surrender. The Mongol army then seized Ngo Chou (Hupei
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414 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
Province, Wu Chang) and in 1275 occupied the Southern Sung capital
of Lin'an (Hangchou). There were attempts to revive the Southern
Sung, but in 1279, two years before the Koan campaign, the young
Sung emperor Ping perished at sea in the battle of Yaishan. Kublai had
at last defeated the Southern Sung and brought all of China under his
control. Thus my conclusion is that the Mongol threat to and invasion
of Japan was related to this attack on the Southern Sung.
In Kangan (south Kyongsang Province), a part of Koryo close to
Japan, lived a man named Ch'oe I who enjoyed Kublai's favor. He
reported information he had heard about Japan to Kublai, telling him
that the country's laws and government were superior, and advised
him to open negotiations with Japan, which had been in communication
with China since Han and T'ang times. Ch'oe further recommended
that Koryo guide the Mongols to Japan. This is the background
of Kublai's dispatch of emissaries to Japan requesting diplomatic
relations. Thus in 1265 negotiations commenced between Japan
and the Mongols.
A document from the Mongols (dated 8/1266 and arriving in Japan on
1/1268) first described the Mongols' might and then recounted how
they had brought peace to Koryo, explaining that the Mongol-Koryo
relationship was like lord and vassal or father and son: Koryo was the
Mongols' "eastern vassal state." Japan is close to Koryo, the document
continued and, since Japan's founding, had normally had exchanges
with China but had not yet concluded peace with it. Saying that
perhaps "your honorable country" is unaware of these circumstances,
the document expressed the Mongols' wish to establish friendship
between the two states. The wording was courteous and did not demand
Japan's submission, but it concluded that if there were no other
way, the Mongols would resort to force of arms. Reminiscent of the
edicts issued by the emperor in the Han Chinese state,51
this document
coupled the Mongol sense of superiority with a Chinese moral view,
following traditional Chinese foreign-policy forms. From ancient
times China had, in return for the tribute goods that neighboring
kingdoms brought and presented at the Chinese court, granted these
states "gifts" of a higher value than the tribute, preserving a Chinacentered
foreign-policy structure. Ever mindful of Chinese tradition,
Kublai naturally patterned his actions after that policy. The type of
51 Ishihara Michihiro, "Gendai Nihonkan no ichi sokumen," in Wada hakase kanreki kinenkai,
ed., Toyoski ronso (Tokyo: Wada hakase kanreki kinenkai, 1951).
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 415
relationship that Kublai first sought with Japan was probably this sort
of tribute-gift exchange,52
one that combined politics, foreign relations,
and economics.
Why did Kublai seek peace with Japan in 1266? The Mongols were
preparing to attack the Southern Sung, and Kublai, judging the Sung
to be strong, proceeded carefully with his attack plans. Part of these
plans required strengthening control over Koryo. In his document
Kublai referred to Koryo as the Mongols' "eastern vassal state." With
Kublai's military backing, Koryo's King Wonjong had suppressed the
military officials who had previously controlled national politics and
had increased his own authority as sovereign. Thus, from Kublai's
point of view, Koryo was indeed a newly attached country. Using the
negotiations with Japan as a tool, Kublai was able to intensify his
domination over Koryo. Also, in preparing to invade Southern Sung,
Kublai had come to realize that Japan, even though it was a small
eastern island really not worth taking, it could not be left alone. Japan
traded with the Southern Sung and therefore continuously added to
the Sung'sfinancialstrength. Seen in this light, Japan had to be cut off
from the Sung and added to Kublai's empire. And this would be
possible if Koryo were used as a go-between. Even in the event that
Japan did not reply positively, Kublai would have a good excuse to
punish Koryo. There is no way to know whether Kublai did think in
these terms, but it is reasonable to suppose that he did.
One view regards Kublai's dispatch of envoys to Japan as stemming
from his desire for trade through amicable relations.53
But even granting
that motive, there was still the matter of the attack on the Southern
Sung, and so trade alone could not have been the chief reason. The
aforementioned Mongol document came about because of the prevailing
circumstances, and it expressed a conciliatory foreign policy. In
any case, Kublai's attempt to negotiate with Japan was linked to his
invasion of Southern Sung, which was itself related to his Koryo
policy. Therefore, he had not definitely decided from the outset to
invade Japan. Rather, that decision emerged during the six JapanMongol
negotiations covering nearly eight years.
The Koryo party, led by P'an Pu, arrived at Dazaifu as envoys of the
Mongols in the first month of 1268. The Mongol and Koryo documents
were given to the provincial governor Muto Sukeyoshi, went
through the Kamakura bakufu, and then to the court at Kyoto. Au-
52 Tanaka, Chusei taigai kankeishi, p. 19.
53 Kayahara Shozo, "Moko shurai no ichi hihan," Rekishi to chiri 10 (August-October 1922).
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4l6 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
thority for foreign relations lay with the court, but the decision to
reply or not was actually controlled by the bakufu. Kamakura decided
not to respond, and so the party of envoys returned without receiving
an answer. The Mongols sent more envoys, but Japan was unyielding
in its refusal, and this eventually resulted in the Mongol invasion.
What explains the bakufu's persistent refusal? The answer will also
explain the reason for the Mongols' attack on Japan.
From the moment the Kamakura bakufu received the Mongol document,
it considered it a declaration of war and therefore strengthened
Japan's defenses. Nichiren's famous treatise Rissho ankoku-ron (The
establishment of the legitimate teaching for the security of the country)
expressed the same interpretation of the document,54
emphasizing
that it was not only the bakufu administrators who interpreted the
communique as a declaration of war. To understand the reasons for
such an interpretation and the adoption of a firm attitude, we need to
consider how Japan obtained information about the Mongols and what
that information was.
Information concerning international relations was learned primarily
from the Southern Sung, through Japanese priests who had visited
Sung, Sung priests who came to Japan, and merchants. But Sung was
constantly pressured by the Mongols, and its hatred for the Mongols
was strong. For Sung, the Mongols were nothing but invaders and
conquerors. The person responsible for formulating Japan's Mongol
policy was Hojo Tokimune. He was strongly influenced by the patriotic
and nationalistic religious thought of the Sung priests and based
his foreign policy on information from these priests. The authoritarian
control of the Hojo family's main line had increased from the time of
Tokimune's father, Tokiyori, and the rejection of the Mongol communique
was decided by a very small group led by Tokimune. We must
remember that the bakufu, which held the real power over Japan's
political and military affairs, represented the warriors. Thus the Mongol
invasions were a meeting between a people with strong tendencies
toward conquest and a society governed by warriors.
The nobles deliberating how to respond to the Mongols lived in a
closed society clinging to ancient practices. Because Japan's relations
with the continent had long since ceased, the nobles were not able to
make an informed judgment on Japan's international relations. Most
of their debate, therefore, was devoted to interpreting the Mongol
54 Kawazoe Shoji, Nichiren-sono shiso, kodo to Moko shurai (Tokyo: Shimizu shoin, 1971), p. 55.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 417
document. In addition, the real power at court, the retired emperor
Gosaga, was made emperor by the Hojo family after the Jokyu disturbance,
and thus Kamakura's wishes were directly reflected in the
court's deliberations. The Koryo document that accompanied the
Mongol communique appealed to the Japanese to accept the Mongol
request, as the Mongols only sought recognition of their moral influence.
But this had no decisive influence on Japan's decision. We
should not overlook the fact that in its continental relations, Japan had
a tradition of familiarity with southern China and an estrangement
from the north. Further, Japan's traditional attitude was to confront
China as an equal or superior, which was the principal reason for
Tokimune's unyielding attitude.
Kamakura adopted its own plan for foreign conquest, appointing
the provincial governors Muto Tsunesuke and Otomo Yoriyasu as
commanders in an attack on Koryo, the base for the Mongol attack on
Japan. In addition, the bakufu constructed a stone wall along the
entire Hakata Bay coastline as a defense against the Mongols. The
Japanese selected the third month of 1276 as the date for their attack.
The plan was to prepare troops and boats primarily in Kyushu but this
idea was ultimately abandoned, and Kamakura instead concentrated
on strengthening its defenses. Immediately after the second Mongol
invasion, the bakufu drew up a second plan to invade Koryo, using
outlaw bands from Yamato and Yamashiro provinces. But this plan
was abandoned too.
Both of these plans attempted to use a foreign-policy issue to help
solve internal political problems. In 9/1274, claiming that there was a
rumor of an impending invasion by the Mongols, Kamakura ordered
the descendants of the Kanto warrior Shodai Shigetoshi to proceed
to their holdings in Higo Province and the deputy of Nikaido
Ninsho, the jito of Ata Kitakata in Satsuma Province, likewise to
proceed to that holding. The bakufu also ordered them to subdue
the local outlaw bands (akuto) in those holdings.55
Just before this
order, Nichiren and his followers, whose teaching of the supremacy
of the Lotus Sutra continued to spread rapidly throughout society in
light of the Mongol problem, intensified their criticism of the
bakufu. Nichiren was regarded as perpetrating unlawful acts under
the very noses of the Kamakura military leaders and accordingly
suffered tremendous persecution. The Kamakura bakufu, that is,
55 For the "foreign defense" (ikoku keigo) against the Mongol invasions, see Kawazoe Shoji,
Chukai, Genko borui hennen shiryo — ikoku keigo banyaku shiryo no kenkyu (Fukuoka:
Fukuokashi kyoiku iinkai, 1971).
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418 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
the Hojo main line under Tokimune, saw its political task as resolving
the various internal social contradictions that were eroding the
existing social structure. These social contradictions, as expressed by
the outlaw bands, coincided with the Mongol problem and continued
to become more serious. Clearly the Mongol threat was used
to try to solve these internal political problems, chief among them
that of the akuto.56
The unyielding bakufu attitude - Hojo Tokimune's
"resolute" attitude toward the Mongols - resulted from these
circumstances.
All of these conditions on the continent and in Japan ultimately led
to the Mongol invasion. The first Mongol invasion, the Bun'ei campaign,
came in 10/1274. Combined Mongol-Koryo forces of some
28,000 men and 900 ships passed through Tsushima and Iki before
landing at Hakata. They immediately withdrew when it appeared useless
to continue fighting, and tremendous damage from the so-called
divine wind (kamikaze) forced them to return home. The second Mongol
invasion, the Koan campaign, came in the fifth month of 1281 and
lasted for three months. The Mongols attacked with an eastern-route
force composed of 40,000 Mongols, Chinese, and Koreans, and a
Kiang-nam force of 100,000 (composed primarily of conquered Southern
Sung troops), and 3,500 ships. But this time as well the Mongols
suffered a destructive blow from the kamikaze in which the greater
part of their force sank to the bottom of the sea.
The origins and course of the Koan campaign differ in many respects
from those of the Bun'ei campaign. The Yuan dynasty regarded the
first attack as unsuccessful but not as a defeat; the second invasion was
intended to rectify the failure of the first. Several important considerations
were involved in the second invasion. At the time of the first
attack, the Yuan attached considerable importance to its Koryo policy,
as it was closely linked to the task of subjugating the Southern Sung.
But in the second invasion, the Mongols were pressed to resolve a
number of problems that followed their defeat of the Sung, such as the
treatment of a large number of captured Sung mercenaries. The Mongol's
activities also included redirecting already-conquered peoples
toward a new area for conquest, and so they used many defeated Sung
professional soldiers, the basis of their mercenary system, to invade
Japan.57
56 Abe Yukihiro, Moko shurai (Tokyo: Kyoikusha, 1980), pp. 20-21.
57 Atagi Mitsuo, Ajia no seifuku ocho, vol. 11 of Sekai no rekishi (Tokyo: Kawade shobo 1969).
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 419
The problem of Koryo was also important. Koryo adopted passive
tactics throughout the first Mongol invasion, attempting to evade
control by the Mongols, who were primarily intent on conquering
Japan.58
Then, shifting tactics to support the Mongol attack, King
Chungyul hoped that the Mongol subjugation of Japan would alleviate
the exhaustion of his own country. Some scholars argue that this
shift was actually to prepare for the Japanese wako.59
1 disagree, for
as I showed earlier, Koryo's problem with the wako was rather severe,
and I believe that Koryo tried to solve it by relying on the
Mongols' power.
Many scholars hold that the Mongols invaded Japan to obtain its
wealth. They are particularly taken with the idea that the Mongols
wished to conquer a Japan that was believed to have been full of gold,
as related in The Travels of Marco Polo. The fact that Japan exported
gold dust to Sung supports this contention. With the defeat of the
Southern Sung, the Yuan dynasty no longer needed to concern itself
with maritime trade between Japan and Southern Sung; furthermore,
it had seized the prosperous port cities of Kiang-nam. These ports
traded extensively with Japan, and naturally the rumor that Japan was
a country rich in gold circulated widely. Gold was especially coveted
by the Mongols, although it was also well known that Japan produced
pearls and many other prized goods. The desire for wealth from the
conquest of Japan became a much clearer motive in the second Mongol
attack.60
Kublai's proclamation to his generals leading the invasion clearly
indicates the Yiian's intentions in the second invasion. In his proclamation,
Kublai indicated that the.first reason for the invasion was Japan's
internment of his envoys. By executing the Mongol envoys, Japan
blocked the Mongols' attack for a long time, but this action had catastrophic
effects stemming from the differences in foreign-policy outlook
between Japan and the Yuan. In response, therefore, Kublai
called for seizure, invasion, and conquest of the Japanese people and
lands.
A third invasion of Japan was impossible. The Yuan court was
plagued with both a factional struggle characteristic of the Mongol
Empire and continual widespread wars of resistance by its conquered
peoples. The burden of the people under Mongol control was over-
58 Nakamura Hidetaka, Nissen kankeishi no kenkyu, vol. 1, p. 78; Tamura, Chusei Nitcho boeki
no kenkyu, p. 24.
59 Aoyama, Nichirai koshoshi no kenkyu, p. 32; Ikeuchi, Genko no shin kenkyu, p. 200.
60 Atagi, Ajia no seifuku ocho, p. 314.
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420 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
whelming,61
as it included those from the invasions of Japan, Champa
(South Vietnam), and Chiao Chih (Kingdom of Annam and North
Vietnam). Moreover, the economy of the Yuan court was racked by
unrelenting inflation.62
In the era of King Chungyol, Koryo suffered under Mongol demands
related to the planned third invasion of Japan, but scattered
entries in the Koryosa in the reigns of King Chungyol and his successor
King Chungson point to a relatively peaceful relationship with Japan.
However, while Japan was planning an attack on Koryo during the
Mongol invasion, a bellicose and deprecatory view of Koryo was forming
among the Japanese people, which revived and even strengthened
the legend of Empress Jingu's "conquest of the three Han countries."
The Mongol invasions strengthened the Hojo family's control over
Kyushu. With the Muto family's position diminished as the main
support of bakufu control in Kyushu, however, they were unable to
check the wako's activities. In the late Kamakura period, the various
contradictions of the prevailing social order became severe. The national
power of Koryo itself also was weakened. Under these circumstances,
the wako became very active. In the seventh month of 1323, a
large-scale pirate raid took place, and one hundred wako were beheaded
in Cholla Province. In the Nambokucho period, these raids
developed into full-scale pirate attacks.63
After the Koan campaign, despite Japan's and the Yuan's adversary
relationship, trading vessels traveled back and forth openly, and there
was a brisk economic and cultural interchange. In the year following
the Koan campaign, 1282, the Yuan began cutting timber to use for
ships to attack Japan and several times issued orders for the construction
of vessels. They planned to invade in the eighth month of 1283.
But the peoples of Kiangsu and Anhwei had suffered military conscription
and the harsh labors of ship construction for many years, and in
more than two hundred localities they rose in revolt, forcing abandonment
of the plan. Nonetheless, the preparations fcr the attack continued,
albeit on a smaller scale. But rebellions arose in Fukien,
Kwantung, and other areas, and in 1284 the office responsible for
coordinating the attack was abolished. But the preparations still contin-
61 Hacada Takashi states that the major reason for the frustration and failure of the Mongol
attacks on Japan was the resistance of the various Asian peoples under Mongol domination.
Hatada Takashi, Genko - Moko teikoku no naibujijo (Tokyo: Chud koronsha, 1965).
62 Iwamura Shinobu, "Gen jidai ni okeru shihei infureshon," in Toyo gakuho, vol. 34 (March
1964). 63 Ikeuchi, Genko no shin kenkyu, chap. 12.
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THE MONGOL INVASIONS 421
ued, and the office was revived in 1285. The Mongols planned to
attack from Happo in the eighth month of 1286. But the Yuan dynasty
had been sending troops for several years to Champa and Chiao Chih,
and so this plan had to be abandoned because of a severe lack of
manpower. It is said that when they heard this, the conscripted soldiers
from south China raised shouts of joy that resounded like thunder.
Even though the uprisings continued in both the north and east,
Kublai Khan would not give up the conquest of Japan but continued
with the preparations. With his death in 1/1294, however, the conquest
of Japan was no longer possible.
While Kublai continued to prepare for conquest, he also tried to
effect Japan's subjugation through diplomatic means, and these attempts
continued even after his death. Following the Koan campaign,
the Mongols sent at least four ambassadors to Japan carrying royal
edicts: Ju Chih and Wang Chun-chih in 8/1283; Ju Chih and Wang
Chi-weng in 5/1284; Chin You-ch'eng and Kuo Lin in 10/1292; and Ishan
I-ning in 3/1299. However, the first and second missions failed to
reach Japan, and on the third mission Chin You-ch'eng was detained
for years in Japan, where he subsequently died. On the fourth mission
I-shan I-ning won over Hojo Sadatoki in Kamakura and ex-Emperor
Gouda in Kyoto and contributed to the development of Japanese culture
through his broad knowledge. The Mongols' purpose in dispatching
the envoys, however, was never achieved.
Even as the Yuan dynasty attempted to invade Japan on two occasions
and continued to seek a military solution, they established a
monopolistic trade system that permitted trade by Japanese merchant
vessels. However, in 10/1292 when a Japanese merchant ship landed at
Ch'ing-Yuan (Ningpo) seeking trade, weapons were discovered hidden
on board. Accordingly, the Yuan immediately strengthened its coastal
defenses and appointed a commander in chief, intensifying their cautionary
attitude toward Japan. Soon thereafter, however, Kublai died.
The edict of 1298 failed to sway Japan, and rumors of Japanese
revenge against the Mongols circulated. The Mongols' fear of Japan
increased, and Mongol court officials began to adopt a firm attitude
toward Japanese trading vessels. In response to this, and to illegal
persecution by Yuan court officials, the Japanese found it necessary to
arm themselves for self-defense, and a kind of forced trade ensued. In
addition, Japanese pirate attacks on the Yuan continued. Thus the
Yuan forbade private trade and repeatedly sent out commercial officials
to regulate it.
While the Yuan dynasty prepared for a third attack on Japan, or
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422 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
attempted to lure the Japanese to its side, Japan did not dismantle the
defense structure prepared for the Mongol invasions. The institutional
exemplification of this was the establishment of the Chinzei tandai
(western defense command)64
in Hakata to rule on lawsuits (mainly
civil suits) in Kyushu where warriors were forced to devote their entire
attention to foreign defense. Hojo family members were successively
appointed to head the office. Previously, the center of Kyushu government
had been at Dazaifu, but now it shifted to Hakata. The Chinzei
tandai was organized around 7/1300, the year after the Yuan envoy Ishan
I-ning came to Japan. Because the Chinzei tandai was a
Kamakura bakufu organ for controlling Kyushu and hinged on foreign
defense, it was granted authority primarily over foreign relations.
Because the Chinzei tandai also functioned as a link in the Hojo's
control of the entire country, it meant that the control of foreign
relations was directly connected from Hakata to Kamakura within the
Hoj6 family itself. However, as it became obvious that it was merely a
local office for Hojo family authoritarian control, the Chinzei tandai
gradually lost the support of Kyushu warriors and suffered the same
fate as did the bakufu.
In 4/1264 the Kamakura bakufu had curtailed its official ships to
China as the conditions leading to the Mongol invasions began to take
shape. But in 4/1290 the bakufu allotted "money seized from Chinese
ships" to construct the Raizan Sennyoji, a temple in Chikuzen. Therefore,
nine years after the Mongol invasions, Japanese trading vessels
were entering China with the official approval of the Kamakura
bakufu. Documents 70 through 73 in Volume 1 of the Aokata monjo
pertain to a Chinese vessel wrecked in Hizen in 4/1298; the greater
portion of the cargo was consigned to the Hojo family. This is a partial
indication of why Kamakura was excited about the importation of
Chinese goods.
Thus, from the end of the Kamakura period into the Nambokucho
era, trading vessels for the purpose of constructing temples and
shrines were dispatched to Yuan China with the approval of the
Kamakura bakufu. Among these, for example, were a vessel for the
construction of the Kenchdji (departed in 1325 and returned the next
year) and one for the construction of the Great Buddha at Kamakura
in 1329. A ship for the construction of Sumiyoshi Shrine in Settsu
was also dispatched under bakufu protection in the final years of this
64 For Chinzei tandai, see Sato Shin'ichi, Kamakura jidai sosho seido no kenkyu (Tokyo: Unebi
shobo, 1943), chap. 5; Seno, Chinzei gokenin no kenkyu.
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: EARLY MUROMACHI 423
period. The ship for the construction of the Tenryuji temple dispatched
by the Muromachi bakufu during the Nambokucho era is
well known.65
Temple and shrine construction projects of this magnitude
required enormous wealth, and so Japan relied on foreign trade,
from which it was easy to obtain great profits. And we should not
forget that it was the Hojo family's control over Japan's coastlines
along the Inland Sea and Kyushu that enabled the dispatch of these
trading vessels.
Thus, in regard to Japanese-Mongol relations after the invasions,
even while the Mongols prepared for a third invasion (a military solution)
and attempted to induce Japan's surrender (a diplomatic solution),
there were also cultural exchanges, and trade was brisk.66
The
bakufu publicly authorized the trading vessels so that they would not
be mistaken for wako, and these ships became the precedent for the
later tally trade with Ming China. On the other hand, the wako trade
also increased. So in postinvasion Japanese-Yuan relations we see two
trends developing that served as forerunners of the trading structure
of the succeeding era: authorized trade and piracy.67
FOREIGN RELATIONS IN THE EARLY MUROMACHI
PERIOD
The Muromachi bakufu was presented with its first diplomatic problem
in 1366 with the arrival of the Koryo envoys,68
requesting in the
name of the Yuan dynasty the suppression of wako raids which had
become especially fierce after 1350. Koryo periodically dispatched
envoys to Japan in response. The Muromachi bakufu saw the Koryo
mission as significant, for two reasons. First, this was the first time
that Koryo had sent a mission requesting the suppression of piracy
since the fall of the Kamakura bakufu. The Muromachi bakufu dispatched
its own envoy privately and achieved a peaceful relationship
with Koryo, thus taking the first steps toward seizing authority for
foreign relations. Second, although the Muromachi bakufu acceded to
65 Miura Hiroyuki, "Tenryuji-bune ni kansuru shin kenkyu," in Shigaku zasshi 25 (January
1914), reprinted in Nihonshi no kenkyu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1922).
66 Kimiya Yasuhiko, Nikka bunka koryushi (Tokyo: Fuzambo, 1955), is the most comprehensive
work dealing with the Sino-Japanese cultural interchange this era. Tsuji Zennosuke, Nisshi
bunka no koryu (Osaka: Sogensha, 1938), describes the cultural exchange between the two
countries from ancient times to the early modern period.
67 Mori, Shintei Nisso boeki no kenkyu, p. 525.
68 On this subject, see Aoyama, Nichirai koshoshi no kenkyu, pp. 91-97; and Nakamura, Nissen
kankeishi no kenkyu, vol 1, pp. 203-26.
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424 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
Koryo's desire to establish diplomatic ties, it did not do so as Japan's
official representatives. Because Kyushu, the local agency of Japanese
foreign policy, was under the sway of the Southern Court, the Kyushu
tandai - who controlled the bakufu's forces on the island - could not
exercise his authority and thus could scarcely suppress the pirates as
requested by Koryo. And this forced the Muromachi bakufu to consider
in earnest the subjugation of Kyushu.
The next diplomatic problem to arise for the Muromachi bakufu
was the arrival of Chinese envoys following the founding of the new
Ming dynasty. These envoys did not initially approach the bakufu but
negotiated with Prince Kaneyoshi, the Southern Court's general for
the conquest of the west (seisei shogun).
In the first month of 1368, Chu Yuan-chang (1348-98), having
toppled the Yuan dynasty, was enthroned as emperor at Yungt'ien-fu
(Nanking). He called his new dynasty Ta-ming (Great Ming) and
changed the era name to Hung-wu (Vast militance). The Grand Progenitor
(T'aitsu) Chu Yuan-chang based his state on Confucianism,
which regarded the Ming as the center of the world, and he expected
to establish an international order in which the surrounding barbarian
states would bring tribute to the Ming as the Middle Kingdom. In the
eleventh month of the same year, T'aitsu sent envoys to Annam,
Champa, Koryo, and Japan announcing the founding of the dynasty.69
He aimed for the restoration of a Chinese world order based on exchange
(gifts or trade, allowed by the Ming in return for tribute from
the foreign states).70
This exchange represented a form of etiquette
demonstrating friendly political relations between states and, at the
same time, having an economic aspect as it involved an exchange of
goods.71
The Ming accordingly revived the appointment of commis-
69 Ming shih-lu records dealing with Japan are collected in Nihon shiryo shusei hensankai, ed.,
Chugoku-Chosen no shiseki ni okeru Nihon shiryo shusei, Minjitsuroku no bu (Tokyo: Kokusho
kankokai, 1975), vols. 1-3 (abbreviated as Min jitsuroku). Likewise, Ming shih (abbreviated
as Minshi) is included in the same collection in Rekishi no bu, vol. 1. Ishihara Michihiro,
Yakuchu Chugoku seishi Nihonden (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1975), which includes the
Japan-related sections of the Ming shih, provides a valuable overview of Sino-Japanese relations
from Chinese official histories, from the Wei chih to the Ch'ing shih.
70 The following are studies on Sino-Japanese relations in the early Ming: Ikeuchi Hiroshi,
"Minsho ni okeru Nihon to Shina to no kosho," Rekishi to chiri 6 (May-August 1904);
Sakuma Shigeo, "Minsho no Nitchu kankei o meguru ni, san no mondai," in Hokkaido
daigakujimbun kagaku ronshu, no. 4 (February 1966); and Imaeda Aishin and Murai Shosuke,
"Nichimin koshoshi no jomaku," in Tokyo daigaku shiryo hensanjoho, no 11 (March 1977).
Also see the following studies that deal with Japanese-Ming relations: Akiyama Kenzo,
"Nichimin kankei," in Izvanami kdza Nihon rekishi, vol 1 (1933); Kobata Atsushi, Chiisei
Nisshi tsuko boekishi (Tokyo: Toko shoin, 1941); and Tanaka, Chiisei taigai kankeishi.
71 Sakuma, "Minsho ni okeru Nihon to Shina to no kosho," p. 8.
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: EARLY MUROMACHI 425
sioners at Ningpo (Ming chou), Ch'uan chou, and Kuang chou, to
oversee the exchange.
T'aitsu's first envoy to Japan was killed en route by pirates. He
dispatched another in 2/1396 and, in a threatening manner, pressed
the Southern Court general Prince Kaneyoshi to send tribute and to
suppress the pirates.72
Prince Kaneyoshi, however, had the Ming envoy
killed and refused the demands. One reason that the Ming had
chosen to negotiate with the outpost of the Southern Court was its
geographical proximity in Kyushu's Chikuzen Province, but they also
thought that it was the successor to Dazaifu, Japan's traditional local
agency for foreign relations.73
However, when the Ming sent a third
envoy to Japan in 3/1370, Prince Kaneyoshi presented a hydsen (piaochien,
a foreign-policy document presented to a Chinese emperor) in
which he referred to himself as "subject." He sent his vassal Sorai and
others with tribute to Ming in 10/1371, at which time he returned
more than seventy men and women who had been captured at Mingchou
and Tai-chou.74
Prince Kaneyoshi thereby completely reversed
his previous attitude, accepting the Ming international order and entering
into a subject relationship.
Representative bakufu warriors from Kyushu traveled to Kyoto pleading
with the bakufu to develop a plan to revive its declining power in
Kyushu. One reason that the Muromachi bakufu did not earlier subjugate
the Southern Court's last fortress of Seiseifu and its ruler was that
the bakufu was not recognized by foreign countries as sovereign in
Japan, and thus the bakufu leaders prepared with great care their plan
for pacifying Kyushu. At the center of this plan was Hosokawa
Yoriyuri, aiding the young shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. It also involved
the appointment as Kyushu tandai of the Ashikaga kinsman
Imagawa Ryoshun, who possessed both civil and martial abilities.
After thorough preparations, Ryoshun set off for Kyushu in the second
month of 1371. Because the Muromachi bakufu concentrated its
power on overthrowing the Southern Court in Kyushu, an attack on
the Seiseifu fortress at Dazaifu became a necessity. Prince Kaneyoshi's
change of attitude toward the Ming was quite natural under the cir-
cumstances.
When Prince Kaneyoshi's envoy arrived at the Ming capital, T'aitsu
accepted him as Japan's official ambassador and treated the prince as
72 Minjitsuroku no bu, vol. I, pp. 1-2. 73 Tanaka, Chusei laigai kankeishi, p. 55.
74 Minjitsuroku no bu, vol. I, p. 8; Ming shih, p. 284.
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426 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
"Japan's true ruler." During T'aitsu's era, Japan dispatched about ten
envoys to China. Among them, the 6/1374 and 9/1380 missions sent by
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu were turned back because they did not have
proper documents. The 6/1374 Shimazu Ujihisa mission was also
turned back because the Ming said he was not a ruler but only a vassal.
Two missions are of uncertain nature, and all the other six were from
the "Japanese King Ryokai" (Yoshikane) in 10/1371, 4/1378, intercalary
5/1379, 5/1380, 7/1381, and n/1386.75
In the first three, Japan
forwarded a hydsen under Prince Kaneyoshi's name and offered
horses, swords, armor, sulfur, and other items. However, the fourth
mission was turned back for insincerity; the fifth's tribute was rejected;
and the sixth had both its documents and tribute rejected.
Prince Kaneyoshi's name, "King of Japan," was credible with the
Ming up until the third mission; thereafter, even though rejected by
the Ming, the Japanese attempted diplomatic contacts with the Ming
under his name. Those in charge of foreign affairs actually believed
that under Prince Kaneyoshi's name, relations would be acceptable to
the Ming. Because it appears that Prince Kaneyoshi resigned the post
of seisei shogun in 4/137476
and died in 1384, the only mission that he
unquestionably dispatched to China was that of 1371. The other missions
were probably dispatched by Kaneyoshi's successor, the goseisei
shogun no tniya, using the prince's name as he had already been recognized
by the Ming as "Japan's true ruler," although this is not known
for certain. By this time the Southern Court's influence in Kyushu was
already on the wane, and these may have been bogus envoys to Ming
China sent by pirate forces.
The Ming envoys to Prince Kaneyoshi at Dazaifu arrived in Hakata
in the fifth month of 1372. This was during Imagawa Ryoshun's siege
of the Seiseifu at Dazaifu, and so the envoys were detained at Hakata
and could not present the prince with the Ming calendar and other
items symbolic of his status as a subject of the Ming. Responding to
the changed political situation, the Ming envoys instead went to Kyoto
and entered into negotiations with the Northern Court. In 8/1373
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu sent them home to China and then dispatched
his own ambassador with a reply, returning at the same time some 150
Chinese and Korean captives. However Ming T'aitsu refused to accept
the tribute relationship on the grounds that it lacked proper documentation.
Thus, the Muromachi bakufu's initial negotiations with the
75 Kawazoe Shoji, Imagawa Ryoshun (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1964).
76 Kawazoe Shoji, "Kaneyoshi Shinno o meguru Kyushu no Nambokucho," in Rekishi koron 5
(September 1979): 92-99.
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: EARLY MUROMACHI 427
Ming ended in failure.77
In this incident, the Muromachi bakufu under
the Ashikaga shogun was keenly aware that it had not received
recognition as Japan's representative in the Sinocentric East Asian
international order. To do so, the bakufu would have to defeat Prince
Kaneyoshi - whom the Ming recognized as "Japan's t r u e
ruler" - and
suppress the wako. Thus the pacification of Kyushu became even
more urgent. Only after the political opposition between the two
courts had been settled in favor of the Northern Court did Ashikaga
Yoshimitsu become "King of Japan."
In 2/1375 Koryo's King U sent an envoy to Japan requesting that it
suppress the wako raids. In response, Japan dispatched an envoy offering
Koryo dyed cloth, painted folding screens, long swords, wine
vessels, and other items. On that occasion the Tenryuji monk Tokuso
Shusa sent the following letter expressing the bakufu's intention:
"Kyushu is broken apart by rebelling subjects and does not pay tribute;
the stubborn subjects of the Western seacoast have become pirates.
But these are not the doing of the bakufu. We are planning to
dispatch a general to Kyushu to pacify the area and can promise to
suppress the pirates."78
This indicates that the Muromachi bakufu was
counting on Imagawa Ryoshun's operations in Kyushu and hoping to
use his success in negotiations with Koryo.
In 8/1372, Imagawa Ryoshun forced Dazaifu's surrender and captured
Prince Kaneyoshi and his chief military supporters, the Kikuchi
family, at Kikuchi in Higo Province, and in 8/1375, he killed Shoni
Fuyusuke at Mizushima in Higo. The Shoni family had held shugo
appointments since Kamakura times and had inherited the office of
Dazai no shoni the highest post of local responsibility within the
Dazaifu structure. Imagawa Ryoshun secured the supremacy of the
bakufu force in Kyushu by first proceeding from Dazaifu to Seiseifu
and then defeating Shoni Fuyusuke, the warrior of highest local authority
in Dazaifu. Shimazu Ujihisa, who brought Shoni Fuyusuke to
Imagawa Ryoshun, subsequently found himself having to follow
Ryoshun's orders. However, he not only came into control of
Chikuzen Province, the Shoni's home territory and the base for administering
Kyushu; he also seized the Shoni's authority over foreign
affairs. As the real successor to Dazaifu, Imagawa Ryoshun came into
control of Japan's foreign policy.
77 Imaeda and Murai, "Nichimin koshoshi no jomaku"; and Murai Shosuke, "Muromachi
bakufu no saisho no kenminshi ni tsuite," in Imaeda Aishin, ed., Zenshu no shomondai
(Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 1979). 78 Koryosa, kwan 133, Yolchon 46, Shin U.
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428 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu secured shogunal authority only after Kyushu
had been subjugated. Except for his reception of the Ming envoy in
1372, Imagawa Ryoshun's dealings with Ming are not mentioned in
any sources. It was natural that Ming would not conduct formal negotiations
with Ryoshun, as he was only a vassal. But it also goes without
saying that there were always hidden problems stemming from the
Ming's relations with the Southern Court in Kyushu.
That being the case, Imagawa Ryoshun's public diplomatic dealings
were with only the two Korean dynasties, Koryo and Choson. The 9/
1377 visit of the Koryo envoy Ch'oe Mong-ju seeking suppression of
the wako was an epoch-making event in Ryoshun Koryo negotia-
tions.79
Ch'oe Mong-ju, a noted scholar and high government official
of the pro-Ming faction, was praised as the greatest statesman of his
day. Ryoshun received Ch'oe warmly, returned several hundred prisoners
captured by the wako, and suppressed the pirates of Tsushima, Iki,
and Matsura. From then on, Koryo dealt directly with the real power
holder in Kyushu, "the Kyushu defense commander Minamoto no
Ryoshun," when seeking the suppression of pirate attacks. Ryoshun,
taking advantage of this role, dealt directly with Koryo without consulting
the bakufu. At this point, the Muromachi bakufu recognized
that direct control over foreign relations was necessary to crush the
Southern Court in Kyushu, and fortunately for the bakufu, Ryoshun's
supporter, Hosokawa Yoriyuki, was the real power in bakufu politics.
Ryoshun's return of the captives was an "enterprise similar to a commercial
act contracted to obtain compensations,"80
and in this sense
his dealings with Koryo were a kind of "trade" appropriate to the
wako period.
However, Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, aspiring to become "King
of Japan," could not be expected to allow the situation to continue
forever. When Ryoshun's protector, Hosokawa Yoriyuki, was toppled
from power in the Oryaku incident of 1379, the repercussions affected
Ryoshun's position as Kyushu landai, and Yoshimitsu's designs on
control of foreign policy intensified. A shogunal order of 6/8/1381 in
the Nejime monjo, addressed to Ryoshun as shugo of Osumi, prohibited
the akuto (outlaws) of that province from crossing over to Koryo and
committing outrages; that is, the order prohibited pirate activities.81
79 Shiryo shusei hensankai, Chugoku-Chosen no shiseki ni okeru Nihon shiryo shusei, Sangoku,
Korai no bu, p. 238. 80 Tanaka, Chusei laigai kankeishi, p. 99.
81 Kawazoe Shoji, ed., Nejime monjo, vol. 3 (Fukuoka: Kyushu daigaku bungakubu, Kyushu
shiryo kankokai, 1955), p. 56.
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: EARLY MUROMACHI 429
This is the only Muromachi bakufu order dealing with the suppression
of wako. The document clearly expressed Yoshimitsu's intention to
arrange the suppression of the wako under the chain of command from
shogun (bakufu) to Kyushu tandai (shugo).
The final epoch of Imagawa Ryoshun's foreign policy was marked
in Korea by the fall of Koryo and the founding of Choson, and in
Japan by the unification of the Northern and Southern Courts. On the
Korean peninsula, in the seventh month of 1392, Yi Song-gye (1334-
1408), who had achieved some success in suppressing the wako, received
the abdication of King Kong Yang and was "installed by the
ministers" as king (reigned 1392-98?). He was the dynastic founder,
Taijo, of the Yi dynasty's Choson. In Japan, in the intercalary tenth
month of the same year, the fifty-seven year conflict between the
Northern and Southern Courts was brought to an end with the victory
of the Northern Court.
From the outset Choson adopted a conciliatory policy toward Japan.
Taejo inherited from the former dynasty the task of subjugating the
wako, but he aimed for amicable relations with the outside world and
also reorganized the country's own military system and strengthened
defenses.82
In the year of Taejo's accession, the new dynasty sent an
envoy to Japan requesting that the "government of the seii taishogun"
(the Muromachi bakufu) suppress the wako}1
The bakufu responded
that it was ordering the Kyushu tandai to subjugate these wako in its
name. As Kyushu tandai, Imagawa Ryoshun's dealings with Choson,
as with Koryo, involved the return of captives in response to Korean
requests for piracy control and his interest in obtaining such items as
the Buddhist Tripitaka. The number of captives returned to Choson
increased greatly. But when the courts were reunified, the coincidental
link between defeating the Southern Court in Kyushu and suppressing
piracy disappeared. Shogunal restrictions on the Kyushu tandai as a
subordinate local officer of the Muromachi bakufu became stronger.
The tandai's growing wealth from trade, conducted in the guise of
returning Korean captives, was exceeding the limits appropriate to a
local bakufu official and was arousing the shogun's jealousy. Thus,
Imagawa Ryoshun was removed from his post as Kyushu tandai in
1395-
82 Nakamura, Nissen kankeishi no kenkyu, vol. I p. 149. Nakamura Hidecaka, Nihon to Chosen
(Tokyo: Shibundo, 1966), provides a good summary of Japanese-Korean relations from
ancient times through the Tokugawa period.
83 Zuikei Shuho, Zemin kokuhoki (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1975), pp. 91-92. This work,
written in 1466, is an invaluable source for the study of Muromachi-period foreign relations.
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430 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
The problem of suppressing piracy and the development of the tribute
system that accompanied the founding of the Ming dynasty were the
common threads running through Japan's relations with Koryo,
Choson, and Ming China in the Nambokucho period. When considering
the East Asian international order centered on the Ming, one must
examine the Ming policy of prohibiting overseas travel which was
inseparable from the tribute system.84
This policy prohibited all Chinese
from going abroad; whereas the tribute system was foreign policy,
the overseas prohibition was domestic policy. Together the two had a
significant influence in East Asian international relations. The impetus
for Emperor T'aitsu Hung-wu's issuance of the overseas prohibition
order lay in his fear that internal political divisions might link up with
foreign powers, leading to a domestic political crisis. This fear was
directly related to the Japanese wako problem. In concrete terms, it
was generated by two incidents, which I shall discuss next.
After the defeat of the late Yuan-period rebels, Fang Kuo-chin and
Chang Shin-cheng, who had held sway in the Kiangsu and Chekiang
areas, some of their surviving followers established bases on the
coastal islands. They tried to revive their influence by joining with
people on the mainland and, moreover, by linking up with the wakd.*5
Thus, for the Ming, the wako were not simply a foreign concern but
also a problem linked to internal discontent. This is why the Ming
insisted that Japan control the wako.
The second incident, involving Hu Wei-yung and Lin Hsien,
brought about a decisive rupture in Japanese-Ming relations.86
One of
the meritorious subjects involved in the founding of the dynasty, Hu
Wei-yung, had risen to become left chancellor, or head, of the Secretariat
because of his superior political talent. But after becoming left
chancellor, Hu exercised authoritarian policies and planned to usurp
the throne. Attempting to enlist Japan's aid in this endeavor, Hu
linked up with Lin Hsien, the leader of Ningpo-wei (Yin District in
the province of Chekiang). Hu falsely accused Lin of a crime and
banished him to Japan, where he put him in touch with Japanese
leaders. Next, Hu Wei-yung announced the restoration of Lin Hsien
to his former post, and he dispatched a messenger to bring Lin back,
secretly sending a message to the "King of Japan" seeking military
84 Sakuma Shigeo, "Mincho no kaikin seisaku," in Tohogaku, no. 6 (1953).
85 This incident is recorded in the Mingshih, Chuan 91, treatise 67 (military 3, section on coastal
defense).
86 This incident is outlined in Mingshih, Chuan 322, in pt. 3, "Foreign Lands." Also see
Sakuma, "Minsho no Nitchu kankei o meguru ni, san no mondai."
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: EARLY MUROMACHI 43I
support. This king of Japan sent four hundred soldiers under the
priest Nyoyo, misrepresenting them as an envoys merely bringing a
tribute of large candles. Within this tribute, however, he concealed
gunpowder and swords. But when Nyoyo landed in China, he found
that Hu Wei-yung and his group had been executed in the first month
of 1380, based on a tip from an informer. Six years later in 1421, it
became clear that Nyoyo and the "King of Japan" were involved in the
affair, and Lin was executed along with his whole clan. Emperor
T'aitsu was enraged over Japan's actions and severed relations; he
reinforced the policy forbidding Chinese to go overseas and strengthened
China's coastal defenses.
These is some doubt concerning the details of this affair, but the real
problem is identifying the "King of Japan" who colluded with Hu
Wei-yung and Lin Hsien. One view is that it was perhaps a leader of
the wako}1
In Chuan 13 of Ming T'aitsu shihlu (Veritable records of
Ming T'aitsu), in an entry for 7/1381, we learn that the King of Japan,
Ryokai (Prince Kaneyoshi), dispatched the priest Nyoyo and others to
Ming, bearing goods and ten horses as tribute, but the Ming emperor
did not accept their offering. So Nyoyo appeared as Prince
Kaneyoshi's messenger, but at that time the prince was no longer
leader of the Southern Court in Kyushu. This role had passed to
goseisei shogun no miya. As in the case described earlier, it was only a
matter of using Prince Kaneyoshi's name. Nyoyo may well have had
connections with the Kyushu Southern Court, but he might also have
been connected with the wako. Therefore, the "King of Japan" at the
time of the Hu Wei-yung incident could have been the leader of the
Kyushu Southern Court (goseisei shogun no miya), Southern Court
forces with wako connections, or wako simply using the name of the
Southern Court in Kyushu.
The Ming regarded the "King of Japan" as a pirate, and his connection
with an internal Chinese plot was truly a serious problem. Because
this incident followed so closely on the last one, Emperor Hung
Wu's distrust of Japan grew stronger, and he also cut off diplomatic
relations and intensified the ban on Chinese going abroad. This prohibition
had been carried out at one point during the late Yuan, but
from the beginning of the Ming it became permanent and was continued
for some two hundred years. Furthermore, the plotting of Hu
Wei-yung and Liu Hsien was a convenient opportunity for the Ming
emperor to complete his authoritarian structure. Here we can see a
87 Tsuji Zennosuke, Nisshi bunka no koryu, p. 123.
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432 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
pattern by which wako or wakd-like forces helped define Ming internal
politics.
The tribute system and the ban on overseas travel represented a
unified internal-external relationship, and together they exerted a
great influence on East Asian international relations. Tribute brought
by various foreign lands to the Ming was rewarded by Ming gifts in
return,88
which is properly termed tribute trade. Virtually all the tribute
items were either luxury goods for China's upper class or military
necessities. The Ming government monopolized the import and purchase
of these resources and allowed only a very small portion to be
traded by general merchants under government supervision. Overseas
trips by Chinese were forbidden under the formal prohibition in force
from the beginning of the Ming dynasty. Through the tribute system
and this ban, the Ming government was able to protect itself against
piracy and to monopolize trade. Both policies were in accord with its
political and economic goals. The travel prohibition struck a blow
against the Ming trading merchants, but on the other hand, it expanded
the area of activity for overseas Chinese to the south and for
merchants from the newly risen Ryukyu kingdom.
THE TRIBUTE SYSTEM AND JAPAN
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu dispatched envoys to Ming China in 1374 and
1380 in order to establish relations, but his offers were rebuffed.
Subsequently, Yoshimitsu reunited the two courts and rose to the
highest position in the civilian bureaucracy, that of prime minister. He
dismissed Imagawa Ryoshun, who had succeeded in pacifying
Kyushu, and now placed that island - the base for foreign relations under
his own control. Yoshimitsu furthermore subdued Ouchi
Yoshihiro, a warrior with considerable power in foreign affairs who
held several shugo appointments and was becoming a rival force to the
shogun. By these actions, Yoshimitsu achieved control over Japan's
politics. However, he resigned from his public offices and became a
free agent and therefore was not in a position to open formal relations
with the Ming as the representative of Japan. In 1401, Yoshimitsu
dispatched a mission to the Ming headed by Soa, a member of his
coterie of artists and aesthetes (doboshu), as chief envoy, with a
Kyushu merchant as his assistant. This appointment of shogunal
88 Momose Hiromu, Minshin shakai keizaishi kenkyu (Tokyo: Kenkyu shuppan, 1980), p. 6;
Tanaka, Chusei taigai kankeishi, p. 86.
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THE TRIBUTE SYSTEM AND JAPAN 433
doboshu and merchants as envoys was an exception, however, and
never occurred again.
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu sent a document addressed to the emperor of
the Great Ming dated 5/13/1401 under the title Nihon jusango Dogi
("equivalent in rank to imperial family")-89
In it, Yoshimitsu sought
to establish relations in accord with the customary practices of the
past, and he listed the tribute goods he was sending. He also returned
a number of Ming citizens who had been captured by wako.
In the eighth month of the next year, 1402, Soa's party returned to
Japan, accompanied by a Ming envoy whom Yoshimitsu received
warmly. They brought with them an edict from the second Ming
emperor, Chien Wen, which began with the words, "you, King of
Japan, Minamoto no Dogi," and invested Yoshimitsu as ruler and
ordered him to accept the Ming calendar. In other words, the edict
proclaimed that Japan should be vassal to the Ming. However, three
years earlier a war had broken out between Chien Wen and his uncle
(later Emperor Ch'engtsu Yung Lo); and only two months before his
envoy reached Japan, the city of Nanking had fallen, and Chien Wen
had perished in the flames. Yung Lo, known as the greatest warrioremperor
in Chinese history, had toppled his nephew and seized the
throne for himself.
In 3/1403 a party of Japanese envoys headed for China with the
returning Ming envoy. Japan's document to the Ming was also in the
form of an edict. Opening with the words, "King of Japan, Your
Subject, Minamoto," it congratulated Emperor Ch'engtsu on his enthronement
and offered gifts. The document mentions many military
items: twenty horses, one thousand spears, one hundred large
swords, and ten thousand kin of sulfur. It seems that some of the
three hundred people accompanying the mission were carrying weapons
to trade. These were probably sent to gain profits, anticipating
an increase in Chinese military requirements for internal purposes.90
Ch'engtsu received this tribute just when he was on the verge of
sending an envoy to announce his accession. He was exceedingly
pleased and sent back the envoy with a reply. In contrast with
T'aitsu, Ch'engtsu had a positive attitude toward the outside world,
89 The document is found on p. 97 of the Zemin kokuhoki. A draft can be found in the diary of
Gon no daigeki Nakahara Yasutomi, "Kofuki," in Zoho Shiryo taisei, vol. 37 (Kyoto: Rinsen
shoten, 1965), p. 3. For an overview of Japanese foreign relations documents, see Kawazoe
Shoji, "Kodai-Chusei no gaiko monjo," in Kagamiyama Takeshi sensei koki kinenkai, ed.,
Kobunka ronko (Fukuoka: Kagiyama Takeshi sensei koki kinen ronbunshu kankokai, 1980).
90 Sakuma Shigeo/'Eirakutei no taigai seisaku to Nihon," in Hoppb bunka kenkyu, no. 2 (1967):
121.
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434 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
which accounts for the subsequent development of active Ming foreign
relations.
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu had referred to himself as "King of Japan,
Your Subject, Minamoto" when corresponding with the emperor of
China; in return he received from the Ming a gold seal investing him
as the king of Japan. This was a shift away from Japan's traditional
policy of regarding China as an equal and accepting the Ming tribute
system: Japan was incorporated into the East Asian international order
centering on the Ming emperor. It was on this occasion that one hundred
Yuan Lo tallies were brought, commencing the so-called tally
trade (kango boeki).
Yoshimitsu's relations with Ming China
During the era of T'aitsu (Japan's Nambokucho era), Yoshimitsu
twice tried to establish relations with the Ming but was rebuffed. The
Ming joined instead with Prince Kaneyoshi, head of the Seiseifu,
which could also be called the successor to Dazaifu. Ming relations
with Japan became active in the reign of the Yung Lo emperor
Ch'engtsu who was quite positive regarding foreign affairs. In comparison
with T'aitsu, who devoted his energy to internal institutional
consolidation, Ch'engtsu planned to maintain internal institutions by
working actively in the foreign arena.91
In the case of Japan, the wako
problem was directly connected with China's internal security, and so
the matter of reducing Japan to the position of a vassal state was a task
of some urgency. The first half of the Ch'engtsu's twenty-two-year
reign corresponded to the era of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's negotiations
with the Ming: The relationship between the two countries was normalized
according to the Chinese model, and a friendly relationship
was preserved. Ch'engtsu never ceased to praise Yoshimitsu's successful
efforts to suppress the wako.
In opening diplomatic relations with the Ming, Yoshimitsu hoped to
develop normal trade. This policy reflected the inclinations of the
merchants in northwestern Kyushu, especially Hakata. It was also
congenial to the ryoshu class of the west Japan seacoast and the farmers
of Tsushima, Iki, and Matsura. Yoshimitsu established an internal
control structure, and the political situation generally stabilized. By
successively dismissing and overthrowing Imagawa Ryoshun and
Ouchi Yoshihiro, Yoshimitsu absorbed their real authority in foreign
91 Ibid., pp. 118, 136.
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THE TRIBUTE SYSTEM AND JAPAN 435
affairs and strengthened a base from which he could open normal
relations with Ming and Choson. However, the Ming would not permit
direct trade by vassals, as was clear from the case of Shimazu
Ujihisa: Trade was allowed only to the king. This was why Ashikaga
Yoshimitsu sent tribute to Ming China as the "King of Japan."
Yoshimitsu's adoption of the title King of Japan represented a denial
of the traditional foreign-policy concepts of Japan's ruling class, which
had considered Japan to be China's equal, and it was criticized by
contemporaries. In his Zenrin kokuhoki, Zukei Shuho claimed that
Yoshimitsu was wrong to call himself the king of Japan, to use the
character for subject, and to write the Chinese era name. Most contemporary
specialists on ceremony shared this criticism. In more recent
times there have been several criticisms of Yoshimitsu's action as being
disrespectful of the sovereign or as being a "national shame," criticisms
based on the ideal of supreme loyalty.92
In contrast, members of
the nobility and those close to Yoshimitsu argued that any change in
the form of the documents could destroy Japan's traditional foreignpolicy
course and the sense of equality between Japan and the Ming.
But they did not fault Yoshimitsu out of any concern over loyalty to
the emperor. Rather, their concern lay in a fear that Yoshimitsu's
policies might lead to subjugation to the Ming. The title King of Japan
was problematic because it indicated that Ashikaga Yoshimitsu had
transformed his position from warrior hegemon to ruler of a feudal
state.
Yoshimitsu's motive in reversing the traditional course of foreign
policy and initiating relations with Ming China has also been debated.
One thesis argues that his motive was to acquire trading profits.
Suganuma Teifu's Dainihon shdgyoshi (first published in 1892) explained
Yoshimitsu's relations with the Ming exclusively from the
standpoint of trade, and many since have contended that it was the
income that could be gained from missions to China that motivated
Yoshimitsu to open relations with the Ming.93
Enormous sums were
required to build such projects as the Kitayama villa, said to have cost
100,000 kan, and for the frequent Buddhist ceremonies. The large
gifts of copper coins, silk, brocades, and so forth that the Ming envoys
brought to the shogunal court were certainly a major economic attraction.
This tribute-gift exchange was in reality simply trade, and
92 Tsuji, Nisshi bunka no koryu pp. 140 ff.
93 Usui Nobuyoshi, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1960), p. 187; Kobata,
"Kango boeki to wako," p. 52; Tanaka, Wako to kango boeki, pp. 55.
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436 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's Japan-Ming relations represented his own personal
monopoly of it.
That Yoshimitsu was motivated by a desire for trading profits is
generally accurate. However, the actual role of Ming trade in shogunal
and bakufu finances, which included income from the goryosho (the
bakufu's direct holdings) and levies on pawnbrokers and sake dealers
in and around the capital, is unclear. Moreover, even though the Ming
"gifts," that is, the importation of Chinese goods, may have satisfied
the desires of Yoshimitsu and his followers, it is unclear how they were
related to the bakufu's finances. In any event, it is too narrow to
attribute Yoshimitsu's motive in opening Japan-Ming relations solely
to profits.
Others have sought a political explanation for Yoshimitsu's actions.
Sato Shin'ichi argues that by representing himself to the Ming emperor
as "King of Japan, Your Subject, Minamoto no Dogi,"
Yoshimitsu brought the various lords of Kyushu under his control and
through them brought stability to the central political arena, thereby
forcing the diverse factions participating in Ming trade to recognize his
position as king. In other words, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's position as
king was guaranteed by the Ming emperor.94
This is the Ming tributesystem
theory. Sato examined the importation of copper coins in terms
of its political function, whereas earlier scholars had focused only on
its economic aspects. He also viewed Yoshimitsu's control of trade
through the tally system as an attempt to increase his own political
power. Sato's study was a breakthrough, explaining Yoshimitsu's
Ming relations in terms of political history when previously scholars
had emphasized Yoshimitsu's profit motivation. We should also note
Miura Keiichi's thesis that the Ming tally system - and the system
whereby the king of Choson received books from and granted posts to
traders - functioned as a kind of overseas shiki (rights) system that
augmented Japan's internal shiki system. It was used, Miura feels, to
maintain Japan's internal ruling structure.95
Yet questions remain: Why did Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who had
come to wield absolute power, feel the need to seek an even higher and
foreign - guarantee?96
The theory of control over private trade
was criticized for overemphasizing political factors and ignoring other
94 Sato Shin'ichi, "Muromachi bakufu ron," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi, vol. 7 (chitsei 3)
(Tokyo: Iwanami shocen, 1963).
95 Miura Keiichi, "Chusei koki no shohin ryutsu to ryoshu kaikyu," in Nihonshi kenkyu, no. 65
(March 1963).
96 Haga Norihiko, "Muromachi bakufu ron," in Nihon rekishigaku kenkyukai, ed., Nihonshi
no mondaiten (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1965).
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THE TRIBUTE SYSTEM AND JAPAN 437
forms of economic income to the bakufu.97
Furthermore, Sasaki Ginya
raises a question that is indeed difficult to answer: In the turbulent
international situation of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries,
did Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and the ruling class really grasp, in any
coherent political and international way, the relationship between national
trade and their own political power?98
Sasaki's view of the motivation behind Japan-Ming relations is that
Japan hoped to eliminate the insecurity caused by fear of a Chinese
invasion. In order to do so, Japan, already a latecomer, had to become
part of the Ming tribute system as soon as possible and thus cease to be
the "orphan" of East Asia.99
For centuries the Japanese had feared
attack by the Silla, and the Mongol invasions provided real grounds
for fearing a Ming attack. Then too, the Ming had tried to use the
Mongol invasions to China's advantage in the negotiations with Japan.
Sasaki sees Yoshimitsu's adoption of the title King of Japan not only as
stemming from his own personal predilection to "serve the great" but
also as an honest expression of the almost traditional uncertainty and
fear toward "Great T'ang" or "Great Ming" which derived from his
responsibility and position as Japan's feudal monarch and ruler.
Sasaki's argument is, in a broad sense, an explanation in terms of
political motives, but he sees it as a political response, albeit uncertain,
at a stage when Japan could not yet understand Ming Chinese foreign
policy.
Most studies of Yoshimitsu's motives start from the end product of
the entire history of Japan-Ming relations and argue back toward the
origins; they try to surmise actual conditions from the surviving documents.
As Sasaki stated, it is difficult to prove that Yoshimitsu dealt
with the situation from a clear political and international perspective.
That he had a fuzzy perception of Chinese foreign policy can be seen
from the fact that he dispatched an envoy during the Chingnan incident
(1399-1402). When considering Yoshimitsu's motivation, we
must recognize the importance of that first 1401 mission. I have already
explained that there was a strong demand for normal trade from
the trading merchants of western Japan, and that in responding to this
demand, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was himself eager for profits. In his
document to the Ming emperor, Yoshimitsu emphasized his establishment
of control over the entire country and proclaimed his qualifications
to open relations with China. Furthermore, besides the required
97 Tanaka, Chusei taigai kankeishi, pp. 78-79.
98 Sasaki "Higashi Ajia," p. 113. 99 Ibid., p. 114.
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438 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
tribute, Yoshimitsu also returned the Ming prisoners captured by the
wako, an act that Sasama Shigeo has called a kind of primitive slave
trade.100
These, then, are the various theories concerning Yoshimitsu's motives
in establishing relations with Ming China amidst the political and
economic conditions of Japan at the turn of the fifteenth century. We
cannot simply select only one of these theories as correctly identifying
the motive; rather, we must adopt a syncretic and comprehensive view.
It is true that trading profits were in large measure misdirected toward
the extravagant life-style of Yoshimitsu and his coterie, but it is also
true that they stabilized the bakufu's finances. Thus we can see that
such profits from trade did work to the advantage of what the Zemin
kokuhoki and Miura Hiroyuki call "the country,"101
that is, the
Muromachi bakufu structure. Furthermore, Japanese-Ming relations
conducted in the name of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and the Muromachi
bakufu were of obvious help in controlling Kyushu. Even though the
title King of Japan is ambiguous when considered in regard to the
court, it did clearly indicate the primary agent of Ming relations,
Japan's feudal ruler. Through Yoshimitsu's action, Japan joined the
East Asian Sinocentric tribute system and achieved a guarantee of
international security. The wako problem was the real intermediary in
this relationship as far as Ming China was concerned.
The tally trade system
Tally refers to a certificate of proof that authenticated an envoy or
mission.102
Already in Yuan times there was a system of tallies for
foreign-trade purposes, called panyin kongho wenpu (half-seal tally register),
which was also used for domestic trade. The Ming practice of
issuing tallies to foreign trading vessels, a blend of these two systems,
began in 1383, and was first applied to Japan in 1404. The Ming tally
system was one in which some two hundred tallies and four volumes of
records were collected and kept in each country. In Japan's case, the
tallies were divided into two sets, labeled nichi and hon. One hundred
of the nichi tallies and one volume each of the nichi and hon tally
records were kept in the Board of Rites at the Ming capital in Peking,
and one hundred of the hon tallies and a volume of the nichi tally
100 Sakuma, "Eirakutei no taigai seisaku to Nihon," p. 124.
101 Miura Hiroyuki, Nihonshi no kenhyii, vol 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1930), p. 973.
102 Among the early inclusive studies of the tally trade was that by Kayahara Shozo, "Nichimin
kango no soshiki to shiko," in Shigaku zasshi31 (April, May August, and September 1920).
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THE TRIBUTE SYSTEM AND JAPAN 439
records were sent to Japan. A set of the hon tally records was also
placed in the Chekiang provincial governor's office (which handled
popular and financial affairs).
When a ship went from Japan to China, it sailed with the proper hon
tally, which was then checked against the record book at the Board of
Rites in Chekiang and Peking. When the checking was completed, the
tally was collected. The converse, Ming ships going to Japan bearing
nichi tallies, did not in fact occur. None of these tallies exists today, but
according to a sketch in the Boshi nyumin-ki, the "hon character number
i" was stamped in red ink on the tally sheet. On the reverse side
were various pieces of information, such as the number of tribute
items presented, the auxiliary gifts for the envoy and members of his
party, and the cargo, number of ships, and sailors of the "official
merchants" (those merchants recorded on the tally). These writings on
the reverse side were called p'i-wen or pieh-fu.
Over the century and a half from Ashikaga Yoshimitsu to 1547,
nineteen missions were sent to the Ming.I03
The fourth Ashikaga shogun,
Yoshimochi, severed relations with Ming China, and in the latter
half of the Yung Lo emperor's reign, the wako incursions became
severe. The sixth shogun, Ashikaga Yoshinori, restored the tribute
relationship with the Ming. The Muromachi bakufu monopolized
trade until the eighth mission in 1401, but starting with the ninth
mission to Ming in 1433, temples, shrines, and daimyo joined in. The
eleventh mission during the tenure of the eighth shogun, Yoshimasa,
was the largest in the course of Japan-Ming relations. On this occasion,
the Ming concluded the Hsuan Teh treaty, which stipulated that
from then on there could be one mission every ten years, each consisting
of three ships and three hundred people.
A conflict regarding the Ming trade developed between the
Hosokawa and Ouchi houses, based respectively in Sakai and Hakata.
This confrontation became severe during the sixteenth and seventeenth
missions to the Ming in 1511 and 1523, and on the latter
103 Here I follow Tanaka, Chusei laigai kankeishi, pp. 159-60. There are many other studies of
Japan-Ming relations after Yoshimitsu's time. See Kayahara Shozo, "Nichimin kango boeki
ni okeru Hosokawa Ouchi nishi no k6so," Shigaku zasshi 25 and 26 (September-October
1914, February-March 1915); Akiyama Kenzo, Nisshi kosho shiwa (Tokyo: Naigai shoseki
kabushiki kaisha, 1935); Fujita Motoharu, Nisshi kdlsu no kenkyu, chu-kinsei hen (Tokyo:
Fuzambo, 1938); Akiyama Kenzo, Nisshi koshoshi kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1939);
Makita Tairyo, Sakugen nyuminki no kenkyu (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1959); Sakuma Shigeo,
"Mindai chuki no taigai seisaku to Nitchu kankei," Hokkaido daigaku jimbun kagaku ronshu,
no. 8 (1971); Kobata Atsushi, Kingin boekishi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Hosei daigaku
shuppankyoku, 1976). See also the short but useful guide by Sakai Tadao, "Mindai bunka
no Nihon bunka ni ataeta eikyo," Rekishi kyoiku 11 (October 1963).
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440 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
occasion the struggle reached a peak, resulting in the Ningpo disturbance.
The eighteenth and nineteenth missions in 1540 and 1549 came
during a period when the Ouchi monopolized the trade, and with their
defeat, trade with the Ming was abolished. Thus, the dispatch of ships
to Ming China is a wonderful barometer of the rise and fall of the
Muromachi bakufu's power.
CHANGES IN THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF
EAST ASIA
The Kyushu tandai after the dismissal of Imakawa Ryoshun was
Shibukawa Mitsuyori (priestly name Dochi), but the real focus of
relations with Choson was Ouchi Yoshihiro, known as the "head of the
six countries of Japan." Yoshihiro attempted in the name of the shogun
or bakufu to subdue the wako and to acquire such items as the
Buddhist Tripitaka. As "King of Japan," Ashikaga Yoshimitsu carried
on relations separately from the Ouchi,104
and we know about the
shogun's relations with Choson until the mission dispatched by
Ashikaga Yoshiaki in the mid-sixteenth century. From the Korean
point of view, Japan participated in the Ming-centered East Asian
relationship as an equal with Choson, but Japan's warrior government
viewed itself as superior to the Korean government. Moreover, dealings
between Japan and Korea were not conducted solely between the
two central authorities, as in the Japan-Ming situation. Instead, a
number of local lords in western Japan, as well as the Muromachi
bakufu, had connections with the Yi government, the sole interest on
the Korean side. The bakufu was only one of the traders and did not
direct the entire trade. Jepanese-Korean relations were not like the
one-dimensional Japan-Ming relationship predicated on Japan's subordinate
position. Furthermore, the Ming dynasty would not recognize
any relation with vassals of the king of Japan. On the other hand,
Japan and Choson were on an equal footing within the tribute system.
The Yi dynasty understood Japan's political situation. It did not regard
the shogun's power as the only force able to control the wako, and
it knew that the bakufu was limited by the differences in the productive
capacity of the different areas (especially the west) and ciasses.
The Yi government initiated a variety of policies to bring the wako,
under control and achieved great success during the reigns of T'aejo,
104 For accounts of relations with Japan in the Yijo sillok, see Nihon shiryd shusei hensankai,
ed., Chugoku-Chosen no shiseki ni okeru Nihon shiryd shusei, Richojitsuroku no bu, vols. 1-5
(Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1976-81).
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CHANGES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 44I
T'aejong, and Sejong. One was a conciliatory policy toward the wako
wherein the Yi government granted official posts, rice lands, and other
property to those who surrendered. However, as a result, the number
of defectors became so large that the Yi had to limited trading areas to
the ports of Pusan-p'o and Naei-p'o. In 1426, the system was relaxed
to include Yon-p'o as well. The Japanese who lived in these three ports
were referred to as "permanently resident Japanese" (hangko waein).
There were others living in Japan who received appointments from the
Yi government and came once a year to trade in Korea; these people
were called "appointment-receiving Japanese" (jusik waein). In 1407
trading vessels (called hungnison or "profit-raising ships") from various
Japanese daimyo were made to bear passports (gyqjo or fumihiki) as
proof of their origin. The Yi government also established rules for
people on the vessels.105
The issuance of these documents became the
exclusive monopoly of the So family of Tsushima. This was the initial
step allowing the So to occupy a special position in Japan-Korea trade
until the middle of the nineteenth century and was one of the primary
causes leading to their complete control of Tsushima.
The Yi dynasty also undertook military action, in the form of an
attack on Tsushima in 1419, to annihilate the wako. In Japan this
attack is known as the Oei invasion.106
However, after the primary
agent behind the attack, King T'aejong, died, his successor King
Sejong moved Japanese-Korean relations toward normalization, and
for about a century the two countries remained comparatively peaceful
trading partners.107
However, all the various classes in Japan wished to
expand their trading with Korea unilaterally. The Yi dynasty continued
to be mindful of checking further occurrences of wako raids and
tightened control by consecutively adding restrictive regulations. This
trade policy emerged in the first years of Sejong's reign and was virtually
complete by Songjong's rule. A senior Yi official in charge of
foreign affairs, Shin Suk-ji, wrote the Haedong Chegukki (A record of
countries to the east), which brought together all the existing rules and
105 For the Yi dynasty's limitation regulations, see Nakamura, Nissen kankeishi no kenkyu, vol.
1.
106 See the following works on the Oei-period pirates: Miura, Nihonshi no ketikyii, vol. 2, pp.
1086-1121; Takagi Shintaro, Oei gaiko no zengo (Tokyo: Yagi shoten, 1942); and Nakamura,
Nissen kankeishi no kenkyu, vol. 1. pp. 227-310.
107 Among the works on Japanese and Korean trade are Nakamura, Nissen kankeishi no kenkyu;
Tanaka, Chusei taigai kankeishi; and Tamura, Chiisei Nitcho boeki no kenkyu. Tamura
Hiroyuki has also compiled three useful works of source materials on Japan's relations with
the Koryo and Yi dynasties: Nichirai kankei hennen shiryo (Kyoto: Mine shobo, 1967); TaisoTeiso-Taiso
jitsuroku Nitcho kankei hennen shiryo (Kyoto: Sanwa shobo, n.d.); and Seso
jilsuroku Nitcho keizai shiryo (Tokyo: Koseikaku, n.d.).
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442 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
agreements concerning association and trade.108
It includes data on
internal conditions in Japan and the Ryukyu Islands as well as histories
of these nation's relations with Korea.
Choson adopted a policy combining favorable treatment of Japanese
travelers with restrictive legislation. The main restrictions consisted of
control by granting official tally seals, edicts, passports, limitations on
the number of ships per year, and a system of communication seals.109
The first bronze seals to be used bore the name of the recipient and
were known in Japan as tally seals (kangoin). This system was initiated
at Japan's request and is first recorded in documents in 1418. The
recipients of these seals were called juto shotnin. Edicts, the second
measure, were confirmations stamped with the seals. This measure
was implemented through the position and influence of the Kyushu
tandai and the So family lord of Tsushima. It originated in 1419 as a
request from Choson to the Kyushu tandai Shibukawa Mitsuyori.
After that date, simple trading vessels could no longer travel between
Japan and Korea: Trade was instead carried out as a subsidiary business
of the official vessel traveling under the ambassador's name.
Under the system of passports, missions not bearing passports from
the So lord of Tsushima were treated as pirates. This system first
appeared in 1426 at the request of So Sadamori. It was organized after
1435 and firmly established in 1436.
The fourth item was a system for limiting the number of official
ships that could visit annually, which began in 1424 with a suggestion
by Kyushu tandai Shibukawa Yoshitoshi that there be two ships per
year.110
In 1443 the famous Kyehae (Kakitsu) treaty established the
right of the So to sendfiftyships annually and to dispatch special ships
when necessary. This was the culmination of Korea's control policy;
the treaty confirmed the So's monopolistic position regarding trade
with Korea and thus represented the very heavy restrictions on trade
for Japan as a whole.
Japanese traders required permission to trade, from someone like the
"King of Japan" (the Ashikaga shogun or the head of the Ouchi fam-
108 Shin Shuku Shu, Kaito shokokki (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1975).
109 Nakamura, Nissen kankeishi no kenkyu, vol. 1. pp. 112-14.
n o For the Kyushu tandai in Japanese-Korean relations, see Akiyama Kenzo, "Muromachi
shoki ni okeru wako no choryo to Kyushu tandai," Rekishi chiri 57 (April 1931),
"Muromachi shoki ni okeru Kyushu tandai no Chosen to no kotso," Shigaku zasshi 42 (April
1931), and "Muromachi shoki ni okeru wako no choryo to Oei gaiko jijo," Shigaku zasshi 42
(September 1931); Kawazoe Shoji, "Kyushu tandai to Nitcho kosho," in Seinan chiikishi
kenkyu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Bunken shuppan, 1977), and "Kyushu tandai no suimetsu katei,"
Kyushu bunkashi kenkyusho kiyo, no. 23 (March 1978): 81-130.
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CHANGES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 443
ily). Communication seals, the fifth control, were used to prevent the
forgery of such permission. In addition to the aforementioned restrictions,
Korea instituted the port restrictions mentioned earlier, designated
a special route to the capital, and issued stipulations regarding
the reception of envoys.
In the article dealing with envoys in the "Choping ungjopgi" ("Record
of reception for court visitors") of the Haedong chegukki, four
categories of Japanese travelers involved in trade were enumerated: (i)
envoys of the king of Japan (Ashikaga shogun); (2) envoys of the
various daimyo, called koch'u or "great chieftain," (3) envoys from the
Kyushu chuldosa - tandai - or lord of Tsushima; and (4) Tsushima
people and jusikin. The envoys of the second category - the various
daimyo - were actually traders. Japanese-Korean trade took three
main forms. The first was trade via the ceremonial exchange of tribute
goods and gifts; the second was official trade in which the Yi government
traded with government goods; and the third was private trade
carried out under the Yi government's supervision. Outside these legally
established forms, there was an illicit trade that could not be
eliminated despite stringent controls. When private trade was outlawed,
it flourished all the more.
According to the Yijo sillok, which records Japanese-Korean trade
relations in comparative detail, there were, on the average, twenty-two
missions per year in the first half of the fifteenth century, but in the
second half of the century, the number more than tripled, reaching
sixty-seven."1
The amount of cargo per shipment was small, and the
prices were low in comparison with those of the Japan-Ming trade,
but the number of ships and missions, that is, the total amount of
trade, far outstripped that between Japan and China.
Japanese-Korean trade held a very important place in Japan's overseas
relations in the fifteenth century. The main items exported from
Japan to Korea included cinnabar and other Southeast Asian dyes,
medicines, sulfur, and spices; metals such as brass, gold, tin, and lead;
and military and cultural items like swords and folding screens. Southeast
Asian items were imported in large quantities to Choson directly
from the Ryukyus or via Hakata."2
Merchant ships from the Ryukyus
and Southeast Asia frequently put in at Hakata; with many traders
from Choson and Ming, the port prospered as an international city.
111 Tanaka, Chusei taigai kankeishi, p. 167.
112 For the details of this affair, see Arimitsu Yugaku, "Chusei koki ni okeru boeki shonin no
doko," Shizuoka daigaku jimbun gakubu jimbun ronshu, no. 21 (January 1971).
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444 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
Japanese-Korean trade clearly formed an important link in the East
Asian trading sphere.
The kinds of goods imported into Japan from Korea included such
things as tiger skins, boar skins,floral-patternedwoven mats, ginseng,
and honey. In the beginning, trade was largely in ramie and hemp
cloth, but later cotton cloth became more important. Cotton was not
yet being produced in Japan, and so became the central item in
Japanese-Korean trade, as Japan's strong demand for cotton coincided
with an increase in Korea's cotton production. Besides these
items, a considerable number of Buddhist sutras and religious items
were imported, primarily by those people referred to as "great chieftains"
(the shugo daimyo).
If one considered the Japanese-Korean trade relationship by stages in
accord with Tanaka Takeo's scheme, it would be as follows:"3
The
first period (1392-1419) lasted from T'aejo to the Oei raid in Sejong's
first year. It was the era after the height of the wako attacks, when
trade relations with Korea finally got started and traders from different
parts of Japan could cross over to Korea freely. Having already
opened Japanese-Ming relations, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was actively
pursuing trade.
The second period (1419-50) corresponds to the latter part of
Sejong's rule. This was the era in which the Muromachi bakufu deemphasized
the importance of Korean trade and the So family of
Tsushima enhanced its position through the restoration of amity after
the Oei raids. Sejong adopted a policy of equality based on peaceful
relations, set up a number of trade controls, and put relations between
Tsushima and Choson on course.
The third period (1450-1510) runs from Munjong's reign to the
first year of Chungjong and the Three Ports disturbance. Continuing
in the same vein as the previous stage, the controls on trade were
consolidated, but the discrepancy in Japan's and Korea's stages of
economic development influenced trade, which subsequently
foundered. The outbreak of violence in the Three Ports, involving the
permanent Japanese residents, proved to be a turning point in trade
relations between the two countries.
The fourth period (1510-92) lasted from the Three Ports disturbance
until the outbreak of the Bunroku campaign (Hideyoshi's invasions
of Korea). Although Japanese-Korean relations revived early in
113 Tanaka, Chusei laigai kankeishi, p. 166.
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CHANGES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 445
this period through the efforts of the So family, contacts became less
frequent because of declining interest on the part of the Japanese.
Relations were totally severed with the invasion. This period in East
Asian history witnessed the failure of the Ming policy forbidding overseas
travel, the arrival of European vessels, and wako incursions, all of
which strongly influenced Japanese-Korean relations.
The Ryukyu Islands (present-day Okinawa) also was a link in the East
Asian trading sphere."4
After engaging in a three-cornered struggle,
the three Ryukyu kingdoms of Hokuzan, Chuzan, and Nanzan were
unified by Sho Hashi in 1429. This unification hinged on the issue of
offering tribute to Ming China. The Ryukyus had been sending about
one tribute mission to the Ming annually since 1372. At the outset
they presented such southern products as spices and pepper, and also
Japanese swords and fans, but later their tribute was limited to horses
and sulfur produced in the Ryukyus. From the Ming, Okinawa received
pottery, iron, textiles, and coins. Because Okinawa sent students
to study in Ming China and received some thirty-six Ming immigrant
families from Fukien, the Chinese cultural influence in the islands
was significant.
The Ryukyus enjoyed trading relations with Southeast Asia from at
least the latter half of the fourteenth century, and from then through
the sixteenth century they advanced to such places as Siam (presentday
Thailand), Palenpan, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Patani, Vietnam,
and Sunda, with the Siam trade being especially brisk. This trade was
actively pursued only by the Ryukyu side, and it was mainly official
trade directly controlled and managed by the kingdom. This was some
150 years before Japan's venture into the south. The demand for, and
expansion of trade in, products from the south in Ming, Choson, and
Japan was supported largely by the Ryukyus' relationship with the
various countries of Southeast Asia.
The Ryukyus' relations with Choson began in 1389 when the
Ryukyu's sent back some Koryo people captured by wako, along with
offerings of sulfur, pepper, and sapon wood."5
Even after the establish-
114 See the following studies of the Ryukyu foreign trade: Akiyama, Nisshi kosho shiwa;
Higaonna Kanjun, Reimeiki no kaigai kouushi (Tokyo: Teikoku kyoikukai shuppanbu,
1941); Miyata Toshihiko, "Nichimin, Ryumin kokko no kaishi,'WiAon rekishi, nos. 201—3
(February-April 1965); Kobata Atsushi, Chusei nanto tsuko boekishi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Toko
shoin, 1968); and Miyagi Eisho, Okinawa no rekishi (Tokyo: Nihon hoso shuppan kyokai,
1968).
115 Kobata Atsushi, Nihon keizaishi no kenkyu (Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 1978), pp. 559-
79Cambridge
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446 JAPAN AND EAST ASIA
ment of the new Yi dynasty by T'aejo Yi Song-gye, the Ryukyus
continued to send envoys to Korea, trading Southeast Asian and Chinese
goods. But this was unilateral, active trade by the Ryukyus; the
Korean side remained inactive. The Ryukyus dispatched envoys to
Choson who traveled on the merchant ships from Hakata, Tsushima,
or other ports in Kyushu. Sometimes the Kyushu merchants themselves
became Ryukyu envoys. But this kind of trade was ended by
Satsuma's invasion of the Ryukyus in 1609.
Japan and the Ryukyus opened mutual trading relations through the
medium of Ming tribute. For the Ryukyus, Japan and Korea were
places to resell items imported from China, and later they became
trading partners to which Okinawa could reexport trade goods from
Southeast Asia. It was a classic case of intermediary trade. Thus,
Ryukyu boats called at such ports as Bonutsu, Obi, and Hakata in
Kyushu; Hyogo and Sakai in the Kinki region; and Matsura in
Musashi Province of eastern Japan. The Muromachi bakufu appointed
a Ryukyu commissioner to administer and control the trade. The
Ashikaga shogun and the king of the Ryukyus exchanged documents
written in Japanese kana, and they had a superior-subordinate relationship
based on a common script and common race.1
'6
Because the
Onin-Bunmei War in Japan brought an end to the visit of the Ryukyu
ships to Hyogo, Sakai merchants seeking trade began instead to venture
to the Ryukyus. However, the Hakata merchants, backed by the
Ouchi, opposed these Sakai merchants, who were supported by the
Muromachi deputy shogun of the Hosokawa house, and restrained
their activities. They were able to confine the Japanese mainland base
for the Ryukyu trade to Kyushu, where Bonotsu and Hakata became
the principal centers.
The Ryukyu Islands were able to carry out such extensive trading
activity because Chinese traders were hampered by the Ming policy of
forbidding overseas travel. But when this policy broke down, illicit
international trade focusing on the southeast China coast commenced.
Oceangoing traders engaged in this illicit trade increased in number,
and the period of the great wako raids of the Chia-ching (1522-67) era
ensued. However, when European vessels began to arrive, the
Ryukyus' glory based on its extensive trade came to an end.
116 Tanaka Takeo, "Muromachi bakufu to Ryukyu to no kankei no ichikosatsu," Nanto shigaku,
no. 16 (November 1980).
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CHAPTER 10
CULTURAL LIFE IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN
THE KAMAKURA PERIOD AND THE END OF
BUDDHIST LAW
After senior retired emperor Toba died on the second day of the seventh
month of 1156 (the first year of Hogen), fighting and strife began in Japan,
and the country entered the age of warriors.1
This laconic statement came from the brush of the Buddhist priest
Jien (1155-1225), the author oiGukansho, an early-thirteenth-century
history of Japan. Jien was a member of the ascendent northern branch
of the Fujiwara and wrote Gukansho in part to justify the historical
success of his family as regent-rulers at the Heian court. But Jien is
probably best remembered as the first historian in Japan to view the
past in distinct terms of cause and effect and as a progression from one
stage to another. Although earlier writers had not been totally oblivious
to historical causality, none had sought to analyze Japanese history,
as Jien did, within an overall, interpretive framework.
Jien's emphasis on the progress of history was not an aberrant view
but, rather, emerged from a heightened awareness of the momentous
historical changes that he himself witnessed. As observed in
Gukansho, Japan in the late 1100s was transformed from a comparatively
peaceful and tranquil country under the rule of the imperial
court to a tumultuous, strife-filled "age of warriors." Yet the anguish
that Jien and other members of the courtier elite experienced as a
result of this transition was accepted fatalistically because of a belief in
its inevitability: They were convinced that the period of mappd, or
"the end of the Buddhist law," had already begun a century before.
According to this pessimistic notion, which set the dominant tone for
the outlook of the medieval age, Japan had entered into a final, cataclysmic
stage of its history, in which people ceased to follow the Buddhist
law, turmoil replaced order in society, and life became sub-
1 Okami Masao and Akamatsu Toshihide, eds., Gukansho, vol. 85 of Nihon koten bungaku taikei
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1967), p. 206.
447
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448 CULTURAL LIFE
merged in darkness and suffering. Under such circumstances, it was
hardly surprising that warriors should arise to reimpose, even by brutal
force, some semblance of order in the land.
The mappo concept of historical decline, strongly held in the early
medieval age, was nurtured by the traditionally keen sensitivity of the
Japanese to the mutability and evanescence of all things. The central
ideal of beauty in Japan had always been a beauty of perishability,
found most typically in the changes in nature brought about by the
passage of the seasons. Buddhism, with its belief that the world is in
constant flux, deepened and rendered more poignant this native feeling
for change. Thus, when we read the following passage:
The flow of the river is ceaseless and its water is never the same. The bubbles
that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, are not of long duration:
so in the world are man and his dwellings. It might be imagined that the
houses, great and small, which vie roof against proud roof in the capital
remain unchanged from one generation to the next, but when we examine
whether this is true, how few are the houses that were there of old. . . . The
city is the same, the people are as numerous as ever, but of those I used to
know, a bare one or two in twenty remain. They die in the morning, they are
born in the evening, like foam on the water.2
we are struck by its poetic imagery and the profoundly sad vision it
presents of the fleeting nature of humans and their works.
Standing alone, this passage provides no clue to the period of its
composition: It expresses feelings that the Japanese have always been
wont to articulate. In fact, it is the opening to Kamo no Chomei's
Hojoki (An account of my ten-foot square hut), a brief miscellany
written in 1212, and is prelude to a narrative that is characteristically
medieval in it description of the sufferings of this life and the pension
for salvation in Amida's Pure Land paradise after death.
Chomei (1153-1216) was a member of the lower-court aristocracy
whose family served as Shinto priests at the Kamo Shrine in Kyoto. A
gifted poet, he was nevertheless denied - probably because of his inferior
social standing - full membership in the literary salon at court;
and in middle age he took Buddhist vows and withdrew from life in
the capital, eventually moving into reclusive retirement in a meager,
"ten-foot square" hut on Mount Hino on the city's outskirts.
The first half of Hojoki describes the grief and hardships of life in
this world and relates a series of calamities, including earthquake, fire,
and famine, that afflicted Kyoto during the late 1170s and early 1180s.
2 Donald Keene, ed., Anthology ofJapanese Literature (New York: Grove Press, 1955), p. 197.
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THE TALE OF THE HEIKE 449
These were the epochal years when the Taira and Minamoto contended
for military hegemony of the land and a warrior government
(bakufu) was established at Kamakura. But Chomei, the poet, said
scarcely a word about these events, even though at least one of his
calamities - the famine of 1181 - was in part caused by the disruption
of food shipments to the capital, owing to fighting in the nearby
province of Omi, the "breadbasket" of Kyoto.
Against this backdrop of disaster and suffering, Chomei turned in
the second half of Hojoki to an account of his personal quest for
religious salvation. Increasingly he sought to disentangle himself from
worldly ties, both social and material, and in the end sequestered
himself in the ten-foot square hut. Yet pathetically, he was forced to
confess that even his attachment to the tiny hut might hinder his
salvation and rebirth in the Pure Land of Amida.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Hojoki is the conflict revealed
within the author himself who, even as he denounced this existence
and yearned for rebirth in Amida's Pure Land, found beauty almost
everywhere in life, even in his wretched hut. Although the hut was
supposed to represent rejection of material values, it became instead a
focal point for Chomei's aesthetic sensibilities as a poet. Later in the
medieval age, the "hut" became an important aesthetic ideal for many
poets and artists, but few were ostensibly as torn as Chomei was in the
desire to renounce the beauty of the world in order to achieve religious
salvation.
THE TALE OF THE HEIKE AND OTHER WAR TALES
Although Hojoki is one of the finest literary expressions of the intensified
awareness of change that accompanied the advent of medieval
times, it is not concerned with the larger course of history and Japan's
inexorable descent into the age of mappo. This is the central theme of
Gukansho, but Gukansho is a rather drily written historical record and
does not reflect the popular imagination of its age. Instead, it is the
great war tale, Heike monogatari (Tale of the Taira, or Heike), that
provides us with the richest legends and the most vivid impressions of
the medieval mind at the time when the high civilization of the Heian
court waned and the country was plunged into an age of warriors.
There is no simple definition for the literary genre of war tales
(gunki monogatari) that became so important to the narrative tradition
of the medieval age. In subject matter they deal with warriors and
battle, and by that criterion the earliest war tales are Shomonki (or
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450 CULTURAL LIFE
Masakado-ki), which recounts the rebellion of Taira no Masakado (d.
940) in the Kanto in 935-40, and Mutsu waki (Tale of Mutsu), a record
of the Former Nine Years War fought in the northern Mutsu-Dewa
region in the mid-eleventh century. Both of these works, however,
although abundant in the lore and ethos of the emerging samurai class,
are written in Chinese and are therefore quite different linguistically
from the war tales of the medieval age. In contrast, the language of the
medieval war tales was Japanese (transcribed with Chinese characters
and the native kana syllabary), enriched by a heavy admixture of
Chinese loan words, including many that were used to express Buddhist
ideas.
The authorship and dates of most of the war tales are either unknown
or disputed. We do not even know, for example, by whom and
in what order the three major tales of the Kamakura period (1185-
I
333) — Hogen monogatari, Heiji monogatari, and Heike monogatari —
were written or compiled. Perhaps there was no "order"; for although
the first two tales are relatively short, focused on restricted events (the
Hogen and Heiji disturbances of 1156 and 1159-60), and possibly
written by single authors at specific times, Heike monogatari is an
enormously long and episodic record of the rise and fall of the Taira
clan that evolved over a century (from the late 11oos to the late 1200s)
from both written and oral sources.
Scholars hypothesize that the original Heike monogatari was written
in the early thirteenth century by a former courtier named Yukinaga
who came under the patronage of the priest-historian Jien, then abbot
of the Enryakuji temple on Mount Hiei. This suggests that Gukansho
and Heike monogatari (in its first form) were compiled at roughly the
same time and that Yukinaga was strongly influenced by Jien's fatalistic
ideas and philosophy of mappo.
If there was an "original" Heike, it was most likely a fairly brief,
chronological account of the events and developments that have always
constituted the book's principal narrative: the rise of the Taira under
Kiyomori (1118-81) to dominance of the Heian court in the late 1170s
and the family's fall from grace and power andfinaldestruction during
the Gempei War (1180-5). But the Heike we have today is a vastly
expanded work, containing many miscellaneous stories and legends
from diverse sources. Most important, the Heike was extensively revised
and reshaped by the contributions of blind itinerant priests who
traveled the countryside chanting their tales to the accompaniment of
a biwa, or lute.
Whereas the opening lines oiHojoki plaintively observe the sadness
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THE TALE OF THE HEIKE 451
of change and the passage of time, the introduction to Heike monogatari
strikes a much more somber and ominous tone:
In the sound of the bell of the Gion Temple echoes the impermanence of all
things. The pale hue of theflowersof the teak tree shows the truth that they
who prosper must fall. The proud ones do not last long, but vanish like a
spring-night's dream. And the mighty ones too will perish in the end, like
dust before the wind.3
We are informed that the Taira are fated for a fall, and the text assumes
a tone of tragic inevitability that is sustained until the end. The fall of
the Taira is one of the great themes in the Japanese cultural tradition,
and the reasons for and the manner of their decline, as presented in
Heike monogatari, tell us much about differing attitudes toward the
historical displacement of courtiers by warriors as rulers in this age.
The views of Heike's original author (let us assume it was Yukinaga)
represent those of the courtier-centered ancien regime. Kiyomori, the
Taira chieftain, was the vilest of men. Not only was he excessively
proud and haughty, but he also repeatedly breached the tenets of the
unwritten but sacred "imperial law" (oho), violating both the persons
and offices of the emperor and other members of the imperial family.
In a sense, the Heike portrait of Kiyomori - which cannot be accepted
as historically accurate - represents a cri de coeur against the entire
warrior class as usurpers of national power from the emperor and his
court. But the depiction of the Taira clan as a whole, especially after
Kiyomori's death in 1181 (at the end of the first half of Heike), can be
interpreted quite differently. In the sections in the second half of the
book in which the Taira are forced to flee Kyoto and are relentlessly
pursued by the Minamoto to final destruction at the battle of
Dannoura in 1185, they subtly become surrogates for the courtier
class, and their pitiful fate represents the demise of the courtiers as
rulers in the medieval age.
This portrayal of the Taira as courtiers may be found in the famous
passage in "The Death of Atsumori" in which the Minamoto retainer
Kumagai Naozane, having captured the young Taira general Atsumori
on the beach at Ichinotani, is forced to behead him in order to save
him from cruder treatment at the hands of other Minamoto partisans.
When Naozane discovers a flute in Atsumori's sash, he exclaims in
anguish that not a single member of the myriad forces of the Minamoto
would have thought to carry such a thing into battle. But it is not
merely the refined courtly tastes in music, poetry, and the like attrib-
3 ibid., P. 78.
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452 CULTURAL LIFE
uted to the Taira that transforms them into surrogates for the courtiers.
It is also the tone and literary qualities of certain key sections that
relate the humiliations, agonies, and deaths of leading Taira during the
Gempei War. Whereas most of Heike monogatari is written in the
strong, vigorous style of the new genre of war tales, these sections
evoke the mood and feelings of the fictional tales (tsukuri monogatari)
of the Heian period.
Although the Taira may be viewed as both warriors and courtiers,
the Minamoto who appear in the pages of Heike monogatari are, with
few exceptions, clearly drawn as the dynamic military leaders of the
new age. The book's pervasively tragic tone is sustained even in the
treatment of these victors: for example, in the vivid detailing of the
death in battle of the first great Minamoto field general of the Gempei
War, Yoshinaka (1154-84), and in the foreshadowing of the doom of
the second, Yoshitsune (1159-89). But otherwise the Minamoto represent
the future, and indeed some of them and their followers are
portrayed in terms of the exaggeratedly superior prowess and courage
that were to become stereotypical of the war tales of the medieval age.4
THE AGE OF SHINKOKINSHD POETRY
The nostalgia for the courtier past that we find in both Gukansho and
Heike monogatari (and less explicitly, in Hojoki) was not merely a passing,
futile yearning for something that could never be recaptured but
was part of a growing sentiment that endured throughout the medieval
age. In part, this sentiment was sustained because the courtier class
itself survived the traumatic transition to warrior times. Although
eventually stripped of all political power and most of their economic
wealth, the courtiers retained their unique social status as aristocrats
and their custodianship of the still greatly admired classical culture
that their forebears had produced.
The heart of the classical culture was waka poetry, the art on which
the courtiers lavished their greatest love and in whose cadences they
sought to express their highest sense of beauty. The waka tradition's
range of poetic expression, vocabulary, and social sentiment was established
in the early to mid-Heian period, about the time of the compilation
in 905 of Kokinshu (Anthology of ancient and modern poems), the
4 See Kenneth Dean Butler, "The Heike Monogatari and the Japanese Warrior Ethic," Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies 29 (1969): 93-108. Butler has analyzed how, contrary to the facts of
history, oral-tale singers created stereotyped, "ideal heroes" of famous warriors who appear in
the Heike monogatari.
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THE AGE OF SHINKOKINSHO POETRY 453
first imperially authorized waka anthology. Later court poets deeply
venerated Kokinshu and identified it and other works of tenth and
early eleventh centuries - especially he monogatari and Genji
monogatari - as models of the aesthetic and cultural values of court
life. In earlier times the "classical past" had been essentially a Chinese
past; now the Japanese looked back increasingly to the mid-Heian
period of their own history for artistic guidance and inspiration.
Keen awareness of a classical Japanese past was a major feature of
the efflorescence of waka that occurred, ironically perhaps, during the
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries when the court was a declining
governmental institution. This period may be called the age of
Shinkokinshu, as its finest achievement was the compilation of the
eighth imperial anthology, the "new Kokinshu," in 1205. The
Shinkokinshu poets, who included Fujiwara no Shunzei ( n 14-1204),
the priest Saigyd (1118-90), and Shunzei's son Teika (1162-1241),
spoke of expressing "new feelings with old words" (kotoba furuku,
kokoro atarashi) and sought to achieve resonance in their poetry by
both alluding to earlier poems (honkadori) and using suggestion rather
than explicit statement. A poem by Fujiwara no Teika illustrates some
of these techniques:
As I look about,
I see neither cherry blossoms
Nor crimson leaves.
A straw-thatched hut by the bay
At evening the Autumn.5
Teika alludes to two traditional subjects, the cherry blossoms of spring
and the changing maple leaves of autumn, but instead of celebrating
them directly, he describes a setting in late autumn or early winter in
which they are conspicuously absent. The setting itself, a monochromatic
scene of a lowly fisherman's hut by the bay, is untraditional and
suggests some of the new tastes of the medieval age. It is made familiar
through reference to the blossoms and leaves that poets had always
praised, and our impression of the bleak landscape is enhanced by the
reminder that it has been and will again be suffused with color.
Two aesthetic values that guided the Shinkokinshu poets and set
much of the artistic tone of the medieval age were yugen (mystery and
depth) and sabi (loneliness). I leave the discussion of yugen to the
section on the noh theater in the Muromachi period. Here let me note
some of the tastes connoted by sabi.
5 Shinkokinshu, vol. 4, no. 363.
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454 CULTURAL LIFE
Heian-period poets had given their attention chiefly to the new and
fashionable (imamekashi) and to nature's more conventionally regarded
beauties, such as spring's blossoms and autumn's leaves. By
the age of Shinkokinshu, an aesthetic appeal was growing - perhaps
encouraged by the somber sentiments of mappo pessimism and the
mounting awareness that a great era was coming to an end - for the
weathered and withered, the desolate and lonely - sabi. Teika's hut by
the bay at eveningtime in late autumn is a good example of sabi. An
even better example is the following well-known poem by Saigyo:
Even one who has renounced
His worldly feelings
Knows of the pathos of life.
A shrike rises from the marsh;
Autumn at dusk.6
Both the Teika and Saigyo poems have the same last line (aki no
yugure, autumn at evening or dusk) and are therefore set at the same
time of day in the same season. Teika's verse is almost purely descriptive,
whereas Saigyo's speaks also, in intensely personal terms, of the
desolation and loneliness of life.
Fujiwara no Teika and his compeers were not only poets but also
scholars. The scholarship they pursued, essential to the "allusive
depth" of their poetry, was itself one of the most important products of
the nostalgia for the past that evolved in the medieval age. Usually
called wagaku, or Japanese scholarship (to distinguish it from
kangaku, or Chinese scholarship), it consisted of two general areas of
study. One was the corpus of «>a&a-centered, classical court literature,
especially the mid-Heian-period masterworks Kokinshu, he monogatari,
and Genji monogatari; the other was "court ceremonial and practice"
(yusoku kojitsu), the accumulated rituals, customs, and minutiae
of court life. Wagaku reached its peak of development in the midMuromachi
period in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The compilation of Shinkokinshu in the early thirteenth century was
one of the last major achievements in the arts that was primarily the
work of the courtier class. It is fitting that its leading compiler was the
senior retired emperor Gotoba (1180-1239), who later schemed to
overthrow the Kamakura bakufu and precipitated the Jokyu disturbance
of 1221. As a result of this brief war, Kamakura military rule
was vastly expanded, and perhaps most important in terms of cultural
history, the bakufu's control over Kyoto was firmly established.
6 Shinkokinshu, vol. 4, no. 362.
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THE REVIVAL OF SHINTO 455
THE REVIVAL OF SHINTO AND THE LATE KAMAKURA
PERIOD
After 1221, the court ceased to control even its most important affairs.
Major decisions, including the selection of successors to the throne,
were made either directly by the bakufu or through its representatives,
the Rokuhara tandai. Under these circumstances, a stultifying atmosphere
settled over Kyoto, and for the remainder of the Kamakura
period the arts did not shine as brilliantly as they had during the first
three decades or so of the medieval age. Meanwhile, Kamakura came
under the firm administration of the Hojo shogunal regents (shikken),
who became ever more confident of their newly acquired status as
rulers and who wished to enhance their seat of power by elevating its
cultural life. This was achieved primarily through the patronage of
Zen Buddhism. The Hojo invited Chinese Zen (Ch'an) priests to
Kamakura and helped them establish major Zen centers, such as the
Kenchoji and Engakuji temples.
Much of the intellectual vigor of the Kamakura period was devoted
to Buddhism, and the finest works in learned writing were those by
the founders of the new Buddhist sects, including Honen, Shinran,
Eisai, Dogen, and Nichiren. But there was also a revival in Shinto in
Kamakura times. Although it did not stimulate much great writing, it
greatly influenced the attitudes of at least the higher levels of society
during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, when Japan
was attacked by two Mongol invading forces (1274 and 1281), the
Kamakura bakufu gradually faltered and was finally overthrown
(!333)J and Emperor Godaigo (1288-1339) attempted to "restore"
imperial rule in the Kemmu restoration (1333-6).
One aspect of the Shinto revival was renewed interest in Japan's
origins. Jien began his history in Gukansho with the first earthly emperor,
Jimmu, and the so-called age of humans. But others began to
study the long-neglected history of the "age of the gods," thus preparing
the way for articulating the concept of kamikaze during the period
of the Mongol invasions - the "winds of the gods" that arose at times
of great peril to protect Japan. This concept asserted the primacy of
Shinto over Buddhism, which for many centuries had been viewed as
the supreme "protector of the state."7
Another aspect of the Shinto revival was the commencement of new
research into the history of the imperial institution. This research
7 Chingo kokka.
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456 CULTURAL LIFE
coincided with disputes over succession to the throne that erupted
among the descendants of the senior retired emperor Gosaga (1220-
72) upon his death in 1272. The most important product of this research
was Jinno shotoki (Chronicle of the direct descent of gods and
sovereigns), a history of Japan written in 1339 by the courtier-general
Kitabatake Chikafusa (1293-1354). To understand the historical setting
of Jinno shotoki, it is necessary first to note the circumstances
surrounding the failure of the Kemmu restoration and the subsequent
founding of the Ashikaga bakufu (1336-1573).
The Kemmu restoration was essentially a futile, ahistorical effort
to reinstitute the conditions of an age some five hundred years earlier
when emperors supposedly exercised personal rule over the country.
Probably the most grievous failure of the restoration government in
Kyoto was its inability to meet the demands for rewards by warriors
who had aided in overthrowing the Kamakura bakufu. The restoration
government was also divided from its inception by intense rivalries
among the chieftains who were its principal military supports. In
1335 one of these chieftains, Ashikaga Takauji (1305-58), the head
of a major branch of the Minamoto clan, turned against the government
and occupied Kyoto, forcing Emperor Godaigo and his backers
to flee to Yoshino in the mountainous region south of the capital.
Thus began the period of war between the courts (133S-92), an
unprecedented time in Japanese history when there were two rival
seats of emperorship: Godaigo's "Southern Court" at Yoshino and
the "Northern Court" in Kyoto headed by emperors of another
branch of the imperial family. The Northern Court was a mere pawn
of the Ashikaga bakufu, which Takauji established in Kyoto in close
proximity.
Kitabatake Chikafusa, a follower of Emperor Godaigo, became the
de facto leader of the Southern Court after Godaigo's death in 1339. It
has long been speculated that he wrote Jinno shotoki to instruct the
emperor's son and youthful successor, Gomurakami (1328-68). Recently,
however, it has been suggested that Chikafusa intended his
history primarily as a means to recruit support for the Southern
Court.8
Whatever Chikafusa's purpose may have been, Jinno shotoki is
mainly remembered as a history whose author argued the legitimacy of
the Southern over the Northern line of emperors during the war be-
8 I have discussed this new interpretation in H. Paul Varley, trans.,Jinno Shotoki: A Chronicle of
Gods and Sovereigns (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 30-31.
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THE REVIVAL OF SHINTO 457
tween the courts. Yet even more fundamentally, Chikafusa emphasized
the continuity of imperial succession, which in his mind set Japan
apart from other countries and made it superior. Whereas Jien began
Gukansho with the reign of the first human sovereign, Jimmu,
Chikafusa traced a line of unbroken rulership from the age of the
gods.9
A principal theme in Gukansho is the interrelationship between oho
(imperial law) and buppo (Buddhist law) in Japanese history. Jien believed
that imperial law was headed toward extinction and had, in fact,
been propped up for centuries by the imported law of Buddhism. By
contrast, Chikafusa eschewed the use of the term oho with its connotations
of imperial decline and extinction.10
Although he said a great
deal in Jinno shotoki about Buddhism, he did not acknowledge that it
exerted any influence on the imperial institution. Chikafusa, whose
thinking emerged from the Shinto revival of the late Kamakura period,
also rejected the concept of mappo. Although recognizing the
debased state of civil war into which the country had fallen in his own
time, he insisted that it could be revived through the restoration of
proper (i.e., time-honored and legitimate) principles of rule and that
the imperial institution would endure eternally through the mandate
of Amaterasu.11
Kitabatake Chikafusa's thinking was more significant to the Shinto
ideologues and nationalists of later centuries than it was to his contemporaries.
With his call for the restoration of "proper principles,"
Chikafusa was already an anachronism in his own lifetime. We know
in retrospect that after the failure of the Kemmu restoration, there was
no real chance of reviving imperial rule in the sense of returning
political power to the emperor or his ministers.12
The warriors' long
process of displacing the courtiers as the ruling elite, which began in
the late twelfth century, was complete by the fourteenth century.
9 This emphasis on continuous rule from the age of the gods is announced in the opening lines
of theJinno shotoki: "Great Japan is the divine land. The heavenly progenitor founded it, and
the Sun Goddess bequeathed it to her descendants to rule eternally. Only in our country is
this true; there are no similar examples in other countries. That is why our country is called
the divine land."
10 Rather than imperial law (oho), Chikafusa stressed imperial succession.
11 The mandate given to Ninigi by Amaterasu in theJinno shotoki when she bestowed the regalia
upon him and sent him down from heaven to rule Japan was, "Go there and rule. Go, and
may your line prosper eternally, like heaven and earth."
12 The emperor and ministers of the Northern Court were dominated by the Ashikaga bakufu.
The emperors and ministers of the Southern Court seemed to have had no real chance of
reinstalling themselves as leaders of the entire country.
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458 CULTURAL LIFE
THE EARLY MUROMACHI PERIOD
A major result of the founding of the Ashikaga bakufu and the commencement
of the Muromachi period (1336-1573) was the reestablishment
of Kyoto as the country's unchallenged administrative and cultural
center. With the bakufu located in Kyoto instead of Kamakura,
courtiers and warriors began to intermingle socially to a much greater
degree than before and to share patronage of the arts. In addition,
Kyoto replaced Kamakura as the focal point of Zen, and the Kyoto
Zen temples assumed a new leadership among the religious institutions
of the central provinces in encouraging art and learning.
This period also witnessed the emergence of Kyoto as a commercial
center and the rise of a newly affluent merchant class that increasingly
participated in the city's cultural life. Until the end of the Heian
period, culture and the arts had been monopolized by the courtiers. It
was a sign of the dynamic social changes that occurred in the early
medieval age that by the beginning of the Muromachi period, not only
warriors and merchants but also members of the lower orders in the
provinces came to play meaningful roles in cultural development. A
truly national culture was taking shape for the first time in Japan, a
culture that derived from both elite and popular sources and was
increasingly shared and enjoyed by all classes.
The war tale Taiheiki (Chronicle of great peace) is the single best
source describing the political, social, and cultural changes that occurred
during the Kemmu restoration and the first three decades or so
of the Muromachi period.13
This lengthy chronicle covers the time
from Godaigo's accession to the throne in 1318 until about 1368, when
Yoshimitsu became the third Ashikaga shogun, and ranks wkh Heike
monogatari as one of the two most important medieval war tales. In
literary terms, however, Taiheiki is far inferior to Heike monogatari.
The first third of Taiheiki deals with Godaigo's plot against the
Kamakura bakufu and is reasonably well structured and presented.
But later sections are loosely organized and full of digressions, trivial
anecdotes, and repetitious and stereotypical battle scenes. Taiheiki
lacks a great unifying theme. Whereas Heike monogatari, from its opening
lines until its somber closing pages, narrates the tragically portended
decline and annihilation of the Taira family, Taiheiki comes
closer to a simple narrative of events.
13 One theory is that "great peace" expressed the wish for termination of the strife that the
Taiheiki, in fact, records.
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THE EARLY MUROMACHI PERIOD 459
Japanese critics over the centuries have categorized Taiheiki as a
propaganda text of the Southern Court. If anything, the work is distinctive
for the cumulative criticism that its author or authors directed
against all parties to the dynastic warfare of the fourteenth century.'4
Nevertheless, there is a certain validity to this perception of Taiheiki as
a Southern Court work; the episodes most frequently extracted from it
by later storytellers were those dealing with the heroic exploits and
steadfast loyalty of the adherents of Emperor Goidago and the Southern
Court. By the modern age such men as Nitta Yoshisada (1301-38),
Prince Morinaga (1308-35), and especially Kusunoki Masashige (d.
1336), all of whom died fighting for the unsuccessful Southern side,
had been apotheosized in the Japanese folk tradition as the most exemplary
of loyalist heroes. The characters most beloved in both Heike
monogatari and Taiheiki were those whom Ivan Morris termed "failed
heroes," characters who made their greatest appeal to the Japanese
sentiment by destroying themselves or otherwise going resolutely to
their ends for noble but losing causes.'5
The pages of Taiheiki introduce a great variety of characters and
social types. Most notable, apart from the loyal heroes of the Southern
Court, are the military leaders, led by theAshikaga, who sponsored
the Northern Court and emerged as the new ruling elite in Kyoto.
These men came to share, along with the courtiers and Buddhist
prelates (especially of the Rinzai Zen sect), patronage of the arts and
culture in the early Muromachi period. Many of them came from the
central and western provinces and were quite a different breed from
the chieftains who had supported the Kamakura bakufu. Rising to
prominence at a time when regional pulls made centralized control of
the country exceedingly difficult, they were far more independent and
far more apt to challenge traditional authority than were their
Kamakura-period predecessors. In Kyoto, where the new leaders took
up residence, they became the most prominent figures in a social life
that was severely criticized by some contemporary chroniclers as ostentatious
and extravagant. A term that came into currency about the
time of the Kemmu restoration and connoted such ostentation and
extravagance was basara,16
and the chieftains who subscribed to it
were dubbed basara daimyo.
The most conspicuous basara daimyo portrayed in Taiheiki was
14 I have discussed this point in H. Paul Varley, Imperial Restoration in Medieval Japan (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1971), chap. 5.
15 Ivan Morris, The Afoftttoy of Failure (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).
16 Basara also meant disruptive or potentially destructive.
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460 CULTURAL LIFE
Sasaki Doyo, a shugo from Omi Province. At parties held at Doyo's
residence, the seating places were lavishly adorned with leopard and
tiger skins, damask, and gold brocade, and works of art were ostentatiously
displayed. Guests were regaled with munificent quantities of
food and sake, and there was music, singing, and dancing. The parties
(which were said to project a glitter not unlike the "radiance of a
thousand Buddhas") also included gambling in the form of tdcha or
tea-judging contests.17
Tea had first been introduced to Japan from China in the early
Heian period, but tea drinking was not permanently accepted by the
Japanese until after its reintroduction by the Zen priest Eisai in the
late twelfth century. By the Muromachi period, all classes in Japan
drank tea. The tdcha were contests in which the participants, backed
by wagers, sought to identify the tea of Togano'o, a place northwest of
Kyoto where the most highly regarded tea of that time was grown, by
drinking from unmarked cups that contained it as well as the products
of other tea-producing regions.18
As we shall see, tdcha was the precursor
to the classical tea ceremony (chanoyu) of later Muromachi times.
Another connotation of basara was exoticism, manifested especially
in this age by the desire to acquire works of art and craft {karamono)
from China. There had been a hiatus in relations with the continent
following the Mongol invasions of Japan in the late thirteenth century.
But the Ashikaga, beginning with the bakufu's founder, Takauji,
gradually renewed trade with China, which was formalized and made
official from the time of the third shogun, Yoshimitsu (1358-1408).
Much of the story of the importance of this trade in cultural terms
belongs to the chapter on the gozan (Chapter 13), because until the late
fifteenth century, the Zen monks of these temples managed most of
the trade under the sponsorship of the bakufu. In addition to trading,
the gozan Zen monks also inquired eagerly into Chinese art, literature,
and scholarship. But for our discussion the most important aspect of
the new China trade was the karamono, including paintings, calligraphic
scrolls, ceramic wares, fine porcelains, and lacquerware
brought to Japan in ever-greater quantities beginning in the midfourteenth
century.
People like Sasaki Doyo vied aggressively for karamono and dis-
17 These contests were a form of monoawase or "comparison of things" and had been popular
from at least the Heian period, when the courtiers engaged in a great variety of monoawase,
from the comparison or judgment of things such as flowers, incense, roots, and seashells to
artistic creations such as poems and paintings.
iS By the end of the fourteenth century, Uji had replaced Togano'o as the leading tea-producing
region of Japan.
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THE EARLY MUROMACHI PERIOD 461
played them proudly at parties and other social functions. Scenes from
late-fourteenth-century scrolls show karamono lined up on view at
gatherings.19
But there is little indication, either in the scenes themselves
or in the writings of the time, that the owners were qualified to
judge the quality of their treasures. The process by which the Japanese
gradually developed a connoisseurship for karamono and evolved canons
of taste for displaying both these and their native works of art and
craft (wamono) is a major theme of cultural history in the fifteenth
century and is closely related to the creation of the earliest settings for
the performance of chanoyu.
Sasaki Doyo was a flamboyant man who opportunistically played
the shifting politics of his age. He also possessed considerable learning
and artistic discrimination. He was, for example, a major contributor
to the first imperially authorized linked-verse (renga) anthology,
Tsukubashii (1356), and was an authority on incense and the purported
author of a book on flower arrangement.20
Doyo may also have been
the first person of prominence to discover Kan'ami (1333-84) and
Zeami (1363-1443) who, under the patronage of the shogun
Yoshimitsu, created the classical noh theater.
The Ashikaga bakufu reached its greatest influence during the time
of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who acceded to the office of shogun at the age
of ten in 1368 and about a decade later became the real as well as the
titular head of the bakufu. Yoshimitsu's time (from 1368 until his
death in 1408) is known as the Kitayama or "Northern Hills" epoch,
named for the location of the residential retreat he built in his later
years in the hills north of Kyoto. There were few other epochs in
Japanese history when a ruler was so important to shaping cultural
developments. The principal reason for this, apart from Yoshimitsu's
personal proclivities, was his desire to establish himself as "king" of
the bakufu by combining in himself both the supreme military (bu)
and the civil or cultural (bun) aspects of rule. Yoshimitsu's pursuit of
the bun of rule involved both the extension of patronage to the arts in
general and the adoption of a policy of simultaneous assimilation with
and domination of the courtiers, the traditional possessors of bun. I
shall discuss Yoshimitsu's relations with the courtiers first, as they
were a major influence on the character of his patronage of the arts.
Yoshimitsu sought to transform himself into a courtier and encour-
19 For example, a scene from the fifteenth-century narrative scroll Sairei zoshi shows karamono
vases and an incense burner aligned on shelves extending the lengths of two walls of a room in
which people are gathered waiting to be served food.
20 This book was entitled Rikka kuden daiji.
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462 CULTURAL LIFE
aged his leading vassals to adopt courtier tastes and the courtly style of
life. Perhaps the most conspicuous aspect of Yoshimitsu's personal
transformation was his acquisition of ever-higher court ranks and offices.
By 1380, at the age of twenty-two, he had attained the junior
first rank (ju-ichii), the highest level of the courtier ranking system. A
year later he received the position of minister of the center (naidaijin),
and in 1394 he was made great minister of the Council of State (daijodaijin),
an office that, with the exception of Taira no Kiyomori, had
not been held previously by a warrior. In addition, Yoshimitsu took a
wife from the noble Hino family,21
obliged prominent courtiers to
become members of his entourage, and constructed a splendid palace,
the Hana no Gosho (Palace of Flowers), where he held court in a
kingly manner.
We are most interested in Yoshimitsu's cultivation of courtier taste,
however, and the main influence on him in this area was Nijo
Yoshimoto (1320—88), a leading Fujiwara and imperial regent who is
probably best known as the compiler of the renga anthology
Tsukubashu. Yoshimoto personally tutored the young shogun in courtier
customs, etiquette, and art and was frequently at his side to guide
him in the conduct of cultural affairs.
THE NOH THEATER
Seldom in cultural history are single events of great significance, but
one exception was the visit by Yoshimitsu to Imakumano Shrine in
Kyoto in 1374 to attend his first performance of sarugaku (an early
form of noh drama). At Imakumano he saw Kan'ami and his young
son (the later Zeami), was totally entranced, and promptly provided
the patronage that enabled them to become the leading theatrical figures
of the Kitayama epoch and the principal creators of noh.22
We see
here one of Yoshimitsu's first and most important acts in his patronage
of the arts and, as can be deduced from the subsequent career of
Zeami, who eagerly sought to satisfy his grand patron, probably the
best example of the influence of Yoshimitsu's courtier tastes on the
evolution of a major art.
The two main types of early medieval theater were sarugaku and
dengaku (field music), both of whose performers were organized into
troupes or guilds (za) that received the patronage of great religious
21 The Hino were related to the northern branch of the Fujiwara.
22 It may have been another actor-playwright, Nan'ami, who arranged to have Yoshimitsu go to
Imakumano Shrine.
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THE NOH THEATER 463
institutions, including the Todaiji and Kofukuji temples and the
Kasuga Shrine. Little is known about the shows given by sarugaku and
dengaku players, although it is assumed that they included music,
dance, and other types of entertainment such as acrobatics and juggling.
Because the troupes traveled throughout the provinces, performing
at various temples and shrines and from town to town, they presumably
presented material that appealed chiefly to popular tastes.
But dengaku, at least, was also much appreciated by members of the
upper classes, including the military leaders of the Kamakura and
Ashikaga bakufu. For example, the last of the Hojo regents, Takatoki
(1303-33), is said in Taiheiki to have brought to ruin his house and the
military regime at Kamakura because of his passion for dogfighting
and dengaku.21
By Yoshimitsu's time, sarugaku and dengaku had quite likely become
similar to each other. Yoshimitsu was drawn to sarugaku mainly because
of Kan'ami's fame as both a playwright and an actor, about
whom he may have first heard from Sasaki Doyo. Yoshimitsu's extension
of patronage to Kan'ami, the twelve-year-old Zeami, and their
Kanze troupe of Yamato Province is the most conspicuous example of
a process whereby the patronage of both sarugaku and dengaku troupes
was largely shifted from religious institutions to warrior leaders.
A courtier writing in his diary expressed outrage that Yoshimitsu
not only gave material support to sarugaku performers, whom he dismissed
as lowly fellows "little better than beggars," but also consorted
with them. The direct cause of the courtier's outrage was an occasion
when Yoshimitsu, attending the Gion festival, shared his mat with
Zeami and ate with the boy from the same plate.24
Yoshimitsu's liking
for the young Zeami seems to have been exceeded only by that of Nijo
Yoshimoto who, in a remarkable letter recently discovered, spoke of
him in terms that could only have sprung from a passionate love. To
Yoshimoto, Zeami was a dreamlike vision who had stepped out of
Genji monogatari, a youth of infinite grace and elegance of manner who
was not only wonderfully talented as an actor but was also skilled in
kemari (football) and the composition oiwaka and renga.25
There are at least two important points to be noted regarding Zeami's
personal relationship with Yoshimitsu and Yoshimoto. First, it was
possible during the medieval age for an actor like Zeami, even though of
23 Helen Craig McCullough, trans., The Taikeiki: A Chronicle of Medieval Japan (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 131—3.
24 From Gogumaiki, the journal of Sanjo Kintada.
25 See Toita Michizo, Kan'ami to Zeami (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1969), pp. 152-53.
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464 CULTURAL LIFE
humble birth, to attain access to members of both the warrior and the
courtier elites solely on the basis of talent and professional achievement.
(Other commoner artists, such as renga masters, shared this opportunity
to mingle with the elite of the land and also enjoyed much greater
freedom of activity and movement than did the lower classes as a
whole.) Second, access to courtiers and warrior leaders helps explain
how Kan'ami, Zeami, and their fellow playwrights acquired the classical
education - indeed, erudition - necessary to compose the masterpieces
of the noh theater that have come down to us today. Nijo
Yoshimoto spoke in his letter as though Zeami was already learned when
he met him, but surely Yoshimoto himself played an instrumental role
in educating the precocious youth in the literature and other arts of the
court tradition.
The major elements of the noh theater as it evolved from Yamato
sarugaku during the Kitayama epoch were a type of acting known as
monomane (the "imitation of things"), a style of dance called kusemai,
and the aesthetic quality ofyugen. From what we can judge of the plays
of Kan'ami and his contemporaries (most of Kan'ami's extant plays
were reworked by Zeami), they were centered on monomane in the
form of dramatic narratives based on the lives of such perennially
popular figures of history and legend as Ono no Komachi, the Soga
brothers, and Minamoto Yoshitsune and his mistress Shizuka.26
Although
gods, demons, and other unearthly characters appeared in
them, these plays were essentially "realistic plays" (genzaimono), insofar
as the main personages were usually portrayed as living humans.
Kan'ami is given chief credit for transforming Yamato sarugaku into
noh by incorporating into it, first, the kusemai dance and, second, the
yugen aesthetic, which had theretofore been associated with the
sarugaku troupes of Omi Province rather than those of Kan'ami's
Yamato.27
But Kan'ami remained committed, even after he received
the patronage of Yoshimitsu, to sarugaku as a theater for all classes,
and he continued to travel and perform in the provinces up to his
death in distant Suruga in 1384. It was Zeami who accepted immersion
in the elite social world of Kyoto and who, under the tutelage and
26 Ono no Komachi was a poet and famous beauty of the late ninth century, about whom many
legends grew. The Soga brothers were warriors of the late twelfth century who carried out a
celebrated vendetta against their father's killer. Their tale is told in Soga monogatari. Legends
dealing with Yoshitsune and Shizuka can be found in the Muromachi-period work entitled
Gikeiki (the record of Yoshitsune).
27 There were four sarugaku troupes in Yamato: the Hosho, Komparu, Kongo, and Kanze
troupes.
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THE NOH THEATER 465
influence of people like Yoshimitsu and Yoshimoto, elevated noh to
the supremely refined and courtly art we know today.
Two categories of plays that best illustrate how Zeami changed noh
are "warrior plays" (shuramono) and "woman plays" (kazuramono).2
*
Before Zeami, warrior plays, as they were to be later categorized, did
not exist; it was no doubt in part to appeal to and flatter Yoshimitsu
and other warriors that Zeami created the shuramono, which had as
their main characters (shite) historical personages of the samurai class.
Zeami's source for nearly all of his shuramono was Heike monogatari.
But even as he recreated famous samurai heroes from this great war
tale, he stressed their courtier rather than their martial qualities and
used them as a means to evoke the past world of the courtiers.
A brilliant technique that Zeami employed in his plays to turn back
time to the courtier past was mugen, the apparitional or ghostly dream,
wherein the shite, often after first appearing on stage in such humble
guise as a boatman, a reaper, or a village girl, reappears in the second
act as the ghost of the famous person on whom the play is based. A
good example of such a play by Zeami employing mugen is Atsumori,
whose plot was drawn from the pathetic death (as told in Heike
monogatari) of the young Taira general Atsumori at the hands of
Kumagai Naozane at the battle of Ichinotani. The play begins with
Kumagai, called by the Buddhist name Rensei which he took after
becoming a priest to pray for Atsumori's spirit, announcing that he is
going to visit the site of the battle of Ichinotani. The site, quickly
reached by means of noh convention,29
is on the shore of Suma on the
Inland Sea, a place rich with associations from Genji monogatari, and
the time is dusk.30
Rensei meets a young reaper, whom he hears playing
a flute just as Atsumori had the night before the Ichinotani conflict,
and, on inquiring, learns that he is related to the Taira.31
In the
second act, as Rensei prepares to spend the night praying for
Atsumori, the reaper reappears in a dreamlike sequence as the ghost of
the fallen general. Announcing that ties to the world still bind him in
death, Atsumori recounts the rise and fall of the Taira and his own
destruction at the hands of Rensei (Kumagai). After performing the
kusemai dance that is the climax to most noh plays, he attains salvation
through the prayers of his former foe, Rensei.
28 The five categories of plays are god plays, warrior plays, woman plays, miscellaneous plays,
and devil plays. 29 A few short steps can indicate the taking of a distant journey.
30 Prince Genji was exiled to Suma but later returned triumphantly to the court.
31 In the Heike monogatari, Kumagai says that he heard the sound of the flute at dawn on the day
of the battle.
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466 CULTURAL LIFE
Nonomiya (The shrine in the fields) is a woman play by Zeami
similar in structure to Atsumori. This play also begins with the ubiquitous
traveling priest, although in this case one who remains nameless.
He visits the shrine outside Kyoto where, in Genji monogatari, Prince
Genji had once called on Lady Rokujo, his most jealous lover.32
There
the priest meets a village girl who later shows herself to be Rokujo's
ghost, and by earnest prayers he helps the ghost overcome her still
burning passion for Genji and gain release from the delusion of earthly
existence.
The priest playing the secondary role (waki)Si
in each of these plays
represents the audience or, indeed, all living people, and it is through
this character that we are drawn into a mysterious world of death,
dreams, and a remote past. It is above all an aristocratic world, for
most of its main characters are taken from Heian history or literature,
and its language at the highest moments is the language of waka
poetry. Moreover, in its resplendent costuming and the elegant movements
of the actors, some of them wearing masks, it is a visual recreation
of the age of courtier glory.
In Zeami's woman plays, in particular, there is very little action in
the conventional theatrical sense and virtually no conflict among the
characters. These plays, which are regarded as the principal repositories
of Zeami's ideal oi yugen, deal primarily with the emotions of the
shite. Zeami achieved yugen through poetic resonances cultivated from
the age of Shinkokinshu and evocation of the courtier past by means of
the ghostly dream. This is not to suggest that yiigen is to be found in
Zeami's plays only in poetic resonances that brought depth and
ghostly dreams with their intense sense of mystery, but simply that
they were particularly important methods by which he created this
aesthetic quality.
An aspect of the yugen of Zeami and other noh playwrights that has
received less emphasis by critics is its relationship to sabi. We noted
examples of the sabi aesthetic of loneliness in poems from Shinkokinshu,
one of which was by the priest Saigyo. Sabi was particularly
associated in the medieval age with traveling priests, like Saigyo,
whose journeys took them to desolate, remote areas, and who were
thought to be especially sensitive to the insubstantiality and inherent
pathos of life. Thus the waki in plays like Atsumori and Nonomiya, as
they set out to visit sites near and far, but always lonely, establish from
32 The jealous spirit of Lady Rokujo was believed to have caused, for example, the death of
Genji's first wife, Aoi. 33 A noh play usually focuses on only one main character, the shite.
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THE NOH THEATER 467
the outset a strong atmosphere of sabi. In Nonomiya the sense of
desolation and loneliness is also quickly advanced by the first entrance
of the village girl, who declaims:
Autumn has drawn to a close
And the harsh winds blow;
Colors so brilliant they pierce the senses
Have faded and vanished.
What remains now to recall the memories of the past?
The past that the girl yearns to recall was a time of "color and perfume";
but Nonomiya, representing the present, is described again and
again in the play as lonely and desolate, a place "of withered stalks and
leaves."34
As one writer has observed, the balance between spring and
autumn found in Kokinshu shifted in favor of the latter with the coming
of the medieval age and Shinkokinshu.35
By the time of Zeami and
noh, autumn was by far the preferred season of poets, and a preponderance
of plays, of the warrior and woman categories in particular, are
set in that time of year.
The sabi of noh, whether or not regarded as a component ofyugen,
is often presented in explicitly religious terms, and it is important to
note that aesthetics and religion were virtually inseparable in plays of
this kind. Death was always near at hand in the tumultuous medieval
centuries, and mugen plays display an almost morbid fascination with
the realm of the dead and the agonies that people may be forced to
endure before achieving salvation.
Although Zeami was one of the brightest stars in the artistic firmament
of the Kitayama epoch, his ascendancy rested largely on the
personal patronage of Yoshimitsu, and when the latter died suddenly
at the age of fifty in 1408, Zeami fell precipitously from favor. One
reason was that the next shogun, Yoshimitsu's oldest son, Yoshimochi
(1386-1428), bitterly resented his father and all who were associated
with him because of the greater love that Yoshimitsu had bestowed
upon another son, Yoshitsugu. Yoshimochi seems also to have genuinely
preferred dengaku to sarugaku, and his taste was evidently indicative
of a broad and continued liking for the more narrative, monomanecentered
plays of both dengaku and sarugaku, in contrast with Zeami's
highly aestheticized works with virtually no action.
34 "The Shrine in the Fields," in Donald Keene, ed., Twenty Plays of the No Theatre (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1970).
35 Umehara Takeshi, "Yugen to shi," in Hayashiya Tatsusaburd and Okada Yuzuru, eds., Ami
to machishu vol. 8 oiNihon bunka no rekishi (Tokyo: Gakkyu, 1969), p. 190.
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468 CULTURAL LIFE
The misfortune that Zeami encountered after Yoshimitsu's death
followed him for the remainder of his life, reaching its nadir with his
exile in 1434. For reasons that are not clear, he was exiled to the island
of Sado by Yoshimochi's successor as shogun, the cruel and tyrannical
Yoshinori (1394-1441). Meanwhile, the famed Kanze troop of
sanigaku noh also fell on hard times and was left nearly leaderless after
the death in 1432 of Zeami's son and chosen successor, Motomasa. Yet
Zeami never ceased working, and it was during these years that he
wrote most of his critical works on noh that constitute the finest legacy
of theoretical writing on art from the medieval age.
A form of theater that emerged simultaneously with noh was kyogen
(literally, "wild words"). One kind of kyogen was simply an interval or
separate scene (ai-kyogen) in a noh play, generally used as a device by
which a "person of the vicinity" appears to provide the waki with the
background information necessary to understand the story of the main
character. Another kind of kyogen also evolved. These were independent
skits of a farcical nature that were often presented on the same
programs with noh. As suggested by the character for kyo in kyogen,
which connotes odd or unorthodox behavior, these skits probably first
arose from informal mimicry and satirizing by noh players. In any
event, broad, slapstick satire became the staple of this kind of kyogen
and can best be observed in skits in which servants outwit their
daimyo masters. Some people in the mid-medieval age railed against
these skits, claiming they encouraged insubordinate behavior. But the
warrior authorities, who enthusiastically patronized kyogen, evidently
regarded them as harmless.
THE EVOLUTION OF NEW INTERIOR SETTINGS
FOR THE ARTS
The practice of adopting professional names that included the syllables
ami (a shortened form of amida-butsu, Amida Buddha), such as
Kan1
ami and Zeami, was very common during the Muromachi period,
especially among actors and artists. The first to adopt such names
were members of the Ji sect of Pure Land Buddhism, some of whom
attached themselves to armies during the war between the courts and,
in addition to ministering to the wounded after battles, gathering up
bodies, and conducting funeral services, also served as entertainers for
the warriors during lulls in the fighting. By the Kitayama epoch the
adoption of ami names had become conventional practice for artists
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THE EVOLUTION OF NEW INTERIOR SETTINGS 469
and the like and did not necessarily imply formal association with the
Ji or any other Buddhist sect.36
Some of those who took ami names entered into the direct service of
Shogun Yoshimitsu and his successors and formed a group known as
the doboshu (companions). Although there are still many unanswered
questions concerning the role of the doboshu during the Muromachi
period, it appears that they began simply as menials who ran errands
and performed miscellaneous chores for the shogun. They became
important to cultural history when they were given responsibility for
arranging and overseeing the social and ceremonial functions of the
bakufu.
One manner in which Yoshimitsu attempted to transform the office
of shogun into what I call a feudal kingship was the institutionalization
of a calendar of formal events for warriors imitating the annual events
(nenju-gydji) of the imperial court. Perhaps the most conspicuous of
these events was the procession of the shogun (onari) at New Year's
and other times to the Kyoto mansions of his leading vassals, who by
this time were obliged to maintain nearly full-time residency in the
capital. There were also important events held on special occasions,
such as the six-day visit of Emperor Goen'yu (1358-93) to the Hana no
Gosho in 1381 and the twenty-day visit of Emperor Gokomatsu (1377-
1433) to Yoshimitsu's Kitayama estate in 1408.
The parties and celebrations that were arranged during such events
were similar to the social affairs held by the earlier basara daimyo and
included music, dance, dengaku and sarugaku (noh) performances,
waka and renga compositions, and the drinking of tea. Besides promoting
these arts, they helped create a new interior setting, known from
contemporary records as the kaisho (banquet chamber), for socializing
among members of both the warrior and courtier elites. The evolution
of this new setting in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries
was so significant that historians often discuss the period in terms of
kaisho culture. This is because several of the most important forms of
Muromachi art and culture, such as renga and chanoyu, were premised
on intimate social intercourse for which the kaisho and, from the late
fifteenth century on, the shoin served as settings.37
Moreover, as the
kaisho and shoin rooms and appropriate decorations evolved, other
36 H. Paul Varley, "Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and the World of Kitayama: Social Change and Shogunal
Patronage in Early Muromachi Japan," in John Whitney Hall and Takeshi Toyoda,
eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
I977)> PP- 188-9. 37 The shoin room will be described later in this chapter.
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470 CULTURAL LIFE
arts, including ink painting (sumi-e) on vertical hanging scrolls and
flower arranging, were also greatly advanced.
The shogun's doboshu played a central role in the development of
both the kaisho and shoin. Although many doboshu, such as the famous
"three ami" (Noami, 1397-1471; his son Geiami, 1431-85; and his
son Soami, d. 1525), were artists in their own right,38
their main
function as a group was to establish criteria for the evaluation and
display of karamono. The best source for information about these
criteria and the work of the doboshu in this area is Kundaikan sochoki.
Begun by Noami and completed by Soami, it contains three sections: a
listing and evaluation of some 150 Chinese artists and their works,
illustrated descriptions of ways to display paintings and other
karamono, and a discussion of the kinds of Chinese works of art and
craft that should be shown to guests.
In the last years of his life, Yoshimitsu devoted much time to the
construction of his Kitayama estate, where he lived after 1397 in the
manner of a retired emperor. Of the many buildings that once made up
this estate, only the Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion) has been preserved
into modern times, and it remains a striking symbol of the brilliance of
the Kitayama epoch of cultural history.39
Architecturally, the
Kinkakuji is an amalgam of the older courtier (shinden) style of construction
and newer features associated with the buildings of medieval
Zen temples. Perhaps the strongest impression one receives when viewing
the Kinkakuji, with its low ceilings and gently sloping roof, is of a
much greater intimacy that in earlier Japanese buildings. Such intimacy
seems quite in keeping with the new habits of social intercourse
and standards of artistic tastes than brought about the kaisho during
this same period.
SOCIAL IDEALS AND AESTHETIC VALUES OF THE
HIGASHIYAMA EPOCH
Study of the cultural history of the mid-Muromachi period usually
focuses on the two peaks of Yoshimitsu's Kitayama epoch and the latefifteenth-century
Higashiyama, or "Eastern Hills," epoch of the
eighth Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimasa (1436-90). The obvious danger in
concentrating on these two periods of cultural brilliance is the implication
that little of significance occurred during the three intervening
38 For example, both Geiami and Soami were noted painters.
39 The Kinkakuji was burned down by a deranged monk in 1950 but was rebuilt a few years
later.
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SOCIAL IDEALS AND AESTHETIC VALUES 471
decades. Because shogunal patronage was so important to both the
Kitayama and Higashiyama epochs, we might suppose that the shoguns
of the interim period, Yoshimochi and Yoshinori, were less earnest
in their support of the arts. This was by no means the case. Both
Yoshimochi and Yoshinori were men of great artistic discrimination
and taste, and they actively continued the bun policies inaugurated by
Yoshimitsu.40
For example, Yoshimochi and Yoshinori markedly expanded
the warrior calendar of annual events, instituting, among
other things, monthly waka and renga gatherings. Yoshinori was also
responsible for urging the compilation of the twenty-first and last
imperially authorized waka anthology, Shinzoku kokinshu, which was
completed in 1439. Also, it was during Yoshinori's bakufu rule that
Noami became a member of the dobdshu and played a leading role,
along with the shdgun, in the evolution of the first major form of the
tea ceremony, denchu chanqyu (the aristocratic tea ceremony).
A simple division between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
provides a periodization more meaningful than that yielded by focusing
only on the Kitayama and Higashiyama eras, for the new century
brought important developments that led to the Higashiyama flowering.
These developments included the establishment of standards for
evaluating and appreciating karamono, evolution of the shoin room
setting, formalization of the preparation and serving of tea, a deepening
nostalgia for the past, and the rise in popularity of linked verse
among all classes to a nearly consuming passion.
We can also observe, by the beginning of the fifteenth century, a
new emphasis on certain social ideals and aesthetic values of earlier
origin but that collectively gave the Higashiyama epoch its special
coloration. The main social ideals were those of the inja (or tonseisha, a
person who has taken Buddhist vows and placed himself outside the
official class ordering),41
the wandering priest, and life in a hut (soan).
The aesthetic values included sabi, wabi (the austere and irregular),
and hiekareru (cold and withered).
People who took Buddhist vows in early and medieval Japan did so
with various intentions, the most important distinction being between
those who joined particular sects or temples and devoted themselves to
the true life of religion and those who took vows either to break free of
the restraints imposed by a class system based almost exclusively on
40 Zeami, who had no reason to love Yoshimochi, said that he possessed finer taste than did
Yoshimitsu.
41 Inja means, literally, a "hidden person," whereas tonseisha means a "person who has withdrawn
from the world." The closest English equivalent to these terms is eremite.
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472 CULTURAL LIFE
birth or to avoid the normal duties and responsibilities of society. The
second group of priests are commonly known as inja or tonseisha and
included (among those who have already appeared in this chapter)
Saigyo, Kamo no Chomei, Kan'ami and Zeami, and the members of
the shogunal doboshu. Some inja, such as Saigyo, gained distinction
through their frequent travels throughout the country. In the Japanese
literary tradition, traveling implied at least two important things.
First, it meant the opportunity to visit the famous sites of history and
literature, view them firsthand, and express one's feelings about them,
usually in verse. Second, it symbolized release from the ordinary social
and material attachments of life and acceptance of human existence for
what, in Buddhist terms, it really was - fleeting and insubstantial, a
state of ceaseless flux.
The inja were also associated with the renunciation of material things
by retirement to reclusive life in a hut. One of the most famous soan in
Japanese literature is Kamo no Chomei's "ten-foot square" hut.
Chomei's desire, expressed so movingly in Hojoki, to prepare himself
for rebirth in the Pure Land by rejecting all worldly possessions and
retreating to a bare existence in a tiny hovel, however, was not shared by
most other inja. Rather, as we shall see in the discussion of renga and
chanoyu, the soan became more of an aesthetic than a religious ideal: It
was not conceived by inja as a mean hovel but as a microcosmic setting
of beauty based on sabi, wabi, and similar aesthetic tastes.
Sabi and wabi are probably the two key aesthetic terms of the
fifteenth century. I wish to reserve further analysis of wabi until I
discuss the wabi form of chanoyu that was first evolved by Murata
Shuko (d. 1502) in the Higashiyama epoch. But it should be noted
here that the two terms are commonly used together to connote a wide
range of Muromachi-period tastes, including a preference for the austere,
the old, the worn, the irregular, the imperfect, and the lonely. In
general, we may think of sabi and wabi as representing the monochromatic
aspect of the Muromachi period, as contrasted with the vividly
colorful quality of Heian-period court culture.
One of the earliest depictions of the sabi-wabi realm of Muromachi
culture is to found in Tsurezuregusa (Essays in idleness), written
in the early 1330s by Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350), a minorranking
courtier and poet who became an inja. Tsurezuregusa is a
miscellany (zuihitsu, or flowing brush) in the tradition of the midHeian-period
Makura no soshi (Pillow book) of Sei Shonagon. It is
characteristic of the zuihitsu genre that the author writes impressionistically
rather than with any clear attempt to be logical. Kenko cerCambridge
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LINKED-VERSE POETRY 473
tainly did not present a consistent or overall philosophy in Tsurezuregusa,
and commentators over the centuries have variously regarded
it as a work of didacticism, aesthetics, and even social criticism.42
Yet
we can note some significant consistencies in Tsurezuregusa. Kenko
was always nostalgic for times gone by, proclaiming "a longing in all
things for the past," and he was driven by an urge to preserve even
the smallest of ancient practices and customs (yusoku kojitsu).** In
addition, Kenko rigorously criticized ostentation and repeatedly
urged simplicity of taste and moderation in behavior.
Perhaps the most important thing to be said about Kenko is that he
possessed an excellent "eye" for things, and in this sense his book is a
treasure trove of medieval aesthetics. The following passages exemplify
Kenko's sabi-wabi sensibility:
A house, though it may not be in the current fashion or elaborately decorated,
will appeal to us by its unassuming beauty - a grove of trees with an
indefinably ancient look; a garden where plants, growing of their own accord,
have a special charm; a verandah and an open-work wooden fence of interesting
construction; and a few personal effects left carelessly lying about, giving
the place an air of having been lived in. Somebody once remarked that thin
silk was not satisfactory as a scroll wrapping because it was so easily torn.
Ton'a replied, "It is only after the silk wrapper has frayed at the top and
bottom and the mother-of-pearl has fallen from the roller that a scroll looks
beautiful." This opinion demonstrated the excellent taste of the man. People
often say that a set of books looks ugly if all volumes are not in the same
format, but I was impressed to hear the Abbot Koyu say, "It is typical of the
unintelligent man to insist on assembling complete sets of everything. Imperfect
sets are better." In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is
undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives
one the feeling that there is room for growth.44
LINKED-VERSE POETRY
One of the most characteristic arts, and indeed fervid preoccupations,
of the medieval age was linked-verse (renga) poetry. Because the greatest
renga master, Sogi (1421-1502), lived his life almost entirely during
the fifteenth century, it is fitting to discuss the development of
linked verse here.
The technique of dividing the waka into two discrete links of three
42 The Japanese of the Tokugawa period generally regarded Tsurezuregusa as a didactic work,
whereas during the Meiji period its aesthetic content was stressed. More recently, scholars
have made much of what they perceive as the social criticism in Kenko's writing.
43 Donald Keene, trans., Essays in Idleness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 29.
44 Ibid., pp. 10,70.
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474 CULTURAL LIFE
lines of five, seven, and five syllables and two lines of seven syllables
each dates back to the Kojiki, the oldest extant Japanese book.45
But
there was little experimentation in the use of such links until the Heian
period. True renga, wherein several poets gathered together and alternately
composed links of verse and joined them into chainlike sequences
of a hundred or even a thousand or more, did not evolve until
the early thirteenth century in the salon of the retired emperor
Gotoba, compiler of the.Shinkokinshu.
Renga remained popular among court poets for the rest of the
Kamakura period. Meanwhile, the composition of linked verse also
spread among members of the lower classes and was sometimes called
renga "under the blossoms," because of the practice of holding parties
on temple grounds in the spring to compose verses beneath the blossoming
trees.
The widespread growth of a commoner tradition in renga caused
considerable variations in the methods, purpose, and general quality
of composition throughout the country. For example, an anonymously
written satirical tract posted in Kyoto in 1334, a year after the overthrow
of the Kamakura bakufu and during the Kemmu restoration,
claimed that in the capital the vulgar Kamakura and elegant Kyoto
styles of renga were being freely intermixed, distinctions between hereditary
and newly formed renga schools were being ignored, and
everyone deemed himself qualified to serve as a judge at versing com-
petitions.46
The authors of Kemmu shikimoku, a brief formulary of
admonitions issued by the Ashikaga bakufu in 1336, asserted that
people then were "addicted to the pleasure of loose women, and engage
in gambling. . . . Under the pretext of holding tea parties and
renga competitions, they make great wagers, and their expenses are
beyond calculation."47
We can deduce from this that renga versifying,
like tea competitions, had become a popular diversion among the
basara daimyo and others in the early Muromachi period.
Yet developments were also under way that merged renga's aristocratic
and commoner strains and established it as a recognized, serious
art. The two people chiefly responsible for the renga's success at this
time were Nijo Yoshimoto (1320-88), the imperial regent and later
confidant-adviser of Yoshimitsu, and the inja poet Gusai (or Kyusai).
45 See Donald L. Philippi, trans., Kojiki (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969),
pp. 242-3. This so-called oldest renga contains the place name Tsukuba, and linked-verse
poetry later became known as the way of Tsukuba.
46 The Nijo-Kawara lampoons in Kemmu nenkan ki in Hanawa Hokinoichi, ed., Gunsho ruiju
(Tokyo: Zoku gunsho ruiju kanseikai, 1933), vol. 25, pp. 503-4.
47 Gunsho ruiju, vol. 22, pp. 33-34.
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LINKED-VERSE POETRY 475
Working together, they compiled Tsukubashu, whose appearance in
1356 gave renga a status in poetry that had previously been reserved
exclusively for waka. Although lacking the ancient tradition of waka,
renga was thereafter regarded as a pursuit of significance and high
artistic purpose.
Nijo Yoshimoto who wrote several pieces on the history and art of
renga, expressed the belief that the work he, Gusai, and their contemporaries
were doing was a coming-of-age for renga, an achievement of
poetic maturity that would serve as a model for all linked verse in the
future. Yoshimoto also sought to distinguish between the renga's tradition
(or relative lack of it) and that of the waka: "Although the way of
waka is transmitted orally and in secret, renga - which has no fixed
rules for versification from ancient time - is intended to give pleasure
merely by arousing the emotions of those who join together in composi-
tion."48
Yoshimoto further explained the essence of renga in these
words:
The poet of renga does not seek to tie the idea of one moment in with that of
the next but, like this fleeting world, shifts through phases of both waxing
and waning, of sadness and joy. No sooner does he reflect on yesterday than
today has passed; while thinking about spring it becomes autumn; and even
as he admires a scene of new blossoms it turns into one of crimson leaves. Is
this not proof that everything is impermanent, like scattered flowers and
fallen leaves? In ancient times poets of waka pursued their way with such zeal
that we have examples of one person who offered his life in return for the
inspiration to write a superior poem and of another who died from criticism
of his poetry. But in renga such things do not happen. Because the sole aim is
to give pleasure to those who have gathered to compose verse, there is no
room for such attachments and zeal. And because the poets exclude all extraneous
thoughts from their minds, bad notions are not apt to arise.49
Above all, renga was conceived as a means for expressing the constant
flow and changeability of life. As we have seen, impermanence was a
religious and philosophical concept that underlay nearly all the thinking
of the medieval age, and it evoked intense feelings about the
evanescence of the beauties of nature on the one hand and of the
fundamental pathos of human existence on the other. Yet, to the renga
poet, nature's beauties were not entirely evanescent nor human existence
entirely pathetic, and to dwell even on these presumed verities
was to distort reality. In renga, the highest value was placed on movement
and progression, and strict rules were formulated to ensure that
48 Tsukuba tnondo, in Kido Saizo, ed., Renga ronshu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1961), p. 80.
49 Ibid., pp. 82-83.
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476 CULTURAL LIFE
poets steadily advanced from one theme to another. Some scholars
have likened renga to modern jazz. In much the same way as jazz
musicians harmonize extemporaneously, medieval renga poets sought
to blend their verses with those of others, even to the point of subordinating
their own creativity.
Although some famous renga are contained within multiverse sequences,
many anthologies, such as Tsukubashu, have their verses arranged
in pairs. As a rule, the first verse of each pair is anonymous,
and the second is identified by its composer's name. Renga poets were
thus given the opportunity to respond to the verses of others. Here,
for example, is an anonymous verse and Nijo Yoshimoto's response:
Flying squirrels
Screeching in the mountains!
The moon sinks
Below the treetops
Of the forest at dawn.30
In this poem Yoshimoto used a device he much favored when composing
responses to action or sound-oriented verses. Rather than seek to
explain why the squirrels were screeching or what their screeching
might mean, he simply provided a visual setting for the verse. The
image of the moon sinking as dawn breaks over the forest creates an
eerie impression that heightens our awareness of the sound of the
squirrels.
As Yoshimoto and others were advancing the literary status of renga
in the late fourteenth century, an important institutional basis was also
established through its association with the Kitano Shrine in Kyoto.
This shrine was dedicated to the spirit of the Heian-period scholar and
statesman Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), and the Ashikaga had
formed close affiliations with it. It became the location of poetry sessions
known as Kitano horaku renga, or "linked verse for the entertainment
of the gods," that were regarded in Muromachi times as the most
important formal occasions for renga composition.
Kitano horaku renga began about 1391, when the shogun Yoshimitsu
sponsored and attended, along with his usual kingly retinue of courtiers,
daimyo, ecclesiastics, and others, a gala affair that not only set the
precedent for an annual renga event at Kitano but also inspired daimyo
to hold similar affairs at the shrine. In this way, the Kitano Shrine
became the undisputed center of renga, with sessions most commonly
held on the twenty-fifth of the month, the day when Michizane, who
50 Tsukubashu, no. 384.
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LINKED-VERSE POETRY 477
became apotheosized as the god of renga, died. To handle such bustling
renga activity, the bakufu founded an office entitled Magistrate of
the Kitano kaisho (Kitano kaisho bugyo) and, by combining appointment
to it with the designation of renga master (sosho), made the office
tantamount to poet laureate of renga in Japan.
It was the renga's good fortune to be championed by so illustrious a
courtier as Nijo Yoshimoto, who may have been individually responsible
for its acceptance as a major art. Interestingly, the commoner
strain represented by Gusai also had its most pronounced influence on
renga during Yoshimoto's day. Although many linked-verse masters of
later times were of low social origin, they often became the leading
advocates of a more classically oriented, aristocratic poetry. In other
words, they sought to elevate renga to elite status in much the same
way that Zeami raised sarugaku.
Linked-verse poets of the Higashiyama epoch regarded the Eikyo
period (1429-40) of the shogun Yoshinori as the starting point of a
new flourishing of renga that climaxed during their own age. One
reason for this flourishing was the active patronage of Yoshinori. More
fundamentally, it occurred as part of the antiquarianism in scholarship
(wagaku) and culture in general that grew in intensity from about this
time. In their study of the ancient literary masterpieces of the Heian
period, wagaku scholars (some of the best known of whom, like Sogi,
were also renga masters) strongly influenced the aesthetic tastes of the
age by contributing to a reenunciation of the classical courtier vision of
beauty. In this regard, we should keep in mind that Zeami did most of
his theoretical writing on aesthetics and the art of noh during roughly
the same period.
The enduring ties between waka, the richest repository of the courtier
vision of beauty, and renga may be illustrated by reference to Sozei
(d. 1455), one of the leading linked-verse poets of the Eikyo period,
and his relationship to the waka master Shotetsu (1380-1458). It was
said that "upon meeting the noted master Shotetsu, he [Sozei] studied
Genji monogatari and acquired a deep understanding of the way of
poetry. He selected his models for renga on the basis of the great
knowledge he came to possess and prized especially the ushin-yugen
style of ancient times."51
Another student of Shotetsu and one of the finest linked-verse poets
in Japanese history was Shinkei (1406-75), who not only stressed the
51 These remarks were made by Sogi. Azuma mondo in Kido, ed., Renga ronshu, pp. 208-9.
Ushin means "elegant."
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478 CULTURAL LIFE
inseparability of waka and renga but also asserted that poetic inspiration
was equal to Buddhist enlightenment. Such an assertion was in
keeping with the syncretic thinking of the Muromachi period, when it
was commonplace, for example, to argue the congruence of Buddhism,
Shinto, and Confucianism or to seek to enhance one's artistic
way - whether it be poetry, flower arrangement, or incense - by enshrouding
it with the divine.
As analyses of medieval taste, Shinkei's critical writings on renga,
including Sasamegoto (Whisperings, 1463), are second in quality only
to the works of Zeami on noh. Imbued with the aesthetic of yugen
through his study of waka under Shotetsu, Shinkei expressed the
conviction that the highest level of yugen was in the sphere of the cold,
withered, and lonely:
When a master poet of the past was asked how poetry should be composed,
he replied: "Grasses on the withered moor/The moon at dawn."
This was his way of saying that one should concentrate on things that
cannot be expressed with words and should become aware of the sphere of the
cold and lonely (kie-sabi). The poems of those who have attained the highest
level in the art of poetry are invariably in the cold and lonely style. Thus, in
response to a verse like "Grasses on the withered moor," one should always
reply with a line of similar feeling such as "The moon at dawn."
In teaching poetry, the ancients urged that the following poem [by Minamoto
no Saneakira] be kept in mind as a model for composing in this style:
Faintly it beams,
The light of the moon
At dawn.
Crimson leaves blow down
With the piercing mountain wind.52
Shinkei entered Buddhist orders in infancy, but unlike the more
typical artist-priest kind of inja, he remained devoutly committed to his
priestly responsibilities throughout his life. This was one reason that he
participated in public renga gatherings to a much lesser degree than did
most other poets. Another reason, it appears, was that Shinkei was less
interested in the composition of multiverse renga sequences than in the
construction of the basic statement-and-response links (known as tanrenga,
or short renga). He approached naked verse with an extraordinary
intensity and evidently felt ill at ease in sessions where it was
necessary to mute this intensity of feeling to achieve an overall emotional
balance among the participants.
52 Shinkei, Sasamegoto, in Kido, ed., Renga ronshu, p. 175.
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LINKED-VERSE POETRY 479
Like many others of the world of art and culture in Kyoto, Shinkei
left the capital at the outbreak of the Onin War (1467-77), a conflict
that reduced the city almost totally to ashes. Filled with a longing for
Kyoto, Shinkei traveled through the eastern and northern provinces
and finally died, a virtual exile, in the province of Sagami in 1475. It
was a fitting, if poignant, end for a poet so inspired by the aesthetic
values of the cold and lonely.
During his travels in the east and north, Shinkei frequently met and
perhaps gave instruction to Sogi, a person and poet of a considerably
different stamp. Almost nothing is known about Sogi's birth and early
life, as he did not mention them in his writings, a fact that suggests he
was of low origin. There is, however, evidence that at a young age he
took Zen vows at the Shokokuji, one of the Kyoto gozan temples.
Unlike Shinkei, Sogi used his inja status primarily to move in social
circles from which he would otherwise have been barred. Thus, we
find him meeting and studying with such luminaries of Kyoto society,
art, and religious life as the waka poet Asukai Masachika (1417-90),
the wagaku scholar Ichijo Kanera (1402-81), and the Shinto theologian
Urabe Kanetomo (1435-1511).
Like Saigyo, Sogi was one of the great traveling poets of Japanese
history. In his journeys he visited the domains of such prominent
daimyo as Saito Myoshun of Mino, Ota Dokan (1432-86) of Musashi,
and Ouchi Masahiro of Yamaguchi. But probably Sogi's closest relationship
in the provinces was with the Uesugi clan of distant Echigo,
which he visited on nine occasions between the late 1470s and 1500.
Provincial chieftains cherished the visits of people like Sogi, who were
bearers of Kyoto art and culture, and they undoubtedly recompensed
them well. In this sense, Sogi's traveling was good business. But it also
greatly nourished his art in a very special way. Poets like Saigyo, Sogi,
and Basho (1644-94) did not journey into the provinces simply in
quest of random inspiration from the beauties of nature. Rather, they
"sought what the ancients sought"; they attempted to experience nature
through classical eyes, as the great poets of the past had experienced
it.
Sogi's fame as a renga master was equaled by his eminence as a
wagaku scholar. Wagaku, as we shall see in the discussion of Ichijo
Kanera, came especially into demand during and after the Onin War,
when nostalgia for the past became ever greater as a result of the war's
appalling destruction. Sogi lectured on such works as Genji monogatari
and he monogatari to both courtiers and warriors and wrote, among
other things, a tract on Genji monogatari that has been recognized as
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the first attempt to deal with a wagaku masterpiece in terms of its
overall structure and content.53
Whereas Shinkei was noted for the brilliance of his short renga,
Sogi's greatness as a poet lay in the fact that he treated renga as truly
linked verse. Of the major surviving renga sequences from the fifteenth
century, nearly all were composed either by Sogi independently
(dokugin) or by poetic groups in which he participated. Sogi was invariably
the central figure at any renga gathering because he devoted
himself so fully to the spirit of linking verses together. Rarely intruding
his personal sentiments, he sought in his poetry to reveal the
classical vision of beauty he cherished most and, at the same time, to
maintain the poetic rhythm that was the essential quality of renga.
The most famous of all renga sequences is known as "The Three
Poets at Minase" (Minase sangin) and was composed in 1488 by Sogi
and his disciples Shohaku (1443-1527) and Socho (1448-1532) at a
palace once used by Emperor Gotoba at Minase Village, Settsu Province.
The opening verses of this one-hundred-link poem illustrate the
best qualities of medieval renga:
Sogi: Snow clinging to slope,
On mist-enshrouded mountains
At eveningtime.
Shohaku: In the distance water flows
Through plum-scented villages.
Socho: Willows cluster
In the river breeze
As spring appears.
Sogi: The sound of a boat being poled
In the clearness at dawn.
Shohaku: Still the moon lingers
As fog o'er-spreads
The night.
Socho: A frost-covered meadow;
Autumn has drawn to a close.
Sogi: Against the wishes
Of droning insects
The grasses wither.54
When Sogi was at home in Kyoto, he lived in a soan called
Shugyokuan, which he had built in a bamboo grove in the Muromachi
53 Konishi Jin'ichi* Sogi (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1971), pp. 34-35. Previous wagaku studies
had been restricted to analyses of word usage and the like.
54 See the next in Ichiji Tetsuo, ed., Renga shu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, i960).
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THE HIGASHIYAMA EPOCH 481
section of the capital. His construction of a soan was in keeping with
his status both as a Zen priest, however minimal his religious affiliations
may have been, and as an inja poet. Although we know little
about Shugyokuan, we can imagine that it was a hut only in name and
was actually a residence, whatever its size, of the best quality. It was
also sufficiently well appointed to be suitable, the records indicate, for
entertaining guests from the most elite circles of Kyoto society.
Shugyokuan was destroyed by fire in 1500, and in that same year Sogi
set out on what was to be his last journey. He died at Hakone in the
eastern provinces in 1502, having dreamt the night before, we are told,
of Fujiwara no Teika.
I have limited my discussion of renga to its development as an
elegant (ushin) form of art. By Sogi's time, elegant renga was certainly
dominant, but we should note that an inelegant (mushin), comic type
of linked verse evolved alongside the more conspicuous ushin renga
and led the way to the emergence of both haikai and haiku in later
centuries. A leading figure in the evolution of mushin renga was Socho,
one of Sogi's companion poets at Minase in 1488.
THE HIGASHIYAMA EPOCH AND THE SCHOLARSHIP OF
NOSTALGIA
The shogun Yoshimasa is as closely associated with the Higashiyama
epoch in medieval culture as Yoshimitsu is with the Kitayama. The
differences in personality between the two men reflect the changes in
tone and quality of the bakufu from one epoch to the other. Whereas
Yoshimitsu was strong willed and domineering and exercised power
more broadly than did any other Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimasa was
negligent and careless in his duties and was easily swayed by others.
Yet even a more forceful ruler could have done little, for by
Yoshimasa's time the Ashikaga hegemony, founded on a balance of
power between the shogun and the shugo daimyo, was in rapid decline.
It was Yoshimasa's fate to preside over the bakufu as it moved toward
and met disaster in the Onin War.
The Higashiyama epoch may be defined broadly as the second half
of the fifteenth century or, more narrowly, as the decade and a half
following the Onin War, when Yoshimasa, having retired as shogun,
pursued a life of elegant leisure and reigned as the foremost patron of
the arts and culture from his retreat in the Eastern Hills of Kyoto.
Perhaps the narrower definition is preferable, because it emphasizes
the horrendous consequences of the Onin War, during which Kyoto,
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the heart of Japanese cultural life, was virtually destroyed. The world
must indeed have seemed a "cold and lonely" place as strife and
disorder spread and the country fell into the age of war in the provinces
(Sengoku jidai, 1478-1568). One faction, at least among the
elite circles of Japanese society, was to look to the past with evergreater
nostalgia, especially to the golden age of court life in the midHeian
period. This nostalgia can be observed in nearly all the arts and
drew increasing attention to wagaku scholarship, which had been
evolving throughout the medieval age. It was such attention that elevated
Ichijo Kanera, the greatest of the wagaku scholars, to the pinnacle
of cultural life in the Higashiyama epoch.
A grandson of Nijo Yoshimoto, Kanera served for three terms as
imperial regent. He established his reputetion as a scholar during the
1420s and 1430s in the field of courtier customs and ceremonial
(yusoku kojitsu), and in 1438 he received the exceptional honor ofbeing
selected by Emperor Gohanazono (1419-70), probably at the urging of
the shogun Yoshinori, to write both the Chinese and Japanese prefaces
to the last imperially authorized anthology of waka, Shinzoku
kokinshu.
One of the most productive periods of Kanera's life as a scholar was
the decade of the Onin War, which he spent in Nara. Like many other
prominent persons of religion, art, and culture, he fled Kyoto at that
time, thus contributing to a movement cf culture outward from the
capital that continued long after the end of hostilities in 1477.55
Meanwhile
the provinces, where a new breed of independent warrior chieftains
were establishing territorial controls, beckoned. Because they
were conscious of the need to bolster their de facto military positions
with an aura of cultural legitimacy and sincerely desired to advance
their knowledge and artistic appreciation, these chieftains invited people
like Kanera, Sogi, and the painter Sesshu (1420-1506) to their
domains to participate in and lend authority to their cultural activities.
Such invitations gave tremendous impetus to the spread of higher
learning and art throughout the country and demonstrated that fighting
men in the medieval age were sensitive to the need to combine the
bun and bu in rulership.
During his decade in Nara, Kanera completed major studies of
Genji monogatari and Nihon shoki. He also visited the Kitabatake family
in Ise Province and Saito Myochin, deputy constable to the daimyo
55 Others who left Kyoto during the Onin War were the renga master Shinkei, the Zen priest
Ikkyu (1394-1481), the noh master Komparu Zenchiku (1405-68), and the painter Sesshu
(1420-1506).
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THE HIGASHIYAMA EPOCH 483
family of Toki, in Mino Province. As the Onin War neared its end,
Kanera received repeated calls from Kyoto imploring him to return.
Yoshimasa and his wife, Hino Tomiko (1140-96), were particularly
insistent, and in the twelfth month of 1477 Kanera finally made his
way back to the capital. He found himself in constant demand at both
the imperial and shogunal palaces, where he regularly lectured on
wagaku topics, and when he died in 1481 at the age of seventy-nine, he
was hailed by one diarist as the finest scholar in Japan in five hundred
years.56
After Kanera, the leadership of wagaku study at court fell to
Sanjonishi Sanetaka (1455-1537). A courtier of upper-middle rank,
Sanetaka is remembered less for the quality of his scholarship than for
the detailed diary he kept from 1474, during the Onin War, until 1536,
a year before his death. Sanetaka Ko ki (The record of Lord Sanetaka)
provides us with a fascinating view not only of Sanetaka's day-to-day
activities but also of Kyoto during more than a half-century of the
darkest and most tumultuous period in its history. Although there is
no reason to suppose that all courtiers reacted to the events of the
period precisely as Sanetaka did, his diary, as the record of a man who
was at the center of cultural life, can be taken as a fair depiction of how
the courtier class looked upon its world during the first half of the age
of war in the provinces.
Sanetaka Ko ki provides a grim chronology of the grief inflicted on
the residents of Kyoto during this age. In addition to the fighting of
armies, there were constant outbreaks of fire (often set by arsonists),
attacks by robbers, and pillaging by armed bands (ikki). In the seventh
month of 1500, for example, fire swept through the city, destroying
twenty thousand homes, including Sanetaka's; and in the fifth month
of 1531 robbers were even able to make their way into the imperial
palace.
Sanetaka and other members of the courtier and warrior elites
sought escape from the harsh realities of life through a seemingly
constant round of parties, noh performances, poetry gatherings, and
other forms of entertainment. For the courtiers, however, even escape
into pleasure brought sad reminders of their fallen state: On the occasion
of a lavish affair at the shogunal palace in the third month of 1475
held by Yoshimasa's wife, Tomiko, and attended by the emperor,
Sanetaka was obliged to remain in a separate room because he did not
56 Jurin-in naifu ki, 1481/4/2. Cited in Tokyo teikoku daigaku, ed., Dai Nihon shiryo (Tokyo:
Shiryo hensan gakari, 1927), ser. 8, vol. 13, p. 171.
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have proper clothing. And when the shogun Yoshitane (1466-1523)
departed from Kyoto in the eight month of 1491 on a military campaign
to Omi, some courtiers could not call on him because their
clothing was inadequate. By contrast, according to Sanetaka Ko ki,
Yoshitane and his commanders attired themselves in dazzling finery.
To Sanetaka and his circle, a particularly fearful danger of the times
was the destruction of books and manuscripts. Ichijo Kanera lost his
personal library in the early days of the Onin War, and Sanetaka
recorded similar losses by others during the years covered in his diary.
The feeling grew that measures were required to ensure preservation
of the cultural legacy of the past. One result was a mounting demand
that copies be made of such classics as Genji monogatari, he
monogatari, and both waka and renga anthologies. Sanetaka, who was
both a scholar and fine calligrapher, was much sought after as a copyist
by emperors, shoguns, and others. Brief works, like he monogatari,
could be readily reproduced, and Sanetaka recorded in his diary having
copied he many times. The reproduction of Genji mcnogatari, on
the other hand, was a major undertaking that usually required a team
of copyists, and Sanetaka, we learn, frequently took the lead in organizing
teams to copy this most revered of all courtly writings.
One of the most interesting stories that Sanetaka tells in his diary is
his relationship with the renga master Sogi. Sogi, thirty-four years
Sanetaka's senior, had studied the wagaku classics with Ichijo Kanera,
and in his later years he lectured on these to Sanetaka. It is a testament
to the relative social mobility possible in the field of the arts and
learning in the medieval age that we find a person of Sogi's humble
origins giving scholarly instruction to a courtier of Sanetaka's stature.
A major benefit to Sanetaka of his association with Sogi was the
receipt from the older man of the "Kokinshu Transmission" (Kokin
denju). This transmission was a collection of arcane interpretations of
obscure words, phrases, and names in the poems of the tenth-century
anthology Kokinshu that had been passed down from early medieval
times by the descendants of Fujiwara no Teika.57
There were many
such collections of arcana during the medieval age, but the Kokinshu
Transmission was the most famous, and possession of it was thought to
endow one with an almost magical insight into poetry. When Sanetaka
received the written transmission in 1501, a year before Sogi's death,
he recorded the event in his diary in almost hushed tones of awe:
57 The Kokinshu transmission was passed down by the Nijo line of poets descended from Teika.
It later came into the hands of the To, a warrior family from the Kanto that had married into
the Nijo. To no Tsuneyori (1401—94) gave the transmission to Sogi.
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LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS AND GARDENS 485
"Priest Sogi's materials of the Kokinshu Transmission, including his
notes . . . were delivered today in their entirety in sealed boxes . . . it
was all handled in the greatest secrecy."58
Sanetaka obtained much-needed supplements to his income from
Sogi and others, who took copies he had made of the classics and
other samples of his writing into the provinces, where they were
eagerly awaited by the daimyo, their families, and their leading vassals.
It is a plaintive commentary on the times that we find an entry
in Sanetaka Ko ki, such as the one on 1509/2/4, in which Sanetaka
records having sent passages copied from Genji monogatari by Emperor
Gokashiwabara (1464-1526) to the wives of the Imagawa
daimyo of Suruga and the Asakura daimyo of Echizen. "Appreciation
money" was soon forthcoming from both Suruga and Echizen and
was presumably forwarded by Sanetaka, through discreet channels,
to the emperor.59
Unlike Ichijo Kanera, Sanetaka himself never ventured into the
provinces. Yet his fame spread from one end of the country to the
other, owing as much as anything else, it seems, to the yearning of
people in these dark times for the classical culture and values of the
ancient courtly tradition.
LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS AND GARDENS
A major theme of medieval aesthetics was the trend toward the monochromatic,
toward a realm "transcending color," as the renga master
Shinkei might have put it. Great encouragement was given to this
trend by the importation from China of a form of painting in black ink
that evolved during the Sung dynasty.
Works of Sung-style ink painting (sumi-e) were brought to Japan
throughout the medieval age and were among the most prized of
karamono during the Kitayama epoch. These paintings dealt with a
variety of traditional Chinese subjects - people, flowers and birds,
and landscapes - but it was the landscapes that most influenced the
aesthetics of medieval Japan.
The Japanese, of course, already had a highly developed sense of
landscape, articulated especially in their poetry. But nothing in their
poetry or the other native arts prepared them to deal with the vast
scale of many Sung landscapes, in which mountains tower awesomely
58 Sanetaka Ko ki, 1501/9/15.
59 Haga Koshiro, Sanjonishi Sanetaka, vol. 43 of Jimbutsu sosho (Tokyo: Nihon rekishi gakkai,
1960), p. 159.
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486 CULTURAL LIFE
and craggy masses recede, one behind the other, into the remote distance.
The landscape of Japan is less imposing, and when the Japanese
began painting in the manner of the Sung landscape in the early
fifteenth century, they succumbed entirely to the subject matter of
their foreign models and reproduced monumental scenes based on
what they imagined settings in China to look like.
The three most famous landscape painters of the fifteenth century
were also monks of the Kyoto Zen temple Shokokuji. The first,
Josetsu, is a shadowy figure remembered primarily because of his
"Catching a Catfish with a Gourd," a painting commissioned by the
shogun Yoshimitsu. The inspiration for this painting came from a Zen
riddle about catching a slippery fish with such an unlikely object as a
gourd. The main historical interest of "Catching a Catfish," however,
lies not in the foreground depiction of a man in tattered clothes, with
gourd in hand, approaching a fish swimming in a stream but, rather,
in the setting, which includes a hazy view of mountains in the distance.
The picture as a whole conveys a feeling of spatial depth not
found in earlier ink works by Japanese artists.
Josetsu's disciple and successor as painter-monk at the Shokokuji
was Shubun, who flourished in the second quarter of the fifteenth
century but is otherwise nearly as dim a person in history as is his
teacher. Many extant paintings are attributed to Shubun, but not one
has been authenticated as his. For this reason, it is probably better to
speak of paintings "in the Shubun style" than of the paintings of
Shubun. The Shubun style is an impressionistic, highly atmospheric
way of representing imagined Chinese landscapes. Mountains appear
to be suspended; cliffs jut precariously into space; and a pervasive
mistiness makes it impossible to judge how the various elements in a
painting might actually fit together. Painters in the Shubun style did
not intend to be realistic but aimed at capturing the essences of idealized
Chinese settings. It was not until the time of Sesshu (1420-1506),
the third great Shokokuji painter of the fifteenth century, that the art
of ink landscape finally became truly Japanese in both subject matter
and feeling.
In 1467, the year the Onin War began, Sesshu went to Yamaguchi at
the western end of Honshu and, under the patronage of the daimyo
family of Ouchi, even journeyed to China, where he was able to observe
sumi-e at its source. Back in Japan, Sesshu never returned permanently
to Kyoto but spent the remainder of his life either in the
Yamaguchi region or traveling elsewhere in the provinces. He may be
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LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS AND GARDENS 487
likened to Saigyo, Sogi, and others of the medieval age, whose artistic
awarenesses were enhanced by visiting famous sites and by long exposure
to provincial life. Such exposure was evidently especially important
to Sesshu, inspiring him to break free of the Shubun school's
imaginary visions of China and to depict landscapes from a distinctly
Japanese perspective.
Rather than to the panoramic landscape work of the early Sung
masters, Sesshu was attracted to the more narrowly focused, asymmetrically
composed paintings of such later Sung artists as Ma Yuan and
Hsia Kuei. In addition, Sesshu tended to flatten the surfaces of his
landscapes, thus reducing the feeling of depth even in his depictions of
distant vistas. The Japanese had always approached nature intimately,
and we may speculate that Sesshu's de-emphasis of depth was more
comprehensible and inherently congenial to Japanese tastes than were
the vast scenes of the Shubun style.
Ink painting influenced another major art of the Muromachi period,
the kare-sansui or "withered landscape" garden. A Heian-period text
on gardening, Sakuteiki, informs us that the chief concern in garden
construction during the courtier age was the handling of water, both
itsflowin the form of streams and its coalescence as ponds. Several of
the finest gardens of the Muromachi period, including the Saihoji
(moss) garden and the gardens of Yoshimitsu's Golden Pavilion and
Yoshimasa's Silver Pavilion, featured streams and ponds. From about
mid-Muromachi times, however, primary attention was shifted from
the element of water to the use of rocks in gardens. At the same time,
partly as a result of the Kyoto region's limited sources from springs
and mountain streams, water was represented increasingly by the use
of sand. The kare-sansui, as they evolved in the later Muromachi
period, were constructed mainly, and in some cases exclusively, of
sand and rocks.
All the remaining kare-sansui of the Muromachi period are situated
on the grounds of Zen temples, and the great majority are in Kyoto or
its suburbs. The two most famous are the gardens at Daisenin of the
Daitokuji temple and at the Ryoanji temple. The Daisenin garden
contains unusually shaped and textured rocks that are arranged to
depict mountains, islands, and a bridge under which sand (representing
water) flows. Although the garden, which is L-shaped, is exceedingly
small - no more than a few yards in any direction - it gives the
feeling of great height and depth and may be likened to a painting in
the Shubun style. The Ryoanji garden, on the other hand, is severely
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CULTURAL LIFE
abstract - only fifteen rocks scattered about on a surface of raked
sand. It is comparable, perhaps, to a Sesshu painting in its minimization
of depth.
THE CULTURE OF TEA
The medieval age in Japan brought a great diversification in the arts
and culture, both in terms of new and more varied pursuits and of
participation by new classes, including samurai, merchants, and even
peasants. But equally significant was the fact that within this diversity,
there was an exceptional degree of aesthetic unity, made possible
chiefly through the continued appreciation of, and nostalgic yearning
for, the courtier past. The main aesthetic terms of the medieval age yugen,
sabi, wabi - had their roots in the Heian period or earlier.
Although these terms led in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries to a stress on the monochromatic and the "cold, withered,
and lonely" that seems outwardly to reject the Heian passion for
color, the richness of these aesthetic concepts derives from the fact
that they so strongly resonate the color and warmth of classical courtier
tastes.
This aesthetic unity is nowhere better seen than in the culture of tea
and the classic tea ceremony (chanoyu) around which it developed. As
noted, tea was adopted as a beverage by all classes in Japan during the
early medieval age. In the late fourteenth century it was used conspicuously
in judging competitions (tocha) at the social affairs of the basara
daimyo. During the fifteenth century, the drinking of tea was removed
from the realm of game playing and was gradually transformed into a
serious pursuit.
The evolution of the chanoyu was inseparably linked to the creation
of the kaisho and shoin rooms, for the chanoyu was never conceived as
an activity to be pursued outside a carefully arranged and decorated
setting. In the kaisho form of chanoyu, which first appears in the
records during the time of the shogun Yoshinori, tea was prepared in
another room or outside corridor and brought to the host and his
guests in the kaisho. The utensils employed in the chanoyu and the
works of art used to decorate the kaisho were "Chinese pieces"
(karamono), and their selection and handling reflected the more restrained,
discriminating taste for karamono established by the doboshu
and others in the fifteenth century.
A paucity of records makes it impossible to determine precisely
when and how the kaisho tea ceremony was transformed into the
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THE CULTURE OF TEA 489
wabicha,60
although credit for the transformation is traditionally given
to Shuko (or Juko, d. 1502), a semilegendary person from the merchant
class of Nara. The setting for the wabicha was the shoin. This
room, which came into fashion during the Higashiyama epoch, had as
its principal features tatami floor matting, shqji sliding doors, the
tokonotna alcove, the shoin writing desk, and asymmetrical shelves
(chigaidana). It has remained to the present day the prototype of the
main room of a Japanese dwelling.
Shuko's preferred shoin was a four-and-a-half-mat (approximately
nine-foot-square) room. In its confines he created a microcosmic
world within which the host, in a precisely arranged aesthetic setting,
prepared and served tea to his guests. As the process of serving tea
evolved from Shuko's day, it became an act symbolizing the renunciation
of the material and the celebration of the spiritual values of life.
These spiritual values had both religious and aesthetic origins and
were most commonly articulated by the late medieval Japanese in
terms of Zen Buddhism and the aesthetic of wabi.
One of the most difficult problems in the study of medieval culture
is to assess the influence on it of Zen Buddhism. The problem arises
primarily because of the tendency of many commentators in the centuries
since the medieval age to give excessive credit to Zen for molding
medieval tastes and sentiments. If there is a single point that stands
out most clearly in a survey of the culture of medieval Japan, it is that
aesthetics of the age evolved directly from earlier times. The criteria of
Zen in the arts - simplicity, suggestion, irregularity - coincided with
feelings that were also indigenously Japanese and had always governed
native tastes. Thus Zen (Ch'an) Buddhism, brought from China in the
late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, found a particularly congenial
environment in which to flourish culturally. But it was not until the
sixteenth century that Zen was truly extolled as a major influence on
the arts, especially on the culture of tea. We can see this, for example,
in a phrase that gained wide currency at the time, that "tea and Zen
have the same flavor" (cha-Zen ichimi).
Wabi derives from the verb wabu, whose original meaning was "to
decline into a sad and helpless state." An early use of wabu as a term of
aesthetic value appears in the noh play Matsukaze by Kan'ami (reworked
by Zeami). In the play, an itinerant priest (the waki) visits
Suma, where he meets two sisters, Matsukaze and Murasame, who
60 I know of no single word in English that can serve as a translation for wabi, although
"austerity" is probably as good as any. Cha means tea.
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490 CULTURAL LIFE
had once received the affections of a courtier exiled to their lonely
coast and are now consigned to live as ghosts because of their ceaseless
yearning for him. The priest requests that the sisters put him up for
the night, but they at first refuse because their hut, "with its rough
pine pillars and bamboo fence," is too wretched to accommodate a
guest. But the priest persuades the sisters to let him in, by assuring
them that he is accustomed to poverty. He further observes that any
sensitive person would derive pleasure from living "humbly and in
solitude" in such a setting. Although the use of wabu in its adverbial
form as zvabite in this passage from Matsukaze is vague and could easily
be translated with words other than "humbly and in solitude," it
conveys much of the tone of the wabi aesthetic that later became
central to the culture of tea.61
In a letter to one of his disciples, Shuko wrote:
In pursuing this way [cf tea], greatest attention should be given to harmonizing
Japanese and Chinese tastes. How absurd it is these days for those who are
inexperienced to covet with self-satisfaction such things as Bizen and Shigaraki
wares on the grounds that they possess tlie quality ofbeing "cold and withered"
(hiekareru).62
From these remarks we can deduce that Shuko opposed outright rejection
of the aesthetic values of the kaisho tea ceremony, based on the
connoisseurship of karamono, and disapproved of too impetuous an
espousal of the wabi range of tastes. Many commentators have interpreted
the remarks to mean that Shuko, although he may have originated
wabicha, still had one foot in the earlier world of karamono.
The historical role of perfecting wabicha as the classic tea ceremony
fell to two men of merchant stock from the city of Sakai, Takeno J66
(1502-55) and Sen no Rikyu (1522-91). Rikyu, the most celebrated
tea master in Japanese history, preferred as a setting for wabicha a
room of only two mats in size, which could accommodate no more
than two or three people. He dispensed with the customary tea stand
(daisu) and placed his utensils, including dark raku bowls and bamboo
whisks and ladles, directly on the floor. Rikyu also espoused a philosophy
of tea that came to be regarded as the very essence of wabicha. His
sentiments, as recorded by a disciple, were as follows:
Chanoyu performed in a plain hut is above all an ascetic discipline, based on
the Buddhist law, that is aimed at achieving spiritual deliverance. To be
61 "Matzukaze," in Keene, ed., Twenty Plays of the No Theatre, pp. 26-27.
62 "The Furuichi Letter," in Hayashiya Tatsusaburo, ed., Kodai-chusei geijutsu ton (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1973), p. 448.
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THE AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA EPOCH 491
concerned about the quality of the dwelling in which you serve tea or the
flavor of the food served with it is to emphasize the mundane. It is enough if
the dwelling one uses does not leak water and the food served suffices to stave
off hunger. This is in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha and is the
essence of the chanoyu. First, we fetch water and gather firewood. Then we
boil the water and prepare tea. After offering some to the Buddha, we serve
our guests. Finally, we serve ourselves.63
The achievements of J66 and Rikyu in the evolution of wabicha
signified the prominence of members of the rich merchant class in the
cities of Kyoto, Nara, and Sakai in late medieval art and culture. Joo's
wealth enabled him to study literature with Sanjonishi Sanetaka, the
great wagaku scholar of the early sixteenth century. Rikyu was one of
several tea masters of Sakai employed by Oda Nobunaga and
Toyotomi Hideyoshi as they led the way to the unification of Japan in
the second half of the sixteenth century.
Rikyu's greatest fame came in the service of Hideyoshi, when he not
only assumed the role of grand arbiter of taste in matters concerning
the culture of tea but also wielded substantial power as an intimate of
the hegemon. Rikyu's power was made possible by practices of the age
of unification that can collectively be called the "politics of tea" and
that gave rise to the use of a tea master in political negotiations as well
as in the ceremonies of rule.
THE AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA EPOCH
If a date must be selected to mark the end of the medieval age, the best
choice is probably 1568, for this was the year when Nobunaga entered
Kyoto and began the process of unification that was completed by his
successor, Hideyoshi, in 1590. The period of unification under
Nobunaga and Hideyoshi was a heroic time of growing self-confidence
and expansiveness of spirit. Warlords built great castles and decorated
them with painted screens and door panels suffused with brilliant
colors; new vistas to the outside world were opened by the arrival of
European traders and missionaries; and the establishment of order on
a national scale promised joys in this life that served to dispel the
gloom and other-worldliness of the medieval age.
It is fitting that this new age should be known in cultural history by
the name of Azuchi-Momoyama, a name taken from the location of Nobunaga's
principal castle at Azuchi on Lake Biwa and of one of Hide-
63 Nambosokei, Namboroku, in Sen Soshitsu, ed., Sado koten zenshu, vol. 4 (Kyoto: Tankosha,
1956), p. 3Cambridge
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492 CULTURAL LIFE
yoshi's strongholds at Momoyama to the south of Kyoto.64
The castle
was the preeminent symbol of these exciting times and represented the
tangible glories of the chieftains who led the way to unification.
Despite their imposing appearances, the castles of the AzuchiMomyama
epoch were not constructed only for defense. Daimyo
wished to develop commercially thriving towns around their fortresses
and therefore often selected castle sites more on the basis of economic
than military considerations. But above all, the typical AzuchiMomoyama
daimyo conceived of the castle as a means to impress the
world with his grandeur and power. Thus, although castles of the time
were noteworthy because of their broad, deep moats and huge protective
walls made of stone, their most distinctive features were multistoried
donjons or keeps, which were of little use militarily but were
highly decorative and showy. Designed to dazzle the eye and give the
appearance of "reaching to heaven," the donjons were often painted a
glistening white or, as in the case of Nobunaga's Azuchi castle, were
rendered in colors. Luis Frois, a Jesuit missionary who spent many
years in Japan, gave the following description of the exterior appearance
of the donjon at Azuchi Castle:
Some of the stories are painted white with their windows varnished black
according to Japanese usage and they look extremely beautiful, others are
painted red, others blue, while the uppermost one is entirely gilded. This
tenshu (donjon) and all the other houses are covered with bluish tiles which are
stronger and lovelier than any we use in Europe; the corners of the gables are
rounded and gilded, while the roofs havefinespouts ofa very noble and clever
design. In a word the whole edifice is beautiful, excellent and brilliant.65
The interiors of the donjons were also decorated for conspicuous
display. Indeed, donjon rooms and the rooms in other castle buildings
were among the most important settings for the visue.1 arts in the
Azuchi-Momoyama epoch and, in them, on the formats of folding
screens and sliding doors, could be found the work of the leading
artists of the day.
DECORATIVE SCREEN AND DOOR-PANEL PAINTING
The main kind of painting in the late medieval age was, as noticed,
landscape work in a monochrome ink style (sumi-e) that had developed
64 The dates most commonly used for the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch are 1568, when Nobunaga
began unification, and 1615, the year when Hideyoshi's heir was destroyed by Tokugawa
Ieyasu at the battle of Osaka Castle.
65 Michael Cooper, ed., They Came toJapan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1965), p. 134.
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DECORATIVE SCREENS AND DOOR-PANELS 493
in China during the Sung and Yuan dynasties. Landscapes by medieval
Japanese masters like Shubun and Sesshu were suffused with a
deeply religious feeling that emerged from the pervasive Buddhist
sentiment of impermanence and from the desire of painters, poets,
and other artists to discover some ultimate truth about life beyond this
transitory existence. Although certain paintings revealed the more
violent aspects of nature and the weather, for the most part the medieval
ink landscapes depicted tranquil, quietistic scenes.
The form of decorative screen and door-panel painting that evolved
in the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch differed from the preceding, mainstream
work of medieval artists, in several important respects: (1) Its
principal subject matter was "flowers and birds," which, along with
"landscapes" and "people," was a traditional category of Chinese art;
(2) it was rendered chiefly in brilliant colors, including a dazzling
gold leaf used for backgrounds; (3) it showed little if any of the
religiosity of medieval painting; (4) its artists frequently imbued their
works with a great dynamism, through such means as the posturing
of animals and the configuration of enormous trees, that was strikingly
different from the quietism of most medieval landscapes; (5) it
was decorative in the sense that objects were deliberately placed to
achieve balance (or a conscious imbalance) of design; and (6) it was a
monumental art because the artists often had to paint on huge formats,
such as door panels (jusuma) that comprised entire walls of
castle rooms.
The spectacular return of color to art distinguished, perhaps more
dramatically than anything else, the aesthetic difference between the
medieval age and the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch. Yet even during the
flourishing of the monochrome ink landscape, color had not been
entirely absent from Japanese painting. Throughout the medieval age,
for example, artists of the ancient Yamato-e school, represented especially
by the Tosa line of artists, had continued to paint in colors,
producing studies based on themes from classical Heian-court literature,
the lives of great religious leaders, and the histories of Buddhist
temples and Shinto shrines. In stylistic terms, the decorative screen
and door panel art of the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch was a blending of
the monochromatic Sung-Yuan Chinese school, which had produced
the great medieval landscapes (although artists of this school also
painted flowers and birds and people), and the color-oriented Yamato-e
tradition.
This blending was achieved chiefly by the Kano line of painters, of
whom Eitoku (1543-90) was the dominant figure in the first half of
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494 CULTURAL LIFE
the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch.66
The most important event in
Eitoku's career was undoubtedly his selection by Nobunaga to decorate
the interiors of the rooms in the donjon of Azuchi Castle. Regrettably,
Azuchi Castle was destroyed shortly after Nobunaga's assassination
in 1582, and none of the screen and door-panel paintings done by
Eitoku and his assistants survived. But we do have a rather detailed
catalogue of these paintings and can surmise what they looked like
from other contemporary works by Eitoku and the Kano line.67
By far
the most numerous of the Azuchi paintings were those of "flowers and
birds," although there were also a number in the "people" category,
consisting primarily of pictures of famous hermits, sages, and immortals
of Chinese history and legend. Interestingly, there appears to have
been only one pure landscape in all of the Azuchi works.
One reason for the preference for flowers and birds in the new
decorative art of the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch was that this subject
lent itself particularly well to filling up large spaces, as Eitoku effectively
demonstrated in such famous paintings as the cypress tree
screen. This screen, consisting of eight panels, depicts the bottom
portion of a massive tree whose twisted trunk and limbs spread out
from the lower right side of the painting and reach nearly to the
opposite, left side. In a manner characteristic of Azuchi-Momoyama
decorative art, Eitoku's cypress tree is set against a brilliant background
of gold-leaf clouds, a stream of dark blue water, and carefully
detailed rocks.
Eitoku's greatness lay in the fact that his art forcefully conveyed the
spirit of the age of unification. It was he who took the last major step
away from the restraint and quietude of medieval painting into the
realm of gorgeous colors and dynamic motifs rendered on monumental
screen and door-panel formats. Fittingly, Eitoku died in 1590, the
very year that Hideyoshi completed Japan's unification. His successors,
living in a new state of national peace (which was secured in 1600
by the founding of the Tokugawa bakufu), modified the raw energy of
Eitoku's style and produced a type of painting, subdued and refined
by the standards of decorative screen and door-panel art, that was
perhaps more suitable to the sentiment of their age of political and
social stability.
66 The Kano family line was begun by Masanobu (1434-1530), who in the late fifteenth century
was appointed by the Ashikaga bakufu as the official artist in the Chinese manner of painting.
67 The catalogue appears in Shinchoko ki (Public chronicle of Nobunaga). Its contents are
summarized by Tsugiyoshi Doi, Momoyama Decorative Painting (New York: WeatherhillHeibonsha,
1977), pp. 69-79.
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GENRE PAINTING 495
GENRE PAINTING AND AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA HUMANISM
A second major form of painting that evolved in the AzuchiMomoyama
epoch was genre art, or the depiction of people in their
everyday activities of work and play. Genre scenes can be found in
earlier Japanese paintings, especially in the narrative scrolls of the
Yamato-e tradition. But it was not until the sixteenth century that such
scenes became a principal subject of painting.
One of the earliest types of genre painting was the rakuchu-rakugai
zu or "scenes inside and outside Kyoto."58
These scenes, originally
done as distant panoramas, gradually became intimate views of the
city, its buildings, and the bustling activities of its inhabitants. Kano
Eitoku, using essentially the same style and colors as in his decorative
work, did an especially fine rakuchu-rakugai zu on a pair of six-panel
screens that contain some fifteen hundred people in an intricate mosaic
of movement and behavior. These screens are a brilliant piece of
art and place Eitoku in the forefront of the genre as well as the decorative
painting of his day.
There is a theory that the first "scenes inside and outside Kyoto"
paintings were commissioned by wealthy merchants to celebrate their
role in the rebuilding of Kyoto after the Onin War. It is also generally
assumed that townsmen patrons and artists were prominent in the
production of genre paintings, as great emphasis is given in these
works to commercial and craft activities. Yet fully half of the genre
paintings extant from the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch are either signed
by or attributable to the Kano line of artists, who had been patronized
by the military aristocracy for more than a century. The fact that such
"aristocratic" artists and their samurai patrons should be keenly interested
in the activities of all classes of society testifies to the new humanism
that so distinguished Azuchi-Momoyama times culturally from
the preceding medieval age.
The humanism that emerged in the late sixteenth century and continued
into the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) was not based on the
individualism - the idea of the inherent worth of the individual - that
was spawned in Renaissance Europe, and therefore it must not be
confused with what is usually regarded as humanism in the Western
tradition. Japanese humanism was, first, a secular movement that
rejected the other-worldly Buddhism that had dominated the medieval
centuries. Second, it was a kind of joyous rekindling of interest in the
68 The oldest extant rakuchu-rakugai zu dates from about 1525.
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496 CULTURAL LIFE
lives and doings of people - all people - in this world. The genre art
of the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch thus constituted the first portion of
what became a vast and fascinating pictorial record of the lives of the
early modern Japanese. This art reached its culmination in the "pictures
of the floating world" (ukiyo-e) of the middle and late Tokugawa
period.
Of all the many categories of genre art, the most interesting from
the standpoint of cultural history are those that deal with the activities
of people at leisure and play, including the depictions of festivals,
picnicking, flower viewing, horseracing, dancing, theatrical performances,
bathing, wrestling, and the promenading of women of the
pleasure quarters. These pictures attest to a great increase in leisure
time, especially in the larger cities, which helped create the conditions
that gave rise to the flourishing of a bourgeoise culture in the Tokugawa
centuries.
A special kind of genre art, unique in subject matter, is the namban,
or "southern barbarian," screen paintings that portray the Portuguese
traders and Jesuit missionaries who first arrived in Japan during the
1540s. These paintings, which in style are purely Japanese (they are
similar to the other genre and the decorative work of the time), are of
two varieties: single-scene paintings and split-scene paintings. The
single-scene paintings show the Portuguese carrack arriving in
Nagasaki harbor and its passengers walking into town to be greeted by
the Japanese and the missionaries. The split-scene paintings depict, on
one side (e.g., on the left screen of a pair of six-panel screens), the
Portuguese in one of their overseas ports, presumably Goa or Macao,
either in some kind of genre setting - such as observing the training of
horses - or departing for Japan in their great ship and, on the other
side (e.g., the right screen), the ship's arrival in Nagasaki.
The detail with which the Europeans and their things are shown in
the namban screens tells of the lively interest that the Japanese of the
Azuchi-Momoyama epoch had in foreign people and exotic ways.
Intercourse and trade flourished in this age, not only with Europeans
but also with the people of other Asian countries, making Japan more
international and cosmopolitan than at any other time in its premodern
history. (Such "internationalism," it should be noted, also led to two
Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597.) The rest of the story of
European and other foreigners in Japan, of trade in the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries, and of the Korean invasions must be
left for the next volume of this History ofJapan. Let us simply note
here that the humanism that evolved in the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch
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THE WORLD OF TEA 497
in Japan seems to have made the Japanese more curious and perhaps
more receptive than they might earlier have been to the intrusion of
outsiders and of new, alien ideas.
THE WORLD OF TEA
A topic in the cultural history of the age of unification that is especially
difficult to assess is the chanoyu, the tea ceremony. This is because it
was far more than just a ceremony. It was also a philosophy, an art, and
a unique style of social intercourse, and in the Azuchi-Momoyama
epoch it entered its finest phase.
As a philosophy, the chanoyu had come to be equated, as we have
seen, with Zen Buddhism. This aspect of the chanoyu was authentically
medieval and underlay the concept and practice of wabicha. It is
ironic that wabicha was perfected in the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch
after the medieval age had ended. Yet this is what was achieved
through the efforts of the great master Sen no Rikyu, and it served to
accentuate the dualism that had long been characteristic of the
chanoyu. On the one hand, there was in the chanoyu an urge to ostentation,
as when it was used in the early fifteenth century as a setting for
the display of karamono. On the other hand, there evolved that sentiment,
from at least the late fifteenth century, that drew the chanoyu
more and more to Zen and the wabi realm of aesthetic taste.
Shuko, as noted, appears to have stood at the turning point between
the "ostentation" period of the chanoyu and its evolution toward
wabicha. But although the creation and perfection of wabicha became
the main line of development in the chanoyu during the sixteenth
century, the "urge to ostentation" was never lost and led in the
Azuchi-Momoyama epoch to a new outburst of display, especially by
the warlords, which was in keeping with the "display" character of the
epoch as a whole.
This tendency in the chanoyu was closely related to the treasuring
and collecting of tea articles, including paintings and scrolls of calligraphy
as well as the actual tea utensils. Thus karamono, many of which
were colorful and showy and therefore antithetical to wabicha taste,
remained popular and much sought after throughout the medieval
age. Because wabicha was based on a philosophy that rejected materialism,
we might suppose that its practitioners disdained any attachment
to the physical articles of tea. But in fact, they were as covetous of
these as was everyone else in the chanoyu. The "famous articles" of
wabicha, along with the best of the karamono, came to be regarded as
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498 CULTURAL LIFE
virtual national treasures, and their prices were driven up by demand
to astronomical levels.
Nobunaga reflected the national mania for tea articles when, shortly
after entering Kyoto with his army in 1568 and taking the first major
step toward unification, he launched a "hunt for famous tea articles"
(meibutsu-gari), acquiring either by payment or, if necessary, by confiscation,
many of the finest articles in the country. Nobunaga proudly
displayed these tea articles at banquets and other special gatherings,
and on occasion he bestowed one or another of them on a subordinate
for meritorious service. Thus, in 1577, he gave Hideyoshi a famous
kettle as a reward for his attack on and destruction of a castle.69
The tea-article mania of the Azuchi-Momoyama epoch is perhaps
best illustrated by the story of Matsunaga Hisahide (1510-77), a chieftain
of the central region around Kyoto who made peace with
Nobunaga in 1568 by rendering to him a prized tea caddy. Eleven
years later, when Hisahide had joined a plot against Nobunaga and was
about to be killed, he deliberately smashed another coveted tea article,
a kettle, to prevent it from falling into Nobunaga's hands.
Hideyoshi, when he became hegemon, also avidly collected tea articles
and displayed them with even more enthusiasm than did
Nobunaga. Very likely it was because of his desire to show off his tea
articles on a grand scale that Hideyoshi conceived the idea of the Great
Tea Party held at the Kitano Shrine in Kyoto in 1587, a spectacular
affair to which he invited everyone and promised to exhibit his collection
of articles "without leaving any out."70
Hideyoshi was indeed the
champion displayer of all, and his exhibitionist instincts reached a
pinnacle not only in the Great Kitano Tea Party but also in his construction
of a tea room covered entirely with gold, which was portable
and could be taken on military campaigns and other sojourns.
As a style of social intercourse, the chanoyu gave rise in the AzuchiMomoyama
epoch to the politics of tea. Of course, the chanoyu was
used for political purposes when its articles were bestowed as rewards
on allies (or, conversely, given to seduce or appease an enemy) and
when the articles or chanoyu itself were conspicuously displayed in the
same way that castles, decorative screens, and other things were displayed
to enhance the power and prestige of the warlords. But the
essence of the politics of tea was the exploitation of the special social
69 Nobunaga also made the holding of formal tea parties by his subordinates an exclusive right
that only he could authorize. Hideyoshi gained this right in 1578.
70 The party was scheduled to last for ten days, and guests were required only to bring a few
utensils and mats to sit on. In fact, the party was suspended after only one day.
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THE WORLD OF TEA 499
function of the chanoyu and the deliberate use by warlords of the tea
master as a go-between, a negotiator, and even a diplomat. It was the
tea master Imai Sokyu (1520-93), for example, who finally arranged
the peaceful submission of the city of Sakai to Nobunaga during the
latter's march to power in 1568. Both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi employed
tea masters, including Sen no Rikyu, to perform various political
as well as cultural services for them. Rikyu, we are told, became so
influential under Hideyoshi that no one could see the hegemon without
first securing his approval.
Sen no Rikyu is the most fascinating figure of the AzuchiMomoyama
epoch because he symbolizes more than anyone else the
clashes and pulls of the cultural history of the waning medieval age
and the beginning of the early modern period. Even as he perfected
wabicha, he abetted Hideyoshi the parvenu in his penchant for vulgar
display. But in the end Rikyu ran afoul of Hideyoshi, who was ever
capable of acting on a tyrannical whim, and in 1591 he was condemned
to commit suicide.71
With Rikyu's death the last major force of medieval
culture was spent, and there was nothing left to impede further
development of the more "modern" aspects of Azuchi-Momoyama
culture.
71 Historians cannot determine the precise reasons for this severe punishment. Included among
the possibilities are that Rikyu personally offended Hideyoshi's vanity or that he was sacrificed
to appease a political faction that opposed him.
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CHAPTER 11
THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE IN
MEDIEVAL JAPAN
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ISSUES
Historians transform lived life into narrated life, and in this sense they
are not unlike novelists. Intent notwithstanding, neither history nor
novel copies human experience but, rather, selects, focuses, and retells
and thereby inevitably reshapes. Even subtraction adds something
new. And so though we go to both historians and novelists for "truth,"
both are inherently disposed to falsification.
By selecting and subtracting, the interpretations of Japanese cultural
history to date, particularly those of the Kamakura and
Muromachi eras (roughly the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries)
have focused on the "high" culture of the period; on the activities of
the political, religious, and intellectual leaders of the time; and on the
achievements of their close associates, eminent artists, architects, writers,
and performers. Even those historians who are interested in the
culture of ordinary people tend to view them in comparison with the
upper classes, and their accounts are thereby riveted to the same highlow
polarity as are those of the historians with whom they are ideologically
at odds. Ironically, therefore, an elite veneer stretches over the
history of the middle ages, obscuring the texture and contours of the
daily life of the great majority of medieval men and women, while
leaving in darkness those creators of Japanese culture who have failed
to qualify under these preferred definitions of history.
It is not that such lives are beyond historical retrieval. On the
contrary, throughout the middle ages the daily life of ordinary citizens
was often a subject of note, even in the diaries and historical records of
the elite; it is therefore much more easily resurrected than might be
imagined. We are fortunate, further, in having a rich tradition of
medieval paintings, statues, fiction, and songs, all of which preserve a
realistic depiction of the period's life. Through these works we are
This chapter was originally presented and discussed in European and American forums under
the title "The Other Side of History: In Search of the Common Culture of Medieval Japan."
500
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HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ISSUES 501
able to look in on the common culture of medieval Japan and to
perceive it as it was experienced by men and women from all levels of
society.
This chapter will aim, therefore, at revision. It will examine significant
concerns of the Japanese middle ages - indeed, significant creators
of Japanese culture - that have gone unnoted, unheeded, or even
disdained. I do not refer here to the culture of commoners as opposed
to that of courtiers, nor do I contrast "popular" with "elite," as I am
not convinced that primary sources permit so convenient a dichotomy.
If I use the word popular, I shall do so with regard to those aspects of a
nation's culture valued by most of its citizens, crossing all lines of
class, sex, and generation. The common culture that I seek are those
attitudes and activities known to all and esteemed by that same majority,
high and low. A common culture is one that has outgrown the
exclusive ownership of any gender, group, or coterie in society, high or
low, and has become the property of all.
We must recognize that historical constructs have been built around a
conceptual vocabulary frozen by class, gender, and status preclusions.
This had led to a favoring of certain topics of research and a denigration
of other features of Japan's culture that do not fit the dominant paradigm.
History, like court poetry, has been written from a canonized list
of preselected topics, with most aspects of ordinary life excluded.
To complicate matters, the Japanese middle ages comprised not an
elite and a popular culture but a variety of cultures - those of farmers,
warriors, fisherfolk, courtiers, urban working people, and religious
practitioners, for example - and within each, the cultures of the
young, the middle-aged, the old, and so on. But if there is one marked
characteristic of the medieval years, it is the clear sense of a coming
together for the first time, of a sense of national community. Emanating
from the expressive arts of song, dance, mime, and narrative are
self-perceptions, community perceptions, revelations regarding social
contracts, and struggles with the margins of tolerated behavior that
help us see better those perimeters.
The use of such "fictions" as painting, song, and narrative in the
writing of history has, for some critics, occasioned inordinate skepticism.
Yet historians have embraced historical records far more contaminated;
for example, "In the Gukansho it is impossible to separate the
history from the dogma."1
And genealogical forgery, even the buying
1 Toshio Kuroda, "Gukansho and Jinno Shotoki: Observations on Medieval Historiography," in
John A. Harrison, ed., New Light on Early and Medieval Japanese Historiography (Gainesville:
University of Florida Monographs, Social Sciences no. 4, Fall 1959), p. 39.
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5O2 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
of family trees, was a common way of life for some during various
centuries in Japanese history.2
On the other hand, to be accepted by
medieval Japanese citizens, fiction, painting, and song had to ring
true. Thus, they are useful to historians precisely because behind their
narratives are implicit agreements about the nature of the social experience;
they organize what is deemed significant and represents knowledge
of the daily universe. Knowledge of this kind is no less true than
the symbolic representation in a statistical account. Literature and art
are, in effect, the staging of collective experience. And they perhaps
have an even greater authenticity than does fact because they represent
the "truth" as fidelity to social expectation.
The story of every nation is that of both unique historical events and
recurring events, events that are the habits of a people.
For medieval Japan, such recurring patterns include the tonsure
(cutting or shaving off the hair and taking religious vows), the selling
of children, pilgrimage, the enjoyment of dance, the need to talk to the
spirits of the dead, or the talismanic function of the vocalized word.
The great power of the medieval song or the bard's narrative, like that
of their counterparts today, lies wholly in this generic nature, in the
likelihood of the tale it tells. One is moved because one knows that this
is the way things really are.
THE CASE OF MUGAI NYODAI
In 1976 Nishikawa Kyotaro published a book on the subject ofchinso,1
or what I shall term "proxy statues," a genre of sculpture devoted to
the realistic, three-dimensional portrayal of the seated figures of historical
Zen priests, whose function was to convey the essence of the
master of his disciples after his death. The wooden statues depicted
were largely similar-looking ecclesiastics in Buddhist robes with
shaved heads. But one, despite the uniform presentation, somehow
seemed different from the rest. Astonishingly, it was the figure of a
thirteenth-century female Zen master. No remnant of feminine culture
can be seen in her figure; with shaved head and Buddhist robes, she
looks almost identical to her male colleagues. Yet the flesh of the face
and shoulders is incontrovertibly matronly; it is indeed the portrait of
a woman (see Figure 11.1).
2 Toyoda Takeshi, "Tenkanki no shakai," in OtogizoM, vol. 13 of Zutsetsu Nihon no koten
(Tokyo: Shueisha, 1980), p. 196.
3 Nishikawa Kyotaro, Chinso chokoku, in Nikon no bijutsu, no. 123 (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1976).
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THE CASE OF MUGAI NYODAI 503
Figure 11.1 Wooden sculpture of medieval abbess Mugai Nyodai
This medieval abbess's religious name was Mugai Nyodai,4
and she
lived from 1223 to 1298. An unknown artist captured in wood the
quiet, life-worn face and dignified meditative posture of a serious
woman in her seventies, who looks out through glimmering eyes of
inlaid crystal in so uncanny a fashion that she seems alive, about to
reply to something of great importance that one has asked. Once seen,
Mugai's face is unforgettable. The great master who made this statue
must have known Mugai Nyodai very well. Like the best of chinso
sculpture, it is not mere likeness; it emanates the powerful life spirit of
the Zen master herself and must truly, as intended, have served as her
proxy after her death.
During the past decade this statue has become the object of study
and analysis. The woman it depicts, however, has not, nor has the
important religious association of Zen convents she headed and, in
effect, launched.
In Japanese medieval history as it is now written, women appear,
when they do at all, because they are the mother, wife, mistress, or
daughter of an important man. Almost all the rare exceptions are
4 Also apparently known as Mujaku.
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504 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
women who have written outstanding literary works that somehow
have survived. Mugai Nyodai, however, represents a challenging case.
Here is a woman of superb accomplishments in the ecclesiastical
world, and yet no one seems certain just which "important man"
might have been her father or her husband. What were the facts of this
woman's life, and what was the nature of the institution she headed?
From this perspective, her life takes on an importance beyond the
historical; it has generic ramifications.
The tonsure was as widespread in female culture as it was in male
culture, and possibly more so, for even at that time, if they lived
through childbearing, women tended to outlive their husbands sometimes
by a great many years when the occupational hazards of the
wars thinned out the male population. There were also a variety of
nunhoods, ranging from a status that permitted a spiritual life of
ascetic devotion, to a welfare system for the abused or impoverished,
to a disguise for prostitution. Indeed, just what was nunhood in medieval
society? And what was the institution of the convent? No one
knows. It is hard to find reliable information on even the lives of
eminent nuns.
The standard references on Japanese history and Buddhism reveal
the woeful state of current research on ecclesiastic women in Japan.
Each authority assigns to Mugai a different Hojo-connected father and
husband. Further inquiry reveals one husband to have been twentyfive
years her junior, another thirty-five years younger - unthinkable
liaisons for that time. Her alleged fathers, too, are incongruously intriguing,
as one was born eight years after she was and another was
born when she was twenty-five!5
Such neglect is not due to Mugai's failure to fulfill the traditional
qualifications for history. An extraordinary person from wellconnected
bushi stock, born into the Adachi family, given the name
Chiyono when she was young, married into a branch of the Hojo clan,
highly educated in both Japanese and Chinese, Mugai was a woman to
be reckoned with. Owing to circumstances as yet unclear, in mid-life
she studied Zen under the Chinese priest Mugaku Sogen (also called
Bukko Kokushi, 1226-86), who had come to Japan in 1279 at the
invitation of the regent Hojo Tokimune to head the Kenchoji temple in
5 Nihon rekishi daijiien (Tokyo: Kawade shobo shinsha, 1956); Sanshu meiseki shi 21 and Fuso
keika shi 2, in Shinshu Kyoto sosho, vols. 2 and 9 (Kyoto: Kosaisha, 1967); Koji ruien, vol. 44
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1969); and Dai Nihon jiin soran (Tokyo: Meiji shuppansha,
1917). As of this writing no published accounts concerning Mugai's family should be taken as
reliable. Even the most recent contain inherent inconsistencies and errors, and many problems
remain to be solved.
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THE CASE OF MUGAI NYODAI 505
Kamakura. After Mugaku Sogen founded the Engakuji in 1282 and
began laying the groundwork for the establishment of Rinzai Zen in
Japan, Mugai continued as his proselyte. Before his death in 1286, he
recognized her as the heir to his teachings and gave her the character
mu from his own name. Mugai thus became the first woman in Japan
fully qualified not as a nun but as a Zen priest (Zen so).
After her years under Mugaku Sogen, Mugai Nyodai founded, and
served as the abbess of, the Keiaiji temple and its subtemples in northern
Kyoto, which throughout the Muromachi period stood at the
pinnacle of the developing network of Zen convents known as the Niji
(Amadera) Gozan, or the Five-Mountain Convents Association, an
institution organized concurrently with the Gozan (five-mountain)
Monasteries established for male priests.6
Mugai's Keiaiji headed the
Niji Gozan network, which in her day had more than fifteen
subtemples. In the generation after her death, the Five-Mountain
Convents expanded to include the Keiaiji, Tsugenji, Danrinji,
Gonenji, Erinji, and their subtemples in Kyoto, as well as five convents
in Kamakura: the Taiheiji, Tdkeiji, Kokuonji, Gohoji, and
Zemmyoji. Keiaiji, it is said, was burned down in the Onin War
during the mid-fifteenth century, at which time Mugai's chinso and
other relics were removed to one of Keiaiji's subtemples in Kyoto, the
Hoji-in (also known as Chiyonodera), where they remain today.7
Mugai was born during a short but receptive time in Japanese history
for the participation of women in official religious institutions.
Buddhism, like Christianity, has had a dismal history of discrimination
against women. Theologically women were viewed as inherently
flawed, as both defiled and defiling; they were forbidden to enter even
the grounds of the major Buddhist centers of learning and worship,
such as Mount Hiei and Mount Koya, and they were also barred by
doctrine from attaining Buddhahood. Now suddenly, in Mugai's lifetime,
momentous and major changes were foot. All of the newly
founded and growing sects of reform Buddhism (Pure Land,
Nichiren, and Zen) were asserting that the old sects had erred and that
Buddha's compassion extended to the salvation of all sentient crea-
tures.
The statements of the Zen priest Dogen (1200-53), in particular,
were world-shaking. Indeed, Stanley Weinstein's fine studies of re-
6 See Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard East Asian Monographs no. 85, 1981). No research has yet been
published in any language on the Niji Gozan system of Zen convents.
7 A name taken from what is thought to have been her childhood name, Chiyono.
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506 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
form Buddhism reveal that Dogen, of all the new religious leaders,
was "by far the most uncompromising on asserting complete equality
between the sexes."8
In his treatise Shobogenzo, Dogen describes the
new world into which Mugai was fortunate enough to be born:
When we speak of the wicked there are certainly men among them. When we
talk of noble persons, these surely include women. Learning the Law of
Buddha and achieving release from illusion have nothing to do with whether
one happens to be a man or a woman.9
A nun who has attained the Way is entitled to receive the homage of all the
arhats, pratye&a-buddhas and bodhisattvas who would seek to learn the
Dharma from her. What is so sacred about the status of a man? . . . The four
elements that make up the human body are the same for a man as for a
woman. . . . You should not waste your time in futile discussions about the
superiority of one sex over another.10
Zen was then virtually a new sect of Buddhism in Japan. Known
early to the Japanese, it made no lasting impression for centuries and
no inroads into Japanese religious life until Eisai (1141-1215) introduced
Rinzai teachings in 1191 and his student Dogen introduced
Soto thought in 1227, just four years after Mugai was born. Her life
was fundamentally changed by this new wave of social thought, and
the path she chose was one that affected the lives of thousands of other
women who joined the Five-Mountain Convents.
Mugai lived during a time when the foundations of modern Japanese
society and culture were taking shape. Women and men from
every stratum of society were taking part in its design. Studying
Mugai's life, then, illuminates this period from a different perspective
than has been available to us before.
Dogen went to China the same year that Mugai was born. While she
was still an infant, Shinran (1173-1262) had begun actively to propagate
the Jodo Shin faith. Dogen returned from China when Magai was
four and wrote his Shobogenzo when she was ten. The great courtierpoet
Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) was still alive throughout her
teens, and numerous famous waka-poetry collections appeared as she
grew up. In her adolescence, the Uji shui monogatari and Azutna
kagami were written, and 6m>a-priests were chanting narratives
around the country that recounted episodes from the cataclysmic
Gempei War of a half-century earlier. In Mugai's middle years, Ippen
8 Stanley Weinstein, "The Concept of Reformation in Japanese Buddhism," in Saburo Ota,
ed., Studies in Japanese Culture, vol. 2 (Tokyo: P.E.N. Club, 1973), p. 82.
9 Weinstein, "Concept of Reformation," p. 82, trans, from Shobogenzo, Iwanami bunko ed.
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1939), vol. I, p. 128.
10 Weinstein, "Concept," p. 82, trans, from Shobogenzo, vol. 1, p. 124.
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THE CASE OF MUGAI NYODAI 507
(1239-89) was at work spreading early Jishu teachings, and Nichiren
(1222-81) was writing his Rissho ankokuron. Muju was at work on his
collection of Buddhist setsuwa, the Shasekishu. Ban Dainagon ekotoba
and one of the famous sets of Kitano Tenjin engi scrolls were being
painted. The Mongols attacked Japan twice. The central structure of
the Sanjusangendo temple and the Great Buddha of Kamakura were
built. The restless ghosts of the Soga brothers were being placated by
enshrinement in Hakone. And when Mugai died, Yoshida Kenko
(1283-1350) was only a fifteen-year-old boy.
In addition to the particular details of her life, Mugai also offers us
a glimpse into that silent other side of elite culture. No understanding
of medieval Zen, its values or practices, can be complete without
knowing something of her contribution to it. Mugai represents the
vast and complex socioreligious institution of the convent and of
nunhood itself, a culture rarely represented in history at all, elite or
otherwise. She stands for the founder-abbesses of history and also for
all those women who took the tonsure and thereafter moved not to
the cloister but out into the world of commerce and the arts. They,
too, played a fundamental role in creating Japan's emerging national
culture.
If there is a single dominant paradigm in medieval life, it is the
tonsure as an acceptable option, a pervasive dynamic in the common
culture of medieval Japan, in the lives of all, men and women alike. In
offering religiosecular severance (and liberation) from the requirements
(and impositions) of society, the tonsure proved to be one of the
most creative forces in Japanese history. Eventually discredited by
Neo-Confucian thought and social changes during the Edo period, the
tonsure has today virtually ceased to exist as a socially creative factor
in society. It can be hypothesized, however, that during the middle
ages, it was one of the most important contexts for Japan's artistic,
intellectual, and even entrepreneurial freedom and originality.
No history of medieval Japan has yet been written in which tonsured
males (inja and tonseisha), representing a wide range of religiosity,
did not appear prominently in every realm of activity, from the
imperial top to the outcast, mendicant bottom of society. Their role not
only in the religious domain but also in politics, art, the performing
arts, commerce, literature, and even the military - is so ubiquitous
as to constitute a major characteristic of the age. Yet the sociological
background of this option of the tonsure has not been explored, for
men or for women.
Curiously, those few prominent medieval nuns who have succeeded
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5O8 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
in attracting historians' attention were alive during Mugai's years. The
nun Eshin (i 182-1270s), the first official wife of a priest in Japan,
actively supported the work of her husband, Shinran, in his Jodo Shin
teachings. Both Lady Nijo (1258-1306?), the author of Towazugatari,
and Abutsu (i233?-83?), the author of Utatane no ki and Izayoi nikki,
were traveling throughout Japan as nuns during Mugai's lifetime,
though they had taken the tonsure with considerably different aims
than did either Mugai Nyodai or Eshir. Both women wrote notable
autobiographies whose contents are self-absorbed and concerned to
varying degrees with literary ambition." Indeed, their work has been
of historical interest primarily because of its literary value; the religious
consciousness they express is only elementary. Nijo's pilgrimage
appears to have been the traditional medieval tourist course; Abutsu's
tonsure, which took place in her late teens, was hardly a religious
decision, but an act of despair akin to suicide over a dying love affair.
During her brief stay in a convent, it was the man who had grown
indifferent to her who obsessed her thoughts. Nevertheless, neither
woman would probably have achieved what she did in her day had she
not taken the liberating step of choosing the tonsure.
It is troubling that although the lives of these two aristocratic
women have been studied, no one has yet examined their nunhood or
tried to explore its meaning in the context of medieval society.
Nunhood, after all, was not an elite pursuit. Nijo encountered several
nuns who had previously made their living as prostitutes; one was a
former brothel owner. If we are to believe the overwhelming statistical
evidence of medieval fiction, diaries, poetry, songs, paintings, and
drama, then nunhood must have been common in medieval life from
the top to the bottom of society, an acceptable alternative in the popular
culture of medieval Japan.
Becoming a nun in childhood was rare, but taking the tonsure in
late middle age was common among all classes and geographical areas.
Indeed, when one was widowed, society expected it. Some widows
clearly "acquiesced" to nunhood, in Emile Durkheim's sense of the
word.12
Widows' becoming nuns also had an important secular socio-
11 For English translations of these works, see Karen Brazell, trans., The Confessions of Lady
Nijo (New York: Anchor Books, 1973); and Edwin O. Reischauer, trans., "The Izayoi
Nikki," in Edwin O. Reischauer and Joseph K. Yamagiwa, eds., Translations from Early
Japanese Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 3-135. Donald
Keene recounts Abutsu's diary, Utatane no ki, written when she was about seventeen years
old, in "Diaries of the Kamakura Period," Japanese Quarterly 32 (July-September 1985):
186-9.
12 Emile Durkheim, The Rules ofSociological Method (Glencoe, N.Y.: Free Press, 1950), p. 104.
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THE CASE OF MUGAI NYODAI 509
political, and even economic role in the medieval family: It was, in
effect, a disposal system for used women.
There were other types of nunhood, however. Medieval fiction provides
a rich array of tonsured women whose motivations varied widely
and include defiance, resignation, religious fervor, love of poetry and
travel, flight from crime, and passionate attachment to deceased loved
ones on whose souls they wished to concentrate their attention through
prayer. Paintings show us the commercial side of nunhood as well.
Depicted in the city streets, in the countryside, and in marketplaces
are nuns with diverse affiliations plying their trades as peddlers, artisans,
brokers, singers, and proselytizers.
Like the various monastic options for males (shukke-tonsei),
nunhood also could simply be an opportunity to escape from the
unwelcome pressures of life - to become independent, to get away,
and to take up appealing avocations - provided one had the means.
Interdependence and dependence are favorite themes in analyses of
Japanese society, but a closer look at the tonsure will cast much light
on the often disregarded but equally important anatomy of independence
at work in the Japanese social system.
In Shichinin bikuni, the activities of one particular nun are illuminat-
ing:
[She] . . . cut off her hair, and changed her flower-like appearance to that of a
nun. In linen robes, carrying a mendicant's bag, her make-up gone, her
natural complexion revealed, she wandered through the provinces as a tattered
beggar. . . . She visited learned monks in various temples and listened
to sermons. . . . After some years during which she lived amongst other
religious itinerants and social outcastes, she decided to go to Zenkoji. There
was a sub-temple to one side, the abbot of which was greatly revered as
someone who had obtained enlightenment. She felt this was the kind of place
she had been looking for and stayed in the area for two years. Sometimes she
secluded herself in mountain valleys, sometimes she begged with other mendicants.
She did not neglect the practices of either the completely enlightened
cleric (Daiin) or the partially enlightened one (Shoin).'3
This is a woman who demonstrates a familiarity with a wide range of
sutras and Buddhist treatises and has a fine grasp of religious doctrine.
As she departs from the company of other nuns at the end of the story,
the words she tosses back over her shoulder strike a sympathetic chord
13 Margaret Helen Childs, "Religious Awakening Stories in Late Medieval Japan: The Dynamics
of Didacticism" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1983), p. 283. For the original,
see Shichinin bikuni, in vol. 1 oiKindai Nikon bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Kokumin tosho, 1928),
pp. 171-226. At one time believed to be a seventeenth-century work, it is now generally
agreed to be from the Muromachi period.
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5IO THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
even in the modern reader: "Rather than spending my time with
small-minded people and staying in cramped houses, I just take an old
straw hat and begging bag and go.'"4
In another medieval story, Akimichi, Kitamuki is asked by her husband
to seduce and trap the professional thief who has murdered his
father so that he can take revenge. Outraged, she protests vigorously
her husband's willingness to use her in this way, but in the end she can
find no alternative but to succumb to his wishes. The wary thief,
though swiftly seduced, does not let down his guard until she has been
with him for a year and borne him a son. Ultimately she succeeds in
leading her husband to the thief's secret hiding place, and the revenge
is accomplished. Her husband is delighted and showers her with
words of love. She is revolted. Her husband has asked her to prostitute
herself, and in the end her actions have led to the death of the man
who, though repulsive to her, is the father of her child. Thus in chagrin
and defiance, Kitamuki leaves her husband and becomes a nun.15
Medieval Japanese society considered nunhood to be an acceptable
form of deviation from the behavior it normally required of its women
of childbearing age. It was indulged disengagement, lamented but not
punished. Insofar as nunhood was a liberation from the requirements
of socially expected life roles, it represented freedom in a society that
otherwise presented few social choices. To become a nun was, throughout
Japan's middle ages, one of the few decisions a woman could make
about her own life. Suicide was another; flight and prostitution a
third. For example, in The Tale of Genji, the father of Lady Akashi
observed: "I have had high hopes for [my daughter] since she was
born. I have been determined that she go to some noble gentleman in
the city. . . . I have said to her that . . . if I die before my hopes are
realized she is to throw herself into the sea.'"6
That his daughter might not wish to die, as she was, after all,
healthy and even beautiful and talented, that she might wish instead to
devise a life for herself even in the environment of a cloister, never
occurred to this father. This was still the eleventh century, but by the
time of Nijo and Mugai, medieval fact and fiction show the positive
value of both the cloistered and the itinerant religious life for tonsured
women. Convents were certainly places of shelter and respectable occu-
14 Childs, "Religious Awakening Stories," p. 277.
15 For an English translation of the full story, see Childs, "Religious Awakening Stories," pp.
191-212. For the original, see Akimichi in Otogizoshi, vol. 38 of Nihon koien bungaku laikei
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1965), pp. 394-410.
16 Edward G. Seidensticker, trans., The Tale of Genji (New York: Knopf, 1978), p. 257.
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WORKING FOR A LIVING 511
pation for women in a day when wars were numerous and the result
was a surplus of widows and orphans left without male support. Convents
were also places of learning, especially for women such as Mugai
Nyodai. We cannot be certain whether it was widowhood that led her
to "acquiesce" to becoming a nun or whether it was spiritual or intellectual
drive. Nor do we know what circumstance caused her to become a
learned Zen master. In any case, the temples she founded and the
institution she led had major political and economic ramifications for
her day. In 1973, the Japanese National Research Institute of Cultural
Properties designated her statue as an "important cultural property,"
but today Mugai Nyodai continues to sit before us as an important
cultural challenge, reminding us of that other side of gender that has
for so long gone unheeded and unstudied.
WORKING FOR A LIVING
I'm Saru Genji
From Akogi Bay.
Buy my sardines, you hear!
Buy my sardines, ei!17
From Saru Genji soshi sounds the plucky call of an audacious
Muromachi-period entrepreneur.
One of the most delightful aspects of mid- and late-medieval literature
and painting are the glimpses they give us of the flow of activity in
the streets and marketplaces of medieval Japan and the insight they
offer into the lives of those ordinary (and some extraordinary) men and
women who had to work for a living.
If Kyoto was an aristocratic center of religiopolitical power, it also
became a city of commerce. Despite its agricultural base, Japanese
society was developing its mercantile side, and a network of trades and
services fanned out across the land. The capital and the provincial
centers, production sites and marketplaces, were linked by medieval
entrepreneurs in all their guises. Pilgrim's routes became peddlers'
circuits; itinerant poets' paths became tourists' tracks; and mendicant
proselytizers' courses turned into commercial trade routes.
From early times, the Japanese elite have been fascinated by the
activities of ordinary working people. Heian-period paintings on fanshaped
paper, the Ogimen Hokekyo zoshi owned by Shitennoji, depict
scenes from daily life. Shops can be seen where fish and dumplings are
17 Saru Genji soshi, in Otogizoshi, vol. 38 otNihon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
1965), p. 180.
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512 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
sold and people with bundles on their heads are busily transporting
items here and there. Among the earliest twelfth-century hand-scroll
paintings are narrative scrolls such as the Shigisan engi and Ban
Dainagon ekotoba in which everyday people can be found going about
their business either as background to the central action of the story or
as part of the main events themselves. Such narrative hand scrolls, or
emaki, are one of the most conservative of all Japanese art forms, in the
sense that they seem to have been designed less to embellish than to
preserve the literary, religious, military, and ceremonial heritage.
That desire to preserve has given us a vivid view of the medieval
world. Women doing laundry, men hauling wood, children devising
games, elegant urban dwellings, simple rural farmhouses - the panorama
goes on and on and reveals in detail how Japanese from all walks
of life dressed, did their hair, furnished their houses, cooked, ate and
drank, and pursued their pleasures. There are people running, falling,
dancing, peeing, blowing their noses, playing, sleeping, buying and
selling, carting, peddling, begging, and in general engaged in the sorts
of activities that absorb men and women everywhere in all ages and
cultures. Yet here we see the Japanese variations on these themes.
Thirteenth-century scrolls recounting the histories and miracles of
religious centers such as the Taima mandara engi or the lives of famous
priests such as the Ippen shonin eden offer excellent depictions of not
only religious activities but also daily secular life in cities, regional
markets, and the countryside.18
Other genres of painting are valuable
as well: illuminated works of fiction, records of annual ceremonies,
battle tales, and even paintings of sacred sites, such as the Nachi
Shrine crowded with pilgrims. Medieval painting, in the form of hand
scrolls, hanging scrolls, and screen paintings, was more than an elite
avocation or investment, it was a public art, a national art in the
deepest sense. In intimate detail the entire known population of the
country, from beggars to deities, is depicted, with sacred and profane
in wholly comfortable continuity - indeed, even when such categorical
dichotomies are out of place.
Late in the thirteenth century, a new genre of hand scroll emerged
in which working people became the central focus. Known as shokunin
uta awase e, or poetry contests among people from various occupations,
these scrolls normally pair one representative each of two similar
types of profession; a poem or two on a preestablished theme is in-
18 These paintings are reproduced in their entirety in Nihon emakimono zenshu, 24 vols. (Tokyo:
Kodokawa shoten, 1938-69.
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WORKING FOR A LIVING 513
scribed beside each; and a judgment is recorded as to which poem is
superior. The oldest of the genre is the Tdhokuin shokunin uta awase,
probably made in the late thirteenth century. This work was followed
by similar poetry-contest scrolls illustrating an increasing array of
occupations, such as the Tsurugaoka hojo e shokunin uta awase and the
Muromachi-period Sanjuniban shokunin uta awase. The most detailed
of them all is Nanajuichiban shokunin uta awase, which depicts 142
professions.19
The majority show trades and crafts found in Kyoto and
its environs, but a few merchants from other locales are included as
well.
Without any question, such works were composed, painted, and
inscribed by educated members of the higher levels of society for their
own pleasure. These works also contain, however, religious and poetic
nuances that remain unstudied and unclear to us. I believe that the
rules for the pairing as well as the painting of the professions were
more complex than has been recognized and that indeed they may be a
kind of "linked-painting," related in a fashion similar to linked verse
(renga). The artists' delight in depicting the working people of their
society, in pairing up "similar" types, in being sure to include in the
picture the tools of each trade, and in general making poetic play with
the figures' names and functions have resulted in what is for us today
an invaluable array of portraits of medieval working people.20
Simply to invoke the names of those depicted in these paintings is to
bring back to life the lively street action of medieval Kyoto. From
early in the day echo the calls of the fishmongers, herb sellers, incense
and medicine vendors, and peddlers of firewood, charcoal, brooms,
footgear, salt, oil, and fresh greens. In a city constantly being renewed,
there was always somewhere the sound of sawing and hammering as
the carpenters, roof tilers, stone cutters, and plasterers ply their
trades. On street corners passersby delight in the antics of monkey
trainers, word tricksters, and puppeteers. Hard at work in their homes
and shops are the armor makers, indigo dyers, wig makers, sword
sharpeners, hat lacquerers, comb makers, needle sharpeners, fabric
weavers, embroiderers, cord weavers, rosary makers, metal workers,
19 The most convenient and informative reproductions of the shokunin uta awase e mentioned
here can be found in Ishida Hisatoyo, "Shokunin zukushi e," Nihon no bijutsu, no. 132 (May
I977)> and the special issue, "Shokunin uta awase no sekai," Kobijutsu, no. 74 (April 1985).
20 For an important and detailed historical study of the meaning of shokunin in medieval society,
see Amino Yoshihiko, "Nihon chusei no heimin to shokunin," Shiso, pt. 1, no. 680 (April
1980): 1-25; pt. 2, no. 681 (May 1980): 73-92. Until the middle of the fourteenth century,
the word shokunin referred to a wide variety of nonagricultural workers, including fishermen,
hunters, craftsmen, merchants, fortune-tellers, and performing artists. Only later did the
word narrow to mean only craftsmen. See Amino, "Nihon chusei no heimin," pt. 2, p. 73.
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514 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
blacksmiths, and religious image makers, among many others. Were
you to venture to the marketplace you would find vendors of rice and
beans, tofu and yeast, sake, wooden pillows, rouge and face powder.
The big fish market is along Rokkaku Street; you can watch the
carters come into town and unload at Gojo and Muromachi; they
stable their animals there and also find lodgings nearby.21
Should you
tire, there are vendors of whisked tea or brewed tea, rice cakes or
dumplings along the thoroughfares. The high-class pleasure houses
are at Higashi no Toin, but if you wander over to Hell's Alley (Jigoku
ga Tsuji) or Earning-a-living Lane (Kasegi ga Tsuji) any time of the
day or night there will be girls waiting on street corners or in backalley
enclaves to satisfy prurient impulses. If in trouble, you will find,
here and there in public places, doctors, mediums, soothsayers, and
geomancers at your service. Inevitably you will also run into a variety
of holy men and women, fund collectors, sutra readers, touringyamabushi
and Koya hijiri, and prayer chanters intoning rhythmically while
beating time on bowls or gourds or even on their bare chests.
Such nonagricultural working people were a sign of the entrepreneurial
flavor of urban medieval life. Unlike rigidly stratified seventeenthcentury
Japan, there was as yet no particular differentiation among an
artisan, manufacturer, peddler, merchant, or a worker engaged in providing
services, except perhaps in their economic success or failure.
By the late sixteenth century a new genre of paintings, the rakuchu
rakugai zu bydbu, or screen paintings of Kyoto and its environs, added
another dimension to the depiction of the daily life of ordinary people.
From a bird's-eye perspective, the painters of these screens reveal a
nourishing Kyoto completely recovered from the wars. We see in exquisite
detail its hills and temples, rivers and canals, and streets and alleys
and look telescopically into shops at fan sellers and writing-brush dealers
and even into public baths to watch people having their backs
scrubbed. The streets are animated by people buying snacks - broiled
sparrow-on-a-stick - or watching cockfights; street girls paw reluctant
customers; a mother holds her tiny child's bare bottom encouragingly
over a street-side ditch while friends dawdle tolerantly nearby.22
21 Toyoda Takeshi, "Otogi ni arawareta minshu," in Otogizoshi, vol. 13 of ZusetsuNihon no koten
(Tokyo, Shuseisha, 1980), p. 132.
22 The pair of six-panel screens known as the Uesugi screens were made by Kano Eitoku (1543-
90). In 1574 Oda Nobunaga gave them to Uesugi Kenshin (1530-78), the daimyo of Echigo.
The political psychology behind such a gift to one who lived so far from the capital should not
be overlooked. The Uesugi screens are reproduced in detail in Okami Masao and Satake
Akihiro, eds., Rakuchu rakugai bydbu: Uesugibon (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1983).
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WORKING FOR A LIVING 515
The picture of working people that emerges also from contemporary
fiction and popular songs enriches these painted portraits of the medieval
Japanese. Muromachi fiction - usually referred to as otogizoshi, or
companion stories - describes life-styles and human situations that
corroborate the sorts of activities and concerns depicted in paintings
and recorded in contemporary diaries and chronicles. Fact and fiction
are more than contiguous; they have a redundancy that historians can
count on. In painted portrayals of working people and their environments,
fantasy had no place. Prosperity might be exaggerated for
aesthetic or even political ends, but the aim was to convey the real, not
to invent the imaginary. Likewise, in medieval Japan, readers of fiction
would not countenance stories that did not somehow ring true.
Even flights of fantasy tell us much about the actual contexts from
which escape is sought.
As there had been for centuries, we find, of course, stories of ineffectual
princesses and their premarital problems. But they are joined in
the medieval repertory by sexually tormented priests and their anguished
love affairs with one another, by warriors who are easily offended
and do not hesitate to use young girls badly. The picture is
consistent with the essayists' laments of a less-than-ideal world. By
and large, however, the world of ordinary people in otogizoshi is felicitous:
smile inducing, hope inspiring, and reassuring. Despite literary
shortcomings, which will not be our concern here, these stories, like
the contemporary comic plays (kyogen) and popular songs (Jtouta),
reveal a people down to earth, unwilling to pine away in the face of
hardship, entrepreneurial, imaginative, hardworking, combative, ambitious,
self-reliant, persistent, and even brazen.
The sardine peddler Saru Genji, whose bold street call sounded at
the start of this section, was not about to let his lowly occupation stand
in the way of his getting the one woman in the world he wanted after a
love-at-first-sight look at her on the street one day. Never mind that
she was Keika, one of the highest ranking courtesans in Kyoto, who
catered only to the elite of that city's society. Never mind that he
would have to impersonate a daimyo, spread rumors of his own arrival
in town, find himself an entourage, carry the whole thing off with
improvisation and aplomb once inside the door of her elegant establishment.
And never mind that he is ingenious and clever at poetic double
entendres; he almost ruins the whole thing by doing exactly what one
imagines peddlers or salesmen would be likely to do: when he talks in
his sleep it is to recite his daily call: "Buy my sardines, Ei!" But the
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5l6 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
story ends felicitously. Keika is a woman of wisdom. We are not
informed about how she got where she is, bat she is smart enough to
recognize a hardworking, intelligent, entrepreneurial winner; leaving
Kyoto's high life, she goes off to set up a home with Sam Genji in his
fishing village. They prosper as fish merchants, and their descendants
enjoy their wealth.
Clearly not all made millions. The old nun who makes a living as a
broker of secondhand goods and odd-job services in Oyo no ama seems
just above indigence. Nonetheless, her work and style clearly show the
same qualities of ingenuity and boldness so highly valued in the sardine
merchant story. On her rounds one day she convinces an old
priest that he needs a girl to look after his needs; she knows just the
one. Tottering with anticipation, excited and befuddled all the more
by a touch of sake, the old man that night gives an overwhelming
welcome to his new companion, who has arrived modestly swathed in
robes. Dawn reveals her to be the old peddler-nun herself. Why not,
she says. We are perfectly matched; here is a good way to look after
each other in our declining years. Two can live as cheaply as one. And
with other such assurances, the story ends on a felicitous note for each
of them.
In the kyogen play Imajimmei, however, a husband and wife have
had no luck in any of the small businesses they try to start. Hearing
that a new deity has appeared in Uji, they decide to set up a tea shop
near the sacred site and start out afresh. But their burner is too small,
and they cannot seem to keep the tea hot; they can afford only one tea
cup, and so they have a dishwashing problem; then, too, the wife is
not pretty enough to attract customers. In the end, the small business
fails.
The nouveau riche appear in many forms in medieval fiction, and in
some instances the entrepreneur emerges as a cultural hero. Perhaps
the most famous such manufacturer-merchant is Bunsho, the salt
maker, from the story Bunshososhi. Beginning as a servant to the head
priest at the Kashima Shrine in Hitachi, the hero is one day tested by
dismissal. Stopping at a salt maker's house, he earns his keep by
helping around the salt kilns and proves able to work as hard as six
men. Rewarded by his employer with the gift of two kilns, he begins
to manufacture and sell salt himself. His product proves extremely
tasty and of good medicinal effect; he is also able to increase his
production to thirty times that of his rivals! Hardworking, ambitious,
with a better product and higher productivity, he soon becomes a
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WORKING FOR A LIVING 517
millionaire. At this point the story turns to questions of progeny and
the marrying of his two daughters to the court. In the end, Bunsho
himself becomes the senior councilor of state.23
It has been common to interpret such stories as a sign of the commercial
class's burgeoning self-consciousness, their drive for upward mobility,
for control of commercial activity, and also for the attainment of
political powers. Yet we would do well to notice that, here, Bunsho's
success is not attributed to his self-awareness or even to his hard work,
but to the blessings of the deity of the Kashima Shrine.
As is clear from the few stories described here, upward social mobility
is not the aim of characters in medieval fiction; what they want is
economic security. No one is looking for power; everyone is looking
for wealth. If one's life ends in high rank and aristocratic marriage,
these are just the natural results of having money. And having money
is good fortune bestowed on one by the gods. Bunsho and his daughters
are supremely indifferent to government. They want merely to
prosper and be as rich as possible. And indeed they succeed. So well
suited was this story to the dreams of the Japanese people that it took
on talismanic qualities. In merchant homes during the Edo period, it
became standard practice to read this story aloud at New Year's time as
the year's "first reading" - an act of invocation, as it were, to induce
wealth and good fortune to enter the home.
Felicitous words end many works of medieval fiction, and laughter
and/or good-natured reconciliation can be found in many kyogen
(comic plays) and noh plays. Indeed, felicitous words remain in the
mainstream of Japanese sociolinguistic life and continue as a fundamental
dynamic in both the Japanese family and work mentality.
Throughout the middle ages there were those who worked for a living
as performers of felicitous words. Such itinerant shomonji, or "frontgate
performers," as the senzu manzai, shishi mai, and others whose
words, dances, and rituals warded off evil, expressed gratitude, and
were of a felicitous nature, reflected the great importance the populace
assigned to inviting good forces and good fortune into the home and
workplace. Modern Japanese men and women in their homes and
workplaces today continue this pattern of felicitous gestures and word
formulas designed in the middle ages to elicit and maintain good
fortune.
23 For a translation of this story, see James T. Araki, "Bunsho soshi: The Tale of Bunsho, the
Saltmaker," Monumenia Nipponica 38 (Autumn 1983): 221-49.
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5l8 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
ELECTION OF THE GODS
Underlying the struggle to earn a living during the middle ages was a
perception that success or failure depended not only on one's own
efforts and talents but also on the deities, who either cleared the way
for good fortune or interfered by means of their disgruntlement.
Shinto deities had always been this-world oriented, and Buddhism,
too, was not exclusively concerned with salvation or rebirth into a
paradise in the next world. It is customary to comment on Buddhism's
"next-world"orientation, its emphasis on the concept of mujo, or transience
of this world, and its doctrine of mappo, or the degeneracy of
the latter days of the Buddhist law. Conversely, however, during the
middle ages, Buddhist deities came to play a more overtly philanthropic
role in the daily "this-world" activities of ordinary men and
women, a role that transcended theology or orthodox doctrine. For
example, Jizo muddies his feet helping believers plant rice (Jizo engi),
and Kannon bleeds from the blow of a sword endured on a devoted
believer's behalf (Munewari Kannon).
On the other side of the history of religious doctrine, therefore, lies
the question of how these daily perceptions and practices were related
to the spiritual and sacred forces in which the medieval Japanese
believed. How, in daily life, did lay people on all levels of society
perceive such supernatural forces? To which deities did they usually
turn for help in affairs pertaining to this world? In view of all the
buddhas and boddhisattvas and the many Shinto deities, we should
ask which ones fell by the wayside and which the Japanese elected to
keep at the center of their daily, active faith. Which ones became the
national gods of an entire people?
With increased travel, the pilgrim's circuit and the merchant's route,
and the influence of the here-and-now needs of mercantilism, we find
emerging those deities who, serving this world and not the next, transcended
their role as local tutelary gods and became national gods.
Fiction, song, and drama illuminate those deities who came first to
everyone's mind and on whom all seemed to rely. Although various
Buddhist and Shinto divinities were magnets of devotion in certain
locales and were the principal features in fiction as well, no deities had
greater general nationwide appeal in the daily life of the Muromachi
period than did Kannon, Jizo, and the seven gods of good fortune,
especially Daikoku, Ebisu, and Bishamon.24
24 Toyoda Takeshi, "Otogi ni arawareta minshu," p. 129.
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ELECTION OF THE GODS 519
Kannon appears more often in medieval literature than does any
other deity, and the kannon of Kiyomizu Temple, granter of good
marriages and healthy children, is ubiquitous. The temple had a proxy
pilgrimage path on its premises, and so one could worship before all
the thirty-three manifestations of Kannon there. But the real attraction
was the temple's own kannon, before whom, throughout the centuries,
there was always a steady stream of petitioners. In literature
perhaps only the kannon of the Hase Temple begins to approach that of
Kiyomizu in serving this-worldly needs for good mates and healthy
progeny.
Bishamon, as the protector from all evil, had a natural appeal.
Daikoku, on the other hand, looking like a plump and prosperous
Chinese tradesman, was a deity who seemed made to order for the
medieval businessman. Standing on overstuffed bales of rice, holding
out the promise of his coin-producing magic mallet, he exuded prosperity,
and the strength of even his name led numerous medieval
tradesmen to adopt it for the name of their own establishments. Poetry
and dance genres such as Daikoku renga and Daikoku mai are indicative
ofthis deity's widespread popularity. Money in this world, not promises
of comfort in the next, was a major concern of Daikoku's devotees.
Another divinity who emerged directly from medieval Japan was Ebisu.
Looking unmistakably like a wealthy Japanese entrepreneur - mild
mannered, fair dealing, and with his leisure-time fishing pole - Ebisu
was a deity who promised wealth, fair business management, and the
good life.25
Dreams of wealth, so important to those who worked for a living,
are reflected in kyogen plays through the frequent appearance of
Daikoku, Ebisu and Bishamon. The grounds of Kyoto's temples contained
shrines dedicated to one or more of the lucky gods. At Toji, the
shrine to Daikoku had an endless line of daily petitioners. On
Bishamon's festival day, tens of thousands visited shrines associated
with him. And the 1480s witnessed the notorious case of some burglars
who disguised themselves as the seven lucky gods and broke into
a house where they were welcomed with open arms and loaded down
25 The appearance and accoutrements of both Daikoku and Ebisu evolved over time, probably
to accommodate various occupational groups. From early times, Daikoku was a guardian of
harvests and kitchens, and Ebisu was especially revered by those in fishing and industry. For
essays in English on these deities, see Ichiro Hori, "Mysterious Visitors from the Harvest to
the New Year," pp. 76-103, and Katsunori Sakurada, "The Ebisu-gami in Fishing Villages,"
pp. 122-132, both in Richard M. Dorson, ed., Studies in Japanese Folklore (Bloomington:
Indiana University Folklore Series, no. 17, Indiana University Press, 1963).
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520 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
with treasure by the rejoicing residents, who believed they had been
blessed by a holy visitation.26
These were the divinities with which medieval men and women
lived intimately, with whom they shared the troubles of their daily
work, and on whom they relied for the blessings of whatever good
fortunes their lives might bring. Depictions of these deities today
continue to smile out at customers from shop fronts throughout
Japan.
Throughout the middle ages the business of selling charms was a
source of support for both Shinto and Buddhist institutions. Such
talismans included small woodprint images of Buddhist deities
(inbutsu), miniature wooden strips shaped like stupas (kogata sotoba),
pieces of wood with religious phrases written on them (kokeragyo), and
wood or paper strips acknowledging the receipt of a contribution
(kanjin fuda). To obtain charms, contributors donated rice and other
staples as well as money. The most wealthy even donated land.
A visit to a religious site usually included the invoking of the
deities and prayers for some longed-for wish. The prayers were often
written out and left at the temple, much as they are today, written on
the kinds of wooden plaques (etna) or paper strips that are also
depicted in medieval picture scrolls. These strips, of no monetary
value to religious institutions, were usually burned when they took
up too much space, and so few survive. But those discovered at
Gangoji-gokurakubo give a vivid picture of the petitions of ordinary
men and women - usually prayers for benefits in both this world and
the next.27
Medieval literature mentions again and again those few Buddhist
sites of the thousands nationwide that drew the greatest numbers of
both the devout and the curious. Most famous, if we are to trust their
omnipresence in fiction, drama, and jongleurs' tales, were Mount
Koya (present-day Wakayama Prefecture), to which the bones of so
many of the nation's dead were carried and interred; the Shitennoji,
closely associated with the founding patron of Japanese Buddhism,
Prince Shotoku; the so-called Nara Three: Todaiji, Hasedera, and
Taimadera; the two most beloved temples in Kyoto: Kiyomizudera
and Seiryoji; the great Nagano center, Zenkoji, rich in legends and
associated with the activities of tonsured women; and farthest of all
from the capital, Risshakuji, in northwestern Japan (present-day
26 Toyoda, "Otogi ni arawareta," p. 130.
27 Gorai Shigeru, Gangoji-Gokurakubo chusei shomin shinko shiryo no kenkyu - chijo hakkenbutsu
hen (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1964).
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UNHEEDED VOICES, WINKED-AT LIVES 521
Yamagata Prefecture). The shrines on the sacred mountains of
Kumano and the Ise Shrine, destined to attract imperial focus in later
years, appear constantly in fiction, song, and drama, attesting to the
magnetism they evinced in medieval society.
The middle ages also gave birth to Japan's common gods. Across
regional and social lines, pilgrimage, work, and the narratives
spawned by both drew people everywhere together into a kind of
nationwide network of believers. Having gods in common is a powerfully
unifying social force, and during the middle ages, the Japanese
people began, for the first time, to become shareholders of beloved
national gods.
UNHEEDED VOICES, WINKED-AT LIVES
Shamans
Like popular songs in most times and places, the medieval Japanese
popular song {imayo, or "modern style," and later kouta, or "short
song") was a genre full of cliches. Nevertheless, from among the hundreds
of lyrics that survive, some touch on areas of deep human concern,
startle and move us with their authenticity, and bear witness to
history. The following is Song 364, from Ryojin hisho (ca. 1170):
My child by now
Must be more than ten.
Soothsayer she's become, I hear,
Out wandering the land.
They say she walks the tide's edge
Out by Tago Bay.
Will fisherfolk there gather
To hear her auguries?
Or will they say "Too young!" and scoff
With this or that remark?
Will they close in and taunt her?
Oh my beloved child!28
Across the centuries we hear the grief-stricken voice of a still-young
mother tormented by anxiety and desolate in the loneliness of eternal
separation that fate and the curse of poverty have inflicted on her and
her child. It is a stunning piece. Eight hundred years later - maybe a
thousand, who can say? - we cannot doubt this was a "true" song.
This song confirms other sources and helps us reconstruct an impor-
28 Usuda Jingoro and Shimma Shin'ichi, eds., Kagura ma, saibara, Ryojin hisho, Kangituhu, vol.
25 oiNihon koten bungaku zenshu (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1985), p. 295.
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522 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
tant, yet mysterious, ancient profession, the itinerant woman shaman,
or aruki-miko, "shaman who walks." Unlike the settled, institutional
shaman, this was a nomad. •
Shamans came in many varieties.29
Some were clearly attached to
shrines, whereas others were independent, self-employed urban dwellers.
Still others were migrant, following routes that are as yet unclear.
Miko, agato-miko, azusa miko, ichiko, itako, aruki-miko, kannagi, jisha:
we are not really sure how to distinguish definitively among them. Yet
the many names need not necessarily imply fundamentally different
species. It is possible to imagine that in a still linguistically splintered
country, different locales, though merging dialectically, still had their
own favorite names for the same familiar person.
The position of shaman was predominantly held by females, and
shamans are widely depicted in medieval literature and painting,
where they range from elegant city women in business for themselves
to impoverished mendicants on the road who seem just one step ahead
of starvation and who, in some instances, have fallen into prostitution.
Also shown arejisha, who may have been male shamans impersonating
females, a phenomenon still alive in Korean shamanism today.30
In the Muromachi-period story Kacho Fugetsu, the two sisters
named in the title are reputable professional shamans who are called in
as consultants when an affluent fan-comparing party conies to a halt
because no one can decide whether the figures depicted on the fan are
of Ariwara no Narihira - the poet-hero of The Tales of Ise - or of
Hikaru Genji - the hero of Lady Murasaki's novel The Tale ofGenji.
In the Tenri Library Nara ehon hand-illuminated book version, although
the paintings are extremely simple and unaffected, the two
sisters are clearly depicted as beautiful, fashionably dressed women,
wearing on their heads gold crowns from which projections in the
shape of half-moons rise in the front, reminiscent of early Korean
aristocratic embellishments.31
They are requested to consult the spirits
29 Carmen Blacker's study of present-day shamanistic practices in Japan, The Catalpa Bow
(London: Allen's Unwin, 1975), deals with prehistoric shamanism and then jumps to twentieth
century practices. She gives a select bibliography of the best works, in both English and
Japanese, on the subject. Hori Ichiro's Nihon no shamanizumu (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1971) is a
major contribution. Almost all of these works take a religious phenomenological approach.
For the premodern period, there are virtually no studies of the social institution or of
individual practitioners.
30 Yanagita Kunio's classic study of shamanism, "Miko ko," published under a pseudonym in
1913, discusses many manifestations of shamanism. It has been republished in Teihon
Yanagita Kunio shu (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1982), vol. 9, pp. 223-301.
31 See Plate 39, p. 38 of Ichiko Teiji, ed., Otogizoshi, vol. 13 of Zusetsu Nihon no koien (Tokyo:
Shuseisha, 1980).
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UNHEEDED VOICES, WINKED-AT LIVES 523
to determine the true identity of the portraits. Kacho calls down the
spirit of the long-dead Narihira; he speaks through her and denies
involvement. Next, using a mirror on a stand, they call up the spirits
of thefiguresin the picture, and suddenly in the mirror appear Hikaru
Genji and Lady Suetsumuhana. They begin to talk. Lady Suetsumuhana,
mild-mannered in the novel, turns on Genji the full force
of her unexpressed and unrelieved fury at his promiscuous love life.
Through this seance, the identity of the painting on the fan is thus
confirmed to be Genji.
The shamans in this story are well known, successful professionals
on call in the capital. In a matrilinear profession in which the skill is
taught from woman to young girl and in which adoption into the
female group was the most common method, the identification of
Kacho and Fugetsu as "sisters" is wholly natural and reflects social
reality. .
The "soothsayer" song quoted earlier, though it gives few details,
makes clear a great deal. Behind the remorse and pain and love, we see
a parent separated from her child against all will and feeling. Yet the
child is neither lost nor abducted, as in the noh play Sumidagawa, but
was given to others when she was very young. The bereft mother tries
to follow the news of her over the years and always keeps her ears open
for rumors of the child's whereabouts. She hears that now she has been
adopted into a shamans' group that is at work around the Tago Bay
area. She wonders whether now that the child is almost ten, she will
have already been called to try out her newly learned skills. With such
hints of the child's whereabouts, the parent of a kidnapped child
would be off at once to retrieve it. But this mother gave up her little
girl out of need. All she can do now is hope to keep track somehow, to
look out longingly over the hills in the little girl's direction, pray that
the gods will somehow protect her and bless her with the skill to talk
with the spirits, and hope that people (and especially men) will be
kind.
The importance of shamanism in ancient as well as medieval life has
been underestimated and essentially ignored in contemporary historical
discourse. Female dominated and individual oriented, it was in
marked contrast with male-dominated and institution-oriented Buddhism.
Yet from early on, shamanism was a part of the daily life of
Japanese on all levels. The statesman Fujiwara no Kaneie (929-90),
for instance, would not make a move without consulting the uchifushi
no miko (shaman who falls into a trance) attached to the Kamo shrine
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524 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
in Kyoto.32
Eleventh-century novels invariably include discussions of
shamanistic consultations, and in twelfth- and thirteenth-century
songs and paintings, shamans appear frequently.
The influence of shamanism on the fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury
performing arts was enormous. Talking with the spirits is the
basis of the world view of the playwright Zeami Motokiyo (1363-
1443), whose mugen noh plays depend on the principles of shamanism.
Even the structure of Zeami's plays and the manner of their casting
(the mae-jite, a borrowed local body, and the nochi-jite, the spirit of the
dead made manifest and speaking in authentic voice) derive almost
wholly from shamanistic ritual.
But for the ordinary shaman working for a living, it was not an easy
profession. See Song 324, from Ryojin hisho (ca.1170):
Sorceress Total
Shaking the bells that way!
Bells are to be shaken
High above the eye:
Jingle, jangle, jingle,
Shake them way up high.
If you shake them low like that
Down below the eye,
The spirits will scold, "You're dawdling!"
Oh how frightful
When they're mad!33
Shamans were ascetic and virginal, wedded to the spirits. Such shamans
continued to work in shrines and to travel the land as spiritual
mediums and soothsayers, sacred women with spiritual powers, hired
for those services alone. During the middle ages, however, if not before,
the shaman path split in several directions, as indeed had the career of
mendicant, itinerant nuns. Those who could not survive in their trade
shook their bells for show, took to being itinerant entertainers of sorts,
or as the last option, became ukareme or "drifters," a euphemism for
prostitutes.
In the several versions of the early-thirteenth-century shokunin
poetry - contest scrolls, for instance, a very old woman with an archer's
bow - the standard diviner's tool of the azusa miko - is identi-
32 A seminal and revisionist work on attitudes toward medieval professional women, including
entertainers and shamans, is by Wakita Haruko, "Chusei ni okeru seibetsu yakuwari buntan
to joseikan," in vol. 2 of Nihonjosei shi - chusei (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1983),
pp. 65-102. Wakita (p. 69) calls attention to Konjaku monogatari, book 31, story 26, in which
can be found the account of Kaneie. The original can be found in Yamada Yoshio et al., eds.,
Konjaku monogatari 5, vol. 26 of Nikon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963),
P- 293. 33 Usuda and Shimma, eds., Kagura uta, vol. 25, p. 283.
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UNHEEDED VOICES, WINKED-AT LIVES 525
fied as a miko or shaman, but her poem is erotic and belongs to the
world of prostitution. She is both shaman and singing girl, a combination
of skills that seems to have become endemic in medieval life.
At the lower edges of the shaman profession, as indeed of all professions
in which women were central, hovered the slave trade, a source
of young girls for any of the matrilinear professions (shamans, entertainers,
prostitutes) that could afford the purchase. See Song 131,
from the Kanginshu (ca. fourteenth century):
A slave trader's boat
Rows in the offing.
"In any case I will be sold,
Tossed about from hand to hand,
So just for now, row gently,
Mr. Boatman, please."34
The voice of a young girl, specific in her predicament, heartrending
in her acceptance of the suffering that lies ahead, rises to meet us
across the years, and we know her inner heart better than that of her
more illustrious countrymen, whose higher status caused the recording
of their names and ranks and dates and around whom we weave
our histories. This song struck a poignant chord in the hearts of
medieval men or women, and the lyrics were later quoted and adopted
in a variety of forms by the writers of later poetic and dramatic genres.
As late as the Tokugawa period this song was still sung in many forms
by the women of the Yoshiwara brothels.35
Did this young girl end up
shaman, entertainer, or prostitute? Who can say?
Female entertainers
As we have seen, the working people that we can resurrect from
medieval sources fall into three groups: those known for the products
they grow, make, sell, or repair; those known for their spiritual powers
or religious activities; and those known for their performing arts. It is
from this last group that there emerged some of the most influential
artists in all of Japanese history: the Japanese hetaerae or female
companions - the singers, dancers, and inamorata of emperors, prime
ministers, generals, and priests.
34 Ibid., p. 424. A different translation can be found in Frank Hoff, Song, Dance, Storytelling:
Aspects of the Performing Arts in Japan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University East Asian Papers,
no. 15, Cornell China-Japan Program, 1978), p. 36, in which the Kanginshu is translated in
full.
35 Kitagawa Tadahiko, ed., Kanginshu, Soan kouta shu, vol. 53 of Shincho Nihon koten shusei
(Tokyo: Shinchosha, p. 76, n. 131.
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526 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
Yet because dancers, singers, and shamans shared a matrilinear
professional line, mother to daughter or female-adept to adopted
daughter-disciple; because the repertories of singers of tales and songs
included some sacred subject matter; because shaman ritual usually
included dance; because all three types tended to be without husbands,
independent, and unregulated and to travel in small groups,
observers throughout history have tended to confuse them. The
brothel, too, was structured in a similar fashion: The female manager
played the role of mother to the adopted girls. In the popular mind,
therefore, shaman, entertainer, and prostitute were often not distinguished.
Modern historians writing about this period, too, have so far
treated them as degrees of one kind.
It should be noted that the professional troupes of musicians and
dancers (gagaku and bugaku artists) maintained by the court, and the
musicians or ritual dancers used by temples, were male. Only the
Shinto shrines supported female ritual dancers, and they were not in
any way considered entertainers. Virtually every female performing
artist in premodern Japanese life, therefore, was outside the institutionalized
structure - until later in the Muromachi period, when brothels
were institutionalized and taxed, and the skilled singers or dancers
located there came under their support and regulation.
The great singers and dancers of the early medieval period, who
virtually created Japan's great traditions of secular song and dance, have
not fared well in historical accounts. Usually swept into the anonymous
category of "lowly entertainer" or "prostitute," their names obscured
by those of their elite patrons, women such as Otomae, Ishi, and
Kamegiku have been lost to the Japanese consciousness.
We are not yet at that stage in scholarship that we can distinguish
among the many types of female entertainers who brought pleasure tp
medieval life and became the stars of medieval public stage and private
mansion. Their varieties were enormous, and the quality of their professional
achievement ranged from brilliant to mere pretense. The
most prominent and artistically influential types, however, appear to
have been the kugutsu (kairaishi), women thought traditionally to be
associated with puppet troupes but especially identified with composing
and singing the popular songs known as imayo, or "present style,"
during the Heian and Kamakura periods; the shirabyoshi ("whitebeat")
dancers thought to have originated from the ranks of kugutsu36
36 Wakita, "Chusei in okeru seibetsu yakuwari," p. 94.
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UNHEEDED VOICES, WINKED-AT LIVES 527
after one entertainer made a sensation costumed in white male attire
and dancing to a strong beat; and finally the yujo (or asobime), which
means "female entertainer" but is most commonly translated as "courtesan"
or "prostitute." On the higher levels,yujo were elegantly attired
singers of the medieval popular "short song" who accompanied themselves
on the tsuzumi or hand drum.
The early and medieval Japanese yujo suggest parallels with the
professional hetaerae of fourth-century B.C. Greece. Women such as
the Athenian Muesarette (nicknamed Phyrne), Praxiteles' lover and
model for the artist Appelles, might well be compared with Otomae,
the kugutsu singer under whom Emperor Goshirakawa studied and
collected popular songs, or Kamegiku, the shirabyoshi dancer and
inamorata of Emperor Gotoba, who accompanied him into exile, or
the yujo, Takahashi-dono of Gojo Avenue and famous consort to the
shogun Yoshimitsu. Skilled entertainers living fashionably alone or in
small groups, their origins ranging from slave to free professional
woman, patronized by wealthy men, hired to perform at public and
family affairs, and taxed by the state, the hetaerae of Corinth and
Athens have many characteristics in common with their counterparts
in Muromachi Japan.
The origins of the kugutsu remain clouded.37
A Heian observer, Oe
no Masafusa (1041-1111), describes kugutsu women who play the
hand drum, dance, sing, intone prayers that bestow good luck and
good fortune, and worship the "hundred gods" - a description that
would also fit some types of shamans.38
Scholarly debate continues
among those who perceive kugutsu women as foreigners or gypsies who
sold combs and engaged in prostitution;39
those who see them originally
as shamans who sang magic invocations, were vehicles for the
voices of the dead, and manipulated dolls;40
and those who view them
as highly skilled, admired, itinerant shamanistic singers who from
early in history became members of imperial households and gave
birth to princess.41
Clearly they were sufficiently respectable and pow-
37 The kugutsu are traditionally thought to have been primarily entertainers who manipulated
puppets. The activities of the women in the kugutsu troupes, however, remain a subject of
debate.
38 Wakita analyzes Masafusa's account in terms of later evidence available in the song collections
and concludes that aruki miko,yujo, and kugutsu all were similarly organized social groups and
engaged in similar religious practices. See Wakita, "Chusei ni okeru seibetsu yakuwari," pp.
69-70. 39 Amino, "Nihon chusei no heimin," pt. 2, pp. 81-84.
40 Gorai Shigeru, "Chusei josei no shukyosei to seikatsu," in Nihon josei shi - chusei (Tokyo:
Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1983), vol. 2, pp. 103-8.
41 Wakita, "Chusei ni okeru seibetsu yakuwari," p. 94.
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528 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
erful in the thirteenth century for one group of them to have been able
to win a lawsuit in Kamakura against a high-ranking warrior.42
Otomae
Otomae (1085-1169), a kugutsu singer of imayo songs, was the voice
teacher to Emperor Goshirakawa (1127-92). The great collection of
favorite popular songs of the past centuries, the Ryojin hisho (Secret
selection of songs that make the rafter dust dance),43
is considered to
be Emperor Goshirakawa's work. It was his love of these songs that led
him to study, collect, and commit them to writing. It would be better,
however, to refer to these as essentially Otomae's songs. She was a
professional singer whose life work was learning, performing, probably
composing, and then teaching these songs. Goshirakawa was her
student and amanuensis.
Already retired and known as the nun of Gojo Avenue, Otomae was
in her early seventies when Emperor Goshirakawa, then just entering
his thirties, called her to court in 1157 and apprenticed himself to her
so as to learn her repertory. Widely admired in the capital as a master
of the imayo, Otomae's lineage can be traced through four generations
of female masters: Her own teacher, Mei, was the disciple of Shisan,
who in turn was taught by the imayo master Nabiki, who had been
trained by Miyahime.44
Goshirakawa had loved music above all else since childhood, was an
avid attender of musical affairs, and had studied various types of vocal
and instrumental music himself, such as Buddhist shomyo liturgical
music and the lute. His passion, however, was the imayo popular song,
which, by his day, had become almost classical in its form.45
When first called to become Goshirakawa's imayo teacher, Otomae
declined, considering herself too old and his wish to become her disciple
inappropriate. But he prevailed and proved a serious and deter-
42 The group of kugutsu involved in this suit dressed as Buddhist nuns and adopted ecclesiastical
names. It is quite possible that they were wealthy hetaerae, as their establishment had
been in operation for several generations. The suit is discussed both by VCakita in "Chusei
ni okeru seibetsu yakuwari," p. 95, and by Amino in "Nihon chusei no heimin," pt. 2, p.
83.
43 At the end of the first volume of this work the collector explains its curious title. In ancient
China, it is said, there were two singers whose performances were so marvelous even the dust
on the rafters above them was excited and continued to dance for three days after they had
left. Usuda and Shimma, eds., Kagura uta, vol. 25, p. 202. The texts of 566 songs from the
collection are still extant.
44 Ibid., pp. 172-3. When actual maternal blood lines could not be maintained in these relationships,
mother-daughter adoption was practiced, much as paternal lines governed sarugaku
noh. 45 Ibid., pp. 170 ff.
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UNHEEDED VOICES, WINKED-AT LIVES 529
mined student. He became devoted to her. In a moving gesture some
ten years later, when she was in her eighties and had fallen ill,
Goshirakawa sat at her bedside and performed the imayo related to the
healing buddha, Yakushi Nyorai (song 32 in the Ryojin hisho),*6
a song
believed to help invoke a cure for serious illnesses. Greatly stirred,
Otomae wept at her student's (and her emperor's) effort and at his
faith.
Many of Otomae's imayo had religious themes. As generations
passed, however, the secular songs prevailed. The popular songs of the
Muromachi age can best be imagined from the 1518 collection, the
Kanginshu, which contains 311 of the most beloved songs covering the
350-year period following Otomae's death around 1169, when
Goshirakawa had completed the Ryojin hisho. The Kanginshu draws on
the great array of vocal music that circulated during the middle ages:
short songs, longer narrative songs, folk songs, songs from stage plays,
professional entertainer's songs, and dance songs. We do not know
how such songs were sung, as the melodies have been lost, and the
meter cannot be reconstructed. But we do know that most were accompanied
by a hand drum or the tapping of a closed fan against the palm
of the hand.
The shirabyoshi and kusemai dancers
Better known to history than are the kugutsu, the shirabyoshi dancers
are represented by many famous names: Shizuka Gozen, Gio, Hotoke,
Iso no Zenji, Ishi, Kamegiku, and so on; yet we understand and can
reconstruct little of their dance art. At the peak of its popularity
during the thirteenth century, it proliferated into various forms and
came to include not only solo but chorus dancing as well.
The unexpected boldness, the soft touch of the erotic, the
poignant - all these qualities in a woman putting on the garb of a
man and dancing, especially electrifying when the items of clothing
belong to her lover - are the elements, I would suggest, that inspired
Zeami, who added death and deranged passion to the formula. The
result was a riveting form of choreographed drama. In the noh play
that bears her name, Matsukaze, in desolate loneliness at having lost
him, puts on the robe and lacquered court hat left behind with her as
a keepsake by her lover Yukihira, now dead. Enclosed in his fragrant
robes, she loses herself in derangement and in dance. In Izutsu, a
46 See ibid., p. 206, for the text of the song.
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53° THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
young woman dons the hat and robes of her lost lover Ariwara no
Narihira and in lonely, grief, dances; the sight of her own reflection
glimpsed on the surface of the water in the well gives her the deranged
joy of believing it is Narihira himself returned. Indeed, her
dance persuades the viewer that she may, in shamanlike fashion, be
possessed by his ghost.
Although it has not been customary to view them so, Zeami's
woman plays should be regarded as a natural evolution of the
shirabyoshi art. Shirabyoshi dancers themselves appear as heroines in
the plays of both Kan'ami (Yoshino Shizuka, for instance) and Zeami
(Futari Shizuka, Futari Gio, Hotoke no hara, and so forth). Indeed,
Zeami's father, Kan'ami Kiyotsugu (1333-84), was famed for his performances
portraying the dancer Shizuka, and Zeami, in his "Three
Elements" treatise of 1423, puts shirabyoshi dancers such as Gio, Gijo,
and Shizuka on the same level of artistic accomplishment as such
Heian-period poetesses as Lady Ise and Ono no Komachi.47
Out of the shirabyoshi dancer's art evolved the kusemai dance, a form
that more fully integrated dance and song. When Kan'ami adapted the
kusemai musical style into his sarugaku noh performance, he revolutionized
it and laid the foundation for the emergence of noh as Zeami later
developed it. Zeami made the famous kusemai dancer, Hyakuman, the
central figure in his play that bears her name.
The label prostitute, however, hangs over the lives of all of these
several types of medieval female artists in a way that it does not in the
lives of male artists who were sometimes also, like Zeami, involved
sexually with their patrons. Shizuka Gozen, for example, the most
outstanding shirabyoshi dancer of her generation at the time of the
Gempei War, is known to us primarily not as an artist but as
Yoshitsune's mistress.48
Yet we would do well to notice that every
major vocal and choreographed genre of literature and music from the
twelfth century on (imayo, kouta, shirabyoshimai, kusemai, enkyoku,
heikyoku, noh, Kowaka bukyoku, etoki, goze-gatari, sekkyo-bushi,
47 Nosakusho, in Hisamatsu Sen'ichi and Nishio Minoru, eds., Karonshu, Nogakuronshu, vol. 65
of Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1961), pp. 470-1. For an English
translation of the whole work, see J. Thomas Rimer and Masakazu Yamazaki, trans., On the
Art of the No Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1984).
48 Not only entertainers and shamans but also merchants and proselytizers - as long as they
were female - were labeled prostitutes at some time in the medieval period. Itinerant merchants
called Kaisurame, women from Katsura who peddled ayu fish in Kyoto; Oharame,
women from Ohara who sold charcoal; Kumano bikuni, nuns from Kumano who performed
painting recitations and raised money for the religious centers on Mount Kumano; uta bikuni,
mendicant singing-nuns; goze, blind hand drum - playing singers of religiosecular narratives none
has escaped the judgment of history that if not overt, then behind the scenes, their real
service was sex.
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AKASHI NO KAKUICHI 531
kojoruri, and, later, senryu, ningyo-joruri, kabuki, and samisen-gafari,)
bears the distinctive marks of the female entertainer.
"Tea, men, and poetry" has a very different ring than does "wine,
women, and song." The first three constitute the main ingredients in
the history of Muromachi Japan as commonly depicted today. Yet the
history of medieval hfe and literature, and indeed of Japanese culture
as we know it today, is inconceivable without the ceremonials and
liberations of sake, the fascinations of female artistry, and the social
bonding of song.
AKASHI NO KAKUICHI
The islands of our small country.
Scattered like grains of millet
At the ends of the earth,
Are poisoned by troubles.
Let me take you away
To paradise, where all is exultation.49
If in our discussions of nuns and shamans, singers and dancers, we
have reviewed cases of historical apathy, inattention, and disregard,
they pale in comparison with the neglect showered on the creator of
Japan's greatest medieval narratives, The Tale of the Heike. On the
twenty-ninth day of the sixth month of 1371, one of the greatest
composer-performers in history died, and yet there are few today who
even know his name. Blind and no doubt sensing that he had little
time left, Akashi no Kakuichi had, three months earlier, dictated to
his chosen disciple, Teiichi, the mammoth libretto of the masterpiece
that had been the life work of his mature years and that he had spent
his last decades perfecting.50
It has not been sufficiently appreciated
49 Kiyomori's widow to her eight-year-old grandson, Emperor Antoku. For the original, see
Takagi Ichinosuke et al., eds., Heike monogatari, vol. 33 of Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1960), p. 438. I have modified Hiroshi Kitamura's and Paul T. Tsuchida's
translation, as found on p. 777 of their complete translation: The Tale of ike Heike (Tokyo:
University of Tokyo Press, 1975).
50 Takagi Ichinosuke et al., eds., Heike monogatari, vols. 32 and 33 of Nihon koten bungaku
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1959-60), pp. 51 and 443, respectively. Data are based on the
okugaki of Kakuichi's text as well as on information recorded in Jorakuki, an anonymous
fifteenth-century historical work. Biographical material on Akashi no Kakuichi can be found
in Takagi et al., eds., Heike monogatari, vol. 32, pp. 5-51; and in Tomikura Tokujiro,
"Akashi no Kakuichi o megutte," Kokugo kokubun 21 (1952): 37-46. The best works in
English on the Heike are by Kenneth Dean Butler. See particularly "The Texual Evolution of
the Heike monogatari," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 26 (1966): 5-51; and "The Heike
monogatari and the Japanese Warrior Ethic," HarvardJournal ofAsiatic Studies 29 (1969): 93-
108. In addition, outstanding scholars of the Heike whose works should not be missed are
Atsumi Kaom and Yamashita Hiroaki. (Helen McCullough's translation appeared after this
chapter was in page proofs.)
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532 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
that no single work of Japanese literature or music has had a greater
impact on subsequent literary genres, theater, and music - indeed on
the Japanese people's very sense of their own past history - than has
Akashi no Kakuichi's Heike monogatari. In the six hundred years since
his death, alterations in his libretto have been small and subtle, not
unlike the changes that conductors and soloists today make in a composer's
work. In effect, with Kakuichi, the Heike was completed. Yet
today his great achievement as a national bard is relegated largely to
footnotes. I speak here not of cultural disappearance but of historical
neglect. The very popularity of Kakuichi's Heike as a musical art
meant that during the middle ages it lay outside the normal purview of
elite scholars, whose interests centered on written canon designed for
reading and poetic study. Only after the Heike was published during
the Edo period as history to be read was it considered an appropriate
subject of scholarly examination. And not until the twentieth century
was it treated as literature, the only masterwork of classical literature
to have been ignored academically so long and to have been accepted
as a masterpiece so late.
Kakuichi's Heike is an oratoriolike work made up of some 182
cantatas for solo bass voice and biwa accompaniment, each lasting for
thirty to forty minutes. Its subject is the conditions leading up to and
following the cataclysmic Gempei War between the Genji and Heike
clans. It recounts the rise to glory and then the decline and fall and
eventual annihilation of the Taira, the clan known as Heike. It sings of
the political maneuvering and subsequent rise of the Heike leader
Kiyomori (1118-81); his arrogance and obliviousness to criticism; his
clan's bloody battles with their rough, east-country rivals, the Minamoto
clan, called Genji; and the lives of the men and women who
witnessed, and were caught up in, the havoc wrought by the pride and
vainglorious ambition of the powerful.
No one was unaffected by the battles. The Gempei Wars shocked
the nobility, cracked the social structure, disrupted normal agricultural
and commercial life, tore apart families on all levels of society,
and left whole segments of the country widowed, orphaned, or disabled
by the loss of economic support or normal employment. The
downfall of the Heike was everyone's history. As the generations
passed, however, it could have become mere history had not two
things happened. First, the wars of the 1330s divided the imperial
reign into two rival courts and brought the downfall of the shogunate
that had been established by the victors of the Gempei War. The old
story of the fall of the Heike thus gained a freshness and new relevance.
Second, Akashi no Kakuichi's great genius transformed the
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AKASHI NO KAKUICHI 533
story into art. Kakuichi's Heike sang so movingly about the Gempei
War that it became the war with which all subsequent wars were
compared. It brought both recognition and perspective to the present.
Though tradition assigns the Heike to the genre of war tales, the
work is so far superior in conception, scope, and quality to all others
in that category that it is better thought of as a unique work. Nor
should it be described, as it so often is, as a work representative of or
belonging to the warrior classes. Kakuichi grasped the essential quality
of the terrifying historical event about which he sang: its generic
nature, its universality, and its metaphorical meaning for all Japanese.
Yet he also knew the inherent power the story had to bring
healing, even beatification. His Heike was not mere narrative; it was
liturgy, sung before audiences when such liturgy was deeply needed.
The incantations abolished time. Its ritual retelling united hearers,
pulling them into participation in the past, causing them to "remember"
things they had never experienced at first hand. It is fair to say
that the power of Kakuichi's great composition was such that it did
not preserve the past but, rather, replaced it with a redesigned collective
memory.
Scholars generally agree that the first version of Heike monogatari
was written between 1219 and 1222 by Nakayama (Hamuro) no
Yukitaka's son, Yukinaga (born around 1164), a minor court noble
who became a monk in 1218. Unfortunately, this Heike monogatari has
been lost, though several subsequent texts have survived.
One of Kakuichi's great achievements was to purge earlier, more
primitive versions of the narrative of much of their partisan defense of
ancestors and their oppressive sermonizing. The Buddhistic themes
and motifs that resound in his version give the work a reassuring
quality, a serenity and universality. Kakuichi attempts neither to glamorize
nor to vilify: The great oratorio is on the side of all those who fell
and died.
One thousand or more people make their appearance in Kakuichi's
Heike. Some pass through quickly, but others have names that to this
day, owing to the work's influence on Japan's society and its performing
arts, stir the hearts of all Japanese. Gio, Kumagai, Sanemori,
Tomoe, Atsumori, Nasu no Yoichi, Yoshitsune, Benkei, Shizuka,
Koremori, Kenreimonin: These names are beloved; they are Japan's
heroes and heroines of the past, not because they can be read about in
history (though of course most can), but because Kakuichi's Heike
thrust them into the mainstream of myth and somehow sanctified
them.
The historical truth of Kakuichi's Heike lies also in its inclusiveness.
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534 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
Labeled as a war tale, described as a story of the rise and fall of men, it
is fundamentally a tale about women. Although Kakuichi's version
supplements history by giving mythicofictional flesh to the bones of
historical men, he has also done something even more extraordinary.
Threading their stories throughout the work like beads on a rosary, he
has framed the entire Heike with the victorious salvation of women.
The chord is struck in the opening movement by the work's longest
single canto, which recounts the tragedy of Kiyomori's hetaera, the
professional shirabyoshi dancer Gio. Her downfall is Kakuichi's first
restatement of the major theme of impermanence that was announced
in the prelude's opening stanzas.
The Gio canto, too, with the tonsures of Gio, her mother, sister, and
her rival Hotoke, contains the first sounding of the salvation motif in a
work that offers intricate variations on that theme. Kakuichi concludes
the Heike with the nun Kenreimonin, her tonsure, her retreat
to the Jakkoin cloister, the visit there of the ex-emperor, and her story
and confession. Kakuichi's finale presents the fall of the Heike indeed
all that has come to pass - through this guiltless yet haunted
woman's eyes. It was her voice that spoke for the age. It is as if the
whole fall of the Heike, and indeed of humankind is subsumed into
her pain:
Verily, all this
That came to pass
Before my very eyes
Has been none other than
A complete turning of the eternal wheel The
Six Realms of sentient pain.5
'
In the end there is salvation for the "mother of the nation" and her
two attendants. The imagery of the three women is reminiscent of
Amida and his two attendants, Kannon and Seishi. So powerful are
the five concluding movements that make up thefinalethat it has been
customary for a master to burn incense when teaching this canto to a
student.52
In many ways, despite their different traditions and the fact that
Akashi no Kakuichi lived almost four centuries earlier, the role he
played in Japanese culture was not unlike that of Johann Sebastian
Bach (1685-1750) in the Western tradition. Both men lived in an
environment of sacred music. They began by following those tradi-
51 Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 33, p. 439.
52 Kindaichi Haruhiko, "Heikyoku - sono rekishi to ongaku," in Heike monogatari, vol. 9 of
Zusetsu Nikon no koien (Tokyo, Shuseisha, I98o),.p. 11.
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AKASHI NO KAKUICHI 535
tions but in the end went further, to creative choice. They also were
exposed to the several secular and folk-music traditions within traveling
distance of their homes. Both were professional music makers,
for hire, who arranged and performed for a living. Although the
perspective of time permits us now to view each as the founder of the
musical tradition that flowed from their genius, in their own periods
they were admired primarily as outstanding performers, Kakuichi as
a virtuoso bard playing the biwa, Bach on the organ. Both men
appeared at propitious moments in time when their genius could
flower; both were men of great conceptual talent. Able to survey and
bring together the principal styles and regional manifestations of
music and vocalized texts that had developed before them, they enriched
them all in a synthesis that set the future direction of their
national traditions.
The biv/a-priests
Because it was the occupation to which Kakuichi turned to make a
living after he lost his sight, the profession of biwa-playing narrative
singers that nurtured the evolution of the Heike texts deserves a brief
note here. The biwa-priests (biwa-hoshi) were engaged in a service
profession whose origins lie in the obscurities of early history.53
They
seem to have begun by performing rituals to placate unsettled spirits
attached to home or village, during which the plucking and striking of
the strident-sounding lutelike instrument, the biwa, played an important
role. Its sound was believed to reach across to the spirit world and
dissipate malignant forces (much as was the sounding of the string of
an archer's bow in other shamanistic connections).
Numerous medieval picture scrolls show biwa-priests. Their casual
appearance as part of the scenery must be taken as representative of
their ubiquitous presence in medieval Japanese life. The depictions
imply an itinerant existence on the edges of poverty. Invariably, biwapriests
are portrayed as blind, a misfortune attributed in those days to
karmic hindrances originating in a previous existence. Blindness was
certainly lamented, but it was also perceived as a sort of fortunate early
warning that in this life one should at once occupy oneself with activities
conducive to improved karma and salvation, or rebirth in paradise,
depending on doctrinal proclivities. The biwa-priests' exorcistic
53 Barbara Ruch, "Medieval Jongleurs and the Making of a National Literature," in John W.
Hall and Takeshi Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1977), pp. 279-309.
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536 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
services, though surely intended to accumulate merit for themselves,
also provided spiritual service to a society that universally embraced a
belief in onryo, malignant spirits of the dead.
We do not know when or how biwa-priests changed from being
purely exorcistic mediums who chanted incantations and played the
biwa to being artist-performers of vocal narratives. Their function
both as local exorcists and eventually as chanters of sacred liturgies
over the dead on battlefields provided a natural background from
which might evolve the intoning of accounts of the last moments of the
dead and finally longer tales about these battles themselves. At least by
the tenth century, ira>a-priests who chanted narratives were noted as
mendicant street entertainers, though what they chanted we do not
know.
By the eleventh century there were at least two main strains of biwapriests.
One type, active especially in Kyushu and eastern Japan,
followed the troops and sang battle tales. The other type was attached
to temples, mostly around Kyoto, where they sang Buddhist pieces to
small audiences.
After the Gempei War many of the battle singers seem to have
gathered at Shoshazan, a Buddhist monastic center in Harima Province,
west of the capital. Composed of several temples related to the
Tendai sect, Shoshazan was an enclave where interest in the composition
of vocal narratives flourished and whose library would have contained
materials relevant to historic and religious accounts. A veritable
melting pot for different strains of chanting and instrumentalizing and
for tales from the widely separated battlefield regions from northeast
to southwest, the Shoshazan environment played a vital role in the
evolution of early versions of the Heike. It was also the monastery
where Kakuichi himself studied and where, after he lost his sight, he
trained to be a fciwa-priest.
During the same period in Heike history, temple priests in Kyoto
had begun to introduce canticles from other circulating Heike accounts
into their own singing, in which history was made an example and the
powers of Buddhism were offered as the answer to history's woes.
It is into this milieu that Kakuichi was born, a man who rose from
•the ranks of a thousand nameless composer-performers to become
bard to a whole nation. But his life remains mostly mystery. Because
he died in 1371 and was at that time over seventy, we may assume that
he was born shortly after Mugai Nyodai died, sometime around 1300.
We do not know his secular name, though records indicate that he was
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AKASHI NO KAKUICHI 537
referred to as Akashi-dono.54
Nor do we know the priestly name he
used when, at a fairly youthful age, he became a monk at Shoshazan,
which was located in the mountains not far from Akashi. Known as
"the western Mount Hiei," Shoshazan attracted traveling monks from
throughout Japan. Judging from the later quality of his literary and
musical genius, Kakuichi obtained a good liturgical and musical education
there. In addition to scriptural study, he probably also learned the
Shoshazan-style of Tendai shomyo, or liturgical vocal music for the
incantation of scriptural texts, as well as a rather fast-paced rhythmical
method of reading sutras, then considered a Shoshazan specialty. He
was surely also familiar with certain styles of enkyoku, or Buddhist
festive melodies, a kind of rhythmic prose song enjoyed by priests in a
party environment at the end of important religious services. Somehow
he also learned the songs called imayo, of the sort Otomae had in
her repertory, as he incorporated them into the Heike.
We have no way to resurrect the melodies or rhythms or the preferred
vocal timbres of these various works, as the system used at the time to
record them constituted merely signs to indicate relative durations and
the general direction of melodic line; music was learned orally by imitating
a teacher. We can only hope that the conservative nature of religious
forms of music makes it possible to hear echoes of the past in the present
forms of Tendai shomyo and in the vocalization of such performing arts
as noh that were influenced by early Buddhist music.
After studying at Shoshazan for some years, Kakuichi lost his eyesight
while he was still fairly young - no later than his early thirties under
circumstances that cannot be reconstructed at the present
time.55
For a priest in a scholarly center where sacred texts were
central to life's daily activities, the blow must have been great. Nonetheless,
Shoshazan was also a gathering place for fo'zua-priests; that
Kakuichi had readily available such a creative option to turn to and
that there were musician-chanters at Shoshazan under whom to study,
was a momentous confluence of circumstances and a turning point in
Japanese cultural history.
While still a Shoshazan, Kakuichi learned how to perform an early
version of the Heike, now called the Kamakura-fton Heike, that most
likely had been created by &ia>a-playing priests there when he was still
a child. In effect, it was a kind of Shoshazan Heike. After learning to
54 According to the fourteenth-century Heike kammon roku, quoted by Tomikura Tokujiro,
Heike monogatari kenkyu (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1967), p. 283.
55 From the Saikai yoieki shu, quoted by Tomikura, "Akashi no Kakuichi," p. 39.
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538 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
perform it, Kakuichi left Shoshazan and moved to Kyoto, probably in
the 1330s. Despite the political turbulence, Kyoto was a good place for
afo'zua-priestto make a living. The best talent was there, and audiences
were readily available.
Kakuichi may have been urged to come to Kyoto by Joichi, a biwapriest
from Kyushu who had spent some time at Shoshazan; they
might have become acquainted there. By about this time Joichi had
become the most famous reciter in Kyoto of what is now called the
Yashiro-ion Heike, one of the earliest extant reciter's versions. He
must have been a talented innovator as well, as he and his associates
were responsible for creating sometime before 1340 what is now called
the Chikuhakuen-ion version.
Although he planned to make a living in Kyoto performing his
Shoshazan Heike, Kakuichi nonetheless apprenticed himself to Joichi,
which means he soon became familiar with at least the two other Heike
compositions performed by his teacher. The association must have
been a felicitous one for the two talented men, as both were interested
in innovative composition and performance techniques. It is around
this time that Joichi and Kakuichi, with one or two others, took the
character ichi (first) as part of their names, a step that indicates an
important bond.
Kakuichi's talent flowered. Soon the new "Kakuichi variations"
were mentioned in diaries, and his name began to dominate the Kyoto
scene. In 1340, Nakahara no Moromori recorded his attendance at a
Heike recital by Kakuichi and stated that it was a "different form" of
the work.56
Moromori must have enjoyed it, as from then on until
1362 he attended numerous recitals of this new Kakuichi Heike. Recitals
were held throughout the city, largely at such shrines or temples as
the Rokujo Mido, the Yata Jizo Hall, the Yakushi Hall at the corner of
Gojo and Takakura, and the Kitano Tenjin shrine.
By this time Kakuichi had attracted students. In the chronicle
Taiheiki, written when Kakuichi was quite elderly, there is an account
of Kakuichi and another 2>m>a-priest, Shin'ichi, being called to the
bedside of Musashi no kami Ko no Moronao (d. 1351), who was then
greatly distracted from his discomfort by their performance of the
Heike canto concerning, appropriately, a terrible night spirit called
nue. Several nue had made an emperor ill until they were shot out of
56 Quoted from Moromori's diary, Shishuki, by Takagi et al., eds., Heike monogatari, vol. 32, p.
50; and Tomikura, Heike, p. 284.
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AKASHI NO KAKUICHI 539
the sky; thereupon the emperor's possession was broken, and he was
restored to health.
The biwa-priests' performance before Moronao is described as a
tsure-Heike, which seems to have been an intricate style of duet performance
in which the elder Kakuichi vocalized the bass lines and the
somewhat younger Shin'ichi the higher tenor lines. It is likely that
tsure indicates an antiphonic rather than a harmonic arrangement, but
because both men were by this time highly ranked fcm>a-priests, this
must have been a virtuoso performance.
During Kakuichi's years in Kyoto, or at least by 1340, the biwapriests
had formed a guild and had established ranks of kengyo, betto,
koto, and zato, the last and lowest coming to refer in later years to any
blind person with a shaved head in a low-level entertainment or service
job. From 1363 on, Kakuichi was referred to as kengyo, and he was
probably soon thereafter made sokengyo or "head kengyo," master of
the entire guild, a rank he kept until his death.57
Kakuichi had at least four major disciples and was the main force in
the establishment of the Ichikata style, or school of Heike performers,
all of whom took the character ichi in their names and were singers of
Kakuichi's Heike. For one hundred years after his death, Kakuichi's
Heike was the principal Heike and represented one of the mainstays of
the country's common culture. A rival style, the Jokata (or Yasaka)
school, which was using the Yashiro version of the Heike that Joichi
had once used, was no match. Although it survived for some generations,
it had virtually disappeared by the end of the Muromachi period.
Written librettos of the Yashiro and the Kamakura variations
once used by Kakuichi dropped out of sight at around the same time
and were not rediscovered until the twentieth century.
Other battle tales such as the Hbgen monogatari and Heiji monogatari
had been a part of the repertory of some 6m>a-priests up to Kakuichi's
time, but by the late fourteenth century, Hogen and Heiji had been
dropped, and Kakuichi's Heike dominated all else.
Before, during, and after the Onin War in the fifteenth century,
Kakuichi's disciples and their descendants flourished. Public performances
of the Heike were often held as fund-raising activities for
shrines and temples. The most famous biwa-priests played at court
and before shoguns, and itinerant performers traveled the length of
the nation. In 1462, it was estimated that five hundred to six hundred
57 Tomikura, Heike, pp. 282-3, 287.
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54O THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
biwa-priests were active in Kyoto alone.58
It is doubtful that all of
them were capable of performing Kakuichi's mammoth, complex masterpiece.
Rather, according to contemporary records, the biwa-pncsts'
repertories included other types of storytelling as well as the singing
of the popular kouta, or "small song." Nonetheless, the popularity of
Kakuichi's work is reflected in the greatly increased numbers of
performer-disciples associated directly with it.
After Kakuichi's death, however, a new genre became popular:
choreographed narratives such as noh and Kowaka max, both of whose
subjects drew on Kakuichi's vocal narrative. Indeed, Kakuichi supplied
Zeami with a cast of men and women characters of enormous
power and aesthetic potential. Zeami himself revealed the awe with
which he held Kakuichi's masterpiece: "In warrior plays, when it
comes to the depiction of famous Genji and Heike warriors, we must
without fail write the script in absolute faithfulness to the Heike
monogatari."59
Indeed, without Kakuichi's and his disciples' achievements,
the appearance of such narrative works as Taiheiki, Soga
monogatari, and Gikeiki is inconceivable.
Kakuichi had created the national myths. Yet in the face of intense
competition from narrative forms with visual choreographed effects,
the Heike priests faltered. Their revival in the Momoyama period had a
kind of antiquarian interest (Kakuichi's Heike was by then viewed as an
old national classic), and they never succeeded in taking center stage
again. Although the Heike performers tried innovations - in 1598, for
example, seven outstandingfcm>a-priestsgave a "choral" performance
of the Heike60
- these could not compete with the more visually spectacular
performing arts then fashionable. With the general burgeoning
of the printing industry during the Edo period, Kakuichi's Heike circulated,
with Momoyama-period revisions, as a reading text. It was at this
time that the term heikyoku first came into usage, to distinguish the
vocal composition from the new book-for-reading.
A definitive blow was struck in 1871, ironically marking the fivehundredth
anniversary of Kakuichi's death: The government sponsorship
and protection of guilds of blind biwa-players as preservers of a
national tradition ended in the flush of "modernization" and "Westernization."
Kakuichi's Heike was mortally wounded. Practitioners
58 Naramoto Tatsuya and Hayashiya Tatsusaburo, eds., Kyoto no rekishi (Tokyo: Gakugei
shorin, 1968), vol. 3, p. 666.
59 Nosakusho, in Hisamatsu and Nishio, eds., Karonshu, Nogakuronshu, p. 475.
60 Tomikura Tokujiro, Shintei Heike monogatari, vol. 1 of Nikon koten zenshu (Tokyo: Asahi
shimbunsha, 1984), p. 75.
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CONCLUSION 541
sank into poverty and could not attract enough new disciples to earn a
living; most scattered to the few alternative occupations open to the
blind.61
The Tale of the Heike represents the first and surely the finest articulation
of Japan's earliest truly nationwide catastrophe and is a compendium
of religious, aesthetic, ethical, and psychological responses to it
as intuited by Kakuichi. To accounts of battles he added details of
heroic action that are entirely fictitious, thereby synthesizing a national
ethic and creating a national myth.62
No other work before it
spoke of or to such a broad spectrum of people. Carried from one end
of the country to the other and performed by religiosecular jongleurs,
the Heike addressed men and women on all levels of society in all
localities. Indeed, another of Kakuichi's important additions to the
earlier Heike versions was his accounts of the great temples of Nara and
Koya and of the sacred sites of Itsukushima, Chikubushima, and
Kumano, through which these sacred sites left sectarian history and
became national monuments.
Kakuichi succeeded where the writers of such Western medieval
epics as Beowulf, The Poem ofCid, or the Song of Roland did not. The
events and personalities he crafted inspired hundreds of later literary
works in every conceivable genre, from noh drama to Kowaka
bukyoku; kojoruri; otogizoshi; Meiji, Taisho, and Showa novels; and
modern cinema. They are alive today as the central national myth of
Japanese society.
CONCLUSION
Gekokujo ("inferior overthrows superior") is a favorite term of Japanese
historians,63
and among twentieth-century scholars it has become
the fashion to call the late middle ages, especially the post-Onin War
61 There are still surviving two or three conservators - chiefly in Sendai and Nagoya - who are
preserving Kakuichi's living Heike and are recording parts of it. For example, Nippon
Columbia cassette tape CAY-9040 {Heike biwd), "Gion shoja" and "Yokobue"; Nippon Columbia
record AL-5046 {Heike biwa), "Gion shoja" and "Kogo"; and Philips (Nippon
Phonogram Co.) PH-7511-2 {Heike Biwa), "Chikubushima mode," "Nasu no Yoichi," and
"Susuki."
62 The Heike provided a model for personal conduct in war throughout the middle ages and even
well into the twentieth century. The process whereby such ethical concepts as loyalty, sacrifice,
and honor were incorporated into Kakuichi's Heike is discussed in Butler, "The Heike
monogatari and the Japanese Warrior Ethic."
63 The concept came from China in the Book of Changes, which describes each of the five
elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) as capable of overpowering one of the others. In
human relations as well, nature had ordained similar powers of control for lord over vassal,
husband over wife, and the like, and any reversal was a dangerous aberration.
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542 THE OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE
years, the age of gekokujo. Yet the rise of ordinary persons to economic
consequence and political effectiveness in the fourteenth or fifteenth
century cannot be explained in such simplistic terms as the rise and
fall or overturn of classes. Furthermore, in writing the history of
culture, we must keep in mind that culture is not benign. It is passionate
and irrational and is based on deeply feh choices. Beyond individual
eccentricity and class, common national preferences spring from
shared social ritual, and for the medieval Japanese the central rituals
were classless: the tonsure, pilgrimage and travel, wine and song, rites
to activate good and nullify evil forces, communication with the spirits
of the dead, and rituals to ensure an afterlife in paradise or beyond the
pain of this life.
Concepts such as yugen and sabi, said to characterize Muromachiperiod
arts and literature, play no role at a?l in the common arts of
painting, sculpture, song, dance, and musical epic that we have been
discussing. Those values belong to an extremely limited world, to
rarefied pockets of society. But the elements that can be found everywhere,
in those same rarefied enclaves as well as in the world outside,
include attitudes, values, and conceptions characteristic of the popular
songs and narratives discussed earlier. Such basic life attitudes
emerged and coalesced during the middle ages; they were transmitted
nationwide and have never left Japanese society to this day.
The list is long and could be easily expanded: gense no go-riyaku (a
focus on the present world with a belief in the personal compassion
and efficacy of deities in this life), akirame (a sense of security in
resignation), the need for shugyo (a belief that suffering is normal and
necessary, that one must drive oneself to the point of suffering for any
good to emerge), the compulsion for tabi or mode (an obsession with
travel coupled with a sense of its inevitable discomfort that makes it
akin to shugyo, yet with a deep appreciation of its liberating qualities),
hogan biki (a sympathy for the underdog, altered in the face of
twentieth-century pressures and practicality to a distaste for the very
powerful or the sure winner), seijitsu (an admiration for the impetuously
sincere act despite any irrational outcome), gisei (a deep sense of
self-worth and even pleasure in sometimes devastating selfsuppression,
a complete confidence that happiness or salvation can lie
in a sublimated existence), shi (a belief that sometimes death is a ready,
necessary, and socially accepted alternative), and shugen (a belief in the
talismanic power of felicitous words to move both the gods and one's
fellows to good effect). These are but a few of the major values and
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CONCLUSION 543
attitudes of medieval Japan, classless, and rendered national through
the social rituals of song, dance, festival, and vocalized myth.
The men and women, the images that here have been drawn from the
unheeded other side of history - the other side of gender, work, faith,
and national image - all add up to a medieval society that is passionate
and practical and brazen, a far cry from the subdued and reticent elegance
of the elite ideal. The shared national heritage certainly included
a courtier past. In the popular mind, the age of Genji was a vision of the
nation's artistic accomplishment; yet it was all the more treasured because
it was both greatly idealized and wholly irretrievable.
If we leave these pages having categorized Mugai Nyodai as woman
or nun, Saru Genji as fisherman or merchant, or Akashi no Kakuichi
as blind priest and national bard, we will have merely substituted
classification for meaning. Though orthodox constituents of the social
structure, these men and women, like shamans, have traditionally
been excised from the pages of official history. Because they were
perceived as existing outside the processes of power, the notion was
that they therefore could not have been important to the nation's past.
Japan has not one past, however, but many pasts, all of which are
indispensable to the public whole and all of which contributed to
society and culture. Our emphasis here on recovering lost histories of
neglected groups is not advocacy of further segmenting scholarship
but, rather, a suggestion that our search for the larger synthetic patterns
in cultural history will fail if half the lights are out. When our
history matures, it will thus be the interrelationships of all these
groups in the formulation of Japanese culture that will be the object of
our best analyses.
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CHAPTER 12
BUDDHISM IN THE KAMAKURA
PERIOD
INTRODUCTION
Buddhism has had a long and illustrious history in Japan, but it was in
the Kamakura period that Buddhism in Japan came into full flower.
The forms of Buddhism that emerged at that time - Pure Land, Zen,
and Nichiren - were largely responsible for the dissemination of Buddhist
beliefs and practices throughout Japanese society. The success of
this movement lay in tailoring the ideas and goals of Buddhism to the
concerns of the populace at large. Hence, Kamakura Buddhism, as the
entire religious movement is called, has left an indelible mark on
Japanese history and has made Buddhism a lasting and pervasive component
of Japanese culture.
Buddhism originated in India and spread to China about four centuries
after the time of the historical Buddha Sakyamuni (ca. fifth to
fourth century, B.C.). It was transmitted to Japan from China via the
Korean peninsula around the middle of the sixth century.1
The cultural
gulf that existed at that time between Japan on the one hand and China
and Korea on the other was considerable. Japan's ruling class accepted
Buddhism as the embodiment of an advanced and superior civilization,
and in order to gain control over the concepts and technology that
Buddhism brought to Japan, the elite provided a succession of large
temples where Buddhism could put down roots. A community of
priests supported by the state and the aristocracy belonged to each of
these temples. The priests pursued activities in a variety offields:They
learned how to read the Chinese version of the Buddhist scriptures that
had been translated from Sanskrit; they became experts in engineering,
architecture, and medicine - fields of knowledge that were concentrated
in the temples - and they performed the various ceremonies
and prayers requested by the imperial court and the aristocracy for
i Nikon shoki, in Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 68 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1957-67), p. 100.
Hereafter Nihon koten bungaku taikei is cited as NKBT.
544
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INTRODUCTION 545
their spiritual and material well-being. As temples became better organized
and acquired control over vast estates (shoen), their operation
became more complex and internal power struggles more prevalent.
Japan absorbed Buddhism as a comprehensive and advanced cultural
medium from the outside but did not, at first, give substantial
weight to its religious concerns per se. Three centuries after Buddhism's
arrival, however, around the middle of the Nara period, there
was an awakening to Buddhism's actual teachings. Priests became
more and more involved in specifically religious activities. Some withdrew
from the temples and secluded themselves in mountainous regions,
proselytizing among the common people.2
At the popular level, various types of beliefs and practices with
indigenous Japanese roots circulated among the people, and among
them, the priests who left the temples gradually found a receptive
audience for their teachings. The Buddhism that they introduced into
these circles contained more sophisticated doctrines and more refined
rituals than the native traditions did. Buddhism was thus used to give
greater form and expression to Japan's simpler folk beliefs and practices.
The kami, or indigenous deities, were explained using Buddhist
doctrines, and the native practices were further ritualized through
contact with Buddhism.
From late in the tenth century, aristocratic society in Japan started
to become stagnant and closed. Important government positions were
monopolized by a few families, and many aristocrats and members of
the literati could not find positions appropriate to their skills, even
when they possessed superior ability and extensive knowledge. Individuals
frustrated by this situation began to show greater interest in
Buddhism. They were attracted to its teaching of the relative and
conditional nature of this world and to its goal of transcending it. They
studied Buddhism's complex doctrines, which up to that time had
been the exclusive pursuit of scholar-priests. Aristocrats and the literati
sought out priests to lecture on the scriptures, particularly priests
active outside the temples. These events paved the way for
Kamakura's new movements to appear in Buddhist history.
During this period a number of large temples had close ties with
aristocratic society through the religious ceremonies they performed
on its behalf. Among them were the Enryakuji on Mount Hiei and the
Todaiji and the Kofukuji of Nara, all major centers of Buddhist learn-
2 One example of these priests is Gyoki, described in the Shoku Nihongi, in Kokushi taikei, vol. 2
(Tokyo: Yoshikuwa kobunkan, 1929-64), pp. 68-69. Hereafter Kokushi laikei is cited as KT.
Other examples can be found in the Nihon ryoiki, NKBT, vol. 70.
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546 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
ing. The temples of Nara preserved the orthodox teachings of the
Kegon and the Hosso schools, whereas Mount Hiei preserved the
teachings of the Tendai school. Mount Hiei also became a center for
the formulation of the new doctrines that popularized Buddhism
throughout Japan. The priests who established ties with the aristocracy
and literati in Kyoto were also those living at Mount Hiei or in its
vicinity. Among them, there arose a tendency to interpret Buddhism
not in a scholarly vein but, rather, in subjective religious terms. As
beliefs and practices spread among the aristocrats, the stage was set for
the emergence of Kamakura's revolutionary Buddhist movements.
From the end of the twelfth century through the middle of the
thirteenth - that is, in the first half of the Kamakura period - some of
Japan's foremost religious figures appeared, in quick succession. The
schools of Buddhism that today claim them as their founders have long
had considerable influence in Japan. From their inception in the
Kamakura period, these schools stood as a separate religious movement
from the eight schools that existed before them. These new
schools came to be known collectively as Kamakura Buddhism. The
establishment of Kamakura Buddhism was a pivotal event in Japanese
history, because through it Buddhism was adapted to Japanese ways
and thus made accessible to the common people.
THE ORIGINATORS OF KAMAKURA BUDDHISM
Honen and Shinran
Kamakura Buddhism criticized the formalism of the Buddhist establishment
of its day and instead emphasized belief and practice.3
The
person at the forefront of this new movement was Honen (1133-
1212).4
He was born in the province of Mimasaka (present-day
Okayama Prefecture), and while still a child, he lost his father in a
local political dispute. As a result of that experience, Honen was
moved to enter the Buddhist clergy as a novice. Some years later he
went to Mount Hiei to receive intensive religious training. During
Honen's lifetime, one of the few ways for people from the provinces to
penetrate Japan's elite intellectual circles was to become a priest. This
3 Scholars since the Meiji period have frequently compared the new Buddhism of Kamakura
Japan to the Christian Reformation of Europe. See, for examples, Hara Katsuro, "Tozai no
shukyo kaikaku," in Nihon chuseishi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Dobunkan, 1929), pp. 304-21; and
Matsumoto Hikojiro, Nikon bunka shiron (Tokyo: Kawade shobo, 1942).
4 Concerning Honen's life, see Tamura Encho, Honen (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1959); and
Bukkyo daigaku, ed., Honen Shonin kenkyu (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1961).
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THE ORIGINATORS OF KAMAKURA BUDDHISM 547
is precisely the route that Honen took. He went to Mount Hiei and
received training first in Tendai doctrine. Later he took as his teacher
a priest named Eiku (d. 1179), who had distanced himself from the
mainstream of Mount Hiei's religious organization. Honen followed
Eiku's example of withdrawing from Mount Hiei's political entanglements
and secluding himself on a remote part of the mountain for
study and religious training. Under Eiku, Honen studied the Buddhist
scriptures and doctrinal treatises. For a time he concentrated on the
Vinaya, containing the rules of conduct for Buddhist clergy, and he
began to reflect on what it meant to be a priest. He also read the
Ojoyoshu by Genshin (942-1017), which exposed him to the Pure
Land teachings that the Tendai school had integrated into its religious
system.5
In addition, Honen traveled to Nara and received instruction
in the doctrines of Hosso and the other philosophies of Nara Buddhism.
In short, Honen received a classical education in the teachings
of the established Buddhist schools.
In 1175, after thirty years on Mount Hiei, Honen happened to read
the Kuan ching shu, a commentary by the Chinese master Shan-tao
(613-81) on the Pure Land Meditation Sutra (Kanmuryojukyo).6
Honen also had a revelatory vision of Shan-tao, and as a result of this
experience, he began to expound the doctrine of the "exclusive
nembutsu" (senju nembutsu). Shan-tao, who formulated his teachings in
seventh-century China, advocated the practice of intoning Amida Buddha's
name in the form "I take refuge in the Buddha Amida." This
practice, known in Japan as the nembutsu, was emphasized even more
by Honen as the single and exclusive act leading to enlightenment in
Amida's resplendent and transcendent realm called the Pure Land.
The basic scripture describing Amida and his Pure Land paradise
is the Larger Pure Land Sutra (Muryojukyo). According to this scripture,
Amida framed forty-eight vows in a previous lifetime when he
was living as the ascetic monk Hozo, before becoming a Buddha. He
phrased the vows in such a way as to make their fulfillment a condition
for his own enlightenment and Buddhahood.7
In the eighteenth
5 Ojoyoshu, in Genshin, Nikon shiso taikei, vol. 6 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970-82), pp. 9-322,
is the most representative work of Pure Land beliefs and practices in the Heian period. It was
written in 985 by the Tendai priest Genshin, on Mount Hiei. Hereafter, Nihon shiso taikei is
cited as NST.
6 Kuan ching shu, in Taisho shinshu daizaokyo, vol. 37 (Tokyo: Taisho shinshu daizokyo
kankokai, 1924-32), pp. 245-78. Hereafter Taisho shinshu daizokyo is cited as TD. For the
Pure Land Meditation Sutra itself, see Kanmuryojukyo, TD, vol. 12, pp. 340-6. Shan-tao was
the foremost Pure Land thinker in China during the T'ang period and was very active in Pure
Land proselytization. 7 Muryojukyo, TD, vol. 12, pp. 267-9.
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548 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
vow, known as the principal vow (hongan), he stated that everyone
who invokes his name will be born in their next lifetime in the Pure
Land.8
The scripture stated that in fact the monk Hozo had achieved
Buddhahood as Amida and that the Pure Land he created now exists.
Consequently, Honen believed that anyone intoning Amida's
name is assured of birth in that paradise after death in this worid.9
Amida Buddha shows no partiality in welcoming human beings into
his Pure Land. Thus, what binds them to Amida must be an act that
can be performed by any person. Honen considered the spoken
nembutsu - that is, uttering the name of Amida Buddha - to be that
very act.10
Honen believed that among Buddhism's innumerable religious practices,
nembutsu could be singled out as the simplest and most efficacious
one.11
Therefore, it is the most fundamental Buddhist practice of
the present age, and it stands in perfect accord with the essence of
Buddhism. This was an epoch-making teaching in Japan, because for
the first time Buddhism's path of salvation was opened to people
without specialized religious training or discipline. When Honen left
Mount Hiei and began to expound this new teaching in Kyoto, he
attracted the interest of many people, but he also elicited doctrinal
criticism from Buddhist authorities. In an attempt to defend himself,
Honen presented a doctrinal systematization of his own, in his irrgnum
opus, the Senjakushu.12
In this work, written for the benefit of
those aristocrats who had accepted his ideas, Honen indicated why it
was essential to adopt the Pure Land teachings: Through them one is
drawn in faith to Amida Buddha's principal vow, which will deliver all
people into the Pure Land. One is inspired to intone Amida's name
because one is the beneficiary of his compassion. Honen maintained
that if these points are understood, then none of Buddhism's other
doctrines will be necessary.13
Honen's assertions were based on the pessimistic assumption that
the human beings in his time were mired in foolishness and wrongdoings.
A time long ago, he believed, humans were capable of attaining
Buddhahood through their own efforts, but in the present age that is
8 Ibid., p. 268.
9 Muryojukyoshaku, in Honen Ippen, NST, vol. 10, p. 50.
10 Senjaku hongan nembuisushu, in Honen Ippen, NST, vol. io, pp. 94-100.
11 Ibid., pp. 101-9; and Ichimai kishomon, in Kana hogoshu, NKBT, vol. 83, p. 53.
12 The full title of this work is Senjaku hongan nembutsushu. For standard editions of the text, see
Honen Ippen, NST, vol. 10, pp. 87-162; and TD, vol. 83, pp. 1-20. Honen composed the
work in 1199.
13 Senjaku hongan nembutsushu, in Honen Ippen, NST, vol. 10, pp. 103-5.
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THE ORIGINATORS OF KAMAKURA BUDDHISM 549
no longer possible, as Sakyamuni Buddha's time has long passed.14
This kind of pessimism emerged in Japan around the mid-Heian period,
based on a sober introspective view of the human condition.
Aristocrats and the literati tended more and more to perceive human
existence in its actual state rather than in the idealized form for which
humans were supposed to strive. Various literary works produced in
the Heian period echo these sentiments, including Japanese poetry
(waka), diaries (nikki), and narratives (monogatari).15
Honen carried
this introspective view of the human condition one step further. He
moved from human foolishness and wrongdoing to Amida Buddha's
perfection and all-pervading compassion. In perceiving the dramatic
gulf between the two, Honen concluded that total reliance on Amida
was the only hope for humans in the present age.
Shinran (1173-1262) inherited Honen's teachings and developed them
even further.16
A member of the lower aristocracy, Shinran was probably
born in Kyoto. Like Honen, he became a monk at a young age. He
spent some twenty years of his life on Mount Hiei but found unsatisfying
the Buddhism espoused there. In 1201, Shinran secluded himself
for religious practices in a temple in Kyoto known as the Rokkakudo.
During this seclusion he received a nocturnal revelation that created
for him a new religious outlook. This event marked the turning point
in Shinran's life, at which time he devoted himself single-mindedly to
Honen's teachings. The master-disciple association between them,
nonetheless, was short-lived. Shinran was separated from Honen during
a suppression of the new Pure Land movement in 1207, which was
sanctioned by the imperial court. Shinran was banished to Echigo
Province (present-day Niigata Prefecture).17
Several years later, when
he was pardoned, Shinran moved to Hitachi Province (present-day
Ibaragi Prefecture) instead of returning to Kyoto. There he became an
active proselytizer of the Pure Land teachings. From the time of his
banishment, Shinran described himself as neither priest nor layman.18
14 This eschatological way of thinking is usually referred to as mappo shiso, "decline of the
Dharma" thought. One Heian-period work that is representative of this way of thinking is the
Mappo lomyoki, in Shinshu zenshu, vol. 58 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1915 and 1975), pp.
495-502.
15 Examples are Kagero nikki, Murasaki Shikibu nikki, and Sarashina nikki. Genji monogatari is
an exception to this pattern.
16 Concerning Shinran's life, see Akamatsu Toshihide, Shinran (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan,
1961); and Matsuno Junko, Shinran: sono shogai to shiso no lenkai katei (Tokyo: Sanseido,
1959)-
17 Concerning the suppression, see the appendix of the Tannisho, in Shinran-shu Nichiren-shu,
NKBT, vol. 82 p. 265, n. 175.
18 Kyogyoshinsho, in Shinran, NST, vol. 11, p. 258.
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55° BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
He openly took a wife, in clear violation of the vow of celibacy he took
when ordinated as a Tendai priest. Shinran perceived in his own life
the very image of human existence that Honen had preached, one
mired in foolishness and wrongdoings. It was in this humble and selfeffacing
frame of mind that Shinran established himself as a religious
seeker and Pure Land teacher in the community of ordinary peasant
farmers in the Kanto region.
The introspective views of Honen and Shinran were an indirect
product of the decline in social mobility in Japan's aristocracy. Consequently,
it was not easy to propagate these views among the peasant
farmers of the Kanto, who had grown up amid more superstitious and
less introspective beliefs. Shinran thus attempted to adapt Pure Land
ideas to the concerns of the lower classes by using the dual concepts of
"this world" and the "next world" that Honen had used. Honen originally
presented the nembutsu as the religious act that one must perform
in order to be born into the next world where Buddhahood will be
achieved.19
Shinran stressed the same idea in a slightly different way to
show that one is blessed also while living in this world. That blessing
comes in the form of an assurance, that one will attain Buddhahood
without fail when born into that next world.20
Thus, the reward of Buddhahood in one's next life is paralleled in
this life by personal assurance and peace of mind. Shinran taught that
whoever enters into this belief is assured of salvation from the first
nembutsu spoken. After that, whenever the nembutsu is invoked, it is
not a repetition of this assurance but, rather, an act of gratitude for
salvation already assured.21
In Shinran's later years, this idea developed
further into the doctrine that a person of correct faith is equal to
the buddhas and the bodhisattvas.22
In other words, faith accords one
the most exalted status possible in this world, even though enlightenment
itself has not yet been achieved. In this way, Shinran conveyed
the idea of immediate benefits that the Pure Land path offered, without
endorsing the mechanistic, superstitious, and magical rewards that
the peasant population typically sought in religion. The heart of his
teaching, however, was that faith leads to enlightenment in the next
world.
Shinran arrived at his beliefs through ever-deeper introspection on
19 Shosokumon, in Honen Ippen, NST, vol. 10, p. 175.
20 Kyogyoshinshd, in Shinran, NST, vol. 11, pp. 97-100; and Maiidsho, in Shinran-shu Nichirenshu,
NKBT, vol. 82, p. 115.
21 Shinran Shonin goshdsokushu, in Shinran-shu Nichiren-shu, NKBT, vol. 82, p. 167.
22 Sanjo wasan and Mattosho, in Shinran-shu Nichiren-shu, NKBT, vol. 82, pp. 62 (wasan no.
94), pp. 120-1.
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THE ORIGINATORS OF KAMAKURA BUDDHISM 55I
the human condition. While living in his fallen state with his wife and
children among the peasant farmers of the Kanto, Shinran focused his
attention on the nature and capacity of human beings. Honen had
asserted that all sentient beings are objects of Amida's salvation, but
Shinran continued to seek their true inner nature. In the end, he
perceived humans as incapable of anything but wrongdoing. He categorically
denied that they had the power to save themselves, and he
thus added another dimension to the idea of faith. That is, faith is not
a path to salvation through one's own efforts. It is defined, instead, by
"other power" (tariki), a total reliance on the power of Amida Buddha.
Around the age of sixty, Shinran left the Kanto region and returned
to Kyoto, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. There he
composed a number of religious works, the foremost of which is his
Kyogyoshinsho.2
* Shinran continued to maintain contact with his
Kanto disciples through letters and to give them guidance in religious
matters. It is clear, however, that he shunned the personal aggrandizement
and veneration that his followers often accorded him. Shinran
believed that all human beings are equal before Amida Buddha, and
he thus refused to accept the exalted role of religious master in which
others cast him. His self-abnegation suggests that Shinran had no
desire to organize a religious sect of his own. Indeed, that enterprise
was undertaken only after his death by his spiritual successors and
blood descendants.
Eisai and Dogen
Shinran and Honen formulated their new religious ideas by concentrating
on the internal nature of human beings. In their proselytization
activities, they separated themselves from the major temples and
turned their attention more to the common people and those living in
the provinces. Zen, however, emerged along very different lines. During
the late Heian period, one segment of Japan's aristocracy began to
study the orthodox traditions of Chinese thought, as a way of reinvigorating
society. Chinese learning had long been considered the foundation
of civilization, especially by the aristocracy, but in the middle of
the Heian period, interest in things Chinese waned or existed only in
the abstract. By the end of the period, however, interest reemerged in
some circles, and priests began to travel to China to visit the important
23 The formal title of this work is the Kenjodo shinjitsu kyogyosho monrui. A first draft of the text
was completed by Shinran in 1224. For standard editions of the text, see Shinran, NST, vol.
11, pp. 7-260; and TD, vol. 83, pp. 589-643.
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552 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
temples and Buddhist sites there.24
Eisai (1141-1215), Chogen (d.
1195)3 a n
d Shunjo (1166-1227) were among those who went to China
at the beginning of the Kamakura period. They differed in their individual
religious views, but they all were united in their attraction to
the thought and culture of Sung China. By importing Chinese learning
and synthesizing it with their own religious traditions, they hoped to
revitalize Buddhism in Japan. It was in this context that Zen was
imported from China.
The first person to play an important role in the adoption of Zen was
Eisai.25
He was born in 1141 into a prominent family of Shinto priests
in Bitchu Province (present-day Okayama Prefecture). Instead of following
the family tradition, Eisai entered a Buddhist temple at a
young age and was eventually ordained as a Buddhist priest. In his
early career he studied Tendai doctrine and mikkyo or esoteric Buddhism.
Unlike Honen, Eisai was not inclined toward withdrawal or
religious seclusion on Mount Hiei. Rather, he had strong ambitions to
make a name for himself in the Tendai establishment. While studying
on Mount Hiei, Eisai began to dream of restoring the Tendai school to
the state of religious creativity from which it had declined. That aspiration
prompted him to make the arduous journey to China twice and to
seek out Buddhism's orthodox teachings there. On his first visit, Eisai
discovered that Zen was the dominant form of Buddhism in China.
During his second visit, he actually studied Zen. His teacher was Hsiian
Huai-ch'ang (Kian Esho), a master in the Huang-lung (Oryo)
branch of the Lin-chi (Rinzai) school.26
Zen had some influence on the Japanese Tendai school at the time of
its founding by Saicho (767-822). This school is often described as an
amalgamation offour Buddhist traditions: Tendai doctrine, Zen meditation,
Vinaya rules, and mikkyo ritual. Eisai believed that among the
four, Zen and Vinaya had lapsed into disuse, and Mount Hiei had thus
fallen into stagnation.27
Hence, Zen was the first thing he sought to
reintroduce from China. The controlling powers at Mount Hiei were
not aware of Zen's ascendant position in China and therefore refused to
recognize the new teachings that Eisai propounded and even attempted
24 Mori Katsumi, Mori Katsumi chosaku senshu, vol. 4: Nisso bunka koryu no shomondai (Tokyo:
Kokusho kankokai, 1975), pp. 167-202.
25 Concerning Eisai's life, see Taga Munehaya, Eisai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1965).
26 Kozen gokokuron, in Chusei Zenka no shiso, NST, vol. 16, pp. 53-54; and Genko shakusho, KT,
vol. 31, pp. 43-46. The Lin-chi branch was founded by Lin-chi I-hsiian (d. 867) and was the
most powerful branch of Zen in China during the Sung period.
27 Kozen gokokuron, in Chusei Zenka no shiso, NST, vol. 16, pp. 16-48.
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THE ORIGINATORS OF KAMAKURA BUDDHISM 553
to suppress them. In response to their opposition, Eisai wrote his primary
work, the Kozen gokokuron, in which he defended Zen as a teaching
that would preserve and uphold the nation rather than undermine
it.28
Despite his protestations, the established authorities on Mount
Hiei were unwilling to permit Zen to be taught there. Fortunately,
however, the leaders ofthe newly established bakufu, ormilitarygovernment,
in Kamakura expressed an interest in it and accorded Eisai the
institutional support and patronage necessary to establish Zen as a
religious tradition in Japan. The bakufu recognized the power and
influence of Sung China and hoped to use Eisai's knowledge of Chinese
thought and culture to lend prestige and authority to its own rule.
Zen originated in China in the mid-T'ang period. As a school of
Buddhism, it bore the strong imprint of Chinese culture. China and
Japan had close ties during the Nara period, and Zen was first introduced
into Japan at that time. But it was difficult for the Japanese to
comprehend Zen because of its mystical qualities and its highly developed
mental training. Zen was reintroduced on several other occasions
during the Heian period, but it never managed to take root as an
independent school. Only in the late Heian period, when the religious
authority of Mount Hiei was shaken and Kamakura's religious revolution
took shape, was the climate right for Zen to be accepted.
Eisai and other early Zen priests in Japan inherited the fundamental
Zen principle that the absolute must be grasped through direct intuitive
experience within the mind, not through the aid of the written
word. But they tended to couch Zen's mystical aspects in the context
of mikkyo, or esoteric Buddhism. The two were similar in that both
preserved their teachings through private master-disciple transmissions,
and they conveyed the absolute through symbolic acts of ritual
and discipline. The arrival of Zen from China, therefore, played a role
in reshaping and bolstering esoteric Buddhist thought, which had
flourished throughout the Heian period. With the appearance of
Dogen, however, Zen assumed a more revolutionary guise and began
to emerge as a strain of Kamakura Buddhism itself.
Dogen (1200-53) was the son of the court noble and politician
Tsuchimikado Michichika.29
As a child, Dogen was surrounded by
28 This was Eisai's most important treatise and the first work on Zen composed in Japan. For
standard editions of the text, see Kozen gokokuron, in Chuui Zenka no shiso, NST, vol. 16, pp.
7-97; and TD, vol. 80, pp. 1-17.
29 Concerning Dogen's life, see Imaeda Aishin, Dogen: sono kodo to shisho (Tokyo: Hyoronsha,
1970); and Okubo Doshu, Dogen zenji den no kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1953).
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554 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
high-ranking aristocrats and well-known literary figures, and so he
received a superior and extensive education. Both of his parents died
while he was still young, and as a result, Dogen decided to take up the
life of a priest on Mount Hiei. In disposition, Dogen was fervent in his
religious pursuits and intent on discovering Buddhism's essence, but
the Buddhism he found on Mount Hiei failed to give satisfying answers
to the questions he asked.
Dogen's entire experience on Mount Hiei differed significantly
from that of the other originators of Kamakura Buddhism: First, by
Dogen's time Mount Hiei was beginning to lose credibility as the hub
of Buddhism in Japan. Second, Dogen was never dependent on Mount
Hiei for social mobility, as were Honen, Eisai, and other priests from
the provinces. For them, Mount Hiei was an entry into Japan's intellectual
and cultural circles. But for Dogen, who came from the highest
aristocracy, studying the doctrines of Buddhism and mastering the
scholarship of the Chinese and Japanese classics were never the only
alternative. Honen and Shinran spent considerable time in doctrinal
training on Mount Hiei, and the scriptures and commentaries they
encountered there became, through reinterpretation, the springboard
for their own religious ideas. Dogen, by contrast, quickly abandoned
Mount Hiei in his search for true Buddhism, and his disillusionment
with Buddhism there prompted him to travel to China in 1223.
In China, Dogen was not attracted to the most popular form of Zen,
the Lin-chi (Rinzai) school, which had extensive ties with the highest
echelons of secular society. Instead, he gravitated toward the Ts'aotung
(Soto) school, which had maintained a strong monastic and antisecular
flavor since its inception in the T'ang period. After training
in Zen meditation at the T'ien-t'ung-shan monastery under the Ts'aotung
master Ch'ang-weng Ju-ching (Choo Nyojo, 1163-1228) Dogen
underwent a religious experience that his master certified as a state of
enlightenment.
Dogen then returned to Japan to impart the Zen teachings there.
Earlier, Eisai had propounded a brand of Zen that was intermixed with
other forms of Buddhism. Dogen, by contrast, rejected other types of
Buddhism and maintained that the religious absolute could be realized
only through Zen in its purest form.30
His claim was that a person
achieves enlightenment only by sitting in meditation and that meditation
itself is indistinguishable from the actual state of enlightenment.31
30 Fukan zazengi, TD, vol. 82, pp. 1-2.
31 Shobogenzo, "Bendowa" chapter, in Dogen, pt. 1, NST, vol. 12, p. 20.
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THE ORIGINATORS OF KAMAKURA BUDDHISM 555
In Japan, Dogen first made his religious base at a temple in Uji on
the outskirts of Kyoto. There he offered instruction in meditation to
an ever-increasing number of Zen aspirants. But because of Mount
Hiei's opposition to his teachings, Dogen was eventually forced to
retreat to Echizen Province (present-day Fukui Prefecture) to continue
his activities.
Dogen's primary work, the Shobogenzo, is a collection of essays
presented as lectures to his disciples.32
The essays date from the time
he resided at Uji until shortly before his death. The Shobogenzo
reveals the sophisticated level of speculative thought of which Dogen
was capable. In it he addresses some of Buddhism's fundamental
questions: What is the essence of Buddhahood? What constitutes
true religious practice? What is the nature of time? In addition to the
Shobogenzo, Dogen composed several works defining the rules and
etiquette governing monastic conditions and the daily life of religious
practitioners.33
He formulated these in an attempt to put into practice
what his teacher had taught him in China. Dogen sought to
separate Zen from the political intrigues in which the religious authorities
on Mount Hiei and the great temples of Nara engaged. Even
though they had dominated Japanese Buddhism throughout the
Heian period, Dogen considered Soto Zen to be the quintessential
form of Buddhism. The basic theme of his teachings was that one
should fervently seek the absolute and diligently practice meditation.
Based on that principle, Dogen scrupulously avoided dealing with
the secular powers, and he produced one of Japan's most sublime
religious philosophies.
Nichiren and Ippen
The last of Kamakura Buddhism's seminal figures, Nichiren and
Ippen, appeared well after the religious revolution began. Although
their teachings differed profoundly from each other, the way that they
adapted them to the Japanese context was similar. This element of
adaptation and concern for the immediate world stands out more
prominently in their ideas than in those of earlier Kamakura thinkers.
The Pure Land teachings of Honen and Shinran, for example, present
32 The Shobogenzo, written in classical Japanese, is the most comprehensive account of Dogen's
ideas. Its contents were assembled from his sermons and lectures. For the standard seventyfive
and ninety-five fascicle editions of the Shobogenzo, see Dogen, pts. 1 and 2, NST, vols.
12-13; a n
d TD, vol. 82, pp. 7-309. 33 Eihei shingi, TD, vol. 82, pp. 319-42.
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556 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
salvation as occurring not in the present world but in the Pure Land
after death. Dogen's teachings are built around the experience of an
ineffable absolute and thus display little concern for the existing secular
order or for guiding people in how to live in it. Nichiren and Ippen,
on the other hand, couched their ideas in down-to-earth terms and
formulated a religious path that melded Buddhism with the immediate
experiences of the Japanese.
This last stage in the development of Kamakura Buddhism occurred
amid conditions different from those of the first stage. Major changes
were at work in Japan's social and religious spheres in the middle of
the thirteenth century, some fifty years after Honen appeared on the
scene. The first important change was in the aristocracy. In Honen's
time, new forms of religious thought came directly out of the aristocracy.
They arose from a deep sense of alarm among the aristocrats and
literati over the crumbling of the established order. But by the middle
of the thirteenth century this situation had changed. It was no longer
possible to hide the fact that the aristocracy itself was in a state of
precipitous decline. The aristocrats withdrew from the religious forefront
to work out their convictions in isolation. They came to view
themselves as the bastion of Japanese culture and the preservers of
tradition. At this stage, the aristocrats no longer functioned as active
agents in creating Japan's new religious ideas.
The second change was the widespread dissemination of Buddhist
doctrines among the samurai and common people. This occurred primarily
through the efforts of the Kamakura Buddhist proselytizers.
The rise of Kamakura Buddhism was paralleled by the emergence ofa
new social order in which the samurai class asserted considerable influence.
But successful samurai were not the only ones attracted to the
new Buddhist movement. Even samurai who languished on the fringes
of the new social order, as well as ordinary peasants, found comfort
and salvation in the new teachings.
The third change was the appearance of new religious organizations.
As various branches of Pure Land and Zen Buddhism became more
active, they generated rudimentary religious organizations that offered
an alternative to the orthodox schools of Mount Hiei and Nara. The
more people that affiliated with these groups, the more that the Buddhist
establishment lost its monopoly over organized religion.
The fourth and final change was the redefinition of Shinto beliefs in
the light of Buddhism. There was widespread social turmoil in the
villages from the end of the Heian period through the Kamakura.
During the fourteenth century, new villages came into existence, and
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THE ORIGINATORS OF KAMAKURA BUDDHISM 557
the villages' social structure as a whole was transformed. Amid this
ferment, Shinto, the villages' indigenous religion, also began to
change. Shinto shrines were the functional centers of people's faith,
and so tales were compiled about the origins of the shrines and the
miraculous works of their kami. These tales were used to proclaim the
power of local kami to people living in distant regions. Buddhism
provided the conceptual framework for these tales.34
All of the
changes that occurred during the mid-Kamakura period created a
climate favorable to religious innovation, quite unlike that encountered
by Honen and the early Kamakura religious figures.
Nichiren (1222-82) played an important role in this last stage of
Kamakura Buddhism's development.35
He was born into a family of
minor samurai in Awa Province (present-day Chiba Prefecture). In
order to receive an education, Nichiren entered a temple near his
birthplace and studied Tendai doctrine. Eventually, he went to Mount
Hiei for training. Nichiren's principal doctrinal interest was not in a
"next-world" form of salvation, such as rebirth in the Pure Land, but
rather in a "this-world" form of salvation that would perfect and liberate
the Japanese, both individually and as a nation. Therefore, the
teachings that Nichiren propounded were meant to guide both spiritual
and political affairs and also to ensure the country's peace and
tranquility.36
While studying the Tendai doctrine, Nichiren discovered
in the Lotus Sutra (Hokekyo) the image of the absolute that would
become the basis of his teachings.37
He came to believe that the truth
and power of the Lotus Sutra are concentrated in the title of the sutra
itself, and he therefore taught that salvation can be attained by chanting,
"I take refuge in the Lotus Sutra." In structure, his teachings
bear certain similarities to those of Honen and Shinran, in that all
claim that a person is confirmed in faith by intoning a sacred name.
Nichiren became convinced that he had been assigned the task of
realizing the Lotus Sutra's ideal in this world, and he stood ready to do
battle with anyone who obstructed that end. Perceiving himself to be a
specially ordained prophet, Nichiren launched vitriolic attacks against
34 Chusei Shinto ron, NST, vol. 19; and Jiska engi, NST, vol. 20.
35 Concerning Nichiren's life, see Takagi Yutaka, Nichiren: sono kodo to shiso (Tokyo:
Hyoronsha, 1970).
36 Rissho ankokuron, in Shiman-shu Nichiren-shu, NKBT, vol. 82, p. 293.
37 The Lotus Sutra, known in Sanskrit as the Saddharma Pundarika Sutra, is one of the most
important religious texts in Mahayana Buddhism. It was translated from Sanskrit into Chinese
by Kumarajiva in 406. The complete title of the scripture in Japanese is Mydho rengekyo,
TD, vol. 9, pp. 1-62. This sutra has been extremely popular as a religious text throughout
Chinese and Japanese history. It is the fundamental scripture of the Tendai school.
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558 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
the teachings of the Pure Land, Zen, Shingon, and Ritsu schools. The
harshness of his diatribes was unprecedented in Japan's religious history,
and eventually Nichiren was arrested by the Kamakura bakufu
and exiled for three years to the island of Sado (in present-day Niigata
Prefecture).38
Nichiren believed that through chanting the title of the
Lotus Sutra persons in this world would be bound together in a perfect
and transformed society. Despite the many teachings of Buddhism,
he embraced the Lotus Sutra exclusively, and he asserted that
anyone is capable of the simple practice of chanting its title.39
This
exclusiveness of outlook and simplicity of practice are what place
Nichiren's teachings within the framework of Kamakura Buddhism.
Among the Kamakura Buddhist thinkers, Nichiren was the first to
integrate secular matters and Shinto kami into his Buddhist scheme,
for he believed that Buddhism undergirds reality in all its dimensions.
The writings of Honen, Shinran, and Dogen rarely address the immediate
concerns of ordinary people. Instead, they focus on doctrinal
questions such as Amida Buddha's compassion or on transcendent
experiences such as Zen enlightenment. Nichiren, by contrast, actively
propounded an ethic for life in this world that was relevant to
both the samurai class and the common people. His teachings, in fact,
incorporated various elements from Confucian morality and Shinto
piety. Before Nichiren's time, Buddhist priests tended to concentrate
on scripture, exegesis, and doctrine. Nichiren departed from this pattern
by trying to explain Buddhism in more pedestrian terms and by
amalgamating it with other varieties of thought popular in his day.
Among the schools of Kamakura Buddhism, Nichiren's in particular
helped create a form of Buddhism well adapted to the Japanese context.
Through this adaptation, Buddhism became accessible to far
more people than ever before.
Ippen (1239-89), a proponent of Pure Land Buddhism and a contemporary
of Nichiren, was another religious figure who synthesized Buddhism
with various popular beliefs and practices.40
Ippen was the son
of a samurai in Iyo Province (present-day Ehime Prefecture). He was
ordained at a young age and at first studied Tendai doctrine. Later he
went to study under someone named Shotatsu, who had been a follower
of Honen's disciple Shoku (1177-1247).
38 Shuju gofurumai gosho, in Showa leihon Nichiren Shdnin ibun, vol. 2 (Minobu-san, Yamanashiken:
Kuonji, 1953), p. 963.
39 Senjisho and Hoonsho, in Nichiren, NST, vol. 14, pp. 233, 297.
40 Concerning Ippen's life, see Ohashi Shunno, Ippen (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1983).
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THE ORIGINATORS OF KAMAKURA BUDDHISM 559
Ippen eventually formulated his own version of the Pure Land teachings,
and he is commonly recognized as the last of the originators of
Kamakura Buddhism. Ippen's initial inspiration was an oracle he received
from the Shinto deity at Kumano Shrine in Kii Province
(present-day Wakayama Prefecture). This kami had long been identified
in popular culture as a manifestation of Amida Buddha. Ippen's
experience at Kumano reflects the strong affinity between his teachings
and the indigenous Japanese beliefs. The oracle stated that rebirth
in the Pure Land is assured only if one chants Amida's name fervently.
It does not matter whether one has faith or whether one is tainted with
wrongdoings.41
The nembutsu that one chants transcends all human
intention. It should be intoned single-mindedly and without distraction.
Ippen maintained that one should set aside all religious practices
except the nembutsu, for then one's trust in it will be perfect.42
He
himself discarded all other practices and thus came to be known as the
sutehijiri, "the discarding holy man." To propagate these beliefs, Ippen
traveled the length of Japan, from Kyushu in the south to Tohoku in
the north, and distributed amulets inscribed with the nembutsu to
every person he met.43
Ippen's teachings stress first and foremost a simple religious practice,
as do all forms of Kamakura Buddhism. In the case of Honen and
Shinran, however, the need for introspection and reflection underlies
this simple practice. Ippen, by contrast, did not focus on the believer's
underlying mental state. Rather, he emphasized the primacy of religious
practice and its power to elicit "single-mindedness without distraction"
from the believer. This stress on religious practice was well
suited to Ippen's style of proselytization.
In the villages that Ippen and his religious cohorts visited, he would
gather congregations to intone the nembutsu and dance to its rhythm.44
Ordinary people were thus exposed to the elements of religion as they
participated in the dancing and nembutsu chanting. These were easier
for them to assimilate than were the subtle teachings of Honen and
Shinran, even though they also presented a message with strong popular
appeal. Ippen, more than any of the priests before him, came into
direct contact with the masses as he traveled from place to place in an
41 Ippen Shonin goroku, in Honen Ippen, NST, vol. 10, p. 305. Kumano Shrine, located in the
southern half of the Kii peninsula in Wakayama Prefecture, has been regarded as a sacred
spot since ancient times and has been visited by countless pilgrims over the centuries.
42 Ippen hijirie, in Nihon emakimono zenshu, vol. 10 (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, i960), "Shisho,"
p. 66.
43 Ibid. This work gives a pictorial image of Ippen as he traveled to these various regions.
44 Ibid., p. 66.
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560 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
endless evangelistic sojourn. He managed to communicate Buddhism
to the people as a path of salvation, by integrating it with practices
they could understand. Even while seeking salvation in Buddhism, the
common people retained their native Shinto religious beliefs. Ippen
was open and responsive to Shinto, and he incorporated various beliefs
and practices associated with the kami into his own religious para-
digm.45
In so doing, he made his teachings compatible with the spiritual
inclinations on the ordinary people. Throughout Japanese history,
it was necessary for Buddhism to come to terms with Japan's indigenous
religious traditions in order for it to spread widely. Nichiren's
and Ippen's teachings accomplished this synthesis better than those of
the earlier Kamakura thinkers, as both molded Buddhism to fit the
popular religious consciousness of the Japanese.
THE RESPONSE OF THE BUDDHIST ESTABLISHMENT
An awakening in the traditional schools
The various groups that arose out of Kamakura Buddhism generated
formal religious organizations during the Muromachi period. From
that time on, they have been the most powerful schools of Buddhism
in Japan. In reflecting on their origins, all of these schools hark back to
the Kamakura period as their institutional starting point, and they
claim a continuous and unbroken existence since that time. There is a
tendency among them to overestimate the power and influence of
Kamakura Buddhism at this embryonic stage in its history. Their
perspective is one of historical hindsight - that is, looking back on the
period from the vantage point of later times. If one looks at the
Kamakura period without this sectarian predilection, one will find
that the various schools of Kamakura Buddhism had no institutional
influence at that time, for their religious organizations had not yet
taken substantive shape. The earlier schools of Buddhism from Nara
and Heian times were, in fact, still paramount in the Kamakura period.
These established schools were both challenged and threatened,
however, by the rise of Kamakura Buddhism, and they responded
vigorously with political and religious initiatives of their own.
The Tendai school exerted the greatest influence in Buddhist circles
throughout the Heian period. By Kamakura times the elite within the
45 In every region to which Ippen traveled, he would visit the local Shinto shrine and pray to its
kami. See Tamura Encho, Nihon Bukkyo shisoshi kenkyu: Jodokyohen (Kyoto: Heirakuji
shoten, 1959). PP- 4°3~4Cambridge
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THE RESPONSE 561
school, like much of Japan's aristocratic elite, was locked in a conservative
mind-set dedicated to preserving the status quo, but up to the
mid-Heian period, when the talented scholar-priest Annen lived, the
school had been a vibrant, creative center of grand doctrinal formulations.
The doctrinal system that gained the greatest prominence in the
Tendai school was the philosophy of original enlightenment (hongaku
shiso). Original enlightenment, which has always been a central tenet
in Mahayana Buddhism, refers to the idea that every living being has
the innate capacity to attain Buddhahood. One is saved at the very
moment that one comprehends this fact. Hence, enlightenment is
immanent and immediate, although people do not ordinarily realize its
presence.46
The concept of original enlightenment directly contrasts
with the idea of acquired enlightenment (shigaku shiso). According to
this doctrine, enlightenment requires one to progress through stages
of religious practice from the time one enters the Buddhist path until
one attains Buddhahood. The religious practices at each stage are
geared to the individual's abilities.
In the Tendai school the doctrine of original enlightenment resulted
in the belief that enlightenment is omnipresent. All things are vessels
of enlightenment, even though they may appear to be discrete and
unrelated objects. Even things that stand in diametric opposition to
one another are not ultimately at odds. At base they are identical, for
they embody the same essence. This philosophy provided a rationale
for affirming all things in their present state, and it fit well with
Tendai's mystical aspect, wherein every form, just as it is, is perceived
as a manifestation of the absolute. Mystical truths of this kind were
not to be revealed capriciously, as religious preparation and training
were necessary to understand them. Consequently, secret oral transmissions
developed in the Tendai school as a way of imparting these
truths between master and disciple.
Various fragmentary works that appeared in the early Kamakura
period came out of this tradition, containing teachings that hitherto
had been transmitted either orally or in secret.47
The Tendai school
suffered a decline in doctrinal creativity during the second half of the
Heian period, at the same time that Mount Hiei increased its involvement
in worldly affairs. Kamakura Buddhism arose in part as a critique
of these involvements and as a search for a purer form of reli-
46 Tamura Yoshiro, "Tendai hongaku shiso gaisetsu," in Tendai hongaku ron, NST, vol. 9, pp.
477-548.
47 Some examples of these works are the Tendai Hokkeshu gozu homonyosan and the Kanko ruiju,
in Tendai hongaku ron, NST, vol. 9, pp. 23-40, 187-286.
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562 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
gion. Nonetheless, the Tendai philosophy of original enlightenment
exerted a strong influence on the new and emergent forms of Buddhism.
In fact, all the originators of Kamakura Buddhism studied on
Mount Hiei at one time or another.
The other powerful schools of Buddhism in the Kamakura period
were the Shingon school and the schools affiliated with the major
temples in Nara, such as the Kegon, Hosso, Sanron, and Ritsu
schools. All of these schools boasted long traditions, and each exercised
considerable authority in both doctrinal and political affairs. In
the Nara schools a large number of monk scholars continued the venerable
enterprise of articulating and elaborating sectarian doctrine.
One representative figure from Nara who was active at the beginning
of the Kamakura period was Jokei (1155-1213).48
He is best
known as a systematizer of Hosso doctrine, but he was interested in
Pure Land and Zen teachings as well. He attempted to incorporate the
nembutsu and Zen meditation into the religious practices of his school
in order to adapt it to the changing times. Jokei's disciple Ryohen
(1194-1252), who was instrumental in formulating a system of Hosso
doctrine that was uniquely Japanese, followed a similar pattern. He
was a student of Zen and was also attracted to the new trends found in
the nembutsu teachings and in Tendai.49
Another important figure, Myoe (1173-1232) of the Kegon school,
was likewise influenced by Zen and the nembutsu.50
Myoe wrote a
work entitled Zaijarin that criticized Honen's major treatise, the
Senchakushii.5
' He did so not because he rejected the nembutsu as a
practice but because he disagreed with Honen's unorthodox interpretation
of it.
The Buddhism centered at the great temples in Nara has come to be
known as "old Buddhism" (kyu Bukkyd), in contrast with the "new
Buddhism" (shin Bukkyd) of the Kamakura period. There is a tendency
to regard the former as a reactionary form of Buddhism opposed
to the revolutionary trends of Kamakura Buddhism. But it is clear that
the very people defending the traditional doctrines and criticizing the
new schools were also heavily influenced by Zen and the nembutsu, and
they were likewise working toward a practicable form of religion. In
short, the religious revolution that occurred in the Kamakura period
48 Concerning Jokei, see Tanaka Hisao, "Chosakusha ryakuden," in Kamakura kyu Bukkyd,
NST, vol. 15, pp. 461-9.
49 Concerning Ryohen, see Tanaka, "Chosakusha ryakuden," pp. 480-8.
50 Concerning Myoe's life, see Tanaka Hisao, Myoe (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1961).
51 Zaijarin, in Kamakura kyu Bukkyd, NST, vol. 15, pp. 43-105. This work, containing three
fascicles, was composed in 1212, one year after Honen's death.
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THE RESPONSE - 563
not only created new schools of Buddhism but also transformed the
old ones.
One other trend that surfaced in the established Buddhist schools
as a result of this revolution was a movement to reassert adherence to
religious precepts (kairitsu).$2
Prominent figures in this movement
included Jokei, his disciple Kakushin (1168-1243), Myoe, and
Shunjo (1166-1227), a
priest of the Ritsu school who resided in
Kyoto.53
There were two motives for emphasizing religious precepts.
One was to reestablish spiritual purity as the aim of the Buddhist
priests. In that state, priests could function as role models for the
populace at large and thereby could once more assume their proper
place as spiritual leaders in society. This social role was connected to
the second reason for administering religious precepts: to lead all
people, as the objects of proselytization, to salvation.54
Implicit in the
first reason was an attack on Buddhism's laxity and worldliness.
Implicit in the second was the idea that priests are the propagators of
Buddhism and should be active among the people. The goal of this
movement was to propel the established Buddhist schools out of their
moribund state.
A widely acclaimed figure in the precept movement was the Ritsu
priest Eizon (1201-90).55
He revived the Saidaiji temple in Nara and
strove to make it a center of the Ritsu school where religious precepts
in one form or another were administered. One distinguishing
feature of Eizon's proselytization efforts was a ceremony that he
instituted in which people would promise to uphold the precepts.
Gradually there emerged the popular belief that anyone who underwent
this ceremony would be saved. Eizon's disciple Ninsho (1217-
1303) was also involved in the movement, but instead of trying to
save people individually by administering precepts to them, he emphasized
the broader social responsibilities incumbent on the clergy
because of their precepts.56
Ninsho organized a wide variety of social
works such as building roads and bridges, digging wells, and looking
after the sick. In order to make the most out of these social activities,
Ninsho established ties with political authorities and enlisted
52 Concerning this movement, see Ishida Mizumaro, Nihon Bukkyo ni okeru kainisu no kenkyu
(Tokyo: Nakayama shobo, 1976).
53 Concerning Shunjo's life, see Sennyitji Fukaki Hoshi den, in Zoku gunsho ruiju, vol. 9 (Tokyo:
Zoku gunsho ruiju kanseikai, 1927), pp. 45-58.
54 Osumi Kazuo, "Kamakura Bukkyo to sono kakushin undo," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi,
vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1975), p. 232.
55 Concerning Eizon's life, see Wajima Yoshio, Eizon Ninsho (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan,
1970). 56 Concerning Ninsho's life, see Wajima, Eizon Ninsho.
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564 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
their assistance and protection in implementing his programs. In this
way he differed from most of the leaders of Kamakura Buddhism,
who wished to have as little contact as possible with the world of
politics.
The suppression of Kamakura Buddhism
The established schools of Buddhism were challenged by the innovations
of Kamakura's new religious movements, and they responded
with such activities as those described, in an attempt to revitalize their
own religious traditions. Buddhist authorities were also disturbed by
certain beliefs and practices circulating in Kamakura Buddhism, and
they reacted aggressively in the name of Buddhist orthodoxy to suppress
them. One early example of suppression was their response to
Honen's followers.
Within the Pure Land movement, some converts to Honen's teachings
formed fanatic nembutsu groups. Their claim was that if one
simply practiced the nembutsu and had faith in Amida Buddha's compassion,
then one would be assured of rebirth in Pure Land, no matter
what evil deeds or wrongdoings one might commit.57
Such views were
anathema to both the Buddhist establishment and the civil authorities.
Therefore, they frequently joined forces to institute measures that
would check the spread of the Pure Land movement. The first measure
was instituted in 1200 when the Kamakura bakufu ordered the
expulsion of all nembutsu priests from Kamakura.58
The next came in
1204 when Mount Hiei led the other major temples in petitioning the
imperial court to ban Honen's teaching of the exclusive nembutsu.
Honen defended himself by declaring that what he taught in no way
undermined the established order, and he warned his followers not to
act in an inflammatory way.59
On that occasion Honen followers managed
to escape suppression. In 1206, however, the Kofukuji temple in
Nara submitted to the imperial court a set of nine accusations against
Honen and his cohorts, entitled the Kofukuji sojo, drafted by Jokei.60
As support for Honen eroded among court nobles, suppression became
inevitable. It finally occurred in the following year when Junsai
and several other disciples of Honen were sentenced to death and
57 Inoue Mitsusada, Nihon kodai no kokka to Bukkyo (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1971)) pp. 280-
8.
58 Azuma kagami, KT, vol. 32, p. 574. See also Inoue, Nihon kodai no kokka to Bukkyo, pp. 284-
5-
59 Shichikajo kishomon, in Honen Ippen, NST, vol. 10, pp. 231-5.
60 Kofukuji sojo, in Kamakura kyu Bukkyo, NST, vol. 15, pp. 31-42.
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THE RESPONSE 565
when Honen, Shinran, and other nembutsu proponents were banished
from the capital to different parts of Japan.6
'
One of the unexpected consequences of this suppression was that it
provided the context for Shinran's own religious maturation. The
suppression set in motion a sequence of events that led Shinran to
settle in the Kanto region and to work out his religious convictions
there.62
To the extent that these convictions were established in an
atmosphere of religious duress, the tenets of Kamakura Buddhism
were often framed in opposition to established Buddhist doctrines.
These doctrinal divergences only heightened the reputation of the new
Buddhist schools as opponents of ecclesiastical authority.
Suppression was by no means limited to the Pure Land movement.
Zen was also a periodic target in the early Kamakura period. The first
attacks on Zen were directed not at Eisai or Dogen but at a priest
named Nonin, who studied Zen meditation independently before
Eisai became an active proponent. Nonin formed his own sectarian
group known as the Daruma school, named after the semilegendary
founder of Zen in China.63
Soon after its formation, Mount Hiei expressed
its opposition to the school and initiated repressive measures
against it. The reasons given were similar to the charges leveled
against Honen: that Nonin stressed Zen meditation to the exclusion of
all other religious practices, that he attached little importance to the
religious precepts that priests were obliged to obey, and that he denounced
other schools of Buddhism. Mount Hiei was the greatest
defender of orthodoxy among the eight schools of Buddhism and enjoyed
the official recognition of the imperial court. It thus was determined
to defend the religious system of the eight against anyone who
threatened their authority or deviated from their norm. Hence, it was
only natural that after its attack on Ndnin, Mount Hiei would attack
Eisai and Dogen as well.
Eisai first began propagating Zen after his return from Sung China.
In 1194 the imperial court, at the behest of Mount Hiei, issued an
order banning Nonin's Daruma school, and this ban was applied to
Eisai activities also.64
Although Eisai's Zen was originally a target for
suppression, he was determined to lift it into the ranks of socially
61 DaiNihon shiryo, pt. 4, vol. 9 (Tokyo: Tokyo teikoku daigaku, 1909), pp. 504-89 (entry for
Jogen first year, second month, eighteenth day).
62 Kasahara Kazuo, Shinran to togoku nomin (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1957), pp. 145-
85.
63 Concerning Nonin, see Tsuji Zennosuke, Nihon Bukkyoshi, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
i960), pp. 61-66.
64 Hyakurensho, KT, vol. 11, p. 125. See also Tsuji, Nihon Bukkyoshi, vol. 3, pp. 70.
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566 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
acceptable religion, by demonstrating that Zen is not detrimental to
the nation but, rather, beneficial. Eisai insisted that the efflorescence
of Zen would revitalize the Tendai school. As aristocrats came to
realize that Zen occupied the mainstream of Buddhism in China, they
had a gradual change of heart toward it.65
Eisai's Zen ceased to be an
object of suppression when he received official patronage and protection
from the Kamakura Bakufu.
Dogen, on the other hand, differed from Eisai in that he propounded
a pure form of Zen, not mixed with beliefs and practices
from the orthodox schools. Because of his unyielding devotion to Zen,
Dogen became subject to various kinds of pressure and coercion,
especially from Mount Hiei. Dogen preferred to avoid open confrontation,
and so he withdrew to Uji, on the outskirts of Kyoto, to remove
himself from Mount Hiei's watchful gaze. In the ensuing years, however,
Mount Hiei continued to put pressure on him, even from that
distance, and ultimately forced Dogen in 1242 to retreat to the remote
province of Echizen (present-day Fukui Prefecture) to continue his
teaching.66
Although Dogen eventually was recognized by the imperial
court and the Kamakura bakufu as an eminent Buddhist master, he
spent most of his career harassed by Mount Hiei for his uncompromising
advocacy of Zen.
These early figures in Kamakura Buddhism all presented teachings
that departed in one way or another from orthodox doctrine in Japan.
Because of their differences they were suppressed as agitators against
the established Buddhist order. Nichiren appeared slightly later than
the others, but he suffered a similar fate. In fact, Nichiren received the
harshest treatment of all, stemming in part from his abrasive personality.
Nichiren was notorious for his fierce and unmitigated attacks, not
only on the established Buddhist schools, but also on the nembutsu and
Zen. These attacks earned Nichiren the wrath of civil and religious
authorities, but they also helped him hammer out and define his own
convictions and teachings.
The first suppressive measure against Nichiren was his banishment
to Izu Province (present-day Shizuoka Prefecture) in 1261.67
This
action was prompted by Nichiren's presentation to the bakufu of his
treatise Rissho ankokuron, in which he vehemently denounced the gov-
65 Taga, Eisai, pp. 224-84.
66 Imaeda, Dogen: sono kodo to shiso, pp. 88-89, I37-41
-
67 Nichiren was exited to Izu Province from 1261 to 1263 and to Sado Island from 1271 to 1274.
See Takagi, Nichiren: sono kodo to shiso, pp. 75-79.
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THE RESPONSE 567
ernment's policies.68
The religious ideal that Nichiren propounded
had a strong social and political dimension. In this way it differed from
the salvation found in Pure Land and from the experience of enlightenment
achieved through Zen meditation. Hence, his suppression may
have been more political than religious.
Notwithstanding Nichiren's social and political pronouncements,
his teachings had a religious message at their core - that one is saved
by chanting the title of the Lotus Sutra. It was this conviction that led
Nichiren to criticize the other schools of Buddhism. Many people who
embraced his teachings likewise assailed the existing Buddhist system,
and their precipitous actions contributed to its decline. The government's
second suppression of Nichiren occurred in 1271, just as the
Mongols were launching their attack on Japan. Nichiren was arrested
for fomenting social unrest, and it was decided that he would be
executed. According to Nichiren's own account, however, he managed
to escape death because of a miraculous intervention, and instead he
was sent into banishment on Sado Island (in present-day Niigata Prefecture).
In Sado's desolation and harsh environment Nichiren developed
his religious teachings to their fullest.69
Thus, as in the case of
Shinran, suppression only deepened Nichiren's inner religious experience
and propelled him to work out his provocative system of thought.
The harsh reaction of the religious and political establishment to
Kamakura Buddhism is demonstrated by the various instances of suppression
cited here. The reasons for this response differed according to
the particular circumstance of each case and the particular agents
instigating each suppression. In some instances, suppression signified
an imperially sanctioned assault against those who slighted Buddhism's
role as supplicator and ensurer of national tranquillity. In
other instances, the attacks arose from doctrinal issues, especially
when the teachings of Kamakura Buddhism violated or ignored the
formalities of orthodox dogma. In still other instances, suppressionwas
used as a precautionary measure to preclude any acts detrimental
to the traditional order that people attracted to Kamakura Buddhism
were inclined to commit. The intensity with which some of the suppressions
were carried out reflects how determined Mount Hiei and
the major temples of Nara were to preserve the traditional Buddhist
order they had created.
68 Rissho ankokuron, in Shinran-shu Nichiren-shu, NKBT, vol. 82, pp. 291-318.
69 Inoue, Nihon kodai no kokka to Bukkyo, pp. 339-54.
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568 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
New scholastic trends
In its capacity as the ecclesiastical authority, the Buddhist establishment
reacted adversely to various beliefs and practices of Kamakura
Buddhism. But Kamakura's radical innovations also spurred many
priests, who held fast to the orthodox teachings, to reflect on their
own religious traditions. This was truer of the Nara schools than of
Mount Hiei. The Tendai school on Mount Hiei was caught up in
diverse secular affairs stemming from its extensive connections with
aristocratic society in Kyoto during the latter half of the Heian period.
Kamakura Buddhism emerged partially in reaction to Mount
Hiei's involvements. The major temples in Nara, by contrast, had
kept Buddhist scholarship alive and moved toward comprehensive
systematizations of Buddhist doctrine. They produced a succession
of eminent scholar-priests such as Jokei and Ryohen of the Hosso
school, Myohen of the Sanron school, and Myoe of the Kegon
school. Together they began a movement that is often described as
"the revival of Nara Buddhism" (Nanto Bukkyo no fukko). Without a
doubt the appearance of Kamakura Buddhism stimulated Nara's new
systematizations of traditional Buddhist doctrine, which were the
response of the Nara priests to the changes occurring around them in
society.
The resurgence of Buddhist scholasticism was part of the broader
current of scholarly pursuits in elite society. Beginning in the midHeian
period, aristocrats attempted to organize and classify the various
forms of knowledge that had developed so far. Editorial projects
aiming at the systematic compilation of information became very common.
This trend extended to the field of Buddhist doctrine as well. In
the latter half of the Heian period, priests at the Kofukuji temple in
Nara began compiling catalogues of Buddhist works such as the Toiki
dento mokuroku70
by Eicho (1012-95) a
°d the Hosso-shu shoso moku-
roku71
by Zoshun (1104-80). Compiling catalogues relating to Buddhist
doctrine helped give order to the vast store of knowledge that
Japanese Buddhism had amassed since the Nara period. The catalogues
had the effect of making Buddhist doctrinal studies more organized
and accessible to outsiders, and they were valuable tools in
efforts to systematize Buddhist doctrine. Through the process of
doctrinal systematization, the foremost scholar-priests of the early
70 Toiki dento mokuroku, TD, vol. 55, pp. 1145-65.
71 Hosso-shu shoso mokuroku, TD, vol. 55, pp. 1140-4.
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THE RESPONSE 569
Kamakura period produced a uniquely Japanese version of traditional
Buddhist philosophy.
By the end of the Kamakura period, many scholars began to construct
outlines of various doctrinal and ritual systems. They provided
comprehensive and sometimes encyclopedic overviews of the specific
elements in Japanese Buddhism. Chozen (1217-97) of the Sanron
school and Gyonen (1240-1321) of the Kegon school are good examples
of such scholars.72
Gyonen's Hasshu koyo, for instance, outlines
the fundamental doctrines of the traditional Buddhist schools in Ja-
pan.73
Also, the Kakuzensho74
by Kakuzen and the Asabasho!i
by Shocho
(1205-82), which were compiled about this time, give encyclopedic
coverage of the ceremonies and monastic decorum of the Tendai
and Shingon schools, respectively. Because of their scope, such works
became valuable references for Buddhist beliefs and practices. These
attempts to systematize all knowledge relating to Japanese Buddhism
eventually aroused an interest in Buddhist history also. Shusho (1202-
92) of the Kegon school, for instance, composed a work entitled Nihon
kosoden yomonsho, in which he collected the biographies of eminent
priests who had played important roles in the history of Buddhism in
Japan.76
His disciple Gyonen also left behind a number of works on
Buddhist history, such as the Sangoku Buppo denzu engi.77
Hence, the
systematization of Buddhist doctrine eventually led scholars to historiographical
questions as well.
Buddhist scholastic trends over the Kamakura period reveal a gradual
shift from the cataloguing of doctrinal literature, to the systematization
of diverse forms of knowledge, and finally to the study of Japanese
Buddhist history.78
When these enterprises are compared with
the concerns of the new schools of Kamakura Buddhism, a distinct
contrast emerges. The originators of Kamakura Buddhism formed
their ideas by making religious experience paramount. They drew
their inspiration from their own personal realizations, and they sought
a path of salvation that each and every individual could follow. Hence,
none of them considered the systematization of traditional Buddhist
72 Concerning Gyonen's life, see Oya Tokujo, Gyonen Kokushi nempu (Nara: Todaiji kangakuin,
1921).
73 Hasshu koyo, in Dai Nihon Bukkyo zensho, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Dai Nihon Bukkyo zensho hakkojo,
1912-22), pp. 7-40. Hereafter Dai Nihon Bukkyo zensho is cited as DNBZ.
74 Kakuzensho, DNBZ, vols. 45-51. 75 Asabasho, DNBZ, vols. 35-41.
76 Nihon kosoden yomonsho, KT, vol. 31, pp. 1-92.
77 Sangoku Buppo denzu engi, DNBZ, vol. 101.
78 Takagi Yutaka, Kamakura Bukkyoshi kenkyu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1982), pp. 177-241.
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57° BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
doctrine to be a matter of overriding concern.79
The Buddhist establishment,
however, regarded doctrinal questions as fundamental, and
as a result it frequently condemned Kamakura Buddhism for its neglect
of Buddhist doctrine.80
The founders of Kamakura Buddhism did not derive their tenets
from analytical interpretation or rational treatment of existing doctrine.
Nor did they attempt to couch their ideas in perfect harmony
with traditional systems of Buddhist thought.81
What is more, few of
them had any interest in the relationship of their own ideas to other
philosophies and religions such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto.
Nichiren was the only Kamakura originator to show a strong interest
in such questions.82
The original teachings of the founders of Kamakura Buddhism
therefore diverged from the interest in Buddhist history that arose in
the traditional schools during the latter half of the Kamakura period.
In the case of the Kamakura innovators, their starting point was a
profound longing for salvation and the religious experience that undergirds
it. When they sought to explain their experiences intellectually,
they were led back to Buddhist doctrine to discover the concepts
and rationale for their beliefs. Traditional priests, on the other hand,
considered the study of Buddhist doctrine to be fundamental and
accepted its doctrinal framework as the parameters of their inquiry.
Only within that framework did they attempt to innovate or to explore
variations on basic themes.83
As Kamakura Buddhism emerged with its diverse new movements
and as various types of religious and intellectual activities began to
appear, the priests at the major temples in Nara were prompted to
reflect on the nature of Buddhism in Japan. They sought to comprehend
the place of Buddhism and its differing systems of thought.84
The interest in Buddhist history that grew out of these circumstances
was eventually inherited by such figures as the Rinzai Zen priest
79 Osumi, "Kamakura Bukkyo to sono kakushin undo," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi, vol. 5,
pp. 236-8.
80 See, for example, Kofukuji sdjo, in Kamakura kyu Bukkyo, NST, vol. 15, pp. 32-42.
Si The Kamakura founders adopted only those things from traditional doctrine that seemed
applicable to and effective in clarifying their own ideas. Honen's Senchaku hongan
nembutsushu, in Honen Ippen, NST, vol. 10, pp. 87-162, exemplifies this idiosyncratic and
selective approach to Buddhist doctrine characteristic of them.
82 Tokoro Shigemoto, Nichiren no shiso to Kamakura Bukkyo (Tokyo: Fuzambo, 1965), pp. 233-
70.
83 Osumi Kazuo, "Kamakura Bukkyo to sono kakushin undo," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi,
vol. 5, pp. 236-8.
84 The works of Gyonen in particular are good examples of this trend. See Hasshu koyo, DNBZ,
vol. 3, pp. 7-40; and Sangoku Buppo denzu engi, DNBZ, vol. 101.
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THE FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 57I
Kokan Shiren (1278-1346), who modified the approach to Buddhist
history pioneered by Shusho and Gyonen.85
Kokan's work Genko
skakusho is a history of Japanese Buddhism in condensed form.86
With
works of this type, the Japanese first attempted to look at Buddhism in
Japan in its entirety and as objectively as possible.87
THE FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
The attitude of the Kamakura innovators
All of the schools of Kamakura Buddhism passed through various
formative stages and eventually succeeded in developing highly structured
religious organizations. None of them originated from a schism
within the older schools of Buddhism. They had as their starting point
the teachings of the Kamakura innovators, who voluntarily severed
ties with the established religious institutions of their day. Even during
the lifetime of these innovators, rudimentary religious organizations
began to coalesce around them. These groups were, by and large,
charismatic religious movements based on their teachings. They had
specific religious tenets at their core, and they were composed of
believers of like conviction. From these loosely structured beginnings,
full-fledged religious organizations gradually evolved, known today as
the Kamakura schools of Buddhism. This entire process extended
many years beyond the lifetime of the innovators, and it resulted not
only in the institutionalization of their teachings but also in the idealization
of them as founders. Whether or not they ever intended to
establish formal sectarian bodies, they ultimately became venerated as
the founding fathers of the Kamakura schools.
Kamakura Buddhism presents clear-cut instances in which religious
teachings acted as the consolidating agent in the creation of religious
organizations. This may seem only natural, but it was not a universal
pattern in Japanese history. There are numerous examples before the
Kamakura period in which religious organizations developed from communities
of priests with special privileges or, in the case of folk religion,
from certain well-defined groups in society. Also, in some instances,
organized movements arose on the periphery of major religious institutions
and incorporated their beliefs and practices.88
Beginning only in
85 Concerning Kokan, see Fukushima Shun'6, Kokan (Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 1944).
86 Genko shakusko, KT, pt. 2, vol. 31, pp. 1-454.
87 Osumi Kazuo, "Genko shakusho no Buppo kan," Kanezawa bunko kenkyu 271 (1983).
88 Examples of such groups are the Pure Land societies that arose in the mid-Heian period,
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572 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
the Kamakura period, believers straddling various social classes, includ
ing the commoner class, banded together around set religious tenets.
Social status, institutional ties, and geographical proximity may have
been other factors in their consolidation, but the teachings of the
Kamakura innovators provided the strongest bond uniting believers in
one body. The organizations that they created reached full institutional
development later as the schools of Kamakura Buddhism.
With the exception of Ippen, all of the originators of Kamakura
Buddhism left behind writings revealing a sophisticated knowledge of
Buddhist doctrine. Most of them studied on Mount Hiei while it was
still in the twilight of its doctrinal heyday, a time when priests in
training might devote ten or twenty years to study. Generally, the
Kamakura innovators propounded their new teachings after undergoing
some type of revelatory or mystical experience. Hence, they
tended to stress the primacy of religious experience. But to the extent
that they all were versed in Buddhist scriptures and doctrine, they
attempted to undergird these experiential elements with doctrinal explanations.
The religious organizations coalesced around their teachings
seldom attracted followers with a profound knowledge of Buddhist
doctrine. Consequently, believers looked to these originators as
the religious specialists of the group. But the articulation of religious
tenets per se did not make the Kamakura thinkers the actual founders
of a religious body in the sense that later adherents portrayed them.
Rather, their teachings simply functioned as a magnet bringing believers
together as a group. The more structured and hierarchical aspects
of the religious organizations emerged sometime later, after the reputed
founders had passed from the scene. During their own lifetime,
however, the founders' attitude toward the creation of independent
sectarian organizations was far more mixed and varied.
Honen and, especially, Shinran present interesting cases in the problems
of institutional development in the Kamakura schools. Both of
them preached a form of salvation requiring total reliance on the
power of Amida Buddha and complete denial of self. Implicit in that
view is the repudiation of any qualitative difference between teacher
and follower and, by logical extension, the rejection of the hierarchy
necessary for setting up a religious organization. This attitude is exhibited
in its purest form in Shinran's assertion, preserved in the
Tannisho, that he was on the same plane with other believers and that
primarily around the Tendai monk Genshin, and the bands of pilgrims that frequented
kannon sites from the end of the Heian period on.
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THE FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 573
he shared with them the same faith.89
The resistance to formal religious
organization intimated in Shinran's statement was one of
Kamakura Buddhism's revolutionary characteristics.
Notwithstanding these antiorganizational inclinations, religious bodies
did take shape, with the Kamakura originators at their center. This
process of formation is seen in the examples of Honen and Shinran
alike. They themselves functioned as guides and advisers in matters of
religious faith but around them revolved a great number of organizers
and proselytizers. These people were the ones who consolidated the
institutional dimension of Kamakura Buddhism. The originators
themselves had no grand vision of organizational expansion. Based on
their attitudes, the Pure Land schools did not overtly express any
intention of competing with established social organizations, but at the
same time they commanded enough popular appeal to create formidable
religious bodies.
Compared with those for the Pure Land schools, the conditions for
the emergence of the Zen schools differed in may ways. Zen is predicated
on the experience of enlightenment. Because of the subtle and
elusive nature of enlightenment, various doctrines were devised to
explain it, and monastic practices centering on Zen meditation were
developed to induce it. Because specialized training and understanding
are part of Zen, it is impossible for ordinary members of the
organization to stand above the teacher or master. A hierarchy is inherent
in the system, and both Eisai and Dogen received training in these
technical aspects of Zen during their travels to monasteries in China.
Eisai, for his part, sought to combine Zen with other forms of
Buddhism once he returned to Japan. He regarded Zen as a revitalizing
form of religious authority, and he strove to create a place for it
within the existing Buddhist schools. Eisai introduced what he had
learned in China into the administration of monasteries in Japan, and
he attempted to inaugurate a revival of Buddhism by doing so. The
new religious organization that Eisai established therefore had roots
firmly planted in the old. Consequently, Eisai must be characterized as
a reformer at heart who attempted to resuscitate the Tendai school
through the importation of Zen.90
Dogen, on the other hand, was critical of combining Zen with other
religious elements, as Eisai proposed. Dogen idealized a strict form of
clerical monasticism, and he was not expressly interested in the organi-
89 Tannisho, in Shinran-shu Nichiren-shu, NKBT, vol. 82, p. 196.
90 Yanagida Seizan, "Eisai to Kozengokokuron no kadai," in ChuseiZenka no shiso, NST, vol. 16,
pp. 450-80.
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574 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
zation or expansion of a school of Buddhism. Instead, he confined his
attention to the practice of meditation and the attainment of enlightenment,
and he tailored his teachings to the needs of the individual
monks he trained.91
Hence, Dogen's monastic organization, though
hierarchical like Eisai's, was not integrated into the established social
and religious network as Eisai's was. The differing institutional concerns
of the two are best reflected in the fact that Eisai actively sought
ties with the political authorities, whereas Dogen turned his back on
the world of secular affairs.
Nichiren, who appeared late in Kamakura Buddhism, differed considerably
from the other four religious innovators before him. He was
a religious genius in his own right who produced Buddhist ideas that
were totally new and unique to Japan. But compared with that of the
other Kamakura originators, Nichiren's period of formal doctrinal
training was somewhat shorter. As a result, his ideas were not as fully
systematized into traditional doctrinal form.92
Nichiren tended to
stress religious experience more than doctrinal matters, and hence he
was more directly involved in creating a religious sect. In this respect
he was closer to being an actual sectarian founder than were the other
Kamakura innovators.
The last of the Kamakura figures, Ippen, was an exception to the
general pattern established by his predecessors. He differed, first, in
that his original inspiration contained a Shinto dimension: a revelation
received from the Shinto deity of Kumano Shrine. Ippen's second
difference was that he repudiated doctrinal systematization and instead
invested his energies in proselytization activities.93
His third
difference was that in his proselytization efforts he did not root himself
in a single location but traveled continuously from place to place.
Neither Ippen's peripatetic life-style nor his lack of a doctrinal corpus
of writings lent itself to the establishment of a religious organization.
The institutional evolution of the Kamakura schools
Religious organizations took embryonic shape around the originators
of Kamakura Buddhism, but the Kamakura schools themselves
achieved full institutional form only through the efforts of countless
religious organizers, long after the founders were gone. What reli-
91 Shobogenzo, in Dogen, pt. I, NST, vol. 12, pp. 165-231; and in Dogen, pt. 2, NST, vol. 13,
pp. 298-302.
92 Ienaga Saburo, Chusei Bukkyo shisoshi kenkyu (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1957), pp. 66-109.
93 Ippen Shonin goroku, in Honen Ippen, NST, vol. io, p. 348.
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THE FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 575
gious organizers had to do in order to give structure to these movement
was to universalize the ideas that the Kamakura originators
derived from personal experiences and to refashion them in a logical
way that would appeal to the largest number of people. Part of that
was actually accomplished by the originators themselves in their
doctrinal writings. Among them Ippen was the only one who did not
translate his experience into doctrinal tenets. Immediately before his
death he burned all the writings and religious texts that he possessed.
Nevertheless, Ippen's successor Shinkyo (1237-1319), who had long
traveled with Ippen on his religious sojourns, set about framing his
beliefs in a doctrinal format that would be passed down in subsequent
periods.94
In instances in which the originator did formulate his doctrine,
there was no assurance that it would preserve organizational cohesion
in the movement he left behind. For example, Honen, the pioneer
of Kamakura Buddhism, produced a distinct doctrinal corpus,
but soon disagreements arose among his followers as to how to interpret
his ideas. In the end there emerged sharp doctrinal differences
among his major disciples: Kosai (1163-1247), Ryukan (1148-1227),
Shoku (1171-1247), Bencho (1162-1238), and Shinran. Many of
these priests drew concepts that they had learned before they ever
met Honen, in order to recast his beliefs into a systematic body of
doctrine.
As a result, interpretive differences put Honen's disciples at odds
with one another after his death. The influential ones ultimately produced
religious organizations of their own and were recognized as
sectarian founders in their own right.95
The unity that Honen's religious
organization had while he was still living was quickly shattered
once he was gone. The same tendency was quite pronounced in
Nichiren's following, too. There were many elements in Nichiren's
thinking that were not spelled out doctrinally. Furthermore, his career
was filled with upheaval and commotion, and so his own ideas
changed frequently according to the events of his life. The result was
that his disciples differed in how they comprehended his teachings and
what elements they were attracted to, depending on what period of his
life they spent with him. Soon after Nichiren's death, his religious
organization was divided into six branches, each with a major disciple
at its head: Nissho (1221-1323?), Nichiro (1243-1320), Nikko (1246-
94 Ohashi Shunno, Jishu no seiritsu to tenkai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1973), pp. 83-99.
95 Yasui Kodo, Honen monka no kyogaku (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1968); and ltd Yuishin, Jodoshii no
seiritsu to tenkai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1981), pp. 135-97.
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576 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
1332), Nikko (different characters, 1253-1314), Nitcho (1252-1314),
and Nichiji (b. 1250).96
Despite the fragmentation in Honen's and Nichiren's movements,
the tendency toward sectarian splintering did not emerge prominently
in other Kamakura schools. Part of the reason was the nature and
content of the founders' teachings. In the case of Shinran, there was
little schism in his following, even though he himself was the founder
of a separate sect within Honen's religious movement. In the case of
Zen, its doctrines were not conducive to sectarian division. That is,
they stressed the importance of Dharma lineage through which the
enlightenment experience is kept alive in a continuous master-disciple
transmission. In the case of Ippen, his teachings were not even formulated
into doctrine at his death, and so there was no palpable issue
from which one could dissent.
As stated previously, the Kamakura schools of Buddhism were distinctive
in that they did not revolve so much around doctrinal studies
as the earlier schools did but, rather, stressed experience and religious
practice. Their religious organizations, therefore, were geared to provide
a context for religious practice. What constituted religious practice
was gradually broadened to include not only the exclusivistic
practices, such as the nembutsu, which are the hallmark of Kamakura
Buddhism, but also the practice of venerating the founders themselves.
Examples of this new trend are found in the memorial services
to the founders established in the Kamakura schools. The Chionko
ceremony to Honen and the Hoonko ceremony to Shinran originated
only decades after their death, but as time wore on they were elevated
to become one of the most important rituals in their respective
schools.97
It also became popular to venerate iconic images of the founders and
to build memorial halls (tnieido) in the major temples to enshrine these
images.98
Religious leaders and organizers in the Kamakura schools
contributed to the founders' deification by composing idealized biographies
of them, which often were read aloud at memorial services for
96 Takagi Yutaka, Nichiren to sono montei (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1965), pp. 291-307.
97 Each year the Chionko service is held on the anniversary of Honen's death day, and the
Hoonko on the anniversary of Shinran's death day. The liturgy for such a service is called a
koshiki. Koshiki were composed for a number of the Kamakura innovators. The one for
Shinran, known as the Hoonkoshiki, in Shinshu shogyo zensho, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Kokyo shoin,
1941), pp. 655-60, was written by his great-grandson Kakunyo in 1294.
98 The memorial hall to Shinran at the Honganji, the head temple of the Shinshu school, is
larger than the hall in which the image of Amida Buddha is enshrined. Concerning the
development of mieido, see Akamatsu Toshihide, Kamakura Bukkyo no kenkyu (Kyoto:
Heirakuji shoten, 1957), PP- 337-55Cambridge
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THE FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 577
them. Some were expanded into illustrated editions (emakimono) to be
used in teaching believers about the greatness of the founders.99
For
example, Honen's religious organization, which divided into branches
early on, produced several different biographies of him. Over time,
many of these biographies were embellished and enlarged so as to
aggrandize the lives of the founders as much as possible.
In looking at these biographies and at the veneration of the founders
in general, one can discern both the religious inclinations of ordinary
believers and the institutional designs of sectarian organizers. Believers
willingly and enthusiastically incorporated reverence for the founders
into their religious outlook and practice. Indeed, organizers found
this reverence to be a crucial element in establishing sectarian control.
The deification of Shinran, for instance, helped strengthen the authority
of his school's organizers, who were his blood descendants. They
made their base of operations the Honganji temple, founded at
Shinran's grave site, and they claimed the position of hossu, or chief
priest of the temple, as the hereditary office of their family.100
Many
other organizers attached themselves to the memory of the founders
through the use of religious writings, images, or other objects that
they had received from them. These articles became potent symbols of
authority, imparting a special privilege or status to their possessors.
Facilities where religious practices were performed were the institutional
backbone of the Kamakura religious organizations. In the case
of Shinran's school, these facilities were small religious meeting places
called dojo.101
The religious organization was gradually built in a pyramid
fashion, with countless dojo at its base. In other schools, temples
were the first institutions around which religious organizations took
shape.
Organizers sought to occupy key positions in the school by taking
charge of the administration of major temples that had close connections
with the founder. Struggles over administration and authority
arose in the Nichiren school at the Kuonji temple on Mount Minobu
where Nichiren had retired and in the Soto Zen school at the Eiheiji
monastery that Dogen had founded.102
In Shinran's Shinshu school,
99 For examples of illustrated biographies of Kamakura Buddhist figures, see Nihon emakimono
zenshu, vol. 10: Ippen Hijiri e; vol. 13: Honen Shonin eden; vol. 20: Zenthin Shonin e,
Boki e; and vol. 23: Yugyo Shonin engi e (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1960-8).
100 Matsuno Junko, "Honganji no seiritsu," in Akamatsu Toshihide and Kasahara Kazuo, cds.,
Shinshushi gaisetsu (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1963), pp. 83-94.
101 Kasahara, Shinran 10 togoku nomin, pp. 271-5.
102 Imaeda Aishin, "Dogen Soho Kanzan no monryu," and Fujii Manabu, "Togoku Hokke
kyodan no seiritsu to tenkai," in Akamatsu Toshihide, ed., Nikon Bukkyoshi, vol. 2 (Kyoto:
Hozokan, 1967), pp. 201-3, 245-6.
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578 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
fierce competition emerged not over temple administration but over
dojo. Rival factions tried to incorporate as many dojo congregations as
possible into their respective religious organizations. After various ups
and downs, the Honganji temple, established by Shinran's greatgrandson
Kakunyo (1270-1351), prevailed over the other factions and
unified the school under its religious authority.103
In the case of
Ippen's Jishu school, it was difficult for a religious organization to
emerge while he was still living because of the peripatetic life he led.
His successor Shinkyo, while preserving religious itinerancy as a practice
of the Jishu clergy, established a domicile base for proselytization,
in the form of dojo and temples. Once these institutions were in place,
the school quickly gained definition.104
In short, even the most loosely
organized movements of Kamakura Buddhism developed a sectarian
structure through fixed institutions where doctrine could be refined
and symbols of authority housed.
The role of lay believers
Kamakura Buddhism began as a movement by turning away from
traditional Buddhist doctrine and severing ties with established Buddhist
temples. It took shape as a formal religious organization by
consolidating believers around institutions of its own. With the exception
of Zen in the early period, particularly the Soto Zen school of
Dogen, all the schools of Kamakura Buddhism actively proselytized
among lay people. Hence, as the religious organizations gained greater
structure, groups of believers had considerable say in the school's
operation. The clerical organizers of the schools functioned primarily
as leaders of ritual and religious practice, but the people who oversaw
the organization's economic affairs were often lay adherents. Through
their combined efforts the Kamakura schools gained a high degree of
institutional stability, though the power and vitality of their teachings
were sometimes diluted by institutional concerns.
The Shinshu school in its early decades is a striking example of the
prominent role that the laity could play in sectarian affairs. Shinran
taught that all people are equal in the sight of Amida Buddha. He was
critical of the clerical ideal that existed in the established Buddhist
schools, and he described himself as neither priest nor layman.105
103 Concerning Kakunyo's life, see Shigematsu Akihisa, Kakunyo (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
kobunkan, 1964). 104 Ohashi, Jishu no seiritsu to tenkai, pp. 79-99.
105 Kyogyoshinsho, in Shinran, NST, vol. 11, p. 258; and Tannisho, in Shinran-shu Nichiren-shu,
NKBT, vol. 82, p. 196.
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THE FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 579
Because of this outlook, the Shinshu religious organization, during its
formative period at least, consisted of nothing more than individual
congregations. In congregational dojo there was no great difference
between dojo leaders and ordinary believers, in either intellectual capacity
or economic means. But this idyllic period of Shinran's school
did not last long, for a master-disciple relationship gradually evolved
between the dojo head and the average adherent. The dojo leader was
at first merely a representative chosen from the ranks of congregational
members. But as he became more specialized in his religious
functions, the intellectual and economic gap between him and the
other members widened.106
The expansion of the dojo leader's power
gradually accorded him a superior status, and ultimately it fit well into
the hierarchical sectarian pyramid that developed under the
Honganji.107
Among the various Kamakura schools, congregations of
this type were most prominent in the Shinshu. Their egalitarian character
derived not simply from Shinran's teachings but also from the
fact that there was a greater social homogeneity of believers in Shinshu
congregations than in other schools.
In other Kamakura schools, temples commonly functioned as the
rallying point for the formation of religious organizations. Therefore,
the people who were most involved in the construction of the temple
usually emerged as the dominant figures among the laity. In Honen's
Jodoshu school and Eisai's Rinzai Zen school, for example, aristocrats
and powerful samurai became major donors and supporters, and so
they exerted considerable influence on the organization's affairs.108
The role of the religious organizers was limited more or less to the
religious functions of the school. There gradually emerged a gap between
the influence of these supporters and that of ordinary believers,
who comprised the wider membership of the schools. Ordinary adherents
had little say in the organization's administration, and so whatever
activities they initiated had minimal impact.
Powerful supporters also began to place members of their own families
in positions of influence as religious leaders and organizers in the
temples. As a result, the power of other groups of believers within the
school was circumscribed even more. The tendency in these religious
106 Osumi Kazuo, "Kamakura Bukkyo to sono kakushin undo," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi,
vol. 5, p. 245.
107 For an overview of the development of the Shinshu school in this context, see Akamatsu,
and Kasahara, eds., Shinshushi gaisetsu; and Kasahara, Shinran to wgoku nomin.
108 The Tofukuji in Kyoto is an example of a temple in which aristocratic adherents became
influential. The Jufukuji and the Engakuji in Kamakura are examples in which samurai
became influential.
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580 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
organizations was to revert to the pattern of the traditional schools of
Buddhism wherein a small elite controlled the religious organization.
The Nichiren school varied somewhat from this pattern. Its major
supporters were mostly samurai, but there was not as pronounced a
difference between them and the other believers. Thus, a broad spectrum
of adherents was involved in the school's religious activities.
Because of the greater number of parties initiating action and exerting
influence, the religious organization was pulled in several different
directions at the same time. These internal dynamics may have contributed
to the sectarian schisms that plagued the Nichiren school more
than the other Kamakura schools.109
There has been considerable research on the specific classes in society
that became the social foundations of the various schools of
Kamakura Buddhism. Investigation into the organization of the
schools and the circumstances of the believers who were attracted to
them has been extensive in the postwar period. Although a number of
controversies still remain, the prevailing views concerning the social
origins of the Kamakura schools are as follows: Honen's teachings made
their greatest inroads among aristocrats and commoners living in the
increasingly complex urban environment of Kyoto and its vicinity.110
Shinran's teachings were disseminated primarily among the farming
peasants of the Kanto countryside.111
The Nichiren school received its
principal support from the samurai residing along the coastal belt of the
eastern provinces.112
Eisai's Rinzai school of Zen appealed to urban
aristocrats and upper-class samurai, whereas Dogen's Soto school
spread among the samurai of the outlying regions.1
'3
These are the
dominant theories concerning the social composition of the Kamakura
schools, but debate continues over many of their finer points."4
CONCLUSION
The period from the middle of the twelfth century through the midale
of the thirteenth was a pivotal juncture in the history of Japanese
109 Nakao Takashi, Nichirenshu no seiritsu to tenkai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1973), pp.
28-84.
no Inoue Mitsusada, Nihon Jodokyo seiritsushi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha,
1956), pp. 283-333; and Tamura, Nihon Bukkyo shisoshi kenkyu, pp. 58-123.
i n Kasahara, Shinran to logoku nomin, pp. 277-303.
112 Kawazoe Shoji, "Nichiren no shukyo no seiritsu oyobi seikaku," in Nihon meiso ronshu, vol.
9: Nichiren (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1982), pp. 2-28.
113 Imaeda Aishin, Zenshu no rekishi (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1966), pp. 13-213.
114 For alternative views and variations on these points, see Ienaga, Chusei Bukkyo shisoshi
kenkyu, pp. 2-109; al
>d Akamatsu, Kamakura Bukkyo no kenkyu, pp. 60-72.
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CONCLUSION 58l
Buddhism. A number of priests broke ties with Mount Hiei, the
citadel of established Buddhism, and became critical of the Buddhism
espoused there. They believed that the religious ideal propounded in
the traditional schools made it impossible for people to be saved in the
present age, and they spawned a movement that sought to address the
human condition in its actual state. This movement concentrated on
the weakness of humans in their current situation, and it generated a
new religious path containing a heavy component of faith. The leaders
of this religious revolution steadfastly maintained that no person is
excluded from enlightenment, and so they focused on how the Buddha
can save even those overwhelmed by wrongdoings and defilements. In
the process they produced forms of religious thought oriented toward
the internal experience of human beings.
This new movement of thought, though creative in its own right, was
built on ideas inherited from the literati of the Heian period, as well as
on doctrinal principles produced at Mount Hiei. The context for its
appearance was the profound social, political, and economic changes of
the late Heian and Kamakura periods - that is, the decline ofthe aristocracy,
the expansion of samurai control, the emergence of a new urban
class of townsmen, and the transition from shoen to autonomous villages
in the countryside. Kamakura Buddhism turned its back on the authority
of earlier Buddhism; it exerted a strong influence on samurai society,
which itself strove to create a new culture; and it spread its teachings
aggressively among the common people.
Kamakura Buddhism generally refers to those schools with roots in
the Kamakura period. They have had a pervasive influence on the
religious thought and sentiment of the Japanese people even into
modern times. The significance of Kamakura Buddhism in Japanese
history is that for the first time Buddhism, which entered Japan as a
foreign religion, was fully adapted to Japanese concerns and put
down roots among the common people. Buddhist thought, transmitted
with great difficulty from India, was boiled down to a few essentials.
It was rendered into simple and comprehensible teachings and
couched in the context of religious practices that ordinary people
could perform. Admittedly, the Japanese adaptation of Buddhism
made it diverge in several ways from its original form. From the
beginning the Japanese fused Buddhism with Shinto and with their
own long-held cosmology of the spirit world. In the Kamakura
schools themselves the veneration of religious teachers and sectarian
founders also distinguished Japanese Buddhism from its antecedents
in other parts of Asia. Nonetheless, the streamlined and simplified
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582 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD
tenets produced by the Kamakura originators had a distinctly Buddhist
message at their core.
The emphasis on belief and practice found in Kamakura Buddhism
displaced a luxurious aesthetic sensibility that had been a part of
Buddhism in the Heian period. Buddhism in the Kamakura period
did not produce artistic works in the fields of painting, sculpture,
architecture, or even literature. The only exceptions to this rule were
the artistic images of the schools' founders used in the memorial services
and the illustrated biographies of them used in religious teaching.
The Rinzai. Zen school, which had close ties to the bakufu, was
later influential in the creation of Japan's literature, art, and culture of
daily life, but such involvements of Rinzai did not exist in the
Kamakura period. They emerged only in the Muromachi period that
followed.
Notwithstanding Kamakura Buddhism's divergence from the fine
arts, its impact on other spheres of society and culture was extensive.
Its teachings stimulated Japan's most widespread propagation of Buddhism
among the lower classes and fostered for the first time organizations
that could rightly be called religious institutions of the people. It
also challenged the earlier schools of Buddhism so profoundly that
they were inspired to initiate various religious activities of their own.
These consequences and others, as they worked their way through aii
levels of society, carved out an indisputable place for Kamakura Buddhism
in Japanese history.
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CHAPTER 13
ZEN AND THE GOZAN
The medieval centuries can fairly be described as the great age of
Japanese Buddhism. Honen, Eisai, Shinran, Dogen, Nichiren, Ippen,
Rennyo, and thousands of lesser-known but equally dedicated religious
leaders took Buddhism out of its traditional place in monastic
cloisters under elite patronage, found new possibilities for personal
salvation, and carried their message to common people throughout
Japan. During these centuries, the foundations were laid for those new
schools of Buddhism - Pure Land, True Pure Land, Nichiren, and
Zen - that still claim the spiritual allegiance of the majority of Japanese.
In response to these surges of reform, innovation, and popularization,
some of the older schools of Buddhism produced reformers
who called for a return to stricter monastic discipline and tried to make
their teachings more accessible to ordinary men and women.
The social ramifications of this religious upsurge were enormous.
Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of monasteries, nunneries,
hermitages, and "training places" (dojo) for lay devotees were established.
Monasteries, monks, and wandering preachers looked for, and
found, new patrons; received donations and grants of land; served as
bearers of culture and learning as well as advocates of Buddhist spirituality;
acted as political advisers; and engaged in commerce and diplomacy.
Some of the older monastic centers remained powerful political
and military forces in society. And some of the newer groups, especially
the Nichiren and True Pure Land followers, displayed a militant
edge.
The general development of Buddhism in the medieval period is
discussed in Chapter 12 of this volume. This chapter will examine the
introduction and spread of Zen Buddhism as one aspect of the larger
development of Buddhism and of changes in medieval society. The
growth of Zen was rapid and striking. In 1200, there were no more
than a handful of small Zen temples in Japan, in most of which Zen
meditation was practiced in conjunction with Tendai or Shingon Buddhist
ceremonies. By 1600, the Rinzai and Soto schools of Zen had
583
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584 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
developed clear sectarian identities, and there were literally thousands
of Zen monasteries in Japan, some having populations of a thousand
monks. The impact of this expansion of Zen on the religious, social
and cultural life of the age can hardly be overestimated.
The development of medieval Zen in all its religious and social
manifestations cannot be dealt with in a single chapter. Here, therefore,
I shall concentrate on five topics: the transmission of Zen from
China to Japan, the institutional growth and diffusion of the major
branches of Zen and the patronage that made this possible, the administration
and economy of the medieval Zen monastery, the transformation
of Zen thought and practice in the Japanese context, and the
contribution of Zen monks to medieval Japanese culture.
THE TRANSMISSION OF CH'AN BUDDHISM TO JAPAN
The Asuka, Nara, and Heian periods
Before the mid-twelfth century, few monks claimed to be bearers of
Zen. Meditation in one form or another is part of the spiritual practice
of most schools of Buddhism. However, Japanese monks and some of
their imperial patrons during the Nara and Heian periods were aware
that some Chinese monks emphasized meditation (dhyana or ch'an) as
a path to enlightenment more direct than such traditional Buddhist
practices as sutra study, prayer and ritual, and the accumulation of
merit through good works. The Japanese monk Ennin (793-864) recorded
in his journal several encounters with Ch'an monks during his
pilgrimage to Chinese Buddhist monasteries in the mid-ninth century.
But he was not impressed by the Ch'an devotees nor inspired to study
Ch'an:
After we had eaten, we drank tea, and then, heading due north, we went
twenty-five li to Hsing-t'ang hsien in the territory of Chen-chou and went to
the Hsi-ch'an-yiian inside the walled town and spent the night. There were
over twenty Zen monks who were extremely unruly men at heart.1
Ennin journeyed to China to study what he believed to be the mainstream
of T'ang-dynasty Buddhism - T'ien-t'ai teachings and tantric
practices. Ch'an was clearly peripheral to his interest, and on this
occasion at least, he seems to have been repelled by the boisterousness
of the Ch'an practitioners he met.
1 For Ennin's comments, see Edwin O. Reischauer, trans., Ennin's Diary: The Record of a
Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law (New York: Ronald Press, 1955), p. 210.
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THE TRANSMISSION OF CH'AN BUDDHISM 585
Other Japanese monks during these early centuries were more favorably
disposed that Ennin was toward Ch'an Buddhism. Dosho (629-
700), one of the founders of the Hosso school of Buddhism in Japan,
went to China in 653 as part of an official embassy. Together with
Hosso teachings, he also studied Ch'an and after his return to Japan
established a meditation hall in his monastery, the Gankoji. Saicho
(766-822), the founder of the Tendai (T'ien-t'ai) school in Japan, is
said to have received a Ch'an transmission from a Ch'an master on
Mount T'ien-t'ai. He incorporated meditation into a fourfold Tendai
practice that involved sutra study, esoteric rituals, study of the Vinaya
precepts, and contemplation (shikan). Saicho's receptivity to Ch'an
was to have significant consequences for later phases of the Zen transmission.
In the late Heian period, many monks who had been trained
in the Tendai monastery of the Enryakuji renewed their interest in
meditation and sought to use Zen to revive Japanese Tendai Buddhism.
But this impulse toward reform was rejected by the Tendai
establishment. Had the Tendai leadership been more accommodating
to the advocates of Zen, it is possible that Zen would have continued
to develop within a Tendai framework rather than emerging as an
independent school of Japanese Buddhism.
Several Chinese exponents of Ch'an found their way to Japan during
the Nara and Heian periods. Around 736, the monk Tao-hsuan
(Dosen) arrived. He was an adherent of the Vinaya school who had
studied Ch'an under masters of the Northern school of Ch'an. Taohsuan
received imperial patronage and established a meditation hall
within the Nara monastery of Daianji. A century later the Ch'an monk
I-k'ung (Giku) was invited to Japan by Empress Tachibana, a consort
of Emperor Saga and an enthusiastic patron of Buddhism. She had
heard from Kukai that Ch'an Buddhism was in vogue in T'ang China
and had requested that a Ch'an master be sent to Japan. I-k'ung was
installed in the newly built monastery of Danrinji. He lectured on Zen
before the imperial court and instructed some Japanese monks in
Ch'an, but then he eventually returned to China.2
Thus, although Zen was known in Japan in the Nara and Heian
periods, the transmission was sporadic and did not lead to any sustained
development. Ch'an was only one among many expressions of
T'ang Buddhism and was certainly not the most clearly defined or
2 Biographical information on Dosho, Saicho, Tao-hsuan (Dosen), and I-kung (Giku) is drawn
from Komazawa daigaku zengaku daijiten hensanjo, ed., Zengaku daijiien, 3 vols. (Tokyo:
Taishukan shoten, 1978).
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586 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
socially influential.3
The Japanese monks accompanying the official
embassies to China during these centuries sought out masters of the
major philosophical schools of Buddhism - T'ien-t'ai, Hua-yen, or
Fa-hsian - or monks who could instruct them in monastic precepts or
esoteric practices. It was these monks, not the Ch'an practitioners,
who dominated the great metropolitan monasteries of the T'ang empire.
If they displayed an interest in Ch'an, it was as a complementary
practice. Dosho combined Ch'an meditation practice with Hosso metaphysics.
Saicho blended it into a syncretism in which devotion to the
Lotus Sutra and the conduct of tantric rituals played major roles.
Many Chinese monks came to Japan during the Nara and early Heian
periods, and some, like the Vinaya master Ganjin, attracted many
followers. Few of these Chinese masters were specialists in Ch'an
meditation or philosophy, however, or advocated Ch'an as an exclusive
practice. Tao-hsuan combined Ch'an with Vinaya discipline. I-k'ung
came as a Ch'an master, but he left Japan before establishing anything
resembling an independent meditation practice.
Opportunities for the transmission of Zen were drastically reduced
with the abandonment of official embassies to China after 894 because
of the expense involved and the political disorder on the continent.
Thereafter, until the twelfth century, the only contacts were sporadic
ones made by traders, pirates and a few pilgrim monks. One Japanese
monk, Jojin, is known to have journeyed to China and studied Ch'an
during the Northern Sung period. There is no evidence, however, that
he ever returned to Japan.
The Kamakura period
The number of monks transmitting Ch'an teachings to Japan during the
late twelfth and thirteenth centuries increased dramatically. This transmission
was hardly interrupted by the Mongols' invasion attempts in
1274 and 1281. During this period, Japanese and Chinese monks introduced
to Japan not only Zen thought and meditation techniques but
also monastic forms and cultural idioms. A few of the monks who
journeyed from Japan to China during the Kamakura period studied
Vinaya (Ritsu) or Pure Land teachings, but most were bearers of Zen.
Why, when there had been so little interest in Ch'an during the Nara
3 The general character of T'ang-dynasty Buddhism is discussed by Stanley Weinstein, "Imperial
Patronage in the Formation of T'ang Buddhism," in Arthur F. Wright and Denis
Twitchett, eds., Perspectives on the T'ang (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973),
pp. 265-306.
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THE TRANSMISSION OF CH'AN BUDDHISM 587
and Heian periods, should there have been so much enthusiasm demonstrated
in the Kamakura period? By the late Heian period, monks
and lay people alike were convinced that Tendai and other branches of
established Buddhism were in serious decline. Monastic regulations
were flouted; monks and nuns lived like aristocrats and indulged in
political intrigues; and monastic armies periodically threatened the
capital, fought among themselves, or challenged the military power of
the new warrior bands. The growing awareness of social dislocation
and political disorder in the eleventh and twelfth centuries heightened
these feelings of religious decline. So did the belief that beginning in
1052 Japan had entered the Later Age of the Buddha's Law (mappo), a
phase of cosmic spiritual degeneration in which the remoteness of the
Buddha's teaching made salvation by such traditional methods as the
accumulation of merit extremely difficult.
By the late twelfth century, Japanese Buddhist circles were showing
signs of revitalization. The lead was taken by Tendai monks seeking to
reform traditional Buddhism and extend the promise of salvation to
the common people. One powerful current developing in Tendai Buddhism
emphasized the compassion of the Amida Buddha as the surest
recourse in the age of mappo. Honen (1133-1212), for instance,
stressed that sincere devotion to Amida, expressed through the invocation
of his sacred name (nembutsu), offered the easiest path to rebirth
(pjo) in the Pure Land of Amida's Western Paradise. Other Tendai
monks came to believe that they could revitalize Tendai practice by
reasserting the centrality of the Lotus Sutra or by reemphasizing the
Vinaya discipline. Others believed that revival could best be accomplished
by bringing the latest and best in Buddhist teachings from
Sung China. Like their predecessors in the Asuka and Nara periods, a
few determined monks made the dangerous sea crossing to study in
the great Buddhist centers of the Southern Sung empire.
When they reached China, however, they quickly discovered that
most of the Chinese monks they encountered no longer advocated
T'ien-t'ai or Hua-yen doctrines but were devotees of Ch'an. In the
intervening centuries, while the older schools of Chinese Buddhism
had languished, Ch'an had flourished and had become the most vital
branch of Chinese monastic Buddhism. This vitality was expressed in
a sharply focused spiritual practice based on rigorous meditation, a
carefully ordered monastic life, an active intellectual and cultural influence
throughout Chinese society, and institutional growth based on
generous secular patronage. Purges of established metropolitan Buddhism
of the kind witnessed by Ennin in the mid-ninth century had
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588 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
left Ch'an and Pure Land communities - with their provincial roots,
loose organization, and relative lack of wealth or reputation for
wealth - virtually unscathed. In fact, by attacking established Buddhism
as alien, opulent, and antisocial, the purges helped clear the
way for the spread of Ch'an and Pure Land teachings and practices
that could easily be reconciled with Chinese sensibilities. Even if they
had not impressed the Japanese monks, T'ang Ch'an masters like Matsu
(709-88) ,and Lin-chi (d. 867) had attracted able monks and intrigued
many laypersons through their direct approach, cryptic responses,
and vigorous advocacy of the possibility of immediate enlightenment
through meditation and self-negation.4
In the centuries following
the collapse of the T'ang dynasty, while Pure Land devotion
spread widely at the popular level, Ch'an won the support of large
numbers of monks, literati, and provincial military governors:
With the diffusion of political power after the An Lu-shan Rebellion, the
military governors came to share with the imperial court the patronage of
Buddhism. The governors and the men around them were attracted to the
ideas of the school of meditation (Ch'an), and this school flourished in many
provincial centers.5
Thus, monasteries that had once been filled with T'ien-t'ai, Lii
(Ritsu), Fa-hsiang, or Hua-yen monks were now dominated by Ch'an
monks and headed by Ch'an masters. During the Sung dynasty, some
thirty Ch'an centers thoughout the empire were organized in a hierarchy,
culminating in five great monasteries, cr mountains (wu-shan), in
Hangchow. These monasteries had great wealth and prestige. Of
course, together with official sponsorship went alignment with the
secular bureaucracy. The lives of the mcnks were carefully regulated,
and the appointments of their abbots were subject to official confirmation.
It was to these thriving Ch'aa rr.anasteries in and around
Hangchow and the lower Yangtze River region that Japanese monks
came in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.6
When they enrolled in the monks' hails of these Chinese monasteries
and recovered from their surprise at the pervasiveness of Ch'an, the
Japanese monks found that they had much to learn. The Ch'an teachings
that I-K'ung introduced to Japan during the T'ang dynasty had
4 The growth of Ch'an Buddhism is introduced by Heinrich Dumoulin, A History of Zen
Buddhism (New York: Pantheon, 1963).
5 Wright and Twitchett, eds., Perspectives on the Tang, p. 21.
6 Brief discussions of the role of Ch'an Buddhism in Sung-dynasty society can be found in Araki
Kengo, "Zen," in Kubo Noritada and Nishi Junzo, eds., Shukyo, vol. 6 of Chugoku bunka
sosho (Tokyo: Taishukan shoten, 1968), pp. 106-114; and Tamamura Takeji, "Zen," in Bito
Masahide, ed., Chugoku bunka to Chugoku (Tokyo: Taishukan shoten, 1968), pp. 151—71.
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THE TRANSMISSION OF CH'AN BUDDHISM 589
been those of the Northern school of Ch'an. By the Sung dynasty, the
rather contemplative Northern teaching had been outstripped by the
Southern school deriving from Hui-neng, the sixth Ch'an patriarch,
' which stressed a dynamic meditation leading to "sudden enlighten-
ment."7
In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, Southernschool
masters tracing their Ch'an lineage from Lin-chi were the most
influential. Their Ch'an practice harnessed mind-breaking "cases"
(kung-an, koan), shouts, and even slaps to intensify their students'
meditative quest. Japanese monks also found that this meditation practice
was conducted in a novel monastic setting in which the monks'
hall, where they practiced communal meditation, and the Dharma, or
lecture, hall, where the monks debated Ch'an publicly with their masters,
were among the most important buildings. They found that
Ch'an masters stressed the Vinaya precepts and that a detailed code of
monastic regulations for the Ch'an communities, the Ch'an-yuan
ch'ing-kuei, had recently been compiled (1103) and was in force in
many Ch'an communities.8
Those monks who stayed longer in China
discovered that many Ch'an masters shared the intellectual and cultural
interests of the secular literati with whom they consorted. They
also learned that monastic life included not only meditation and study
of Ch'an Buddhist traditions and texts but also a wide range of cultural
avocations such as poetry, painting, and scholarship, many of which
blended Ch'an and secular taste.
Young Japanese monks found the Ch'an Buddhism in the monasteries
of Hangchow to be vigorous and impressive. It was natural that
they should have viewed Ch'an as the highest expression of Sung
Buddhism and sought to use it to revitalize Japanese monastic Buddhism.
When they discovered that the Tendai establishment in the
capital resisted such reform, that Zen as a single practice was denounced
as vociferously as Honen's exclusive nembutsu practice had
been, the Zen pioneers were forced to try to establish Zen as an
independent branch of Buddhism in Japan under the patronage of new
groups in medieval society.
The first monks to introduce Sung Ch'an teachings to Japan were
Myoan Eisai (1141-1215) and Kakua (1143-?). Eisai made two journeys
to China, the first in 1168 and the second in 1187. His first stay in
7 The place of Hui-neng and the differences between the northern and southern branches of
Ch'an Buddhism are discussed by Philip Yampolsky in his introduction to The Platform Sutra
of the Sixth Patriarch (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 1-57.
8 Kagamishima Genryu, Sato Tatsugen, and Kosaka Kiyu, eds., Yakuchu Zerion shingi (Tokyo:
Sotoshu shumucho, 1972), pp. 1-25.
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590 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
China lasted for only a few months and was devoted to visiting traditional
Buddhist sites and collecting Tendai and Shingon texts. Eisai's
interest in Ch'an had been whetted, but after his return to Japan he
seems to have continued to advocate Tendai Buddhism. His second
pilgrimage to China lasted for three years and brought him into much
deeper contact with Ch'an. Having been refused permission to proceed
through China to visit the Buddhist sites in India, Eisai made his
way to Mount T'ien-t'ai where he studied Ch'an under Hsu-an Huaichang
of the Huang-lung lineage of the Lin-chi school. Hsu-an gave
Eisai a certificate of enlightenment and urged him to spread Zen
throughout Japan. Eisai was able to establish several meditation halls
in Kyushu, but when he tried to promote Zen in the capital, suggesting
that it be given pride of place in Tendai practice and arguing that
the secular patronage of Zen would contribute to the country's security,
he ran afoul of the monks and supporters of the Enryakuji and
was driven out of Kyoto. Making his way to eastern Japan, Eisai
secured the patronage of Hojo Masako and the young shogun Minamoto
Sanetomo. With their backing Eisai eventually was able to return
to Kyoto and establish the Kenninji, where Zen meditation was
taught together with Tendai and Shingon Buddhist practices.9
Kakua may have introduced Sung Zen teachings to Japan even
before Eisai. In 1171, he learned that Ch'an was in vogue in China and
made a four-year journey to the continental monasteries. He had returned
to Japan before Eisai made his second visit to China. According
to the Genko shakusho, a history of Buddhism compiled in 1322 by the
Zen monk Kokan Shiren, Kakua bemused emperor Takakura by responding
to his questions about Zen with a melody on the flute. But
because Kakua did not establish an enduring lineage, the credit for
founding Rinzai Zen in Japan went to Eisai.10
By the mid-thirteenth century at least thirty Japanese monks had
journeyed to China in search of Zen. A number of them studied at the
Hangchow monastery of Ching-shan under the guidance of Wu-chun
Shih-fan (1177-1249) of the Yang-ch'i lineage of Rinzai Zen." In the
9 Yanagida Seizan, Rinzai no kafu (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1967), pp. 28-88, offers a biographical
study of Eisai (or, as he is also known, Yosai).
10 Kokan Shiren, "Genko shakusho" in Kuroita Katsumi, ed., Shimei zoho kokushi laikei (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1930), vol. 31, p. 100.
11 The fine portrait of Wu-chun given to Enni and carried back by him to Japan is illustrated in
the catalogue for the exhibition The Arts of Zen Buddhism held at the Kyoto National
Museum, October-November 1981. See Kyoto kokuritsu hakubutsukan, ed., Zen no bijutsu
(Kyoto: Kyoto kokuritsu hakubutsukan, 1981), pp. 25, 55. An example of his calligraphy is
discussed in Jan Fontein and Money L. Hickman, eds., Zen Painting and Calligraphy (Boston:
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1970), pp. 24-26.
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THE TRANSMISSION OF CH'AN BUDDHISM 591
transmission of Zen to Japan, the most influential of these monks were
Dogen Kigen, Enni Ben'en, and Muhon (Shinchi) Kakushin.
Dogen (1200-53) entered the Tendai monastery of Enryakuji at the
age of thirteen. Not finding answers to his religious questioning in
Tendai Buddhism, he moved to the Kenninji to study Zen with Eisai.
In 1223, in company with Eisai's most senior disciple Myozen, Dogen
journeyed to China. After studying under several Ch'an masters,
Dogen met T'ien-t'ung Ju-ching (1163-1228), a Ts'ao-tung (Soto) Zen
master reputed for his austere personal life and severe Zen practice.
The elderly Chinese master and the enthusiastic young Japanese monk
established an immediate rapport. Before Dogen returned to Japan,
Ju-ching recognized Dogen's enlightenment and transmitted to him
the teachings of Soto Zen. Dogen found it difficult, however, to gain
acceptance for his Zen in the capital. He returned at first to the
Kenninji, but Eisai had died, and the Zen training there had deteriorated.
Dogen's advocacy of single-minded meditation (shikan taza) as
the best form of Buddhist practice aroused the hostility of the
Enryakuji monks. Their opposition eventually forced him to leave the
capital and establish his community in the mountains of Echizen.
With the exception of one brief visit to Kamakura, where he discussed
Zen with the regent Hojo Tokiyori, he spent the remainder of his life
there, building the monastic center of Eiheiji, training the few disciples
who came to study with him, and writing his treatises on Zen and
the monastic life, the Shobo genzo.12
Enni Benn'en (1202-80) was more successful than Dogen had been
in gaining acceptance for Zen in Kyoto. As a young monk, Enni
studied Zen with Eisai's disciple Eicho after becoming dissatisfied
with Tendai Buddhism. In 1235, he set out on a six-year pilgrimage to
China. There he became a disciple of Wu-chun Shih-fan at Chingshan.
Wu-chun gave to Enni a robe and bowl symbolizing the legitimate
transmission of Zen enlightenment and urged him to spread Zen
throughout Japan. On his return to Japan in 1241, Enni brought with
him many Zen-related texts, as well as portraits of Wu-chun and examples
of his calligraphy.
Eisai, Kakua, and Dogen had not been readily accepted in Kyoto.
Enni, however, secured a stronger beachhead for Zen in the capital
largely because he enjoyed the sponsorship of one of the most influential
nobles of the day, Kujo Michiie. In 1243, Enni was invited to
12 This biographical sketch of Dogen is based on Imaeda Aishin, Dogen: zazen hitosuji no shamon
(Tokyo: NHK Books, 1981); and Hee-jin Kim, Dogen Kigen - Mystical Realist (Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1975).
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592 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
Kyoto to serve as the founding abbot of a grandiose new monastery,
the Tofukuji, that Michiie had built. The Tofukuji was not at first
exclusively a Zen monastery. Rather, Enni was forced to compromise
with established Buddhism and, like Eisai at the Kenninji, to teach
Zen alongside Tendai and esoteric Buddhism. Enni, however, made it
clear that he considered Zen the fundamental Buddhist practice and
worked to convert the Tofukuji into a full-fledged Zen monastery.
Enni's learning, his firsthand knowledge of Chinese Buddhism, and
the patronage of the Kujo family guaranteed his acceptance by the
Buddhist circles close to the court. On several occasions, Enni lectured
on Zen to Emperor Gosaga and his entourage and taught Zen to
the warrior rulers of eastern Japan. In his long lifetime, Enni attracted
large numbers of disciples, many of whom in their turn went to study
under Wu-chun and his successors.13
Muhon (Shinchi) Kakushin (1207-98) was in his thirties before he
began to practice Zen with Eisai's disciples Gyoyu and Eicho in eastern
Japan. In 1249, he traveled to China where he studied Ch'an under
the Lin-chi master Wu-men Hui-k'ai (Mumon Ekai), the compiler of
the collection of koan, (literally, "public cases") known in Japanese as
the Mumonkan (Gateless gate). Koan were conundrums or propositions
used as an aid to Buddhist meditation and enlightenment. Kakushin
was certainly one of the first monks to use koan from this collection in
his training of Zen monks in Japan. Unlike Enni, however, he had
little desire to head a great temple in the capital. Although he was
invited to Kyoto by the cloistered emperors Kameyama and Gouda,
who wished to learn about Zen and offered to build temples for him,
Kakushin preferred an eremitic life at a small mountain temple, the
Kokokuji, in Kii Province.14
Japanese monks like Mukan Fumon or Tettsu Gikai, who had studied
Zen under Enni and Dogen, respectively, continued to journey to
China during the second half of the thirteenth century. But by the time
Kakushin returned to Japan in 1254, a new and important stage in the
transmission of Sung Zen was under way. Chinese Ch'an masters were
beginning to come to Japan to teach Zen and the conduct of Zen
monastic life. The young Japanese monks enrolling in Chinese monasteries
had conveyed to the Chinese monks both their enthusiasm for
13 For the life of Enni, see the chronology compiled by his follower Enshin, "Shoichi kokushi
nempu," in Suzuki gakujutsu zaidan, ed., Dai-Nihon Bukkyo zensho (Tokyo: Kodansha,
1972), vol. 73, pp. 147-56; and the section by Tsuji Zennosuke in Nihon Bukkyo-thi(chusei2)
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970), pp. 98-124. A painting of the Tofukuji in the early sixteenth
century is illustrated and described in Fontein and Hickman, eds., Zen Painting and Calligraphy,
pp. 144-8. 14 Entry on Kakushin in Zengaku diaijilen.
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THE TRANSMISSION OF CH'AN BUDDHISM 593
Zen and the information that Zen was taking root in Japan. As a
result, some Chinese Ch'an masters came to view Japan as a possible
field for the transplanting of Zen.
The first of these Chinese monks to come to Japan was Lan-ch'i
Tao-lung (Rankei Doryu, 1213-78). Although still only in his early
thirties when he landed in Kyushu in 1246, Lan-ch'i was a recognized
Ch'an master who had practiced meditation under the guidance of
Wu-chun Shih-fan and Wu-ming Hui-hsing, the leading Lin-chi masters
of that time. The young Chinese monk made his way to
Kamakura where he won the favor of the regent Hojo Tokiyori.
Tokiyori studied Zen with Lan-ch'i and installed him as the founding
abbot of a new Zen monastery, the Kenchoji, in Kamakura. The
completion of the Kenchoji in 1253 was an important milestone in the
transmission of Zen to Japan. Unlike the Kenninji and Tofukuji in
Kyoto, it did not begin by compromising with the older schools of
Buddhism. The temple bell and the plaque over the main gate proclaimed
that it was a Zen monastery. Unlike Dogen's community at
Eiheiji, which had rejected any accommodation with Tendai or other
forms of Buddhism and as a result had discouraged elite patronage,
the Kenchoji had the backing of the country's warrior rulers.
The establishment of the Kenchoji signaled that Zen Buddhism was
now a major force in Japanese religious life. But Lan-ch'i did not
restrict himself to Kamakura. In 1265, in response to an imperial
request, he went to Kyoto and lectured at the court. While in the
capital he revitalized Zen practice at Eisai's old monastery, the
Kenninji, and helped Enni transform the Tofukuji into a full Zen
monastery. During the Mongols' first invasion attempt in 1274, it was
rumored that Lan-ch'i was a Mongol spy. Subsequently, when he was
exiled to Kai Province, he took the opportunity to spread Rinzai Zen
among the local warriors. Lan-ch'i was allowed to return to the
Kenchoji shortly before his death. In recognition of his contribution to
the transmission of Zen, he was granted the posthumous title of
Daikaku Zenji, Zen master Daikaku. His disciples and successors in
the Daikaku lineage, with Kenchoji as their base, carried his Zen
teachings throughout the Kanto region.15
Lan-ch'i had been followed before the close of the Kamakura period
by more than a dozen fully trained Chinese Ch'an masters. This was a
15 Lan-ch'i Tao-lung and Kenchoji are discussed in Daihonzan Kenchoji, ed., Kyofukuzan
Kenchoji (Kamakura: Daihonzan Kenchoji, 1977), pp. 23-82. Portraits of Lan-ch'i and
Tokiyori, temple ground plans, and examples of Lan-ch'i's calligraphy and monastic regulations
are also included in this source.
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594 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
rare phenomenon in Sino-Japanese cultural relations, and after the
Nara period there was no other comparable influx of fully trained,
high-ranking monks. Some came because they felt uprooted by the
Mongol conquest of China. Others responded to invitations from the
Hojo regents. Others came simply because, like Lan-ch'i, they had
heard that Zen was in the ascendant in Japan. A few of these emigres,
for instance, Wu-an P'u ning (Gottan Funei, 1197-1267), returned to
China disappointed with their Japanese students' incomprehension of
Zen. Most, however, spent the remainder of their lives in Japan,
training monks and lay persons in Kamakura, Kyoto, and the provinces,
where they were invited to establish temples by powerful local
shugo warriors. Through their efforts, the practice of Zen in the Japanese
monasteries by the early fourteenth century was probably equivalent
to that in the Chinese monasteries.16
The Muromachi period
Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Japanese monks now
well trained in Zen before their departure - continued to travel to
Chinese Ch'an centers in search of teachings, monastic codes, and
cultural expressions of Zen. Some of them spent more than a decade in
China and rose to high ranks in Chinese monasteries. Others were sent
by their temples or by the Ashikaga shoguns to head embassies, to act
as interpreters, and to handle foreign trade and cultural exchanges.
These latter may have made very little contribution to the transmission
of Zen.
By 1350, the Zen monastic establishment in Japan was so large, well
organized, and self-sustaining that there was less incentive for Chinese
monks to come to Japan or for Japanese monks to undergo training in
Chinese monasteries. Monks who had been to China were highly respected,
not least by provincial warrior chieftains eager to sponsor Zen
in their domains, but it was no longer essential to have studied Zen in
China or to have had one's enlightenment certified (inka) by a Chinese
master in order to be a leading figure in Japanese Zen circles.
The influential monk Muso Soseki (1275-1351) represented this
first generation of self-confident Japanese Rinzai masters. Muso had
begun his Zen practice under the guidance of the Chinese emigre
monk I-shan I-ning (Issan Ichinei, 1247-1317) but had failed to attain
16 Information on some of these Chinese masters and their patrons can be found in Tsuji, Nikon
Bukkyo-shi (chiisei 2), pp. 125-264; and Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen
Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981),
pp. 57-78.
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THE TRANSMISSION OF CH'AN BUDDHISM 595
I-shan's recognition of his enlightenment. I-shan described Muso's
approach to Zen as too bookish. After further wandering and intense
meditation, Muso attained enlightenment at dawn in a mountain hut,
on seeing dying embers burst into renewed fire. This experience was
accepted as a true enlightenment by the Japanese Zen master Koho
Kennichi (1241-1316), a son of Emperor Gosaga. Muso subsequently
became one of the most influential Zen monks in medieval Japan. He
was patronized by emperors and shoguns, headed many of the leading
Zen monasteries in Kyoto and Kamakura, and attracted many hundreds
of disciples. Some of these disciples went to China. Muso, however,
never made the journey. He declared that with Zen so well rooted
in Japan, there was no longer any need to look to China as a source of
transmission.17
Muso's contemporaries Daito and Kanzan, the founders
of the Daitokuji and the Myoshinji, likewise never visited China.
War in Japan and piracy in East Asian waters during the late fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries virtually ended the direct transmission
of Zen from Chinese monasteries. Beginning in the late sixteenth
century, however, commercial contacts between Japan and China recovered,
and a community of Chinese merchants settled in Nagasaki.
In the seventeenth century, in response to their requests for spiritual
leadership, Chinese monks from Fukien Province began to come to
Nagasaki. Among them was Yin-yuan Lung-chi (Ingen Ryuki, 1592-
1673),a n
eminent Ch'an master of the Huang-po (Obaku) school.
Yin-yuan came to Nagasaki in 1654 to serve as the abbot of the
Kofukuji. His reputation soon came to the attention of the fourth
Tokugawa shogun, Ietsuna, who first invited him to Edo and then
sponsored the building of a new monastery at Uji, near Kyoto, called
the Mampukuji, a Japanese reading of the name of the monastery in
Fukien from which Yin-yuan had come. Yin-yuan and the Chinese
masters of the Huang-po school who followed him to Japan to head the
Mampukuji or its branches introduced a new type of Zen common in
Ming Chinese monasteries in which Zen meditation and koan study
were allied with Pure Land nembutsu devotion.18
Obaku Zen did not
become a very large school, however. At its peak it probably included
no more than several hundred temples. The novel syncretic Ming Zen
teachings and monastic practices, nonetheless, presented a challenge
to the established Rinzai and Soto schools which were sunk in a late
medieval lethargy. Many Rinzai and Soto monks were strongly attracted
by nembutsu Zen. Others, like Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768),
17 Tamamura Takeji, Muso Kokushi (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1969).
18 On Yin-yuan, the Obaku school, and Mampukuji, see Fuji Masaharu and Abe Zenryo, eds.,
Mampukuji (Kyoto: Tankosha, 1977).
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596 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
vigorously rejected such syncretic tendencies, but in doing so they
encouraged a revival of serious Zen practice in both the Rinzai and
Soto monasteries.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ZEN MONASTIC
INSTITUTION IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN
When Eisai returned from his second pilgrimage to China in 1191, no
Zen monasteries existed in Japan. But, a century later, Zen had taken
root, and by 1491 there were many thousands of Rinzai and Soto Zen
monasteries, subtemples, branch temples, nunneries, and hermitages
scattered throughout the country.
Figure 13.1 presents an overview of the growth and institutional
relationships of the major branches of Japanese Zen between the
twelfth and sixteenth centuries. One major institutional division was
that between the Rinzai monasteries, dominated by monks who traced
their Zen lineage from Eisai, Enni, Chinese emigre monks, and their
successors, and the Soto monasteries, whose monks traced their Zen
from Dogen and his disciples. A third branch of Zen, the Obaku
school, was not, as I have already mentioned, introduced to Japan
until the seventeenth century and thus falls outside the scope of this
chapter. The division between Rinzai and Soto was significant, and I
shall return to it frequently in this chapter, but it must be stressed that
divisions within Rinzai and Soto were equally significant in the institutional
development of medieval Zen. These institutional subdivisions
reflected different attitudes toward Zen itself and differences in patterns
of patronage, in economic well-being, and in cultural involvement.
It is through an understanding of these groupings that we can
most easily grasp the institutional development of medieval Zen.
Rinzai Zen: the gozan
Until at least the mid-fifteenth century, the largest, most prosperous,
and most influential Rinzai monasteries were those comprising the
nationwide network headed by the so-called five mountains {gozan),
the great metropolitan monasteries of Kyoto and Kamakura.19
Especially
during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the gozan
group was both the most vigorous branch of Rinzai Zen and one of the
most vital sectors of the entire metropolitan Buddhist establishment.
19 Unless otherwise indicated, the ensuing discussion of the gozan branch of medieval Zen
follows Collcutt, Five Mountains, pp. 76-125.
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1227 DSgen introduces Soto teachings —
1243 Dogen establishes Eiheiji
1300 Third-generation dispute
Keizan leaves Eiheiji and converts Sojiji into a Soto monastery
1400 + Nationwide expansion of Soto
Zen. especially by the Keizan-Gazan
lineages based on Sojiji
1202 Eisai establishes Kenninji
1241 Enni returns to Japan (Tofukuji)
1245 Lanch'i comes to Japan (Kenchojil
1280 Wuhsueh comes to Japan (Engakuji); Kamakura gazan
takes shape under Hojo patronage
; \ 1319 Oaito establishes Daitokuji; Ashikaga patronage of the goian
1379 Soroku office
Kamakura
and Kyoto
gozan
11 gozan
60 jissatsu
230 shozan
Diffusion and
popularization
(esoteric rituals,
folk beliefs, social
welfare, funeral
services, etc.)
5,000 branch
temples
Daio
nes
(Daitokuji
and
Wlyoshinji)
Patronage by
shoguns and
shuto
1507 Eiheiji
becomes an
imperially
sponsored
monastery
Patronage by Sengoku daimyo, lesser
warriors, and cultivators
Patronage by
Sengoku daimyo.
townspeople, and
entertainers
Onin War 1467 1467 Onin War
Present day: Sato school. 15,000 temples; Rinzai school, 6,400 temples.
Figure 13.i The growth of Zen schools, thirteenth to sixteenth century. (From Kawasaki Tsuneyuki and
Kasahara Kazuo, eds., Shukyo-shiy vol. 18 of Taikei Nihon-shi sdsho, p. 219. Tokyo: Yamakawa
shuppansha, 1966.)
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598 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
The development of the gozan institution was of great significance, not
merely for the diffusion of Zen, but also for the cultural, political, and
economic life of the age. Gozan monasteries had as their patrons members
of the warrior and courtly elites. They were major landholders
and collectively were one of the largest holders of private domain
(shoen) interests in medieval Japan. Their monks, who must be
counted among the intellectuals of the age, were well versed in Chinese
culture as well as in Zen and served as cultural and political advisers to
shoguns and emperors besides being mentors in Zen to the sons and
daughters of warrior families. The gozan group comprised a threetiered
hierarchy of monasteries. All adopted the same basic organizational
structure, and although they differed greatly in size and importance,
they all were regulated by the same monastic codes, and were
subject to the same control by warrior laws. A youth entering one of
the small provincial monasteries making up the lower tier of the gozan
system might in time become a Zen master or monastic official in one
of the Kamakura or Kyoto gozan. Conversely, Zen teachings or Chinese
cultural tastes adopted by the metropolitan gozan quickly spread
to the system's provincial extremities.
The gozan institution began to take shape in the late thirteenth
century. By 1299, the Kamakura monastery of Jochiji was being referred
to as one of "five mountains." A Kenchoji document of 1308
states that that monastery was then regarded as the "head of the five
peaks." At about the same time, the newly established Kyoto monastery
of Nanzenji was also being described as one of thefivemountains.
Details of the early gozan network are unclear, but the surviving records
indicate that the Hojo regents in Kamakura took the initiative in
honoring and regulating the new Zen monasteries that they were building,
by adopting the Southern Sung practice of organizing an official
three-tiered hierarchy of Zen monasteries. Together with the appointment
of monasteries to gozan status, the Hojo also designated smaller
monasteries in Kamakura, Kyoto, and the provinces to the second and
third tiers of the hierarchy asjissatsu ("ten temples") and shozan ("various
mountains"). Most of the monasteries included in the gozan were
Rinzai monasteries dominated by those schools of Zen derived from
Eisai, Enni, or Chinese emigre masters that had taken root in
Kamakura and Kyoto. Sot6 Zen was represented in the gozan system
by a very small number of monasteries that had been founded in
Kamakura.
Why should the Hojo have shown such interest in creating a Zen
monastic establishment? In part they were probably responding to
suggestions by Chinese and Japanese monks who were eager that their
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 599
monasteries be given official recognition and warrior protection, thus
relieving them of some of the hostility of the Enryakuji and other
powerful and long-established rivals. The warrior regents would have
been receptive to arguments that it would add to their prestige and
that of Japan to create a nationwide network of official Zen monasteries
similar to the system established in Sung China. But the Hojo
could also have seen other benefits deriving from the elaboration of an
official Zen monastic system. They were thus asserting their predominant
influence over, and co-opting to their service, a new and increasingly
influential branch of Japanese Buddhism.
For centuries, the imperial court had created client relationships
with certain Buddhist monasteries, by granting them the status of
jogakuji or monzeki. Other monasteries in Kyoto and Nara were linked
to the imperial family or the Fujiwara and other noble houses through
the family connections of their abbots. Such ties of monastic status
and personal connection kept the older monasteries firmly within the
sphere of court influence and resistant to warrior control.
By creating an official network of Zen monasteries, the Hojo were,
therefore, building their own countersystem of client monasteries, in
which warrior interests would be heeded and the sons of warrior families
who entered the monastic life could rise to positions of leadership.
The Hojo were also painfully aware that many of the older monasteries
maintained powerful armed bands that were sources of political violence
and monastic unruliness and corruption. By asserting their control
over the metropolitan Zen monasteries, the Hojo were thus trying
to ensure that the new Zen institution would not become yet another
militant branch of monastic Buddhism. Warriors from the bakufu
with the title of superintendent of Zen monasteries (jike gyoji) were
given authority over the gozan network, and the bakufu began to issue
detailed regulations for the various gozan monasteries, including
strong prohibitions against the acquisition of weapons by Zen monks.
Although the Hojo took the lead in elevating to official status the
new Rinzai monasteries they sponsored, members of the imperial family
were quick to follow suit. The Kyoto monastery of Nanzenji was
established in 1291 when the cloistered emperor Kameyama converted
one of his detached palaces into a Zen monastery. At the urging of the
court, it was quickly accorded gozan status. Emperor Godaigo (1288-
1339) demonstrated that, like the Hojo, he too could discern political
advantage in the patronage and control of the growing gozan Zen
institution. When he came to power after the destruction of the
Kamakura bakufu in 1333, he deliberately shifted the leadership of
the gozan monasteries from Kamakura to Kyoto, by promoting to the
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6O0 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
highest rank within the gozan group those monasteries like the
Nanzenji or the newly established Daitokuji that had strong imperial
connections. Godaigo had relied heavily on the support of the older
Buddhist monasteries like the Enryakuji in his efforts to topple the
Hojo. His promotion of a Kyoto-centered gozan was thus an indication
that he fully recognized the social influence of metropolitan Zen and
was eager to use that influence to help restore imperial rule.
Godaigo's imperial restoration was short-lived. Ashikaga Takauji, a
warrior leader who had helped him overthrow the Kamakura bakufu,
ousted him from the capital in 1336, installed a rival emperor on the
throne, and set himself up as shogun. The Ashikaga family came from
the Kanto where they had already been patrons of Rinzai Zen monks.
Takauji, his brother Tadayoshi, and the Ashikaga shoguns carried on
from the Hojo the practice of promoting metropolitan Zen monasteries
to the various ranks of the gozan system. With their bakufu based
in Kyoto, it was natural that the Ashikaga should have particularly
favored newly established Kyoto monasteries like the Tenryuji or
Shokokuji, with which they had close ties and which were dominated
by monks from Zen lineages that they patronized such as that of Muso
Soseki. The Kamakura gozan survived, but for the next century or
more it was the Kyoto gozan monasteries, their subtemples and provincial
satellites patronized by the Ashikaga and their leading vassals and
headed by monks of the Muso and Shoichi lineages that dominated the
gozan network and the whole Zen establishment.
As an institution, the gozan network grew rapidly under the patronage
of the Ashikaga shoguns and their provincial agents, the shugo.
Among the shugo families that became generous patrons of gozan
monks and monasteries during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
were the Akamatsu, Asakura, Hosokawa, Imagawa, Kikuchi, Kira,
Ogasawara, Otomo, Ouchi, Sasaki, Satake, Takeda, Toki, Uesugi,
and Yamana. Both Akamatsu Norimura (1277-1350) and his son
Norisuke (1314-71), for instance, studied Zen under Sesson Yubai
(1290-1348). For Sesson and his followers, they established several
Rinzai monasteries in Harima, among them the Hounji and Horinji,
both of which were designated jissatsu by the Muromachi bakufu.20
Hosokawa Yoriyuki (1329-92), who served as a senior bakufu official
(kanrei) and as shugo in Shikoku and Bingo, was an enthusiastic patron
of monks of the Muso lineage and a vigorous sponsor and reformer of
gozan monasteries.21
Imagawa Ryoshun, who served the Ashikaga as
20 Kosaka Konomu, Akamatsu Enshin, Mitsusuke (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1970). pp.
60-71.
21 Ogawa Makoto, Hosokawa Yoriyuki (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1972), pp. 243-73.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 601
governor of Kyushu (Kyushu tandai) and as shugo of Totomi and
Suruga, was a patron of Bukkai and other monks of Enni's lineage
from the Tofukuji.22
The Ouchi made their provincial headquarters,
Yamaguchi in Suo, into a major cultural center during the Muromachi
period and invited to it some of the most famous Zen masters of the
age. Of the Rinzai temples that they sponsored, the bakufu ranked the
Jofukuji, Koshakuji, and Kokuseiji as jissatsu and the Eikoji as a
shozan.23
The Otomo established half a dozen Rinzai temples in Bungo
during this period. Most of them were headed by monks of Enni's
line, the Shoichi branch of the gozan, and had close ties with Tofukuji.
Among these monasteries, one was ranked as a jissatsu, the remainder
as shozan. Of eleven jissatsu and shozan monasteries in Mino, at least
five were established by the Toki family, the shugo of the province.
The expansion of the jissatsu and shozan tiers of the gozan network
clearly owed a great deal to patronage of the gozan lineages of Rinzai
Zen by warriors of shugo rank. It seems fair to ask, therefore, why the
majority of shugo should have become such eager sponsors of gozan
monks and the gozan institution.
Certainly they were attracted by the new Chinese Zen teachings and
by the novel practice of meditation (zazen). The writings of the Zen
masters of that time reveal that shugo and other provincial warriors not
only discussed Zen with them but also sat in meditation and came to
them to discuss koan - that is, they sought enlightenment. Many
shugo placed their younger sons or daughters in Zen monasteries and
nunneries and some, like Otomo Ujiyasu, rose to high positions in the
gozan.
In addition, as in the case of the Hojo regents and Ashikaga shoguns,
cultural, political, and social factors, as well as spiritual interests,
were involved in shugo patronage. Many shugo spent at least part
of their time at the shogun's court in Kyoto, where they associated
both with other warriors and with nobles and Zen prelates from the
gozan monasteries. The patronage of gozan monks and the establishment
of Zen monasteries in their domains kept these provincial warriors
in direct touch with the cultural style of Kyoto and, beyond that,
with the cultural interests of the Chinese literati.
It is clear from the surviving documents that the Zen monks whom
warriors were most eager to patronize and invite to their territories
were monks who had recently returned from China or who enjoyed a
reputation in Kyoto for spiritual insight or cultural accomplishment.
22 Kawazoe Shoji, Imagawa Ryoshun (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1964), pp. 49-52.
23 Ouchi patronage of Zen and the arts is detailed in Yonehara Masayoshi, Sengoku bushi to
bungei no kenkyu (Tokyo: Ofusha, 1976), pp. 511-814.
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6(32 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
Imagawa Ryoshun, the Akamatsu, Ogasawara, Otomo, and many
other shugo studied Neo-Confucianism and Chinese poetic styles under
Zen monks. Ogasawara Sadamune (1291-1347) is believed to have
developed his code of warrior etiquette (Ogasawara-ryu) partly under
the guidance of Ch'ing-cho Cheng-ch'eng (Seisetsu Shocho, 1274-
1
339)5 from whom he learned the rules of Zen monastic etiquette and
the cultural ideals of Chinese literati.
The Ouchi family, learning from the printing activities of the Kyoto
gozan, sponsored the printing of Buddhist texts, Confucian classics,
and treatises on Chinese poetry at Zen temples in Suo. Like other
wealthy provincial warrior families, they were collectors of Chinese
paintings and other art objects (karamono), in regard to whose appreciation
they sought the guidance of Zen monks. Indeed, it was with the
backing of the Ouchi, and on an Ouchi vessel, that the painter Sesshu
Toyo (1420-1506), who had begun his painting career as a monk in
the Kyoto gozan monastery of Shokokuji, was able to make his way to
China for further study.
By the mid-fourteenth century it was obvious to the shugo and other
provincial warrior families that Rinzai Zen was politically very much
in the ascendant and that the Ashikaga and members of the imperial
family were showing particular favor to those lineages of Rinzai Zen
that were represented in the newly designated gozan, jissatsu, and
shozan monasteries. As vassals of the Ashikaga, the shugo were encouraged
to establish Zen monasteries in their provinces, and they found it
politically expedient to have those monasteries ranked as jissatsu or
shozan.24
In doing so they were not only winning favor with the
bakufu; they were also opening up channels of communication with
the capital and doors for the advancement of those of their offspring
who chose to enter the Zen monastic life. Socially, by installing prestigious
Zen monks from the gozan schools as heads of their family
temples (ujidera), the shugo hoped to raise their own local prestige
among the warrior famines in their province and perhaps contribute to
a greater sense of cohesion among their family members and vassals.
Certainly, the proliferation of jissatsu and shozan monasteries was
achieved in many cases not by. building new foundations but by converting
former Tendai, Shingon, and Pure Land family temples into
Zen monasteries in response to the rapidly growing religious and social
interest in Zen.25
24 On the provincial diffusion of the gozan, see Imaeda Aishin, Chusei Zenshu-shi no kenkyu
(Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai 1970), pp. 137-268.
25 Kawai Masaharu, Chusei buke shakai no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1973), p. 120.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 603
The shugo's patronage was also instrumental in carrying Rinzai Zen
into the provinces. Their example prompted other local warrior families
(gozoku or kokujin) to establish Zen monasteries, some of which
were ranked among the jissatsu and shozan.
By the mid-fifteenth century, the gozan network included some
three hundred monasteries, many of which had their own subtemples
(tatchu) and branch temples (matsuji). Eleven monasteries were ranked
as full gozan. After the reorganization of the gozan ordered by
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in 1386, the five Kamakura gozan monasteries,
in descending order of seniority, were the Kenchoji, Engakuji,
Jufukuji, Jochiji, and Jomyoji. The Kyoto gozan included the
Tenryuji, Shokokuji, Kenninji, Tofukuji, and Manjuji. Nanzenji was
set in a special position "above" the gozan.
In 1386 Yoshimitsu had also named ten monasteries from Kyoto and
ten from Kamakura as jissatsu. By the mid-fifteenth century, however,
the principle that this category should include only ten monasteries or
ten ranks was being neglected. The Ashikaga shoguns awarded jissatsu
ranking to important provincial monasteries until more than forty
were included in this tier. There had never been any restriction on the
number of shozan, or "various mountains," and so the Ashikaga were
able to show favor to provincial warrior families and monks of the
gozan schools by according shozan status to their monasteries. By the
mid-fifteenth century more than 250 shozan had been designated
throughout Japan. In most provinces there was at least one monastery
ofjissatsu and five or six shozan. These carried gozan Zen practices and
the cultural values of Kyoto into the most remote parts of the country.
Gozan Zen was also carried into the provinces through the system of
ankokuji, or "temples for peace in the realm." At the urging of Muso
Soseki, Ashikaga Takauji and his brother Tadayoshi, starting in 1345,
gave the title of ankokuji to one important Zen monastery in each
province, provided it with a Buddha relic, and required its monks to
offer prayers for the memory of Godaigo and those warriors who had
fallen in the fighting between the Northern and Southern Courts. At
the same time, for the same purpose, they gave the title rishoto, "pagoda
of the Buddha's favor," to a Tendai, Ritsu, or Shingon monastery in
each province. In doing this, Muso and the Ashikaga may have taken a
hint from the Nara-period kokubunji system of provincial monasteries,
but they were also motivated by contemporary concerns. Muso was
eager to close the breach between the supporters of the rival courts and
put at ease the restless spirit of Godaigo. By establishing the ankokuji,
the Ashikaga were publicly expressing their repentance for their treatCambridge
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604 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
ment of Godaigo and the Southern Court and were playing for popular
sympathy by a nationwide offering of prayers for those who had died in
the civil war. They were also honoring Muso, promoting gozan Zen,
and tightening their links with the provincial warrior families whose
family temples were designated as ankokuji. Many of the ankokuji were
later included in the gozan network as jissatsu-rank monasteries. The
appointment of non-Zen monasteries asrishotogave the bakufu one
means of surveillance over these influential provincial monasteries.26
Limitations of space preclude a detailed discussion of the ankokuji
system or of the frequent promotions and demotions of temples within
the gozan system. It does seem important, however, before considering
the institutional development of the other branches of Rinzai and Soto
Zen, to mention some of the features characterizing the operation of
the gozan as a bureaucratic institution.
Under the Hojo and the early Ashikaga, the gozan monasteries were
supervised by warrior officials of the bakufu who held the title otjike
gydji or Zenritsugata (commissioners for Zen and Ritsu monasteries).
In 1379, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu gave supervisory control over the gozan
to the Zen monks when he appointed Shun'oku Myoha, a leading
disciple of Muso Soseki, to the office of soroku (registrar general of
monks). Yoshimitsu may well have borrowed this idea from a similar
office supervising the Ch'an monasteries in Ming China. He was also
demonstrating that he believed that the gozan was a mature institution
capable of regulating itself. Beginning in 1383, the soroku office was
headed by the chief monk of the Rokuon'in subtemple within the
Shokokuji. The original intention seems to have been that the soroku
would be responsible for all Zen monasteries, but in practice, his
authority was limited to the gozan network, especially the Kyoto gozan.
The duties of the soroku included the nomination to the bakufu of
monks qualified for appointment as abbots and senior monks of gozan
monasteries, the collection of fees for such appointments, and the
enforcement of Zen monastic regulations and bakufu prohibitions.
The soroku's authority was limited because the monastic assemblies in
each monastery maintained considerable autonomy and the bakufu
continued to deal directly with individual gozan monasteries and to
interfere in the policymaking of the gozan. When Kamakura gozan
monasteries were unable to settle their disputes, the bakufu urged
them to look for redress not to the soroku but to the Kanto kubo.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the soroku office was
26 Imaeda, Chusei Zenshu-shi no kenkyu, pp. 77-138.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 605
held by a number of influential monks, most of whom belonged to the
Muso lineage, including Zekkai Chushin (1336-1405), one of the most
accomplished gozan monk poets; Zuikei Shuho (1391-1473), poet and
compiler of the collection of diplomatic documents known as the Zenrin
kokuhoki; the bakufu representative who settled a dispute between
the Kamakura kubo Ashikaga Mochiuji and the Kanto kanrei Uesugi
Norisada; and Keijo Shurin (1440-1518), a confidant of Ashikaga
Yoshimasa, the eighth shogun. During much of the sixteenth century,
the office of soroku was eclipsed by that of the Inryoken. The Inryoken
was a hermitage built by the sixth shogun, Yoshinori, within the
Rokuon'in. As shogunal appointees, the heads of the Inryoken came to
exert considerable religious and political influence and to extend their
authority over the gozan. In 1615, both the soroku and Inryoken office
were abolished by the Tokugawa bakufu as part of its policy of regularizing
Buddhism. The last holder of the soroku office was the influential
monk Ishin Suden (1569-1633) of the Nanzenji, who had served as an
adviser to Tokugawa Ieyasu and played a major role in drafting policy
toward Buddhist temples, in handling foreign relations, and in compiling
codes regulating the nobility and the samurai.27
The gozan monasteries comprised an officially sponsored system.
Following Sung Chinese practice, the ideal was that these official
monasteries be "open monasteries" (Jipposatsu), their abbots nominated
by the soroku, from among the most qualified monks available,
and confirmed by the bakufu, irrespective of their Zen lineage. In
practice, in the gozan rank, the Nanzenji and Kenninji in Kyoto and
the Engakuji and most of the Kamakura gozan took their abbots
from one of the gozan Zen lineages. Some gozan and many jissatsu,
however, were virtually closed temples (tsuchien), headed and filled
by monks of a particular lineage. In Kyoto, for instance, the Tenryuji
and Shokokuji among the gozan and the Rinsenji and Tojiji of the
jissatsu category were enclaves of the Muso school. The Tofukuji and
its many provincial offshoots were generally headed by monks of the
Shoichi lineage, successors of Enni Ben'en. In Kamakura, the
Kenchoji was dominated by monks who traced their Zen lineage
through Lan-ch'i Tao-lung.28
Subtemples {tatchu) proliferated around the great metropolitan Zen
monasteries. These began as private retreats for senior monks who had
27 Ibid, pp. 269-366.
28 Toshihide Akamatsu, and Philip Yampolsky, "Muromachi Zen and the Gozan System," in
John W. Hall and Takeshi Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 324-5.
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606 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
completed their term as abbot and, instead of returning to the monks'
hall, had retired to build a small hermitage (in, ken, or an) in or near
the main compound, where they lived quietly with a few close disciples.
At his death, the Zen master's cremated remains would be kept
in the tatchu for veneration, and the hermitage would be treated as a
memorial temple in which his spirit was kept alive. These subtemples,
too, naturally became the enclaves of particular lineages. They were
not unique to Japan or to the gozan, but the lavish patronage enjoyed
by the gozan monasteries and ihe relatively short terms of appointment
by their abbots - generally two years - meant the existence of a substantial
pool of well-supported venerable monks eager to establish
their own subtemples. Monasteries like the Nanzenji and Tenryuji in
Kyoto or the Engakuji in Kamakura were, by the sixteenth century,
surrounded by twenty or thirty tatchu. The Hojo regents and the
Ashikaga shoguns tried, but with little success, to restrict the growth
of tatchu, as they were a drain on the resources and manpower of the
main monastery, not always responsive to bakufu regulation or monastic
discipline, and prone to feuding among themselves.
Many of the Zen masters who established subtemples also had cultural
interests: They were poets, painters, connoisseurs of Chinese art
objects, devotees of tea, designers of gardens, and students of Confucian,
Taoist, and Buddhist thought. Their subtemples, therefore,
tended to become close-knit salons in which their cultural interests
were transmitted to their disciples and given free rein, often at the
expense of rigorous Zen practice.29
As an officially sponsored monastic system, the gozan institution
was subjected to close regulation by the warrior rulers. The Hojo
regents Sadatoki and Takatoki issued sets of prohibitions for the
Kamakura gozan monasteries in 1294, 1303, and 1327. Similar codes
were issued periodically by the Ashikaga shoguns for the various tiers
of the gozan hierarchy and for individual monasteries. It was the
soroku's responsibility to secure compliance with these regulations by
the gozan monasteries and their subtemples. In these regulations the
shogunate sought to maintain monastic discipline and prohibit luxury
and immorality, to prevent the excessive growth of Zen monastic populations,
and to ensure that the Zen monasteries did not follow the
example of some of the older monastic centers and become armed
camps.
29 Tamamura Takeji, "Gozan sorin no tatchu ni tsuite," Rekishi chiri 76, nos. 5 and 6 (1940):
44-58, 33-64Cambridge
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 607
The basic legal codes of the Muromachi bakufu, the Kemmu
shikimoku, and their supplementary regulations, the tsuikaho, give considerable
attention to the regulation of the gozan. A sampling of these
regulations will indicate some of the rulers' concerns in their relations
with the Zen monasteries. Article 72 of the tsuikaho, issued around
1352, attempted to deal with certain flagrant breaches of monastic
discipline:
Up to now monks have wandered about day and night outside the temple at
will. They have schemed to make money in the temple precincts and such
moneylending activities have multiplied. This has become a subject of rumors,
causing a decline from the Buddha's law, and must be admonished.
The abbot and temple council acting in concert must make an inspection, and
a violator must be expelled from the temple without delay. If he refuses to
leave the temple, he will be considered a criminal and the Kanto government
must be notified.30
By the late fourteenth century, as gozan life became formalized, secure,
and culturally oriented, some monks were becoming casual in
the performance of their religious practice of prayer and meditation.
Yoshimitsu and his successors thereupon issued sharp admonitions to
delinquent monks, as in the tsuikaho, Article 141:
Both elders and ordinary monks must be carefully checked for [attendance at]
the three daily services. [If they are absent,] they must be removed from the
temple rolls, and elders must not be promoted. In the Zen sect, advancement
comes with the practice of Zen discipline (zazen), and those who have been
repeatedly negligent shall be expelled from the temple.3
'
As a new, growing, and generously patronized institution, the gozan
monastic population swelled rapidly from the late thirteenth century.
The novelty of Zen practice, the fame of Chinese Ch'an masters, the
reputations of Japanese monks like Enni, Muso, and Gido Shushin
(1325-88), the splendor of the new gozan monasteries, their close ties
with the warrior elite and the imperial court, and their cultural style all
helped draw monks away from other branches of Buddhism and convince
provincial warriors that their younger sons could find advancement
in the gozan cloisters. The Hojo and the Ashikaga had no desire
to see the gozan Zen monasteries rival in size the older monastic institutions
like the Enryakuji, Koyasan, or Negoro with their thousands of
monks, monastery servants, and armed bands. Such huge complexes
were unruly, badly disciplined, and hungry for land and donations to
30 Kenneth A. Grossberg and Kanamoto Nobuhisa, trans., The Laws of the Muromachi Bakufu
(Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1981), p. 55. 31 Ibid., p. 79.
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608 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
support their populations. The Kamakura and Muromachi bakufus,
therefore, tried to contain the growth of gozan monastic populations.
They ruled that major gozan like the Engakuji in Kamakura or the
Nanzenji in Kyoto should have no more than between three hundred
and five hundred monks, one hundred or fewer jissatsu, and no more
than around fifty shozan. That their efforts to control the growth of
gozan monastic population were unavailing is clear from the many
references to this problem in the tsuikaho and other codes pertaining to
Zen monasteries. Article 138 of the tsuikaho, for instance, reflects the
situation around 1380:
In the Joji law it was set at 500 men for large monasteries. However, we hear
that [monasteries of] from seven and eight hundred to one and two thousand
[monks] exist, and all must know that this will cause the destruction of
Hyakujo's standards. The abbots must strictly obey the [Joji] law and reduce
the number of monks. There should be thirty novices in regular residence,
fifty as visitors from other temples, and all others must be removed from
temple rolls.32
The large numbers of novices, boys of fifteen or under, in the gozan
monasteries created several problems. First, although they contributed
little to the monastic economy, they had to be fed. Those of them
who came from wealthy warrior families vied with one another in
flaunting the luxury of their robes and personal effects. And many of
them became the objects of sexual attention and rivalry by older
monks.
One recurrent problem confronting the bakufu and the soroku in
their efforts to regulate the swelling gozan monastic institution was
that of maintaining capable and dedicated leadership and administration
for gozan monasteries of all levels. Many of the bakufu's regulations
were directed at correcting abuses by abbots and by monks in
the eastern and western ranks of the monastic bureaucracies. The
authorities were forced repeatedly to warn about powerful families
seeking monastic office for their proteges and to criticize monks
appointed to office for neglecting their duties in one office while
seeking appointment to a higher post in the monastic hierarchy. One
bakufu regulation of 1352, for instance, provides early evidence of
these problems:
In recent years men of no ability have been indiscriminately appointed to
office, either because it was requested by die Bakufu or because of ties to a
powerful person. Furthermore, it is widely heard that in the course of a year
32 Ibid., p. 78.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 609
several men have alternately held the same post. This is unpardonable. . . .
They must choose and appoint men who will hold a post for half a year. Those
who hold an office for less than half a year will not have their names entered
on the roster.33
The same problem is raised even more acutely in the regulations of
1376:
Concerning the period of service for both ranks in recent years, we hear that
there are those who serve for only three or five days, or even change posts
three and five times in one day. This is not the Zen church that Hyakujo
intended. The previous rank must not be recognized. . . . The Shogun will
also not issue an order of appointment to such priests.34
The abbot's choice and behavior was particularly important to effective
monastic leadership, administration, and order. Even the bakufu
recognized that "the rise and fall of temples depends on the abbot."
Abbots were expected to serve for at least three years. Many, however,
retired "after only four or five months" (Article 98) or less.35
The
installation expenses for a new abbot were a heavy drain on a monastery.
The bakufu's regulations repeatedly stressed that gift giving and
entertainment at such installation ceremonies should be kept to a
minimum: "Installation ceremonies must not be extravagant. Temples
are ruined primarily by such expenses, and therefore they are to be
specially prohibited. Abbots must also completely cease gift-giving
because of the great expense involved."36
High office in one of the gozan monasteries brought distinction to
a monk, his family, and patrons. Clearly, many monks wanted the
title of abbot or senior administrator but not the obligations that
went with the office. Finding and maintaining talented monastic
leadership thus remained a critical problem for the gozan institution
and its secular sponsors. And the problem was compounded by the
fact that the shogunate collected a fee each time it issued a certificate
of appointment to an abbot. The fee varied from five kanmon for
installation as abbot of a shozan-rank monastery to fifty kanmon for
installation at the Nanzenji. This represented a substantial income
from the whole gozan system. During the fifteenth century, the
bakufu undermined its own regulations by indiscriminately issuing
such certificates of appointment (kumon) as a means of maximizing
income from the gozan.
Another, area of grave concern to warrior rulers and Zen monastic
administrators in their regulation of the gozan institution was that
33 Ibid., p. 55. 34 Ibid., p. 77. 35 Ibid., p. 65. 36 Ibid., p. 77.
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6lO ZEN AND THE GOZAN
these populous Zen monasteries not become armed camps, as had
many of the older Japanese monastic centers. Article 76 (1352) and
Article 234 (ca. 1445), respectively, reveal that Zen temples were not
always havens of meditative tranquillity:
Recently we have heard repeatedly that groups of monks are shedding blood
among themselves within temple precincts. This is unpardonable. The
wounded parties must be forthwith expelled from the temple, no matter what
their excuse. As for the offenders, the case must be thoroughly investigated,
and in addition to being expelled from the temple, they shall not be allowed
to live in any other temple. If it becomes clear that the investigation is being
delayed, litigation concerning the temple in question and its various retreats
shall not be heard.
In recent years monks and novices of the Gozan [monasteries] have frequently
brought their demands into the temples, using force and bearing
arms. This is unpardonable. Hereafter, even if they have a justifiable grievance,
they will be punished by the Shogun if they attempt to petition using
force in this manner. If such individuals exist, then the Eastern rank and
priests of tsubun and lower ranks shall protect the temple by catching those
using force and by searching for their hiding places. They must search tatchu
temples to find the ringleaders. In addition, whenever monks and novices
bear arms at night, the temple's lay employees shall be ordered to capture
them.37
On the whole, the shogun's efforts to prevent the militarization of the
Zen monasteries were successful. Although there was brawling and an
occasional resort to arms in the monasteries or between gozan monks
and those of other monasteries or schools, as in the clash between the
Nanzenji monks and those of the Onjoji and Enraykuji during the
Nanzenji-gate incident of 1367, neither the gozan nor any other branch
of medieval Zen was so militarized as to become a decisive armed force
in the power struggles of that time.
Rinzai Zen: the Daid school
Although the gozan institution was extensive and influential, it did not
include all the Rinzai monasteries in medieval Japan. The monasteries
of Daitokuji, Myoshinji, and their affiliates in the Daio school of Zen
were excluded from the gozan or chose to remain outside it. But their
independence of the gozan meant no patronage by the shogun, a very
frugal monastic life, and a consequent emphasis on rigorous Zen practice.
The monks of the Daitokuji and Myoshinji found their patrons
37 Ibid., pp. 56 and 103, respectively. Other examples of bakufu regulation of gozan monasteries
can be found in CoIIcutt, Five Mountains, pp. 165-70.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 6ll
among members of the imperial court, lesser provincial warrior families,
and the wealthy townspeople of Kyoto and Sakai.
Ties of patronage played a significant role in shaping the development
of Rinzai Zen schools in medieval society. While the Ashikaga
shoguns were in reasonably firm control of the country and able to
dominate the bakufu-shugo alliance during the fourteenth century and
the first half of the fifteenth, the gozan schools were in the ascendant.
They enjoyed great social prestige, generous economic support, and
the protection of their extensive landholding rights. However, in the
late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the authority of the
Ashikaga shogunate and the shugo was undercut by assassination, civil
war, and the restlessness and ambition of local warrior families, gozan
monasteries at all levels suffered. Financial support dried up, monasteries
were gutted in the Onin War, their monks were dispersed, and
their lands were taken from them. The Daitokuji and Myoshinji also
suffered destruction in the warfare of the late fifteenth century, but the
patrons they were attracting among the local warrior families and
townspeople were a waxing rather than a waning force in Japanese
society. In the sixteenth century, many of the warriors who toppled
shugo and emerged as warlords (sengoku daimyo) were patrons of the
Daitokuji and Myoshinji monks. The Daitokuji, in particular, benefited
from its close connections with the daimyo and the merchant
community of Sakai. During the sixteenth century, the merchant
houses in Sakai grew rich on trade with China and Europe. Some of
their wealth was used to buy Chinese art objects or to indulge in the
arts related to the tea ceremony, under the guidance of the Daitokuji
monks. As links were forged between merchants and Zen masters,
some Sakai townsmen studied Zen, sponsored the building of
subtemples in the Daitokuji, or sent their sons to study Zen there.
The Daio school takes its name from the Japanese Zen monk
Nampo Jomyo (Daio Kokushi, 1235-1308). Nampo began his Zen
practice under Lan-ch'i Tao-lung at the Kenchoji. In 1259 he journeyed
to Sung China where he studied Ch'an under many masters
before attaining enlightenment under the Lan-ch'i master Hsu-t'ang
Chih-yii, whose teaching he transmitted to Japan. In 1267 Nampo
returned to Kamakura to assist Lan-ch'i. He then spent thirty years
heading temples and teaching Zen in northern Kyushu. His reputation
as a stern Zen master eventually reached the court, and in 1305,
he received an imperial invitation to head the Manjuji in Kyoto. There
he tried to establish his own Zen monastery, the Kigenji in
Higashiyama, but was frustrated by opposition from the Enryakuji's
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6l2 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
monks. Accepting an invitation from Hojo Sadatoki in 1307, he
moved to Kamakura where he headed the Kenchoji until his death.38
Daio's numerous disciples included Shuho Myochd (Daito
Kokushi, 1282-1337) whose vigorous Zen and six years as a beggar
under the Gojo Bridge in Kyoto attracted the interest and patronage of
Akamatsu Norimura, shugo of Harima, the cloistered emperor
Hanazono, and Emperor Godaigo. Daito lectured to his patrons on
Zen and the Blue Cliff Koan Collection. With their backing he was able
to establish the monastery of Daitokuji on the site of his hermitage at
Murasakino in the northern part of the capital in 1326.
Although it is unclear whether Daito welcomed Godaigo's plans to
make the Daitokuji, along with the Nanzenji, the head of a Kyotocentered,
pro-Southern Court gozan system during the Kemmu restoration,
it is very clear that he sought imperial acknowledgment that
the Daitokuji should be named "protector of the nation" and "place of
imperial worship" and that it should always be headed by monks of his
own lineage. Daito was a contemporary of Muso, who served as adviser
and Zen master for the Hojo, Godaigo, and the Ashikaga. But
Daito was critical of Muso's Zen and probably of Muso's ability to be
all things to all men. He thus never established close ties with the
Ashikaga, who were admirers of Muso. Daito's death followed by only
a year Godaigo's flight from Kyoto. Throughout its history, the
Daitokuji maintained a strong imperial connection.39
After Daito's death, the Daitokuji was headed by his disciple Tetto
Giko (1295-1369), a skilled administrator. In his codes for the
Daitokuji and its subtemples, the Seven Article Code (1337), Daitokuji
hatto, Shoden'an hatto, and Tokuzenji hatto (all compiled in 1368), Tetto
laid down the regulations by which abbots should be selected and by
which the monastery and its lands should be administered by a monastery
council comprising the abbot, the officers of the eastern and
western ranks, and older monks.40
The Daitokuji was not included in
the revised list of Kyoto gozan monasteries issued by the bakufu in
1341, presumably because the monastery was regarded as a tsuchien, or
temple exclusive to the members of a single lineage.
38 Biographical details for Nampo Jomyo are taken from Ogisu Jundo, "Nampo Jomyo no
Nihon zenshu shijo no chii," in Nihon chusei zenshu-shi (Kyoto: Mokujisna, 1965), pp. 202-
20.
39 Shuho Myocho and the Daitokuji are discussed in Haga Koshiro et al., eds., Daitokuji 10 sado
(Kyoto: Tankosha, 1972); and by Ogisu Jundo, "Shuho Myocho to sono Zen," Nihon chusei
zenshu-shi, pp. 222-36.
40 Tetto's role in providing an administrative framework for the early Daitokuji community is
examined by Takenuki Gensho, "Rinka ni okeru kyodan keiei ni tsuite," Bdtkyo shigaku 15
(July 1971): 225-63Cambridge
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 613
Both the Daitokuji and Ryushoji, a Kyoto monastery established by
Daio Kokushi, were included in a 1385 listing of Kyoto jissatsu issued
by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. They were ranked at the lowly ninth place
among the jissatsu and were undoubtedly ill at ease among the official
monasteries. After several appeals to the bakufu, the Daitokuji was
permitted to withdraw from the jissatsu on the grounds that its charter
by the emperors Godaigo and Hanazono had recognized it as a training
center exclusively for monks of the Daito lineage. It is likely that the
Ryushoji withdrew from the gozan system at the same time. From this
point, Daitokuji abbots were permitted to wear purple robes, as
granted by the imperial court.
In 1453, the Daitokuji was almost completely destroyed by fire.
Before it could be fully rebuilt, it was again put to the torch during the
Onin War. But even while the Daitokuji was in ashes, the basis for its
recovery and expansion was being laid by the monks Yoso Soi (1376-
1458) and Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481). Both Yoso and Ikkyu began
their Zen training in gozan monasteries. But like growing numbers of
monks in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they quickly
became dissatisfied with what they perceived as the formalism, and
aestheticism of the official monasteries and so turned to masters of the
Daio school like Kaso Sodon (1352-1428) for training in a more
rugged Zen. When in 1410 Ikkyu left the ankokuji, he expressed in a
poem his disgust at the gozan monks who, he felt, were more like
merchants than Buddhist priests and who carried their family snobberies
into the cloister:
Amidst Zen sermons and lectures they talk of family.
Filled with shame I struggle to remain silent.
But, when Zen talk fails the challenge,
Demon-victories perpetuate spiritual ignorance.41
Ikkyu was an irreverent, unconventional monk who preferred the
camaraderie of drinking places and brothels to the constraints of monastic
administration. Quite apart from his attacks on the gozan, he
was ambivalent about Zen at the Daitokuji. In 1440 he was persuaded,
perhaps by Yoso, to become abbot of the Nyoi'an subtemple, but he
quit after only a few days, complaining about the frivolousness of the
monks and the endless bureaucratic demands of the office.
"Interesting donations" are dragged into the hermitage;
they decorate the east wall with wooden ladles and rustic
baskets.
41 Translated by James H. Sanford, Zen-man Ikkyu (Decatur, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1981), p. 14.
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614 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
I have no use for such useless stuff,
A straw raincoat beside rivers and lakes has long been
my style.42
and
Only ten fussy days as abbot,
and already my feet are tangled in red tape.
If, someday, you want to look me up,
Try the fish-shop, the tavern, or the brothel.43
Ikkyu and Yoso could hardly have been less alike as Zen monks.
Yoso seems to have been everything that Ikkyu was not: a gentle,
sober, monk-administrator who devoted his energies to training
Daitokuji monks and restoring the monastery. For some reason Ikkyu
developed a violent dislike of Yoso and took every opportunity to
denounce him as a counterfeit Zen master, eager only for imperial
recognition, who had betrayed the tradition of Daito and Kaso. When
in 1457 Yoso was awarded the title of Soe Daisho Zenji by Emperor
Gohanazono in recognition of his labors in rebuilding the Daitokuji,
Ikkyu honored him with the following verse:
A purple robe and high title that impoverish our line.
An imperial appointment is just so much cash in hand.
A clear counterfeit, this master from the Daiyo Hermitage
Come and see him, a real West China highwayman.44
But Ikkyu and Yoso had at least one thing in common. Both, in very
different ways, were extremely effective in winning patrons for the
Daitokuji among the Sakai merchants. Yoso popularized Zen and
raised donations in the process, by granting certificates of enlightenment
to lay people who attended mass meditation sessions at which
koan were "solved" by esoteric transmission rather than through rigorous
self-directed meditative enquiry. Although Ikkyu denounced these
practices as a prostitution of Zen by "selling the Dharma" and ridiculed
Yoso and the townsmen who supported him, Ikkyu's own wild
antics, unconventional Zen, and direct, outspoken approach won him
a devoted following in Sakai. When in 1474, late in life, Ikkyu accepted
the abbacy of the Daitokuji and the burden of restoring it after
the ravages of the Onin War, his prestige and wide-ranging connec-
42 Ibid., p. 47. 43 Ibid., p. 48. 44 Ibid., p. 50.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 615
tions attracted donations from Sakai merchants, tea masters, renga
masters, and daimyo.45
The links between the Daitokuji and Sakai that had been forged by
Yoso Soi and Ikkyu in the mid-fifteenth century were strengthened as
Sakai prospered in the sixteenth, by the townspeople's passion for
Chinese luxury items, Zen, and the tea ceremony. The Daitokuji's
branch temples were established in Sakai; Daitokuji prelates were
frequent visitors to the city; and in time, some of the younger sons of
the merchant families enrolled as monks in the Daitokuji or its
subtemples. After the fire of 1453, a Sakai merchant with the Buddhist
name of Sokan, a patron of Yoso, paid for the rebuilding of the
Dharma hall (hatto). Some twenty years later, the merchant Owa
Shiroraemon Sorin, a disciple of Ikkyu, bore most of the cost of rebuilding
the abbot's building, the Buddha hall, the Dharma hall, and
several of the older tatchu after their destruction in the Onin War. He
also persuaded other Sakai merchants to contribute to the establishment
of the Shinju'an as a memorial temple for Ikkyu and bequeathed
mortuary funds (shidosen) to be used as capital for moneylending ventures
by the Daitokuji. The documents recording the many small
"incense donations" for the thirteenth and thirty-third-year memorial
services for Ikkyu held at the Shinju'an in 1494 and 1514 include the
names of many Sakai and Kyoto merchants, as well as warriors and
wealthy peasants.46
Whereas the backing of Sakai merchants helped the Daitokuji recover
from the effects of the Onin War in the late fifteenth century, it
was the patronage of the daimyo that ensured its prosperity and ushered
in its golden age in the sixteenth century. Before 1500, the
Daitokuji had seven subtemples. Between 1500 and 1812, another
eighteen were established, most of them by sengoku daimyo or by
Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Many of these daimyo tatchu combined the character
of the daimyo family temple (bodaiji) with that of the memorial
temple (tatchu) for a revered Zen master and were generously supported,
at least while their warrior patrons were successful in the wars
and political intrigues. The daimyo patrons shared with the Daitokuji
monks and Sakai merchants a common passion for the tea ceremony,
as well as an interest in Zen, and many tatchu assumed the character of
cultural salons.
Here I need mention only a few examples to convey the character of
45 Izumi Choichi, "Sakai chonin to Zen," Rekishi koron, no. 10 (1977): 89-91.
46 Hayashiya Tatsusaburo et al., Kyoto no rekishi (Kyoto: Gakugei shorin, 1968), vol. 3, pp.
128-9.
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6l6 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
daimyo patronage in the growth of the Daitokuji school.47
The
Korin'in, for instance, was built and patronized by the Hatakeyama of
Noto and later patronized by the Maeda of Kaga. In 1597,
Hatakeyama Yoshimoto bestowed on the subtemple holdings in two
villages in Noto, producing an annual tax income of 100 kanmon. The
Korin'in also preserved a list of those secular patrons granted Buddhist
names (homyo) between 1525 and 1535. This hdmyochd lists sixtyfour
males and thirty-six females, mostly from Kyoto, its environs,
and Hokuriku. The fact that, apart from the Hatakeyama, most were
the deputies (hikan) of daimyo, merchants and artisans, or wealthy
peasants indicates something about the Daitokuji monks' social influence.
Obai'in was built by Kobayakawa Takakage (1533-85), one of
Hideyoshi's leading generals, and granted an annual income of one
hundred koku. Subsequently, the Obai'in came under the patronage of
the Mori (Choshu), who were related to the Kobayakawa, and during
the Tokugawa period the head monks of the Obai'in were treated as if
they were members of the Mori family. Finally, the Koto'in in was
built in 1602 by Hosokawa Tadaoki (1563-1645) as a memorial to his
famous father Hosokawa Yusai (1534-1610).
Tadaoki's career was one of the success stories of the age. His wife,
the Christian convert Gracia, was the daughter of Akechi Mitsuhide
(1528-82). Tadaoki refused to help Mitsuhide assassinate Oda
Nobunaga and later served Hideyoshi and Ieyasu with distinction. For
his services at the battle of Sekigahara and in the Osaka campaigns,
Tadaoki was awarded the Kokura han (390,000 koku) as afief.Like his
father, Yusai, Tadaoki combined literary with martial skills. He was an
accomplished painter and waka poet, one of the leading students of
the tea master Rikyu, and the compiler of a guide to the conduct of the
tea ceremony, the Hosokawa Sansai chaso. Gyokuho Joso, the monk
for whom the Koto'in was built, was Yusai's younger brother. Sengoku
daimyo did not limit their patronage to Kyoto. Many daimyo, like the
Hojo of Odawara, invited Daitokuji monks to their domains and built
provincial branch temples for them. With this kind of backing, the
Daitokuji school of Zen spread rapidly throughout Japan in the sixteenth
century. By the late sixteenth century, the Daitokuji had more
than two hundred branch temples, many of them former members of
the gozan hierarchy.
A third group of sponsors who contributed in the sixteenth century
47 Further information on these and other Daitokuji taichu can be found in Kawakami Mitsugu,
Zen'in no kenckiku (Kyoto: Kawara shoten, 1968), pp. 127-265.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 617
to the prosperity of the Daitokuji and its subtemples were the men of
culture of that period: the linked-verse (renga) poets and tea masters.
The renga poet Saiokuken Socho (1448-1532), who had studied Zen
with Ikkyu, built a single-story great gate (sanmon) at the Daitokuji.
To help raise the money, he sold a precious copy of The Tale ofGenji.
According to documents belonging to the Shinju'an, a total of 731
kan and 500 mon were spent in 1525 and 1526 on the construction of
this gate.48
Socho's fellow poet, Yamazaki Sokan (1465-1553) was
among those who contributed "incense money" at the memorial services
for Ikkyu. Most of the leading tea masters of the age - men like
Murata Juko (1422-1502), Takeno J66 (1502-55), Tsuda Sokyu (?-
1591), Imai Sokyu (1520-93), and Sen no Rikyu (1522-91) - studied
Zen and the tea ceremony with the Daitokuji monks, contributed
generously to the monastery and helped make the Daitokuji one of
the leading cultural centers in Japan.49
In 1585, Hideyoshi held an
ostentatious tea ceremony at the Daitokuji, in which Sen no Rikyu
and Tsuda Sokyu played leading roles and to which large numbers of
daimyo and townsmen were invited. This assertion of cultural hegemony
by Hideyoshi established the Daitokuji as the center for the tea
ceremony and brought fame and favor to Sen no Rikyu. In 1559,
Rikyu rebuilt the great gate at his own expense, adding a second
story and installing a statue of himself. This presumption aroused
Hideyoshi's anger, led to Rikyu's suicide, and almost resulted in the
Daitokuji's destruction.50
As this incident suggests, Hideyoshi's relations with the Daitokuji
were usually tempestuous, blending ostentatious liberality with sudden
bursts of anger and changes of mind. It was undoubtedly under
his example that many sengoku daimyo developed an interest in the
monastery. Hideyoshi continued Nobunaga's policy of tightening control
over the Buddhist institutions while using Buddhism as a counter
to Christianity and extending patronage to compliant monasteries and
Buddhist groups.51
Although Hideyoshi was by no means an exclusive, or particularly
dedicated, devotee of Zen, he had great respect for the Daitokuji
monk Kokei Sochin. In the tenth month of 1582, Hideyoshi held
48 Yamada Sobin, "Sanmon shufuku no kiroku," in Haga et al., eds., Daiiokuji tosado, pp. 264-
73. 49 Hayashiya et al., Kyoto no rekishi, vol. 3, p. 130.
50 Yamada, "Sanmon shufuku no kiroku," pp. 273-9.
51 For a brief general discussion of Hideyoshi's attitude toward Buddhism and his treatment of
the various branches of the Buddhist institution, see Kuwata Tadachika, Toyotomi Hideyoshi
kenkyu (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1975), pp. 341-58.
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6l8 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
lavish funeral obsequies at the Daitokuji for his slain overlord,
Nobunaga, at which Kokei officiated. To pay for the ceremonies,
Hideyoshi made a gift often thousand kan in cash to the monastery.52
In the same year, he ordered the construction of the Soken'in
subtemple as a memorial to Nobunaga and installed Kokei as the
founding abbot. In 1588, he had the Tenzuiji built at Daitokuji as a
memorial for his mother and, at about the same time, gave Kokei
Sochin four thousand kanmon to build a new temple, the Tenshoji.
Construction had hardly begun when Hideyoshi, angered by Kokei's
use of the funds, banished the monk to Kyushu and abandoned work
on the new temple.53
Hideyoshi's land surveys and reforms, however, were much more
significant to the Daitokuji than were his temple-building activities, as
they restructured the Daitokuji's whole economy and largely defined
the economic base on which the monastery was to operate during the
Edo period. Without detailed overall figures for the period before the
land reforms, it is impossible to know exactly how the Daitokuji fared
under Hideyoshi. But compared with monasteries like Negoro or
Koyasan, which were stripped of many of their holdings, the
Daitokuji seems to have been treated generously and may even have
gained a little. In the spring of 1585, when widespread cadastral surveys
of Buddhist monastic holdings were being made, the Daitokuji's
domains were granted full confirmation (ando).54
Later in the same
year, Hideyoshi ordered the consolidation of the Daitokuji's scattered
holdings into three major areas with an assessed yield (kokudaka) of
1,545 koku.55
This was increased to 2,010 koku by Tokugawa Ieyasu in
1615, a level of income that was maintained during the Tokugawa
period. Although this was not a particularly large allowance by contemporary
standards - it compared with the stipends of high-ranking Tokugawa
bannermen - it was greater than the incomes allotted to the
principal gozan monasteries. The wheel of fortune for the Daitokuji
had come full circle.
The other major branch of the Daio school was the line tracing its
descent from the monk Kanzan Egen (1277-1360), disciple of Daito
and founder of the Myoshinji monastery in Kyoto. After a difficult
history in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Myoshinji
line expanded dramatically under the patronage of the sengoku daimyo
52 This document is reproduced in Tayama Honan, ed., Daitokuji (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1968),
p. 302. 53 Hayashiya et al., Kyoto no rekishi, vol. 4, p. 185.
54 Tokyo daigaku shiryohensanjo, ed., Daitokuji monjo (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai),
vol. I, doc. 98. 55 Daitokuji monjo, vol. I, doc. 101.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 619
in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By the close of the sixteenth
century, it was outstripping the gozan and Daitokuji lineages.
At least one key to the rapid growth of the Myoshinji school in the
sixteenth century was an effective monastic organization begun under
the abbot Sekko Soshun.
Kanzan began his Zen studies in the gozan monastery of the
Kenchoji in Kamakura. There, he found no monk who could steer
him toward enlightenment. He did, however, hear of Shuho Myocho
(Daito) in Kyoto. Kanzan immediately left the Kenchoji and practiced
Zen under Daito's guidance for several years until he attained
enlightenment by resolving a koan by Yun-men Wen-yen (Unmon
Bun'en, 864-949) hinging on the single character kan (barrier). From
this he took his name, "Barrier-mountain." Although Kanzan fell out
with Daito and left the Daitokuji, he had learned from Daito a severe
Zen based on rigorous meditation. In his own Zen practice and
teaching, Kanzan earned a reputation for austere meditation and
total indifference to personal advancement, monastic prosperity, and
cultural accomplishments. Like Daito, Kanzan was patronized by
Godaigo and especially by Hanazono who practiced Zen under
Kanzan's guidance and converted a detached palace into the Zen
monastery of Myoshinji, naming Kanzan as the founding abbot. According
to all the surviving accounts, Kanzan remained indifferent to
his environment. During his lifetime, it was said that the Myoshinji's
roof leaked, that there was nowhere comfortable to sit, and that
when he entertained the eminent prelate Muso he sent out a monk to
buy a few cheap rice cakes. These accounts may be apocryphal.
What is important, however, is that they had currency in Kanzan's
day and shaped his reputation within the Myoshinji lineage as a stern
Zen master who set the highest standards of effort in zazen and koan
study. The term O-To-Kan school applied to his line reflects his
prestige as heir to, and equal of, Daio and Daito.56
The first century or so of the Myoshinji's history was troubled and
unpromising. The Myoshinji was a branch temple of the Daitokuji,
but the discord between Kanzan and Daito had created tensions in the
relationship between the two communities. The monks who succeeded
Kanzan as heads of the Myoshinji, Juo Sohitsu (1296-1380)
and Muin Soin (1326-1410), maintained his ideal of a reclusive, frugal
monastic life and spartan Zen practice. Although Muin had come to
56 For a more detailed biography of Kanzan and the early history of Myoshinji, see Ogisu
Jundo, "Kanzan Egen no shomondai," in Nihon chusei zenshu-shi, pp. 332-431; and
Kawakami Kozan, Myoshinji-shi (Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 1975), pp. 25-60.
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62O ZEN AND THE GOZAN
the Myoshinji from the gozan monastery of the Kenninji and introduced
strict monastic regulations of the kind found in the gozan codes,
the Myoshinji was never included at any level of the gozan hierarchy.
But it was in its relationship with the shogunate that the greatest
difficulty for the community lay.
Never on very close terms with the Ashikaga shoguns, in 1399 the
Myoshinji became the object of the anger of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu,
who accused its abbot Setsudo Soboku of being in league with the
warrior rebel Ouchi Yoshihiro (1356-99), shugo of six provinces in
western Japan. Setsudo was dismissed; the temple's lands were confiscated
and placed under the control of Yoshimitsu's relatives in other
monasteries; the Myoshinji's monks scattered to the provinces where
they looked to local warrior families for patronage; and the monastery's
buildings were allowed to fall into ruin. Even the name
Myoshinji was erased when the compound was renamed the Ryuunji
and reclassified as a branch temple of the Tokuun'in taichu in the
Nanzenji. Because Kanzan had been a disciple of Daito, some
Myoshinji monks naturally tried to find refuge in the Daitokuji. But
with rivalry already evident between the two branches of the Daio
school, they received a very cool reception.57
This hiatus in the Myoshinji's development lasted for more than
thirty years. During the 1430s, part of the Ryuunji's former holdings
were restored; monks began to return from the provinces; and the
community again assumed the name Myoshinji. This recovery began
under the leadership of the monks Kongai Sori, Myoko Soei, and
Nippo Soshun (1368-1448) and with the backing of the imperial court
and the Hosokawa family. Kongai was successful in appealing to Shogun
Yoshimochi to restore some of the Myoshinji's former holdings.
Myoko, who was a son of the cloistered emperor Suko and had served
as abbot of temples in Suo Provinces after the breakup of the
Myoshinji, secured the interest of the imperial court and the Ouchi
family in the Myoshinji's restoration.
Nippo had spent much of his early life running temples in Mino.
There he had earned a popular reputation as a great Zen master and
had come to the attention of Hosokawa Mochiyuki and his son
Katsumoto (1430-73). This connection prove to have inestimable
value in the Myoshinji's recovery. The Hosokawa not only were the
most powerful warrior family in the Kanto; they also frequently held
the office oikanrei, the most powerful position in the shogun's bureau-
57 Kawakami, Myoshinji-shi, p. 81.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 621
cracy. Mochiyuki, for instance, was the kanrei from 1432 to 1442, and
Katsumoto held the office three times: from 1445 to 1449, 1452 to
1464, and 1468 to 1473. Thus with Mochiyuki's support, Nippo was
able to secure the return of much of the Myoshinji's property and to
rebuild some of the monestary's deteriorating buildings.58
But Nippo's popularity and success in restoring the Myoshinji renewed
its tensions with the Daitokuji. In 1444, Nippo received an
imperial appointment as the abbot of the Daitokuji. Yoso Soi, Ikkyu,
and the whole Daitokuji community protested unsuccessfully that this
was a breach of the intentions of Daito and his imperial patrons that
the abbacy of their monastery be restricted solely to monks of Daito's
line. The court and the bakufu, however, held that the lineage also
included Kanzan's followers. Thus, Nippo was installed as abbot of
the Daitokuji, the first of many coming from the revived Myoshinji
line.59
Nippo attracted as disciples many of the monks who had left the
gozan monasteries. For instance, both of his successors as heads of the
Myoshinji, Giten Gensho (1393-1462) and Sekko Soshin (1408-86),
had left the Kenninji. These monks continued to enjoy the devoted
patronage of Hosokawa Katsumoto, who practiced Zen meditation
under their guidance. Indeed, for Giten, Hosokawa built the Ryoanji
with its famous stone garden. Like the Daitokuji and many of the
Kyoto gozan monasteries, both the Myoshinji and the Ryoanji were
destroyed during the Onin War. It fell to Sekko to organize their
rebuilding. Again, the Hosokawa family offered their aid. Katsumoto
persuaded all branches of the Hosokawa family and many of their
allies to contribute to the reconstruction effort. Although he died
before the reconstruction was complete, his son Masamoto (1466-
1507), who gained control of the shogunate after the Onin War, oversaw
the work to its completion.
Sekko was not only responsible for restoring the Myoshinji as a
monastery; he is also given credit for introducing important administrative
reforms that contributed both to better management of the
Myoshinji itself and to the rapid provincial expansion of the Myoshinji
line.
From about the time of Sekko's incumbency, the Myoshinji began
to use an extremely detailed system for keeping the monastic accounts.
The monastery has in its archives some 250 account books known as
58 The Hosokawa patronage of Myoshinji is discussed by Kavvakami, Myoshinji-shi, pp. 84-112.
See also Tsuji, Nihon bukkyo-shi (chusei 4), pp. 87-124.
59 Sanford, trans., Zen-man Ikkyu, p. 54.
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622 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
the Shobozan Myoshin Zenji beisen nogecho. Covering the period from
the 1480s to the 1830s, the account books contain a detailed monthly
record of the Myoshinji's income and expenditures. Like many other
Zen masters in China and Japan, Sekko seems to have recognized that
the maintenance of communal Zen practice in the meditation hall
depended in large measure on the stability of the monastic economy
and the careful husbanding of resources.
Another institutional development for the Myoshinji following
Sekko's administrative reforms was the system of rotating the headship
of the main monastery among the senior members of its four principal
subtemples. Sekko had four able disciples: Keisen Soryu (1426-1500),
Gokei Soton (1416-1500), Tokuho Zenketsu (1419-1506), and Toyo
Eicho (1428-1504). These monks and, in turn, their disciples established
four subtemples within the Myoshinji: the Ryosen'in, Tokai'an,
Reiun'an, and Shotaku'an. The subtemple heads jointly supervised the
Myoshinji's administration and accounts, and they, or members of their
provincial branch temples, alternated in the headship of the Myoshinji
itself. Institutionally, therefore, the Myoshinji had an effective oversight
committee and a pool ofsenior monks from which to draw talented
leadership. Each subtemple also took its turn supervising the monastic
accounts {nogecho), which were checked and countersigned each year by
the heads of all four subtemples, as well as by the abbot and monk
officers of the Myoshinji itself.60
As the four disciples of Sekko attracted their own followers, their
subtemples became bases for the diffusion through the provinces of
the Myoshinji school. The Hosokawa remained devoted patrons, but
by mid-sixteenth century the Myoshinji monks were attracting the
patronage of many other sengoku daimyo, especially those in central
Japan. Saito Toshifuji and his wife, who later became the nun Ritei-ni,
the Toki family in Mino, Imagawa Yoshimoto in Suruga, Oda
Nobunaga from his days in Owari, and Takeda Shingen in Kai were
only a few of the daimyo patrons that established temples for the
Myoshinji monks within their domains or built subtemples around the
Myoshinji in Kyoto.
By the end of the sixteenth century, several hundred provincial
monasteries had been established by Kanzan's successors. At least
fifty of these were former gozan monasteries. With strong leadership
and the backing of sengoku daimyo, the Myoshinji school was growing
as rapidly as that of the Daitokuji. Growth was helped by populariza-
60 Hayashiya et al., Kyoto no rekishi, vol. 3, pp. 132-3.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 623
tion. By simplifying the kdan and meditation practices, introducing
Pure Land devotional practices, and conducting prayer meetings and
funeral services, the Myoshinji monks made their teachings more attractive
not only to daimyo but also to the lesser warriors, farmers,
wandering jongleurs, renga poets, and craftsmen with whom they also
consorted.61
The Myoshinji remained an influential temple under the Tokugawa.
In the eighteenth century the monk Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768) of the
Shotaku branch of the Myoshinji reemphasized Kanzan's zazencentered
practice. Indeed, Hakuin's Zen revival was so powerful that
it spread to the Daitokuji and the gozan monastic circles. Kanzan's
teachings thus became the source of modern Japanese Zen.
Rinzai Zen: the Genju school
Before leaving the Rinzai lineages, we should look briefly at the Genju
(Huan-chu) school.62
In the late Kamakura period, a number of Japanese
monks who visited China studied Zen with the famous Ch'an
monk Chung-feng Ming-pen (Chuho Myohon, 1263-1323) at his hermitage
called the Huan-chu-an (Genjuan). Chung-feng was a scholarly
recluse whose Zen was influenced by Pure Land teachings. Chungfeng's
teachings were introduced to Japan by Enkei Soyu (1286-
1344), Kosen Ingen (1295-1374), Muin Genkai (d. 1358), and other
monks, most of whom had been trained in gozan monasteries before
their travel to China but forsook them after their return to Japan in
order to follow Chung-feng's ideal of the hermit. They carried Zen
teachings to remote mountain valleys in northern and central Japan.
Their very reclusiveness militated against their developing a strong
sectarian identity, and during the late Kamakura and Nambukucho
periods they were overshadowed by the highly organized and expansive
gozan lineages.
During the Muromachi period, however, monks of the Genju lineage
began to return to gozan monasteries where their very ecumenical
attitudes toward the Zen transmission won them considerable influence.
The Kyushu monk Ichige Sekiyu (1447-1507) was one of the
first to set in motion this "return to the gozan." Like other medieval
Zen monks, Ichige studied Zen under masters of different lineages.
Unlike most of his fellows, however, he did not commit himself to a
61 Ibid., p. 134.
62 See Imaeda Aishin, Zenshu no rekishi (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1962), pp. 209-12.
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624 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
single lineage but received certificates of transmission (inka) from
several different masters, Soto as well as Rinzai. Ichige's appointment
in 1504 as the abbot of the jissatsu-level monastery Shofukuji in northern
Kyushu was only the first of many appointments of Genju-lineage
monks to the headship of gozan affiliates.
The tolerant attitude by monks of the Genju lineage toward other
branches of Zen was seen as a source of strength and possible integration
in the faltering early-sixteenth-century gozan. Not only were
monks of the Genju line invited to head gozan monasteries, but also
many gozan monks combined the Genju transmission with their own
gozan affiliations. This practice spread also into the Daitokuji and
Myoshinji branches of Rinzai Zen, and so by the mid-sixteenth century
many of the leading Rinzai monasteries in Japan had as their
abbot a monk who had at least a partial affiliation with the eclectic
tradition of Chung-feng. Ironically, however, the successors of those
monks who had left the gozan in disgust at its formalism and literary
pretensions had rejected their eremitic ideal and assumed the leadership
of the Rinzai Zen establishment. On the positive side, their eclecticism
encouraged the breaking down of artificial barriers between the
many lineages or transmissions of Rinzai Zen. But on the negative
side - that is, from the viewpoint of the "purity" of Zen as a selfdirected
struggle for enlightenment - they injected into Rinzai practice
a strong dose of Pure Land devotionalism.
Soto Zen
While the Rinzai Zen of the gozan and Daio schools was spreading
outward from Kamakura and Kyoto and winning the enthusiastic
patronage of shoguns, emperors, shugo, sengoku daimyo, and merchants,
Soto Zen was spreading less obtrusively but equally pervasively
among the families of local samurai and farmers throughout
the provinces. By the sixteenth century, the Soto monks, like those
of the Daitokuji and Myoshinji schools, were winning adherents
among members of the imperial court, sengoku daimyo, and townspeople
and were making inroads into gozan monasteries in the provinces
and the capital.
There were two major transmissions of Soto (Ts'ao-tung) Zen to
Japan. The first was made by Dogen who returned from China in the
autumn of 1227; the second by the Chinese monk Tung-ming Hui-jih
(Tomyo Enichi, 1272-1340) who came to Japan in 1309 at the invitation
of Hojo Sadatoki.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 625
The institutional development of Dogen's lineage during the medieval
period occurred in four fairly clear-cut stages. The first of these
covered Dogen's lifetime and included the establishment of the Koshoji
and Eiheiji communities and the compilation by Dogen of comprehensive
regulations for the monastic institution he had in mind. The second,
beginning around 1300, saw a sectarian schism among the third
generation of Dogen's followers and the growth of the Sojiji as a rival to
the Eiheiji. The third stage included the movement for the popularization
of Soto Zen teachings and their widespread provincial diffusion
during the Muromachi period. The fourth stage witnessed the recovery
of the Eiheiji as the central temple (honzan) ofa nationwide Soto school.
Dogen and the early development of Soto Zen
Dogen returned from China in 1227 convinced that the Zen practice of
concentrated meditation (shikan taza) that he had inherited from the
Ts'ao-tung master T'ien-t'ung Ju-ching was the "true Dharma"
(shdbd). In the first works he wrote after his return to Japan, the Fukan
zazengi (Principles for the universal promotion of zazen) and Bendowa
(Distinguishing the Way), he advocated zazen (seated meditation) as
the supreme Buddhist practice for both monks and laypersons.63
This
assertion of the primacy of Zen aroused the anger of the Enryakuji
monks, who succeeded in driving Dogen from the Kenninji where he
had settled after his return to the capital.
In 1231, Dogen moved to Fukakusa, just south of Kyoto. There he
established the Koshoji. Dogen's strict training under Ju-ching had
made him an admirer of Zen monastic life as he believed it to have
been shaped by the regulations enforced by the T'ang-dynasty Ch'an
master Pai-chang. For some time after his return to Japan, Dogen held
an ideal of universal monkhood in the broadest terms. Enlightenment
through zazen, he argued in Fukan zazengi, was open to all men and
women, lay as well as clerical. And access to this enlightenment was
facilitated by the scrupulous, mindful observance of the Zen monastic
regulations.
In time, however, when Dogen was excluded from the capital confronted
with the practical difficulty of spreading his teachings in
the face of bitter opposition from the established Buddhist schools,
deprived of elite patronage, and becoming more pessimistic about the
63 For translations of these two works, see Masao Abe and Norman Wadell, trans., "Dogen's
Bendowa," The Eastern Buddhist 4 (May 1971): 124-57; and Masao Abe and Norman Wadell,
trans., "Dogen's Fukanzazengi," The Eastern Buddhist (October 1973): 121-6.
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626 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
responsiveness of ordinary people to his message - Dogen's thoughts
shifted increasingly toward the reassertion of an exclusively monastic
tradition: the training of a few select monks who were prepared to
devote themselves single-mindedly to attaining enlightenment in a
remote, strictly regulated monastic community.
At the Koshoji, Dogen worked to create the first pure Zen monastery
on Japanese soil. Eisai's monastery of the Kenninji had allowed
the practice of a mixed Zen in which Tendai and Shingon prayers and
rituals were conducted alongside zazen. But Dogen rejected this accommodation
with other streams of Buddhism. The core of the
Koshoji complex contained two characteristic Ch'an monastic buildings:
the communal monk's hall (sddo), the room where communal
zazen was carried on day and night, and the Dharma hall {hatto) where
the abbot and senior monks debated Zen with the members of the
community.
During the thirteen years he remained at the Koshoji, Dogen produced
more than forty treatises on Zen, which were later included in
the Shobo genzo (The eye-treasury of the true Dharma). These included
not only instructions for zazen and commentaries on the Lotus
Sutra and other texts but also detailed regulations for Zen monastic
life. Through these regulations Dogen introduced to the Koshoji the
administrative organization of Sung-dynasty Ch'an monasteries and
the ideals of Pai-Chang. His regulations shaped the institutional character
of Soto Zen.
One of the earliest of Dogen's treatises was the Tenzo kyokun (Instructions
for the monastery cook), in which Dogen explained the
attitude to be maintained by those monks charged with preparing the
meals that sustained the community. He stressed that the simple acts
of washing rice or cooking vegetables, if performed mindfully, were
conducive to the Zen practice of the individual himself and the whole
community and that the vegetables used should, therefore, be treated
with the greatest reverence: "Simple vegetables feed the seeds of the
Buddha and nurture the buds of the Way."64
In the Juundoshiki (Regulations for the layered cloud hall), Dogen
provided twenty-one basic regulations for the annex that had beenbuilt
to take the overflow from the monks' hall at the Koshoji. To
realize the "true Dharma," monks should use the hall solely as a place
for meditation, not for reading the sutras or, worse, gossiping or quar-
64 Tenzo Kyokun, in Okubo Doshu, ed., Dogen Zenjizenshu (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1970), pp.
295-3O3Cambridge
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 627
reling. The monks' robes should be coarse, and the monks should
avoid spitting or blowing their noses loudly. Sake and spicy foods
were, of course, forbidden. Semmen (Washing the face) and Senjo
(Purification) emphasized the importance of purification rituals in Zen
practice and monastic life. For Dogen, such activities as washing the
face, bathing the body, cleansing the mouth and teeth, washing robes
and bowls, and using the latrine all could be ritualized expressions of
Zen and Buddha-nature if they were performed scrupulously according
to the regulations laid down by Ch'an patriarchs and interpreted
by Dogen:
In the Buddha-dharma the principles of cleansing with water are always
prescribed. To wash the body, to wash the mind, to wash the feet, to wash the
face, to wash the eyes, to wash the mouth, to wash the two acts of urination
and excretion, to wash hands, to wash a bowl, to wash a robe, or to wash the
head - all these acts comprise the right Dharma of the Buddhas and patriarchs
of the three periods.65
In these and many other writings on Zen monastic life, Dogen laid
the basis for a rigorous Zen practice in which careful observance of the
rules and precepts sustained zazen and maintained harmonious community
life. It should be stressed that although Dogen was extremely
critical of some Chinese schools of Rinzai Zen and their monastic
discipline and reinterpreted traditional regulations in the name of faithfulness
to Pai-chang or to suit Japanese conditions, he was drawing on
the same corpus of Ch'an monastic codes (shingt) as did the Rinzai
masters, Chinese and Japanese, who were active in the Kamakura and
Kyoto gozan monasteries.
The need to build an annex for the monks' hall suggests that under
Dogen's leadership the Koshoji community grew rapidly. Dogen attracted
to the Koshoji laymen and monks from other schools of Buddhism.
Among those who came were a group of followers of the monk
Dainichibo Nonin who had also been driven from Kyoto for advocating
Zen as the supreme Buddhist practice. For its continued survival,
this expanded community needed patrons. Here Dogen's own aristocratic
family connections were of help. Shogaku-ni, a nun from an
aristocratic family who may have been a relative of Dogen's, paid for
the construction of the Dharma hall. Kujo Noriie, a cousin, also made
generous donations. These and other noble sponsors helped build the
Koshoji and sustain the community's day-to-day life. Their patronage
65 Cited in Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 234.
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628 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
allowed Dogen to remain undisturbed at the Koshoji for more than a
decade and to lay the foundations of traditional Zen community life.66
As the community at Koshoji expanded, it again attracted the attention
of the Enryakuji's supporters. Dogen refused to dilute his Zen
with Tendai or Shingon elements. In 1242, in an effort to defend his
position and assert the importance of Zen for the country, he wrote a
short apologia entitled Gokoku shobogi (Principles of the true Dharma
in defense of the country). The text of this work has not survived, but
it seems likely that in it Dogen not only made a case for Zen as the
essence of the Buddha's teaching but also argued that its promotion
would bring spiritual benefits and protection to its sponsors and the
nation at large. If anything, the presentation of this defense only made
Dogen's position more critical. The Enryakuji monks counterattacked
by prevailing on the court to outlaw Dogen's teachings as a dangerous
heretical interpretation of Buddhism that could only lead people astray
and thus do harm to the Dharma and the country. To make things
more difficult for Dogen, a new monastery, the Tofukuji, headed by
Enni Ben'en and supported by Kujo Michiie, had been established
near the Koshoji. The Tofukuji had close relations with the
Enryakuji, where the very kind of syncretic Tendai-Zen that Dogen
had criticized was being advocated. Dogen must have felt that his
small community at the Koshoji was being squeezed between the
Enryakuji and this powerful new Rinzai Zen monastery.67
In 1243, before the Enryakuji monks could carry out their threats to
have the Koshoji destroyed, Dogen and his followers moved north to
the mountains of Echizen. The move was made possible by the enthusiastic
patronage of the warrior Hatano Yoshishige, a retainer of the
Kamakura bakufu and the military steward (jito) of the Shihi-no-sho
in Echizen. Yoshishige gave Dogen land and resources for a new monastery,
the Eiheiji. Here, except for a brief visit to Kamakura in 1247
to lecture on Zen to the regent Hojo Tokiyori, Dogen spent all but the
last few months of his life. He wrote prolifically on Zen, compiled and
enforced monastic regulations, instituted a monastic administration
composed of senior eastern and western monks, and oversaw the building
of a true Zen monastic complex. Undoubtedly, the remoteness and
harsh winters of Echizen intensified the shift in Dogen's thought from
the advocacy of zazen as a universal practice easily accessible to all men
66 On Dogen's patrons, see Okubo Doshu, Dogen zenji-den no kenkyu (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo,
1966).
67 The incidents surrounding the writing of the Gokoku shobogi are discussed in Imaeda, Dogen:
zazen hitosuji no shamon, pp. 138-40.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 629
and women to the reiteration of a traditional Ch'an monastic ideal in
which his guidance would be offered to the few dedicated monks who
sought him out and could endure the rigorous conditions.
After Dogen's death, the Eiheiji community developed slowly and
peacefully for half a century under the leadership of two of Dogen's
closest disciples, both of whom had been with him from the Koshoji
and had played active roles in organizing the move to Echizen and the
building of the Eiheiji.
Koun Ejo (1198-1280), Dogen's immediate successor, was from the
Kujo branch of the Fujiwara family. Before joining Dogen at the
Koshoji, he had studied Tendai, Pure Land, and esoteric Buddhism
and had begun the practice of Zen as a follower of Dainichibo Nonin.
As a secretary for Dogen, Koun helped copy many of the books included
in the Shobo genzo. He accompanied the ailing Dogen on his
last journey to Kyoto and brought back his ashes to the Eiheiji. Koun
was thus close to Dogen in life and familiar with his ideas and teachings
on Zen and monastic practice. He strove to continue those teachings
in his leadership of the community.68
Tettsu Gikai (1219-1309), who succeeded Koun in 1267 for the
first of several terms as abbot of the Eiheiji, was a member of a
branch of the Fujiwara family from Echizen and had begun his religious
career in the Tendai monastery of the Enryakuji. Tettsu's family
connections with Echizen may have been crucial in persuading
Dogen to move to that remote province. At the Eiheiji, Tettsu served
as cook (tenzo) and one of the officers in charge of monastery finances
(kanzu). In 1259, he journeyed to China where he spent four years
studying Zen and recording Ch'an monastic architecture, ceremonies,
and religious utensils. The sketches he made of Ch'an monastery
buildings were used as models for the Eiheiji, and on the basis of
his other observations, he revised many of the rituals and regulations
in force at the monastery.69
The peaceful development of the Eiheiji community was broken in
the year 1300 by a bitter dispute over the succession to the monastery's
leadership and over the character of the Zen practiced there. The
struggle pitted Tettsu's followers Keizan Jokin (1268-1325) and
Gazan Shoseki (1275-1368) against a group of monks led by Gien.
Gien secured the leadership and drove Tettsu's followers from the
Eiheiji by presenting himself as the heir to Dogen's strict Zen tradition
68 Zengaku daijilen. 69 Ibid.
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63O ZEN AND THE GOZAN
and attacking his rivals as advocates of the dilution and distortion of
that tradition.70
There was some justice in Gien's charges: Both Keizan and Gazan
wanted to spread Soto Zen outside the Eiheiji cloister. They could
argue that efforts to proselytize were in keeping with the universalism
implicit in the Fukan zazengi and Bendowa, but they must also have
been aware that popularization could be attained only by relaxing the
strict, exclusive monastic practices enforced at the Eiheiji. Keizan
was, by disposition, a syncretist. He had studied Tendai Buddhism
and had close ties with many of the monks and mountain ascetics
(yamabushi) in the Tendai center at Hakusan. He had also studied
esoteric Buddhism and practiced Zen under Muhon Kakushin and
gozan masters. After Keizan was excluded from the Eiheiji, he established
two new monasteries, the Sojiji and Yokoji, in Noto. The
former was converted from a Shingon temple, the latter from a Ritsu
(Vinaya) school center. Keizan's willingness to make accommodations
with other branches of Buddhism, to offer funeral and prayer services
for local warriors and farmers, and to hold mass meetings at which lay
people could do zazen or take the precepts all helped to set in motion a
rapid expansion of Soto Zen based on the Sojiji.71
Keizan's work of popularization and diffusion was carried further
by Gazan, who attracted monks from all over Japan to study Zen
under his guidance at the Sojiji and Yokoji. Gazan is said to have had
twenty-five brilliant disciples. Among them, five monks - Daigen
Soshin (d. 1371), Tsugen Jakurei (1322-91), Mutan Sokan (d. 1387),
Daitetsu Sorei (1333-1408), and Jippo Ryoshu (d. 1405) - established
subtemples within the Sojiji. As in the case of the Rinzai monastery of
the Myoshinji, these subtemples provided abbots and supervision for
the Sojiji and became the nuclei for the diffusion of these branches of
Soto Zen throughout the provinces.
With the Daigen and Tsugen branches in the vanguard, Soto Zen
witnessed a dramatic, nationwide diffusion during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. The details of that diffusion go beyond the scope
of this chapter. Some indication of its pace and extent, however, is
provided in the number of monasteries belonging to the Soto school.
At Gazan's death there were probably no more than 30 or 40 Soto
foundations. But a document dated 1745 refers to 16,554 Soto tem-
70 This "third-generation dispute" is analyzed by Takeuchi Michio, "Nihon ni okeru Soto Zen
no tenkai," in Koza Zen, vol. 4 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1967), pp. 152-5.
71 For a more detailed account of this expansion, see Takeuchi, "Nihon ni okeru Soto Zen no
tenkai."
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 63I
pies, most of which were almost certainly established in the phase of
rapid growth during the Muromachi period.72
It is natural to ask what lay behind this rapid growth. Obviously,
Soto monks like Keizan, Gazan, and their successors gave their Zen
teachings a mass appeal. A few Soto monks came to the attention of
the Ashikaga shoguns. Out of respect for Gazan, Ashikaga Takauji and
Tadayoshi designated the Yokoji as the ankokuji for Noto. And Baizan
Monbon (d. 1417) of the Daigen branch earned such a reputation as a
Zen master that Ashikaga Yoshimitsu invited him to Kyoto. When
Baizan pleaded illness, Yoshimitsu is said to have sent a painter to
Baizan's monastery to produce a portrait of the monk. The portrait
had to be painted secretly, as Baizan would not receive the painter.
When it was unveiled before the shogun, the legend goes, the hall was
shaken by an earthquake, and so the portrait was returned to the
reclusive monk.73
For the most part, however, the Soto monks and monasteries did
not enjoy shogunal or imperial patronage. Rather their patrons were
farmers and local warriors, some of whom emerged as sengoku daimyo
from the wars of the late fifteenth century. In many cases, they were
supported by the same daimyo that were patronizing Rinzai monks of
the Daitokuji or Myoshinji lineages. Among the early patrons of Soto
monks were substantial provincial warrior families, some of them of
jito rank. Hatano Yoshishige's successors, for instance, remained patrons
of the Eiheiji. The monk Daichi (1290-1366) established several
monasteries under the patronage of both the Kikuchi in Kyushu and
Fujiwara Shigemuni, a jito in Kaga, who conferred domains on the
Gidaji.74
In the sixteenth century, a roster of Soto Zen patrons would have
included most of Japan's warlords. Among these sengoku daimyo
patrons were the Uesugi in northern Japan; the Hojo, Ota, and Yuki
in the Kanto; the Imagawa and Tokugawa on the Pacific coast; the
Uesugi, Takeda, Asakura, Hatakeyama, Oda, Asai, and Maeda in
central Japan; the Ouchi, Mori, and Yamana in the west; and the
Otomo and Shimazu in Kyushu. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries alone, several hundred Soto temples were estab-
72 Yokozeki Ryoin, Edojidai tomon seiyo (Tokyo: Bukkyosha, 1950), pp. 524-5.
73 Cited in Nakamura Hajime et al., Muromachi Bukkyo, vol. 6 of Ajia Bukkyo-shi (Tokyo: Kosei
shuppansha, 1972), p. 87.
74 On Daichi and his patrons, see Mizuno Yahoko, Daichi, vol. 9 ofNihon no Zen goroku (Tokyo:
Chikuma shobo, 1978), pp. 9-68; and Sugimoto Hisao, Kikuchi-shi sandai (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1966), pp. 129-51.
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632 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
lished in territories controlled by the Imagawa family. Both the
Takeda family and Tokugawa Ieyasu, learning from the gozan organization,
appointed Soto monks as registrars (soroku) of the temples in
their domains.75
The patronage by farmers is more difficult to define. The records
that survive from Soto temples all over Japan and the diaries and
letters of Soto monks include lists of donations from villagers and
references to meetings and ceremonies attended by Soto monks and
farming families. Some Soto temples were established in Kyoto,
Kamakura, Sakai, and other urban centers, but overall, the great
expansion of Soto Zen was made in rural areas.
The key to this expansion was popularization: the development of
practices that made Soto Zen and Soto monks welcome in the domains
of sengoku daimyo and in farming villages. (The popularization of Zen
practice will be discussed later in this chapter.) But there were ways
other than the simplification of Zen itself by which Soto monks established
close ties with warriors and villagers. Some Soto monks, like
Sensd Esai (d. 1475), revived the Ch'an ideal of labor that had been
expressed centuries before by Pai-chang: "A day without work, a day
without food." Perhaps partly from necessity but also from conviction,
these monks farmed the temple lands as did the villagers around them.
Other monks engaged in local welfare work, organizing the building of
bridges, the construction of irrigation channels, the digging of wells,
or the provision of relief services in time of drought or floods. The
surviving diaries and sermons of Soto monks reveal that they also
provided simplified funeral services, prayer meetings for the exorcism
of restless spirits, and ceremonies to pray for rain, relief from sickness,
and other immediate benefits. They were, in almost every way, more
in touch with the day-to-day life of the ordinary people than were their
counterparts in the gozan.76
For much of the Muromachi period, Soto Zen lacked the institutional
centralization of the gozan schools or the Daitokuji and
Myoshinji lineages. The rift between the Eiheiji and the Sojiji persisted
for decades, and the Eiheiji languished as the Sojiji and other
temples in Keizan's lineage flourished. But even among the rapidly
spreading branches of the various Sojiji offshoots, there was little
unity or central organization.
75 For a detailed presentation of the provincial diffusion of Soto Zen under daimyo patronage,
see Suzuki Taizan, "Soto Zen no kofu to sono gegosha," in Kokumin seikatsu-shi kenkyu
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1959), pp. 223-76.
76 Nakamura et al., Muromachi Bukkyo, p. 98.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 633
By the late fifteenth century, however, a process of centralization
was taking place as monks from the Keizan lineages began to serve as
abbots of the Eiheiji, to rebuild its reputation, and to make it, alongside
the Sojiji, the main temple (honzan) of the Soto school. The
prestige of the Eiheiji and the Soto school was further enhanced when,
beginning early in the sixteenth century, its leading abbots received
the honorary title of "Zen master" (Zenji) from the imperial court.
Throughout most of the sixteenth century, the Eiheiji overshadowed
the Sojiji as its abbots received imperial appointments, such as those of
the gozan monastery of the Nanzenji, and were permitted to wear
purple robes. Under the imperially granted title "principal training
place for the Soto school in this realm" (Honcho Soto daiichi dojo), the
Eiheiji recovered the primacy it had enjoyed under Dogen and his
immediate successors.77
Although the huge Zen school derived from Dogen and Keizan was
the mainstream of Soto Zen in medieval Japan, there was another and
very different transmission. The Chinese monk Tung-ming Hui-jih
(Tomyo Enichi, 1272-1340), who came to Japan in 1309 at the invitation
of Hojo Sadatoki, has already been mentioned. Tung-ming was
already a renowned monk in Chinese Ch'an monasteries before he
departed for Japan. He belonged to the Tsao-tung lineage of Hungchih
Cheng-chueh (Wanshi Shogaku, 1091-1157) and had held high
office in several leading Ch'an monasteries. In Kamakura he received a
much wanner reception than Dogen had received on his return to
Kyoto. At the request of the Hojo, Tung-ming served as the abbot of
the Engakuji and most of the Kamakura gozan monasteries. Emperor
Godaigo invited him to Kyoto, where he headed the Kenninji and
Nanzenji. Tung-ming, who shared many of the literary interests of the
gozan monks, was clearly at home in the Japanese gozan environment.
At his death his remains were enshrined in the Hakuunan subtemple
in the Engakuji, which became the spiritual center for monks of the
Wanshi Soto lineage.
Tung-ming's followers included cultured monks like the poet-monk
Betsugen Enshi (1294-1364), who was patronized by the Shiba and
Asakura warrior families and served as the abbot of the gozan monastery
of the Kenninji in Kyoto. Betsugen and a number of other Wanshi
school monks visited Mongol China and were known as experts on the
latest cultural developments in Chinese literary circles. After the destruction
of the Hojo, the Wanshi school found patrons among the
77 Ibid., pp. 98-100; and Takeuchi Michio, Nikon no Zen (Tokyo: Shunchosha, 1976), p. 290.
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634 Z E N A N D T H E
GOZAN
Asakai and Nijo, kuge families and the Asakura warrior house in
Echizen. The Asakura connection was particularly important. Wanshi
school monks remained within the orbit of the gozan but were able,
with the support of the Asakura who became sengoku daimyo, to survive
the decline of the gozan that resulted from the weakening of the
bakufu and shugo in the late fifteenth century. However, when the
Asakura were crushed by Oda Nobunaga in 1573, the fortunes of the
Wanshi school declined rapidly.78
Before ending this rather extended discussion of the institutional
development and nationwide diffusion of the various branches of medieval
Zen, several questions remain to be addressed. We have shown
that Rinzai and Soto Zen spread rapidly - the words "explosive development"
would perhaps not be an exaggeration - and found patrons
at all levels and in all sectors of medieval society. But why were shoguns,
emperors, shugo, jito, sengoku daimyo, farmers, townspeople,
merchants, tea masters, and wandering entertainers, not to mention
the monks and nuns from other schools of Buddhism, drawn to Zen
and to the monks who advocated it? And how deep and exclusive was
their commitment?
Their motivations, not surprisingly, were complex. People from all
these groups took a spiritual interest in Zen, accepting the assertion
that zazen was indeed the most direct means to realize the enlightenment
attained by Sakyamuni. The regent Hojo Tokiyori, the cloistered
emperor Hanazono, and the provincial warrior Akamatsu Norimura
were only three of many millions of lay people of all classes who,
during the medieval period, engaged in what Zen masters described as
a "life-and-death struggle" for enlightenment (satori) through zazen.
As Suzuki Daisetsu and many other scholars have pointed out, Zen
had a particularly strong appeal for Japanese warriors: Zazen is physically
demanding; an encounter with a Zen master involves a frank and
penetrating probe of the seeker's sincerity and attainment; Zen practice
calls for a direct, intuitive understanding of self rather than book
learning or the recitation of sutras; and for the Zen practitioner, enlightenment
must be grasped by one's own efforts, not conferred by
some compassionate Buddha. All of these qualities appealed to Japanese
warriors and help explain why they were the most numerous and
enthusiastic patrons of Zen monks. But it would be a mistake to
suggest that all warriors practiced Zen - many were devoted followers
78 The growth of the Wanshi line is described by Imaeda Aishin, "Soto-shu Wanshi-ha to
Asakura-ke," in Ckusei zenshu-shi no kenkyu, pp. 483-503.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN MONASTICISM 635
of Nichiren, Shinran, and other Pure Land preachers - or that the
patronage of Zen was restricted to warriors.
Cultural factors also contributed to the widespread acceptance of
Zen. The Hojo regents, Ashikaga shoguns, members of the imperial
court, provincial warriors, and wealthy merchants of Kyoto, Sakai,
and Hakata all were eager to learn from Zen monks the latest in
cultural styles from China. Most gozan monks were advocates of the
"unity of the three creeds." Although Zen remained for them the most
direct path to personal salvation, they also recognized the validity of
Confucianism and Taoism. Chinese Zen monks who came to Japan,
and those Japanese monks who stayed for more than a few years in
China, were fully conversant with the intellectual and cultural interests
of the Chinese literati. In Japan they were happy to discuss with
their patrons the ideas of Confucian or Taoist thinkers, often as a
means of introducing Zen Buddhist ideas. Many Zen monks were
calligraphers, composers of Chinese verse (kanshi), and painters of ink
monochromes, reflecting their spiritual insights and intellectual gatherings.
At literary gatherings and tea ceremonies, monks were in great
demand as mentors and arbiters of cultural styles. Members of the
imperial court were interested in the Chinese culture made accessible
through Zen monks. But for the Hojo regents and Ashikaga shoguns,
access to Chinese culture was particularly important. Some familiarity
with the latest in continental styles gave them a greater sense of confidence
in their social dealings with the nobility, who remained the
arbiters of taste in the Japanese cultural tradition.
Political factors also played a part in the motivations of Zen's patrons,
especially in the patronage of the gozan by the Hojo and
Ashikaga families. Close political regulation by the Kamakura and
Muromachi bakufus ensured that the Zen monasteries never became
an independent political or military force in medieval society. From
the beginnings of its development in Japan, the Zen monastic institution,
unlike the monasteries of the older schools of Japanese Buddhism,
proved amenable to warrior control. At least part of the motivation
for patronage lay in the fact that Zen, as a new institution in
Japanese society, drd not have ingrained social and political ties with
the court, the nobility, and the powerful monasteries clustered around
the capital. For the early Ashikaga shoguns seeking to establish themselves
in Kyoto, their deliberate promotion of the gozan was a means
of offsetting the influence over the capital exerted by the Enryakuji,
Onjoji, and other long-established Tendai and Shingon monasteries.
Imaeda Aishin has shown in his studies of the ankokuji and rishoto
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636 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
and the provincial diffusion of the gozan that Ashikaga Tadayoshi and
Takauji regarded these networks as a means of showing favor to specific
local temples and their patrons, of linking them more closely to
the capital, and of exercising surveillance over them. When both shugo
and local warriors saw that Zen was in the ascendant under the shogun's
patronage, they must have found it politically expedient to sponsor
Zen monks and establish Zen monasteries their domains. During
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the bakufu was in the
ascendant, gozan, jissatsu, and shozan monasteries were the beneficiaries
of the most generous provincial patronage. In the late fifteenth
century, with the bakufu reduced to political impotence, the gozan in
decline, and the country in turmoil, those branches of Zen - the
Myoshinji, Daitokuji, Soto - that had strong provincial roots and
weaker ties with the shogunate came into greater favor with the upsurge
of local warlords, the sengoku daimyo. Like the Hojo and
Ashikaga before them, the daimyo quickly appreciated that Zen monasteries
were disciplined and orderly, politically and militarily docile,
and sources of astute advisers, spartan training, and basic literary
education for the warriors' children.
After the fourteenth century, the imperial court lacked the financial
means to be a major patron of Zen. Godaigo, however, had seen
some political advantage to be gained by trying to bring the gozan
monasteries under his wing. Later emperors maintained close :;es
with the Nanzenji and some of the Kyoto gozan. The granting of
purple robes to abbots of the Daitokuji, Myoshinji, and Eiheiji was,
of course, the court's recognition of their spiritual stature, but as the
Tokugawa bakufu realized in the seventeenth century, it also had the
effect of creating political ties between the court and the major Zen
monasteries.
In regard to the exclusiveness of the commitment to Zen, patrons
like Hojo Tokiyori and Ashikaga Tadayoshi practiced Zen assiduously
until their deaths and displayed little inclination to promote other
branches of Buddhism. Most patrons of Zen, at least among the elite,
however, seem to have adopted a more eclectic attitude, combining
practice and patronage of Zen with devotion to other Buddhist
schools. Ashikaga Takauji and Yoshimitsu are counted among the
great patrons of the gozan, but in their spiritual lives they were also
strongly attracted by the message of salvation carried by Pure Land
preachers. Godaigo's patronage was not unusual, blending, as it did,
the occasional practice of zazen, the Chinese learning and culture
available through Zen monks, and the politically motivated sponsorCambridge
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ECONOMY AND ADMINISTRATION 637
ship of certain Zen monasteries with the continued patronage of
Shingon and Tendai Buddhism.
ECONOMY AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE MEDIEVAL ZEN
MONASTERY
The growth and maintenance of a Zen community of several hundred
monks depended on the existence of a stable monastic economy. The
economic basis of all Zen monasteries in the medieval period - Rinzai
and Sotd, gozan and non-^ozan - was income from land, either the
annual rice taxes (nengu) derived from holdings in shoen or the rents
(kajishi) from cultivators of monastic lands. Income from landholdings
was supplemented by a variety of other sources. Among these were
donations from patrons for the construction and repair of buildings;
the conduct of ceremonies; the provision of texts, paintings, and statues;
fees for funeral services and prayer ceremonies; the proceeds from
foreign trading ventures, from the sale of monastery produce, or from
market fees; the fruits of mendicancy; and the profits of
moneylending. The amount of income and the various elements in the
economic "mix" naturally varied with the size of the monastery, its
location, the wealth and enthusiasm of its patrons, and the period. In
general, the income from shoen holdings provided the mainstay for
Zen monastic economies in the Kamakura period, whereas the income
from rents, commerce, and small donations came to play a greater role
in the Muromachi period as the shoen were dismembered and alienated
from their proprietors.
Unfortunately, the sporadic quality of the documentary record
makes it impossible to provide a detailed picture of the economic life
of any single Zen monastery over the whole medieval period. By piecing
together information on different monasteries at different times,
however, we can form an impression of the main features of the larger
monasteries' economic life and of the ways in which these may have
changed over time in response to changing political and economic
circumstances in the country at large.
The gozan monasteries, under the patronage of the Kamakura and
Muromachi shogunates, were generously endowed and enjoyed huge
incomes from landholdings, mostly jito shiki, in shoen scattered
throughout the country.79
The Tenryuji, in 1387, for instance, enjoyed
79 The economies of the Engakuji, Nanzenji, and Daitokuji are discussed at somewhat greater
length in Collcutt, Five Mountains, pp, 255-75.
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638 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
an income of "8,123 kanmon in rice and cash" from more than twelve
shoen holdings in eight different provinces.80
The Nanzenji in the same
period was receiving an annual income of well over four thousand koku
in rice from domains in Kaga and half a dozen other provinces.81
By
the standards of the age, these were very substantial incomes, greater
perhaps than; those enjoyed by some shugo. The jissatsu and shozan
monasteries, likewise, were granted extensive shoen rights by shoguns,
members of the imperial court, and shugo and were protected by the
bakufu.82
Although the provincial monasteries in the gozan system remained
dependent on income from landholdings, donations, and local mendicancy,
the metropolitan gozan, especially the Kyoto gozan, had other
important sources of income. The capital was the hub of a growing
commercial economy, and some Zen monasteries were active participants
in this growth. The Tenryuji, for instance, derived income from
a thriving sake-brewing enterprise, and the Tofukuji sponsored and
taxed a merchant community at its gates. Zen monks from the Kyoto
gozan led many of the official trading embassies to China on behalf of
the bakufu, the Ouchi, or the Hosokawa. Some gozan monasteries,
notably the Shokokuji, sent monks as traders on these missions and
may have derived an occasional income of several thousand kanmon
from the proceeds of such ventures.
A steadier source of income for gozan monasteries and some individual
Zen monks in Kyoto was provided by moneylending. Many gozan
monks came from wealthy families or were able to use administrative
offices in the gozan to amass private fortunes. They were not averse to
lending money to needy nobles or warriors at high rates of interest.
One Shokokuji monk in the mid-fifteenth century, known as Sei
tsubun, accumulated funds through the management of Shokokuji
shoen holdings and made substantial loans to other Kyoto temples and
nobles at interest rates of between 3 and 8 percent per month.
In addition to private usury, some Zer. monasteries also used "mortuary
contributions" {shidosen) that had been donated by patrons to
pay for memorial services as capital for more public low-interest
loans. Interest rates on shidosen were 2 or 3 percent per month. They
were in considerable demand, but because interest rates would
mount rapidly if the loan were extended, they were sources of fric-
80 Tenryuji monjo, cited by Imatani Akira, Sengoku-ki no Muromachi bakufu (Tokyo: Kadokawa
shoten, 1975), p. 54.
81 Sakurai Keiyu and Fujii Manabu, eds., Nanzenji monjo (Kyoto: Nanzenji, 1972), vol. 1, docs.
2
> 93> 189. 82 Imatani, Sengoku-ki no Muromachi bakufu, pp. 51-54.
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ECONOMY AND ADMINISTRATION 639
tion as well as profit. Among the rioters' demands in the uprisings
(ikki) of the fifteenth century was relief (tokusei) from the payments
on overdue shidosen loans. Involvement in usury thus exposed Zen
monasteries to the anger of disgruntled citizens, some of whom
sought revenge by pillaging monasteries when the chance arose during
the Onin War.83
In addition to direct donations and endowments of land, the gozan
system benefited indirectly from the bakufu's protection. Under the
umbrella of bakufu sponsorship, gozan monasteries and their shoen
holdings enjoyed military protection, exemption from such bakufu
and shugo levies as yakubuku-mai (rice paid in lieu of corvee) and
tansen, immunity from intrusion by warrior officials and tax collectors,
freedom from barrier fees, and favorable treatment in litigation. This
protection allowed the gozan economies to prosper until well into the
fifteenth century and for gozan monastic populations to swell far beyond
the numbers that the bakufu thought desirable. The Tofukuji in
the early fifteenth century, for instance, had more than 600 monks
enrolled, although the bakufu regulations permitted only 350.84
But the close association between gozan and bakufu did not always
work to the advantage of the Zen monasteries. During the fifteenth
century, when the Muromachi bakufu was having financial difficulties
and beginning to lose its grip over the country, the gozan monasteries
were being exploited financially and losing important landholdings.
By the mid-fifteenth century, the Ashikaga shoguns were forcing the
gozan monasteries to give them loans and gifts, and these exactions
increased as the bakufu's finances weakened.
In 1435, for instance, Ashikaga Yoshinori collected at least twenty
kan from the Rokuon'in and fifty kan from the Tojiji. According to
Imatani Akira, in 1458 there were sixty incidents of forced "gift giving"
by gozan monks, providing more than fifteen hundred kanmon for
the shogun. In 1459, the shogunate borrowed two thousand kanmon
and in 1463 six thousand kanmon from monks of the eastern rank of
the Kyoto gozan.85
It is unlikely that these loans were ever repaid.
Exactions on this scale were a heavy drain on gozan coffers, and from
83 On the questions of moneylending by Zen temples and the activities of monks of the eastern
rank, see Fujioka Daisetsu, "Gozan kyodan no hatten ni kansuru ichi kosatsu," Bukkyo
shigaku 6 (March 1957): 47-66; and Fujioka Daisetsu, "Zen'in nai ni okeru tohanshu ni
tsuite," Nihon rekishi, no. 145 (July i960): 19-28.
84 Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, Chusei ni okeru shaji to shakai to no kankei (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1934), p.
49, states that the Tofukuji maintained a population of nearly 700 monks, despite repeated
efforts by the bakufu to hold down the number to 350.
85 Imatani, Sengoku-ki no Muromachi bakufu, pp. 35-39.
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640 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
the 1460s, gozan monk administrators protested that they could no
longer afford to make loans to the shogunate.
Moreover, the wealth that the gozan monasteries had derived from
their extensive shoen holding was drastically reduced when, fron:
around the time of the Onin War, the bakufu began to disallow exemptions
from yakubuku-mai and tansen levies and the local warriors began
to intrude with impunity into gozan landholdings. In the spreading
provincial disorder of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, gozan
monasteries like the Tenryuji, Nanzenji, Engakuji, and Rinsenji lost
control over most of their shoen holdings. This continued until Oda
Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi restored order to the provinces
and began to rebuild the stricken gozan monasteries, restoring, though
on a much smaller scale, their economic base. In 1591, for instance,
Hideyoshi confirmed the Nanzenji's holdings in and around Kyoto,
with an income of 592 koku. Tokugawa Ieyasu later raised this to 892
koku.*6
This income was probably sufficient to support a community
of several hundred, but it was a far cry from the more than 4,000 koku
that the Nanzenji had received from its landholdings in the late fourteenth
century.
Whereas the economies of the gozan monasteries generally traced a
parabola of growth through the thirteenth, fourteenth, and early fifteenth
centuries, followed by disintegration in the late fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, the economies of the Daio branches of Rinzai Zen
and the Soto monasteries followed a contrary curve, coming into their
own as the gozan declined.
In the late fourteenth century, none of the leading non-gozan Rinzai
or Soto monasteries - Daitokuji, Myoshinji, Eiheiji, and Sojiji compared
in wealth with their gozan counterparts. The Daitokuji had
fared well under the patronage of Godaigo in the early 1330s. It was
granted full control and immunity (ichienfuyu) over six shoen and from
one of them, Tomono-no-sho in Shinano Province, derived (if the
documents can be believed) the enormous income of 7,600 koku.87
The
Daitokuji did not, however, find favor with the Ashikaga, and without
the shogun's support, the monastery found it difficult to hold on to its
scattered shoen holdings during the civil wars of the fourteenth century.
In 1371, the Daitokuji appears to have received an income of only
433 kannton from two shorn.™ This was sufficient to sustain a community
of thirty or so monks and attendants, in contrast with the more
86 Nanzenji monjo, vol. 2, docs. 303, 378, 384.
87 Daitokuji monjo, vol. I, doc. 25 and vol. 2, doc. 643. 88 Dailokuji monjo, vol. 1, doc. 124.
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ECONOMY AND ADMINISTRATION 64I
than one thousand members of the Nanzenji community. The scale of
the Myoshinji's economy in the fourteenth century was even smaller
than that of the Daitokuji, and as we have already seen, what landholdings
it did possess were confiscated by Yoshimitsu when the community
was disbanded in 1339.
When the Daitokuji and Myoshinji began to recover in the midfifteenth
century, their economies reflected their ties with new patrons
and changing economic and commercial possibilities. Most of their
subtemples were built by sengoku daimyo and endowed not with shoen
holdings but with income from lands under the daimyo's own control.
Cash donations from daimyo, merchants, townspeople, and entertainers
helped finance monastic ceremonies, construct buildings, and install
abbots. The Daitokuji's connections with tea masters and merchants
from Sakai were a valuable source of support. Most of the
thirty-odd contributions made at the installation ceremony for Kokei
Sochin as the 117th abbot of the Daitokuji in 1573, for instance, came
from Sakai. Among the contributors were Sen no Soeki (Rikyu), who
gave one hundred kanmon; Tennojiya Tsuda Sokyu, fifty kanmon;
Aburaya Shosa, thirty kanmon; and Takeno Shoga, twenty kanmon}9
Sasaki Ginya analyzed the economies of four Daitokuji subtemples:
the Ryoshoji, Nyoi'an, Yotoku'in, and Shogen'in. He concluded that
although these subtemples continued to derive some of their income
from consolidated shden-type holdings in distant provinces until well
into the sixteenth century, they also developed various alternative
sources of income to compensate for the relentless erosion of their
shoen interests by local warriors. Among the most important of these
new sources of support were the supplementary rents (kajishi) paid by
the cultivators of numerous small holdings, rents (jishi) from house
lots in the city of Kyoto, income from the holdings of a growing
number of branch temples, mortuary funds (shidosen), and the sale in
the markets of such temple produce as rice, bamboo, or lumber. Some
tatchu may have managed to subsist on income from landholdings
throughout the sixteenth century. Others, like the Shogen'in, relied
heavily on income from the loan of mortuary funds or rental income
from smallholdings, or, like the Ryoshoji, on the sale of commercial
produce.90
All of the temples were obliged to respond, in some measure at
least, to the changing economic circumstances, in which shoen were an
89 Cited in Haga et al., eds., Daitokuji to sadd, p. 151.
90 Sasaki Ginya, Chusei skohin ryutsu-shi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Hosei daigaku shuppan kyoku,
PP- 95-25O.
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642 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
increasingly precarious and inaccessible means of support. But new
opportunities were being made available by the growth of commercial
activity in and around the Kinai region. Documentary evidence for the
economic life of the main monastery, the Daitokuji, in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries is disappointingly sketchy, but we may assume
that it too acquired small-holding rights and lent money to supplement
its income from donations and meager shoen interests. Income from
donations, land, rents, and moneylending all may have helped swell
the Daitokuji's coffers. But the monastery was placed on a solid financial
footing again only by the patronage of daimyo, and especially by
Hideyoshi's grant in 1585 of an income of 1,545 koku from three
holdings.
The major Soto monasteries, like those of the Daio school, were less
populous than their gozan counterparts and less generously endowed
with shoen holdings. Located as they were in the provinces, they had
no access to involvement in foreign trade and only limited opportunities
for commercial activities or moneylending. These communities
remained heavily dependent on the patronage of warrior families and
on small donations for funeral and prayer services.
Over centuries of development in China and Japan, the Zen monasteries
had refined their effective administrative structure. The characteristic
Zen bureaucracy - with five or six senior monks in each of the
eastern and western ranks assisting the abbot in running the
monastery - was used in the Hangchow monasteries visited by Eisai,
Dogen, and Enni and was described in detail in such Ch'an codes as
the Ch'an-yuan ch'ing-kuei. It was adopted in Japan without substantial
modification by Rinzai and Soto monasteries.
Whereas the monks of the western rank, or choshu, supervised the
religious, ceremonial, and literary aspects of the monastic life, the chiji
of the eastern rank managed the day-to-day administration of the
monastery and its lands. In medieval society, Zen monk administrators
were known for their managerial expertise. Indeed, some of the
bursars and estate overseers from Zen monasteries were employed by
the bakufu as daikan or by non-Zen temples to oversee rebuilding
projects. Bursars of gozan monasteries, in particular, had opportunities
to accumulate capital for their monasteries and for themselves.
And it was to these monks that the shoguns turned for advice and
loans when the bakufu's finances crumbled in the fifteenth century.9
'
91 For a fuller treatment of eastern-rank activities, see Fujioka, "Gozan kyodan no hatten ni
kansuru ichi kdsatsu"; Fujioka, "Zen'in nai ni okeru tohanshu ni tsuite"; and Collcutt, Five
Mountains, pp. 239-43, 2
75—8
5Cambridge
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CHANGES IN ZEN PRACTICE 643
CHANGES IN ZEN PRACTICE, CULTURE, AND THE
MONASTIC LIFE
Even though the Zen pioneers strove to achieve a full and true transmission
of Ch'an practice, monastic discipline, and culture from
China, the very success of Zen in Japan brought changes, accommodation,
and divergence from the Chinese ideal espoused by Eisai, Ddgen,
and the Chinese emigre monks. These concluding pages will point to
some of the ways in which Zen practice and Zen-related culture were
transformed in the medieval Japanese context.
At the outset it must be stressed that the Japanese and Chinese
monks who brought Ch'an teachings to Japan during the Kamakura
period wanted to recreate in Japan a complete and faithful replica of
the Zen monastic life, or the best traditions of that monastic life, as
they had experienced it in Chinese monasteries. During their training
in Ch'an monasteries, Eisai, Dogen, Enni, and their successors did not
simply practice zazen or engage in koan study. From their writings and
the materials they brought back to Japan, it is clear that they took an
interest in all aspects of Ch'an monastic life, from Buddhist texts and
ceremonies to the details of monastic architecture and the secular
cultural interests of the Chinese monks. Eisai's advocacy of the efficacy
of tea derived from the Ch'an monastic use of tea ceremonies to
promote community harmony, bodily well-being, and wakefulness during
long periods of meditation.92
Enni brought back to Japan a library
of Buddhist texts used in Ch'an monasteries, portraits and calligraphy
of his master Wu-chun, and Chinese secular writings. His long stay in
China allowed him to study Sung Confucianism as well as Zen. In
Japan, he lectured on Confucianism before the imperial court, no
doubt intending to lead his audiences on to a deeper interest in the
superior insights of Zen Buddhism. Dogen, too, in the Shobo genzo,
Eihei shingi, and Tenzo kyokun, displays an intense concern for the full
transmission of the detailed rules of authentic Ch'an monastic practice.
He was convinced that the monastic regulations enforced by Paichang
and the Chinese patriarchs reflected the Buddha's teaching and
were intrinsic to the practice of zazen.9i
The many Chinese monks who came to Japan in the late thirteenth
92 On the role of Eisai and other Zen monks in popularizing the Chinese custom of tea drinking
in Japan, see Theodore M. Ludwig, "Before Rikyu: Religious and Aesthetic Influences in the
Early History of the Tea Ceremony," Monumenta Nipponica 36 (Winter, 1981): 367-90; and
Nishibe Bunjo, "Zen Monks and the Formation of the Way of Tea," Chanoyu, no 28 (1981):
7-46. 93 Kim, Dogen Kigen, pp. 228-308.
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644 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
century and headed the Rinzai monasteries in Kamakura and Kyoto
naturally insisted on what they knew as orthodox Sung Ch'an monastic
practice in those Japanese communities. Under the guidance of
Lan-ch'i Tao-Lung and Wu-hsueh Tsu-yuan, monasteries like the
Kenchoji were built in the traditional Ch'an style on a north-south
axis, with the central line of great ceremonial buildings - great gate,
Buddha hall, and Dharma hall - flanked east and west by the monks'
communal hall (sodo) - where the monks meditated, took their meals,
and slept - and the kitchen - office building that housed the monastery's
administrative functions. Monastic life was regulated by codes
that were also in force in the Chinese monasteries: The monks wore
Chinese dress, studied the Chinese language, and moved to the sounds
of bells, gongs, and clappers used in Ch'an monasteries. Following
Chinese Ch'an practice, meditation sessions (zazen) were held four
times daily, interspersed with discussion cf koan in the Dharma hall or
abbot's quarters and the conduct of prayer ceremonies in the Buddha
hall.94
Both Lan-ch'i and Wu-hsueh stressed unremitting zazen and discouraged
literary pursuits. But as Chinese monks came to Japan in
growing numbers and Chinese art objects (karamono)flowedinto temples
and warrior mansions in Kamakura, Zen monasteries also became
centers for the study and promotion of secular Chinese culture. For
example, in order to be accepted as a student by Issan Ichinei, the
Japanese monk Muso Soseki was tested on his command of Chinese
verse.95
In Issan's day, Chinese emigre monks in the gozan monasteries
instructed their Japanese disciples in those arts that were esteemed by
Ch'an masters and their Chinese literati patrons. This gozan cultural
movement embraced calligraphy, ink painting, poetry, philosophy,
book printing, the enjoyment of tea, and garden design. Among the
Japanese monks who studied with Issan and became enthusiastic advocates
of Chinese culture were Kokan Shiren (1278-1348) and Sesson
Yubai (1290-1346). Although he never visited China, Kokan was an
admirer of Chinese civilization. His Genko shakusho, the first attempt
at a comprehensive history of Buddhism in Japan, was based on Chinese
collections of the biographies of eminent monks and Confucian
historical classics. Kokan was a poet and, in addition to his scholarly
writings on Zen and the Lankavatara Sutra, produced the first Chinese
rhyming dictionary for use by Japanese and a handbook of
94 A more detailed treatment of the introduction of Chinese monastic regulations and the
character of the Zen monastic life is provided by Collcutt, Five Mountains, pp. 133-51.
95 Tamamura, Muso kokushi, p. 18.
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CHANGES IN ZEN PRACTICE 645
phrases from the Confucian classics useful in composing the kind of
Chinese parallel prose that was fashionable in Zen monasteries.96
After meeting Issan in Kamakura, Sesson traveled to China where
he spent more than twenty years wandering from Ch'an monastery to
Ch'an monastery. For a time he was imprisoned as a spy. During his
long stay in China, Sesson became expert in the composition of Chinese
verse in both the lii-shih (regulated-verse) and the freer ku-shih
(ancient-verse) styles. The following "irregular verse" reflects on
Sesson's experiences in China and conveys something of his independence
and spiritual detachment from Zen:
The praises of others do not move me,
Their slanders have no bite,
With a heart as free as flowing water,
My ties with the world are slight.
Surviving the grip of prison fetters,
I stayed on three years in Ch'ang-an;
When I feel in the mood to sing,
I speak out straight: What need of fancy phrases?97
Throughout the fourteenth century, the Chinese literary and cultural
tone of the gozan monasteries thickened, and even while the
number of monks actually traveling between Japan and China decreased.
Gozan monasteries were recognized as centers for the diffusion
of Chinese culture and Zen monks, considered by shoguns, emperors,
and provincial warriors as experts in the Chinese language,
literature, and values. The peak of Sinification in the gozan was probably
reached in the late fourteenth century with Gido Shushin and
Zekkai Chushin, both fine poets whose work was praised in China and
who would have been as much at home in Chinese literary circles of
the day as they were in the Kyoto gozan.
But Japan was very different from China. And even though a concerted
effort was being made to recreate Chinese Ch'an monastic practice
in Japan and raise the level of Chinese cultural awareness in the
gozan monasteries, there were also signs of accommodation with the
prevailing religious and cultural conditions in Japan. This accommodation
with Japanese conditions was most striking in the transformation
of Soto Zen after Dogen's death, but it was also evident in Rinzai Zen
from an early period.
96 Zengaku daijiten.
97 Yamagishi Tokuhei, ed., Gozan bungaku-shu, Edo kanshi-shu Nihon koten bungaku laikei
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1968), vol. 89, p. 73; and Marian Ury, Poems of the Five Mountains
(Tokyo: Mushinsha, 1977), p. 36.
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646 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
Although Dogen was critical of the lax standards he had observed in
contemporary Chinese monasteries - monks who did not practice
meditation wholeheartedly, who were dirty and smelled or who failed
to cut their hair or trim their nails - he remained throughout his life a
vigorous advocate of the monastic ideal of Pai-chang and of the severe
meditation practice he had engaged in under the guidance of Ju-ching:
After hearing this truth [of the sole importance of zazen] from my master, I
sat in zazen day and night. Other monks, afraid that they might fall ill at time
of great heat and cold, abandoned their meditation temporarily but I only
urged myself harder with the thought: "I should devote myself to zazen even
at risk of death from serious illness."'8
Dogen warned his followers against the temptations of building for
themselves a lavish monastic environment that would stifle the energy
of their Zen practice: "Don't be foolishly impressed with magnificent
monastery buildings. The Buddhas and Patriarchs never sought fine
temples. If you put up temples or monasteries without attaining true
vision, you are not consecrating havens for the Buddhas but merely
providing caves for your own glory and wealth."99
But from his writings
and his building activities at the Koshoji and Eiheiji, it is clear
that Dogen wanted his communities to prize those buildings especially
the monks' hall, Dharma hall, and library - that had provided
the traditional setting for meditation, koan discussion, and study
in Chinese Ch'an monasteries.
Although he was sometimes forced to modify regulations that had
been written for large Chinese monasteries to suit his small community
at Eiheiji, Dogen took pains to preserve, or recover, what he
believed to be authentic Ch'an monastic discipline as it had been
instituted by Pai-chang and other T'ang masters. Even a trivial daily
routine such as cleansing the teeth could be an expression of Zen
performed in the proper manner: "Although in the Ch'an monasteries
of great Sung nowadays the use of the wooden toothpick has gone out
of fashion, and hence no place is provided for it, there is now a place
for the wooden tooth cleaner here at Eiheiji. . . . "Io
°
Thus Dogen conceived of his ideal Zen community as one in which
zazen would be the paramount activity. The setting might be simple,
but it should at least include a meditation hall, library, and lecture
98 Nishio Minoru, Zuimonki, book I, vol. 82 of Shobogenzo, Shobogenzo zuimonki, Nihon koten
bungaku taikei, (Tokyo: 1965). An English translation of the Zuimonki is provided by Thomas
Geary, trans., Record of Things Heard from the Treasury of ike Eye of the True Teachings
(Boulder, Colo.: Shambala, 1982).
99 Dogen, Shobogenzo, Gyoji. 100 Dogen, Shobo genzo, Senmen.
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CHANGES IN ZEN PRACTICE 647
hall. Furthermore, though regulations might be modified to suit Japanese
conditions, every effort should be made to preserve the monastic
spirit of the Chinese patriarchs. Dogen rejected accommodation with
Confucianism and Taoism, with branches of Buddhism that did not
accord primacy to zazen, and with popular or folk religious practices
common around the Eiheiji.
The rapid expansion of Soto Zen was achieved only by a deliberate
shift away from the exclusive, zazen-centered, Chinese-inspired monastic
practice that Dogen had espoused regarding a popular Zen that
took into account the interests of ordinary lay people and was willing
to combine with local Japanese religious conditions.
Whereas Dogen had rejected opportunities to proselytize, declaring
that all who sincerely wished to practice Zen would find his community,
Keizan and his successors seized every opportunity to take their
teachings to the people. Whereas Dogen had avoided syncretism in the
interest of preserving the centrality of zazen, his successors accepted
into daily Soto practice the Tendai and Shingon texts and prayer ceremonies;
Pure Land invocations; devotion to the kannon and to local
mountain cults; and healing, exorcism, and funeral rites.
In Soto monasteries the forms of zazen were preserved, and Dogen's
writings and Chinese koan collections were studied, but over time the
zazen practice was diluted. The interviews between master and disciple
{sanzen), which had been the core of Dogen's Zen practice, were
formalized and esotericized as model answers circulated among monks
and secret oral and verbal transmissions were made from master to
disciple. As sanzen lost its spontaneity, it was increasingly replaced by
ceremonial public expressions of Zen, especially mass meetings for
gokoe and jukai at which hundreds of monks and lay people gathered
for formalized meditation ceremonies or publicly to profess the Buddhist
precepts. Undoubtedly these changes helped Soto Zen win large
numbers of adherents and respond to the religious needs of peasants
and samurai. At the same time, however, the more energy that the
Soto monks put into popular ceremonial functions and large-scale
public activities, the less that they could devote to private zazen and
sanzen, and the further Soto Zen shifted, for good or ill, from the type
of community that Dogen had wished to establish at the Koshoji and
Eiheiji on the basis of his experience in China.101
In the development of Rinzai Zen, too, there was a growing tendency
toward accommodation with Japanese medieval society and cul-
101 Takeuchi, Nihon no zen, p. 273.
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648 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
ture. This process was less sharply defined than in the case of Soto Zen
after Dogen, but it can be detected in the areas of Zen thought and
practice, the monastic life, and Zen-related cultural activities.
Although Eisai and Enni had carefully observed Ch'an monastic life
in China and sought to recreate it in Japan, pressure from supporters
of established Buddhism, especially of the Enryakuji, obliged them to
incorporate Tendai and Shingon buildings and rituals into their monasteries,
the Kenninji and the Tofukuji. Moreover, Eisai's Kozen
gokokuron (The promotion of Zen in defense of the country), for instance,
argued that Zen was fully in accord with the ideals of Saicho,
the founder of Tendai Buddhism in Japan, and that in return for
support by political authorities, Zen monks, through their meditation
and prayers, could provide the spiritual protection for the state that
Tendai had traditionally claimed to offer.102
The influx of Chinese monks into Kamakura's and Kyoto's gozan
monasteries in the late thirteenth century contributed to an emphasis
on pure Sung monastic practice and unadulterated koan Zen. Lan-ch'i
set the tone by having the Kenchoji built in the Sung style and stressing,
in particular, the importance that the communal life of meditation
in the monks' hall (sddo) had played in Ch'an Buddhism. All of the
gozan monasteries built after the Kenchoji were built on the basic
seven-hall layout characteristic of Sung Ch'an centers and regulated by
the Ch'an-yuan and others codes governing the Chinese monasteries.
But despite this effort to adopt Chinese models, the Japanese features
of monastic life could not be entirely eliminated. The ground
plans of the early Kenchoji and Engakuji reveal that although all the
public buildings of those monasteries - the great gate, Buddha hall,
Dharma hall, monks' hall, kitchens, and bathrooms - were built in
the Sung Chinese style of Ch'an monastic architecture, on the basis of
drawings of actual Chinese monasteries, their abbot's buildings (hojo)
were in the Japanese residential style, including elements derived from
Heian aristocratic buildings and gardens.103
It has already been
pointed out that from the late Kamakura period there was a proliferation
of subtemples (tatchu) around the compounds ofmajor Zen monasteries.
Like the hojo buildings, these too were built in the Japanese
style.
Although Chinese masters stressed the primacy of zazen and koan
study as the core of Zen monastic life, during the frenzied years of the
102 Kozen gokokuron, in Ichikawa Hakugen et al., eds., Chusei zenke no shiso (Tokyo: 1972).
103 See, for instance, the ground plan of the medieval Kenchoji included in Yokoyama Hideya,
Zen no Kenchiku (Tokyo: Shokokusha, 1967), p. 282.
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CHANGES IN ZEN PRACTICE 649
threatened Mongol invasions, the Zen monks, too, like the monks of
other schools of Japanese Buddhism, conducted frequent prayer ceremonies
for the country's delivery. These introduced esoteric rituals
into the monastic timetable and thus inevitably reduced the time that
could be devoted to zazen and sanzen.
As the role of Chinese masters declined from the early fourteenth
century, Japanese influences, especially from Shingon Buddhism,
grew stronger in the gozan. Shingon practices had been incorporated
into the Rinzai Zen teaching of Muhon Kakushin and his followers,
but it was under the powerful influence of Muso Soseki that they
permeated gozan Zen monastic practice.
Muso's earliest religious training had been in Tendai and Shingon
Buddhism. He had begun his Zen practice under the Chinese monk Ishan
I-ning and had received recognition of his enlightenment after
studying with the Japanese monk Koho Kennichi. Koho, a member of
the imperial family, had a strong interest in esoteric Buddhism; Muso
never visited China, and thus it is not difficult to detect in his writings
an indifference to many of the contemporary trends in Chinese Ch'an
Buddhism and a receptivity to Japanese religious practices. In his
Muchu mondo, Muso argued that "although Zen teachings offered the
most direct way to grasp the root of enlightenment," esoteric prayers
and rituals provided a valuable expedient means (hoben) of attaining
the gateway to enlightenment, which could then be deepened by Zen
practice.104
Muso's tolerance of Shingon practices had far-reaching
ramifications. Although there is no evidence that Muso himself conducted
such rituals - in Muchii mondo and elsewhere he warned that
their excessive use would dilute Zen practice - he associated with
Shingon monks and had among his "ten thousand disciples" many
monks who combined Zen and esoteric Buddhism. The esoteric Japanese
tone in the Zen teachings of Muso and his followers made them
particularly attractive to members of the court nobility as well as to
warriors. The readiness of the Muso school's monks to perform rituals
and prayer ceremonies for the welfare of the country, the recovery of a
shogun from sickness, and for relief from drought or famine made the
gozan monasteries that much more useful as religious agents of the
bakufu.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many Zen monks
adopted the Pure Land practice of nembutsu. Some of these Pure Land
104 Muso Soseki, Muchu mondo, vol. 1, stage 15 in Sato Taishun, ed., Muchii mondo (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1934).
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65O ZEN AND THE GOZAN
influences came from medieval Japanese religion, in which devotion to
Amida was a powerful current. Other influences came from China.
One branch of Ch'an Buddhism during the Yuan and Ming dynasties
combined an eremitic ideal with Pure Land devotion. A few Chinese
monks of this school found their way to Japan. But many more Japanese
monks who visited China in the fourteenth century adopted Pure
Land beliefs. Some gozan monks, like Nanko Sogan (1397-1463),
remained hostile to any accommodation with Pure Land. In a long
poem from which the following lines are taken, Nanko heaped scorn
on the practitioners of the dancing nembutsu (odori nembutsu) that had
become popular in Kyoto:
They suddenly leap up, arms nailing hands never at rest,
As mile after mile booms with empyrean thunderclaps.
Men dress in women's clothes, women imitate men,
In red kerchiefs, white caps, torn and tattered shifts,
Their mouths swell with cries of "Namu Amida Butsu!"
Till their "butsu-butsu-butsu" sounds like a pot bubbling over.'05
Although he was less interested in Pure Land than in Shingon
Buddhism, Muso was tolerant of the nembutsu teaching, regarding it as
a means of approaching the deeper truth of Zen for those people who
were not yet ready to commit themselves fully to zazen. Many of his
followers thus recited the nembutsu as part of their daily Zen prac-
tice.106
Just as the "pure Sung Zen monastic practice" of the Kamakura
period was colored by Japanese religious elements in the Muromachi
period, so too was the Chinese tone of gozan culture tinged by the
influence of Japanese aesthetics and literary taste. What we think of as
the typical Zen garden, using stones and moss instead of trees and
water, reflects a blending of the Ch'ar. monastic garden and Japanese
taste and garden design. Zen-inspired ink painting and portraiture,
based at first on Sung ideals, acquired a Japanese character at the
hands of Shubun and Sesshu. The tea ceremony, which had been
nurtured in Zen monasteries before it became a passion among merchants
and daimyo, saw the introduction of Japanese tastes and utensils
alongside prized Chinese ware.
In literature, too, Japanese influences were evident in gozan circles
from the fourteenth century. Muso's mentor Koho Kennichi composed
waka and had verses included in imperial anthologies. Muso
105 Translated by David Pollack, Zen Poems of the Five Mountains (Decatur, Ga.: Scholars Press,
1985)) P-80. 106 Tamamura.Af usoSoseki, pp. 137-43.
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CHANGES IN ZEN PRACTICE 651
himself seems to have been more at home with Japanese verse than
with Chinese poetry. Even Gido and Zekkai, who were acknowledged
masters of Chinese versification, were active participants in mixed
Japanese-Chinese renga gatherings with courtiers and high-ranking
samurai. They and other gozan monks read the Japanese literary classics
and composed verses on Japanese themes, such as the following
reflection by Zekkai on the destruction of the Taira:
Akamagaseki:
The scene before me brings sorrow night and day,
A cold tide battering the Red Walls;
Among weird crags and fantastic boulders, a temple in the clouds,
Between the new moon and the setting sun, boats on the sea.
A hundred thousand valiant warriors have turned to empty silence,
Three thousand swordsmen are gone forever;
Heroes' bones rot in a soil of shields and lances Thinking
of them, I lean on the balustrade, watch the white gulls.107
Finally, looking back over the role of Zen in medieval society, what
have we seen? Most obviously, of course, the history of medieval Zen
involved the importation and growth of an institution that, by the
fifteenth century, embraced thousands of temples and tens of thousands
of monks, nuns, novices, and monastery servants. In the early
phase of its development, Zen encountered determined opposition
from monks belonging to the established schools of Japanese Buddhism.
It prevailed only with the backing of enthusiastic sponsors at
all levels of society. The various branches of the Zen schools reached
from Kyoto and Kamakura into almost every village in Japan. Zen
monastic landholdings were scattered throughout the country, and the
Zen monastic economy reflected the economic possibilities and problems
of the age. Zen monks consorted with shoguns, emperors, shugo,
provincial warriors, sengoku daimyo, townspeople, artists and entertainers,
and peasants. They were among the spiritual pioneers and
leading educators of the time, spreading not only the Buddhist meditation
practice oizazen but also a broader understanding of Buddhism in
general and of Chinese and Japanese secular culture.
From the viewpoint of their secular patrons, Zen monks and monasteries
played many roles. Apart from providing spiritual and cultural
guidance, monks served as diplomats and political advisers, offered
prayers for relief from famines, and conducted funeral services. Monasteries
trained the children of warrior families, contributed to family
107 Translated by David Pollack, Zen Poems of the Five Mountains, p. 105.
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652 ZEN AND THE GOZAN
and local unity and stability, and in some cases made financial loans or
organized welfare projects. The gozan system, in particular, was seen
by the Ashikaga as conducive to national centralization and local surveillance.
But other Rinzai and Soto monasteries played similar roles
in daimyo domains. Responsive to these many demands, Zen monasteries
became deeply enmeshed in the fabric of medieval society.
Medieval Zen was neither monolithic nor static. The gozan schools,
the Daitokuji and the Myoshinji, and Soto Zen all had their own
characteristics and followed different patterns of development. In
their diverse ways, however, they came to terms with the society in
which they ha,d taken root. The expansion of Soto Zen and the Daio
branches of Rinzai Zen was based on a deliberate effort to take Zen to
local warriors, peasants, and townspeople, even at the cost of diluting
the traditional Ch'an monastic ideal and the strict meditation practice
advocated by their founders. Under the patronage of the shogunate,
the gozan was better able to preserve its elite Chinese, meditationcentered
monastic ideal. But even the gozan monasteries were not
totally isolated from the cultural ebb and flow of medieval Japanese
society.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
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GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
Akuto SIE. Literally, "evil bands." Lawless groups of minor warriors and, at times,
peasants who banded together to seize tax rice and commit other acts of banditry.
They became especially prevalent after the mid-thirteenth century and are known to
have acted with or under the direction of other warriors, including military estate
stewards (jits), who challenged the political order of the Kamakura and NambokuchO
periods.
Ashikaga bakufu ffifijfl^lff. The second warrior government established by Ashikaga
Takauji which ruled between 1338 and 1573 from its headquarters in the Muromachi
district of Kyoto after 1378; see also Muromachi period.
Azukari-dokoro fjjfilf. Manager or custodian of a shOen who, in some cases, also acted as a
deputy of the shOen proprietor. This office was often given to the major commender of
the land.
Bakufu Miff- Literally, "tent government." The government of the warrior class headed
by a shogun.
Bashaku ,BKB . Teamsters who used horses to transport rice and other goods from rural
areas to the cities. By the Kamakura period, they had a virtual monopoly over land
shipment, and in the Muromachi period, guilds (za) were formed to consolidate that
monopoly.
Befu (or beppu) Si](ff. Administrative unit of provincial land (kokugaryo).
Bivia hCshi Jlf^&Sfi- Literally, "lute priest." Itinerant performers, usually blind, who
chanted works of vocal literature to the accompaniment of a lute. First mentioned in
contemporary sources in the tenth century, they are believed to have become popular
with the spread of Buddhism.
Bu $ . Unit of land measurement equivalent to 1/360 chO; see cho.
Bugaku W<&. The dance repertoire of the Japanese imperial court. An element of the
traditional music (gagaku) integral to court life during the Heian period but less
popular in the early Kamakura period.
BugyOnin ^fr A. Administrative stewards originally appointed by the Kamakura bakufu
to oversee such administrative functions as the judiciary, shogunal household affairs,
matters relating to temples and shrines, and civil engineering projects. They continued
to supervise judicial and administrative affairs under the Muromachi bakufu.
BugyOnin-sha ^'fs K%- Corps of administrators responsible for preparing policy briefs
for the shogun.
Buke f£M- Military aristocracy, warrior estate, also referred to as bushi or samurai.
Buppo {Lfe. Buddhist law.
Bushi S^±. See buke.
Buyaku -£g. Labor service. A tax paid in miscellaneous products and labor. Although
initially for agricultural work, labor for such purposes as land reclamation and irrigation
projects, repair of roads, transportation of tax rice, and military service was
demanded over time by shOen proprietors and warrior overlords.
Chanoyu %i<Di&. Tea ceremony. A highly structured method for preparing tea in the
687
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688 GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
company of guests.
Chigyo %}'fr. Originally meaning "to carry out the functions of office," this term was frequently
used to refer to income, especially tax rice, from land. Most commonly used
in the medieval to the Tokugawa period to refer to income from fief granted to warriors
by their overlord.
ChigyOkoku ia'nS. Province (koku) held as fief (chigyO) by a warrior. Also, in the Heian
and early Kamakura periods, an entire province held in proprietorship by a ranking
court noble or religious institution appointed by the civil government to serve as provincial
proprietor (kokushu) of the public land.
Chinjo E^tfc. Statement of rebuttal in a judicial inquiry that along with a statement of accusation
(sojo) and the collection and analysis of evidence, became the basis for judg-
ment.
Chinjufu shogun M^FI^^W- General who commanded the headquarters for pacification
and defense in northern Honshu established during the Nara period.
ChinsO (or chinzd) Hft!. Originally referring to sacred aspects of the Buddha manifested
in physical characteristics. In Japan, chiefly a genre of sculpture and painting devoted
to the realistic, three-dimensional portrayal of the seated or standing figures of
historical Zen priests.
Chinzei bugyO IfifS^fr. A post held in Kyushu by two commissioners appointed by the
Kamakura bakufu to oversee local affairs and maintain peace among the Minamoto
vassals. Superseded by the Chinzei tandai in the late thirteenth century.
Chinzei dangijo |RjSI&S£iW. Office established in 128; at Hakata as the central judicial
and administrative organ for the Kyushu region.
Chinzei sdbugyOsho JRSfij^fTtW. Agency established in 1293 to facilitate the authority
of two men of the HojO family dispatched to Hakata to judge court cases and command
military forces. Some scholars regard this agency as the de facto beginnings of
the Chinzei tandai.
Chinzei tandai 8SS££!S. Office of the military governor of Kyushu established in 1293
in the wake of the Mongol invasions and accorded powers similar to those of the
Rokuhara tandai; also called Kyushu tandai.
Cho fff(T). Unit of land measurement equivalent to 2.45 acres. Because cho using the
same character can also be a unit of length, when used to refer to land area it is often
expressed as chobu.
ChObu Bj*. See cho.
Daibon SankajO ^:}GH©^. "Three regulations for great crimes"; also pronounced
Taibon SankajO. Formalized in the Goseibai Shikimoku code of 1232, this phrase
referred to the authority of the military governors (shugo) under the Kamakura bakufu.
Despite the phrase, shugo authority under this "regulation" included jurisdiction over
the crimes of murder and rebellion and the obligation of mustering the imperial guard.
The term continued to be used into the Muromachi period.
Dajo daijin ±jgt^:E. Post of prime minister. The highest court title accorded authority
over both the warrior and court nobility.
Daikan ftlir. A deputy or manager entrusted with local administration. Appointed by
the bakufu, shoen proprietor, or regional military lord (daimyo), daikan acted as their
local representative in the provinces.
Daimyo ~k.%>- Regional military lords who controlled a region; see shugo daimyo and
sengoku daimyo.
Daimyo ryOgoku -k&v&M- Domain of a regional military lord (daimyo).
Dazaifu ii^ffi. The goverment headquarters in Kyushu established as a regular office
in the Taiho code of 701 and charged with diplomatic and defense responsibilities in
addition to the administration of the provinces of Kyushu during the Heian period.
During the Kamakura period, the office of Dazaifu functioned in name only.
Dengaku EH=£. Literally, "field music." Early medieval theater similar to sarugaku and
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GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS 689
assumed to have included music, dance, and other types of entertainment, which
became popular among the newly important military class in the Kamakura period.
DensO f5H. Liaison officials who interceded between the civil and religious nobility and
the retired emperor (in) with the authority to settle lesser political matters.
DdbSsha IBJIW^?. Coterie of artists and aesthetes. Individuals who entered into the direct
service of the Ashikaga shogun as arbiters of taste and practitioners of the arts.
DogO ±.%L. Local powers, generally with landed wealth, who acquired local political and
military influence.
Do-ikki ±—JH. Leagues of cultivators and low-ranking warriors, especially common in
the fifteenth century, organized to demand relief from economic hardships or to
redress political grievances; also pronounced tsuchi-ikki.
Dojo 38*!§. Literally, "training places" for lay devotees of Buddhism.
DomeisO Wi%>?&. An organization of members with the same surname which then allied
with other such organizations to establish a much larger league or communal organization
(so) within a region.
Doso ±.M. Originally meant storehouse keepers but referred primarily to pawnbrokers
and moneylenders of the Muromachi period.
Emaki | K # . Long, horizontal handscroll with illustrations that tell a story, often accompanied
by text. This format for painting flourished during the Heian and Kamakura
periods.
Enkyoku tffi. Literally, "banquet songs." A form of narrative lyric of the Kamakura
and Muromachi periods, often a part of the entertainment at banquets held by nobles
and warriors.
Erizenirei JiHt^. Decrees issued in the late Muromachi period by the Ashikaga bakufu,
regional overlords (shugo daimyo), and even local powers and shoen proprietors, specifying
acceptable mixes of "good" and "inferior" coins of varying values acceptable for
paying dues and, at times, for market transactions.
Fudono jilt. A management bureau for documents of the emperor, retired emperor (in),
and courtiers. That of the in was transformed in 1286 by the Board of Councilors (hyOjoshti)
into a subordinate but full-scale judicial organ whose advisory judgments were
issued on the basis of documentary evidence rather than open hearings.
Gagaku Jt=£. The traditional musical repertoire of the Japanese imperial court of the
Heian period.
Gekokujo T3BLL. Term used to describe the overthrow of a superior by persons of inferior
status; often used to refer to the political upheaval of the Sengoku period.
Genin TA. Those cultivators comprising the lowest level of the peasant class who had
no independent control over land. Their status gradually improved during the
medieval period, and by the late Muromachi period they had gained some degree of independence
and rights to land as tenant farmers.
Gesu (or geshi) T^l. ShOen manager of the highest local level appointed by the shoen pro-
prietor.
Gesu shiki T B I B . See shiki.
Go ef. Unit of cubic measure equivalent to one-tenth she; see sho.
Go #$. Administrative unit of provincial land (kokugaryO) in medieval Japan, having its
origins in the ritsuryO system.
Gokenin M%K. Originally, a direct retainer or vassal of the shogun. Later, also used by
regional military lords (daimyo) to refer to their major vassals.
Goseibai Shikimoku $)fi£BJC5£ 0 • Legal code promulgated by the Kamakura bakufu in
1232 to clarify the extent of its jurisdiction vis-a-vis that of the civil authorities and to
strengthen and formalize its relationship with its own vassals.
Gozan Eli). Literally, "five mountains." The temples at the apex of the three-tiered
hierarchy of officially sponsored Zen Buddhist monasteries.
Gozen-sata 'MwiWlk. Shogunal hearing or council. A procedure under which policy
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69O GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
briefs were brought directly before the shogun for his decision.
Gundai fBft. District deputy or regional intendant.
Gunji fRW). Local official responsible for the administration of provincial districts (gun)
under the ritsuryo system of government. With the rise of the shoen system, the post
gradually disappeared.
Gunki monogatari WS5.$)ia. Literary genre of war tales of the Kamakura and Muromachi
periods.
Gun'yaku W-'&- Obligation of military service imposed on vassals by their warrior
lords.
Gunyakushtt W€t%£- Cultivators under the command of a retainer of a regional military
lord (daimyo) organized into the bottom segment of the daimyo's military force.
Hanzei ¥i%- Literally, "half-payment." One-half of the tax rice (nengu) that vassals of
the Ashikaga bakufu were permitted to collect from shoen and kokugaryO on a temporary
basis. Originally yearly grants, they became permanent over time.
Heian period ^'S:. Historical period that spanned nearly four hundred years, from
about 794, when Emperor Kammu established HeiankyO (now Kyoto) as the imperial
capital, to 1185, when the Minamoto forces defeated those of the Taira, thus setting
the stage for the establishment of the Kamakura bakufu. Emperor Kammu ascended
to the throne in 781, and in 784, the capital then located in HeijOkyO (in Nara)
was moved to NagaokakyO. Some classifications prefer either of these two dates as
the beginning of the period. In addition, some end it in 1180, when Minamoto Yoritomo
established his headquarters in Kamakura. It is noted as a period of great cultural
development centered on the imperial court.
Heino bunri £k§kft%fc- Historians' term for the strict definition and separation of warriors
and peasants that occurred simultaneously with the TaikO kertchi; see TaikO ken-
chi.
Hieizan (Mount Hiei) itfKlil. The name Hieizan is often synonymous with the Enryakuji,
an important temple founded in 788 by the priest SaichO of the Tendai sect of Bud-
dhism.
Higokenin WWW.K. Nonvassals; see gokenin.
Hijiri U. Buddhist holy men who led itinerant lives or were ascetic recluses. They were
organized into formal groups under the great Buddhist temples in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries and played a major role in spreading Buddhism to the Japanese
masses.
Hikan Silf. Broadly, warrior retainers, but often meaning retainers of low rank.
Hikitsuke-sha 'jlf+ffc. Office of Adjudicants. Investigative office of the Kamakura bakufu
formed in 1249 which gradually became the principal organ of inquiry below the
Board of Councilors (hyOjOsha).
Hinin 3$ A. Literally, "nonhumans." Those belonging to the lowest social class subject
to social discrimination and compulsory "unclean" labor, such as caring for victims of
contagious diseases and attending to condemned criminals.
Ho f£. Administrative unit of provincial land (kokugaryO).
HokOshn WVLtR.- Shogunal military guard of the Ashikaga bakufu.
Homei &.&. Buddhist names granted to secular patrons; also pronounced homyo.
Hompojito ^MJ&SI. Military followers granted the title of military estate steward (jito)
and appointed to lands confiscated from the defeated enemy after the Gempei War
(1180-5) by Minamoto Yoritomo as reward for their loyalty.
Honjo ;£J9f. A term used to connote the proprietor (ryoke) and, from the twelfth century,
the guarantor (honke) of a shoen. Also the administrative headquarters of a shoen.
Honjo-ryo ^fiftH. Land from which a proprietor or guarantor (honjo) of a shoen received
income and to which a military estate steward (jito) had been appointed.
Honke ~fcW.. Titular proprietor or guarantor of a shoen. The holder of the highest level
of skiki rights, often the highest-ranked nobles; see shiki.
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GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS 69I
Hyakusho ~§t&. Cultivators or peasants.
HyOjOshtt WRL%. Board of Councilors established in 1225 by the Kamakura bakufu, the
highest decision-making organ of government.
HyDrO-ryOsho ^UPSB?. Lands from which the military supporters of the Ashikaga
bakufu obtained commissariat rice.
Ichizoku —$£. A lineage, including branch family members, that traced its descent from
a common ancestor.
Ikki —§|. Term that originally meant to act in consort but that came to denote both a
league of warriors or commoners and an uprising of local warriors and peasants.
Ikko ikki —|Sj—g|. Large-scale uprisings by followers of the Jodo Shin sect of Buddhism
in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These uprisings were often led by
local military lords (kokujin) who capitalized on the sect's tenets, which encouraged
peasant solidarity and millenarian goals to advance their own interests.
IkkO-shu —(n)«S?. Regional leagues of local military lords (kokujin), peasant warriors
(jizamurai), and cultivators united by an underlying belief in the teachings of the Jodo
Shin sect that fueled resistance to the authority of the military governor (shugo).
Ikoku keigo banyaku HEIIil@#f£. Obligatory tour of military duty in the Kyushu
region imposed on the military governors (shugo) and other regional powers by the
Kamakura bakufu. The obligation involved mustering a combined unit of vassals from
two or three provinces of the region, usually for three months of duty.
ImayO ^(S. Medieval Japanese popular song of "modern style."
In $k. Retired emperor (tennO); cloistered sovereign.
Inja W.%. Tonsured male. A person who has taken Buddhist vows and placed himself
outside the official class ordering.
Insei ErcBt. Literally, "cloister government." The system of government of the late
Heian period in which a retired emperor (tennO) exercised control over the affairs of
state. Despite loss of power, the system lasted until 1840.
hshikiden —feffi. Paddy land of a shden distributed to cultivators but from which only
nengu is exacted at a relatively high rate; partially exempted fields.
Jinaimachi #|*|BT. Towns that grew up within temple grounds rather than in front of
its gates; see monzenmachi.
Jinin t$A. Dependents of Shinto shrines; persons under the protection of powerful
Shinto shrines who were obligated to provide various services in exchange for this pro-
tection.
Jinja W±. Shinto shrine.
Jissatsu + JIJ. Literally, "ten temples." The temples ranked just below the apex of the
offical three-tiered hierarchy of Zen Buddhist monasteries; see gozan.
JitO Jfesl. Military estate steward appointed by the Kamakura bakufu. The most important
local official of the Kamakura period; see hompo jitO and shimpo jits.
Jizamurai Jtfif#. Literally, "samurai of the soil." Refers to rural warriors not far removed
from the peasantry who comprised the lowest level of the warrior class.
Kachomai Jn^:^. Supplementary rice tax or military surcharge.
Kaihatsu ryOshu [Jfl^giSi.. Local warriors or provincial or district officials who actually
developed paddy field lands; also pronounced kaihotsu ryOshu.
Kaisen Wffi. Literally, "ships making rounds." Cargo ships used to transport rice tax
and other goods or to engage in itinerant trade.
Kaisho &Wu Banquet chamber. A new interior setting for socializing among members
of both the warrior and courtier elites that evolved in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth
centuries; often discussed in terms of kaisho culture.
Kajishi SPJ&i1
. Often translated as surtax, additional rent, or cultivation fee; literally,
an "added rent" paid by cultivators to those who acquired the right to collect such
rents (kajishi-shiki). In addition to the rice tax (nengu) owed to either the shoen proprietor
or the warrior overlord, this rent was paid to myOshu, religious institutions,
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692 GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
moneylenders, and, at times, nobles who bought this right; see TaikO kenchi, myoshu,
shiki.
Kamakura bakufu flfc&SJl??. The first warrior government, established by Minamoto
Yoritomo at Kamakura, which ruled from 1192 to 1333; see also Kamakura period.
Kamakura period JBfcJf. Historical period corresponding to the life span of the Kamakura
bakufu; named after Kamakura, where the government was located. It is generally
agreed that the period ended in 1333, the year the bakufu was destroyed. Alternative
dates, however, have been proposed to mark its beginning, such as 1180, the year
Minamoto Yoritomo established his base at Kamakura, or 1185, when the Minamoto
conclusively defeated the rival Taira at the battle of Dannoura, or 1192, the year the
imperial court gave official recognition to the de facto military rule of Minamoto
Yoritomo by conferring on him the title of shogun.
Kami }$. Indigenous deities.
Kamikaze ?$H.. Literally, "divine wind" or "wind of the gods," this term refers to the
storms that twice destroyed much of the invading Mongol forces in 1274 and 1281 off
the coast of Kyushu and forced them to withdraw.
Kan K. Unit of weight equivalent to 3,759 grams or 3.759 kilograms. Because the modal
weight of one Chinese or illegally minted domestic copper coin (mori) was 3.75 grams,
one kan of coins was roughly equivalent to one thousand coins; see mon.
Kandaka JltiSi. Putative yield of paddy field expressed in units of cash (kan). A means of
designating the tax value of paddy field; see also kokudaka.
Kangd bdeki ShaMfzi- Tally trade carried on between Japan and the Ming dynasty
(1368-1644) of China, from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the middle of the
sixteenth century.
Kanjin fuda ffliMffi. Strips of wood or paper attesting to receipt of a contribution.
Kanrei UPI. Shogunal deputy. A high official of the Muromachi bakufu who assisted
the shogun in all important government affairs. The post was not hereditary but was
rotated among members of the Shiba, Hosokawa, and Hatakeyama families, who were
thus known as the sankanrei or "three deputies"; see KantO kanrei.
KantOgoryd F^iKfflliS. Shogunal lands.
KantO kanrei K^ifSt. Shogunal deputy for the KantO region. Official post created in
Kamakura by the Muromachi bakufu to assist the members of the ruling Ashikaga
family who served as governor generals of the KantO region (KantO kubo).
KantO kubo K ^ & T J . Regional bakufu headquarters with administrative control over
the KantO region.
KantO mOshitsugi $Q~Mfyft.. Court post granted authority over court-bakufu relations.
Karamono f§Vo. Art and craft from China including paintings, calligraphic scrolls,
ceramic wares, fine porcelains, and lacquerware.
Karita rozeki XI|EB3£f§. Pilfering or otherwise depriving the rightful owners of their
harvest.
Kashiage (S_h. Moneylenders ofthe Kamakura and early Muromachi periods who usually
accepted pawns; also called kariage.
Kawashi & § . Bills of exchange that began to be used in the mid-thirteenth century that
enabled the bearer to receive a specified amount of cash; known variously as saifu and
warifu.
Kemmu restoration ^ 5 ^ . The attempt by Emperor Godaigo in 1333-6 to restore direct
imperial rule following the overthrow of the Kamakura bakufu. Kemmu refers to the
era name that Godaigo inaugurated in 1334.
Kendan &Kr. Provision of law and order which included the power to pursue, arrest, incarcerate,
try, and sentence criminals.
Kenmon fiFI- A term that refers collectively to the emperor and those of imperial
lineage, nobles, leading military houses, and religious establishments who held power
and authority in the medieval polity.
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GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS 693
Kimon |eIt. Pact for unified cultivator action among villages within a province or
region.
Kirokusho SgiSfff. (Kiroku shOen kenkeijo). Office for the Investigation of ShOen
Documents, or simply the Records Office. The office, established in 1069 by Emperor
GosanjO, was revived in n 56 by Emperor Goshirakawa and came to function as the
body that adjudicated land disputes between local officials and shoen proprietors. During
the Kemmu restoration this office became the central organ of Godaigo's imperial
government.
Ko s$. Religious associations, which originally developed from lecture meetings on Buddhist
sutras, organized by religious leaders for spreading their teachings or for some
other economic or educational purpose.
Koan fisg. Literally, "public cases." Conundrums or propositions used as an aid to
Buddhist meditation and enlightenment.
Kobyakusho 'Mf(&. Small cultivators with few rights over land.
Kdden fiffl. Public lands the dues from which were paid to the central government.
Kogi £91- The highest public authority of a territory; the principle on which authority
to rule was based or justified.
Koku ~G. Unit of cubic measure equivalent to ten to or one hundred sho; see sho.
Kokubunji Slfr^. Temples built by the government during the Nara period in each province
as state institutions.
Kokudaka 5i8j. An assessed tax base calculated in terms of koku. Official assessment of
land value in terms of unpolished rice based on an estimated annual yield.
Kokufu HU?. Provincial capital in which the provincial headquarters (kokuga) of the provincial
governor (kokushi) was located.
Kokuga HSi. Provincial headquarters.
KokugaryO Sfgrjil. Provincial or public land that remained under the administration of
the provincial headquarters (kokuga), in contrast with lands converted to shoen; also
called koryo.
Kokujin HA. Provincial or local warriors. Local figures who acquired political and
military power and who from the early Muromachi period frequently took advantage
of the weaker military governors (shugo) to expand their influence and control. The
more powerful succeeded in displacing the shugo and becoming autonomous regional
lords (sengoku daimyo).
Kokushi I B ] , Post of civilian provincial governor established under the ritsuryo system
of government in the Nara period. With the establishment of the Kamakura bakufu, it
gradually became an empty title, although it was retained throughout the Muromachi
period.
Ko-mokudai 'hflft. Resident deputy of the provincial governor.
KoryO fijS. Public land; see kokugaryO.
KOya hijiri iSfplg. Itinerant hijiri of KOyasan, the Buddhist monastic complex of the
Shingon sect on Mount KOya.
Kubo ibCH. An honorific title that originally referred to the emperor and his court. From
the Kamakura period, it was used to refer to the shogun. During the Muromachi
period, the term referred to the Ashikaga shoguns and their deputies in the Kanto
region; see KantO kubo.
Kudashibumi T3fc. A type of document that conveyed orders from a superior official or
office to a subordinate one. It originated in the Heian period and was used in many of-
fices.
Kuge Iz.%. A Heian-period term referring to the emperor and court aristocrats. During
the Kamakura period, the term was used to differentiate the aristocratic inhabitants of
the old capital from the provincial military aristocracy. Often translated as "courtiers,"
"court aristocracy," or "nobility."
Kugyo £IED. The families of highest court rank who dominated court society.
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694 GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
Kugonin £<$j) A. Persons supplying the court with various daily necessities in exchange
for exemption from taxes or corvee.
Kuji £ V . A category of tax under the shoen system of landholding that can be further
divided into corvee labor (buyaku) and miscellaneous goods (zokaji).
Kumon & JC. A local shoen official below the rank ofgesu charged with handling documents,
assigning tax burdens, and the like. Also a certificate of appointment to install
an abbot.
Kuni B. Basic administrative unit of ancient and medieval Japan; province.
Kusetnai fflS. A lively song and dance form that became a popular part of sarugaku.
KyOgen SM. Comic plays that evolved from the earlier tradition of sarugaku. Often a
part of a noh performance or an independent piece performed between two noh plays;
see noh.
Kyaden I&BB. Benefice land provided for specific services to be rendered.
Kyushu tandai Ti/Xigggj. See Chinzei tandai.
Machi BJ. Administrative unit within a town or city enjoying a degree of self-govern-
ment.
Mandokoro j&R/f. Administrative headquarters for political and economic affairs of a
powerful family or religious institution. In the Kamakura period, the main executive
organ of the bakufu.
Mappo Sfe. "Latter days of Buddhist law." A Buddhist concept of historical decline in
which society ceases to follow the Buddhist law, and as a result, turmoil replaces order
and life becomes submerged in darkness and suffering. This decline was believed to
have begun in 1052.
Matsuji %^f. Branch temples of a monastery.
Menke tfe.%. Households exempt from dues.
MigyOsho ^IfScTH. Standard documentary form used to transmit orders or directives from
a higher authority to subordinates.
MikkyO ?gft. Literally, "secret teachings." A tradition in esoteric Buddhism stemming
from the belief that the most profound doctrines of Buddhism should be kept secret,
not expounded publicly.
Miko ELIz. A female shaman who played a prominent role in Shinto by acting as
medium for the indigenous gods (kami).
Miuchibito 'Mft A.. Private vassals of the tokuso; see also tokuso.
Miyaza TSIM.- Shrine guilds that presided over the religious practices of their communities
and performed various services for the shrines.
Mokudai nft. Resident deputy of a capital-based provincial governor (kokushi).
Momme %L. Unit of weight equivalent to 375 grams. Because most copper coins
weighed approximately this amount, the monetary unit (mon) and the weight
(momme) were often used interchangeably; see mon.
Mon >C. Monetary unit of copper coins in pre-Tokugawa Japan; see momme.
Monchujo PniQlRff. Board of Inquiry. A judicial organ established in the early Kamakura
period of both the Kamakura and Muromachi bakufu that adjudicated land disputes
and other property cases. It gradually became the chief judicial arm of the bakufu outside
Kamakura. Under the Muromachi bakufu, most of the duties of the monchujo
were taken over by the mandokoro, and the former became primarily a records office.
Monzeki f\$fc. An imperial residence temple.
Monzenmachi f\1n^i. Market towns that grew up near the gates of major temples and
shrines.
Moshijo E^tt- Petitions.
Motoffih. Transient peasants without land who were itinerant agricultural laborers
and often similar to beggars.
Mujo & # . A concept and major theme of medieval literature that emphasizes the transient
quality of this world and the impermanence of all things.
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GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS 695
Munabechisen f$5>i]££. A tax assessed by the number of posts in a residential structure imposed
on each household during the Muromachi period. Originally an occasional tax
levied to meet the extraordinary expenses of the court or religious institutions, over
time it became a permanent levy.
Mura ft. Village. A geographical, social, and economic entity whose members by the
mid-i3oos had often formed their own organs of self-government.
Muromachi bakufu ijBj^fl?. See Ashikaga bakufu.
Muromachi period HfflT. Historical period named for the location of the shogunal
residence in Kyoto; also known as the Ashikaga period, after the warrior house that
held the post of shogun from 1338 to 1573. No consensus has been reached regarding
when the government gained and lost its legitimacy or effectiveness, and therefore the
dates corresponding to this period are a subject of debate. See also Ashikaga bakufu.
MyO 35. See myOden.
MyOden £ffl. Literally, "named paddy." Land unit by which yearly taxes and services
were determined within shoen and kokugaryO, registered presumably under the name
of the head (myoshu) of the managing cultivator family, who over time was accorded
some degree of private ownership.
Myoshu 3a i . Manager and, later, owner of a small amount of land responsible for collecting
annual taxes and labor services on myOden. Although commoners, myoshu
often held considerable power in the locale, and in the Muromachi period, some became
rural warriors (jizamurai).
Myoshu kajishi Z^LfinitilT. A mid-level right to receive income from paddies acquired
by myOshu; see also kajishi.
Myoshu-shiki % ±$L See shiki.
Naidaijin rt^riS. Inner minister. An auxiliary government post not prescribed in the
Taiho code of 701 as a part of the ritsuryO system of administration. In 989, however,
the post became permanent.
Namban MM- Literally, "southern barbarian." A term used to describe foreign missionaries,
merchants, and sailors who visited or worked in Japan in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, as well as the European customs and products they introduced.
Nambokucho disturbance ^^fc^. Literally, disturbance of the "Northern and Southern
Courts." The period between 1336 and 1392 when two rival imperial courts existed in
Japan, each claiming the legitimate right to rule.
Nara period S & . Historical period beginning in 710, the year the capital was moved
from Fujiwarakyo to HeijOkyO (in Nara), and ending in 784, when the capital was
moved to NagaokakyO. The ten years between 784 and the beginning of the Heian
period in 794 are generally included in the Nara period. It is noted as the period when
the ritsuryO system of government, which adapted the laws, codes, land policies,
and bureaucratic forms of T'ang China, reached its height and other aspects of Chinese
civilization were actively introduced.
Nembutsu fciL- Invocation of the sacred name of Amida Buddha to ensure rebirth in the
Pure Land. This fundamental Buddhist practice opened the path of salvation to those
without specialized religious training or discipline.
Nengu %-m.. Literally, "annual tribute." The basic dues paid in rice and other commodities.
Often translated as land tax, the term can also mean land rent.
Noh B6. A form of musical dance-drama that in the fourteenth century emerged as a
distinct form of theater from various performing arts, with its plots drawn from
legend, history, literature, and contemporary events. See also sarugaku, dengaku, and
kydgen.
Obanyaku ^f&S. Imperial guard service in Kyoto performed by vassals of the Kamakura
bakufu.
Oho 18;. Imperial law. Unwritten code of behavior for dealing with the emperor and
the imperial family.
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696 GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
Okibumi H jfc- A testamentary document form in use during the Kamakura and
Muromachi periods to regulate matters of inheritance and property.
Onin War ££t. A series of wars fought intermittently in and around Kyoto over a
period of eleven years (1467-77) between "western" and "eastern" forces, loose coalitions
of shugo daimyo led respectively by politically and militarily strong shugo
daimyo, the Hosokawa and Yamana. Often referred to as the Onin-Bummei disturbances
by Japanese scholars (from the period names of these eleven years), these wars
ushered in a century of civil war known as the Sengoku (literally, "warring states")
period. Although the ostensible cause for the Onin War was a dispute over the selection
of a new shogun, the real cause of the war was the decline in the authority and
power of the Ashikaga bakufu and the rise of the shugo daimyo as regional military
powers who challenged the political stability of the bakufu. The war was prolonged
because of the individual ambitions of the leading shugo daimyo and fluctuations in
their coalitions. Specialists continue to debate the specific political and economic
motivations of the shugo daimyo and their vassals, as well as of the civil elites who
were also involved. See also shugo daimyo.
Onryo .tSfi- Malignant spirits of persons of high rank or great influence who died unnaturally
or in a state of anger or resentment who, unless placated, would bring harm
to the living and haunt their enemies.
Osso 2#SF. Appeal to higher authorities, bypassing official channels, for retrial. Such appeals
were strictly forbidden before their institutionalization in 1264; see osso bugyO.
Osso bugyO WM^'fi. The post of commissioner of appeals, established in 1264, to which
petitions for retrial were permitted. This institution was retained by the Muromachi
bakufu but was outlawed by the Tokugawa bakufu, which absolutely forbade, and
severely punished, direct appeals.
Otabumi -fcBl^C. Provincial land registers. Documents compiled in the Kamakura and
Muromachi periods that recorded the size of landholdings and other information on
landownership in each province and that were used to apportion taxes.
Renga M$k- A type of linked verse unique to Japan, with a set number of stanzas that
two or more poets generally composed in alternation. The alternated stanzas comprise
the traditional two parts of waka: a unit of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables;
and a couplet of seven syllables each. Usually consists of one hundred stanzas or a
multiple thereof.
Rensho M?i- Cosigner. An official subordinate to the regent (shikken) of the Kamakura
bakufu whose signature was placed beside that of the shikken on official documents.
After the first assignment to HojO Tokifusa (1175-1240) in 1224, the cosignership, like
the regency itself, became a prerogative of the HojO family.
RitsuryO W-'v- A term referring to the legal codes adopted from China in the seventh
and eighth centuries in Japan. The ritsuryO government refers to the national, imperial
government established by these codes and administered by a bureaucracy; see Nara
period.
Rokuhara tandai /^ScSIHB. Shogunal deputies stationed at Rokuhara in southeastern
Kyoto by the Kamakura bakufu to supervise the political, military, and judicial affairs
of southwestern Japan. The post was established in 1221 and held concurrently by two
men, both chosen from among the ranks of the HojO family. The last Rokuhara tandai
were deposed by Ashikaga forces in 1333.
Ronin i&A. Literally, "floating men." Masterless samurai who no longer received income
from stipends.
Ryo jSj. A unit of weight used in the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries to weigh
valuables such as gold and silver. In the late sixteenth century, a unit of currency
equivalent to the standard gold coin of the Tokugawa bakufu.
RyOgoku RSH. Domain.
RyOgokusei liBS1
). See shugo ryOgokusei.
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GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS 697
RyOke v&M- The court noble or religious institution to whom a shoen was commended
who became the central shoen proprietor; a level of shiki right accorded to the "legal
protector."
RyOshu PB£. General term for warrior overlords and shoen proprietors. Historians' term
for warriors and others at all levels who exercised political power or possessed various
rights to income from land.
Sabi WL. Aesthetic value of the medieval period that combined elements of old age,
loneliness, resignation, and tranquillity.
Sakunin fFA. A broad term referring to cultivators, most often agricultural laborers or
small tenant cultivators.
Samurai f#(±). See buke.
Samurai-dokoro f#3f. Board of Retainers. A formal bureau established in 1180 under the
Kamakura bakufu to control the activities of its vassals (gokeniri). Its duties were
gradually expanded to include the supervision of the police authority of military estate
stewards (jito). Under the Muromachi bakufu, this office assumed responsibility for
guarding Kyoto and its environs and overseeing shogunal property.
Sanjo jftfiff. Literally, "scattered places." A term originating in the late Heian period to
distinguish the scattered possessions from the main resident and headquarters (honjo)
of a shoen proprietor. In the Kamakura period, the nonagricultural areas of a shoen.
The service population congregated in these areas and were themselves often called
sanjo.
SansO Ujfi. Literally, "mountain monks." The monks of the powerful Enryakuji temple
on Mount Hiei in Kyoto.
Sarugaku $i:
M- A genre of early medieval theater which included music, dance, and
other types of entertainment. As sarugaku developed, it absorbed elements of another
performing art known as dengaku and became increasingly standardized. The tradition
emerging from this process formed the basis on which noh was created in the fourteenth
century.
Satanin Wtkh. Village representatives chosen from the myoshu class to serve in the
village self-governing organization (so).
Satori fii 0. Enlightenment or awakening. The experience of sudden enlightenment at
the heart of the Buddhist faith, particularly the Zen tradition.
Sett tax shogun W%~k.WW-. Generally abbreviated as shogun and customarily translated
as "barbarian-subduing generalissimo," this title was derived from ancient titles
bestowed on government officials who led campaigns against insurgents or indigenous
tribes on the periphery of the realm. The shogunal title, bestowed by the emperor,
was resurrected after the Gempei War, and the shoguns became the military rulers
whose governments (bakufu) ruled Japan with varying degrees of power, with authority
held independently of that of the civil government.
Seisei shogun WMffiW- General of the Western Pacification Command.
SeitO shogun fiE^t?^. General of the Eastern Pacification Command.
Sekisho KlMf. Toll barriers.
Sekkan ffilMJ. Regent; see also sekkanke.
Sekkanke }ffBU^. The sublineage of the Fujiwara house, whose members served as imperial
regents in the Heian period, which split into five branches (gosekke) during the
Kamakura period, with important offices rotating among them.
Sengoku daimyo 9£|B:*:€. General term for the regional military lords of the Sengoku
or Warring States period who gained considerable independent political and economic
control over the lands they held and began to fight among themselves for regional
hegemony.
Sengoku period ©B. The period of the warring states which lasted from the beginning
of the Onin War in 1467 to 1568, when Oda Nobunaga entered Kyoto to assert national
hegemony. Some scholars date the beginning of the period in 1490, when the shogunal
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698 GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
deputy (kanrei) took over actual control of the Ashikaga bakufu. See also gekokujo,
sengoku daimyo, and shugo daimyo.
Shariki %~t). Teamsters using carts to transport goods.
Shiki p]|2. Originally meaning "office," this term refers primarily, although not exclusively,
to the right to receive income from shoen accorded to each position within
the shoen hierarchy. In some instances, such rights developed outside the shoen
framework, as in the case of kajishi shiki. See honke, ryoke, and kajishi.
Shikken Hff. Post of shogunal regent established in 1203 and held in heredity by the
HojO family under the Kamakura bakufu.
Shimpo jito ffffiflfesfi. Military estate stewards (jitO) newly appointed by the Kamakura
bakufu following the Jokyu war of 1221 to lands confiscated from the defeated army of
the imperial court. Most of the new jito were located in central and western Japan,
over which the bakufu now enlarged its influence. From this point forward the post of
jito became a truly national institution.
Shinden-zukuri fiESSia. Palace-style architecture typical of the residences of the aristocracy
as well as high-ranking Buddhist clerics and warriors in the Heian period, a
style that greatly influenced Japanese residential architecture until the mid-fifteenth
century. The central feature for which it is named is the master quarters or main hall
(shinden).
Shitaji chabun TJft41
^". Literally, "halving of land." Division of shoen land between a
civil proprietor and military estate steward (jito) in order to settle a dispute over rights
of tax collection and law enforcement.
Shitaji shinshi-ken TJ&iSlttfi. Authority to commend land.
Sho fh Unit of cubic measure. In measuring rice in the medieval period (as the term is
used in this volume), 1 sho of rice changed in real quantity from approximately 0.4 sho
to 1 standard sho of the Tokugawa period, from approximately 0.722 liters to 1 805
liters. Because the square wooden container (masu) for measuring rice differed over
time, by region, and even by shoen in the medieval period, the quantities indicated by
koku, sho, and to in various chapters cannot be converted to Western measure or even
Tokugawa measure with any degree of accuracy.
Sho ;££()£). Designation for a shoen following its name; for example, Ategawa-no-sho is
equivalent to Ategawa shoen.
Shoen JEH. Private estates that began to be created in the eighth century through the
privatization of public land. At its zenith, the twelfth century, this landholding system
became the most important political and economic institution. These estates were
created through land reclamation, lands received by religious institutions as gifts from
the emperor or the highest officials of the civil government, and, most frequently, commendation
of land to the highest-ranked nobles who could exempt them from taxation
and prevent entry by civil officials. The means of establishing these estates changed
over time, and as a result, those who shared income from these estates also changed
and became increasingly complex. These estates were gradually transformed into fiefs
controlled by the warrior class in the Kamakura period and had totally disappeared by
the late sixteenth century. See azukari-dokoro, daikan, gesu, honjo, honke, kuji, kumon,
tnyOden, ryoke, ryOshu, shiki shitaji chubun, shokan, shugo-uke, tsukuda, ukeoi daikan,
ukesho, wayo, zaike, and zassho.
Shoin Wl$n. Interior setting developed in the late fifteenth century, whose principal
features were woven rush floor matting (tatami), paper sliding screens (shoji), a
decorative alcove (tokonoma), a built-in desk (shoin), and asymmetrical shelves
(chigaidana). Also a style of residential architecture that forms the basis of modern
traditional-style Japanese dwellings.
Shokan 8rf. General term for a variety of shoen officials responsible for the management,
assignment of duties, tax collection, and protection of shoen. Most were dispatched
by the shoen proprietor or chosen from among local notables. This term
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GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS 699
usually refers to the principal officer of a shoen appointed by the proprietor.
Shokunin 5$ A. A general term for those engaged in nonagricultural occupations, that is,
artisans. Entertainers were also sometimes included in this category.
Shomon tE^fc. Documentary proof.
ShOmyO pvft. Liturgical vocal music for the incantation of scriptural texts.
Shoni ' > ^ . Deputy assistant governor of Dazaifu, the government headquarters in
Kyushu.
Shoryo WrM. Individual landholdings.
Shugo TFfflf. Provincial constable; later, military governor.
Shugo-dai ^fMfi. Deputy of the military governor (shugo) at the local level.
Shugo daimyo ^fM^^i- Military governors (shugo) of the Muromachi period who succeeded
in gaining control of a region by adding to their landholdings and attracting
local warriors as their direct vassals.
Shugo ryo ^fMM- Lands under the personal control of a military governor (shugo).
Shugo ryOgokusei ^5$PIII1$IJ. Shugo domainal system; not a historical system but, rather,
a historiographical concept.
Shugo-uke ^sllff. A practice of tax contracting in which a military governor (shugo) was
entrusted with the collection of taxes and their delivery to the shoen proprietor.
Shugo yaku ^fM'&. In the fifteenth century, ad hoc taxes and labor corvSe levied by
military governors (shugo).
Shukke-tonsei tii^iiifi:. Literally, "escaping from the world by becoming a monk."
Monastic options for males.
Shukuba ?|*g. Towns designated as transportation centers along major routes where
lodging and other services could be obtained.
So 3g. Self-governing organizations that existed in rural Japan from the fourteenth
through the sixteenth centuries. Each so took responsibility for its own irrigation, communal
lands, law and order, and, in some cases, defense. Decisions were reached and
carried out at group meetings (yoriai) made up of a headman and a small group of
elders selected from among the leading landholders (myOshu); also called sO-mura.
Sobyakusho JSlfii. Resident cultivators of a self-governing organization (so).
Sohei <Sft. Warrior-monks employed by the great Buddhist temples.
Sojo Drtt. Complaint; statement of accusation.
So-mura ®M. See so.
Soroku (SIS. Registrar general of monks with authority over the gozan network, especially
in Kyoto.
SoryO **»j!3. Internal organization of landholding families of both the warrior and commoner
classes which emphasized the absolute leadership of a main heir, usually the
eldest son. Most frequently refers to the system as practiced by warrior families of the
Kamakura period in which land was divided among multiple heirs.
Soson *&M- Post-fourteenth-century medieval village communities in which even small
cultivators had full membership rights.
Sotsuibushi IgiUffifjS. Provincial-level officers appointed early in the Gempei War;
predecessor of the military governor (shugo).
Sumi:
e SISc. Chinese-style monochromatic ink painting adopted by Japanese painters in
the fourteenth century and gradually adapted to Japanese aesthetics, although the
traditional Chinese themes such as people, flowers, birds, and landscapes were re-
tained.
Taibon SankajO -kW.=-Wf\- See Daibon Sankajo.
TaikO kenchi ^C^^Jfe. The cadastral surveys carried out in 1582 by Hideyoshi.
Tan S(J5). Unit of land measurement equivalent to one-tenth chO; see cho.
Tansen f£g£. During the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, a cash tax per tan of land
levied on cultivators by the imperial court, the bakufu, military governors (shugo), and
sometimes temples and shrines, to cover the cost of special events such as imperial enCambridge
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7OO GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
thronements and abdication ceremonies or for the rebuilding of palaces or important
temples.
Tatcha *gll. Memorial temple for a revered Zen master often supported by warrior
patrons, many of which assumed the character of a cultural salon.
Teichtt H41
. A new appeal system adopted in 1293 by which a plaintiff might bring suit
directly and in person before a high tribunal, especially if the case had obviously been
delayed or mishandled by the assigned investigating officer; also the appeal court
under this system.
Tenka 5cT. A term that in Chinese political theory refers to the empire or "all under
heaven"; Japanese state and polity.
Tenno ^ ^ . Emperor, sovereign.
To 4-. Unit of cubic measure equivalent to ten sho; see sho.
Tocha BS3?. Tea-judging contests; a precursor of the classical tea ceremony (chanoyu) of
the later Muromachi period.
Toijo Fpitt. Formal questionnaires.
Toimaru PnTA. Specialists of the Kamakura and Muromachi periods engaged in sea and
land transportation who performed managerial functions and provided other services
such as warehousing, delivery of goods, and supervision of porters.
Tokusei $•.&. Literally, "virtuous acts of government." Government decrees issued during
the medieval period to give relief to certain groups from taxes and debt.
Tokusei-rei ffijBt^. Debt-abrogation decree; see also tokusei.
TokusO {#^. The patrimonial head of the main branch of the powerful HojO family
which monopolized the post of shogunal regent (shikken) during the Kamakura
period. Later, also came to refer to all successors of the main HojO line.
Ton'seisha j!iiS:^5\ Tonsured males; see inja and shukke-tonsei.
Tsuchi-ikki ±—Sk. See do-ikki.
Tsukuda fffl. Paddy fields under the direct administration of the sheen proprietor
cultivated by peasants and others (genin), generally without compensation, as a form
of labor service (buyaku).
Tsumugi jfi. Cloth made by twisting silk floss into thread by hand, which is then woven
on a primitive loom to produce a thick, sturdy fabric.
Udaisho ~&iz¥}. A "commander of the inner palace guards." In the Kamakura period, a
position without work or duties.
Uji K;. Lineage group, including lineal and collateral kinsmen and their followers.
Ujidera ft#. Temple of a lineage group (uji).
Ukeoi Wift. Literally, "contract." A system of tax contracting in which a shoen proprietor
entrusted the collection of the tax to local warriors or moneylenders.
Ukeoi daikan KfftftTlT. "Contract stewards" who represented the interests of a weakened
proprietor of a shoen and negotiated with the military governor (shugo) or local
warrior (kokujin) for the delivery of tax rice; frequently a monk from a Zen temple
of Hieizan.
Ukesho Ifffif. A contractual agreement between a shoen proprietor and a military estate
steward (jito), authorizing the latter to assume full responsibility for collecting and
delivering the annual tax; also called jito uke.
Ukiyo-effi-Vkife..Literally "pictures of the floating world." A genre of art depicting the
lives of early modern Japanese that reached its culmination in the mid- to late
Tokugawa period.
Utokunin WSSA. Literally, "men of virtue." Successful merchants of the Muromachi
period who had accumulated great wealth and often engaged in moneylending.
Wabicha f£3S. The classical tea ceremony, which came to symbolize renunciation of the
material and celebration of the spiritual values of life.
Wagaku ft}^. Japanese scholarship, which consisted of two general areas of study: the
corpus of aiafoj-centered, classical court literature and the court ceremonial and pracCambridge
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GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS 701
tice - the accumulated rituals, customs, and minutiae of court life. It reached its peak
of development in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Waka WD;. A style of Japanese poetry containing thirty-one syllables; see renga.
Wako g|*I. Japanese pirates who pillaged the coasts of East Asia from the thirteenth
into the seventeenth century.
Wamono fd!$j. Works of art and craft native to Japan.
Wayo fP-^-. A compromise agreement, often between a shoen proprietor and a military
estate steward (yi'ffl), regarding distribution of shoen revenue; see ukesho and shitaji
chubun.
Yachida SJfeffl. Small landholdings located in the hills.
Yachihata SUfeflB. Dry fields usually planted with millet and buckwheat and sometimes
also barley, soybeans, vegetables, hemp, mulberry for sericulture, and other crops.
Yakubuku-mai S ^ I ^ . Rice paid in lieu of labor service (buyaku).
Yamabushi Ujftc. The name given to ascetics, usually men, who practiced austerities in
the mountains in order to attain holy or magic powers.
Yoriai%^5. A general term for a meeting, such as of league (ikki) leaders and village
(so) assemblies, at which important matters were discussed. Also HojO family council.
Yagen W&. An aesthetic value that conveys mystery and depth and that set much of the
artistic tone of the medieval age.
Za HE. A trade or craft guild of merchants, artisans, or those offering services that
originated in the eleventh century and were most active in the Muromachi period.
Each was protected by a patron (usually a religious institution or member of the
military or civil elite) who guaranteed its official recognition and protected it from outside
competition within its sphere of influence.
Zaichi ryOshu tEJte?3i. Local warriors who exercised political and military control and
possessed the power to collect dues from the cultivators within a locale, by retaining
autonomy of power from a higher political authority or military power. Although such
warriors existed throughout the medieval period, over time most either became vassals
of the military estate steward (jito), military governor (shugo), shugo daimyo, or
sengoku daimyo. Others retained their autonomy independently or collectively by forming
military leagues (ikki). Some, increasingly referred to in the Muromachi period as
regional military lords (kokujin), themselves became sengoku daimyo. See also jito,
kokujin, sengoku daimyo, shugo, shugo daimyo, and ikki.
Zaicho betchimyO liEBSSiJ^i. Holdings of local officials of the provincial government
(zaicho kanjin) within the public domain.
Zaicho kanjin ~&M*g A. Local officials attached to the provincial government headquarters
(kokuga) who handled most provincial affairs and who inherited their offices.
Zaike ~&%. Peasants who cultivated the lands of shoen proprietors. Originally considered
chattel, over time they were able to claim rights over the lands they cultivated
and came to resemble small local landholders (myOshu).
Zassho %%• A centrally appointed shoen administrator.
Zazen W&. Meditation. Meditation and the study of conundrums (koan) are two of the
main practices that characterize Zen Buddhism and that prepare the way to enlightenment
(satori).
Zokuji $lfi$. Dues paid in various products and labor.
Zomenbyakusho Jtfelifii. Cultivators of miscellaneous exempt lands; also called "lowly
people of exempted households."
Zuryo •jtvU. Career governors of the mid- to late Heian period appointed by the provincial
governor (kokushi) to carry out administrative functions in the province while the
latter remained in the capital. They were able to enrich themselves through harsh taxation,
and thus this term is often translated as "tax manager."
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