Warring+States+Politics+Japan+(1347-1598

Back to Hist. 152 page Japan: The Road to Stability, 1337 – 1650

Terms to know: Ashikaga Minamoto Hojo //daimyo// Warring States period gekkokujo Oda Nobunaga Toyotomi Hideyoshi Tokugawa Ieyasu Shingon Amidism Francis Xavier battle of Okehazama great sword hunt Sekigahara Shogun Neo-confucian social hierarchy //sankin-kotai// or "alternate attendance" system //sakoku//

Discussion Question: What steps did Tokugawa Ieyasu take to end the events that characterized the "Warring States" period in Japan, and how did those steps differ from the actions of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who tried to do the same before him?

While the history of China between 1368 and 1644 was one of political conservatism that first served, and then frustrated the need for change to suit new situations on the continent of Asia, the history of Japan was quite different. Rather than moving from one imperial regime to another, with the accompanying emphasis on regulation and re-establishing order, Japan moved from the stability of the Kamakura Shogunate into a period of anarchy and warfare, out of which it eventually found its way to order and stability. During this period, though warfare was endemic, and social change was drastic, the Japanese economy and culture experienced dynamic and productive growth. This growth in cultural, spiritual, and social matters was not in spite of, but was a function of, the political chaos from which it sprang.

In 1337, the **Ashikaga** family, thanks to treachery and an Imperial war to restore power to the reigning emperor, were able to take the title and power of shogun from the **Minamoto** and their regents, the **Hojo** clan. The reason for the Ashikaga victory in a 7-year civil war was at least in part due to the inability of the Hojo to reward the Shogun’s vassals appropriately for their sacrifice in defending Japan from Mongol invasions. Most of the great lords (//**daimyo**)// who had sent soldiers expected substantial gifts of appreciation, most commonly in the form of land. However, the wars against the Mongol armies had been defensive, and simply preserved the real-estate situation already in existence in Japan. The Hojo had no land to give, and this frustrated the daimyo who had helped. They threw their weight of numbers behind the Ashikaga, in the hopes that they would get more favorable treatment if the Ashikaga won the civil war.

After Ashikaga victory, however, it soon became clear that the Ashikaga shoguns were, if anything, weaker and less astute than their Minamoto predecessors. Not only did they not have experience ruling, or in dealing with the sophisiticates of the emperor’s court in Kyoto, they also had little land, and less money. The family was inexperienced and weak, and this meant they were easily manipulated by ambitious daimyo.

In 1467, fighting began between the various branches of the Ashikaga clan for the right to provide the next shogun. Various other samurai houses allied with one or the other of the Ashikaga claimants to the position, each with the hope that victory for the man they sponsored would bring favor, power, and connections to their own house. This war was at its end in 1477, but the weakness of the new Ashikaga shogun, and continued maneuvering for favor and power by the daimyo of other houses led to a continuation of conflict in this period.

Among the larger daimyo houses of the time, the ambition to control Japan by controlling the Shogun, who controlled the emperor, was in the forefront of most daimyo minds. Several daimyo marched their armies on Kyoto in the pretense of guarding the new shogun, but in actuality keeping him in prison and under surveillance.

These wealthy daimyo had large armies, and thus an insatiable need for wealth. In the 1400’s they began to feed that need by confiscating the estates of absentee landowners, including the emperor, and using the income from those estates to provide the wealth and land needed to reward soldiers. With no army that he personally had any control over, the emperor could do nothing but sit in his palace while the diamyo used their newfound wealth to build armies and begin to compete with each other over local land disputes, and over who would run Japan. This infighting soon became personal, and the age of the **Warring States** was born. During this period, the emperor was often ignored, and Kyoto was burned several times. The emperor, now with no land for finances or food, was at one point reduced to selling his own poetry in order to get the money to buy food.

The daimyo of Japan after 1400 were a new kind of aristocrat. They were not a landholding elite loyal to the emperor, as they often had been before. Instead, they held on to the land they had gained, and used it as bargaining chips to get what they wanted from the emperor and each other. It was a period characterized by the idea of "**gekkokujo**" – the low rising against the high. Samurai ethics were not forgotten, but became subordinated to the needs of individual clans. These clans, who now owned their lands outright, and behaved toward those lands and the people on them as autonomous rulers, had to maintain their strength relative to other clans, and so a race for power began. In that race for power, nothing else mattered. Ethics were flexible in the service of the main goal. Even the three great unifiers of Japan were all products of this period and its ethic. **Oda Nobunaga** was a second son who became a daimyo through the murder of his uncle and brother. **Toyotomi Hideyoshi** lied about his heritage, claiming to be from a samurai clan in order to join Oda’s army. **Tokugawa Ieyasu** forced his own son to commit suicide. All of these things were done in the name of house power. So often, in fact, did the captains and hirelings of a daimyo’s army turn on and kill their own commander in the hope of taking his place, that the samurai ethic of loyalty to one’s lord seems to have broken down altogether.

In this environment of literal chaos, in which daimyo constantly fought other daimyo, their own followers, the armies of the shogun, and even fortified villages and armed Buddhist monks, it is initially a shock to learn that the Japanese economy, technology, and culture all thrived during the period of the warring states. It was, in fact, the chaos – the lack of a strong central government, that allowed this to happen.

The need of daimyo for revenue, both to reward their soldiers, and to purchase weapons and build the innumerable castles that came to dot the countryside, was simply insatiable. This meant that daimyo were not willing to look too closely at the business dealings of merchants who supplied what they needed, and paid taxes in return for protection by the local lord. The merchants and skilled artisans were also the people who built the castles and adorned them with fine carvings and paintings. Their favor was necessary to keep projects going, and so they were paid well for their work, and treated with respect. This, of course, meant that any revenues the daimyo collected were soon back in circulation, and the money supply continued to increase, stimulating new business and new wealth. So a lack of regulation combined with heavy expenditures and a tax/protection reciprocation that led to excellent cash flow during the period. This cash flow made it possible for merchants to take risks, develop new products, and even venture into international trade. It also encouraged the growth of such industries as entertainment, literature, and philosophy, since people at all levels of society had more disposable income than they had enjoyed previously. Finally, the tendency of successful daimyo to reward their samurai for good service with grants of land, and large sums of money meant that the local farmers may also be wealthy samurai, with the need to appear as such – they also bought expensive items for display in their expensive homes, and hired workers to keep the fields in production while they were off at war.

All of this economic exchange meant an interest in new products – including foreign ideas. Buddhism became very popular during this period, but the most popular forms were those that did not take much time from the activities required to be successful on this earth. Therefore **Shingon**, and especially **Amidism**, which envisioned a heaven comparable to that of the Christian heaven, and required only belief in the bodhisattva Amida for salvation, became extremely popular. These views of the way the world worked, of course, were very similar to the Christian views that were propagated in Japan at this time, as well, by the Jesuit missionaries sent by the Pope. Among these missionaries was **Francis Xavier**. He and his assistants arrived in Japan around 1549, and immediately set about, as Jesuits will, learning the local language and translating the bible into Japanese. Francis Xavier had great success in Japan with Christianity. In fact, by 1595, there was a higher percentage of the Japanese population that professed Christianity than there is today. The times encouraged it, with the interest in new ideas, in philosophy, and, especially for warriors, in how do deal with death.

Francis Xavier and his colleagues in the Jesuit order served other interests as well. Their command of the language made them the perfect middle men for Japan’s new trade with the Portuguese. Portugal, interested as always in a bit of profit, began sending gold ships from its Latin American posessions to the Philippines and China, where they used silver to buy silk, which they then sold to the Japanese at higher prices. They also made a killing, in this time of endemic warfare, by selling guns to the daimyo. Portuguese goods were in great demand – especially gunpowder weapons, and a number of daimyo converted to Christianity in order to get a good connection with the Portuguese so they could get guns cheaply, or deny them to their enemies. Eventually, the daimyo literally wore each other out in this period of chaos. The need to constantly keep up defenses, and constantly keep watch over their own followers, tired them out economically. During the last 50 years before 1598, a succession of 3 intelligent, lucky, and charismatic men began to reduce the chaos and unify Japan.

The first of these was **Oda Nobunaga**. Nobunaga, second son of a minor daimyo, came to his position, as mentioned before, by murdering his brother and uncle. When he finally did succeed to the seat of Owari domain, he had control over barely 5,000 men, and nominal control over a small area of land just south of what is now Osaka. He had limited resources, and no command experience. At the **battle of Okehazama**, in 1560, Nobunaga got lucky. His small army of 5,000 caught his largest neighbor, marching on Kyoto, in camp on a rainy night in a valley famous for its ability to turn into a marsh with just a bit of rain. Nobunaga apparently had (or was counselled to have) a brilliant idea at the moment he most needed it. Waiting for darkness, his 5,000 swept down from the hills above in a surprise attack against the 25,000 man army of his opponent, and swiftly was able to reach the center of the encampment and take the head of the enemy general. With its commander (and daimyo) gone, the army was in a shambles, and Nobunaga was able to take advantage of the situation. He quickly marshalled the loyalty of the defeated army, and took control of their domain as well as his own. With a much larger army of 30,000 or so, and a new reputation for brilliance and brutality in battle, Nobunaga began a career that has made him one of the five most famous people in Japan’s history.

Nobunaga ultimately succeeded in gaining control of about 1/3 of Japan – the area of the political core around Kyoto, Sakai (near present-day Osaka) and up to the area around Nagoya. By 1573 he controlled, and then got rid of, the last of the Ashikaga shoguns, though he never sought that title for himself, and had destroyed or gained the loyalty of all of the daimyo within the region he controlled. In about 1582, Oda Nobunaga was burned alive in a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto where he was sleeping. The fire was set by the vassals of a daimyo who had been one of Nobunaga’s generals – Akechi Mitsuhide. Akechi apparently felt that he had not been well enough rewarded for his loyalty. He also clearly had ambitions to replace Nobunaga at the top of the power heap.

Akechi did not succeed, however. One of Nobunaga’s generals, originally a peasant who had lied about his samurai status to get a job with Nobunaga, **Toyotomi Hideyoshi** swiftly marshalled most of Nobunaga’s soldiers and destroyed Akechi and two other former Nobunaga generals who had decided to follow their own personal ambitions. At first through Nobunaga’s second son, and then, after having him killed, on his own, Hideyoshi continued to increase his strength, and carried on Nobunaga’s project of unifying Japan, though with a very different style.

Hideyoshi, through a combination of overwhelming military strength (he could regularly field armies of well over 100,000 men), brilliant strategy, and personal charm was able to unify nearly all of what we now call Japan under his own personal leadership. However, having no demonstrable great house pedigree, Hideyoshi also never sought the title of shogun. His true power lay in the size and strength of his armies, combined with shrewd diplomacy and a series of reciprocal defense relationships he had arrived at with other powerful daimyo. He was given the title Taiko by the emperor, and became imperial regent. He did not really rule a unified country, though, so much as he stood at the pinnacle of a sort of federal system. Hideyoshi had the right to make laws that affected all of the daimyo. The daimyo were allowed to do what they wanted with no interference within their own domains. Hideyoshi acted as mediator between disputing daimyo, and communicated with the emperor. He also commanded the combined armies of his allies personally. In order to solidify his power, Hideyoshi began the process of changing the warrior (samurai) class. First, so as to provide for mass armies that could effectively defeat other daimyo, Nobunaga, then Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu all adopted a new kind of soldier. This soldier was not a member of the nobility, with the the land to provide the money to buy a horse, armor, swords, etc. Instead, this new soldier was a member of a mass army that moved on foot, not horse, and carried long, armor-piercing pikes. It was because his new foot soldiers were not aristocrats that Hideyoshi could afford so many of them.

Hideyoshi also forced people in Japan to become either soldier or not after 1584. In a move historians call the **great sword hunt**, Hideyoshi made his soldiers go house to house throughout Japan. When they found a house that maintained weapons, that person was classified as a samurai, and required to move off of his land, and into the castle town of the daimyo he served. If he chose to remain a farmer, his weapons were confiscated and he was no longer allowed to fight for any daimyo. The weapons – thousands of them – were melted down to make a great figure of the Buddha. In this way, Hideyoshi separated out the warrior class, and put them in places where they could be watched and controlled. The warrior class could not grow as large as the population, which also gave Hideyoshi and the daimyo more control. Further, the need for the wealthy aristocratic samurai had been diminished with the creation of the foot soldier, so most samurai, when they moved into the castle towns, were not of high status, but were given rude quarters surrounding the castle itself, and a small stipend – their salaries were now paid, and they were professional soldiers. This limited their ambition, as they could never gain land or wealth from fighting except through serving their daimyo. They were prevented from engaging in any other work besides warfare. Hideyoshi kept them busy by requiring them to practice for war every day, and to serve their daimyo in whatever way they could be useful.

Thus, Hideyoshi, with his careful organization of social positions, began the process of bringing order out of chaos. Still, though, the economy and the culture flourished, producing some of Japan’s most important advances under Hideyoshi’s reign. One reason was that Hideyoshi, after unifying the country, sent hordes of samurai to Korea in an attempt to take that kingdom, and use it as a gateway for his planned invasion of China. This provided samurai with an outlet for their talents, and merchants with a continued need, on about the same scale, for the goods and services they had been providing to the warring states daimyo. The unification of Japan, and its attendant regional centralization process required artisans and merchants to assist in the building and re-building of castle towns. Hideyoshi also continued the relatively good relationship with the Jesuits that had grown under Francis Xavier, though he never became a Christian himself. Instead, he apparently hoped that the Portuguese would help him in his quest to conquer Korea and China. When they did not support him in this, and he began to have difficulties with the obedience of several Christian daimyo, Hideyoshi banned the religion, ordered the missionaries to leave, and Crucified six priests and 20 Japanese to make his point.

By 1598 Hideyoshi had died, leaving a young wife and a 5-year-old son as heir to his position as Taiko. Hideyoshi had left **Tokugawa Ieyasu**, among others, in charge of bringing his son up to rule, and making sure that he did not lose his position. Ieyasu, though, had other ideas. By 1598, Ieyasu was the strongest daimyo in Japan. When Hideyoshi died, he waited a year, then began his own attempt to take power – first by creating alliances, then by attacking the loyal followers of Hideyoshi who were defending his son. In 1600, Ieyasu defeated nearly all of his enemies on the field of **Sekigahara**, and emphasized his victory by lining the road from Osaka to Kyoto, on both sides, with their heads on pikes. In 1602, he burned Hideyori (the young son of Hideyoshi) with his mother in Osaka Castle – Hideyoshi’s greatest monument to his power. With the Toyotomi family out of the way, Ieyasu set out to finish the job of unification that Hideyoshi had begun by creating a structure for himself and his successors to rule, and building a series of myths around the Tokugawa that would give them legitimacy as shoguns and de facto rulers of Japan until 1868.

In 1603 he accepted the title of **Shogun** from the Emperor in Kyoto. This made him the right hand man of a living god in Japanese mythology, thus giving him great power to make laws and to act in the name of the emperor. He passed this title on to his son Hidetada in 1605, though Ieyasu would continue to live and run the government until 1616. He passed on the title of Shogun in order to be certain that his death would not lead to another civil war that might destroy the Tokugawa power.

Early on, Ieyasu decided to continue trade with the Portuguese, the Chinese, the English, and the Dutch from various ports. His government encouraged Japanese exports and actively participated in foreign trade through regulation and taxation. Ieyasu saw this activity as potentially enriching Japan and his Shogunal government in Edo.

He also attempted to base the rationale of his government, and the legal system he set up, on **Neo-confucianism**, which he borrowed from scholars in China’s Ming dynasty. This system had the advantage of created a rigid social hierarchy, with warriors at the top as rulers, followed in importance by farmers, then artisans, then merchants. All of these ranks were based on the moral importance of the class to society, not its wealth. This helped Ieyasu to continue the division of warriors from the rest of society – a practice that made warriors feel that they were elite, but made them the easiest group for Ieyasu to watch and control.

To further his control of the warrior class, Ieyasu instituted several other laws, as well. Perhaps the most important and effective was the **//sankin-kotai// or "alternate attendance" system** in which, for 12 months out of every 24, each diamyo was required to attend the shogun at his palace in Edo (present day Tokyo). This cost the daimyo oodles of money, for they had to maintain a separate, lavish residence in Edo, stock it with servants and food, and pay for the journey of a retinue of hundreds of retainers and servants to and from Edo at least once each year. Spending this kind of money meant that most daimyo would never have the cash to start a war against the Tokugawa. Further, the law stated that the family of the daimyo must live in Edo permanently – thus creating a group of hostages who could easily be killed should the daimyo begin a rebellion. Ieyasu’s system of social organization and regulation of daimyo behavior was an effective peace-keeping system for nearly 300 years.

Ieyasu’s grandson, Iemitsu, also one of the most effective shoguns of the Tokugawa period, was the shogun who finally decided, in 1339, to outlaw Christianity, and to set up the laws that scholars have said effectively isolated Japan. These laws actually were mostly concerned with eliminating Christianity in Japan, primarily because Christians do not believe that the emperor is a god, and since the Shogun’s authority is based on his relationship to the emperor, Christianity opened a wide door for potential disobedience. Iemitsu was also aware that foreign trade was not as successful as had been hoped. By 1639, Japan’s gold reserves had dwindled to only a tiny percentage of what Ieyasu had controlled, and Iemitsu felt that such reserves needed to be saved to provide for defense or finances in the event of great emergencies. Therefore, in 1639, Iemitsu issued edicts that came to be known collectively as the policy of **//sakoku//** – the closing of the country. Japan was never closed, however. Trade with China and the West was limited to the port of Nagasaki, and the only Westerners welcome were the Dutch, who were willing to promise not to bring missionaries with them. Trade with Korea continued unabated, and trade with the Ezo of Hokkaido, and through them with Russia, continued as well. The //sakoku// policy, then, was not a closing of the country, but a limiting of trade to places where it could be easily controlled, and would better serve the interests of Japan – or at least of the Tokugawa.

Once again, the system of governance created by the Tokugawa did not cause the economy to stall, or limit cultural growth. Rather, once again, trade and art was given a boost – this time by the stability provided by the Tokugawa regime. With the end of endemic warfare came an increase in confidence among traders that their goods would not be stolen or confiscated, and this led to a greater willingness to put more goods on the market. This, of course, led to more buying and selling, and a new increase in the money supply, which encouraged artists and writers to produce art and literature for a growing market at all levels of society.

Thus, the story of Japan from 1336 to 1650 is, unlike that of Ming China, one of chaotic growth that eventually found stability and direction, and improved the welfare of most Japanese. Back to Hist. 152 page