6
The Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868) was the last and longest lived of Japan’s three warrior governments. Many of its key social, political, and administrative policies built upon the foundations laid by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. The three centuries of Tokugawa rule were a time of peace and prosperity, when violence was largely outlawed. As the first stable national government after a century of fierce civil war, the bakufu integrated all of Japan’s independent domains into a single, national polity. Many of the policies Ieyasu and his sons designed were intended to maintain this state by freezing the status quo, with the Tokugawa clan as hegemonic power. Thus, the bakufu controlled and regulated potential rivals among the court, the daimyo, and Buddhist institutions, and it created elaborate systems to regulate identity in the four-class system of samurai, peasants, artisans, and merchants. Over time, the bushi became bureaucratized, serving as official functionaries who received hereditary stipends, rather than as warriors.
Although the Tokugawa shoguns sought support from Buddhist sects and sponsored various temples, they largely turned from Buddhism to Confucianism as the main ideology to legitimize their rule, emphasizing Confucian teachings on maintaining social order and stability through moral governance. Teachings on Confucian morality spread widely throughout the populace in a variety of formats. A new intellectual movement known as Kokugaku (National Learning) emerged in the eighteenth century as a nativist backlash against China’s hegemonic influence on Japan. Kokugaku initiated renewed interest in Japan’s indigenous history and literary classics and was an important influence on later imperial activists in the Meiji Restoration. A third development in intellectual culture was the spread of Rangaku (Dutch Studies). The Dutch were the only Europeans allowed to trade and reside in Japan. Texts and objects they provided allowed the Japanese to remain abreast of many Western developments in science and industry. Finally, although Buddhism did not develop any major new teachings or sects during this period, new forms of popular religiosity, including pilgrimage, spread widely among the populace.
Because there were so many developments in society and culture during the Tokugawa era, this chapter will address political, social, intellectual, and religious change, while chapter 7 will focus on the emergence of new forms of popular culture.
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS
Tokugawa Ieyasu was named shogun in 1603. Adopting the tactics of Heian emperors, he retired from the position two years later, allowing his son Hidetada to assume the title, but continued to act as the main authority behind the office until his death in 1616. There would be fifteen successive Tokugawa shoguns before the fall of the regime in 1868, but following Hidetada’s successor Iemitsu, few exerted real authority or true leadership; most led the luxurious lives of royalty and left matters of governance to others.
The governing structure established by Ieyasu is sometimes referred to as the baku-han (bakufu-domain) system, in which government functioned through two political mechanisms: the Tokugawa bakufu and daimyo-led domains (han). The bakufu rarely interfered directly in the internal affairs of the domains, giving daimyo considerable autonomy, but strictly insisted that all daimyo swear their vassalage to each shogun, agreeing to follow certain basic policies, such as keeping order within their own domains, providing military support when requested by the bakufu, and contributing funds, manpower, and materials for the maintenance of shogunal castles, imperial palaces, and public works. If they failed to perform these duties to the shogun’s satisfaction, they could be transferred to less desirable domains or simply have their domains confiscated altogether. As chief of Japan’s warrior class, the shogun was expected to preserve law and order domestically and to control foreign trade and diplomacy. To achieve these ends, the bakufu created institutions and policies in three key areas: administration, foreign policy, and social management. In addition, they exerted controls over other potential centers of power that had threatened earlier regimes, such as the imperial court, Buddhist temples, and especially other daimyo clans, the largest threat because they still held military and economic power. The shogunate did not possess absolute military superiority—of the two hundred thousand samurai in Japan, Tokugawa forces numbered around sixty thousand. Thus, Tokugawa rule depended on the support of the other daimyo to maintain their hegemony.
MAP 6. Tokugawa-era Japan. Prepared by Englebert Kaempfer, employee of Dutch VOC, seventeenth century.
A senior council (rōju) of five or six daimyo considered to be close allies of the Tokugawa (fudai daimyo) oversaw national administration and affairs, including foreign relations, defense, and daimyo control. Each member served as head of the council for a month at a time, in order to prevent any single daimyo from taking control. Other important offices, like the commissioners of major cities, were also held by fudai daimyo. Daimyo whom the Tokugawa considered potential rivals for power (tozama daimyo, or outer lords) were kept at arm’s length, prohibited from holding a seat on the senior council. Tozama daimyo held eleven of the sixteen largest and wealthiest domains, but these were located on the peripheries of the main islands. Fudai domains, by contrast, surrounded and protected Tokugawa-owned territories, which totaled around 25 percent of Japan’s arable land and also included Japan’s largest cities and its major gold and silver mines.
In order to avoid the intrigues, secret alliances, and rebellions of vassals against their lords that characterized the Sengoku era, the Tokugawa employed heavy surveillance, with networks of spies, inspectors, and censors at all levels of society. Known as metsuke (literally, to put one’s eye upon), these spies scrutinized activities of daimyo, Tokugawa vassals, and bakufu officials. Each domain also had its own system of inspectors and spies for internal control. Villagers and townspeople were organized into groups of five or more households (gonin gumi), who were held collectively responsible for the conduct of all members, creating a self-surveillance mechanism among the general commoner populace. In a sense, the metsuke inspectors were heirs to the much celebrated but historically rather insignificant “ninja” or shinobi tradition. Some ninja troupes existed during Sengoku; they clandestinely penetrated enemy territory to observe movements, obtain secret information, or engage in assassinations. In the Tokugawa period, however, their combat techniques were codified into martial arts and the business of spying became bureaucratic and systematized. This routinization of the skills of war, “the taming of the samurai,” is an underlying theme of the period. Warrior skills, the prerogative of the samurai class, were unnecessary in a society where violence had been outlawed and where one’s position depended on hereditary rank, so samurai largely became government functionaries. Their martial skills, the raison d’être for this privileged class, declined in importance over time.
To maintain its position as the hegemonic power in the new order, the Tokugawa shogunate limited the power of competing centers of authority, restricting the prerogatives of the imperial court, Buddhist temples, and other powerful daimyo. The court was a notorious source of intrigue that had threatened numerous past regimes. Control of the court was important because the shogun was officially only a delegate of the emperor, who, at least symbolically, possessed the ultimate authority of the land and could, theoretically, remove the Tokugawa from this position. In 1615, Ieyasu issued a seventeen-clause order prohibiting the imperial court from engaging in political activity and claiming veto power over the emperor’s awards of court honors to military houses. Court nobility were physically confined to the palace enclosures in Kyoto and were closely monitored by the shogun’s deputy, installed at the magnificent Nijō Castle, constructed using contributions ordered from western daimyo.
Buddhist temples and monasteries lost their military capabilities under Nobunaga but remained wealthy and influential. In order to ensure that they could not challenge Tokugawa rule, the bakufu required that they submit to state supervision in return for continued approval of their land rights, the source of the Buddhists’ financial security. The sects that were firmly established by the seventeenth century became quasi-official organs of the state, responsible for maintaining population registers. All individuals required a certificate of affiliation with a Buddhist temple. Thus, at birth every person was enrolled in his family’s temple, and registers of temple members were compiled and sent to the daimyo. The temple certificate was required for many important occasions, including marriage, travel, change of residence, or entry into certain occupations. Those suspected of Christian faith were sometimes ordered to trample on crucifixes or images of Jesus or Mary (fumi-e) in order to prove they were not Christian.
Control of the 250-odd daimyo, who autonomously ruled over four-fifths of the country, was critical. With the accession of every new shogun, each daimyo was required to re-swear a pledge of obedience; in return, he received certification of his right to the income earned in his domain. Misbehavior was punished by confiscating or reducing domains or transferring daimyo to new territories. In “Buke shohatto” (Laws for military houses), first issued in 1615, the shogunate issued orders that forbade daimyo from building new fortifications or large ships, from harboring fugitives, and from imposing tolls on domainal roads. Domains could not contract marriages that might lead to political alliances without shogunal approval.
One of the most remarkable methods of daimyo control was sankin kōtai, or alternate attendance. Under this policy, daimyo were required to reside in Edo every other year in attendance on the shogun and had to maintain residential estates there, where their wives and children were permanently held hostage. Requirements for sankin kōtai were specified in “Buke shohatto” and altered only once from 1635, when they were formally enacted, until 1862, when the practice ended. It was the bakufu’s most effective form of control over the daimyo, inhibiting their ability to threaten the regime. Furthermore, sankin kōtai acted as an agent of major social transformation, stimulating economic growth and forging a sense of national culture.
In order to monitor the movement of daimyo armies to and from the capital, the bakufu created and administered a network of five central highways converging in Edo. This national transport system proved vital in integrating the new state through speedy and safe official communications, maintaining monopolies over military deployment, and controlling the circulation of both goods and individuals. The two major highways were the Tōkaidō, which ran along the coastline from the imperial capital at Kyoto to the shogun’s capital at Edo; and the Nakasendō, which took a longer and more mountainous inland route between the two cities. Travel along these roads was tightly regulated—officials checked identification at a number of barrier stations. Post station towns, spaced from three to ten miles apart along the route, provided services for travelers, such as fresh horses, porters, and lodging. There were fifty-three stations along the Tōkaidō and sixty-seven along the Nakasendō, immortalized in the woodblock prints of artist Andō Hiroshige (see chapter 7). The highways and post stations provided national integration in communications, the exchange of goods, and the circulation of people. Villages near these towns were assigned responsibility for providing men and horses and for bridge construction and road maintenance necessary to keep traffic moving.
FIGURE 26. Andō Hiroshige, “Changing Porters and Horses” at Fujieda, 1830s, Tokyo Metropolitan Library. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The typical daimyo traveled to Edo in parade-like processions along the main highways with an entourage of one to six hundred vassals and servants, including pikemen, mounted and unmounted swordsmen, banner carriers, and other top domain officials with their own vassals and servants. The size of the retinue depended on the amount of rice income (koku) generated by the domain. Specialists that were needed to provide services for the daimyo during the journey included doctors, veterinarians, falconers, cooks, scribes, and sometimes poets. At the head of many processions, porters carried an array of religious objects to bring the journey good fortune and guard against mishaps and evil. Carpenters who made repairs to their lords’ palanquins and rooms at inns, and other artisans who mended curtains and flags, were also part of the entourage. In addition to weapons and possessions, they had to carry food, drinking water, sake, and soy sauce. They needed items like rain gear, portable chairs, and lanterns for the route. The daimyo required his own exclusive traveling toilet and bathtub. Everyday goods, and porters to carry them, were often procured en route, helping to support the economies of highway towns. The daimyo himself traveled in the center of the procession in a palanquin surrounded by personal attendants and extra palanquin carriers. As the daimyo passed, commoners were ordered to drop to their knees and kowtow. Travel to and from Edo and the construction and upkeep of the official daimyo compounds there, each housing thousands of men, consumed about 50–75 percent of domainal income, preventing daimyo from heavy investment in military expenditures that might threaten the Tokugawa regime.
FIGURE 27. Detail from a scroll illustrating a nineteenth-century sankin kōtai procession, 1904, Nantan City Museum of Culture, Sonobe, Japan. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Sankin kōtai processions were “theaters of power,” symbolizing both the authority of the Tokugawa regime to unify and command the realm and the wealth and status of the traveling daimyo.1 Watching the parades pass into and out of the capital was considered the most popular form of sightseeing in Edo. The colorful, coordinated uniforms of retainers, depicted in pictorial scrolls, provided a sense of order and discipline among the domain’s ranks. The weapons carried demonstrated the daimyo’s military power, the parade itself mimicking the form of an army setting out for battle. On the long stretches between towns, however, the participants did not march in formation. Only before arriving at a major town or checkpoint, where a large audience awaited, would all in the procession smarten up their appearances, synchronize their steps, and raise their weapons. Footmen known as yakko, carrying lances decorated with feathers and fringes, would begin to dance, tossing and swirling their lances like baton twirlers at the head of a parade. When returning home, daimyo often employed temporary laborers at the borders of their domain to create a grander show of arrival.
Overall, the system provided a major stimulus for economic growth throughout the country. The domainal samurai residing in Edo were accompanied by artisans, tradesmen, and merchants who flocked to the city to supply their needs, quickly swelling the population. By the mid-eighteenth century, Edo became the largest metropolis in the world, with over one million residents. Osaka grew into a financial and commercial center, as daimyo sold tax rice and other commercial goods—such as foodstuffs, paper, cloth, and iron—to the local merchants in order to obtain cash to fund their living expenses. Kyoto thrived as the center for fine textiles and elegant handicrafts needed for daimyo mansions. The domains themselves developed new industries and attempted to create new monopolies on commercial products in order to raise funds to meet the daimyo’s expenses. Networks of inns and restaurants arose to meet the needs of the massive traveling entourages. Sankin kōtai also brought cultural transformation, disseminating the tastes and trends of the capital to the provinces when vassals traveled home while simultaneously drawing new fashions and ideas from around the nation into Edo. Furthermore, sankin kōtai effected political change within the domains; the regularly absent daimyo, who generally preferred Edo sophistication to the rustic, rural lifestyles at home, became figureheads in their own lands, further bureaucratizing the management of the domain’s government affairs. Sankin kōtai is so symbolic of the Tokugawa era that its processions are reenacted for tourists in many cities and towns across Japan today.
STATUS SYSTEM
The bakufu’s fundamental method of social control over the populace was a strict separation of classes, upheld by rules and regulations designed to maintain the status quo. The bakufu built upon the four-class system of samurai, peasants, artisans, and merchants initiated by Hideyoshi to ensure that everyone would know and keep their place in society. This four-class hierarchy was modeled on Confucian hierarchies of social utility and virtue. According to this ideology, those at the top served the public interest, while those at the bottom promoted their own self-interest. Confucian economic philosophy was traditionally agrarian, hostile to commerce and to putting profit before virtue. The samurai ruling class, roughly 10 percent of the total population, was deemed most important because they provided leadership, order, and moral guidance to society. The peasants, over 80 percent of the population, were second in social status because they produced necessary sustenance and provided for the economic needs of the ruling class. Artisans, in third place, created necessary goods, but merchants, at the bottom, produced nothing useful and only distributed goods made by others for their own profit. Artisans and merchants were often collectively referred to as townspeople (chōnin).
Individuals were born into their respective classes and prohibited from changing occupation or marrying outside of their status. The four classes were separated not just by job function, but also by different legal codes and lifestyle prescriptions. They resided separately, samurai within the walls of castle towns or daimyo compounds, peasants in rural villages, and townspeople in certain urban districts. To protect the privileged position of samurai in society, the shogunate issued minutely detailed instructions on every aspect of life, specifying the housing, clothing, entertainment, food, and even hairstyles appropriate to each class and to different age groups and genders within classes.
These sumptuary laws and edicts attempted to regulate the personal appearance and expenditure of wealth appropriate to each class. Segregation of material culture was meant to impose physical distinctions that matched the differences in status; in other words, one should live and spend according to one’s social position, which should be immediately recognizable through visual cues. Rulers recognized that elements of appearance, such as styles of clothing, hairstyles, and accessories, might be used to subvert status and occupational boundaries. Sumptuary laws thus helped identify threats to the status system. Classes were also restricted in terms of the amounts that might be spent on entertainment and ceremonies, such as weddings and funerals. Ostentatious behavior and display of wealth were proscribed for all classes, but the shogunate was especially concerned that merchants, who tended to have the most discretionary income despite their lowly social ranking, should not outshine their betters, as this might undermine samurai morale and discipline.
Examples of rules for the samurai included regulations dictating the length of swords and the requirement to wear a topknot hairstyle with a partially shaved head. They were forbidden from sporting heavy facial hair. Peasants were ordered to live frugally, to consume rough grains like barley and millet rather than tax rice, to abstain from tea and sake, and to wear only cotton. Townspeople were prohibited from using gold and silver decoration in their clothing, housing, and accessories. They were forbidden from wearing “luxurious clothes” or high rain clogs, possessing long swords, or walking alongside a samurai in the streets.2 Samurai were entitled to strike down commoners for disrespectful behavior. Wealthy townspeople resentful of such restrictions sometimes engaged in illegal behaviors subversively, in ways invisible to official eyes, such as using luxurious, gold-embroidered silks as the lining for plain cotton kimonos.
The bakufu relied more on threats and exhortations than on consistent punishment to compel compliance with sumptuary laws, but flagrant violaters were sometimes harshly punished to set an example for others. One such case occurred in 1681 with the household of wealthy Edo merchant Ishikawa Rokubei. Rokubei’s wife loved extravagant clothing and had worn her best finery to view the procession of the fifth shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646–1709), remembered as the “dog shogun” for his eccentric edicts protecting canines in Edo. The elegant Mrs. Ishikawa caught Tsunayoshi’s eye and he inquired after her, assuming she was a member of a high-ranking family. When told she was only the wife of a lowly merchant, the shogun was infuriated and demanded punishment. The town magistrate confiscated all of the family’s property and they were banished from Edo.3 Tsunayoshi, known as a profligate spender himself, soon issued an unprecedented number of sumptuary regulations regarding merchant clothing. A later example of enforcement involved Kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjūrō VII (1791–1859), the biggest star of his time, in 1842. Danjūrō used genuine weapons and armor on stage, the gifts of wealthy admirers, rather than stage props. This clear violation of the exclusive samurai privilege to own and carry such weapons resulted in the actor’s ten-year banishment from Edo. Since Osaka also possessed a popular Kabuki theater, the actor did not actually suffer much, but his fame ensured that the warning against violating status restrictions would spread widely among the populace.
The four-class system provided a normative, static model of society designed to maintain support for the Tokugawa social and political order, but it did not accurately describe lived reality, where identities were less fixed and more complex. Many individuals and professions, including Buddhist monks and nuns, members of the court, and doctors, did not belong to any of the categories. Outcaste classes were also absent from the idealized social model. This varied group included those whose hereditary occupations were considered polluting, such as butchers, tanners, and undertakers, known collectively as eta (considered a discriminatory term today); those who engaged in itinerant lifestyles, known as hinin (non-people), such as prostitutes, entertainers, beggars, and blind masseuses; and the indigenous peoples of Ezo (northern Honshu and Hokkaido), known as Ainu today. The eta caste, referred to today as burakumin (people of the hamlet), faced numerous forms of discrimination. Like other classes, they were restricted to living in certain villages and required to wear cotton clothing and straw slippers, rather than wooden geta clogs. They were prohibited from owning or cultivating rice fields and had to abide by special curfews.
TOKUGAWA INTELLECTUAL CULTURE
Confucianism
Rather than sponsoring new schools of Buddhism to add to the legitimacy of the new regime, as previous groups of rulers had done, the Tokugawa shogunate turned to Confucianism to help undergird their rule. Confucianism was primarily concerned with maintaining order, stability, and moral governance, in keeping with Tokugawa aims after a century of chaos and warfare. It emphasized the importance of propriety, ritual, and hierarchy in personal relationships. In an age when the Japanese could no longer visit the continent, Chinese philosophy, especially the Neo-Confucianism associated with the philosopher Zhu Xi (1130–1200), flourished as never before. Neo-Confucian philosophy was rationalistic and human-centered. Zhu Xi advocated an approach to knowledge based on observing and studying the laws of nature and human society. The rationalism of Neo-Confucianism contrasted with the nonrational approach of Zen or the medieval Buddhist belief in mappō that viewed the world in negative terms.
Some aspects of Confucianism didn’t suit Japanese society as well as China. For example, as noted in chapter 2, the Confucian doctrine of the “Mandate of Heaven” held that if the ruler was incompetent or unjust, he could be overthrown and the mandate would be transferred to whoever would rule best. Japan’s imperial house, however, claimed its mandate through direct descent from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, and thus could not be replaced by a competing dynasty. The position of shogun, too, was restricted to members of the Tokugawa family. Many leading Japanese Zhu Xi scholars, such as Yamazaki Ansai (1619–82), infused their works with Shinto-related concepts to adapt Confucianism to Japan’s imperial situation. Another difference between the two countries lay in the identity of the ruling class. In China, ruling bureaucrats were scholar elites who earned official positions based on merit, whereas in Japan they were members of the samurai class who held inherited rank. Nevertheless, the Confucian concept of hierarchical relationships, with rigid distinctions between ruler and subject, father and son, and men and women, suited the needs of the Tokugawa bakufu. Whereas the Chinese emphasized filial piety and the parent-child relationship, the Japanese emphasized the tie between rulers and subjects, interpreting this as the commitment of absolute loyalty to one’s lord.
Tokugawa Ieyasu appointed Neo-Confucianist Hayashi Razan (1583–1657) as one of his key advisors. Hayashi played a critical role in drafting the laws and edicts issued by Ieyasu and served as key advisor to the first three shoguns. His descendants continued to advise subsequent shoguns. The Kansei Edict of 1790 made Zhu Xi Neo-Confucianism the official, orthodox philosophy of Japan, banning other studies of Confucianism as heterodox. Nevertheless, alternative schools of Confucian thought persisted and found wide audiences among the samurai class. Because scholars followed the historical Chinese practice of writing commentaries to Confucian classics to adapt teachings to their present age, conflicting views and rival schools emerged. One such rival was the Wang Yang-Ming school, favored by many independent, reform-minded samurai scholars and the daimyo that employed them. This school of thought, known in Japanese as Ōyōmei, stressed intuition and moral sense over intellect; in short, one did not have to be a scholar but ought to be a good person. Another fundamental Ōyōmei tenet was “the unity of knowledge and action,” the belief that deeds were as important as words and that one’s principles should be carried out directly in action. It was not enough to merely read about or discuss filial piety; one must actively practice it. The founder of Ōyōmei in Japan, Nakae Tōju (1608–48), embodied this teaching. He resigned from an official post to return to his remote native village in order to care for his aging mother. Tōju established a school in his village that attracted many scholars and became highly influential. In the late Tokugawa period, his teachings inspired zealous reformers and patriots who helped overthrow the shogunate and restore the emperor.
Other highly influential Confucian thinkers rejected Zhu Xi orthodoxy and advocated a return to the study of original, ancient Confucian texts. Itō Jinsai (1627–1705), the son of a Kyoto townsman, founded a private school dedicated to teaching humanistic ideals that applied to all classes. His teachings centered on the Confucian Analects and the teachings of Mencius and stressed compassion and humaneness, expressed through loving relationships with other people and through actions benefiting humankind. He believed that Zhu Xi Confucianism was too introspective and that it called for too much seriousness and self-restraint. Itō remained an independent scholar who attracted large numbers of students but steadfastly refused numerous offers for prestigious posts by daimyo.
Ogyū Sorai (1668–1728), a Sinophile and philologist, served as an adviser to the shogunate. Sorai rejected the Zhu Xi Confucianism of Song China, using the ancient Confucian classics on government and social order to criticize the contemporary economic and political order. He is considered a key thinker in making a breakthrough toward modern political consciousness. His 1717 work Distinguishing the Way (Bendō) defined the foundations of political power and offered prescriptions for regimes facing crises. One of Hayashi Razan’s own students, Yamaga Sokō (1622–85), also criticized Zhu Xi orthodoxy, charging that Chinese scholars from the second to fifteenth centuries had misinterpreted the Confucian classics.
Sokō focused on defining the functions of, and rationalizing the privileges given to, the ruling warrior class during a time of peace. Sokō upheld the idealization of bun and bu (see chapter 4): samurai were obligated to maintain their martial skills while cultivating civilian arts such as poetry and history. According to Sokō, they must demonstrate utmost loyalty to their lord and devote themselves to duty and morality over personal gain in order to serve as leaders for the common people. Proper samurai lived “a life of austerity, temperance, constant self-discipline, and readiness to meet death at any time.”4 Here is an excerpt from Sokō’s writings on the “Way of the Samurai” (Shidō) that demonstrates his concern for justifying the stipends and privileges the samurai class earned simply by virtue of their birth:
For generation after generation men have taken their livelihood from tilling the soil, or devised and manufactured tools, or produced profit from mutual trade, so that peoples’ needs were satisfied. . . . But the samurai eats food without growing it, uses utensils without manufacturing them, and profits without buying or selling. What is the justification for this? . . .
The business of the samurai is to reflect on his own station in life, to give loyal service to his master if he has one, to strengthen his fidelity in associations with friends, and, with due consideration of his own position, to devote himself to duty above all. . . .
[I]f there is someone in the three classes of the common people who violates moral principles, the samurai should punish him summarily and thus uphold the proper moral principles in the land. It would not do for the samurai to know martial and civil virtues without manifesting them. Since this is the case, outwardly he stands in physical readiness for any call to service, and inwardly he strives to fulfill the Way of the lord and subject. . . . Within his heart he keeps to the ways of peace, but without, he keeps his weapons ready for use. The three classes of the common people make him their teacher and respect him.5
Sokō’s text provided a guide for the lives of samurai, whose social role had shifted from military to political and intellectual leadership. They could rationalize their stipend by serving as moral exemplars for commoners and maintaining their martial skills, should they be called upon to protect their lord and society. In the twentieth century, Sokō’s works became the basis for the ideology of Bushidō (the Way of the Warrior), which exalted samurai honor and chivalry but avoided discussion of hereditary material reward.
The Forty-Seven Rōnin
Yamaga Sokō’s influence would be seen in the Akō Vendetta of 1703, a well-known historical incident that has been transformed into numerous, beloved pieces of popular literature, art, drama, and film under the names The Forty-Seven Rōnin and Chūshingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers). The story is thought to represent the ultimate in the samurai ideal of honor and loyalty to one’s lord. The incident began when Asano Naganori, the daimyo of the Akō domain, was ordered to arrange a reception for imperial envoys at the shogun’s palace during his period of sankin kōtai service. The young daimyo was to be instructed in court etiquette by Kira Yoshinaka, the shogun Tsunayoshi’s master of rituals, but Kira humiliated Asano instead, treating him with contempt. The daimyo soon lost his temper and attacked Kira with a dagger, an act completely forbidden within Edo Castle. He was ordered to commit seppuku that day; the bakufu confiscated the domain from his family, leaving his samurai retainers masterless.
Of the three hundred Akō rōnin, forty-seven—led by Ōishi Yoshio (a pupil of Yamaga Sokō)—decided to avenge their lord, although they realized they would face severe punishment. Suspecting a plot for revenge, Kira ordered spies to surveil the rōnin. To offset suspicions, the forty-seven dispersed around the country, adopting identities as merchants and monks. Ōishi located himself in Kyoto and began to drink heavily, frequent brothels, and act foolishly in public to convince Kira and the authorities that he was no threat. Some of the rōnin avengers gained access to Kira’s mansion in Edo as workmen or merchants and became familiar with its layout and operations. Other avengers obtained weapons and transported them to Edo, which were illegal acts. After a year and a half, Kira let down his guard and the rōnin sprang into action.
In the early hours of January 30, 1703, during a heavy snowstorm, the avengers posted archers outside Kira’s mansion—to prevent the inhabitants from sending for help—and began the attack. Breaking into the back of the house, they fought off Kira’s retainers but could not find their enemy, who had hidden himself in a secret room. When the attackers finally discovered the hiding place, the occupant refused to identify himself as Kira, but he bore a scar on his head consistent with Asano’s attack. In consideration of Kira’s high rank, Ōishi presented him with the opportunity to honorably commit seppuku using Asano’s own dagger, but Kira refused to answer, so the rōnin cut off his head to offer to their master at his tomb at Sengaku-ji Temple. To reach the temple, they marched more than six miles across the center of Edo. Their procession attracted a great deal of attention, and the story of their successful campaign of revenge spread quickly. After the rōnin made their offering at their lord’s gravesite, the group turned themselves in and awaited judgment.
Shogunal officials debated the particulars of the case and the meanings of righteousness it held. On one hand, the rōnin had broken the law by exacting revenge, but on the other, they were motivated by samurai ideals of loyalty to their lord. Officials received many petitions on behalf of the rōnin from admirers. In the end, they were ordered to commit seppuku, spared the indignity of criminal execution because of the honorable nature of their actions. The loyal rōnin were buried in front of their master’s tomb at Sengaku-ji, and Asano’s younger brother was restored to the position of daimyo, although the size of his domain was vastly reduced. The gravesites became a site of pilgrimage, where many have come over the centuries to pray and offer veneration; the clothing and weapons of the forty-seven rōnin are preserved in the temple to this day.
FIGURE 28. Utagawa Hiroshige, Act XI Second Episode: Rōnin Breaking into the Inner Building of Moronao’s Castle, from Chūshingura, 1830s, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Popular Morality
Literacy was surprisingly widespread throughout Tokugawa society, allowing Confucian teachings, often blended with aspects of Buddhism and/or Shinto, to diffuse widely throughout the classes. The samurai class was nearly 100 percent literate, because all its ranks were entitled to attend domainal academies where they studied the Confucian classics, military arts, and calligraphy, among other subjects. Wealthy commoners often achieved degrees of literacy matching or surpassing their samurai betters, while moderately well-off commoners were also surprisingly literate. In rural areas, the latter attended schools that were held at temples or at teachers’ homes (terakoya); in cities, educated samurai, rōnin, and priests operated private academies open to townspeople. Such schools taught the basics of reading and writing, employing the Confucian Classic of Filial Piety and other canonical texts; taught arithmetic using an abacus; and steeped students in conventional wisdom that placed stress on hard work, respectfulness, morality, and frugality. One frequently employed terakoya text, the Dōjikyō (Precepts for the young), contained dozens of instructions and admonitions for students. The Dōjikyō still seems relevant for both teachers and students today, warning against truancy, littering, mischievous pranks, rude language, sumo wrestling, and graffiti. Children were urged to keep their clothing clean and their hair tidy. The opening verse emphasized the importance of education: “To be born human and not be able to write is to be less than human. Illiteracy is a form of blindness. It brings shame on your teacher, shame on your parents, and shame on yourself. The heart of a child of three stays with him until he is a hundred, as the proverb says. Determine to succeed, study with all your might, never forgetting the shame of failure.”6
Kaibara Ekken (1630–1714) is among the best-known popularizers of simplified Confucian teachings. He employed vernacular language, rather than classical Chinese, to present the basics of Confucianism to a broad audience, providing easy-to-understand moral doctrines for governing people’s everyday conduct, their relationships with others, their duties within their families and to their feudal lords, and other topics. In short, he did for Confucian ethics what Pure Land had done for Buddhism in medieval Japan: he brought it down from the level of difficult, elite doctrine to the level of common speech available to all. Kaibara is especially well known for treatises addressing women and children. A 1733 work entitled Onna daigaku (Greater learning for women) is often attributed to him, although its authorship is unclear. This treatise appears shockingly patriarchal and sexist to modern sensibilities, defying Confucianism’s aim of self-cultivation by denying women’s selfhood and fully subordinating them to their husbands and families. Two particularly misogynist passages, translated by Japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain in 1890, are as follows:
The five worst maladies that afflict the female mind are: indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy, and silliness. Without any doubt, these five maladies infest seven or eight out of every ten women, and it is from these that arises the inferiority of women to men. A woman should cure them by self-inspection and self-reproach. The worst of them all, and the parent of the other four, is silliness. . . .
Let her never even dream of jealousy. If her husband be dissolute, she must expostulate with him, but never either nurse or vent her anger. If her jealousy be extreme, it will render her countenance frightful and her accents repulsive, and can only result in completely alienating her husband from her, and making her intolerable in his eyes. Should her husband act ill and unreasonably, she must compose her countenance and soften her voice to remonstrate with him; and if he be angry and listen not to the remonstrance, she must wait over a season, and then expostulate with him again when his heart is softened. Never set thyself up against thy husband with harsh features and a boisterous voice!7
Schools and teachings specific to different classes explained the duties and responsibilities for a given status group, as Yamaga Sokō had done for the samurai class. A religio-ethical school known as Shingaku, established by Ishida Baigan (1685–1744) in Kyoto, urged merchants to strive for morality in their business dealings, devote themselves to their enterprises, and practice frugality. If they fulfilled their merchantly duties, they were entitled to profits, just as samurai were entitled to stipends for fulfilling their moral duties. Baigan promoted zazen-like meditation as a method for followers to know their minds and understand their place in the social order. Shingaku lecturers traveled throughout Japan, using stories and humor to help deliver teachings. By the nineteenth century, there were 180 centers of Shingaku learning across the nation. An official Confucian academy for merchants, the Kaitokudō, established in Osaka in 1727, offered higher education for the business classes. It became an important think tank for merchants to help formulate policies that would support domainal and bakufu finances; many Kaitokudō graduates were hired as economic advisers by daimyo and the shogunate.
Ninomiya Sontoku (1787–1856), a self-educated farmer known as the “Peasant Sage of Japan,” developed a set of teachings to help improve rural lives. He emphasized three main points: first, that manual farm labor represented the highest form of human activity, allowing humans to receive food as the gift of the gods; second, that the unpredictability of nature and weather dictated that farmers must plan and budget for bad harvest years; and third, that successful agrarian life required cooperative communal organization. A main theme in his work, which stretches to thirty-six volumes, is “repayment of virtue,” or humankind’s obligations to repay the debts accumulated through benefits received from nature, family, and society by offering such benefits to others. For example, one’s wealth and status were built on the virtues of ancestors and must be protected for descendants; one’s food, clothing, and shelter depend on both the natural products of farms and forests and the labor of other people, so one must work hard and be thrifty to help share and preserve these gifts. Sontoku claimed his teachings were a “pill of three religions,” one-half Shinto and one-quarter each Buddhism and Confucianism. When a disciple drew a pie chart of this “pill,” with half of the circle marked Shinto and the other quarter-segments marked appropriately, Sontoku replied, “You won’t find medicine like that anywhere. In a real pill all the ingredients are thoroughly blended so as to be indistinguishable. Otherwise it would taste bad in the mouth and feel bad in the stomach.”8
National Learning
The new intellectual movement known as Kokugaku (National Learning) advocated an ethnocentric Shintoist revival. It was founded in the eighteenth century by scholars who wished to de-emphasize China’s historical influence on Japan and initiate a renewal of interest in native Japanese history, literary classics, and cultural traditions. During the centuries of Buddhist and Confucian philosophical dominance, Shinto, lacking its own sophisticated systems of thought and doctrine, was blended into—and itself drew upon—the better-articulated traditions. Many disparate sects of Shinto, sometimes aligned closely with a school of Buddhism or Confucianism, were created over the centuries, such as Yoshida Shinto, tied to Neo-Confucianism; Watarai Shinto, associated with Ise Grand Shrine; and Ryōbu Shinto, derived from Shingon. In the early Tokugawa era, many Zhu Xi Neo-Confucian scholars opposed Buddhism but saw in Shinto a traditional form of worship that did not directly challenge the hierarchical values of Confucianism. Yamazaki Ansai founded Suika Shinto to fuse Confucian ethics with Shinto mythology and rituals. Most Kokugaku proponents, however, wished to purge Shinto of foreign elements. In nearly every community, ritual life continued to center around local Shinto shrines and festivals, which provided important symbols of communal identification and pride. On a fundamental level, Shinto continued to be deeply felt in the lives of the people, but scholars realized that if it were to become a truly national religion, rather than a collection of local practices, it would require a set of basic texts and teachings.
The poet Kada no Azumamaro (1669–1736), influenced by Ogyū Sorai’s call to reexamine the Chinese classics, hoped to do the same for early Japanese texts. He petitioned the bakufu to support his study of Japan’s ancient literature, which he called Kokugaku. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Kokugaku was regarded as the true expression of Japanese national feelings, unpolluted by alien culture. As scripture, it claimed not only ancient Shinto hymns and prayers (norito) but also the Man’yōshū, Japan’s earliest extant collection of poems; the earliest national historical chronicles, the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki; classical Japanese literature such as The Tale of Genji; and the Heian imperial poetry collection the Kokinshū.
Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769) was Kada’s disciple and the first important scholar of the Kokugaku movement. Kamo insisted, albeit incorrectly, that the eighth-century Man’yōshū was free of foreign influence. Its poems represented a true expression of archaic Japanese sentiment: open, spontaneous, and devoid of guile. He started composing his own poems in the Man’yōshū style and invited others to follow him.
The Kojiki had long been neglected, because of its difficulty and the greater historical importance assigned to the more reliable Nihon shoki. Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), the second great scholar of Kokugaku and one of the finest scholars in all of Japanese history, took more than thirty years to translate the Kojiki into the language used in his day. Norinaga believed that emotion and sentiment were more central to Japanese life than Chinese ethics or philosophy and identified The Tale of Genji as a classic expression of native Japanese aesthetic sentiment, popularizing the notion of mono no aware, meaning sensitivity to beauty or pathos in nature or in the conditions of human life. In reaction to the Confucian orthodoxy that refuted Shinto mythology on the grounds of reason, he argued that matters pertaining to the gods were beyond the realm of human understanding and that rationalism was thus inadequate and inappropriate for assessing founding myths. In a work addressing the “true tradition of the Sun Goddess,” he stated that all of the lands and all of the gods and goddesses of the world were brought into being by Izanami and Izanagi, but that China did not know of this act of divine creation and, hence, explained the principles of heaven and earth through theories such as yin and yang instead.
Norinaga’s Kokugaku thus constituted a form of religious fundamentalism, upholding national mythology as literal truth to assert Japan’s special position as a divine country, the home of the Sun Goddess, who cast her light over all countries. The ethnocentrism he espoused was taken even further by the next great Kokugaku scholar, Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843), whose reformulations of native faith, sometimes called Revival Shinto, was an important influence among imperial activists for the Meiji Restoration.
Early European and American scholars sometimes dismissed Atsutane as a zealot or huckster for his eclectic blend of spiritual and national teachings. Atsutane claimed that he met Motoori Norinaga in a dream and was his legitimate intellectual heir. Nevertheless, he diverged from his master on many counts, such as the nature of the afterlife and the gods of creation. Norinaga accepted the Kojiki’s accounts of a pair of creator gods and of yomi, the dark, spectral land of the dead. Atsutane drew from Christianity and folk religion, proposing a monotheistic god of creation and expanding notions of the afterlife by collecting accounts of an “other world,” contiguous to our own, visited by those who encountered supernatural beings. Atsutane was worldlier than his predecessors, more knowledgeable about Western science, medicine, and religion. Deeply aware of the outer and inner threats faced by Japan in the early nineteenth century, from an encroaching Russia and rural unrest, he sought to strengthen the nation by creating a syncretic faith superior to Buddhism, Christianity, and Confucianism. Aiming to launch a grassroots nativist movement, Atsutane worked with authors of farm manuals, creating simple, illustrated pamphlets that taught improved rice-cultivation techniques while introducing Atsutane theology by linking humans with cosmology and agricultural fertility. Evangelists traveled throughout central Japan distributing masses of pamphlets and earning Atsutane a large following among the rural peasant class.
Atsutane represents a break with the purely scholarly, urban culture characteristic of his classical Kokugaku forebears. Like Kaibara Ekken, he used vernacular idioms to extend a populist message to larger audiences. While Atsutane is credited with reviving reverence for the emperor and influencing the samurai who brought about the Meiji Restoration (see chapter 8), his far-reaching influence extended beyond politics. Yanagita Kunio and Origuchi Shinobu, influential folklorists of the Meiji era, incorporated many of Atsutane’s views on the supernatual and afterlife into their studies of folk worldviews. Large, new religious movements that flourished among rural populations in the late nineteenth century, such as Konkokyō and Tenrikyō, adopted his notion of a monotheistic creator kami and the prayers and rituals devotees should offer the kami daily.
Dutch Studies
As previously mentioned, the Dutch were the only Europeans legally tolerated in Japan by the Tokugawa regime. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they represented one of the wealthiest and most scientifically advanced nations of the world, with a large trading empire centered in the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch kept the Japanese abreast of many aspects of the industrial and scientific revolution occurring in the West. Although largely confined to a tiny, man-made island known as Dejima, a small Dutch contingent including the factory chief, company secretary, and a physician was required to travel to Edo annually to provide the shogun with gifts and updates on world events. The ninety-day journey, hauling food, wine, tables, and chairs, mirrored the sankin kōtai of daimyo and was understood as giving the Dutch factory chief a similar status, but the Europeans remained in Edo for only two to three weeks. The gifts they presented, including telescopes and microscopes, maps and globes, clocks, oil paintings, spectacles, magic lanterns, and mechanized puppets (karakuri ningyō), became popular among many other daimyo and high officials. The Dutch embassy was also called on to provide amusement for the shogun, ordered to sing and dance, while the ladies of the palace watched their antics from behind screens. Japanese fascination with Dutch culture is seen in woodblock prints that recorded their customs, fashions, and possessions.
FIGURE 29. Rin Shihei, depiction of a Dutch meal with Javanese servants, 1790s. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum.
In order to curb the subversive influence of Christianity, early shoguns strictly forbade access to foreign books and knowledge. In 1720 the eighth shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684–1751), began to allow translation of Dutch texts on natural sciences that might prove useful in Japan. Allowable works were largely in two categories: astronomy, which included calendrical sciences, cartography, and geography; and medicine, including chemistry, physics, botany, mineralogy, and zoology. Knowledge of Western sciences and arts became known as Rangaku (Dutch Studies) and was limited to a small group of specialized bakufu scholars. Rangaku physicians also acquired knowledge of Western medical techniques, through observing the “redhair-style surgery” of Dutch doctors on Dejima.
Japanese views on human anatomy at the time were based on speculative theories from Chinese traditional medicine, as both Confucianism and Buddhism condemned the practice of dissecting corpses. When European anatomical charts that conflicted with Chinese theories began to circulate, Sugita Genpaku (1722–1817), an officially appointed surgeon, arranged to attend the autopsy of the corpse of a criminal, a woman known as the Green Tea Hag (Aochababa). Sugita was surprised to see that the woman’s anatomy and organs matched the European charts rather than the traditional Chinese descriptions. He worked with other Rangaku scholars to translate an important Dutch text on anatomy, producing the Kaitai shinsho (New treatise on dissection) in 1774, after years of painstaking work. This text proved to be one of the most influential works on medicine in Japanese history. Japanese doctors began to blend Chinese and Western approaches, for instance combining acupuncture with the scientific view of anatomy. The subsequent translation and publication of Western surgical textbooks in the early nineteenth century allowed information on operations, wounds, bandaging, fractures, and bloodletting to circulate widely throughout the nation.
Another brilliant but eccentric Rangaku scholar, Hiraga Gennai (1728–80), was a low-ranking samurai exposed to Dutch ideas when studying herbal medicine in Nagasaki. Later moving to Edo, he experimented with Western sciences and arts, inventing thermometers, a form of asbestos fabric, and an electrostatic generator. Hiraga studied European painting techniques that incorporated a more natural perspective; his student Shiba Kōkan (1747–1818) became one of the first Western-style (yōga) painters.
TOKUGAWA RELIGIOUS CULTURE
During the Tokugawa and subsequent Meiji periods, critics charged that Buddhism had become “degenerate,” or full of corruption, with monks violating vows and engaging in lewd behavior. These charges were due, in part, to the shogunate’s control and co-option of Buddhist institutions, which inhibited Buddhist development such that no major new doctrines, no large new sects, and few truly notable priests or leaders appeared during the Tokugawa period—especially when compared to the medieval era’s remarkable innovations in Buddhist doctrine and practice, championed by charismatic religious leaders. Under the Tokugawa bakufu, Buddhism became a form of state religion; all Japanese were ordered to register at their family’s local temple to attest that they were not Christian. It was during this era that these temples became primarily associated with funerary and memorial services and rituals, an expensive cycle of thirty-three years of death rites that provided an important means of temple financial support. The idea of “funerary Buddhism” continues to characterize many Japanese people’s view of the religion today.
There were, nevertheless, a number of remarkable monks who sought to purify and revive their traditions. Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1768), a Rinzai Zen monk, worked to refocus his sect on rigorous training in meditation and kōan practice. Although he was an amateur artist, his paintings and calligraphic works are much admired for their strong, personal, and straightforward expression, which served as a model for later Zen monks. Hakuin began to study calligraphy in his teens, but at the age of twenty-two he saw firsthand the work of a true Zen master and realized that calligraphy was a statement not of skill, but of human character. Hakuin’s artistic strengths emerged after he turned sixty. He depicted a wide variety of subjects, from gods of good fortune to severe faces of Zen patriarchs, creating a new visual language for Zen that was not limited to landscapes or famous Zen subjects but included folk legends, animals and birds, and everyday objects and scenes. Hakuin made thousands and thousands of paintings, which he gave away freely to all who asked.
Religious developments in the Tokugawa period thus occurred less in the arena of institutionalized Buddhism than in the explosion of new forms of popular religiosity. For one, syncretic new religious philosophies, such as those of Hirata Atsutane, Ishida Baigan, and Ninomiya Sontoku, spread widely among the populace. Itinerant religious practitioners, from exorcists to beggar monks (hijiri), traveled to every remote corner of Japan, providing a variety of religious and secular services for contributions, like the storytelling nuns and monks of the medieval era. Some engaged in divination, some peddled religious goods, others entertained by dancing or playing music on bamboo shakuhachi flutes or other instruments. During this era, popular deities and sacred sites acquired or further developed reputations for providing certain “practical benefits,” including healing, bringing wealth, and guarding against fire, thus becoming major centers of worship. Another form of religious practice, pilgrimage to a sacred site or to a circuit of sites, mushroomed in popularity, aided by the appearance of scores of travel guidebooks and diaries from the mid-seventeenth century onward. Pilgrimages and excursions to popular shrines and temples were not necessarily solely religious in character. Devotees participated in a “culture of prayer and play” that simultaneously provided religious benefit and amusement.
The center of “prayer and play” in the Edo capital was Sensōji Temple in the townspeople’s district of Asakusa. According to legend, the temple was founded in the seventh century by two brothers who found a golden statue in their fishing nets. They enshrined it and gave it offerings; afterward, their nets were always full. The village head realized that the statue was an incarnation of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, and converted his house into a Buddhist temple, the first Sensōji. As Edo grew and developed, people of all classes came to the capital to sightsee, seeking out the places depicted in travel guides and woodblock prints (see chapter 7). The Asakusa area was popular among tourists, and the Sensōji grounds contained a vast network of amusements and commercial enterprises. Its inner precincts housed hundreds of booths purveying a wide variety of food, goods, and entertainment: tea and dumpling houses; liquor, candy, tobacco, and paper-goods stores; archery booths; and dozens of toothpick shops, which often doubled as fronts for prostitution. In Sensōji’s outer precincts, permanent stores lined both sides of the street, specializing in such goods as sandals, toys, umbrellas, and Asakusa food specialties like seaweed, sake, soba noodles, and senbei (rice crackers). Hawkers touting nearby entertainment spectacles competed to lure customers. There were human freaks like the crab girl with two fingers on each hand, said to embody lessons in Buddhist karmic principles, and unusual animals, such as a giant toad, a porcupine, and an elephant. Circus acts, often used as a lure to sell herbal medications, featured acrobats, jugglers, tightrope walkers, and magicians. Sumo wrestling, which evolved from a religious practice to pacify resentful spirits or foretell harvest, was also performed. Sensōji staged playful quasi-sumo shows, such as in 1796, when a half-naked woman wrestled eight blind masseurs.9 Each day, more than ten thousand people visited the complex.
In addition to the secular attractions, an unrivaled array of divine beings, Buddhist and Shinto alike, filled Sensōji’s halls. The primary deity enshrined in the main building, the Asakusa Kannon, was the center of a large cult of devotees, but additional halls featured statues of new, “fashionable” deities said to be particularly efficacious for health and good luck, such as a statue of an old woman missing two front teeth that was believed to lessen toothache, and one of the Buddha of medicine, Yakushi Nyorai, venerated for its ability to cure eye disease.
The Sensōji fusion of prayer and play was favored by high and low alike. Shoguns and their families made visits to conduct services dedicated to Asakusa Kannon, followed by a lengthy inspection of entertainments. The eighth shogun, Yoshimune, loved street storytellers; and the eleventh, Ienari, often played archery or blowgun games. Sensōji was a very wealthy institution. In addition to rents received from the many businesses housed there, it sold talismans and votive offerings to visitors who wanted objects containing the power of the Asakusa Kannon. Buying such talismans and charms remains a must-do activity today when visiting famous shrines and temples. Another source of funds and offerings was religious confraternities, organized groups of one to two hundred lay supporters located throughout Japan. While Sensōji was one of the largest and most popular religious complexes, temples and shrines in other regions, such as Shikoku’s Konpira Shrine, engaged in a similar blend of prayer and play. This may be one reason critics charged that Tokugawa Buddhism was decadent and corrupt, but it might be viewed instead as flexible, able to accommodate prevailing political and cultural trends to ensure financial survival.
FIGURE 30. Utagawa Hiroshige, Asakusa, Edo, 1853, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Visits to famous shrines and temples and to sacred mountains were a part of pilgrimage, which had been a popular religious activity among elites since at least the Nara period but boomed in the Edo period, in part because of the improved travel infrastructure of national highways and networks of inns. Pilgrims set out to seek cures for diseases, to expiate sins, to venerate deities and holy men, and to petition the latter for benefits and rewards in this life and the next. But, as noted in regard to Sensōji, many pilgrims also had touristic motives—the desire to escape from their everyday lives and experience new places and new horizons.
FIGURE 31. Katsushika Hokusai, A Group of Mountaineers, from series Thirty- Six Views of Mount Fuji, 1830s. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Mountains were and are considered mysterious and sacred spaces, the dwelling places of spirits of the dead, containing entrances to the “other” world. Holy men and religious practitioners traveled to the mountains to engage in rigorous ascetic training that they believed would give them special powers. Heian nobility made pilgrimages to sacred mountains, such as Kumano and Yoshino, to experience a foretaste of the Pure Land while on earth. These journeys were hardly ascetic—they were luxurious outings for hundreds of courtiers. For commoners in the Tokugawa era, mountain pilgrimage involved difficult climbing as part of physical and spiritual discipline. Mount Fuji, the highest, holiest, and most beautiful of Japan’s mountains, was an especially popular destination. The climb and descent of Fuji represented travel from the world of the living to the world of the dead and back, through which pilgrims could wash away their accumulated sins and impurities.
Membership in pilgrimage groups was predominantly male; women were forbidden from climbing sacred mountains because of a belief in their inherent pollution. Men had to conform to strict rules of abstinence and purification if they wanted to enter the mountain. Trips to climb the mountain entailed considerable hardship and expense. In order to make access to Fuji easier, mounds resembling the sacred mountain were constructed throughout Edo, and on the first day of the sixth month, many city dwellers headed for the miniature Fujis in their vicinity.
Other popular pilgrimage routes were based on faith in a particular deity. The best-known route is on the island of Shikoku and consists of eighty-eight temples associated with the Shingon founder Kūkai. Another, located in western Japan, traverses a circuit of thirty-three temples dedicated to Kannon, the Buddhist deity of compassion. Every sixty years or so during the Tokugawa era, major pilgrimages to the Ise Grand Shrine attracted millions of pilgrims. Some traveled in organized village groups, but many others, especially women and children ineligible for membership in those groups, simply ran away to join the fun, leaving their work and families behind. Pilgrims were supported by almsgivers, who contributed everything from money, food, and clothing to hot baths and haircuts. The Ise pilgrimages were chaotic and festive, often characterized by ecstatic dancing, so they tended to be viewed negatively by officials and many elites.
The bakufu and domains did not usually allow commoners to travel outside their own village or city, making exceptions only when they sought permission for such pilgrimages or for medical treatment. Nonetheless, by the late Tokugawa period, travel and pilgrimage were a cultural obsession, supported through pleasure tours, hostelry chains, and guidebooks. Like many aspects of urban culture in the Edo period (described in chapter 7), pilgrimage sites—including Zenkōji Temple in Nagano, Ise Grand Shrine, and Konpira Shrine in Shikoku—were often associated with prostitution. It was sometimes said that prostitutes represented incarnated deities, and sexual contact with them was dubbed a form of omatsuri, or religious festival.
In summary, the Tokugawa shogunate forged a national polity and created effective systems of administration that restrained competing centers of power, such as temples and daimyo, and exerted control over the populace through the separation of status groups. Fearing subversion of the social order, the bakufu issued detailed regulations dictating lifestyles appropriate to each class. Confucianism, with its emphasis on stable governance, morality, and maintenance of order, proved a useful philosophy for the regime; its simplified teachings were propagated among all classes. New schools of thought, such as Dutch Studies and National Learning, also emerged, representing a shift away from the hegemony of Chinese intellectual and scientific systems. Few, if any, revolutionary changes occurred in the realm of religion, but a more playful and commercial approach toward religion became apparent among many temples, shrines, and adherents. This development was related to the larger cultural context of the Tokugawa era, in which urban commoners created and indulged in new forms of art, literature, and theater and in “pleasure quarters,” a district of brothels and teahouses—all to be explored in the next chapter.
FURTHER READING
Burns, Susan. Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Hanley, Susan. Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Hellyer, Robert I. Defining Engagement Japan and Global Contexts, 1640–1868. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Hur, Nam-lin. Prayer and Play in Late Tokugawa Japan: Asakusa Sensōji and Edo Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Ikegami, Eiko. The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
McNally, Mark. Proving the Way Conflict and Practice in the History of Japanese Nativism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Pitelka, Morgan. Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015.
Roberts, Luke. Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century Tosa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Sawada, Janine T. Practical Pursuits: Religion, Politics and Personal Cultivation in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004.
Teeuwen, Mark, and Kate Wildman Nakai, eds. Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
Vaporis, Constantine N. Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009.
Walker, Brett L. The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590–1800. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
RECOMMENDED FILMS
Harakiri. 1962. Feature film directed by Kobayashi Masaki. Early seventeenth-century tale of revenge based on the practice of rōnin who threatened to disembowel themselves in the courtyards of daimyo palaces unless they were given alms.
Red Beard. 1965. Feature film directed by Kurosawa Akira. Nineteenth-century tale of a compassionate rural doctor and his arrogant young apprentice, who had trained in Dutch medicine at Nagasaki.
The Ballad of Narayama. 1993. Feature film directed by Imamura Shohei. The legendary practice of poor rural villages that abandoned their unproductive elderly in the mountains to starve is depicted in this winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or.
The Forty-Seven Ronin. 1941. Feature film directed by Mizoguchi Kenji. Adaptation of the famous tale by an iconic director.
The Lower Depths. 1957. Feature film directed by Kurosawa Akira. An adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s play of the same name, this film portrays the daily struggles of poor commoners in Edo.
The Twilight Samurai. 2002. Feature film directed by Yamada Yōji. Set during the final decade of Tokugawa rule, this film tells the story of a poor, low-ranking samurai bureaucrat content with his simple existence but forced to risk his life by domainal politics.