Becoming Samurai: The Warrior Culture of Japan
Beginning with sword inscriptions (the oldest known writings related to Japanese warriors), this book is arranged more or less chronologically, proceeding on to works of court literature, diaries, letters, documents, and law codes as well as portraits and picture scrolls. It aims to show that an autonomous and unique warrior culture arose and thrived and explores warriors’ roles as fighters, guards, lawgivers, and managers and traces their rise in Japanese society—from bodyguards to marginal provincial figures to autonomous warriors, and finally, in some cases, to provincial magnates and dominant rulers over all of Japan. Included here are such illuminating texts as the late sixteenth-century documents formalizing the creation of the samurai order as well as ordinances from the 1870s abolishing that very same order.
A Brief Overview of Japanese History 471–1877
The warrior culture of the earliest centuries covered in this book (471–900) is revealed through inscriptions on five swords, two of which contain the earliest known writing in Japan. They date from the time of the Great King Yūryaku (known then as Wakatakeru) and correspond to a time of extensive immigration to his Yamato kingdom. These immigrants, primarily from the Korean peninsula, brought with them new beliefs, such as their ancestral gods; new technologies, including writing; and a new means of recording time through a Chinese calendar.
The powerful Yamato kings had massive tombs, requiring millions of hours to construct, and undoubtedly controlled extensive armed forces. Some Chinese histories refer to the Yamato leaders as great generals who maintained peace and commanded all military affairs with their battle axes. However, after Yūryaku’s time, the tombs decreased in size. In chronicles dating from 712 and 720, Yūryaku is portrayed as being a cruel and arbitrary leader. But we can tell, from looking at his swords, that his reputation began to suffer even sooner than that. One of his swords, which had at some point been owned by a prominent magnate {xiv} (kuni no miyatsuko), eventually ended up in the hands of a far lesser figure—someone who could not afford a lavish tomb but was instead roughly buried on top of another man’s tomb. The disgraced Yūryaku’s gifts were shunned by the powerful, even in a time when great value was placed on a good sword.
Little is known about the oldest warriors of Japan, save what can be gleaned from these swords, or from images of them made from pottery, known as haniwa. In purely material terms, we know these warriors wielded bows and possessed iron swords, and, from the fourth century onward, some wore suits of iron armor, which also protected their horses. Their horses were small, resembling the animals we would now call ponies. Equestrian warriors had obvious advantages in terms of mobility on the field of battle and enjoyed a certain amount of prestige compared to the majority of fighters, who fought on foot. Inscriptions on swords found in the tombs of powerful kings indicate that some descendants of regional magnates (kuni no miyatsuko) would travel to central Japan, where they served the powerful kings of Yamato. Though these early warriors most likely came from local elite families, with some serving the Yamato rulers, it seems unlikely that they fell into any well-defined social category.
In the sixth and seventh centuries, the states of East Asia significantly improved their administration. New beliefs, such as Buddhism, came to favor, and a powerful state arose, with a well-defined capital, carefully laid out roads, and an extensive administrative system whereby all men, women, and children were given lands to cultivate. Commoners would pay taxes on agricultural produce, goods in kind, or provide labor. Of the labor taxes, the most onerous was conscription. In principle, one out of every three able-bodied men, aged twenty-one to sixty, would have to serve in the army, although in practice the rate was much lower. Conscripts had to provide their own armor and provisions and could serve in guard duty or on the frontiers of Japan. So burdensome was this duty that many conscripts deserted in order to escape their obligations.
In the seventh century, Yamato became known as Japan. At that time, Japan’s rulers adopted the title of tennō, heavenly sovereign or emperor, and claimed cosmic universal authority based primarily on their administrative control over revenue and people in the archipelago. Throughout the seventh and eighth centuries these emperors administered Japan with a firm hand, creating provinces, districts, and highways crisscrossing the archipelago, and imposing a countrywide system of taxation.
In 737, a devastating smallpox epidemic decreased Japan’s population by a third and strained the elaborate administrative system. An emperor named Shōmu (701–756; r. 724–49) tried to mitigate this epidemic by patronizing temples, having Buddhist sutras read, and otherwise enhancing his Buddhist merit. Most notably, {xv} he ordered the construction of Tōdaiji, the largest temple in the world. Symbolizing both imperial power and protection, by the time of the death of his consort Empress Kōmyō in 760, his two swords—named “Bright” and “Dark”—were placed under the Great Buddha altar of this temple.
In 749, significant deposits of gold were discovered in the northern regions of the main Japanese island of Honshu. Unfortunately for the Japanese court, this northern part of Honshu was not under their control, and the inhabitants of that region—known as emishi, or barbarians—did not recognize the authority of the state. Resisting the encroachment of the Japanese government, these emishi attacked the military forces sent to subdue them and initially achieved great success, capturing and destroying many garrisons and military outposts in the far north. Yet the war between the residents of Honshu and the central Japanese government would ultimately last for another thirty-eight years. In 794, the government finally decided that a conscripted army was not an effective fighting force against the emishi and ended the practice of conscription.
Having abandoned conscription and a standing national army, the Japanese government instead turned to a network of small groups of powerful warriors to preserve order in the provinces. A more substantial military force remained in the far north, however. Known as the Six-District Army, this force remained stationed in the gold-rich regions of northern Honshu, although it never did conquer the far northern reaches of the island. The commander of this force—which remained in place until 1189—was the Chinjufu shōgun, or the “Pacification General.” After 1089, however, actual authority passed to the “Military Envoy (ōryōshi) of Mutsu Province,” a hereditary position held by a towering northern warrior named Fujiwara no Kiyohira (1056–1128). He and his descendants Motohira (?–1157), Hidehira (?–1187), and briefly, Yasuhira (?–1189), controlled the north through 1189.
The Office of Sei-i-tai Shōgun and Changes during the Heian Era (794–1185)
The war in the north was brought to a successful conclusion when Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758–811) was appointed as the Pacification General (Chinjufu shōgun) in 796, and then to the extraordinary and temporary office of Sei-i-tai shōgun, or “Barbarian-Subduing General” in 797 and again in 804. Taking command of the situation, he defeated the emishi decisively in 802, although skirmishes continued through 811. After his victory, he lived out his remaining days in Kyoto. He was eventually buried with his sword, one replete with gold fittings, a symbol of his {xvi} successful conquering of the north. Over time, the office of Sei-i-tai shōgun would become the core office justifying the Tokugawa shogunate, but originally it was an ad hoc and extraordinary position.
During the tenth century, Japanese governing institutions were simplified. Capital Police (kebiishi) provided order in Kyoto, the capital, while commissioned officers, known variously as “Envoys to Pursue and Capture,” or “Pursue and Destroy,” would quell rebellions. They were most notably successful in defeating two uprisings: one by Taira no Masakado (?–940) in the east, and another by Fujiwara no Sumitomo (?–941) in the west. Masakado’s is the more famous of these major revolts and is the subject of some of Japan’s earliest-known warrior tales.
Over the course of the Heian era, provincial governors, known as zuryō, served as tax collectors who extracted, often arbitrarily, revenue from the provinces. The previously egalitarian society became stratified, and the provincial elites, known as zaichō kanjin, or “provincial office holders,” assisted their governors in squeezing taxes from the locals.
Although the provincial office holders helped governors tax other residences of the provinces, they themselves were only lightly taxed. As the governors’ bodyguards, however, they did have to supply their own armor, weapons, and horses, both for themselves and their closest followers. Dozens of such men—whose descendants would eventually become the Japanese warriors of legend—would serve their provincial governor. In Murasaki Shikibu’s classic eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji, the passages describing an encounter with the “Commissioner” accurately portray the general attitude of these warriors to provincial governors.
Japan in the eleventh century also witnessed a political transformation with the rise of “Dharma,” or “Retired” Emperors. These men became Buddhist monks but did not renounce the affairs of the world. To the contrary, they engaged in direct administration and oversaw rituals which were thought to be the essence of court governance. The first of these Retired Emperors was Go-Sanjō (1032–73; r. 1068–73). But the position was solidified by Shirakawa (1053–1129), who officially reigned as Emperor from 1073–87. But Shirakawa continued to govern as a Buddhist monarch after his “retirement” and conducted rites demonstrating that he, rather than the nominally reigning Emperor, was sovereign.
Over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the most powerful warriors remained provincial office holders who helped provincial governors collect revenue. Most governors were clients of the Retired Emperors. Some warriors who lacked strong ties to a governor could escape his depredations by commending and thus placing their lands under the protection of a court noble. In doing so, they created what are known as shōen estates.
{xvii} Shōen have been greatly misunderstood by many later historians. Shōen were not owned by any single person. Rather, multiple people of differing status could point to the same piece of land, proclaim “This land is my land!” and would all be correct. The most important status-based rights of income were gesu shiki, managerial rights, and ryōke shiki, or proprietary rights, to these lands. The person on the land who commended the estate became the gesu and, as a rule of thumb, would overlook the estate and be entitled to a third of its surplus. The proprietor, on the other hand, secured two-thirds of the surplus revenue and had to be a capital noble. No local warrior could hold proprietary shiki; nor could a central noble possess managerial rights. Not until the mid-fourteenth century did these status-based rights of income blur.
The gesu remained in a precarious position. He could be divested of his post at any time by the proprietor. In other words, he served at the proprietor’s whim. Hence, establishing an estate was usually an act of desperation and one that could well leave unfortunate gesu with nothing.
Retired Emperors exacerbated this instability on the land because on occasion they could create estates through administrative fiat, dispossessing powerful provincial office holders (the zaichō kanjin) in the process. This instability and uncertainty regarding provincial land rights led to resistance against the dictates of the central court, culminating in the so-called “Genpei War” of 1180–85 and the rise of the Kamakura Shogunate, Japan’s first “warrior government.”
Animosity regarding the policies of the center focused not on the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa (1127–92; r. 1155–58), but rather one of his clients and later adversaries, Taira no Kiyomori (1118–81). Kiyomori’s father and grandfather had long been clients of Retired Emperors and served as provincial governors. In 1156 and 1159, two skirmishes broke out between competing supporters of a Retired Emperor and Emperor, and in both cases, supporters of Go-Shirakawa, who was then the reigning Emperor, triumphed. Though these clashes involved only dozens of warriors, they were unprecedented, for buildings in the capital were destroyed, and prominent nobles and warriors were executed in the aftermath of the conflict. They were later immortalized as the Hōgen and Heiji Disturbances, and the subject of warrior tales and picture scrolls.
After the disturbances of 1156 and 1159, Kiyomori, who may have been actually fathered by the Retired Emperor Shirakawa, acted more as a powerful courtier than a provincial governor or warrior, sponsoring great Buddhist rites, overseeing trade with the continent, and advancing to the pinnacle of court society. He did not, however, establish particularly close ties with warriors in the provinces. Surviving documents reveal that Kiyomori, acting in typical fashion for nobles, granted the office of gesu, or manager, to an estate to his local supporters. But it was {xviii} not a stable position and, as noted above, court officials could evict a gesu from the position at any time.
Ultimately, in 1179, Kiyomori staged a coup, placed Go-Shirakawa under house arrest, and forced the accession of Kiyomori’s grandson Antoku (1178–85)—the product of a match between one of his daughters and the Emperor Takakura (1161–81; r. 1168–80)—to the throne, sparking the civil conflict that came to be known as the Genpei War. Though this civil war is often portrayed as a struggle between the Taira and Minamoto families, contemporary records reveal that it was in fact a much broader conflict waged between local warrior forces (both zaichō kanjin and gesu) against the agents of the central government, provincial governors, and their deputies.
Minamoto no Yoritomo and the Establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate (1185–1333)
During the 1180 outbreak of civil war, Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147–99), the exiled son of a man who had been defeated and killed in the Heiji Disturbance of 1159, established the completely new office of jitō, or land steward. He did so on an ad hoc basis, and remarkably—even though he had no authority to do so—he successfully attracted support through this new office and was able to defend these rights. This office of jitō was functionally the same as that of the gesu; but, unlike the gesu, the person appointed as the jitō could not be arbitrarily dismissed from the post by the court. Thus, Yoritomo, the rebel, attracted support by giving warriors in the province security of land possession through this office.
The Genpei War was fought between local warriors in opposition to the arbitrary policies of the court and its provincial governors. In the midst of this war, the court formally recognized Yoritomo’s regime—an alliance created in 1183—as an organization charged with reestablishing order throughout the country. The greatest causality was Kiyomori and his descendants, who were thought to embody the excesses of the court. Kiyomori died in 1181, and almost all of Kiyomori’s direct line, including his grandson Emperor Antoku, drowned at the Straits of Shimonoseki during the Battle of Dannoura in 1185.
The destruction caused by warfare did not bring peace. In the provinces, many warriors unilaterally declared themselves to be jitō, and Yoritomo spent much effort trying to adjudicate and vacate these claims. In 1189, Yoritomo destroyed the remains of the Six-District Army in the northeast, attacking them at a remarkable settlement of Hiraizumi, replete with a gold-covered temple, which had been founded by Fujiwara Kiyohira, Military Envoy (ōryōshi) of Mutsu Province. In his {xix} mobilization for this campaign, Yoritomo demanded that all jitō participate. The ōryōshi of Mutsu Province, and commanders of the Six-District Army from 1089–1189, were big men, generally over six feet tall, and the last of their line, Yasuhira, was killed in part because the small Japanese horses could not carry such large men.
In 1192, Yoritomo was invested with the same Sei-i-tai shōgun title Sakanoue no Tamuramaro had last received in 804. With this title, and later court appointments, he could open an administrative office (mandokoro) and govern the affairs of his jitō. This marks the official origin of the Kamakura Shogunate. Kamakura was the name of the town where the shogunate was located; it also describes this government, and the name Kamakura is given to the era of history lasting from 1185 until 1333.
Yoritomo served only briefly as Sei-i-tai shōgun and passed this post to his son, preferring instead to rely on a higher-ranking court office. Yoritomo died in 1199, and his sons succeeded to this post, but by 1219 both were dead. From 1219 until 1226, there was no shōgun in Kamakura.
Recognition of the office of jitō was the major innovation of Yoritomo’s life. For over a century, scholars have asserted that this institution represents the advent of feudalism in Japan. According to this view, espoused most notably by Asakawa Kan’ichi (1873–1948), the position of jitō resembled that of a fief, which was recognized by Yoritomo and exchanged for service, thereby making these men “vassals.” Certainly, in 1189 Yoritomo demanded that all jitō attack the Six-District Army in the north, but he was more concerned about the survival of his regime than demanding service from jitō who did not resemble vassals in the European context, although they have often been described by this term. Even during Yoritomo’s lifetime, there seems no clear sense that his confirmation of jitō rights was contingent upon military service. Thus, the analogy of “feudalism” does not apply to him and his men; nor does its terminology of vassalage adequately characterize the warriors of Kamakura.
Another office, that of shugo, or protector, is also associated with Yoritomo’s regime, but this position—a kind of quasi-judicial and policing office whereby holders created rosters of locals for guard duty and apprehended criminals and, if need be, rebels—appears only to have been formalized after Yoritomo’s 1199 death.
The Rise of the Hōjō and the “Golden Age” of Kamakura Governance (1221–1333)
The Hōjō were related to Hōjō Masako (1157–1225), Yoritomo’s wife. They staffed Yoritomo’s executive office (mandokoro) and, after his death, consolidated their hold on this power by ruthlessly eliminating anyone they perceived as a threat. {xx} Their position became imperiled after Yoritomo’s final surviving son, Sanetomo (1192–1219, shōgun 1203–19), was assassinated in 1219. Sensing an opportunity, the Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1183–1239; r. 1183–98) declared war on the Hōjō, and argued that they were upstarts who had no rationale for any governing authority whatsoever. Go-Toba erred, however, in attempting to assert the authority to appoint and divest jitō of their cherished posts. A majority of these jitō joined the Hōjō, who had been preparing for a conflict, and may have even goaded Go-Toba into declaring war against them.
Although the Jōkyū War of 1221 lasted a mere six weeks, it proved decisive in a way that the earlier twelfth century conflicts had not. The Hōjō triumph allowed them to ensure that a shogunate would continue in Kamakura and, in the aftermath of the war, more jitō were appointed throughout Japan.
Kamakura’s victory shocked many—warriors, courtiers, and monks alike—into rethinking the nature of imperial authority and the relationship of Buddhism and the state. The power of Retired Emperors, and their ability to meddle in provincial land rights, was thwarted. To the practical Hōjō, the war illustrated the relative ease with which they could consolidate their hold on political power as long as they had the support of provincial warriors.
After 1221, a series of Hōjō leaders established regulations and institutions of governance that helped usher in a period later recalled as a golden age. Their greatest governing accomplishment was a law code, the Jōei Formulary, promulgated in 1232. The laws provided guidelines for the transmission of jitō posts, giving the jitō freedom to determine who succeeded to their post. The Jōei Code, a foundational document, provided broader rights to a larger percentage of the population (both male and female), than did the English Magna Carta of 1215, to which it is sometimes compared.
After 1232, warrior status was linked to the prestigious office of jitō, the manager of an estate with local policing and judicial authority. This position guaranteed its holder revenue from the estate and authority over its inhabitants. Additionally, they exercised authority over all who lived in their house. Jitō rights could be bequeathed to offspring, or adopted heirs, which led to many inheritance disputes and the practice of dividing these lands among siblings. In some cases, the recipient of these jitō rights took the name of the lands they possessed. Both men and women could inherit lands, and brothers and sisters could adopt new surnames at will, often choosing to pick the name of where they resided as their new family name. These jitō became increasingly autonomous and were mostly concerned with the preservation of their household.
Scholars have characterized the period of 1221 to 1333 as consisting of a Dual Polity, where the court ruled alongside Kamakura. Sovereign affairs, state rites, {xxi} and most taxes still went to the court, while Kamakura shugo provided stability in the provinces through their policing abilities and their ability to mobilize warriors for guard duty. The court was reorganized, with its laws and administration revitalized during the latter half of the thirteenth century.
Together, the court and Kamakura successfully defended Japan against the Mongol invasion attempts of 1274 and 1281. More than the damages suffered, which were limited to the Hakata region of northern Kyushu, the systemic need to maintain defense efforts, through guard duty or ongoing maledictions, led to concerted administrative reforms. Scholars have suggested that Kamakura lacked the lands and new jitō posts to reward its warriors and that this led to this later unrest. But much of the evidence suggests that Kamakura’s new administrative policies caused the most turmoil.
Previously, Kamakura had promoted the notion of inalienable jitō rights. But in their quest to adjudicate cases more efficiently, they demanded that jitō appear in court by the third summons. Previously, some had avoided up to seventy of such commands. In the 1280s, Kamakura started enforcing this writ and confiscated the lands of those who failed to obey. Though these regulations made administrative sense, the jitō warriors felt that Kamakura was exceeding its mandate and encroaching on their own rights. They began to see Kamakura as being unjust. Some took to violence, openly defending their lands, and were described in the sources as being akutō, or brigands. Though Marxist historians have seen the akutō as being disgruntled marginal figures from below, they were predominantly local warriors upset with Kamakura’s policies and willing to use violence to assert their local rights. Many shugo were in broad sympathy with them, so when commanded to find and apprehend akutō, they did so half-heartedly.
More than warriors, or the so-called akutō, it was the court that proved to be the most destabilizing presence. Many courtiers felt the events of 1221 had put Japan on the wrong path and agitated for a return of powerful emperors, whose powers had been reduced since the time of the Jōkyū War. Animosity was directed toward Kamakura because its officials would ultimately determine who, among several competing candidates to the throne, would be Emperor. One Retired Emperor (Kameyama 1249–1305; r. 1259–74) went so far as to employ a warrior in an attempt to assassinate the reigning emperor in 1290—an attempt that failed spectacularly (see Excerpt from “The Light and Shadows of the Day,” The Clear Mirror (Masukagami) p. 100).
A new coalition—one comprised of ambitious nobles, an aggrieved Emperor, and dissatisfied jitō—arose and succeeded in overthrowing Kamakura and killing nearly all the Hōjō in 1333. These anti-Kamakura allies had remarkably divergent world views: Emperor Go-Daigo (1288–1339; r. 1318–31, 1333–36) expressed {xxii} a desire to rule as a powerful autocrat; Ashikaga Takauji (1305–58), the most prominent warrior who survived the turmoil of 1333, saw himself as the natural successor to the post of Sei-i-tai shōgun; and the jitō believed removing Kamakura would enhance their rights. Unpleasantly surprised when the triumphant Go-Daigo asserted ultimate control over their rights, the jitō threw their support to Ashikaga Takauji. In 1335 Takauji rebelled against Go-Daigo, unleashing decades of civil war.
Ashikaga Takauji and the Wars of the Fourteenth Century
Immediately after the fall of Kamakura, Ashikaga Takauji acted as if he was a Sei-i-tai shōgun, even though he initially had no such appointment. Go-Daigo undermined Takauji’s support by dispatching imperial princes loyal to him throughout Japan. He also revitalized the office of the Pacification General (Chinjufu shōgun) and appointed the young Minamoto court official Kitabatake Akiie (1318–38) to this position. From 1335 through 1338 wars raged, with no clear outcome in sight, until the Chinjufu shōgun Kitabatake Akiie was killed in battle in 1338 along with another general named Nitta Yoshisada (1301–38). That year Takauji was appointed to the office of Sei-i-tai shōgun, a position his descendants would hold through 1573. The defeated Go-Daigo fled to Yoshino in 1336 and founded what is known to posterity as the Southern Court. Though Go-Daigo died in 1339, his supporters continued to resist for decades.
The warriors of this period of turmoil did not feel that they were obligated to serve a lord. To the contrary, they believed that lords were required to compensate warriors for their service, and so an elaborate system for recording and verifying battle service was created in order that battle service could be verified and compensated.
Although loyalty to a lord would become a hallmark of how warriors were remembered, the notion of loyalty was valued more highly at the court than it was among warriors. Warriors with lands prized their autonomy. Although they expected obedience from landless members of their own households, they were loath to follow a lord. Nevertheless, the expenses of warfare proved prohibitive and, when paying for their armor and provisions for campaigns lasting many years, warriors had to sell their houses or borrow horses and other accoutrements from either the commoners (hyakushō) residing on their estates or sympathetic generals.
To help diminish the burden of war, which had been exacerbated by the turmoil of the 1350s, Takauji delegated great powers of taxation to holders of the post of {xxiii} shugo. That position had existed for centuries, but it was more of a policing office. After Takauji allowed its holder to levy taxes on half of a province’s revenues, shugo used this authority to maintain durable armies and to embark upon the path of becoming regional warlords. The shugo had the resources to wage wars indefinitely; the old jitō, who found the campaigns prohibitively expensive, did not. The wars of the fourteenth century petered out, and the Southern Court finally surrendered in 1392, thereby ending this period of disunion.
The Ashikaga Heyday (1368–1441)
In 1350, the provincial constables known as shugo were given the right to use half of a province’s revenues for military provisions. This was known as the “half-tax” (hanzei). As a result, over the course of the next century, these shugo became incipient provincial magnates. The previously autonomous jitō were no longer able to fight in war; they gradually became subsumed into these regional armies, whose leaders were increasingly known as daimyō.
Even though Takauji’s half-tax, or hanzei, was an extraordinary levy initially allowed only in a time of warfare, shugo did not give up this authority. They instead maintained these revenues, sometimes confiscating the holdings of delinquent landholders, including some jitō. As had been the case before the hanzei, the court and the Ashikaga had access to half of the revenue, although Ashikaga leaders did also assess innovative taxes on trade.
Despite the limitations imposed on central power by the hanzei, three Ashikaga leaders—Yoshimitsu (1358–1408), Yoshimochi (1386–1428), and Yoshinori (1394–1441)—continued to exercise great authority through 1441. Symbolizing their rule was a new imperial residence on Muromachi Street in Kyoto, which has given its name to the age. Though the court remained, imperial power was undermined by Yoshimitsu, the third Ashikaga shōgun.
In 1392, having defeated the Southern Court, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu abdicated the post in favor of his son Yoshimochi. He did not govern as a shōgun, but instead acted first as a high-ranking courtier, then by assuming the prerogatives of the sovereign. Yoshimitsu was thus able to overawe shugo and force them to use their newfound wealth for his projects. In one case, he had them level a mountain in order to expand a pond in his garden. Yoshimitsu did isolate, attack, and militarily defeat the most powerful shugo, the Yamana, in 1391 and the Ōuchi in 1399. In 1402, the Chinese Ming Emperor recognized Yoshimitsu as the King of Japan; Yoshimitsu was then able to use his political ties to control lucrative trade with China. With his wealth, he built a lavish {xxiv} Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji), with a nine-story pagoda located nearby, in the region known as Kitayama to the immediate northwest of Kyoto. He named one of his sons an imperial Crown Prince, but his plans for this son’s enthronement as Emperor came to naught when Yoshimitsu died suddenly in 1408.
Yoshimitsu’s son Yoshimochi adopted a dramatically different pattern of rule, preferring to act as more of a warrior than a courtier or sovereign. During the period of his rule as shōgun—from 1408 through 1429—Yoshimochi governed through consultations with shugo. He did not overawe them, although he could effectively manipulate the shugo. He abandoned Kitayama, his title of “King of Japan,” and even the Muromachi mansion. Of the shugo, he most favored the Ōuchi. They helped the Ashikaga govern in the west and took a leading role in trade with the continent. As they controlled mines in the west, they profited immensely from trade and were able to loan funds to the Ashikaga in the 1460s.
After Yoshimochi’s death, his brother Yoshinori became shōgun. Yoshinori attempted to rule as an autocrat, going so far as to execute cooks for mistakes, or force courtiers into starvation as punishment. Yoshinori also poisoned some shugo and meddled in their succession until Mitsusuke (1381–1441), the leader of the trusted Akamatsu shugo family, assassinated him.
Although Ashikaga would hold this post of Sei-i-tai shōgun until 1573, they only governed Japan in a meaningful way from the late fourteenth century through 1441. Their regime had no such authority during the long century of its decline.
In the resulting turmoil, and the decline of Ashikaga authority, many shugo gained influence. The office of shugo proved powerful, for it allowed magnates to mobilize and command armies, but it was also destabilizing, as tensions over succession often led to political and military skirmishes. Because the hanzei gave shugo direct access to provincial tax revenue, shugo could mobilize and maintain what amounted to standing armies. Shugo logistical prowess led to improvements in military organization, as they could create massed formations of infantry capable of occupying territory. This happened in the 1450s, and the Hatakeyama were forerunners in this innovation.
The Rise of the Ōuchi and the Ōnin War (1441–1551)
The rise of the inept eighth shōgun, Yoshimasa (1436–90), led to an intense civil war. Though Yoshimasa tried to be a powerful shōgun like Yoshinori, he simultaneously antagonized multiple shugo houses, most prominently the Ōuchi. Yoshimasa’s misguided attempt to confiscate their harbors, an action unacceptable to Ōuchi {xxv} Masahiro (1446–95), led him to fight openly against the Ashikaga in 1465. In 1467, Masahiro led an armada to Kyoto. There, a conflict was waged for over a decade. It is named the Ōnin War after the era when fierce battles were fought in Kyoto. Masahiro, allied with Yamana Sōzen, established a “Western Army,” and fought Ashikaga Yoshimasa, whose forces, known as the “Eastern Army,” were directed by Shogunal Chancellor (kanrei) Hosokawa Katsumoto. Although the war is commonly thought to have occurred from 1467 through 1477, analysis of the Ōuchi’s role in it indicates that it lasted from 1465 to 1478.
At the end of the Ōnin War, Ōuchi Masahiro returned to Yamaguchi. This city became a thriving and stable urban center. Ōuchi laws reveal the peace and stability in their western territories: curfews in Yamaguchi were enforced, its streets were swept, and the Ōuchi lords complained of people gawking at their gardens. By contrast, in this same period Kyoto experienced decay and ruin in the aftermath of the devastating war fought there because Yoshimasa was incapable of effective governance. Ashikaga Yoshimasa nevertheless began construction on a retirement villa known as the Silver Pavilion, which, in fact, was a building coated in black lacquer.
After Yoshimasa’s death, the forces of the kanrei Hosokawa Masamoto (1466–1507) ousted the Shōgun Yoshitane (1466–1523) in a coup. Yoshitane escaped and ultimately fled to Yamaguchi. After Masamoto was killed by one of his disgruntled retainers, Yoshioki (1477–1529), the next Ōuchi lord, again led an army to Kyoto. Allying himself with Hosokawa Takakuni (1484–1531), head of a branch line of the Hosokawa, Yoshioki decisively defeated the main line of the Hosokawa at the battle of Funaoka. From 1508 until 1518, Yoshioki occupied the capital, eventually returning to Yamaguchi. The powerless Ashikaga remained in Kyoto. Having confiscated their King of Japan seals, Yoshioki was able to monopolize trade with the continent. This continued with his son Ōuchi Yoshitaka (1507–51), who oversaw the export of tons of Japanese silver to Korea and China.
While the west enjoyed relative peace and prosperity, eastern Japan experienced more turmoil. The Date codes of 1536 reveal a much-impoverished domain. The region continued to rely on the jitō for governance, even though the position had been largely eliminated elsewhere in the country. Eastern landholders exhibited considerable local authority, a level of autonomy unthinkable in the Ōuchi domains. The western peace lasted until 1551. Ōuchi Yoshitaka was felled by a coup as he was preparing to move his capital to Kyoto. By 1557, his entire lineage lost power, western Japan descended into turmoil, and Japan was convulsed by war from 1551 through 1573.
{xxvi} The Arrival of the Europeans
When, in 1543, the Portuguese landed at Tanegashima, to the south of Kyushu, they brought with them guns and cannon, and these new weapons had a profound impact on the Japanese way of war. Initially, the Japanese, unfamiliar with Europe, assumed the Portuguese were Buddhist monks from India. Gradually, of course, they learned a great deal about Europe from the newly arrived Portuguese.
In military terms, gunpowder mattered as much, if not more, than the guns themselves, and one recipe for it was transmitted from Ōtomo Sōrin (1530–87), a Kyushu lord, to Uesugi Kenshin (1530–78) in the east (see the Portuguese Recipe for Gunpowder, p. 231). Several documents composed by Ōtomo Sōrin in 1580 are translated here and reproduced along with images of his saddle, which bore the monogram FRCO for “Francisco,” the new name he adopted upon his conversion to Christianity sometime between 1578 and 1580 (see Photo of Ōtomo Francisco [Sōrin] Saddle, p. 226, and Images 13–15). A cannon he received, also bearing the FRCO monogram, is depicted here as well (Images 14–16). (This cannon ended up in St. Petersburg, after being captured by Russian forces in the nineteenth century when, having taken control of Siberia, they probed Japanese defenses of their northern islands.)
The warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534–82), who expelled Yoshiaki, the last Ashikaga shōgun in 1573, effectively used guns in battle during the 1575 battle of Nagashino (see Ōta Gyūichi, The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga, p. 235), when he defeated the Takeda, a rival. Nobunaga subjugated many rivals but was killed by Akechi Mitsuhide (1528–82), one of his own generals, in 1582. Toyotomi Hideyoshi (?–1598), another one of Nobunaga’s generals, then gained power. Hideyoshi, through a series of profound transformations, created the samurai order. The term samurai means “one who serves”; in this case, the now-landless warriors were obligated to serve and reside near a daimyō lord. Their status, and its constituent income, depended on ties to a lord. Those samurai who did not have direct investiture or a lord became known as rōnin, “masterless” samurai, or “wave men.”
Hideyoshi forced warriors either to live on their lands and become “peasants” (hyakushō), a term which previously meant all commoners in general, or to leave the lands and become samurai (see Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Edict Concerning the Collection of Swords, p. 242; and Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Edict Regarding the Separation of Status, p. 243). Divorced from the countryside, samurai became urban dwellers in the newly established castle towns.
Hideyoshi based his concept of social status on revenue—in particular, the amount of rice a single person required in a year; this measurement was known as a koku. To be considered a daimyō, or great lord, a man had to have 10,000 koku or {xxvii} more at his disposal. He also initiated an ill-conceived attempt to conquer Ming China, which led to two invasions of Korea, in 1592 and 1597. Hideyoshi’s armies never made it to China as Ming troops pushed his forces back, until they withdrew after his death.
The Samurai of the Tokugawa Era (1603–1867)
Shortly after Hideyoshi’s death in 1598, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616)—a rival warlord and follower of Oda Nobunaga—took up arms against the Toyotomi supporters, winning the battle of Sekigahara against them in 1600. He put many Hideyoshi supporters to death or confiscated their properties; some of Tokugawa’s enemies, such as the Uesugi and the Mōri, survived in much reduced circumstances, while only a few, such as the Shimazu, maintained their earlier power. In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed as Sei-i-tai shōgun and his descendants could justify their rule by governing through this this office through 1867. In 1615, Ieyasu destroyed the forces of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s wife and son and immediately thereafter codified his rule in the buke shohatto (see The Buke Shohatto of 1615, p. 264). These warrior codes were revised by Tokugawa Ieyasu’s grandson Iemitsu (1604–51) in 1635 (see The Revised Buke Shohatto of 1635, p. 265).
The warrior codes of conduct established in the buke shohatto prohibited daimyō from having interactions with the imperial court. These daimyō could only have a single castle in their domains, and had to travel to the Tokugawa headquarters, a new city called Edo, located in eastern Japan, where their families were required to reside. Edo’s population grew to over a million over the course of the eighteenth century. Yet the Japanese worldview seemed to narrow even as the urban center of Edo continued to grow: Japanese people were forbidden from traveling abroad and even required permission to travel within Japan. The faith of Christianity was banned, along with some sects of Nichiren Buddhism which did not acknowledge the primacy of Tokugawa authority.
As Japan experienced a certain level of peace and prosperity in the Tokugawa era, the need for fighting samurai waned, and these warriors slowly took on the roles of administrators, or local officials. Former samurai tended to look back nostalgically at their fiercer fighting days. Some wrote treatises explaining arms and armor; others studied Confucianism; still others studied marital arts. Some intellectuals, such as Kumazawa Banzan (1619–91) (see Kumazawa Banzan, “Abolition of the Separate Soldier Class,” p. 267), argued that the removal of samurai from the {xxviii} land had enervated their military prowess. He referred to their lackluster attempts to quell a Christian uprising at Shimabara in 1637, during which the Christian rebels were able to kill a commanding Tokugawa general with a good shot from one of their cannons. Though they were defeated and slaughtered in the end, Kumazawa Banzan’s critiques of policy of separating the samurai from the land had merit. Some samurai wrote in their diaries how they fainted at the sight of blood. Other samurai used their status and authority to become tax collectors even when they had no right to do so (see Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai, p. 280).
During the seventeenth century, the old bonds of warriors to their lands were sometimes recalled, however, such as when one murderous samurai, who became a serial killer, fled to his ancestral lands, where he was protected by his peasants (see Arai Hakuseki’s Autobiography, p. 272). In general, though, samurai became urban dwellers, removed from villages, save for times when they traveled to extort extra taxes from these regions. Yet again, experiences differ, as some villages were hostile to their lords and remote from them (most notably Goganzuka village; see Musui’s Story), while in other cases, villagers like Jinmori Heizō fought valiantly for their lord and supported the well-being of their domain as a whole (see The Testament of Shiba Gorō, p. 292).
The Collapse of the Tokugawa and the End of the Samurai (1867–77)
As the Tokugawa regime buckled under foreign pressure to engage in diplomatic relations with America and other nations, it also loosened the strictures imposed on samurai by the buke shohatto. Some domains immediately established ties with the imperial court and bought weapons, two developments which led directly to the wars that brought down the Tokugawa. The Tokugawa surrendered in 1867, but battles continued between daimyō forces of the west (Chōshū and Satsuma) and the northeast (Aizu Wakamatsu), who were allied with different factions. The samurai of Aizu Wakamatsu, in the northeast, were badly outmaneuvered and defeated, suffering casualties among men, women, and children (see The Testament of Shiba Gorō, p. 292, and Two Petitions for Reward [gunchūjō] Submitted in 1869, p. 297).
A new imperial government, known by the new era name of Meiji, or Enlightened Rule, took power in 1868. Forces from western Japan—in particular, the domains of Chōshū and Satsuma, nominally ruled by the Mōri and Shimazu families, respectively—dominated this new regime. Among the other reforms instituted by the Meiji government was the reestablishment of a conscription army. {xxix} The samurai right to bear arms was formally abolished in 1876 (see The Japan Mail: Abolishing of the Samurai Right to Wear Swords, p. 300), but that year and the following year of 1877, witnessed massive rebellions in the west. The most famous of these uprisings was led by Saigō Takamori (1828–77) (see The Diary of Kidō Takayoshi, p. 302), an ex-Meiji leader from Satsuma. Saigō captured a local armory and tried to capture the castle of Kumamoto but was outgunned by the newly conscripted army and defeated. The samurai order was then dissolved, although it would linger in Okinawa until 1914.
In later centuries, however, the idea of the “Way of the Warrior,” which had been debated in the Tokugawa era, became idealized as an ethical system, that of Bushidō, which had little to do with actual warrior behavior. Idealizations of the Japanese warriors and their imagined ethical system, if not the warriors themselves, live on in popular culture as an ideal which had passed beyond the boundaries of Japan to become a trope of the human condition and world culture.
A Note on Dates: The sources translated in this text rely on the Japanese lunar calendar, which does not correspond to the Julian or Gregorian calendars. Hence, months will be referred to numerically throughout the text.
A Note on Names: Full names of Japanese men will contain the genitive no particle only for sources dating from early times through the twelfth century. As this practice was eventually abandoned, names from the thirteenth century onward will not include this particle.