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Foundations of the Modern Japanese Daimyo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

John Whitney Hall
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The institutional foundations of the Tokugawa daimyo have been obscured by the lack of insight which historians have traditionally shown into the history of the Ashikaga period and, in particular, into the late Ashikaga, or Sengoku, age. Like the Dark Ages in Europe, this chapter of Japanese history has been accepted in historiography as a dark and formless era of war and trouble. Japanese historians have dismissed the Sengoku period as a time of ge-koku-jō when the political order was capriciously turned upside down by unworthy leaders. The colorful Western historian, James Murdoch, has heaped his most caustic invectives upon the main figures in Ashikaga history. Of the founder of the Ashikaga shogunate he claimed, “Takauji may indeed have been the greatest man of his time, but that is not saying very much, for the middle of the fourteenth century in Japan was the golden age, not merely of turncoats, but of mediocrities.”1 To Murdoch the Sengoku period was a “vile” age when the Japanese people showed, as he put it, a “lust for war and slaughter … utterly beyond human control,” and only the timely arrival of the “great trio” of daimyo, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu, saved the day for Japan.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , May 1961 , pp. 317 - 329
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1961

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References

1 Murdoch, James, History of Japan (3 vols., Kōbe and London, 1903–1926), I, 580.Google Scholar

2 Murdoch, I, 636.

3 Dening, Walter, The Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98) (Kōbe, 1930), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

4 Kichiji, Nakamura, Hōkfnsei saihenseishi [History of the Re-establishment of the Feudal System] (Tokyo, 1939).Google Scholar

5 Tsunoda, Ryusaku, de Bary, Wm. Theodore, Keene, Donald, comp., Sources of the Japanese Tradition (New York, 1958), p. 322.Google Scholar

6 Suzuki Ryōichi, “Shokuhō-seiken ron” [“On the Shokuhō Political Structure”], Kenkyūkai, Rekishigaku and Kenkyūkai, Nihonshi, Nihon rekfthi kōza [Lectures on Japanese History] (8 vols., Tokyo, 1952), IV, 86.Google Scholar

7 For a selection of the more accessible and generalized writings of these historians see: Keiji, Nagahara, “Shugo ryōkokusei no tenkai” [“The Changing Structure of the Shugo Domain”], Shakpikeizaishigaku, XVII (Feb. 1951), 103–104Google Scholar; Shinʻichi, Satō, “Shugo ryōkokusei no tenkai” [“The Changing Structure of the Shugo Domain”], Shin Nihon rekishi taikei [New Series on Japanese History] (6 vols., Tokyo, 1952–1954), III, 81–127Google Scholar; Takeshi, Toyoda, “Sengoku-daimyo-ryō no keisei” [“The Structure of the Sengoku Daimyo Domain”], Shin Nihon rekishi taikei, III, 197–223Google Scholar; Takeshi, Toyoda, “Shokuhō seiken” [“The Shokuhō Political Structure”], Nihon rekishi kpza, III, 185–208Google Scholar; Tasaburō, Itō, “Kinsei daimyō kenkyū josetsu” [“Introduction to die Study of the Modern Daimyo”], Shigaku zasshi, LV, nos. 9 and 11 (Sept., Nov. 1944)Google Scholar; Kichiji, Nakamura, “Kokudaka seido to hōkensei—Bakuhan taisei no seikaku—” [“The kokudaka System and Feudalism—The Nature of the Shogunal-Daimyo System—”], Shigaku zasshi, LXLX, nos. 7–8 (July, Aug. 1960).Google Scholar

8 Sansom, George B., Japan—A Short Cultural History (rev. ed., New York, 1943), pp. 362–365.Google Scholar

9 Kanʻichi, Asakawa, tr. and ed., The Documents of Iriki, Illustrative of the Development of the Feudal Institutions of Japan (New Haven, 1929).Google Scholar

10 Satsuma, the scene of the Asakawa's study of the Iriki house documents, is one of the few regions in which a shugo family of Kamakura origin, the Shimazu, managed to retain its power and continue as a daimyo under the Tokugawa hegemony.

11 Tasaburō, Itō, Nihon hōkenseido shi [History of Feudal Institutions in Japan] (Tokyo, 1951), p. 142Google Scholar; Shigeki, Yoshimura, Kokushi-seido hōkai ni kansuru kenkyū [A Study of the Decline of the System of Provincial Governorships] (Tokyo, 1957)Google Scholar. For a case study of a shugo family in the vicinity of Okayama see: Hisato, Matsuoka, “Ōuchi-shi no hatten to sono ryōkoku shihai” [“The Emergence of the Ōuchi House and its System of Territorial Control”], in Sōgorō, Uozumi, Daimyō-ryōkoku to jōamachi [Daimyo Territories and castle towns] (Kyōto, 1957).Google Scholar

12 These figures were compiled by Madoka Kanai from the following sources: Usaburō, Nagayama, Okayama Ken nōchishi [History of Agricultural Land in Okayama Prefecture] (Okayama, 1952), 394–452Google Scholar; Naokatsu, Nakamura, Shōen no kenkyū [Studies on shōen] (Tokyo, 1939), 601–643Google Scholar; Rizō, Takeuchi, Jiryō shōen no kenkyū [Studies on Temple Shōen] (Tokyo, 1942), 63–64, 77, 471–472Google Scholar; Toranosuke, Nishioka, Shōenshi no kenkyū [Studies on Shōen History] (3 vols., Tōkyō, 1956–1957), III, 882–886Google Scholar; Masatake, Shimizu, Shōen shiryō [Documents on Shōen] (2 vols., Tōkyō, 1933), 1121 ff.Google Scholar

13 Kyōichirō, Mizuno, “Shugo Akamatsu-shi no ryōkoku shihai to Kakitsu no hen” [The Territorial Administration of the shugo Akamatsu House and the Kakitsu Incident], Shirin, 42 (1959), 254–281.Google Scholar

14 For an analysis of the institutional weaknesses of a shugo house similar to the Akamatsu see: Yoshio, Koyamada, “Muromachi jidai no Mōri-shi ni tsuite” [“On the Mōri House during the Muromachi Period”] Rekjshi kyōiku, 7.8 (1959), 24–26Google Scholar; Sakuji, Fukui, “Mōri-shi no daimyō ryōshusei no hatten” [“The Development by the Mōri House of its System of Daimyo Territorial Control], Geibi chihōshi kenkyū, V–VI (1954), 17–24Google Scholar. Hiroshi, Sugiyama, Shōen kaitai katei no kenkyū [Studies on the Dissolusion of the Shōen] (Tōkyō, 1959), 138–192.Google Scholar

15 Usaburō, Nagayama, Okayama Ken tsūshi [Survey History of Okayama Prefecture] (2 vols., Okayama, 1930), II, 987–1011.Google Scholar

16 Shiyakusho, Okayama, Okayama Shi shi [History of Okayama City] (6 vols., Okayama, 1938), II, 1195 ffGoogle Scholar. Seiichi, Tanaka, ed., Kibi gunsho shūsei dai san shū (Senki bu) [Collected Writing on Kibi, Volume 3, (Military Chronicles)] (Tokyo, 1921).Google Scholar

17 lkeda-ke monjo [lkeda-house Archives], Urakami Ukida ryōke bugenchō [House Rolls of the Urakami and Ukida], doc. Zatsu, 717.

18 Okayama Shi shi, II, 1325.

19 The Ukida House has left behind only a very few documents relating to its rise as the first great daimyo of Bizen, perhaps due to its violent demise in 1600. The available records are fairly well assembled in Okayama Shi shi, II, 1403 ff. A few house rolls recovered from the archives of the Ōoka family are found in the Okayama Kenritsu Toshokan (Okayama Prefectural Library).

20 Urakami Ukida ryōke bugenchō.

21 See Ōoka-ke monjo [Ōoka House Archives], Ukida Chūnagon Hideie Kyō kashi chigyōchō [Roll of Fiefs of the Housemen of the Middle Counsellor, Lord Ukida Hideie], Okayama Kenritsu Toshokan, doc. 692.8/132.

22 Sumio, Taniguchi, “Bizen hansei no kakuritsu katei,” [“The Establishment of the Bizen Domain Administration”], Okayama Daigaku Kyōikūgakūbu kenkyū shūrokū [Collected Research Papers from the School of Education, Okayama University], II (1956), 1–3.Google Scholar

23 Okayama Shi shi, II, 1492, 1504. The significance of the shuinjō is discussed in Takahiro, Okuno, Nobunaga to Hideyoshi [Nobunaga and Hideyoshi] (Tōkyō, 1955), 61–63Google Scholar. But the technical study of the legal issues involved in the transfer of authority from the Ashikaga Shogun's consent to the “red seal” of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi has yet to be made.

24 This is revealed in the structure of the Ukida house rolls. See especially: Ukida Chūnagon Hideie Kyō kashi chigyōchō.

25 Disregarding the controversy over whether the resulting condition should be interpreted as more “feudalistic” than the previous situation, Japanese studies have agreed upon the importance of certain basic changes in the organization of rural and urban communities. See Mitsuo, Shimizu, Nihon chūsei no sonraku [The Medieval Village in Japan] (Tokyo, 1942)Google Scholar; Mitsuru, Miyagawa, Taikō kenchi ron [On the Cadastral Survey of Hideyoshi] (2 vols., Tokyo, 1957)Google Scholar; Gakkai, Shakaikeizaishi, Hōken ryōshusei no kakuritsu—Taikō kenchi wo meguru shomondai [The Establishment of Feudal Proprietorship—Various Problems Related to the Hideyoshi Cadastral Survey] (Tokyo, 1957)Google Scholar; Moriaki, Araki, “Taikō kenchi no rekishiteki zentei” [“The Historical Foundations of the Hideyoshi Cadastral Survey”], Rekishigaku kenkyū, 163 and 167 (1954).Google Scholar

26 For studies of the effects of the reorganization of the land system under the Ukida see Madoka, Kanai, “Shokuhō-ki ni okeru Bizen” [“Bizen during the Shokuho Period”], Chihōshi kenhyū, XLII (1959), 9–20Google Scholar; Hajime, Shibata, “Sengoku dogōsō to Taikō kenchi” [“The Sengoku Local Gentry and Hideyoshi's Cadastral Survey”], Rekishi kyōiku, VI, No. 8 (1958), 52–63.Google Scholar

27 For an analytical treatment of the stabilization of the Bizen domain under the Ibeda see Taniguchi, “Bizen hansei,” pp. 4–14.

28 See Hall, J. W., “The Confucian Teacher in Tokugawa Japan,” David S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright, Confucianism in Action (Stanford, 1959), pp. 272–277.Google Scholar

29 Sumio, Taniguchi, “Han kashindan no keisei to kozō—Okayama-han no baai” [“The Structure and Organization of the han Houseband—The Case of Okayama”], Shigaku zasshi, LXVI, No. 6 (June 1957), 594–615.Google Scholar

30 See Kenkyūkai, Hampō, ed., Hampōshū, I, Okayama-han [Collected han laws, I, Okayama-han] (2 vols., Tokyo, 1959–1960)Google Scholar; Okayama Shishi, vols. III and IV, for the most extensive published sources on Okayama legislation.

31 Hampō Kenkyūkai, op. cit., I, 186, 263; Madoka, Kanai, “Ōjoya no gyōseki kuiki ni tsuite—Bizenhan no baai” [“On the Administrative Jurisdiction of the ōjōya—The Case of Bizen-han”], Shigakji zasshi, LXII, No. 1 (Jan., 1953), 66–71.Google Scholar

32 Nakamura Kichiji, in his article “Kokudaka seido to hōkensei” (cited in note 7) has recently reversed the dominant academic trend in Japan led by Araki and Miyagawa who have taken the stand that the Tokugawa period brought a true serfdom to the Japanese peasant and therefore represents the final attainment of feudalism in Japan. Nakamura has emphasized the many “non-feudal” aspects of the Tokugawa political and social structure.