Chapter Eleven:
Rise of the Warriors
The Heian period came to an end as a result of a major shift in relative strength among the four main groups that wielded political power (emperor & imperial family, aristocracy, temples, and provincial warriors). This chapter covers the basics of the political, military and economic narrative of medieval Japan.
By roughly the middle of the Heian period, the world of the aristocrats in the capital had become remarkably insular and removed from life in the rest of Japan. It was almost a fairy tale world--a delicate blossom destined to fade and scatter in the face of the winds of inevitable change, to say it in the Buddhist-inspired style of Heian-period discourse. Turning our attention back to the realm of politics and institutions, the cloistered emperor's court had managed to return the preponderance of political power in the capital to the imperial family; though, as always, it still had to rely on the cooperation of leading aristocratic families. The power of the capital over outlying areas, however, had been gradually fading. Filling the power gap were local strongmen with bands of warriors under their command. Many of these local strongmen had distant hereditary connections with the aristocrats in the capital, often with the imperial family.
The reason for these connections is that the imperial family continually grew too large, its members having ample time, energy and opportunities to produce many children, each of whom in turn tend to produce many children, and so forth. The numbers of imperial second cousins and other distant relatives grew too large for the government to provide for their support. Periodically, therefore, the government would undertake a weaning out of persons a certain number of generations removed from the current emperor. Those affected lost all or most of their government support and usually had to leave the capital to seek their fortunes in the provinces. An imperial relative, a cousin, for example, would have been unimportant in the capital because such people were so numerous. Out in the provinces, however, even the most distant imperial relatives enjoyed prestige. This prestige combined with connections back in the capital enabled many of these provincial aristocrats to acquire managerial interests in shōen. Economic power went hand-in-hand with military power, resulting in the formation throughout Japan of #bands of provincial warriors# led by local aristocrats. As the generations passed, these local strongmen abandoned the refined manners and culture of the capital.
Back in the capital, the aristocrats regarded such provincial strongmen as uncultured boors, hardly worthy of respect. Aristocratic capital society held skill in the military arts in the lowest regard. Indeed, to suggest that another aristocrat was "skilled with a bow" or something to that effect was a common form of insult. When one or another of these bands of local warriors got out of hand, becoming outlaws or rebels, the imperial court summoned other warrior bands to attack the rebels. As incentive, the court usually offered grants of minor rank. That the court's strategy was successful, at least for a while, suggests it retained much cultural prestige in the provinces, even if it lacked its own military might.
One of the earliest of the rebel warriors was Taira-no-Masakado 平将門 (#his resume#), a fifth-generation descendant of Emperor Kanmu. Masakado took over several provinces and set up a rival court in 939. The imperial court appointed a member of the Fujiwara family as general, giving him orders to attack the rebels; however, before he was able to do anything significant, several other provincial warrior groups, including other branches of the Taira family, joined forces and defeated Masakado. The major point for our purposes is that, even as early as the 900s, rivalry among the different warrior groups, not the military power of the imperial court itself, kept potentially serious challenges to the imperial system in check. This situation, of course, was not conducive to long-term stability.
By the late Heian period, two large military clans had emerged, each with branches in many provinces. One was the Minamoto 源 family, the other the Taira 平 family. Both were distant descendants of former emperors. This situation was potentially dangerous for the imperial court because, if one of these two clans were to defeat the other, there would be nothing but tradition to stop the victor from taking over all government authority. This was exactly what happened, though tradition turned out to be a powerful force in restraining the demands of the warriors. As a result, the imperial court retained a substantial measure of importance and authority throughout the Kamakura period.
In the #struggle between these two families,# fortunes rose and fell for each during the twelfth century (#map#). At first, the Taira family gained the upper hand, and, by the middle of the twelfth century, their leaders had taken up residence in Kyōto. They demanded high court rank and offices and got it. The Taira ruled as virtual dictators, much like the Fujiwara had done at the height of their power. Like the Fujiwara, the Taira did not eliminate the emperor or any key institution. Instead they ruled from different places within the system, their military power always an ominous force in the background. Things looked bleak for the traditional aristocrats. They regarded the Taira as barbaric warriors and were horrified at the extent of Taira power, yet they were helpless to check it.
The Minamoto clan had not, however, been totally defeated. Led by politically astute Minamoto Yoritomo 源頼朝 (1149-1199) and his brother Yoshitsune 義経 (1159-89), a brilliant general who met a tragic end, the Minamoto began to make a comeback. Meanwhile, at the Heian court, life went on among the aristocrats, but change was definitely in the air. One specific problem was that revenues from shōen (quasi-private estates) were becoming less reliable as imperial power weakened. Shōen managers in the field began using a variety of excuses (bad weather/crop failure, for example) as a thin cover for not delivering full quantities, or even any, of the produce normally owed to the holders of formal estate rights (shiki 職) in the capital.
Pressured by the Taira and by reduced revenues, the high courtly ideals of the middle Heian period began to decline, albeit gradually, in a variety of ways. In literature, for example, we see less concern with elegance and taste and increasingly detailed depictions of the more sinister sides of life. In a major novel from the twelfth century, Konjaku monogatari, for example, we find relatively graphic depictions of sexual acts, often with a sinister twist. In one part, a former lover turned demon has been having sexual relations with one of the emperor's wives. The emperor called in Buddhist monks to perform an exorcism, but the demon merely bided his time, waiting a few months to make everyone think the exorcism had been successful. Then one day the demon reappeared in the palace and:
. . . the lady reappeared following the demon. They made love right in front of the Emperor and everyone else present. It was so ugly an act that it cannot possibly be described. She performed it without any restraint at all. When the demon arose, she also stood up and went back into her room. The Emperor felt that there was nothing that could be done and collapsed in tears. (Quoted in Shuichi Kato, A History of Japanese Literature 1: The First Thousand Years [New York: Kodansha International, 1979], p. 205.)
Lady Murasaki and Sei Shōnagon would have been shocked at such coarse, unpleasant matters depicted in literature. In the late Heian period, however, the "demons" (military families?) were gaining the upper hand over the "Emperor" (imperial court and aristocrats). The once-glorious aristocratic order (the imperial wife?) was clearly starting to decline by the twelfth century.
Another development of the twelfth century was that institutionalized Buddhism had become widely regarded as corrupt and worldly. By almost any standard, this perception was accurate. Recall that the Tendai relied on the concept of original enlightenment as expressed in the Triple Truth. In this view, both the provisional and the void were equally "real," and one purpose of proper Tendai practice was to apprehend this truth. Over the course of the Heian period, there was a tendency for Tendai priests increasingly to focus on the void. Neglecting the provisional, when they did discuss the phenomenal realm, they often taught "that evil is good and ordinary people are Buddhas." Instead of affirming the subtle theology of the religion, the effect was to encourage "people to indulge in their desires," which "contributed to moral degeneration." (Yoshiro Tamura, Japanese Buddhism: A Cultural History, Jeffrey Hunter, trans. [Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Co., 2000], p. 77.) The moral decline of the clergy and organized Buddhism in general fueled fears that the world had entered mappō, the final, degenerate phase of the Buddhist cosmic cycle.
Law and order also began to decline within the capital during the twelfth century. The great Buddhist temples surrounding Kyōto took advantage of the imperial court's weakness by sending armed bands of warrior monks into the capital. These monks would sometimes march right up to the grounds of the imperial court and present lists of demands for political favors and concessions. To avoid attack from the imperial guards, the monks often brought various Buddhist icons, relics, and other holy objects with them. Terrified of divine wrath, the guards would not dare attack or even confront the monks (in most cases, there were some exceptions). The warrior monks' terrorizing of the capital and intimidation of the imperial court was another indication of the decline of late Heian period aristocratic society.
Warfare broke out anew in the late 1170s between the regrouped Minamoto forces and the Taira armies. Under the able generalship of Yoritomo's brother #Yoshitsune# (#details;# #contemporary image#), the Minamoto forces gradually gained the upper hand. In 1185, the Taira and Minamoto fought a final, decisive battle in which the Minamoto were completely victorious. With the Taira destroyed, #Minamoto Yoritomo# (#contemporary image#) and his warriors emerged as the single most powerful military or political force in Japan. Incidentally, to secure his own personal power, Yoritomo accused his brother Yoshitsune of treason and forced him to commit suicide. It was Yoshitsune who had done nearly all of the work of defeating the Taira, but he paid a heavy price for political naiveté. The tragic circumstances of his death after a heroic career resulted in Yoshitsune becoming a literary hero, celebrated even today.
The military struggle between the Taira and the Minamoto is known as the Gempei 源平 War(s), which are chronicled in the literary song-tale Heike Monogatari 平家物語 (composed, 13th century) and the epic tale Taiheiki 太平記 (composed, 14th century). Barbara Ruch comments on the broader influence of this epic struggle as follows:
No one was unaffected by the battles. The Gempei Wars shocked the nobility, cracked the social structure, disrupted normal agricultural and commercial life, tore apart families on all levels of society, and left whole segments of the country widowed, orphaned, or disabled by the loss of economic support or normal employment. ("The Other Side of Culture in Medieval Japan," in Kozo Yamamura, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan: Volume 3 Medieval Japan [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990], p. 532.)
After victory over the Taira, Minamoto Yoritomo set up his headquarters in Kamakura, a city in the general vicinity of present-day Tōkyō. Yoritomo claimed to be in complete support of the imperial court, and all evidence indicates that he did respect imperial traditions. Nevertheless, because of Yoritomo's military power, talks with the imperial court were actually negotiations regarding the division of power.
In 1192, the emperor bestowed on Yoritomo the title sei'i taishōgun 征夷大将軍 which means "barbarian-conquering great general." Thereupon, Yoritomo established a military government at his base in Kamakura. His title is usually abbreviated to shōgun 将軍, and his military government is commonly known by its Japanese term *bakufu,* 幕府 which is so common that we will use it here. The title Shōgun may sound impressive, but, being a military post, it was not high on the list of court offices. It seems that Yoritomo was willing to go without a high office or title from the imperial court, which must have pleased the aristocrats, and set up his headquarters far from Kyōto. In return, however, the court delegated substantial real authority to him.
Initially, Yoritomo received permission from the court to appoint his own officers as shōen supervisors and as provincial military governors in all of Japan's eastern provinces. This development in effect created *two different governments* in Japan, each with its own capital. Yoritomo's Bakufu ruled the east from the city of Kamakura; Go-Shirakawa 後白河 the cloistered emperor, ruled the western provinces from Kyōto. The imperial capital retained its prestige as the center of high culture. However much the imperial court may have disliked its forced alliance with Yoritomo, the merger actually strengthened imperial authority in the western provinces because now the imperial court had a powerful backer. Yoritomo's appointees also restored shōen (estate) revenues to the Kyōto aristocratic holders of shiki (rights to certain estate revenues), though there was a discount to pay for the bakufu-appointed overseer. (As time went on, however, these overseers became a major problem for shiki-holding aristocrats, as we will see later.) The alliance between the civilian and military governments also gave legitimacy to Yoritomo's Bakufu.
Yoritomo died relatively young in an accident in 1199. At the time of his death he had two small sons and had not made arrangements for who would succeed him to leadership of the Minamoto family and the other families allied with it. Yoritomo's principal wife, Hōjō Masako 北条政子 (1157-1225), took advantage of the situation. Along with her father, Hōjō Tokimasa 北条時政 (1138-1215), she used her power over Yoritomo's sons to place members of the Hōjō family into key leadership positions within Kamakura's Bakufu. Gradually, the Hōjō family gained de facto control of the Bakufu. Yoritomo's descendants continued to become Shōgun, but they were actually puppets of a Hōjō regent (shikken 執権) who ruled the Bakufu from behind the scenes.
Around the year 1220, Japan had two governments, each ostensibly headed by someone who was in fact nearly powerless--the emperor in Kyōto and the Shōgun in Kamakura.
The real power in each case lay behind the scenes--the cloistered emperor in Kyōto and the Hōjō regent in Kamakura. This type of arrangement is still common in Japan today, whether in the realm of government or in business. It is common to find someone with a lofty title but very little real power serving as a ceremonial figurehead for one or more persons behind the scenes, often with humble titles, who actually wield power and make decisions. Government and business leaders from the United States trying to do business in Japan have often suffered for their ignorance of this phenomenon. What are some advantages to this arrangement of power? What are some disadvantages?
Until 1221, the power balance between the *imperial court and the Bakufu* was about even. The Bakufu, however, had greater potential power since government is ultimately based on coercive force. In the early Kamakura period, two important power struggles took place, one in each capital. In Kamakura, the brother and sister team of Hōjō Yoshitoki 北条義時 (1163-1224) and #Hōjō Masako# seized power from their father Tokimasa and (really) retired him. In Kyōto, Emperor Go-Toba 後鳥羽 "retired" at age 18 and then set to work eliminating the influence of rival court factions. By 1202, he was in complete control of his own cloistered government and was on the fast track to becoming master of the whole capital. Go-Toba began to compete with Kamakura in certain ways. For example, he recruited prominent Bakufu retainers for his personal guard units, thus providing an alternative source of patronage for warriors. Both the Hōjō siblings and Go-Toba were ambitious.
Go-Toba (large #image#) and Hōjō Masako entered into negotiations for a marriage link between the imperial court and the Bakufu. Masako's plan was for one of Go-Toba's sons to be adopted into the Minamoto family and become shōgun. Go-Toba balked at the plan after he learned of the assassination of the third shōgun, Minamoto Sanetomo (1192-1219), for not cooperating with the Hōjō. The bakufu responded by implied threats and other forms of pressure, and, finally, Go-Toba was forced to allow an imperial princess to marry the Hōjō-controlled shōgun. Go-Toba decided at this point to go to war and destroy the Bakufu. He quietly raised an army from imperial shōen and Buddhist temples and attacked suddenly in 1221. The attack initially caught the Hōjō family off guard, but they soon rallied and defeated Go-Toba's forces in what is known as the Jōkyū War (or Jōkyū Disturbance 承久の乱). The fighting lasted approximately a month.
When word spread of the defeat of the imperial forces, lawlessness broke out in several western provinces as local warrior groups took advantage of the situation. This and similar incidents made the bakufu leaders realize that however much they might want to exact revenge on the imperial court, they still needed its authority to maintain order in the west. Therefore, the bakufu did not make radical changes in the imperial court. The changes it did make, however, were significant. After exiling Go-Toba to a remote location, the bakufu abolished the court of the cloistered emperor. Retired emperors now really retired. Second, the bakufu posted an overseer in Kyōto and reserved the right to intervene in high-level personnel decisions in the imperial court. Finally, the bakufu forced the court to allow it to post shōen managers and provincial military governors in the western provinces, just as it had earlier done in the east.
From this point on, the balance of power shifted firmly in favor of the warriors. The imperial court continued to exist, but it gradually lost power and prestige until the nineteenth century. For reasons we examine in HIST 481, from the mid-nineteenth century, the imperial court gradually regained its prestige, as well as some of its power. During the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, It was warrior government and institutions that most shaped the direction of Japanese society. As political power shifted from civilians to warriors, institutional importance shifted from the imperial court to the bakufu. Japan had three bakufus, two of which we deal with in this chapter in some detail.
A period of approximately fifty yeas of relative peace and prosperity followed the Jōkyū War. The Hōjō regents provided excellent leadership for the bakufu, and the bakufu oversaw the operations of the imperial court. We need not examine the structure of the Kamakura bakufu here in detail, but we should be aware of its basic functions. First, it supervised Japan's warrior households, which was no simple task. Second, it supervised local officials and shōen managers. Third, it adjudicated disputes involving warriors or warriors versus civilian aristocrats (the imperial court continued to adjudicate disputes involving civilian aristocrats and ordinary people residing in Kyōto). The bakufu, in other words, had become Japan's largest legal organization, and its courts were constantly backlogged with disputes.
It was common for Kyōto aristocrats to bring suit before the bakufu against local shōen managers (bakufu appointees), claiming the managers were not delivering all the goods and produce owed the capital shiki holders. The bakufu tried to be fair in such cases and often sided against the shōen manager. The penalties it meted out to wayward managers, however, were usually too light to serve as an incentive for them to stop their wrongdoing. Dealing with the bakufu-appointed shōen managers became so frustrating for civilian aristocrats that many opted for a rearrangement of the contractual obligations. Known as shitaji-chūbun, a common rearrangement was to *split the shōen* physically in half. One part went to the bakufu's shōen manager, the other to the aristocrat and his own appointed manager. Such an arrangement often resulted in a cut in revenue for the aristocrat on paper but a greater, if not perfect, assurance that he would at least receive a predictable income. These arrangements were a sign that the bakufu was unable fully to control local warriors, even at the peak of its power.
The post-Jōkyū era was a difficult time for many court aristocrats. Kato describes aristocratic reactions to the reality of warrior power as follows:
The aristocracy reacted in two basic ways to the military power of Kamakura. The first, as we have already seen, was to seize every opportunity to set in motion plots aimed at resurrecting the old system. The unsuccessful Jōkyū uprising of 1221, led by the Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180-1239), was a typical example of this reaction. The second reaction is well illustrated by the policy of Fujiwara Kanezane (1149-1207) and his close relationship with Yoritomo; Kanezane's policy being to preserve the autonomy of Kyōto by compromise with Kamakura and to maintain for the aristocracy as many as possible of the special privileges, especially 'shōen', they had enjoyed under the old system. Many individual aristocrats adopted this second attitude as a means of self-preservation.2
Despite the prevalence of disputes over shōen revenues and general aristocratic anxiety, there were no major problems until the late 1260s. At that time, the Mongols were completing their conquest of China and had also intimidated the Korean kingdom into becoming their allies. Mongol leader Kubilai Khan first sent envoys to Japan in 1266 to demand that Japan become a tributary state of the Mongol empire. The aristocrats at the imperial court were terrified of antagonizing the powerful Mongol leader and probably would have agreed to the demand. When Kubilai's envoys reached the bakufu, however, Regent Hōjō Tokimune 北条時宗 (1251-1284, #image#) rejected their demands with scorn. Subsequent Mongol envoys received similar treatment. What was Kubilai Khan's motivation? According to Thomas D, Conlan:
Surviving records suggest . . . that the Mongols were in fact preoccupied with political hegemony, for such rhetoric pervades their diplomatic missives; the accumulation of wealth seems to have been perceived as a function of this dominance that deserved little explicit attention. Indeed, an aura of absolute supremacy permeates their diplomatic discourse, which when coupled with their military offensives, led many to conclude that they intended to bring the whole world under their domination. (Thomas D. Conlan, trans., In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Takezaki Suenaga’s Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan. [Ithaca: East Asian Program, Cornell University, 2001], pp. 255-6.)
In 1274, Kubilai Khan finally resorted to force, sending from Korea an armada, which landed an #invasion force# numbering about 30,000 #soldiers# according to traditional accounts (some accounts put the figure as high as 90,000). Because each side greatly exaggerated the number of enemy soldiers in its own records (during and soon after the invasion period), one should be skeptical of such a large figure. Conlan has carefully examined both Mongol and Japanese military capabilities and concludes that each side consisted of perhaps 2,000 - 3,000 soldiers in 1274. Regarding overall military capabilities: “Surviving sources suggest that military parity existed between the Mongol invaders and the Japanese. Although the Mongols enjoyed naval superiority, they lacked sufficient forces to occupy northern Kyūshū and accordingly avoided close confrontations with the Japanese defenders.” (Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention, p. 265.)
It is hard to say with certainly how the Japanese forces fared in the initial battles on 1274, in part because the Mongol force did not have sufficient solders to conquer and hold much territory even under ideal conditions. Working against the defenders was the superior weaponry of the Mongols. More important was that the Japanese defenders, while sufficiently numerous, consisted of a collection of local warrior bands with little or no central organization. Each warrior band--or individual warrior--sought to maximize its own glory in the hope of receiving rewards from the bakufu. Many, therefore, avoided areas of the battle where the Mongols were strongest and Japanese defenders most urgently needed. Instead, they tended to hold back while seeking places where they could score a relatively easy "victory" in the sense of taking Mongol heads or being witnessed killing Mongol invaders. In any case, not long after the Mongols landed, they departed. The traditional account blames the departure on serious storms that arose suddenly, causing the Korean sailors manning the fleet to persuade the Mongols to leave or risk disaster. But the likely cause was not a storm per se, but a sudden reversal of the wind direction. Mongol commanders had come to know that their numbers were insufficient, and the change in wind direction facilitated their sailing back to the continent. In any event, "neither side believed that the 1274 encounter had been decisive. The Mongols attributed their initial failure simply to insufficient manpower, while the Japanese, uncowed by the Mongols, initiated preparations for an invasion of Korea in order to belatedly aid anti-Mongol forces.” (Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention, p. 267.) (#visual images# of the invasions)
The first Mongol force withdrew, but Kubilai had certainly not given up. He sent several more envoys and threatened a much larger invasion force if Japan did not capitulate to Mongol demands. The bakufu response was as firm as ever, and Hōjō Tokimune ordered fortifications built in northern Kyūshū, the area most likely to be attacked in the second invasion. The bakufu also ordered warriors from all over Japan to mobilize and serve guard duty in Kyūshū on a rotational basis. It was not until 1281 that the second invasion force set sail for Japan. This force was much larger, about 140,000 in traditional accounts. More realistically, however, says Conlan: "It remains doubtful that even as many as ten thousand invaders attacked a reinforced Japanese contingent of several thousand men in 1281.” (Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention, p. 264.) Although the second invasion force was much larger than the first, Japanese defenses and coordination were also much better.
Since the time of the first invasion, Japanese laborers had erected a massive stone defensive wall along the coast of Hakata Bay (part of present day Fukuoka City, which is straight up from Nagasaki on the northwestern coast of Kyūshū). This wall proved quite effective in containing the Mongol forces that did manage to come ashore. Japanese strategy, however, called for preventing as many from landing as possible by keeping the relatively large Mongol ships under constant attack by #small, maneuverable vessels# that could strike swiftly from any angle. This strategy also worked well, and only a relatively small number of the invaders ever landed. The fighting went on for about two months, with Japanese defenses holding but no major battle having been fought. The lack of a major battle should not suggest a lack of savagery. For example: “The defenders’ desire for vengeance had been inflamed by the brutal occupation of the outlying islands. The Mongols murdered most men and cruelly pierced the center of the palms of captured women and tied them to the sides of the ships. . . Suenaga [a Japanese warrior] and his cohorts coolly killed most sailors and soldiers captured on the high seas.” (Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention, p. 270.) Then, quite suddenly, a typhoon came through the area and destroyed much of the Mongol fleet. The typhoon ended the invasion, and the battered, greatly reduced remnants of the Mongol force sailed back to Korea.
While the bakufu was busy with military preparations, the imperial court had mobilized all of Japan's shrines and temples to offer prayers and perform religious rituals to ward off the invaders:
Kyōto and not Kamakura took the lead in mobilizing the gods. The court ignored the initial Mongol missives of 1266, but began enacting esoteric rituals of destruction against foreigners (ikoku chōbuku 異国調伏) during the third month of 1268, shortly after establishing the precedent for such rituals to be performed on a national scale. . . . After the 1281 invasion, the court (and the retired sovereign Kameyama in particular) took the most active role in cursing the Mongols. The Kamakura bakufu belatedly promulgated prayers in eight of Japan’s sixty-six provinces in 1283 and did not apparently start issuing nationwide prayers throughout Japan until 1290. (Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention, p. 273.)
The court made the plausible claim that the typhoon was the result of these prayers and proof that Japan was a land specially favored by the deities. The typhoon that destroyed the second Mongol invasion force is the origin of the word "kamikaze" 神風 (also pronounced shinpū in premodern times). Kamikaze literally means "divine wind." One should not, however, read too much into this idea of Japan as favored "land of the gods." This idea was prominent in elite court circles from the late Kamakura period onward, but it does not indicate popular nationalism, as Conlan points out in the context of the extensive account provided by a local warrior:
Nowhere in Takezaki Suenaga’s account can one uncover evidence of a “national” consciousness whereby “Japan” existed as a transcendent entity worthy of defense. Although Takezaki Suenaga explained in his audience with the high-ranking bakufu official Adachi Yasumori that normal ‘rules’ of precedent did not apply when fighting foreign invaders, he stated so in order to convince Yasumori to grant him rewards that otherwise did not appear to be forthcoming. Rather than fighting for the defense of Japan, personal and familial goals—the desire to be first to charge, to have an audience with his lord, and to receive ample rewards—propelled him to risk his life in battle. Even his grim determination to behead as many enemy as possible stemmed from the need to have proof of his “valor” than to extract revenge from foreign invaders. (Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention, p. 271.)
The idea of Japan as a transcendent entity worthy of sacrifice on the part of its citizens is a modern notion that would not take hold among the general population until the last two decades of the nineteenth century. This transition of Japan form a loosely-organized empire to a nation-state is a major theme of HIST 481, Modern Japan.
The Mongol Invasions of 1274 and 1281 were a major turning point in the history of the Kamakura period. On the surface, it appeared the bakufu had won a great victory against the vast Mongol empire. It was certainly the case that the bakufu provided excellent leadership in the crisis, but, in hindsight, we can see that the Mongol Invasions proved to be the beginning of the end for the Kamakura bakufu. For one thing, the invasions exacerbated pre-existing social tensions:
Those dissatisfied with the status quo believed that the crisis provided an unprecedented opportunity for advancement. By serving generals and . . . [shugo], these men could ignore the commands of their family chieftains (sōryō 惣領) . . . Takezaki Suenaga, for example, disobeyed the commands of his relatives in order to receive lands and rewards from ranking bakufu officials such as Adachi Yasumori. . . . Sōryō generally resented the creeping autonomy of some family members, which they perceived to stem from encroaching bakufu authority. (Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention, p. 269.)
Until the time of the invasions, all warfare had taken place within the Japanese islands between competing groups of local warriors. This situation meant that there were always spoils, typically land, taken from the losing side. The victorious general would reward his officers and key allies with grants of this land and other wealth taken in battle. The idea that sacrifice in military service should be rewarded had, by the thirteenth century, become deeply ingrained in Japanese warrior culture. In the case of the Mongol invasions, of course, there were no spoils to divide up as rewards. Sacrifices, on the other hand, had been high. Not only were the expenses for the first two invasions high, the bakufu regarded a third invasion as a distinct possibility. Costly patrols and defense preparations, therefore, continued for several years after 1281. The bakufu did all it could to equalize the burden and used what limited land it could spare to reward those individuals or groups who had made the greatest sacrifices in the defense effort; however, these measures were inadequate to prevent serious grumbling among many of the warriors.
There was a sharp rise in lawlessness and banditry after the second invasion. At first, most of these bandits were poorly armed civilians, sometimes called #akutō (brigands, gangs of thugs)# 悪党. Despite repeated orders from the bakufu, local warriors were unable, or unwilling, to suppress these bandits. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, these bandits had become more numerous. Furthermore, it seems that impoverished warriors now made up the bulk of the bandits. The Kamakura bakufu was losing its grip on the warriors, particularly in outlying areas and in the western provinces.
There were several causes of this rise in lawlessness and banditry, but the most important one--the one that tended to turn warriors into bandits--was the decision by the Kamakura bakufu to begin vigorously enforcing administrative law. This matter may seem tedious or trivial at first glance, but it was terribly important. Before the Mongol invasions, it was common for warriors to ignore bakufu summonses or fail to comply with bakufu administrative procedures. It seems that Japanese of this time had only a weak sense of administrative law. It is not clear whether the Mongol invasions in any way caused this development, but starting in the 1280s, the bakufu began to punish administrative lapses among warriors. This policy became more severe at the turn of the fourteenth century, and many warrior families lost some or all of their lands as a result. Significantly, most warriors regarded such punitive measures and fundamentally unjust, which increased resentment against Kamakura while also fueling local violence. Conlan explains that:
According to the reminisces of one priest from Harima province, "brigands" (akutō) started appearing during the Shōan and Kangen eras (1299-1302), precisely at the time when Kamakura began widely enforcing administrative regulations. Violence and a disdain for authority increased as a result of Kamakura's criminalization of administrative lapses. According to a contemporary account . . . . Throughout the provinces, over half of the men of high and low [statuses] sympathize [with the akutō]. Resentment of Kamakura's administrative inflexibility was such that when one or two thousand men were ordered to search for akutō at Kuroda estate. for example, they did so grudgingly and only managed to capture five or six individuals. It is certainly ironic that the Kamakura regime which had provided unparalleled protection for lad rights came to be perceived as being fundamentally unjust because of its administrative zeal. (Thomas Donald Conlan, State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth-Century Japan [Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2003], p. 202.)
Compounding this problem with bandits and widespread warrior resentment, the Kamakura bakufu faced renewed problems with the imperial court. The complex details need not detain us here, but the bakufu had gotten itself entangled in a bitter succession dispute between two branches of the imperial family. The bakufu decided that each branch should alternate emperors, which only prolonged the dispute from one reign to the next and also caused increasing resentment toward the bakufu in the court. Go-Daigo 後醍醐 (#image#), a strong-willed emperor (#who liked wild parties#), came to the throne in 1318. He soon became convinced of the need to change the imperial institution radically. Recognizing the almost total militarization of society, #Go-Daigo sought to re-make the emperorship# so that it would be at the head of both civilian and military governments. In 1331, he began a rebellion against the bakufu. It quickly ended in failure, and the bakufu exiled Go-Daigo to a remote island. Go-Daigo #escaped,# however, and became a magnet around which all the many dissatisfied groups in Japan rallied.
After Hōjō Tokimune died in 1284, the bakufu suffered intermittent rounds of internal disputes, some of which resulted in bloodshed. By the time of Go-Daigo's rebellion, it lacked sufficient internal unity to deal with the crisis effectively. As the opposition forces grew stronger, bakufu leaders assembled a vast army under the command of Ashikaga Takauji 足利尊氏 (1305-1358, #image#). In 1333, this army set out to attack Go-Daigo's forces in Kyōto. Takauji had apparently made a deal with Go-Daigo, however, for midway to Kyōto he turned his army around and attacked Kamakura instead. The attack destroyed the bakufu, and Go-Daigo had made great strides toward re-positioning himself and those who might come after him. But there was a reaction against Go-Daigo's moves by certain elements of the warrior class. By 1335, Ashikaga Takauji, Go-Daigo's former ally had become the leader of the opposition forces. In other words, Takauji launched a counter-revolution against Go-Daigo and his policies designed to create a strong central government headed by an emperor.
After considerable maneuvering, Takauji managed to drive Go-Daigo out of the capital and installed a different member of the imperial family as emperor. Go-Daigo set up his imperial court to the south of Kyōto. Takauji propped up a rival member of the imperial clan as emperor and for himself took the title shōgun. He tried to establish a bakufu along the lines of the former government in Kamakura, and set himself up in the Muromachi district of Kyōto. It is for this reason that the period from 1334 to 1573 is known as either the Muromachi period or the Ashikaga period.
Go-Daigo did not give up his claim to the throne. He and his supporters fled south and set up a military base in the rugged mountains of Yoshino in present-day Nara Prefecture. There they waged war against the Ashikaga bakufu until 1392. Because there were two competing imperial courts, the period from roughly 1335 until reunification of the courts in 1392 is known as the period of the Northern and Southern Courts. During this half century plus, the tide of battle ebbed and flowed with victories for each side, until gradually, the fortunes of Go-Daigo's southern court declined, and its supporters dwindled. The Ashikaga bakufu prevailed. At least this is the "official" textbook version of these events. In reality, the opposition between the northern and southern courts lasted much longer, at least 130 years, and, to some small extent, it continues to this day. *Click here* for the rest of the story.
Both Takauji and Go-Daigo died before the matter of the two courts had been settled. The man who brought about that settlement was the third shōgun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu 足利義満 (1386-1428). Under Yoshimitsu's reign, the bakufu attained the peak of its power, though even then its ability to control the remote areas of Japan was marginal. Yoshimitsu negotiated with the southern court to return to Kyōto, promising the southern emperor that his branch of the imperial family could alternate with the rival branch currently on the throne in the capital. Yoshimitsu broke this promise. Indeed, he treated the emperors quite poorly, not even allowing them their former ceremonial dignity. There is even evidence that Yoshimitsu planned to supplant the imperial family with his own, although it never happened. The power and prestige of the emperors reached its nadir in the fifteenth century. But neither was the bakufu particularly powerful, unlike its Kamakura predecessor. As Go-Daigo well knew, times had changed. During most of the Muromachi period, power drained out of the "central" government(s) into the hands of local warlords.
Yoshimitsu is noted for a number of accomplishments. In the realm of foreign relations, he initiated formal diplomatic ties between Japan and Ming China in 1401. Doing so required that the bakufu agree to participate in China's tributary system, which it did so reluctantly. Yoshimitsu even accepted the title "King of Japan" from the Ming emperor--an act that later Japanese historians often severely criticized as a disgrace to the "national" dignity. In the cultural realm, Yoshimitsu created a number of magnificent buildings, the most famous of which is the #Golden Pavilion,# which he built as a retirement residence. The building's name derives from the walls of its second and third stories, which were plated with gold leaf. It is one of Kyōto's major tourist attractions today, although the current structure is not the original one. These construction projects established a precedent for shōgunal patronage of high culture.
The activities of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and his two predecessors became problematic in modern Japan. The main reason is that, while modern Japanese ideology required that Go-Daigo's line be regarded as the legitimate line of imperial succession, in fact, the line of Ashikaga puppet emperors displaced that of Go-Daigo. #Click here# to see about 75% of a lesson plan on teaching Yoshimitsu to 6th grades from a Ministry of Education approved guidebook for teachers from 1937.
It was in patronage of high culture that the later Ashikaga shōguns excelled. The bakufu steadily lost political power after Yoshimitsu's day. In 1467, #open warfare between two rival warrior families# broke out in the streets of Kyōto itself, laying waste to large areas of the city. The bakufu was powerless to prevent or suppress the fighting, which eventually touched off civil wars throughout Japan. There are several variations on what this warfare is called in English: the Ōnin War, the Ōnin Wars (the plural form emphasizing the subsequent outbreak of small-scale wars), or, following the Japanese term, the Ōnin Disturbance (Ōnin no ran 応仁の乱). There's a human interest story behind this war, though it is not an inspiring one. Let us look into it in some depth as a way of looking into some of the workings of the Muromachi Bakufu during the time its power was waning. We start with the shōgun, but it turns out that his wife was the driving force that led to the war.
Ashikaga Yoshimasa 足利義政 (1436-1490) reigned as the eighth Ashikaga shōgun from 1449-1473. A "general" in name only, he was certainly not a "great man" of history in the usual sense. He had no military skills, no political skills, and no backbone. Perhaps to compensate for these lacks, Yoshimasa indulged himself in amusements and women. In an age of famine, warfare, and a relatively high level of general misery, Yoshimasa displayed not the slightest interest in the suffering of his subjects. He did, however, amass a group of over 40 concubines, which puts him in third place in this category, behind Toyotomi Hideyoshi (we will get to him later) and Tokugawa Ienari 徳川家斉 (1773-1841--Ienari holds the record for the number of shōgunal offspring, siring 54 children) of the Tokugawa bakufu. Yoshimasa's primary wife, Hino Tomiko 日野富子 (1440-1496) was strong-willed and capable, and Yoshimasa seems to have been afraid of her. In any case, she put her husband on a strict allowance, which was far short of what he need to support all his concubines. So he was broke all the time. When one of his concubines was about to give birth, for example, he had a servant pawn a suit of armor from the household. Yoshimasa was the first to patronize pawn shops on a regular basis.
In addition to his concubines, Yoshimasa took refuge in the arts to shelter him from a world he could not control. He diverted much of his limited funds and remaining shōgunal prestige to arts patronage. He sponsored tea ceremony gatherings, for example, which began a process whereby tea-related arts became increasingly popular among elite Japanese. Yoshimasa also constructed the Silver Pavilion 銀閣 (ginkaku--#image#), a pavilion dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon in the Jishō Zen temple, which was a rough imitation of Yoshimitsu's Golden Pavilion. There was one glitch, though: Yoshimasa could not afford the the actual silver gilding he had originally intended to place around the upper story. After all, sliver is expensive and he had forty concubines to maintain. Despite his many faults and failures, Yoshimasa generally gets credit for initiating "Higashiyama culture" and the "Higashiyama Era" 東山時代 (ca. 1483 - 1560s). Notice that his failings as a political and military leader caused Yoshimasa to exert a significant cultural influence on Japan. The reason was not so much that Yoshimasa was a great practitioner of high culture but that he happened to be the shōgun.
Let us shift the focus now to Tomiko, Yoshimasa's principle wife. Yoshimasa seems to have been a mother's boy, but in his case the attachment was to his wet nurse, Imamairi no Tsubone 今参局. Imamairi opposed Yoshimasa's marriage to Tomiko, though Imamairi was unable to prevent it. Tomiko's first child, a boy, died at birth, and rumor quickly spread around the shōgun's palace that Imamairi had caused the death by casting a spell (shuso 呪詛). Tomiko demanded that her husband punish Imamairi. The terrified Yoshimasa could not say no to his wife nor could he punish his beloved nursemaid and surrogate mother. So he sent Imamairi to Oki Island in Lake Biwa, not so much as punishment (banishment) but to keep her safe. Tomiko was not satisfied and managed--after some complex maneuvering--to send assassins to the island. Yoshimasa, in the meantime, had become paralyzed with indecision--his main response to any crisis. What happened next has been the subject of considerable embellishment. In a typical version of the story, Imamairi realized her number was up and boldly went forth, stood in front of the assassins, cut open her belly, reached inside, and threw a handful of guts at them. They were awestruck by this defiant mode of suicide. But pause for some reflection. Though you may not have any direct experience cutting open your belly, all indications are that doing so is very painful and leads to a state of shock. The internal organs are well attached to the body with connective tissue. So cutting oneself open, cutting loose some guts, and throwing them at someone is essentially impossible. Still, such a deed is a common theme in Japanese tales of defiant suicide.
Soon thereafter, Tomiko gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Ashikaga Yoshihisa 足利義尚 (1465-1489), later to become the ninth shōgun (in office 1473-1489). She devoted all her attention to raising this child and became determined to put him into the office of shōgun as soon as possible to replace her worthless husband. To complicated matters, Yoshimasa had already designated his younger brother Yoshimi 義視 (1439-1491) to succeed as the next shōgun. Cutting through the complex details, the result was that the powerful warrior Yamana Sōzen 山名宗全 (1404-1473) supported Yoshihisa's candidacy and the powerful warrior Hosokawa Katsumoto 細川勝元 (1430-1473) supported Yoshimi to become the next shōgun. In these seventh month of 1467, the armies of these two warriors clashed on the streets of the capital, resulting in the destruction of most of it by fire.
Indeed, the imperial palace burnt down and both the emperor Go-Tsuchimikado and the retired emperor Go-Hanazono (emperors commonly retired as in earlier times but no longer presided over a court) had to go live in the shōgun's palace. In this way, the imperial court and the bakufu were briefly "united," albeit in a pathetic manner. And a rumor quickly spread that Tomiko was having an affair with Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado, though we have no way to verify its veracity. What we do know is that Tomiko became fed up with the bakufu's lack of funds. She became determined to raise money so that Yoshihisa could get off to a good start.
Yoshimasa was utterly powerless to stop the fighting that had erupted, and Tomiko had gradually taken over control of the bakufu. She leveraged its last bit of power and prestige for money. Specifically, she had several checkpoints set up on major travel routs and collected tolls. With these funds as her base, she speculated in the rice market and profited nicely as a result. She shamelessly prostituted the bakufu's remaining prestige, selling official posts to the highest bidders. She then took the profits from all these sources and started lending out money at high interest rates. She proved very capable at fund raising and succeeded in getting Yoshihisa to succeed her husband. In that narrow sense, Tomiko succeeded in her goals. The bakufu, however, never recovered from the ravages of the reign of Yoshimasa and Tomiko and the Ōnin War. It continued to exist until the 1570s, and it had some influence in cultural circles, but it was unable to function as an effective governing force.
The civil wars that the Ōnin War sparked continued for over a century, a period known as the Age of Warfare 戦国時代. Japan had entered an era of turmoil, and the Ashikaga bakufu, which continued to exist until 1573, lost nearly all its political power. The post-1467 Ashikaga shōguns spent their remaining political and financial resources on cultural matters, and the bakufu now replaced the imperial court as the center of cultural activity. Meanwhile, the imperial court had sunk into poverty and obscurity, and no emperor like Go-Daigo ever appeared on the scene to revive its fortunes. It was not until the 1580s that a succession of three generals managed to reunify all of Japan.
One significance of the Ōnin War is that it touched off a profound process of social change that became especially prominent during the sixteenth century. Recall the financial difficulties of Ashikaga Yoshimasa and his bakufu as discussed above. Yoshimasa's pawning of his household objects, although the specific result of his lifestyle, was also representative of a broader phenomenon: the impoverishment of the aristocracy. Shōen were no longer a significant institution by the sixteenth century, and the military and political power of both the imperial court and the bakufu was at an all-time low. Where was the power? As we have seen, local warlords tended to fill the gap left by the absence of a strong central government. But that is not the whole story.
In the major urban areas in the Kyōto-Ōsaka region, we see the rise of common people organized into commerce and trade guilds (za 座). The commercial interests were especially prominent, and many commoners began to acquire vast wealth through capitalist market mechanisms. They translated this wealth to some extent into military power (in the form of guild-sponsored police forces) and to some extent into socio-cultural power. Just as the Muromachi bakufu had been a major sponsor of high culture during the fifteenth century, the wealthy merchant commoners tended to perform this function during the sixteenth century. For the first time in Japan's history, urban merchants began to assert themselves vis-à-vis the traditional political powers of court and bakufu. It is for this reason (following Michele Marra) that they can now be called "citizens" (not "subjects").
The relationship between the new citizens and the traditional social elites was sometimes tense. The basic market forces, however, could not be denied. If the elites wanted to continue to exist they had to interact with the wealthy merchants. More specifically, the traditional elites tended to sell their social prestige (adopting wealthy commoners into their households, for example) and their cultural knowledge in return for infusions of wealth. It was generally a symbiotic relationship. The traditional elites needed commoner wealth, and wealthy commoners sought the cultural capital of the traditional elites to enhance their economic power and thus increase social standing. Michele Marra explains the situation as follows:
An infusion of aristocratic awareness into the bloodstream of the Citizens took place after the [Ōnin War], when aristocrats dispossessed of their wealth came to live shoulder to shoulder with merchants and artisans. Unprotected by the impenetrable walls of their palaces, noblemen came to share the same space with the Citizens, while accepting the loathsome economic laws of the market. Besides selling valuable family property such as literary manuscripts and letters . . . the impoverished nobility eked out a living by marketing their knowledge to wealthy merchants in search of cultural capital. The aristocrat Yamashina Tokitsugu records in his diary, the Tokitsugu Gyōki, his participation in the daily life of the commoner, including his effort to redeem a mosquito net, a halberd, a pleated skirt, and a ceremonial court robe that he had pledged to a pawnshop the previous year. (Michele Marra, Representations of Power: The Literary Politics of Medieval Japan [Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993], p. 139.)
Study *this image* (PDF file) to see this situation represented graphically. This social change helped set the stage for the emergence of urban merchants as the leading cultural force during the Tokugawa period.
Popular literature of the late medieval period often provides a window into this social change. Perhaps the best example is Bunshō the Salt Maker (Bunshō sōshi 文正草子, late 15th century). The basic plot is a rags-to-riches story. Bunshō (actually Bunda--he changes his name later) starts out as a poor lad helping out around the salt kilns at the Kashima Shrine in Hitachi Province (an area slightly NE of Tokyo). He proves to be an remarkable worker, diligent, strong, and loyal. His employer eventually rewards Bunshō for his outstanding service by giving him two salt kilns of his own. He produces a special salt with them that gains a reputation for preserving the youth of those who consume it. He becomes fabulously rich as a result.
Although rich, Bunshō could not become aristocratic without the intervention of supernatural forces. The deity of the Kashima Shrine intervenes to give Bunshō two daughters, whom he names Lotus Flower and Lady Lotus. They end up marrying the leading court minister's son and the emperor respectively, which results in Bunshō's being appointed to high office in the imperial court. Thus the lowly commoner transforms himself into a wealthy commoner and then and aristocrat through a combination of his outstanding personal attributes and divine intervention. Notice that the tale roughly mirrors the social transformation that was underway at the time it was produced. Barbara Ruch comments on its significance as follows:
As is clear from the few stories described here, upward social mobility is not the aim of characters in medieval fiction; what they want is economic security. No one is looking for power; everyone is looking for wealth. if one's life ends in high rank and aristocratic marriage, these are just the natural result of having money. And having money is good fortune bestowed one one by the gods. . . . So well suited was this story to the dreams of the Japanese people that it took on talismanic qualities. In merchant homes during the Edo period, it became standard practice to read this story aloud at New Year's time as the year's "first reading"--and act of invocation, as it were, to induce wealth and good fortune to enter the home. ("The Other Side of Culture in Medieval Japan," in Kozo Yamamura, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan: Volume 3, Medieval Japan [New York, Cambridge University Press, 1990], p. 517.)
Not all scholars who have analyzed Bunshō the Salt Maker in the context of late medieval Japan would agree with Ruch about indifference to social mobility, whether in the tale or in actual social life. Many wealthy merchants did seem to seek the cultural accouterments of elite society. But there can be no doubt about the desire for wealth and economic security and that this tale resonated with the dreams of many late-medieval Japanese.
In the Tokugawa period, this dream of wealth was, if anything, even more pervasive. Unlike Bunshō the Salt Maker, many Tokugawa-period tales of self-made wealth left out the divine intervention. During the seventeenth century and beyond in many circles, the marketplace replaced the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and kami as the supreme agent of destiny.
1. Quoted in Shuichi Kato, A History of Japanese Literature 1: The First Thousand Years (New York: Kodansha International, 1979), p. 205.
2. Kato, Japanese Literature, p. 239.
