April Francis
HSTR 340
Final Essay
12 December 2016
Question One:
While Japan began the modern process in a different way and at a different time than the Western countries, the idea of Japan as a backwards Eastern holdout that needed to be opened and enlightened by Commodore Matthew C Perry is simply untrue. Prior to 1868, Japan had been undergoing the modernizing process for a couple hundred of years. For centuries, Japan had been moving toward political unification, urbanization, changes in social order, and economic change. These changes to the internal order of Japan lead to the early modernization of Japan, which was well underway by the date of the arrival of Commodore Perry.
Thanks to the three great unifiers, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan began to make the transition from an island made up of fairly autonomous and warring states and fiefdoms to a nation with a fairly unified center of governance. Starting with Nobunaga, things began to be done “for the sake of the realm”, as he liked to frequently say. As a fierce military leader, he used his military might to assert national authority over nearly the entirety of Japan. After the Ashikaga bakufu collapsed in 1573 due to supposed collusion with Nobunaga’s enemies, Nobunaga began to create a cult of personality around himself after pointing out that it was clearly the intention of the shogunate to “abandon Kyoto”. In 1576 he began construction on Azuchi Castle, where—owing to a carefully executed and ritualized setting—he asserted his authority and place in the hierarchy of the lives of his countrymen.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, following Nobunaga, expanded on his predecessor’s efforts and took them a step further. He implemented the red seal system to mark to laws that he intended to span the entirety of the realm. A major step toward moving forward in the unification process is attempting to apply law on a large scale, rather than at the level of individual domains. He also took the notion of tenka—or “realm”, in the sense of all under heaven—and declared himself to be the embodiment of the realm. He stated that the realm was not tenka, but he was. He was the kami and the Buddha, he was mankind, he was creation, and China, India, and Japan were his body. By tying the strength and vitality of the state to his own existence, Hideyoshi was able to reaffirm his authority and position of power in the order of things.
After Hideyoshi came Tokugawa Ieyasu, for whom the bakufu is named. Ieyasu was able to finalize the unification process and establish a line of shoguns that would last nearly three-hundred years. With the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), Ieyasu was able to prove that, much like Nobunaga, he was willing and capable of committing acts of violence in order to assert his power and ability. By defeating the Western Army of Mitsunari, Ieyasu was able to emerge as the most dominant figure militarily and politically. Unfortunately, the losers, who would be marginalized on the fringes of society and surrounded by loyalists to keep an eye on them, would never forget this defeat, and would harbor this hatred of the bakufu until 1868.
Another defining aspect of early modern Japan was the way in which it urbanized. In 1588, Hideyoshi instigated the Sword Hunt, which forbade farmers from owning weapons such as swords, bows, spears, and muskets. Men were forced to make the decision to continue being a farmer, completely unarmed, or to be an armed warrior. Armed warriors were pulled out of the populace as a whole and relegated to castle towns. This served to help create centers of government, military, and economics that would help to lead to massive growth of the population centers. A chief example of this is Edo, or modern day Tokyo. It was once a small town on the edge of a marsh. After the construction of the castle finished in the 1630s, it became the center of the Tokugawa bakufu, and a monument to the power and splendor of the shogunate.
Unlike America, who did not formulate an effective fire department until 1736 when Benjamin Franklin realized the necessity of a force to avoid fiery destruction, Japan had to create a fairly sophosticated fire prevention system quite early. Organizations that exists solely for the protection and welfare of the populace is a fairly modern notion. Cities like Edo were designed with firebreaks in them to prevent the spread of fire when the mostly wooden buildings inevitably ran into trouble. Men wandered the streets reminding people to make sure that their fires were properly tended to and put out at night.
Cities like Edo eventually began to “desamuraize” and become important consumer based, cosmopolitan capitals as the culture of the people developed into an attitude of consumerism and leisure. People began to take pride in being “children of Edo”, or Edokko. That is, having taken their first baths in the city’s aquaducts, having ancestors from the city, and being not samurai, not from the country, but purely urbanized. They took pride in their aesthetics of iki and tsu, and flaunting their refinement in the face of their fellow citizens without fearing the retribution of the bakufu. Men would get into poetry battles to show how well read they were, competitive flower arrangement, bamboo flute playing, and other ways of showing off how cultured and worldly they were. Around this time, food culture began to emerge as a distinct force in Edo. Secrets of food preparation were passed down through generations via secret texts. Some of the quintessential Japanese culinary forms, like the noodle shop and the street vendor, began to spring up like weeds, as did the formal, sit down restaurant. As people began having disposable income, things like prostitution in Yoshiwara and bath and tea houses became much more common place. A defined urban and consumer culture is a hallmark of a modernizing state—if everyone is focused on subsistence and avoiding destruction by barbarians, city cultures and leisurely activities have less of an opportunity to develop.
Another way that Japan began modernizing earlier than 1868, was the emergence of an established social order. Following the Sword Hunt in 1588, in which men were forced to choose between being unarmed farmers or armed warriors, Hideyoshi also froze the social order in 1591. The following year, a census was conducted in which people registered not only by house and village, but also by social status. Farmers registered as farmers, military men registered as military men, and average townspeople registered as townspeople. The combination of Sword Hunt and societal freezing helped to establish the mibunsei, or status system. It would eventually become an integral cornerstone of early modern Japanese politics, as people were characterized as samurai, farmers, artisans, or merchants (or shi, no, ko, and sho). Samurai established the moral trends for common society and were partially respponsibility for the creation of the bakufu, so they were at the top of the societal pyramid. The farming peasants were the second highest class because of their importance in food production. Then came the artisans, who produced aestehtically beautiful, but essentially unrequired products. Merchants were considered to be the least vital group of citizens due to the fact that they made money off of the back of other people’s production. Social mobility was almost unheard of, and there were rules and regulations that outlined what each member was allowed to do.