6 - “Farmer-Soldiers” and Local Leadership in Late Edo Period Japan

Summary

One of the defining features of the early modern political order in Japan was the monopoly of the means of violence held by the samurai class. In the decades preceding the Meiji Restoration, however, some Japanese officials at the regional and local level began to advocate for the mobilization of commoners into militia. They were motivated by the belief that the existing samurai-based military and security forces were not sufficient to meet the challenges they faced - first, from foreign powers, and then, increasingly, from domestic disorder. Japanese historians have long been interested in these farmer-soldiers, or nōhei, generally with the goal of assessing the revolutionary implications of farmers taking up arms and forming militia. This chapter will take a different approach to the study of nōhei by situating them within a larger trend in local governance in the late Edo period. Nōhei militia were one of many examples in which local elites, motivated by the desire to restore order to communities they perceived to be in crisis, took on new leadership functions and intervened in new areas of public life.