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7 results

  • 3 - Regional Authority during the Tokugawa Period

  • from Part I - The Character of the Early Modern State
  • Edited by David L. Howell, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge History of Japan
    Published online:
    15 January 2024
    Print publication:
    23 November 2023, pp 97-127

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the structure of regional authority in early modern Japan. Its aim is to clarify the nature of the early modern Japanese state. The shogunate delegated authority to autonomous daimyo domains, and both shogunate and domains delegated authority to village heads, who managed their communities with little direct oversight. The system worked well enough to keep the realm generally peaceful and prosperous for 265 years. The chapter begins with a top-down taxonomy of the daimyo domains and other, lesser jurisdictions under the authority of the Tokugawa shogunate. It then moves onto a discussion of village rule, framed in terms of governmentality – that is, the structures through which villagers participated in their own subjecthood to the shogunate and domains. The chapter concludes with a discussion of shared-revenue villages (aikyū mura), which were divided among multiple overlords while retaining a character as singular communities.

  • 3 - Late Medieval Warlords and the Agglomeration of Power

  • Morgan Pitelka, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book:
    Reading Medieval Ruins
    Published online:
    31 March 2022
    Print publication:
    07 April 2022, pp 93-119

  • Summary

    This chapter traces the rise of the Asakura clan from mid-ranking warriors to warlords of the province of Echizen, and the emergence of Ichijōdani as the thriving capital of the region for a century. It considers the construction of a palatial residence near a fortified castle, and the resulting growth of a city around this pairing, as one of many forms of elite warrior politics in late medieval Japan

  • 5 - The han

  • Edited by John Whitney Hall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Assisted by James L. McClain
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Japan
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1991, pp 183-234

  • Summary

    The han, or daimyo domains, covered some three-quarters of the total area of the Japanese islands. The han have been restored to their rightful place in the history of the Tokugawa period. Many han were already in existence well before the bakufu was established in 1603; for that matter, almost all of them, in one form or another, were to survive its fall, lingering on uneasily into the Meiji world. The role of the han was defined by the bakufu, for it was the Tokugawa government that confirmed their existence and prescribed the extent of their responsibilities and the limits of their jurisdiction. Tokugawa rule had effectively released all han from the need for constant vigilance against each other. Equally, it had done much to enhance their internal stability by making it clear that it would countenance no usurpers from among the han vassals.

  • 14 - Popular culture

  • Edited by John Whitney Hall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Assisted by James L. McClain
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Japan
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1991, pp 706-770

  • Summary

    Major economic and social changes followed political unification and the establishment of a stable political order under the Tokugawa in the years after 1600. The interest in popular entertainment and culture in the major cities developed rapidly, especially in the second half of the seventeenth century, culminating in a brilliant flowering of popular culture known as the golden age of Genroku. This chapter focuses on popular culture, which had wide appeal to urban commoners. The development of popular culture, during its early stages, took place largely within the urban environment of Kyoto. The increase in literacy during the seventeenth century among both samurai and urban commoners was an important factor in the functioning of the administration and the expansion of commerce. During the century of warfare preceding the establishment of the Tokugawa bakufu, there was little time or necessity, even among the daimyo, for extensive formal education.

  • 4 - The bakuhan system

  • Edited by John Whitney Hall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Assisted by James L. McClain
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Japan
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1991, pp 128-182

  • Summary

    This chapter traces the formation and the evolution of the bakuhan structure of government from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. The political and social institutions that underlay the bakuhan polity had their origins in the unification movement of the last half of the sixteenth century, especially in the great feats of military consolidation and social engineering achieved by Toyotomi Hideyoshi during the last two decades of the century. The story of the rise of the Tokugawa family to become the foremost military house of Japan follows a pattern common among a whole class of active regional military families who competed for local dominion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The structure of power over which the Tokugawa shogun ultimately presided was conceived as a balance among several classes of daimyo and the interests of the shogun.

  • 1 - Introduction

  • Edited by John Whitney Hall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Assisted by James L. McClain
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Japan
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1991, pp 1-39

  • Summary

    Japan's sixteenth-century unification, as it was both observed by Europeans and influenced by the introduction of Western arms, has naturally suggested to historians various points of comparison between European and Japanese historical institutions. Japan during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries underwent several similar political and social changes. The country achieved a new degree of political unity. The Tokugawa hegemony gave rise to a highly centralized power structure, capable of exerting nationwide enforcement over military and fiscal institutions. Daimyo were permitted to retain their own armies and also a considerable amount of administrative autonomy. This chapter discusses the Ōnin-Bummei War of 1467 to 1477 that marked the beginning of the final downward slide of the Muromachi shogunate. The victory of Tokugawa Ieyasu's forces against the Toyotomi faction at the battle of Sekigahara in 1600 marked the beginning of the Tokugawa hegemony.

  • 7 - Christianity and the daimyo

  • Edited by John Whitney Hall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Assisted by James L. McClain
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Japan
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1991, pp 301-372

  • Summary

    Japan passed from a state of extreme political dissolution and social upheaval to a new era of unity and peace, it also turned inward and away from the relative cosmopolitanism of the Christian Century's first half. From sengoku, Japan was transformed into sakoku, a closed country. For the daimyo, the establishment of a new order meant a reduction to fealty under the Tokugawa shogunate. For the Christian missionaries and their converts, it meant a bitter persecution and the nearly total eradication of their religion in Japan. For the country at large, it was the beginning of more than two centuries of national seclusion. The daimyo Shimazu Takahisa, Ōuchi Yoshitaka, and Ōtomo Yoshishige, who were the most important political personages of western Japan, were also the Christian missionary Francis Xavier's most important collocutors in the country. Christianity had been the objects of suspicion, denigration, and occasional persecution in various parts of Japan from the day of Xavier's arrival in the country.