- Ancient Japan to 1185
- Early modern Japan (1550–1850)
- Japan from 1850 to 1945
News •
Thus, the bakuhan system was firmly solidified by the second half of the 17th century. The establishment of a strict class structure of warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants (shi-nō-kō-shō) represents the final consummation of the system. Distinctions between the statuses of warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants were strictly enforced, but the distinction between the samurai and the other three classes was especially strict. Forming barely 7 percent of Japan’s total population, warriors levied taxes on the farmers, who formed more than four-fifths of the population and who thus provided the economic foundation of the system. Symbolizing their dominance of society by force of arms, samurai wore two swords; by law, the other classes were forbidden to wear them, thus carrying the policies of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi to their logical conclusion. Concern for strict status differentiation was evident even in family relationships, as absolute obedience was demanded from members of the family toward the house head (kachō). Among the family members, the status of women was especially low, and the idea of danson-johi (“respect for the male, contempt for the female”) was prevalent.
The establishment of the Tokugawa regime created a need for legitimation, a new worldview, and a system of ethics to support it. Neither the Shintō nor the Buddhist ideologies of the earlier medieval society was adequate. But the ideas of Neo-Confucianism, especially of the Sung dynasty Chu Hsi school (Shushigaku)—which had been well-known to political and ethical thinkers since the 13th century—provided an intellectual rationalization for the status-oriented social structure of the bakuhan system. Shushigaku appealed especially to the feudal rulers because, among the various schools of Confucianism, it was the most systematic doctrine. Fujiwara Seika is regarded as the father of Tokugawa Neo-Confucianism, lecturing even to Ieyasu himself. Seika’s student, the Chu Hsi scholar Hayashi Razan, served as advisor to the first three shoguns. He established what was to become the official Confucian school, which provided philosophical guidance to the shogunal house and high bakufu officials throughout the period. Razan is said to have had a hand in the drafting of all bakufu official documents and in the formulation of bakufu laws. His political ideas—as seen in such works as Honchō hennen-roku (“Chronological History of Japan”) and Honchō tsugan (“Survey History of Japan”), completed by his son Gahō—provided a historical justification for the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, based upon the concept of tendō (“way of heaven”). Tendō essentially took on the connotation of the Chinese term t’ien-ming (“mandate of heaven”; Japanese: tenmei), and Razan and other Confucian thinkers provided an explanation and justification for changes in rulers through the process of gekokujō (overthrow of superiors by inferiors) of the Sengoku period. But the role of Chu Hsi political-ethical thought in Tokugawa times was to repudiate the revolutionary idea of gekokujō by stressing the legitimacy of Ieyasu’s new regime, emphasizing instead the idea of kenshin (“devotion,” or “loyalty”), linking this to Confucian moral concepts. Razan stressed the Chinese idea that, just as there is order between heaven and earth, there needed to be order between rulers and subjects. Thus he argued that the separation of the four classes of society was in accord with the teachings of Confucius. The two central moral ideals of Confucianism were chū, or “loyalty,” and kō, or “filial piety.” But in contrast to China, Tokugawa thinkers like Razan placed more emphasis on chū as a support for feudal lord-vassal relations than on kō, which was a family ethic. Chu Hsi studies opposed the new worldview and logic introduced by Christianity, which gave more importance to God than to the ruler-subject relationship, and also bitterly criticized the other-worldly aspects of Buddhism, which had been the ideology of the medieval era. Orthodox Chu Hsi thought was a perfect conservative philosophy of statecraft that valued loyalty and order above all else.
Japanese thinkers of the 17th century could hardly have been expected to fully ingest a foreign political philosophy already several hundred years old, and challenges to orthodox Chu Hsi thought were many. Some argued for a return to the original teaching of Confucius himself, emulating a reform movement already under way in China. The philosophy of yet another Sung thinker, Wang Yang-ming, also held a special place in Confucian circles in the early Edo period. Wang Yang-ming studies (Ōyōmeigaku in Japanese) were characterized by a strong subjective idealism but, at the same time, were quite practical since they emphasized the unity of thought and deed. Virtue had to be not only cultivated in the abstract but practiced as well. Nakae Tōju, often regarded as the father of Japanese Wang Yang-ming studies, was so earnest in performing virtuous acts that he was called the sage of Ōmi. One of his followers, Kumazawa Banzan, who criticized the growing autocracy in the politics of his day, transformed Wang Yang-ming studies from a means for individual spiritual training into a method for political reformation.
Commerce, cities, and culture
By reducing Ōsaka Castle and quelling the Shimabara Rebellion, the Tokugawa regime brought to an end the period of violence and ushered in an era of unprecedented domestic peace. As a result, commerce was promoted and cities developed. Widespread commercialization occurred in the latter half of the 17th century, centered in the Kinki region, where productive capacity was the most advanced. Now the nationwide farming populace (hyakushō) of independent landowners, although subject to heavy taxes and various kinds of labor services, sought the means to enjoy a better standard of living. In addition to their primary efforts as cultivators, they reclaimed new lands and produced various commercial crops and handicraft goods for sale in the city and town markets. Among these commercial crops were cotton and rapeseed oil in the Kinki region and silk in eastern Japan. Communications and transportation also developed for the circulation of such goods, thanks to the earlier efforts of various daimyo to maximize production in their domains and to the increased mobility caused by the sankin kōtai system. As a result of the development of commerce and communications, new-style merchants such as wholesalers and brokers to handle commercial crops came to the fore, and powerful financiers also appeared.
There was a massive growth of urban centers in the first half of the Edo period, mainly represented by the castle towns of the various daimyo. These daimyo, numbering some 250 for most of the period, were allowed by the bakufu to have but one castle, and thus there was a move to pull down other castles and concentrate the samurai of each han in a capital castle town. These castle towns gradually came to acquire the character of commercial cities, as some farmers abandoned the countryside and merchants emerged to serve the needs of the burgeoning urban population. Purely commercial cities and post towns (towns along highways) also arose throughout the country as part of this massive urbanization. While most cities averaged between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants, many had populations exceeding 100,000. The three main cities of Edo, Ōsaka, and Kyōto, under the direct control of the bakufu, were especially developed. When its warrior inhabitants are included, Edo in the early years of the 18th century had a population of more than one million and thus became one of the largest cities in the world.
The early and mid-Edo periods produced many remarkable figures in the fine arts and crafts. Perhaps the three artists most representative of the culture were Ihara Saikaku in ukiyo-zōshi (“tales of the floating world”) genre novels, Chikamatsu Monzaemon in jōruri (“puppet play”) drama, and Matsuo Bashō in haiku poetry. All three flourished during the Genroku era (1688–1704), the name more broadly denoting a golden age of cultural development roughly 50 years long during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Saikaku was an Ōsaka townsman who first aspired to write haikai—humorous renga (linked-verse) poetry from which the more serious haiku was derived—and for more than 30 years he was active as a haikai composer. He was especially skilled at yakazu haikai, a competition to compose as many haikai as possible within a fixed period of time that derived its name from a popular arrow-shooting competition (yakazu). Saikaku set a new record by composing 23,500 haikai in a single day and night—one verse every four seconds. By 1682 Saikaku largely had given up haikai, however, and began to write ukiyo-zōshi, producing about 20 masterpieces in succession, beginning with Kōshoku ichidai otoko (1682; The Life of an Amorous Man). The ukiyo-zōshi developed out of the so-called kana-zōshi (storybooks written in kana script) into a more thoroughly urban commoner’s form of literature after the latter had themselves replaced the previous otogi-zōshi (“fairy-tale books”) in popularity. The unique urban spirit of the age can be seen in the word ukiyo, which had meant “sad world” in Buddhist terms during medieval times. Written with a different Chinese ideogram in Edo times, it now came to mean “floating world” and implied pleasure—specifically from the pleasure quarters of the great Edo cities. Saikaku consistently attempted to create an accurate depiction of the human desire for love and profit. His works offer sharp criticism of the Edo samurai as men so bound by social status and moral principles that they could not live a free life.
Matsuo Bashō became closely attached to haiku (although the word itself was not coined until the 19th century) and fashioned it into a popular form of poetry. Bashō was born into a warrior family, but after becoming a rōnin he devoted himself to the development of haiku as a literary form. Bashō found the existing haikai style unsatisfying. He began writing hokku (17-syllable opening verses for renga) as separate poems, developing a new style called shōfū or “Bashō style.” Bashō proclaimed what he called makoto no (“true”) haiku, seeking the spirit of this poetic form in sincerity and truthfulness. He also introduced a new beauty to haiku by using simple words. Bashō essentially grafted the aristocratic conceptions of medieval poetry onto the more mundane feelings of Tokugawa urban culture, creating a highly popular poetic form. Rather than repudiating tradition, Bashō’s haiku brought it to completion.
About the turn of the 17th century, the Jōrurihime monogatari (a type of romantic ballad), which drew on the traditions of the medieval narrative story, was for the first time arranged as a form of dramatic literature accompanied by puppetry and the samisen (a lutelike musical instrument). It continued to develop until the three great masters—Takemoto Gidayū as narrator, Chikamatsu Monzaemon as composer, and Tatsumatsu Hachirobei as puppeteer—made jōruri into a highly popular Tokugawa performing art, enjoyed by all classes of society.
Chikamatsu, like Bashō, came from a warrior family. Chikamatsu, a prolific writer, wrote more than 80 jidaimono (historical dramas) and 20 sewamono (domestic dramas focusing on urban society), both for jōruri. He also wrote more than 30 kabuki plays. The chief theme running through Chikamatsu’s works is the idea of giri (“duty”), which is to be understood not so much as feudal morality enforced from above but rather as the traditional consciousness of honor and dignity in one’s motives and of social consciousness in human relations. The compositions of Chikamatsu’s later years seek the motif of tragedy in the fact that this giri, while proof that people have humanity, cannot be thoroughly achieved because of their immorality and lack of principle. Giri is constantly in conflict with ninjō (“human feelings,” especially love), and this tension provides the drama in many of his works. Beginning with his Shinjū ten no Amijima (1720; The Love Suicide of Amijima), the leading male and female characters in his sewamono dramas are unable to resolve the contradictions between giri and ninjō in this world and so die by shinjū (a suicide pact between lovers) in order to realize their love in a future life. While Buddhist elements can be detected in these tragic endings, they also graphically capture the unresolvable contradictions that faced townspeople in Genroku society.
Besides the licensed quarters for prostitutes, theatrical districts also flourished in the Genroku era. Kabuki drama also developed in the early Edo period. Okuni kabuki, named for the female dancing troupe led by Izumo Okuni, became popular at the turn of the 17th century and is conventionally regarded as the origin of this dramatic form. Other troupes imitated her work, developing into yūjo (“prostitutes’ ”) kabuki, run by brothel owners. Ultimately, women were banned from kabuki, and actors and prostitutes separated into distinct quarters. A further development was the wakashū (“young-man style”) kabuki, in which the young men were also available as sexual partners; this also was prohibited because of widespread homosexuality. All kabuki was banned following the death of the shogun Iemitsu in 1652. It was allowed once again, but only after substantial reform, in which even women’s parts were played by adult males (who were distinguished from the wakashū by shaved forelocks). Kabuki now developed from its previous dancing-act form into a theatrical form centered on a dramatic plot with realistic acting. In western Japan (Kyōto and Ōsaka), the style that emerged was called wagoto (“tender business”), which had a pronounced comical element and concentrated on love; by contrast, the popular form of Edo kabuki was aragoto (“rough business”), which focused on the rash actions of historical heroes. This Edo form of kabuki seemed to suit the rowdy elements of society; indeed the word kabuki itself (using different Chinese ideograms), meaning “inclined,” was first used by wild gangs of outrageously dressed young men called kabukimono.
Despite the popularity of these new theatrical forms, traditional arts of nō drama, the tea ceremony, and flower arrangement also reached new stages of development in the period. The tea ceremony (cha-no-yu) in particular became popular and was practiced not only by the shogun and daimyo but also by the newly risen merchants, who used their wealth to become eager collectors of famous antique tea-ceremony utensils. As the tea ceremony became popular, many schools emerged, most notably the Sen-ke (Sen house), the school of Sen Rikyū. The art of the tea ceremony came to be monopolized by the house heads of the various schools, fostering the development of the “profession” of tea master. This “house head” (iemoto) system also spread to flower arrangement and to other arts and became a distinguishing feature of the Edo period. One result of this segmentation into tradition-conscious schools was that it inhibited further development of these artistic forms. Often, it was only by breaking away from the iemoto that innovation could proceed.
Distinctive development also occurred in the fine arts and crafts. Ogata Kōrin, for example, brought decorative painting to its highest stage of perfection, bequeathing to posterity many splendid masterpieces in gold lacquer (maki-e) and other media. Techniques of dyeing and weaving were also improved in the Edo period. In Kyōto, Miyazaki Yūzen developed the splendid techniques of yūzen-zome (a rice-paste batik method of dyeing), and the weaving and decorating of the traditional kimono became even more colorful. In Edo, drawing in traditional styles was further developed by Hishikawa Moronobu, who not only depicted the usual courtesans and actors but also vividly portrayed various aspects of the lives of ordinary people. But Moronobu’s real contribution was to develop the Chinese technique of wood-block printing to produce the ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) style, which met a growing popular demand. Many great Edo-period artists—e.g., Andō Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai—developed the ukiyo-e genre into a unique Japanese art form. Famous centers of pottery production also flourished at various places throughout the country, some ancient, like Seto, but others, like Hagi, stimulated by the influence of Korean potters captured during Hideyoshi’s invasions.
Both the old ceremonies of the imperial court and the various forms of warrior etiquette developed by the successive bakufu were codified, studied, and even extended to the common people, helping to shape manners throughout the country. Indeed, Japanese customs in dress, food, and housing became established and somewhat standardized during the Edo period. Even eating habits changed from two to three meals a day; in the cities rice became the standard food, and a rich variety of cakes and sweets were consumed by urban dwellers.
The weakening of the bakuhan system
As Japan entered the 18th century, the bakuhan system began to show signs of weakness. The finances of both the bakufu and the han were theoretically based on a rice-producing economy, in which administrators endeavored to levy taxes to be paid in kind, mostly in rice, centered on the annual crop. Rice and other crops were then transported to the great central cities of Edo and Ōsaka, where they were exchanged for money. The extremely diverse economic and social life of these cities was based upon a money economy in which people and produce were constantly exchanged. This activity radiated outward to the various daimyo castle towns and, inevitably, into the countryside as well. Thus, even the rural areas of Japan were increasingly drawn into a monetized economy, and peasants everywhere paid part of their taxes in money. If commercial development had been largely a phenomenon of the cities in the 17th century, in the 18th and 19th centuries it spread to the hinterlands of Japan, where small-scale producers of goods, distributors, and even retailers appeared. Inevitably, it meant the rise of some wealthy members of the rural populace, who used their wealth to invest in land and commercial ventures and to “ape their betters” in the cities in both custom and culture. Few farmers, however, prospered through producing commercial goods, and the majority of peasants remained impoverished. Rural villages were characterized by a few wealthy farmers, a majority of small-scale independent landholders, and a growing number of impoverished tenants. Many small-scale farmers, squeezed by the demands of commercial development, were forced to part with their lands and fell into tenancy.
Thus, as the commercial economy extended into rural villages, social divisions arose among the farmers. Tax collection became unstable, and many warriors—whose stipends, still calculated in koku, depended upon taxes paid by the farmers—found themselves in serious financial difficulty. Despite the general improvement of agricultural technology and the spread of such knowledge through manuals and handbooks among an increasingly literate populace during the Edo period, productivity was uneven; and in many areas, and especially during certain eras, periodic crop failures and famines, exacerbated by excessive taxation, resulted in people starving or fleeing their villages. The abandonment of cultivated land also became conspicuous. As noted above, the samurai class had long since taken up normal residence in the cities. With the development of the urban way of life, they now incurred increasing expenses, despite a spate of bakufu and domain exhortations to practice frugality. Living on fixed incomes, many became greatly impoverished. At times, both the bakufu and the domains tried to suppress commercial production as a means of alleviating the suffering of their vassals; but this met with great resistance from merchants and affected the self-sufficient economy of the farmers as well. It was, in any event, a hopeless effort, given the scale of commercial development nationwide. When attempts to restrict production failed, bakufu and han administrators encouraged such production, seeking to supplement their finances by monopolizing the farmers’ commercial goods and selling them themselves. Thus, on top of excessive taxes, farmers also were sometimes deprived of the profits of their commercial goods.
Ultimately, such rural conditions led to major outbreaks of violence. Stratification of rural villages—a growing gap between wealthy and poor farmers—tenancy, the inability of many to survive the harsh realities of commercialization, and exploitation by feudal lords forced some peasants into uprisings (hyakushō ikki). Even in early Edo times, there were localized demonstrations against daimyo for excessive taxation, but from the 18th century peasant protest became increasingly violent and widespread. Some uprisings were directed at local lords, some were more widespread, and some were directed not at feudal warrior overlords but at wealthy peasant landlords and village headmen who also had become exploitative. Meanwhile, economic conditions in the cities—to which frustrated peasants often fled seeking a better life—were hardly better. While many wealthy merchants enjoyed luxurious lifestyles in cooperation with warrior rulers, the city poor, driven to the edge of starvation by the rising prices of rice and other commodities, often rioted, plundering and destroying rice shops and pawnshops.
Political reform in the bakufu and the han
The second half of the Tokugawa period is characterized by continual political reforms made by the samurai overlords in response to this ongoing economic crisis. Such reforms began with the Kyōhō Reforms instituted by the eighth shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune (ruled 1716–45). Yoshimune proved adept at personnel matters. He swept out officials favored by his two predecessors and appointed new officials to posts in finance and rural administration in order to increase government efficiency. In general, he reaffirmed the influence of the fudai daimyo, the traditional stalwart supporters of the regime, whose power had been undercut under Tsunayoshi and Ienobu. Besides consulting a group of about 20 personally selected advisers, he periodically set up a complaint box to gain new information, especially on such matters as corruption and bribery. The thrust of his reform efforts, however, came in the area of general economic policy and the bakufu’s own finances. As an emergency policy, Yoshimune ordered the daimyo to make rice contributions (agemai), which he then allotted to the hatamoto to supplement their stipends. More characteristic was his effort to increase tax yields by opening new lands to cultivation and revising the method of taxation. His attempt to control the falling price of rice earned him the name of “the rice shogun.” But when the price of rice rose sharply in a great famine in the 1730s, the common people of Edo attacked the wholesale rice dealers who had cornered the market. This was the first such riot in Edo. Yoshimune’s reforms focused heavily on currency reform. He successfully revalued and standardized the currency and also brought regulation into the chaotic and disruptive world of Edo’s money changers. His economic reforms enjoyed no small success. By 1744, the year before his retirement, the receipts of the bakufu both in total land taxes and in tax receipts reached their highest level for the entire Edo period. Yoshimune’s reforms also expedited the legal process, ameliorated punishments, and were published in a collection of laws (Kujikata osademegaki). For such reasons, Yoshimune was regarded as the restorer of the bakufu. His success, however, was possibly due to the fact that the urban and rural disturbances had not yet become that grave, while the coercive power of the bakufu was still quite strong.
Under the rule of Yoshimune’s son Ieshige, control of government by attendants of the shogun—which Yoshimune’s strong personal rule had prevented—was revived. Chamberlains (soba-yōnin) who handled communications with the senior councillors (rōjū), gained strong powers of authority as his spokesmen when they won the shogun’s confidence. One such man was Tanuma Okitsugu, who rose from chamberlain to be senior councillor under Ieshige’s son, Ieharu, the 10th shogun. Tanuma and his associates accepted bribes, and he was criticized by an opposition group for corruption. But Tanuma was nonetheless an active reformer who further developed some of Yoshimune’s programs. Though cognizant of the problems posed by merchants and the spread of a commercial economy, Tanuma chose not to suppress the activities of big-city merchants but rather used them to promote production; while advancing the development of the commercial economy, he sought to control it. His decision to force commercial and industrial guilds, or kabu nakama, into monopolistic associations and to demand licensing fees seems to have been aimed not so much at gaining contributions for the bakufu treasury as much as to establish control over the circulation of commercial goods, linking the city guilds with village producers. Tanuma, too, was concerned with a monetized economy, especially the problem of money lenders. He tried—unsuccessfully—both to control the issuance of unbacked promissory notes and to issue a new silver coin, the value of which was calculated in terms of gold. He was widely criticized by the people for issuing large amounts of debased coinage that caused a rise in prices; yet it was a rational attempt to establish a gold standard in place of the confusing practice of using silver in western Japan and gold in the east.
Tanuma’s rational and progressive political attitude is best revealed in his attempt to develop Ezo (present-day Hokkaido) as a bulwark against the southward advance of the Russians; he even considered trading with Russia. Various natural disasters occurred in his time, however, and peasant protests rose to more than 50 per year during the 1780s. A great eruption of Mount Asama in 1783 was followed by a widespread famine during the Temmei era (1783–87), in which large numbers of people starved to death. An uncommon number of crop failures, fires, epidemics, and droughts reconfirmed peoples’ sense of divine displeasure with the performance of the ruler. The protests of the farmers were now most often directed against wealthy members of the village community. In 1787 large-scale riots threatened Edo, Ōsaka, and other major cities. Tanuma had already been dismissed as senior councillor the previous year, and Matsudaira Sadanobu, grandson of Yoshimune and the daimyo of Shirakawa domain (in modern Fukushima prefecture), was selected as his successor. But Tanuma’s supporters in the bakufu sought to prevent Sadanobu’s appointment, and for more than six months the political situation remained a complete vacuum. The outbreak of peasant violence, however, was enough to drive Tanuma’s supporters from office, and Sadanobu was appointed senior councillor.
Sadanobu is renowned as the initiator of the Kansei reforms (1789–1801). He rejected Tanuma’s administration and instituted a policy of retrenchment in the spirit of Yoshimune’s reforms half a century earlier. To combat the frustration against Tanuma’s regime, Sadanobu sought to restore morale, revive the economy, and reinvigorate the social system. He set out to reduce the high prices in the great cities and had a fund established in Edo called shichibu tsumikin (70 percent reserve fund); knowing that land and house rents were high in the shogun’s capital because of the heavy taxes levied on its landlords, he reduced this tax and set aside 70 percent of it for relief for the poor. To relieve the hardships of the bakufu retainers, he took emergency measures to cancel the debts of the hatamoto to the Edo merchants who handled the exchange of their stipends. Again following Yoshimune, Sadanobu—himself skilled in several martial arts—urged the samurai to devote their energies to practice of the martial arts. The farming villages, which were the foundation of the bakuhan system, had been devastated in the Temmei famine of the 1780s. Sadanobu encouraged officials to bring land back into cultivation and to increase the population of the villages by such measures as granting parcels of land to vagabonds. Those who had left villages for seasonal work in cities were given money to return to agricultural productivity. Infanticide and abortion were widely used as means of limiting family size, both to maximize wealth and to avoid starvation, and pregnant women were thus watched over in order to increase the farming populace—so that tax revenues from that sector would rise. But effective control of agriculture depended largely upon competent officials, and, despite heroic efforts to root out incompetence and avarice, Sadanobu had recurrent problems dealing with corrupt and ruthless local officials.
Sadanobu was a firm admirer of Chu Hsi studies, and he believed that government must be conducted on the basis of Confucian benevolent rule. In the mid-1790s, he prohibited all teachings except those of the Chu Hsi school at the Shōheikō, the bakufu official college headed by the Hayashi family. He even instituted a five-level examination system for promotions among bakufu officials who were trained at this shogunal academy.
While Sadanobu was senior councillor, a Russian envoy, Adam Laxman, landed at Nemuro in 1792 and requested trade relations. Although the bakufu rejected the Russian proposal, Sadanobu ordered that plans be drawn up immediately for a coastal defense system centered on Edo Bay (now called Tokyo Bay), while he himself inspected the coastline of Izu, Sagami, and Bōsō. At Sadanobu’s resignation in 1793 these plans were scrapped, but the bakufu councillors of this era were the first to react to the threat of foreign nations advancing on Japan, which now could be heard through the wall of national seclusion. Sadanobu’s reforms appear to be an overreaction to Tanuma’s administration, and, whereas people at first welcomed them, antipathy gradually increased. Within the bakufu Sadanobu had his enemies. Some Tanuma supporters remained in bakufu posts through his early years; in addition, the ōoku (women’s quarter, the shogun’s harem), disliked him since he had purged some women who had become involved with Buddhist priests. Ultimately, he lost the confidence of the shogun Ienari and resigned.
In conjunction with the bakufu programs, reforms were carried out within the various daimyo domains. A distinctive feature of han reforms at this time, however, was that they tried to apply stronger regulations and control over the commercial economy of the farmers.
Ienari was restrained by Sadanobu’s strict political reforms, but, when the latter left the bakufu council, the shogun was able to relax. Even so, Ienari was not completely free while the councillors who had supported Sadanobu’s reforms were still alive. During the period 1804–31 these men died one after another, and the bakufu government became lax once again. Mizuno Tadaakira, a senior councillor with acute business acumen, rose to power as a personal attendant to Ienari. But he and other high officials seemed as addicted to bribery as earlier regimes, and the corruption of the bakufu increased considerably. On the surface things seemed peaceful, but underneath the stagnation of the feudal system became even more grave. Even in the villages of Kantō, the seat of the bakufu, disturbances continued apace. The bakufu therefore set up an office called the Kantō Torishimari-deyaku (“Supervisors of the Kantō District”) to strengthen police control of the area, and it ordered the villages of Kantō to form associations to assist this office. But the impetus to reform had faded, as almost a century of bakufu efforts to deal effectively with vastly changed socioeconomic conditions had proved ineffective: many samurai “rulers” lived in poverty, while officially despised merchants became incredibly wealthy; the number of tenants soared as the gap between rich and poor farmers widened; commercialization proceeded far beyond the understanding as well as the control of the regime; rural and urban unrest threatened the stability of society; and now the ominous spectre of a foreign threat loomed on the horizon.
The growth of the northern problem
In the early 1800s foreign relations, which national seclusion policies had been designed to avoid, became a pressing problem for the bakufu, and the situation in Ezo became especially worrisome. In 1804 another Russian envoy, N.P. Rezanov, visited Japan—this time at Nagasaki, where the Dutch by law were allowed to call—to request commercial relations. The bakufu refused Rezanov’s request, and during the next three years Russians attacked Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Earlier in 1804, the bakufu had taken eastern Ezo away from the jurisdiction of the Matsumae domain in northern Honshu and placed it under its direct control, and in 1807 the bakufu also took direct control of both eastern and western Ezo for defensive purposes. In 1808 the English warship Phaeton made an incursion on Nagasaki, and three years later the Russian naval lieutenant V.M. Golovnin landed on Kunashiri Island, where he was arrested by bakufu authorities. When these various incidents were resolved, peace continued for a time in the northern regions; the bakufu relaxed its precautions, returning all Ezo to the control of the Matsumae domain in 1821. In the south, English ships often appeared in Japanese waters after the Phaeton incident, and the bakufu failed to adopt a consistent policy. In 1825, responding to a proposal by Takahashi Kageyasu, Edo authorities promulgated the Order to Drive Away Foreign Ships (Ikokusen uchiharairei), which also enjoined coastal authorities to arrest or kill any foreigners who came ashore. This was also known as the ninen nashi or “no second thought” law. It was never fully carried out because of opposition by a number of officials, including Matsudaira Sadanobu. In 1842, upon hearing the news of China’s defeat in the Opium War, the bakufu responded to foreign demands for the right to refuel in Japan by canceling that order and adopting the Order for the Provision of Firewood and Water (Shinsui kyūyorei). While attempting to preserve the iron law of seclusion to the bitter end, bakufu policy was thus inconsistent, driving foreign ships away at one point and treating them with leniency at others. And it proved to be utterly powerless when it was faced with the full weight of foreign pressure later in the 1840s.
New learning and thought
Underlying this weakening of the bakuhan political system was an ideological crisis, the result of many new movements that took place in scholarship and culture. The mid-Tokugawa period, roughly the 18th century, as discussed above, was a time of considerable unrest. Samurai leaders of bakufu and han alike sought to grapple with the disturbing fact that the great peace envisioned as resulting from policies of rigid class separation, national isolation, and agricultural self-sufficiency was being undermined by unintended economic changes released by those policies themselves. In the area of thought, the ideological foundations of Edo rule—orthodox Chu Hsi philosophy—came into question. Ironically, the ideal of “the investigation of things” inherent in Chu Hsi philosophy encouraged speculation that inevitably led to questioning Chu Hsi orthodoxy itself. And many of those who were led into such speculation were not samurai but commoners.
Heterodox Confucian schools
Already in the second half of the 17th century the scholars of the kogaku (“study of antiquity”) school criticized Chu Hsi studies and advocated a return to the original ideals of Confucianism. Two of the most important thinkers articulating this view were Itō Jinsai and Ogyū Sorai. Sorai, acknowledged to be the seminal thinker of Edo times, was especially concerned with the contradictions between social theory and reality. Critical of the rise of merchants and farmers at the expense of the samurai, he tried to find a way to revive the deteriorating conditions of warriors. In his work Seidan, for example, Sorai insisted that the main reason for the financial distress of the warrior class in both the bakufu and the domains was that warriors had moved to the cities, where they were at the mercy of a monetary economy. If they would return to the villages, they could be self-sufficient once again, and other orders of society—especially the peasants—would respect them. The proper relations between the classes could thus be restored. Kogaku critics of orthodoxy were hardly alone. Various other schools of Confucianism arose, such as setchūgaku (“eclectic school”) and kōshōgaku (“positivistic school”). Conflict between the various schools became fierce, and the authority of Chu Hsi studies grew weak, which explains Sadanobu’s prohibition of heterodox studies during the Kansei reforms. The bakufu attempted to reinvigorate Chu Hsi orthodoxy by prohibiting all other schools of Confucianism in the college of the bakufu, but the attempt was destined to failure. Confucianism, both Chu Hsi orthodoxy and other types, now spread widely throughout the provinces, especially with the establishment of domain schools (hankō) for the education of the domain samurai. Beginning in the 18th century, but continuing until the end of the Edo period, domains one after another opened such schools to train their warrior-administrators in both civil and military skills. Thus, learning and culture arose in the domains, accompanied by a growth of scholarship with local coloring. Among such schools, the Kaitoku-dō in Ōsaka became famous as the “townspeople’s university.” This school was founded cooperatively by Confucian scholars and wealthy merchants in 1724, and samurai and merchants sat together to hear lectures. Perhaps the best-known and most unique thinker to come out of the school was Yamagata Bantō.
