Unifier's of Japan
REUNIFICATION,
1573-1600
Between 1560 and 1600, powerful military
leaders arose to defeat the warring daimyo
and unify Japan.
Three major figures dominated the period in succession: Oda
Nobunaga (1534-82), Toyotomi Hideyoshi
(1536-98), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), each of
whom emerged as a major overlord with large military forces under his command.
As their power increased, they looked to the imperial court in Kyoto for sanction. In 1568 Nobunaga, who had
defeated another overlord's attempt to attack Kyoto in 1560, marched on the capital, gained
the support of the emperor, and installed his own candidate in the succession
struggle for shogun. Backed by military force, Nobunaga was able to control the
bakufu.
Initial resistance to Nobunaga in the Kyoto region came from
the Buddhist monks, rival daimyo,
and hostile merchants. Surrounded by his enemies, Nobunaga struck first at the
secular power of the militant Tendai Buddhists,
destroying their monastic center at Mount
Hiei
near Kyoto and
killing thousands of monks in 1571. By 1573 he had defeated the local daimyo, banished the last Ashikaga
shogun, and ushered in what historians call the Azuchi-Momoyama
period (1573-1600), named after the castles of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi.
Having taken these major steps toward reunification, Nobunaga then built a
seven-story castle surrounded by stone walls at Azuchi
on the shore of Lake Biwa.
The castle was able to withstand firearms and became a symbol of the age of
reunification. Nobunaga's power increased as he enfeoffed
the conquered daimyo, broke
down the barriers to free commerce, and drew the humbled religious communities
and merchants into his military structure. He secured control of about
one-third of the provinces through the use of large-scale warfare, and he
institutionalized administrative practices, such as systematic village
organization, tax collection, and standardized measurements. At the same time,
other daimyo, both those that
Nobunaga had conquered and those beyond his control, built their own heavily
fortified castles and modernized their garrisons. In 1577 Nobunaga dispatched
his chief general, Hideyoshi, to conquer twelve
western Honshu provinces. The war was a
protracted affair, and in 1582, when Nobunaga led an army to assist Hideyoshi, he was assassinated.
After destroying the forces responsible
for Nobunaga's death, Hideyoshi was rewarded with a
joint guardianship of Nobunaga's heir, who was a minor. By 1584 Hideyoshi had eliminated the three other guardians, taken
complete control of Kyoto,
and become the undisputed successor of his late overlord. A commoner by birth
and without a surname, Hideyoshi was adopted by the
Fujiwara family, given the surname Toyotomi, and
granted the title kanpaku,
representing civil and military control of all Japan. By the following year, he
had secured alliances with three of the nine major daimyo coalitions and continued the war of reunification
in Shikoku and northern Kyushu.
In 1590, with an army of 200,000 troops, Hideyoshi
defeated his last formidable rival, who controlled the Kanto region of eastern Honshu. The remaining contending daimyo capitulated, and the military
reunification of Japan
was complete.
All of Japan was controlled by the
dictatorial Hideyoshi either directly or through his
sworn vassals, and a new national government structure had evolved: a country
unified under one daimyo
alliance but still decentralized. The basis of the power structure was again
the distribution of territory. A new unit of land measurement and
assessment--the koku--was
instituted. One koku
was equivalent to about 180 liters of rice; daimyo
were by definition those who held lands capable of producing 10,000 koku or
more of rice. Hideyoshi personally controlled 2
million of the 18.5 million koku total national assessment (taken in 1598).
Tokugawa Ieyasu, a powerful central Honshu
daimyo (not completely under Hideyoshi's control), held 2.5 million koku.
Despite Hideyoshi's
tremendous strength and the fear in which he was held, his position was far
from secure. He attempted to rearrange the daimyo
holdings to his advantage by, for example, reassigning the Tokugawa family to
the conquered Kanto region and surrounding their new territory with more
trusted vassals. He also adopted a hostage system for daimyo wives and heirs at his castle
town at Osaka
and used marriage alliances to enforce feudal bonds. He imposed the koku
system and land surveys to reassess the entire nation. In 1590 Hideyoshi declared an end to any further class mobility or
change in social status, reinforcing the class distinctions between cultivators
and bushi
(only the latter could bear arms). He provided for an orderly succession in
1591 by taking the title taiko,
or retired kanpaku,
turning the regency over to his son Hideyori. Only
toward the end of his life did Hideyoshi try to
formalize the balance of power by establishing certain administrative bodies:
the five-member Board of Regents (one of them Ieyasu),
sworn to keep peace and support the Toyotomi, the
five-member Board of House Administrators for routine policy and administrative
matters, and the three-member Board of Mediators, who were charged with keeping
peace between the first two boards.
Momoyama art (1573-1615), named after the hill on which Hideyoshi built his castle at Fushima,
south of Kyoto, flourished during this period. It was a period of interest in
the outside world, the development of large urban centers, and the rise of the
merchant and leisure classes. Ornate castle architecture and interiors adorned
with painted screens embellished with gold leaf reflected daimyo power and wealth. Depictions of
the "southern barbarians"--Europeans--were exotic and popular.
In 1577 Hideyoshi
had seized Nagasaki, Japan's major point of contact with
the outside world. He took control of the various trade associations and tried
to regulate all overseas activities. Although China rebuffed his efforts to
secure trade concessions, Hideyoshi succeeded in
sending commercial missions to present-day Malaysia, the Philippines,
and Thailand.
He was suspicious of Christianity, however, as potentially subversive to daimyo loyalties and he had some
missionaries crucified.
Hideyoshi's major ambition was to conquer China, and in
1592, with an army of 200,000 troops, he invaded Korea, then a Chinese vassal state.
His armies quickly overran the peninsula before losing momentum in the face of
a combined Korean-Chinese force. During peace talks, Hideyoshi
demanded a division of Korea,
freetrade status, and a Chinese princess as consort
for the emperor. The equality with China sought by Japan was
rebuffed by the Chinese, and peace efforts ended. In 1597 a second invasion was
begun, but it abruptly ended with Hideyoshi's death
in 1598.
TOKUGAWA
PERIOD, 1600-1867
Rule of Shogun and Daimyo
An evolution had taken place in the
centuries from the time of the Kamakura
bakufu,
which existed in equilibrium with the imperial court, to the Tokugawa, when the
bushi
became the unchallenged rulers in what historian Edwin O. Reischauer called a
"centralized feudal" form of government. Instrumental in the rise of
the new bakufu
was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the main beneficiary of the
achievements of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. Already
powerful, Ieyasu profited by his transfer to the rich
Kanto area. He maintained 2.5 million koku of land, had a new
headquarters at Edo, a strategically situated
castle town (the future Tokyo),
and had an additional 2 million koku of land and thirtyeight
vassals under his control. After Hideyoshi's death, Ieyasu moved quickly to seize control from the Toyotomi family.
Ieyasu's victory over the western daimyo at the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) gave him virtual control of all Japan. He
rapidly abolished numerous enemy daimyo
houses, reduced others, such as that of the Toyotomi,
and redistributed the spoils of war to his family and allies. Ieyasu still failed to achieve complete control of the
western daimyo, but his
assumption of the title of shogun helped consolidate the alliance system. After
further strengthening his power base, Ieyasu was
confident enough to install his son Hidetada
(1579-1632) as shogun and himself as retired shogun in 1605. The Toyotomi were still a significant threat, and Ieyasu devoted the next decade to their eradication. In
1615 the Toyotomi stronghold at Osaka was destroyed by the Tokugawa army.
The Tokugawa (or Edo)
period brought 200 years of stability to Japan. The political system evolved
into what historians call bakuhan,
a combination of the terms bakufu and han (domains) to describe the
government and society of the period. In the bakuhan, the shogun had national
authority and the daimyo had
regional authority, a new unity in the feudal structure, which had an
increasingly large bureaucracy to administer the mixture of centralized and
decentralized authorities. The Tokugawa became more powerful during their first
century of rule: land redistribution gave them nearly 7 million koku,
control of the most important cities, and a land assessment system reaping
great revenues.
The feudal hierarchy was completed by the
various classes of daimyo.
Closest to the Tokugawa house were the shinpan, or "related
houses." They were twenty-three daimyo
on the borders of Tokugawa lands, daimyo
all directly related to Ieyasu. The shinpan
held mostly honorary titles and advisory posts in the bakufu. The second class of the
hierarchy were the fudai,
or "house daimyo,"
rewarded with lands close to the Tokugawa holdings for their faithful service.
By the eighteenth century, 145 fudai controlled such smaller han, the greatest assessed at
250,000 koku.
Members of the fudai
class staffed most of the major bakufu offices. Ninety-seven han formed the third group, the tozama
(outside vassals), former opponents or new allies. The tozama were located mostly on
the peripheries of the archipelago and collectively controlled nearly 10
million koku
of productive land. Because the tozama were least trusted of the daimyo, they were the most cautiously
managed and generously treated, although they were excluded from central
government positions.
A code of laws was established to regulate
the daimyo houses. The code
encompassed private conduct, marriage, dress, and types of weapons and numbers
of troops allowed; required alternateyear residence
at Edo; prohibited the construction of
ocean-going ships; proscribed Christianity; and stipulated that bakufu
regulations were the national law. Although the daimyo were not taxed per se, they were regularly levied
for contributions for military and logistical support and for such public works
projects as castles, roads, bridges, and palaces. The various regulations and
levies not only strengthened the Tokugawa but also depleted the wealth of the daimyo, thus weakening their threat to
the central administration. The han, once military-centered domains, became mere
local administrative units. The daimyo
did have full administrative control over their territory and their complex
systems of retainers, bureaucrats, and commoners. Loyalty was exacted from
religious foundations, already greatly weakened by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, through a variety of control mechanisms.
The Tokugawa not only consolidated their
control over a reunified Japan,
they also had unprecedented power over the emperor, the court, all daimyo, and the religious orders. The
emperor was held up as the ultimate source of political sanction for the
shogun, who ostensibly was the vassal of the imperial family. The Tokugawa
helped the imperial family recapture its old glory by rebuilding its palaces
and granting it new lands. To ensure a close tie between the imperial clan and
the Tokugawa family, Ieyasu's granddaughter was made
an imperial consort in 1619.