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The United State in Kamakura Law by Christoffer R. Bovbjerg A The United State in Kamakura Law By Christoffer R. Bovbjerg A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Mary Elizabeth Berry, Chair Professor Andrew E. Barshay Professor H. Mack Horton Summer 2018 Abstract The United State in Kamakura Law by Christoffer R. Bovbjerg Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Mary Elizabeth Berry, Chair What did the Kamakura bakufu (c. 1180-1333), Japan’s first so-called “warrior government” actually do? How did its “warrior” authority and role in governance change and expand over time? This dissertation examines the administration of the Kamakura bakufu through the its legal and administrative documents. It finds that these sources are critical to understanding how the warriors of the bakufu governed themselves, and to the process of expansion of “warrior” authority well beyond military matters. From 1199, the bakufu began to formalize and systemize its political, legislative, and judicial processes. By 1249, it had issued the List of Precedents on Judgment (Goseibai shikimoku), which outlined and standardized the basic principles of Kamakura justice in the vernacular, as well as 265 supplemental laws (tsuika- hō) to update and expand Kamakura policy. It had established new conciliar structures for governance and judgment, and added procedures and supporting organizations to increase the efficacy and reliability of the legal process as Kamakura’s jurisdiction expanded. These sources show that the Kamakura bakufu consistently adapted to changing circumstances, taking on more authority and responsibilities as required by political exigency. This pattern of slow, uneven expansion further provides insight into the bakufu’s relationship with the imperial court and government. This dissertation argues that the bakufu operated as part of a “united state,” working as an (increasingly powerful) agency within the imperial government and under imperial authority. The bakufu actively worked to maintain the structures of the united state, and frequently reinforced the authority and jurisdiction of the imperial court and major religious institutions while limiting its own authority and the powers of its warriors. This arrangement allowed for the bakufu to continue to enjoy imperial legitimacy, and for undertaking sometimes substantial reforms without fundamentally altering or separating from the state. The bakufu was thus a complex and dynamic organization that resists easy categorization. It was not a separate or independent “warrior government,” nor merely one of several cooperative “powerful houses” (kenmon). The bakufu adapted and expanded to fill the space left by a retreating imperial court and provincial governments, drastically enlarging and refining its administration over time, changing to fit the needs of the moment. These findings further challenge the traditional conception of “warriors” as a distinct and separate social category, as well as the periodization and meaning of Japan’s “medieval” era. This work argues that overlooking the nature of the early development of the Kamakura bakufu obscures the broader development of “warrior” authority over the next 400 years, as the legal order originating under 1 Kamakura became the basis for total warrior rule as later warrior administrations completely eclipsed the imperial government. 2 For Shoelace the Shelter Cat, my constant dissertation companion i Contents Acknowledgments iii A Note on Sources and Translation iv Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: The Birth of Conciliar Rule and the Hōjō Regency, 1199-1213 10 Chapter Three: The Jōkyū Disturbance and Aftermath, 1221-1224 36 Chapter Four: A New Standard: The Kangi Famine and The List of Precedents on 64 Judgment (Goseibai Shikimoku), 1226-1232 Chapter Five: Solidification, 1233-1249 105 ii Acknowledgements I am grateful to many people for their help in completing this dissertation. Professor Mary Elizabeth Berry has been a constant source of inspiration and encouragement since I came to University of California, Berkeley. My interest in warriors grew out of conversations with her, and her criticism and challenges—always constructive—have improved my research, writing, and thinking immeasurably. Professors Andrew Barshay and Mack Horton also provided me with support and a sharp but sympathetic audience for my writing. In the course of my research, I had the pleasure of working with Professors Takahashi Noriyuki, Takahashi Shin’ichirō, and Kondō Shigekazu at the University of Tokyo and its Historiographical Institute. Each welcomed me into their classrooms, devoted time to reading medieval documents with me, and continue to patiently answer many questions and emails. My dissertation research and writing were supported by fellowships from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science and the Center for Japanese Studies, History Department, Institute for International Studies, and Graduate Division at U.C. Berkeley. I have benefitted greatly from the scholarly and personal support of my colleagues and friends at U.C. Berkeley. I am grateful to Sebastian Peel and Kaitlin Forgash for our ranging discussions of Japanese history, and especially to Andrea Horbinski for her advice and editorial expertise in revising this dissertation. The friendship and patience of Alberto Garcia, Bobby Lee, Zoe Griffith, and Eric Johnson were vital to my progression through graduate school and this project. My family, Matt, Barbara, and Randall Bovbjerg, have supported and indulged my interest in Japan from an early age. I am grateful for their patience, especially my father’s through many hours of phone calls discussing big ideas and line edits. Shoelace the Shelter Cat sat with me and kept my spirits up through writing every chapter. Finally, I could not have done this without Giuliana Perrone, my partner and wife. Her help in navigating the processes of research, writing, and editing was essential, but pales in comparison to happiness she brings me, reminding me that life is good, even if my latest draft was not. iii A Note on Translations and Dates All translations are by the author unless otherwise noted. Any mistakes are my own. I have largely preserved dates as they were written in the texts. Sources at the time used a lunar calendar and relied on a system of era names. In general, I have converted the years to their equivalents in the Gregorian calendar, but maintained the months and days as in the original. For example, 8/10/1232 as the tenth day of the eight month, 1232 (which was September 3rd, 1232). iv Chapter One Introduction Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199), the progenitor and first shogun of the Kamakura bakufu (c.1180-1333), died abruptly in 1199 after falling from his horse at the dedication ceremony of a bridge. His death lowered the curtain on the opening act of the bakufu, during which he raised an army of rebel warriors, led them to victory in battle, and then transformed them into officials serving both himself and the imperial government. Over the next fifty years, the bakufu continued to rely on such adaptive genius as it faced a variety of challenges, ranging from the momentous (famine and imperial rebellion) to the mundane (overburdened courts and ambiguous laws). The bakufu responded to crises with many different methods, but most of them were quite unwarlike. They included the development and systematization of legal and administrative structures as central pillars of Kamakura governance. The innovations usually resolved the problems at hand; they also legitimized expanding warrior authority over the longer term. The bakufu morphed, haltingly, from an autocratic instrument of Yoritomo into a consultative body of decision makers, who relied on councils of top warriors under the hegemony of the Hōjō family regents. It would defeat opposing forces of the imperial family in battle, assert new controls over the imperial court, and pervasively expand its network of officials. It would assume more power in more places. In 1232, the bakufu promulgated the List of Precedents on Judgments (Goseibai shikimoku), which established standard principles of justice in warrior law and included—remarkably—substantial limitations on its own jurisdiction and warrior membership. Another 265 supplemental laws (tsuika-hō) over the next eighteen years clarified, modified, and extended those initial principles (notably in the domain of judicial procedure). The bakufu also added administrative and judicial offices to manage its expanding operations. Yet all such expansion, I argue, took place within a “united state.” The Kamakura bakufu worked not just with but also within the imperial government, as its warrior housemen served as increasingly specialized agents in an integral administration. Kamakura laid the foundations for subsequent, more assertive bakufu regimes. However, during the first half-century of their ascendancy, the Hōjō regents integrated the Kamakura bakufu into pre-existing state structures and advanced distinctly limited notions of the warrior role. National warrior hegemony would not occur until the early modern era (c.1590-1868). In the following chapters I trace the early activity of the Kamakura bakufu, its vision of rule, and its exigent but always contained expansion within a state that neither anticipated nor led in any linear fashion to the radical reinventions of later centuries.
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