EARLY MODERN JAPAN 2008 the Early Modern Warrior: Three
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EARLY MODERN JAPAN 2008 The Early Modern Warrior: warlords and the practice of exchanging family members as guarantees of loyalty meant that this Three Explorations of young samurai’s life was not likely to be stable. Samurai Life Premature death and separation from one’s loved ones were in fact common experiences for many warriors. His own father was engaged in a string of campaigns against more powerful warlords Introduction who surrounded and threatened his territory. As a gesture of conciliation, Ieyasu’s father sent him, © Morgan Pitelka, Occidental at the age of five, as a hostage to a neighboring warlord. In transit, however, he was kidnapped College by yet another rival warlord, and two years into his life in that domain learned that his father had The following three essays focus on lesser- died. Later that year he was transferred to Sumpu known aspects of the early modern warrior ex- castle where he became a hostage of the Ima- perience: food, shopping, and travel. While each gawa until the age of eighteen. Young samurai essay is part of a larger scholarly project, the hostages such as Ieyasu were rarely treated as intention of the articles presented here is to serve prisoners. In fact, at Sumpu Ieyasu received a as an introduction to warrior life. This brief full education in the military and cultural prac- opening essay is designed to provide a context tices of the samurai; he learned to love the out- for understanding the rich history of the early doors and the practice of falconry in particular; modern warrior experience. It begins with a brief he was married at the age of fifteen to a relative sketch of one of the most famous warriors in of his captor; and he was sent on his first sortie Japanese history and the founder of the Toku- at the age of sixteen. But even when he seized gawa shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616). his independence as head of his natal family at It then reviews warrior demography and society, the age of 18, defeated an uprising at the age of warrior cultural practices, and the urban charac- twenty-two, and unified Mikawa and took the ter of the warrior experience, providing refer- name “Tokugawa” at the age of 24, his successes ences to secondary literature in English while 1 were related to the ongoing disruption of the old contextualizing the essays that follow. system of shogun-dominated warrior authority.2 Contrast these early, insecure experiences Sketch of a Warrior: with Ieyasu’s later life. In 1590 Ieyasu became Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616) ruler of the largest territory in all of Japan, the Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the most famous eastern provinces formerly controlled by the warriors in Japanese history, was born into a so- ciety in the throes of civil war and into an elite 2 warrior family in difficult circumstances. His This brief outline of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s career father, ruler of the northern part of Mikawa Prov- is based on my ongoing research into his life and ince, was only sixteen and his mother only four- material culture, which uses his letters, extant teen. His talented grandfather, who had helped objects, and the many contemporaneous and establish the family name and built Okazaki Cas- slightly later documents to analyze his rise and tle, was assassinated before he reached the age of establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. twenty five. The constant battles between rival Unfortunately, English-language resources on Ieyasu are few. Conrad Totman’s popular biography, Tokugawa Ieyasu: Shogun (San 1 I extend my gratitude to my collaborators Eric Francisco: Heian International Inc., 1983) is out Rath, Constantine Vaporis, and Laura Nenzi. I of print. A much older biography, A. L. Sadler’s also offer thanks to Matthew Stavros, Rachel The Maker of Modern Japan: The Life of Shogun Saunders, David Eason, Martha Chaiklin, Janice Tokugawa Ieyasu (London: G. Allen and Unwin, Katz, David Spafford, and Linda Pitelka. The Ltd., 1937) is still widely available but is entirely map is by Scott Flodin. unreliable. 33 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 2008 Hōjō, and he set up his new headquarters in the could be displayed through the acquisition of antique paintings or powerful Noh masks. But the methods of confrontation had changed. When Ieyasu died in 1616, he was surrounded by friends, family, and vassals, relatively secure in the knowledge that he had pacified the forces that wreaked havoc on the country for over a century. His successors would struggle to per- petuate this Pax Tokugawa, but Ieyasu’s part, at least, was done. Ieyasu began his life in volatility, and ended it in stability. As the essays in this issue illustrate, the Tokugawa stabilization of society would have profound consequences for all those with warrior status. Warrior Demography and Society To begin the process of examining the ex- periences of early modern samurai more gener- ally, we must first ask how large the population of warriors was in premodern Japan. An exact answer is not possible because of the limitations of available primary sources, but broad demo- Map 1. Japan circa 1600, detail. graphic trends can be estimated. Samurai appear to have made up a small population of medieval village of Edo. Ten years later, he defeated at Japan, only 1.6 to 1.8%.4 Growth occurred in the Sekigahara a powerful but ultimately disjointed sixteenth century, when shifts in battle tactics assortment of warlords opposed to his preemi- and leadership resulted in much larger armies.5 nent national position and was rewarded in 1603 The warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of with court appointment to the post of shogun, Kyushu, for example, involved more than allowing him to establish a new warrior govern- ment for Japan. In an act of confidence and to guarantee succession, he stepped down from the and his family’s hawking purposes has been well position of shogun in 1605 and passed it on to documented in Nesaki Mitsuo, Shōgun no taka- his accomplished son Hidetada. Ieyasu then gari (Dōseisha, 1999). spent his remaining years doting on his children 4 Historian William Wayne Farris estimates that and grandchildren and advising his son in Edo. in the early eighth century, Japan’s total From his retirement residence in Sumpu, where population was 5.8 to 6.4 million, with a warrior he had lived all those years before as a child hos- population that hovered around 110,000, or tage surrounded by a violent and insecure world, about 1.8% of the total. William Wayne Farris, he enjoyed not only stability, but also a range of Japan’s Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, experiences long appreciated by warlords but and Warfare in a Transformative Age (Honolulu: that he now could pursue with vigor: regular University of Hawaii Press, 2006), 97. banqueting, hunting for sport, leisure travel, and 5 On changing tactics and growing armies: patronage of the Noh theater. Like the struggles Delmer Brown, “The Impact of Firearms on of his early career, participation in these activi- Japanese Warfare, 1543–98,” The Far Eastern ties was still a deeply political act: alliances Quarterly 7:3 (May, 1948). Also, parts of could be struck over tea, land could be confis- 3 Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: cated in the name of hunting rights, and status Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University 3 Ieyasu’s practice of setting aside land for his Press, 1988). 34 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 2008 250,000 warriors.6 Although the national warrior tion for extraordinary service. 9 Rather, those population was never counted during the Toku- who were born into established warrior lineages gawa period, historians estimate that samurai and who engaged in some sort of public military made up around 5-10% of the total population, service maintained this distinct social status. In which rose to nearly 30 million in the late seven- the medieval period, warrior status was part of teenth century and then hovered at that level un- the Kyoto court’s system of ranks and hierarchy. til the nineteenth century.7 These numbers are Nagahara Keiji writes that “the status of samurai significant, as they indicate that during the me- was defined within the framework of the medie- dieval period warriors represented a truly tiny val state which had the Emperor and the nobles fraction of the overall population and in the at the head of its formal structure. The samurai, peaceful years of the Tokugawa period they in short, was a status which qualified one for came to occupy a slightly larger slice of the specified ranks within this state, and the princi- demographic pie. pal function of the bushi was to serve as a mili- Who made up this population of warriors, a tary arm of the state.”10 The warfare of the late group described variably as samurai (“those who fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, loos- serve”), bushi (warriors, or, literally read, “mili- ened status boundaries, and the need of warlords tary officers”), or buke (elite warriors)? Member- for larger armies created openings for those not ship in general was defined by both birth and from hereditary warrior families to gain access to occupation. 8 Commoners recruited as foot- the military profession. With the establishment soldiers (ashigaru) were not considered warriors of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 and the de- unless they won special recognition and promo- feat of the Toyotomi in 1615, opportunities for social mobility between samurai and non- samurai status declined markedly as Japan en- tered into a long period of peace and relative 6 Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi (Cambridge, stability.