November 1999 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 1

Volume VIII Number 2 CONTENTS November 2000

From the Editors' Desk 編纂者から 2

Articles 論文

The Diverse Japanese: Local History's Challenge to National Narratives in the Nineteenth Century: An Introduction Jonathan Dresner 2 Community and Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Japan: A Re-consideration Edward Pratt 5 Lost in History: Aizu and the Meiji Restoration John E. Van Sant 14 Meiji Education and the Uses of Local History Brian Platt 20 Sacred Sites and the Dynamics of Identity Sarah Thal 28 Local History’s Challenge to National Narratives Philip C. Brown 38

Book Notes, Etc. 研究書ノート等

Book Introduction: Questioning Edo as a Free-Sex Paradise: Koyano Atsushi 小谷野敦, Edo gensō hihan—"Edo no seiai" raisanron wo utsu 『江戸幻想批判― 江戸の性愛」礼讃論を撃つ』("Critiquing the Edo Fantasy: Shooting Down the Discourse in Praise of 'Edo Sexual Love') Lawrence Marceau 48

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Editors

Philip C. Brown Ohio State University

Lawrence Marceau University of DelDelaaawareware

Editorial Board

Sumie Jones Indiana University

Ronald Toby University of Illinois

For subscription information please refer to the end page

The editors welcome preliminary inquiries about manuscripts for publication in Early Modern Japan. Please send queries to Philip Brown, Early Modern Japan. Department of History, Ohio State University, 230 West 17th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210 or, via e-mail to [email protected].

Books for review and inquiries regarding book reviews, please contact Lawrence Marceau, Review Editor, Early Modern Japan, Foreign Languages & Literatures, Smith Hall 326, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716-2550. E-mail correspondence may be sent to [email protected].

Subscribers wishing to review books are encouraged to specify their interests on the sub- scriber information form.

NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 2

From the Editors' Desk schach test for historians, because it tends to re- flect and reveal what is sought. Scholarship on 編纂者から Japan in the United States has been searching for new approaches and directions for some time, This issue of EMJ is devoted to papers that and the substantial studies of Japan's local history were presented at the American Historical Asso- produced recently in English suggest that local ciation’s annual meeting in Chicago, in January history may be the means by which our under- 2000. The session, “The Diverse Japanese: Lo- standing of Japan is going to take its next steps cal History's Challenge to National Narratives in forward. the Nineteenth Century,” brought together four Much scholarship on the 19th century is fo- papers that focused on developments in nine- cused on the question of Japan's national history, teenth century Japan and employed local history and takes as a given the uniformity of Japan's materials and perspectives to critique our under- development. Part of this is due to the deliberate standing of the transition to Meiji. In the proc- obfuscation of regionality on the part of the Meiji ess, they raise some significant questions about government, and part of it is due to the uninten- how we create our “national” narratives and deal tional difficulty of getting beyond the nation-state with issues of local variations in telling the story unit in our thinking. Tokugawa scholarship has or stories of Japanese history. begun to articulate a concept of "Japan" not as a unitary national society but as an interactive sys- tem of classes, regions and communities, but only recently has there been scholarship that gave real The Diverse Japanese: Local attention to diversity and regionality in the late 19th century. Recent scholarship is beginning to History's Challenge to National challenge the imposition of paradigmatic history Narratives in the Nineteenth with complex and diverse studies that are both CeCennnturyturytury:: An InIntroductiontroduction local in focus but regional and national, some- times even international, in implication. Jonathan Dresner Local history, by both professional and ama- Coe College teur historians, has been steadily popular in Japan since the end of World War II. The presentation "But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better under- of local history is not immune to the errors of standing and, consequently, a thing in movement. dogmatism. Much of this scholarship was de- To limit oneself to describing a science just as it is voted to either promoting or denying the impor- will always be to betray it a little. It is still more tance of the central state in the modernization of important to tell how it expects to improve itself in Japan in the 19th century, and was highly politi- the course of time. Now, such an undertaking inevi- cized; most of the rest were sentimental attempts tably involves a rather large dose of personal opin- ion. Indeed, every science is continually beset at to situate important national movements in each stage of its development by diverging tenden- largely neglected peripheries. Though it is im- cies, and it is scarcely possible to decide which is portant to deconstruct the concept of Japanese now dominant without prophesying the future. We nationhood, local history should be more than shall not shirk this obligation. The dread of respon- just a challenge to the nation-state unit of histori- sibility is as discreditable in intellectual matters as cal writing. Nor can it simply glorify the "com- in any others. But it is only honest to give the reader fair warning." -- Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft, mon people", though it certainly brings their sto- pp. 12-13. ries to the fore and makes it possible to gain a sense of what life was like during this period of The nineteenth century is perhaps the most change. Rather than focusing on local history as frequently studied period of Japanese history, but "exemplar" or "challenger" to national narratives, it remains poorly understood. It is complex, we need to build up a substantial body of broad dynamic, contradictory, and clearly crucial to local histories, which can then become the foun- understanding what Japan is and was. It is a Ror- dation of a regionally diverse but interactive na- NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 3

tional history, without the subject-object dichot- movements of Japanese in a changing national omy so common in the master narrative. economy and international environment. It will The late nineteenth century has most fre- also provide the foundation for closer examina- quently been studied for clues as to what came tion of the effects of "national" trends and phe- before and after it. The "legacy of the Tokugawa" nomena – the Matsukata deflation, unequal trea- scholarship looks at the way in which Meiji gov- ties, growth of the banking system, etc. – on ernment, economics and culture are continuations small communities. of pre-Restoration society, both to challenge the When I put out a call for scholars to join me "modernization transformation" motif of early presenting a panel on Japanese local history at the 20th Century scholarship and to cast light on the American Historical Association (AHA) 2000 less well-sourced Tokugawa society. The "key to Annual Convention, I expected a few responses, the future" scholarship looks for clues to Japan's and had some candidates in mind for gentle per- 20th century imperialistic nationalism and eco- suasion if recruitment failed. The response was so nomic success. Both of these kinds of studies strong that I decided to forego presenting a paper answer important questions, but they are difficult myself in order to have the chance to hear as to integrate into a coherent picture: Japan is ei- many of the other papers as possible. Of the pre- ther lingeringly pre-modern or an incipient mod- senters, only one was previously known to me ern society. Local studies can complicate this di- (Edward Pratt), which suggested to me that there chotomy, perhaps even eliminate it, by examining are a lot more people working in the area of local systemic change in terms of the individuals and history than I had realized. So the panel, "The communities who participate, as both subject and Diverse Japanese: Local History's Challenge to actor. Most importantly, local historical studies National Narratives," represents just a small por- give scholars a chance to sift through the raw data tion of this new wave of scholarship, but covers a of history, looking for the typical and atypical, wide range of topics within a relatively focused the striking details that lead to questions, and the time period. Taken together, these papers suggest questions that lead to greater understanding. the potential of local history to both answer ques- This is what I am trying to do in my own re- tions raised at the national level and to question search on Meiji-era international emigration and answers accepted as national truisms. its effects on local social and economic develop- Ed Pratt challenges conventional ideas of ment in Yamaguchi Prefecture. This is an in- village structure by looking at both cooperative tensely regional phenomenon: most emigrants in and competitive behavior together rather than the 19th century came from five prefectures, usu- seeing the two in Manichean opposition. His es- ally from a few counties within those prefectures; say exemplifies the wonder of discovery in local outside of the high emigration regions, interna- historical study, how the most important discov- tional emigration was nearly non-existent until eries begin, as Isaac Asimov said, with "That's colonial migration. Nonetheless, histories of these odd" rather than with "Eureka!" The diary of regions rarely point to the flow of people and Ichikawa Shōemon provides a vivid and detailed money as a significant factor in local growth. The account of both family and hamlet affairs in the reason, if I may anticipate my own research, late 19th century. The village is indeed a coop- seems to be threefold: scholars focused on the erative unit and one that values harmony highly, growth of capitalism have neglected the history but neither of these things operates automatically: of the labor-rich, capital-poor regions; local his- rather they are the result of constant effort, often torians are loath to characterize their hometowns in the face of social and economic turmoil. Dis- as poor labor-exporting migrant societies; finally, putes arise frequently in this account, but they are the effect of the income from international remit- more the result of violations of social norms than tances and hand carried earnings seems to have of economic class clashes. More common, were been matched in many other regions, and there- communal activities, celebrations, mutual assis- fore muted, by remittances and income from mi- tance, local administration, but these required gration to cities or industrial areas. I hope this coordination and negotiation. research will elucidate the complex and active NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 4

John Van Sant highlights the dissension that The success and popularity of pilgrimage shrines remained after the Meiji Restoration within the affected (and was shaped by) regional and local samurai class, and the need for Tokugawa loyal- governments' economic policies, not to mention ists to absent themselves from the modernizing regional identification. The success of the shrine state. The Meiji Restoration is frequently touted also draws attention to a tension in national pri- as "nearly bloodless" and the unity that followed orities: the elites, educated in Western scientific is considered remarkable, but this paper high- ideas, criticized and denigrated the traditional lights the destruction seen in Aizu-Wakamatsu, as religious faith which was such an important part well as the punitive treatment it received after- of the structure of Japanese nationalism. wards, which led to both internal and interna- Philip Brown, our panel commentator, has tional migration. Though we usually do not think provided a much more extensive and detailed of the Japanese as refugees, the Meiji Restoration discussion of the ebb and flow of local historical did produce substantial political and economic study in English-language scholarship on Japan. disorder that produced large numbers of them. Though it was not at all intentional in the panel Brian Platt's study of Nagano education re- formation, he identifies a thread of confrontation form complicates the conventional narrative of running through these studies, sometimes in the modernization by balancing central and local ini- form of violence, which suggests a much more tiatives, and suggests a dynamic and multilateral dynamic and active response to change than has process. Perhaps most striking, for a discussion of traditionally been attributed to Japanese com- education in Japan, his narrative is neither trium- moners. He has very thoroughly outlined the phant nor tragic. Nagano, though lacking the sort challenges and the potentials of local historical of public protest that makes it an obvious resister studies, and the place that local history can and to centralization, nonetheless articulated dis- should -- and will, if the papers presented here tinctly local needs and advocated for substantial are any indication -- play in the dialectic synthe- modifications to the education system. The cen- sis of Japanese history. tral government, without compromising its goal How do these studies of local history ad- of using the education system as an element in vance our understanding of Japanese history? national unification, responded positively to local First, they challenge scholarly assumptions, not requests. He argues that the development of edu- because of ideological schism, but because the cation in Nagano fails to fit any of the powerful documents and data do not fit the inherited para- paradigms of Japanese historiography -- Marxist digms. Second, though their conclusions are ex- determinism, Populist resistance, or Moderniza- citing, they are tentative, because all of these tion theory developmentalism -- as well as com- scholars recognize the particularity of their data; plicating the traditional national uniformity with the "final" word on all of these questions must which education development is usually por- await further study of more regions, which these trayed. papers clearly invite. Third, these papers make it Sarah Thal's study of shrines and pilgrimages clear that Japan in the 19th century was an in- adds a regional depth to our understanding of the tensely regional place, with local identity and crucial intersection of religion and nationalism in society far more important to most people than Modern Japan. The tension between new identi- national concerns or events, and with a great deal ties -- the religious and "traditional" rural versus of regional variation among economic, religious, the secular, "modern" urbanite – and local actors’ political and social systems. Finally, without de- deliberate use of central government policy to nying the importance of national leadership and advance regional development suggest a much "Great Men", these papers highlight the experi- subtler negotiation and development than any ences of Japanese with little or no official author- previous narrative of Meiji religious history. ity, and credit them with active, thoughtful and Though the "State Shinto" structure might have effective participation in social, economic, reli- been imposed, the religious and social power of gious, and political arenas. sites like Kompira depended on active and ap- parently earnest participation by local individuals. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 5

Community and Conflict in the village as conflictual has been articulated forcefully by Irwin Scheiner and Herman Ooms. NineteenthNineteenth---CenturyCentury Japan: Scheiner writes about the “myth of community”; A ReRe---considerationconsideration he even goes so far as to call portrayals of villag- ers acting collectively as “imagined communi- Edward Pratt 3 William and Mary College ties.” Ooms contends that the Tokugawa vil- lage is best characterized by strife and discord. “One evening at the end of March,” Ichikawa He writes, “The frequent description of villages as harmonious and consensual is a misrecognition Shōemon wrote in his diary, “there was a fire at 4 the house of Mohachi of Arata. But . . . this if not an outright denial of these realities.” person did not know a thing about it. I heard the Both writers leave little room for considerations story the next day. Thus, I did not go there at of the nineteenth-century village as communi- the time.”1 The failure of his neighbors to com- tarian. municate the news about the fire clearly frus- According to the Western theoretical literature, trated Shōemon. It did not matter that he was this view concerning the absence of community on seventy-nine years old and in poor health. It the eve of Japan’s Meiji transformation seems to was the duty of neighbors, after all, to lend a make perfect sense. Eminent social scientists hand, first in putting out the fire and later in the such as Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber, and Tal- clearing of the ashes and the rebuilding of the cott Parsons long ago argued that collective be- house. They assisted one another, too, when havior and community necessarily decline with their roofs needed to be re-thatched and in the the arrival of “modern” society, especially with the preparations for funerals, marriages, and com- onslaught of market forces and bureaucratic cen- ing-of-age ceremonies. They joined together to tralization. Tönnies viewed this transformation offer prayers to ward off contagion from the vil- along a spectrum, with Gemeinschaft at the one lage and to go on pilgrimages to Ōyama to pray end and Gesellschaft at the other. Whereas Ge- for rain. They formed revolving credit associa- meinschaft is characterized by collective will, tions to provide themselves the funds necessary folkways, and religious life, its destruction leads to to sustain or to expand their farm operations. Gesellschaft, whereby the growing importance of convention, law, and public opinion culminate in Shōemon’s experiences, and indeed the ex- 5 periences of many other farmer diarists, seem- individualism. Since Japan witnessed remark- ingly challenge prevailing wisdom on the con- able growth in its market economy in the nine- flictual nature of the nineteenth-century village. teenth century, and because the Meiji state enacted The works on peasant revolts, for example, por- policies that increasingly eroded local autonomy, it tray a rural populace besieged by inequality, dis- seems only natural that collective activity there, cord, and rebellion.2 More recently, this view of too, would decline.

1 Ichikawa Shōemon, Ichikawa-ke nikki (hereinaf- ter IKN), in Nishitama-gun jinbutsushi, Hō kagami, Protest in Early Modern Japan, Ithaca: Cornell Minoue ichidaiki, Ichikawa-ke nikki, Ōme shishi University Press, 1995. shiryōshū, vol. 46, compiled by Ōme-shi Kyōdo 3 Irwin Scheiner, “The Japanese Village: Imagined, Hakubutsukan, Ōme-shi: Ōme-shi Kyōiku Iinkai, Real, Contested,” in Stephen Vlastos, ed., Mirror of 1996, 219. Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, 2 See, for example, Herbert Bix, Peasant Protest in Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, 69. Japan, 1590-1884, New Haven: Yale University 4 Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice: Class, Press, 1986; Stephen Vlastos, Peasant Protests and Status, Power, Law, Berkeley: University of Cali- Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan, Berkeley: University fornia Press, 1996, 10. of California Press, 1986; Anne Walthall, Social 5 Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Society (Ge- Protest and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century meinschaft under Gesellschaft) New Brunswick, Japan, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986; N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1988, see esp. chapters James W. White, Ikki: Social Conflict and Political 4 and 5. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 6

Adding to the general confusion surrounding perhaps explains why many of the things he the issue of rural conflict and cooperation is the writes about are not found in other diaries, at fact that ethnographic accounts portray twenti- least not with the same amount of detail. eth-century villages where farmers engaged in a Shōemon lived in a mountain village, Mi- host of collective activities and placed a high pre- nami-osoki (currently part of Ōme city), in mium on consensus and harmony. This is clear Musashi province. from the works of John Embree, Robert Smith, Much of the diary concerns the collective ac- and Ronald Dore, for example.6 What happened? tivities of the villagers and the various relation- Was collective behavior something that came into ships among them. Surprisingly, the village being only in the twentieth century? That seems itself was not so important. The most important highly unlikely. Despite the current fascination unit for Shōemon was the hamlet or neighbor- with “invented traditions,” it is doubtful whether hood. Most collective activity centered around the modern Japanese state and its surrogates could the hamlet, not the village, and the hamlet asso- have remolded the Japanese people along commu- ciation (kumiai) frequently met to resolve prob- nitarian lines out of a cast forged from conflict. lems. Minami-osoki contained six hamlets, with Many studies have emphasized the conflictual an average of 27.5 households in each. In this nature of rural society, I contend, because the part of the Kantō hamlets were known as niwaba; documents they rely on -- materials relating to in other parts of Japan, they were known by such peasant revolts and intra-village conflict -- have terms as tsubo, kona, and kaito.7 The fact that predisposed them to this view. Perhaps because the hamlet figures so prominently is an important we lack case studies of individual villages, we also point, because with the dizzying administrative have an incomplete understanding of how farmers changes of the Meiji period, the village was con- handled conflict on an everyday level. It is espe- tinually being reconstituted into larger entities, cially important to examine community dynamics but the hamlet itself remained unchanged. This over the long term, so as to better ascertain the might explain the persistence of collective activ- enduring consequences, if any, of discord and ity well into the twentieth century. strife. This paper, as well as the broader research Minami-osoki certainly had its share of trou- project, uses diaries as a major source, not because blemakers, but Yoshisaburō was probably the they are inherently better or tell us more than other worst of the lot. At the end of 1860, he had types of documents, but because they are attuned been “acting violently,” compelling his father to to the quotidian, to the structures and rhythms of tie him up. After gnawing away at the ropes, everyday life. Though oftentimes cryptic, they Yoshisaburō escaped, shouting obscenities as he afford a much better sense of the variety and fre- fled. Neighbors rarely intervened in family quency of collective activity. disputes, but Yoshisaburō’s wild and violent be- havior demanded immediate action. When Ichikawa Shōemon’s diary, covering the pe- Yoshisaburō refused to listen to the suggestions riod 1859-1897, provides particular insight into of members of his hamlet association, they con- the dynamics of community life. Most diaries vened a meeting (yoriai) and decided to put him were written by village elites, the very wealthiest in their custody. The diary does not tell us more, people in rural society, especially headmen and but we can assume that neighbors housed him village merchants. Shōemon’s diary is unusual in that it was written by a middling farmer. This 7 For a discussion of the role of these hamlets, see Kimura Motoi, Mura o aruku: Nihonshi firudo nōto, 6 John Embree, Suye Mura: A Japanese Village, Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1998, esp. chapter 4; and Taki- Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1939; zawa Hiroshi, Niwaba ni tsuite: mura no naka no Robert J. Smith, Kurusu: The Price of Progress in a chiisana kyōdōtai, Ōme-shi: Ōme-shi Kyōiku Iinkai, Japanese Village, 1951-1975, Stanford: Stanford 1992, esp. part 1. Even the kumigashira, one of University Press, 1978; and Ronald P. Dore, Shino- the three positions of village administration, repre- hata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village, New York: sented the niwaba; he was not chosen from among Pantheon Books, 1978. the heads of the goningumi. See Ibid., 10-11. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 7

and kept him under their watchful eye until he hamlet association came out to send him off.13 was back on proper terms with his father. The The villagers’ patience with errant neighbors following evening the hamlet association had to is best reflected in their treatment of Seibei’s four convene yet another meeting. The previous year sons. Whereas Seibei appears to have been an Yoshisaburō had put into pawn the bell from the upstanding member of the village, his sons were local temple. The redemption period was about ne’er-do-wells. In 1862 Seibei kicked his eldest to expire, but he lacked the money to get it back.8 son Izaemon and his wife out of the house.14 We do not know the outcome, but the association We meet Izaemon again in 1871, when we learn must have raised the money, because the same that he put into pawn the temple bell, the same bell appears several more times in the diary. bell that Yoshisaburō had pawned several years In 1862 Yoshisaburō got into a fight with the before.15 Izaemon did not have the money to village ruffian Shōhei, who demanded that he redeem it, so his hamlet association met to dis- repay a loan. Members of their respective ham- cuss what to do. The matter was especially let associations intervened, serving as intermedi- troublesome, because the domain was sending out aries between the two parties. The following officials for an inspection of the territory’s tem- day the matter was “settled,” meaning that the ples and shrines, to ensure that nothing was two parties had reached an accommodation.9 missing. The association had no choice but to After each incident, Yoshisaburō was not borrow the money to get the bell back.16 expelled or ostracized but was reintegrated back Izaemon makes his next appearance in the into the collective life of the community. When diary in 1876. While in a drunken stupor at a the dispute with his father emerged into public memorial service at the local temple, he got into view, his neighbors mediated and took measures an argument with Tomizō and threw boiling wa- to restore calm until tempers subsided. When ter in his face. His brother Umegorō appre- incidents arose involving people from other ham- hended him and tied him up, but Izaemon’s rage lets, intermediaries from the two sides would ar- continued unabated. He shouted obscenities at bitrate to bring about an amicable settlement. everyone and finally managed to get loose. With The neighbors’ indulgent treatment of a priest from the local temple and other locals Yoshisaburō is well documented in the diary. acting as intermediaries, Izaemon later agreed to When he held a meeting in 1863 of a religious send a written apology to Tomizō and to reim- confraternity, known as the Hatsuuma Bisha-kō, burse him for his medications. Izaemon also the diarist Shōemon and his neighbors attended.10 paid the various costs associated with the media- Similarly, when Yoshisaburō held an unty- tion of the dispute, up until the point of settle- ing-of-the-obi ceremony for his son, members of ment (rakuchaku). Both parties, however, paid his hamlet association went over to assist in the the costs for the final reconciliation (teuchi pounding of the rice cakes (mochi).11 People nyūyō), which took place three days after the in- were also at his house in 1865 when he had a cident.17 priest from a nearby village deliver a sermon (kō- The second son Seitarō apparently found shaku).12 And when Yoshisaburō went on a much to admire in the conduct of his older group pilgrimage to Ise in 1873, members of his brother. His father disinherited him in 1860 and asked the village headman to have him removed from the books (chōgai), meaning to expunge 8 IKN, 74. him from the population records. The diary 9 IKN, 82. does not cite the cause, but it appears to have had 10 The Bisha-kō was a religious confraternity cele- brating Inari, the deity of agriculture. The mem- bers of the confraternity took turns hosting and 13 IKN, 159-60. lodging the other members. They feasted and 14 IKN, 81. drink and sometimes invite in a blind female stroll- 15 Undoubtedly the bell had been put in the custody ing musician (goze). of the village youth group, or wakamonogumi. 11 IKN, 95. 16 IKN, 151-52. 12 IKN, 106-7. 17 IKN, 172. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 8

its origins in a loan Seitarō took out. The eventually allowed Seitarō to build a house on headman called the son in for questioning and, family property. Despite all of the problems together with neighbors and other villagers, did Seitarō caused for his neighbors, he was not at all everything in his power to get the father to back ostracized. They assisted him, in fact, when his down. The headman finally worked out a com- house was being constructed in 1865.23 They promise. To save face, the father kept the son in treated him just like everyone else in the commu- the house but only as a boarder (heyazumi), not as nity. heir, and Seitarō agreed to repay the loan.18 Particularly illustrative is the community’s This was hardly the last time that Seitarō response to Seitarō’s arrest and incarceration for caused anguish for his father and Minami-osoki participating in the Bushū Uprising of 1866. villagers. In 1861 someone came to the village Ignited by a steep rise in prices brought on by the demanding that Seitarō repay a loan, undoubtedly opening of the ports and increased exactions im- from gambling; when that failed, he asked the posed as a result of bakufu campaigns against hamlet association to intercede. Because there Choshu, the Bushū uprising included as many as was a difference of opinion concerning the loan, 100,000 poor farmers in Musashi and Kōzuke the association refused his request. Also around provinces. They demanded such things as relief this time, gamblers and other miscreants came to rice, the lowering of interest rates, and the return the village demanding that Seitarō return money of pawned items, all of which they considered he had borrowed, this too the result of a fondness crucial to their survival as farmers. The reasons for gambling.19 for Seitarō’s participation, however, are unclear. In 1862 Seitarō ran off, and his exasperated His primary exploiters, after all, were his gam- father brought before the hamlet association the bling cronies, not people of wealth in the Musashi matter of removing him from the books. The area. At any rate, Seitarō did not return after association got the father to postpone submitting authorities and peasant militia suppressed the the request to the headman until members could rebellion, so neighbors tried to find out where he talk to his son. They were unable to locate him, was. When they learned that he had been jailed however, so Seibei’s petition went before the vil- in Hachiōji, they went there to inquire and to seek lage officials.20 The following month, before his release. And when authorities transferred the case could be resolved, Seitarō found himself Seitarō to an Edo prison, village representatives in far more serious difficulty. He had gone to went to look after him.24 The expense of all of three public baths in the town of Ōme and this must have been enormous. Whenever any- changed into other people’s clothing on the way one was jailed, relatives and neighbors had to pay out. He then ran off to gamble with the money for their food. The cost of lodging the villagers received from their pawn. The hamlet associa- in Hachiōji and Edo, too, must have been consid- tion again got involved, first by talking to the erable. Here, too, we find villagers not ostra- parties concerned and then by raising the money cizing malcontents but doing whatever possible to redeem the clothing.21 Six months passed to bring them back into the fold. before his father repeated his request that Seitarō Seibei’s third son, Kesasaburō, like the others, be removed from the books, but he was once proved to be a most unworthy child. Not long again talked out of it by various parties, including after being designated the heir, in 1864 and again members of the village youth group (wakamono- in 1865 he ran off, first to Ashikaga and then to gumi) and the hamlet association.22 The father Edo, leaving behind his wife and child.25 In 1867, his father Seibei asked that he be removed 26 18 from the books. The diary does not tell us IKN, 73. more, but we do know that he was disinherited. 19 IKN, 76. 20 IKN, 81. 21 IKN, 82. When Seitarō finally returned to the 23 IKN, 107. village two months later -- with the measles -- an- 24 IKN, 113-16. other villager took him in; see IKN, 84. 25 IKN, 104, 109. 22 IKN, 90. 26 IKN, 119. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 9

With Kesasaburō, too, neighbors treated him as a gressors, even going so far as to work for their regular member of the community. When he release from jail. returned from Edo in 1865 and his father would Some might argue that what neighbors did not let him into the house, the hamlet association was required of them as members of the gonin- intervened and suggested that he write his father gumi, the five-family mutual responsibility a letter of apology. 27 When Kesasaburō re- groups, to which all farm families belonged. turned from a shrine pilgrimage to Ōyama in When Izaemon took the temple bell and put it 1866, he was devastated to learn that his son had into pawn, for example, his goningumi had to get died. Neighbors made all the arrangements for involved, because all of the members of the group the funeral, just as they did for everyone else.28 would have been held responsible for its loss. Umegorō, the youngest son, followed proud- Similarly, they were responsible for redeeming ly in his older brothers’ footsteps. He, too, from pawn the clothes that Seitarō had stolen in sometimes left the village, abandoning his wife the baths in Ōme. and child. 29 When questioned about getting The enormous efforts made to resolve con- someone pregnant in 1869, he replied “I don’t flict imply, however, that other considerations remember a thing.”30 In later years, he was ar- were also at work. Especially important was the rested several times for gambling.31 Just as with desire to ensure that disputes be quickly brought the other brothers, neighbors exerted every effort to resolution and that villagers were back on to restore harmony between disputing villagers. speaking terms. This perhaps explains why al- When Umegorō got into a fight in 1874 with his most all serious disputes in the diary utilized the brother Seitarō and his friend Yoshisaburō, services of intermediaries in their resolution. neighbors intervened and ensured that the two The diary tells us little about the choice of inter- sides reached a reconciliation.32 When he was mediaries, but there is no evidence to suggest that having problems with his wife in 1876, neighbors their selection was dictated by village elites or served as mediators and worked out a resolution. other village notables. Oftentimes the local Umegorō had been running off every day and priest, if one was available, mediated disputes; night on one pleasure trip or another, and he re- many disputes required the services of several turned one day to find his wife with another intermediaries, especially if they involved people man.33 from more than one hamlet. As part of the final The above examples suggest that villagers resolution, the parties to the disputes paid the valued harmonious relations and sought to re- expenses associated with mediation. The diary solve conflict among neighbors. In the literature does not tell us what these expenses entailed, but on the Japanese village, we often read that those we can assume that the disputants reimbursed the violating community sanctions were subject to intermediaries for the costs of the food and sake mura hachibu, or ostracism from the life of the consumed in the process of arbitration. The di- village.34 In the case of this community, though, ary also suggests the importance of the final act the villagers were remarkably forgiving of trans- of reconciliation. That expenses were associated with the reconciliation suggests that this was a formal affair, bringing together the two parties to 27 IKN, 109. raise their sake cups as a symbol of the restora- 28 IKN, 114-15. tion of harmonious ties. 29 IKN, 132. Shōemon’s diary presents many other exam- 30 IKN, 104, 139-40. ples of attempts to resolve conflict and restore 31 IKN, 201, 212, 220. 32 harmony to the village. One dispute involved IKN, 167. the headman: 33 IKN, 173. 34 See, for example, Smith, Kurusu, 236-39; and Concerning the matter of the village head- Robert C. Marshall, Collective Decision Making in man Hachirōbei and Hanzō of Himuki and Rural Japan, Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies No. 11, Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, Kōzō of Ōhira, [they were told that] they University of Michigan, 1984, 12-16. had to talk over and resolve [the dispute] NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 10

that had left them on bad terms since April seer of the village commons. Shōemon himself, of last year, so [these] three people came however, could not attend the meeting or take over [to my house]. After discussing it, part in the deliberations, because his father was both sides came to an agreement and recon- seriously ill. ciled.35 Furious at the village’s decision, Shōemon tossed the letter of apology into the fire. This The diary does not tell us who initiated the was not the way these things were supposed to be process of mediation, but the fact that one of the handled, he fumed. There had been a similar disputants was the village headman suggests that case in the past, and the village had drawn up arbitration was not simply mandated from above. regulations to ensure that it would not happen Villagers themselves, or their hamlet associations, again. The fine stipulated in the regulations, he took the initiative. This concern with harmonious stated, was much harsher than that imposed on relations sometimes even extended to one’s asso- Motoemon. ciations with people in neighboring villages: Why was this so important to Shōemon? The land in contention was village commons and Both Chōjirō of Tomioka [village] and thus shared equally by all full-fledged members Tomizō of Kogaido came over. The gist of of the community. Indeed, these lands were their conversation was that since last year vital to their survival as farmers. This is where Hikoshirō of Tomioka and Shōemon [the they gathered grasses and leaves to use as fertil- author of the diary] have been on bad terms. izer or to re-thatch their roofs, where they ob- Recently [Hikoshirō’s wife] Okeru passed tained fodder for their farm animals, where they away. Hamlet association people learned collected firewood to use as fuel, and where they about it and acted as go-betweens. [The felled trees to use in the construction of their above two people] said we must agree [to houses. Villagers could not walk into a village their mediation] and, moreover, said that we forest and take whatever they pleased. Re- must be [on good terms] as we were in the sources were limited, so villages drew up detailed past. Okeru [was buried] on 9/23, the fall regulations for their use, including stipulations equinox week. I visited her grave.36 for when those areas could be entered and how much each family could take out.38 Motoemon In the above example, go-betweens from was not ostracized from the community, but it both villages mediated to ensure that Shōemon was made clear that he had committed a serious was back on good terms with his old friend Hi- infraction. Once settled, however, Motoemon koshirō. Any rupture of ties immediately once again became an integral member of the brought a response from concerned neighbors. community. When his two children fell ill from Not all disputes, of course, were resolved in an epidemic, villagers joined together in per- an amicable way. The dispute over Motoemon’s forming the hyakumanben nenbutsu, a religious actions is a case in point.37 Motoemon commit- ceremony in which they moved from house to ted a serious breach of village regulations: he had house reciting invocations to the Buddha so as to cut down trees on a mountain owned by the vil- dispel from the village the evil deity responsible lage. The hamlet association met to discuss the for the contagion.39 Members of his hamlet as- case and, with two village officials as mediators, sociation saw him off when he went on a pil- forced Motoemon to pay 2 ryō to cover miscella- grimage to Ise with other villagers.40 neous costs, presumably relating to the meeting and the mediation, and 2 ryō for the cost of the trees. They also had him write a letter of apol- ogy to the diarist, who appears to have the over- 38 For a good example, see Ōshima Mario, Kinsei nōmin shihai to kazoku, kyōdōtai, rev. ed., Tokyo: 35 IKN, 171. Ochanomizu Shobō, 1993, 381-88. 36 IKN, 170. 39 IKN, 137. 37 IKN, 110-11. 40 IKN, 159. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 11

Far more serious was the case involving Ji- termediaries, the various sides to the dispute ar- rōkichi.41 Shōemon referred to Jirōkichi as a rived at a settlement, with Jirōkichi having to pay “house renter.” This was a very disparaging 1 ryō in sake costs. term, implying that he was not a regular member The incident with Jirōkichi can be seen in of the village and thus not to be accorded full several different lights. Obviously, it demon- rights. A serious problem arose in 1864, when strates the coercive power of the community. Jirōkichi took in the younger sister of his wife. Villagers could not simply do whatever they While in the care of Jirōkichi, she had an affair pleased. There were clear regulations and codes with someone and was now with child. Jirōki- of conduct to follow, and those breaching them chi wanted the matter settled privately, with only faced serious reprimand. The headman’s re- his friend Tokubei assisting. He handed his sis- sponse to the hamlet association’s decision sug- ter-in-law over to the man responsible and re- gests, however, that expulsion and ostracism were ceived money from him, perhaps in compensation most exceptional forms of community sanction. for the breach to the honor of his house. The imposition of such sanctions brought an im- The members of the village youth group, the mediate response from both the headman and wakamonogumi, soon learned of the incident and other villagers. At the same time, we must were outraged. In addition to arranging festivals recognize the extraordinary efforts villagers took and plays and other forms of village entertain- to resolve the conflict. The neighborhood ment, youth groups like the one in Minami-osoki association held six days of meetings to discuss were responsible for protecting the unmarried the case; on three of those days the meeting lasted daughters of the community. When a young from the morning until the evening, and a fourth woman got pregnant out of wedlock, they would meeting lasted from the afternoon until the early march angrily to her parents’ house and to the hours of the morning. house of the man responsible for getting her The community’s tremendous coercive pow- pregnant. They would demand satisfaction in ers can also be found in its response to Jūzae- the form of a monetary settlement, which they mon.42 Like so many people in late Tokugawa would promptly use to have a feast and to drink and early Meiji society, Jūzaemon was intensely sake. religious. A problem arose, though, because he Jirōkichi refused to negotiate with the youth had become a follower of the outlawed Nichiren group, however. He said that the woman was sect and had brought his faith into the public his wife’s sister and from another village, and sphere. In 1869 he and other adherents recited thus the case was of no concern to them. To the prayers at a village assembly. When the youth diarist Shōemon, this was an egregious transgres- group expressed its displeasure, villagers ordered sion: Jirōkichi, this “house renter,” was ruining Jūzaemon to sign a document stating that he the reputation of the hamlet. Tempers flared on would no longer recite prayers publicly and that both sides, with each refusing to budge from their he would not lodge Nichiren adherents from other respective positions. Infuriated, members of the areas. He also had to pay 2 ryō for the expendi- hamlet association decided to take drastic meas- tures involved in the dispute. The measures had ures. In addition to ordering Jirōkichi to pack little effect. Two months later there was a report up and leave, they imposed mura hachibu on his that he was continuing to pray in public. Vil- chief supporter Tokubei, informing him that they lagers again reprimanded him and ordered him to would have nothing to do with him henceforth. pay additional expenses for settling the dispute. This was a most extraordinary measure, compel- Another two months later, they went a step fur- ling the village headman and farmers from other ther. They tore down the temple he had built for parts of the village to intervene. The headman, Nichiren adherents.43 This is the last we hear in particular, was infuriated by the rash actions of about Jūzaemon in the context of his religious the hamlet association. Through the use of in-

42 IKN, 141. 41 IKN, 99-101. 43 IKN, 143. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 12

activities. The villagers had sent him an unmis- when neighbors celebrated together on particular takable message; they had clearly defined the days of the year or after completing a particular boundaries of his religious activities. task. Shōemon’s diary mentions around ninety-five such occasions.45 Kuroyama Gisa- How typical was this village? Perhaps burō’s diary contains similar entries: a himachi equally important, how typical was the author of for ritual purification after a body was found dead the diary? Undoubtedly, there was a variety of on the road; a himachi held after the lion mask responses to issues relating to conflict and coop- dance festival; another held after finishing the eration in the nineteenth-century village. There felling of trees on a local mountain; yet another to were differences among regions in the extent of worship the local guardian deity, to name but a cooperation. Rice cultivation regions, for ex- few.46 Women, too, frequently held their own ample, required a much higher degree of collec- himachi; they also got together to recite the nen- tive activity in the fields than dry field forms of butsu.47 agriculture. What diaries reveal most vividly, What compelled farmers to cooperate? As however, is that villages were populated with with any social practice, origins can be most elu- very distinct personalities. You see glimpses of sive. In part it stemmed from the very structure these personalities not only in people like of late Tokugawa society. Villages operated Yoshisaburō and Seitarō and Jūzaemon but also within the muradaka system, by which authorities in the author of the diary himself, Ichikawa assigned them responsibility as a unit for tax Shōemon. Shōemon displays an extraordinary collection, corvee, and the maintenance of peace. level of commitment to the community of which Authorities, too, imposed regulations on the he was a part. When neighbors needed assis- gonin gumi to ensure that farmers dedicated tance, he was always there to lend a helping hand. themselves to agriculture and obeyed dictates His diary reminds us that, when historians focus from above; they held them mutually responsible their attention on the “local,” they must keep in for transgressions and wrongdoing. Also, vil- mind that the “local” spoke in multiple voices. lages had no staff to collect taxes, no paid labor At the same time, every village maintained to engage in public works projects, no police to some degree of collective life. In addition to the maintain the peace. Responsibility for these examples of collective activity mentioned above, various tasks rested entirely with the farmers farmers joined together in myriad ways. Ac- themselves, so most villages devised regulations cording to the findings of Watanabe Takashi, to ensure an equitable distribution of duties. In Suwa area villages took out loans as a unit in every village there were teams for repairing or times of need; they hired teachers for the local building roads and bridges or for clearing them of school, as well as doctors to treat their sick. snow. Villagers also had to ensure equitable They collectively owned the equipment necessary access to the raw materials necessary for their to fight fires. They maintained storehouses to survival as farmers. house their tax rice and officials documents.44 Perhaps, too, a growing need to cooperate Villagers also celebrated together in a host of appeared with the collapse of patriarchal farm festivals and religious observances. At festivals units in the seventeenth century. Small farmers for the local guardian deity, they performed plays now had to join together to take over the func- and held sumō matches. Shōemon’s dairy and tions once monopolized by families of distin- the diaries of other western Musashi farmers at- guished lineage. Having won their independ- test to the importance of the himachi celebration. ence, these smallholders vigorously sought to Literally “waiting for the sun,” the himachi had religious origins, but in the late Tokugawa and 45 Meiji it also served as a social gathering, a time See, for example, IKN, 70. 46 Gisaburō nikki: bakumatsu no motojime, Ansei 6-nen yori Keiō 4-nen made, comp. Akiruno-shi 44 Watanabe Takashi, Edo jidai no murabitotachi, Itsukaichi Kyōdōkan, Tokyo: Akiruno-shi Kyōiku Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1996, esp. chapters Iinkai, 1998, 40, 44, 46, 48. 2, 3, 5, and 9. 47 Ibid., 59, 82. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 13

ensure equality of access to the raw materials necessary for their survival as farmers. Their regulations also guaranteed them the labor nec- essary for house construction and re-thatching, tasks that required more than their families could supply.48 Tied together by such means, it is not surprising that farmers found other avenues for cooperation, as well. It was not my intention here to negate or even to downplay the importance of conflict in nineteenth-century rural life. Anyone who has worked in village archives knows the folly of such an endeavor, because the volume of materi- als relating to conflict is staggering. This paper, too, reinforces contentions concerning the trou- bled conditions in rural Japan, especially in the decades bracketing the Meiji Restoration. But it also seems clear that the existence of conflict does not necessarily preclude vibrant collective activity. Indeed, we might even argue that crisis might strengthen the collective impulse all the more. At the same time, rural collective activity should not be eulogized. Farmers’ activities came under the close scrutiny of their neighbors and, on some matters, the community had con- siderable power over an individual’s actions.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

As several pages in this issue indicate, EMJ occasionally has need of illustrations that we can use to accompany articles. It would be helpful if we had an archive of photographs and other illustrations on a wide variety of subjects relevant to early modern Japanese studies. If you have, or know of, appropriate material (digital or hard copy) that we might save for future use please contact Philip Brown at the following e-mail: [email protected]. If you hold copyright, we would like written permission to use your mate- rial (we will, of course, acknowledge your copy- right and permission). If you suggest material for which you do not have copyright, it would be helpful if you could provide contact information to obtain copyright for the material.

Upper photo is detail from “Prayers for Rain,” Tawara kasane kōsaku emaki; lower is from the cover of Taka- 48 Ōshima makes this point in Kinsei nōmin shihai, hara Saburō, Ooita no amagoi, Oita-shi: Sōrinsha, 377-88. 1984. Photos by E. Pratt. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 14

Lost in History: Aizu and short answer is that they were from Wakamatsu, the castle town of Aizu domain, and were sub- the Meiji Restoration jects of Aizu’s daimyo, Matsudaira Katamori-–a John E. Van Sant prominent opponent of the Satsuma and Cho- University of Alabama-Birmingham shu-led movement that ultimately overthrew the shogun and the bakufu government. The Wa- On a hillside overlooking Gold Trail Ele- kamatsu colonists were on the losing side of the mentary School in an area of Coloma, California, Meiji Restoration; and like many people who end known as Gold Hill, there is a solitary grave of a up on the losing side of political upheaval, they young woman who died nearly 130 years ago. left their country as refugees in search of a new One side of the headstone reads, “In Memory of life. OKEI, Died 1871. Aged 19 years. (A Japanese This paper does not directly explore the issue Girl).” The other side is written in Japanese: of how these early Japanese immigrants struggled [nihon kokoku meiji shinen, gappi bossu, OKEI to survive in a strange land.3 It explores the no haka, gyonen jukyusai] issue of why they fled Japan for a strange land. Okei was a member of what is known as the Moreover, this paper challenges Japan’s national Wakamatsu Colony; a group of more than twenty narrative, a narrative that asserts a relatively Japanese who arrived in northern California in peaceful transfer of power from the Tokugawa the summer of 1869. Lasting for two years, the bakufu to the samurai leaders from Satsuma and Wakamatsu colonists built a tea and silk farm Choshu who claimed their tōbaku (anti-bakufu) which was initially successful but ultimately movement in the name of the Emperor. failed due to a lack of water and a lack of money. Most of the colonists then left the area, and the fates of only three are known in any detail. Matsudaira Katamori, Aizu and Civil War Okei was one of three Japanese who remained in Coloma.1 Tragically, she died – perhaps from When United States Navy Commodore Mat- malaria – soon after the breakup of the colony. thew Perry and his fleet of “black ships” ap- As the Wakamatsu Colony existed two dec- peared in Uraga Bay near Edo in 1853, Japan was ades before Japanese immigration to the United thrown into a state of confusion about how to States was even a trickle, why did this group of deal with the threat from the West. Two and a Japanese leave their familiar home in Aizu and 2 embark on a perilous journey overseas? The ing Office, 1872, p. 8, pp. 15-16, and pp. 90-91, there were 55 Japanese in the United States. 1Sakurai Matsunosuke worked as a farmhand and Thirty-three were in California; of these 22 were in lived the remainder of his life in Coloma, where he El Dorado County, all at Gold Hill in Coloma. died and was buried in 1901. It was Sakurai who The 1870 federal census is the first that lists Japa- had the headstone made for Okei’s grave. Ma- nese residents in the United States. The unpub- sumizu Kuninosuke lived in Coloma for more than lished manuscript schedules of the 1870 Census, ten years before moving to Sacramento, and then on State of California, El Dorado County contain the to Colusa where he died in 1915. While in Co- names of 22 Japanese at Coloma Township. loma, Masumizu married Carrie Wilson, a woman 3For a fuller account of these Japanese colonists in of Indian and African-American descent, and they California, see John E. Van Sant, Pacific Pioneers: had at least three children who survived infancy. Japanese Journeys to America and Hawaii, Masumizu’s descendants are the only known de- 1850-1880, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois scendants of the Japanese who left Aizu and came Press, 2000, chapter 6; Henry Taketa, “1969-The to California as part of the Wakamatsu Colony. See Centennial Year,” Pacific Historian, Vol. 13, No. 1; Note 4 for sources on the Wakamatsu Colony. Ki Kimura, “The Japanese Mayflower,” Japan 2According to Ninth Census of the United States, Quarterly, Vol. VIII, No. 3; and Ichiyo Yamamoto, The Statistics of the Population of the United States Wakamatsu koroni no ato wo tazunete, [1870], Volume 1, Washington: Government Print- Aizu-Wakamatsu: Northern Japan Publishers, 1985. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 15

half centuries after the West had been kicked out bines, Hidetada’s wife insisted that their son of Japan (with the exception of the handful of Iemitsu succeed Hidetada as shogun. Neverthe- Dutch allowed on Deshima Island in Nagasaki less, Hoshina and all Aizu daimyo who suc- Bay), they were back. Unlike two and a half ceeded him were close advisors to the Tokugawa centuries earlier, the Western powers–even a shogunate. middling power such as the United States–were In 1862, with Kyoto fast becoming the now far more powerful than Japan, both eco- headquarters for the anti-bakufu movement, the nomically and militarily. The Tokugawa sho- shogun appointed twenty-six year-old Matsudaira guns had no practical alternative except to sign Katamori of Aizu as shugoshoku (“defender”) of lopsided agreements on trade, extraterritoriality, the imperial capital. In this hazardous position, and other matters. The baku-han system, upon Matsudaira carefully navigated between the dis- which the legitimacy and hegemony of the To- parate anti-bakufu forces who demanded Japan’s kugawa bakufu depended, had been unraveling return to the national seclusion policy and the for many years. And then Perry’s arrival and expulsion of all foreigners, and the bakufu which the subsequent “unequal treaties” ripped wide contended that increased, regulated contact and open a Pandora’s Box of long-simmering griev- trade with the West was regrettable but inevita- ances among daimyo, their samurai vassals, and ble.6 In a message to the bakufu in late 1862, the Tokugawa bakufu. A few tozama domains Matsudaira criticized the shogun’s government with large numbers of samurai and the for treating foreigners “with consideration,” all-but-forgotten imperial house grabbed this leading to “a truly grievous state of affairs.”7 golden opportunity of Western-induced commo- Yet, he also disparaged the idea of returning to tion to challenge the legitimacy of Tokugawa the policy of national seclusion because Japan bakufu rule. would then “have no means of understanding Matsudaira Katamori (1835-1893) did not fit foreign conditions and adopting their ways where into the two major categories of daimyo: fudai they are good.”8 By this Matsudaira meant that (hereditary vassal of the Tokugawa shogunate) Westerners “built great ships and guns” which he and tozama (outside lord).4 He was one of a believed would help strengthen Japan’s own small number of kamon daimyo, a division of military forces.9 Such views may appear con- shimpan daimyo, who were related to the ruling tradictory, but they demonstrate Matsudaira’s Tokugawa family. 5 Hoshina Masayuki belief in Sakuma Shozan’s “Eastern ethics, West- (1611-1672), considered the founder of Aizu do- main, was a son of Tokugawa Hidetada, the sec- ond Tokugawa shogun. Because Hoshina’s 6Dating from the early 17th century, the national biological mother was one of Hidetada’s concu- seclusion policy (sakoku) was originally designed to limit trade and contact with the West. The national seclusion policy did not include Japan’s East Asian 4A useful, though somewhat romanticized biogra- neighbors, nor was it universally enforced. See phy of Matsudaira Katamori is Ryoichi Hoshi, Ma- Naohiro Asao, Sakoku, Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1975; tsudaira Katamori to sono jidai, Aizu-Wakamatsu: Ronald Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Rekishi Shubunsha, Northern Japan Publishers, Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa 1984. For another account of Aizu, Matsudaira Bakufu, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991, Katamori, and the Boshin War see Teruko Craig, 2nd edition; and Brett Walker, “Reappraising the “Introduction” in Goro Shiba, Remembering Aizu: Sakoku Paradigm: The Ezo Trade and the Extension The Testament of Shiba Goro, Honolulu: University of Tokugawa Political Space Into Hokkaido,” Jour- of Hawaii Press, 1999. nal of Asian History Vol. 30, No. 2 (1996). 5Another way to delineate the difference is that 7Matsudaira Katamori to bakufu, November 8, 1862, sanke daimyo (from the Tokugawa domains of Mito, in W.G. Beasley, ed. and trans., Select Documents Owari, and Kii) were the senior shimpan while the On Japanese Foreign Policy, 1853-1868, London: kamon were the junior shimpan. This difference Oxford University Press, 1955, pp. 225-26. among shimpan daimyo, however, was not always 8Ibid., p. 226. clear. 9Ibid. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 16

ern science” philosophy that many samurai dismissed Matsudaira and his Aizu samurai from adopted during the turbulent bakumatsu era. guarding the palace in Kyoto.12 They were re- Furthermore, as Harold Bolitho writes of Matsu- placed by Satsuma and Choshu samurai, who had daira during this period, he “managed to tread a gained control of the imperial court and the fif- very distinct path which, while leaving him on teen year-old Emperor. In late January 1868, the reasonably good terms with both bakufu and forces of Aizu and Kuwana (the domain of Ma- Court also helped him avoid anything like a total tsudaira’s brother, Sadaaki), along with bakufu commitment to either of them.”10 Evidence of samurai from other Tokugawa domains, were this can be found in the November 1862 message defeated in fierce battles with Satsuma, Choshu to the bakufu cited above, in which Matsudaira and other newly-designated “imperial forces” at identified himself as an advocate of kōbu gattai Toba and Fushimi outside Kyoto. Won by the (court-bakufu harmony); a vague, mid- imperial forces, these military encounters marked dle-of-the-road policy promoted by a handful of the end of 268 years of Tokugawa bakufu control daimyo and court nobles. of Japan, and the beginning of the Meiji Era. Relations between Matsudaira and the samu- They also represented the beginning of a civil war, rai of Satsuma, Choshu, and other anti-bakufu known as the Boshin War, that raged throughout proponents in Kyoto were anything but harmoni- most of 1868. ous. Political intrigue, assassinations, and spo- The imperial forces marched to Edo and took radic fighting typified the fractious relationship control of the shogun’s capital, of nearby Yoko- among these anti-bakufu groups and Matsudaira’s hama, and of the central government after a few forces throughout the 1860s. Satsuma officials days of fighting against Tokugawa loyalists. challenged Aizu by trying to have their own dai- The new government, consisting primarily of myo, Shimazu Hisamitsu, replace Matsudaira as samurai from Satsuma and Choshu, issued an defender of Kyoto immediately after the Aizu imperial proclamation declaring that Matsudaira daimyo took up his post. Samurai from Cho- and the Aizu domain were “traitors” fighting in shu, generally considered more radical and bel- the “rebellion.”13 Tokugawa Yoshinobu gave up ligerent than those from Satsuma, were quick to all his powers to the Emperor and quietly re- defy bakufu policies and constantly antagonized turned to his home domain of Mito. Matsudaira the Aizu daimyo and his samurai in Kyoto. In and his samurai returned to Aizu in northern Ja- 1864, Matsudaira wanted to battle Choshu samu- pan and prepared for war. rai encamped just outside of the imperial city, but Matsudaira refused to capitulate because the the shogun demurred. The following year, Ma- new imperial forces had yet to prove that they tsudaira helped lead the first bakufu campaign actually controlled Japan. Japan had over 250 against Choshu domain, which ended when Cho- semi-autonomous domains and it would be an shu officials pledged their allegiance to the sho- enormous burden to centralize and control such gun. In 1866, he became furious with the ba- an unwieldy conglomeration of mini-states. kufu for calling off the second campaign against Moreover, Matsudaira and some other northern Choshu.11 In essence, while Matsudaira pro- daimyo considered the “imperial restoration” as moted the fence-riding policy of court-bakufu little more than a coup by their hated southern harmony, his military policy was staunchly ori- rivals, a coup that might not succeed if decisively ented against Satsuma and Choshu. challenged. In 1868, no one knew that the Sat- Soon after Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned his suma/Choshu coup would ultimately succeed and post as shogun in late 1867, the imperial court

12 The shogun presumed he was to exercise his 10Harold Bolitho, “Aizu, 1853-1868,” Proceedings powers until a general council of daimyo reached a of the British Association for Japanese Studies Vo l . decision. 2, 1977, p. 9. 13This “Proclamation By the Mikado” was issued to 11 Ibid.; Conrad Totman, The Collapse of the Toku- foreign legations on February 8, 1868, and can be gawa Bakufu, 1862-1868, Honolulu: University of found in FRUS 1867-68, pp. 714-15. See also Hawaii Press, 1980, p. 288-89. Totman, p. 442. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 17

the result would be the Meiji Restoration. into Aizu in September.19 The single most fa- Matsudaira may not have realized that among mous, tragic, and romanticized event in Aizu’s his supporters were Americans living in Japan. long history took place during this war when A United States Navy doctor stationed in Yoko- twenty teenaged boys of the Byakkotai (“White hama gleefully wrote in his diary on May 26, Tiger Brigade”) committed mass suicide because 1868, that “Aidzu has flogged the troops of Sat- they mistakenly thought Tsuruga Castle in Wa- suma in every engagement. From all accounts kamatsu--Matsudaira’s headquarters--was burn- the cause of Aidzu is not a bad one. We are all ing down.20 anxious to see him win the day....”14 The next An estimated 30,000 troops besieged Tsuruga day he wrote, “Everyone is an Aidzu man now.”15 Castle. Inside the castle were 3,000 samurai and Matsudaira probably received such unsolicited 2,000 dependents. The imperial armies plun- support because American officials presumed he dered and burned much of the city of Wakamatsu. was fighting on behalf of the shogun, whom they Many of the elderly, women, and children living credited with “observing the treaties, and of in the city committed suicide during this violent strengthening the friendly relations with other rampage by soldiers from Satsuma and Choshu.21 countries, especially the United States . . . .”16 The invading forces then sealed off the entrances Robert Van Valkenberg, the American minister to to the castle and began a massive bombardment. Japan, maintained formal neutrality during Ja- Out of food, with many of his samurai dead or pan’s civil war; but his messages to the State De- dying, Matsudaira realized the futility of further partment throughout 1868 clearly indicated his resistance and surrendered on November 5, 1868. support for Matsudaira and Shogun Yoshinobu.17 Aizu lost nearly 3,000 samurai from the begin- He even allowed the shogun and some of his ba- ning of 1868 to Matsudaira’s surrender in No- kufu officials safe haven aboard the United States vember. This was more than twice as many as Navy’s Iroquois anchored in Osaka Bay after the any other domain resisting the “imperial” armies. battles at Toba and Fushimi.18 In comparison Satsuma and Choshu, Bolitho writes, “gambled with the constant anti-foreign rhetoric of the and won, earning for themselves positions of na- anti-bakufu forces and the danger posed by tional eminence and responsibility.”22 Matsu- anti-foreign rōnin, the shogun and Matsudaira daira and Aizu gambled and lost, earning the op- appeared supportive of American interests to probrium of being stubborn opponents of the new American diplomats. imperial order. After battling other northern domains in the Satsuma and Choshu had condemned Ma- summer of 1868, the imperial forces marched tsudaira to death before the battles and Toba and Fushimi.23 Yet, surprisingly he was spared the death sentence despite his prominent role in the civil war. He and Tokugawa Yoshinobu were 14 Elinor and James Barnes, eds., Naval Sur- geon--Revolt In Japan 1868-1869: The Diary of Samuel Pellman Boyer, Bloomington: Indiana Uni- 19For a personal account, see Goro Shiba, Remem- versity Press, 1963, p. 48. bering Aizu: The Testament of Shiba Goro Mahito 15Ibid., p. 49. Ishimits). 16FRUS 1867-68, Pt. 1, Van Valkenberg to Seward, 20Aizu no Rekish, Aizu-Wakamatsu: Aizu Bukeya- January 16, 1868, p. 619. shiki, 1989, pp. 123-24. 17Numerous messages from Van Valkenberg to Sec- 21For example, Shiba Goro’s grandmother, mother, retary of State William H. Seward in the 1867-1869 two sisters, and one sister-in-law committed suicide volumes of FRUS and Despatches attest to his sup- during the destruction of Wakamatsu. See Shiba, pp. port for the shogun and Matsudaira. 54-59. The number of people who committed sui- 18FRUS 1867-68, Pt. 1, Van Valkenberg to Seward, cide during the Boshin War in Aizu is unknown, but February 3, 1868, p. 636. According to this mes- it was certainly in the hundreds. sage, the shogun was aboard the Iroquois for two 22Harold Bolitho, “The Echigo War, 1868,” Monu- hours while waiting for his own ship to arrive and menta Nipponica Vol. 34, No. 3, 1979, p. 277. take him back to Edo. 23Bolitho, “Aizu,”, p. 6. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 18

formally pardoned in a decree issued the follow- colony in a strange, overseas land they may have ing year.24 Charles De Long, who replaced Van heard of but certainly knew almost nothing about: Valkenberg as the United States’ Minister to Ja- the California frontier. pan, believed that the new government, well-aware of its precarious control over Japan, Lost In History decided not to execute the Aizu daimyo because it feared that his death by execution or ritual sui- Aizu’s prominent position in the history of cide would have the “inevitable consequences” of the Meiji Restoration has been noted in a few elevating him to martyrdom and act as a unifying specialist works (especially by Harold Bolitho), symbol to daimyo still incensed at the new Sat- and the Boshin War is often noted–-albeit suma/Choshu-dominated government.25 After a briefly–-in Japanese language narratives of mod- brief period of imprisonment, Matsudaira became ern Japanese history. Yet, in most survey narra- a Shinto priest and eventually served for many tives of Japan history by Western or Japanese years as the chief priest at Toshogu Shrine in scholars, Aizu’s role in the Meiji Restoration is at Nikko, the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the most only briefly mentioned despite Matsudaira founder of the Tokugawa shogunate. Katamori and Aizu’s prominence as the most ac- The people of Aizu faced a bitter winter in tive opponents of the Satsuma and Cho- 1868-1869. The wartime destruction of Waka- shu-dominated “imperial” coalition. Why has matsu and the surrounding areas led to impending Aizu been lost in this extremely important and starvation and yonaoshi (“world rectification”) influential event of Japan’s history? There are, I uprisings throughout Aizu.26 The new imperial believe three interrelated reasons. government took direct charge of the domain’s First is that the loser’s version of history is affairs and, writes Marius Jansen, “no other do- rarely the dominant national narrative-–and Aizu main was treated as harshly” as Aizu in the af- was clearly on the losing side of the Meiji termath of the civil war.27 Disillusioned, desti- Restoration. tute, and branded as traitors, thousands of Aizu’s Second is that the nineteenth century was, in people migrated to northern Tohoku and Hok- addition to being a century of industrialization, a kaido in search of food, refuge, and a new life in century of nationalist emphasis. France, Britain, post-Tokugawa Japan. Many of those who left Germany, the United States, and then Japan cre- Aizu were forced by the imperial government to ated national symbols and emphasized national move to a newly created, dreary domain on the traditions, including the promotion of national Shimokita Peninsula in the northernmost corner narratives. In Japan, nationalism was increas- of Honshu.28 The destruction of Aizu, resulting ingly emphasized from the 1868 Meiji Restora- from the political transformation from Tokugawa tion onwards as a method of creating unity to Meiji, also pushed a handful of these refugees among a historically diverse people whose pri- to seek a new life by establishing a tea and silk mary political and social loyalties were to their villages and domains.29 Third, the once semi-autonomous, semi-in- 24Dispatches, Vol. 13, “Letter Accompanying Par- dependent domains of the Tokugawa era were don Decree, Signed By Daijokwan,” and “Decree.” transformed into fewer prefectures, which were 25Ibid., De Long to Fish, November 26, 1869. 26Stephen Vlastos, Peasant Protests and Uprisings In Tokugawa Japan, pp. 142-53. 29See Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology 27Marius B. Jansen, “The Meiji Restoration,” in The in the Late Meiji Period, Princeton: Princeton Uni- Cambridge History of Japan: Volume 5, The Nine- versity Press, 1985; Takashi Fujitani, Splendid teenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan, Press, 1989, p. 359. Bolitho makes similar judg- Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996; and ments in “Aizu,” pp. 3-6. Daikichi Irokawa, Meiji no bunka, Tokyo: Iwanami 28Aizu no Rekishi, pp. 127-28. The population of Shoten, 1970, published in English as The Culture the city of Wakamatsu dropped from 70,000 before of the Meiji Period, trans. ed. Marius Jansen, the civil war to around 16,000 afterwards. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 19

were increasingly controlled by a central gov- ceremony is always attended by descendants of ernment creating and promoting a nationalist ide- Matsudaira Katamori. The memory of Aizu’s ology. In other words, disparate regional areas history may have been conveniently and deliber- of Japan were turned into peripheries of the na- ately forgotten by the national narrative, but the tion, and the core of the nation was the newly people of Aizu have continued to remember those re-named capital of Tokyo, which would be con- who sacrificed and struggled on behalf of Aizu’s trolled for more than two generations by the for- challenge to the Tokugawa-Meiji transformation mer samurai of Satsuma and Choshu (and to a of Japan. lesser extent by their former allies from Tosa and Hizen). These former samurai controlled not only the nation but also the nation’s history, which taught that there had not been a violent transfer of political power from the old regime to the new regime as was common among other nations. According to this national history, there had been a peaceful transfer from the shogun to the Em- peror because from the dawn of time Japanese had always been unique, united, and virtuous. During the twilight of the Tokugawa Era and the dawn of the Meiji Era, Japan underwent a momentous political transformation, a transfor- mation that in many ways charted the course of Japan’s history in the 19th and 20th centuries. Aizu was caught in the midst of this political transformation. Worldwide nationalism and nationalization of Japan left little room in the historical narrative for those who had challenged the new rulers and the new political order of the Meiji Restoration.

Epilogue

In the 1960s, local historians in Aizu and northern California managed to get the Japanese American Citizens League and the California State government to designate 1969 as the cen- tennial year of Japanese immigration to the United States because of the arrival of the Wa- kamatsu colonists in 1869. Governor Ronald Reagan and Japanese Consul General Shima Seiichi came to Coloma on June 7, 1969 and dedicated a state historical plaque at the former site of the Wakamatsu Colony. One of the sponsors of the centennial year and the dedication ceremony was the Bank of Tokyo of California, whose chairman was Matsudaira Ichiro, the grandson of Matsudaira Katamori. Every year in Aizu there is a ceremony on Mt. Iimori to honor the memory of those who sacrificed their lives during the Boshin War. This solemn NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 20

Meiji Education and the Uses of early Meiji officials, these principles served as counterweights to the backwards, narrow-minded Local History influence of old, evil schooling practices en- Brian Platt trenched in the village.2 The government sought George Mason University to bring new schools to isolated mountain vil- lages, illuminating the dark corners of the local One of the most ambitious, radical national- with the light of the nation. izing projects in world history occurred in Japan Whether our focus is on official ideology, in- during the last few decades of nineteenth century. stitutional development, or popular consciousness, A loose network of relatively autonomous do- our analysis of Meiji education is unavoidably mains was transformed into a rationalized, hier- structured by the narrative of nationaliza- archical political structure guided by an (eventu- tion—even if we successfully divest that narra- ally) powerful central government in Tokyo. tive of its late nineteenth-century moral connota- This new Meiji government formally abolished tions (which is done with surprising infrequency). status distinctions in order to erase the intermedi- Historians of Meiji education who purport to en- ary boundaries that stood between the people and gage in "local history" must therefore confront the national state, thereby weakening alternative, some basic questions: When studying a time non-national loci of identification. The Meiji (the Tokugawa-Meiji transition) and a topic government also redrew the boundaries of local (education) in which nationalization is of such life (with school districts, new units of political obvious importance, what is the role of local his- administration, Shinto shrine registration districts, tory? Can the local history of Meiji education and so on) in order to heighten the sense of pose a challenge to national narratives, despite discontinuity with pre-existing local identities the fact that the educational system played such a and patterns of life, creating new people undis- crucial—and effective—part in the effort to es- tracted in their identification with each other and tablish those narratives as unchallengeable? with the new government. 1 This essay explores some of the ways in which Another radical reform essential to the Meiji postwar historians in Japan and the West have government's nationalizing project was the crea- addressed these questions. In addition, based on tion of a centralized, compulsory educational my own investigation of educational sys- system. Schools were deemed necessary to in- tem-building in Nagano prefecture, I suggest an culcate future generations with the knowledge alternative way of conceptualizing the challenge and values that were important to the moderniz- that local history can pose to national narra- ing nation, and to integrate children and families tives—a challenge in which local history is used on a daily basis into the institutions of the state. not principally to negate or critique the emer- In addition, the new school system played a cen- gence of the national state, but to highlight the tral role in the Meiji government's attempt to influence of local society upon the national state’s stigmatize the local. The two principles that formation. defined the new educational system were As Philip Brown discusses in the comments centralization and standardization; in the minds for to this volume, local history has played only a of early Meiji officials, these principles served as marginal role in the English-language historiog- raphy on Tokugawa and Meiji Japan for much of 1Michio Umegaki, After the Restoration: The Be- ginning of Japan's Modern State, New York: New York University Press, 1988, deals with political 2One can find such rhetoric in most official pro- administration; on religion, see James Ketelaar, Of nouncements on education during the early Meiji Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and years, but the most influential example is the pro- its Persecution, Princeton: Princeton University logue to the 1872 Fundamental Code of Education Press, 1990; Helen Hardacre, Shinto and the State, (Gakusei). For an English translation of this 1868-1988, Princeton: Princeton University Press, document, see Herbert Passin, Society and Educa- 1989. tion in Japan, New York: Columbia University, Teachers College Press, 1965, pp. 210-211. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 21

the postwar period. As Brown points out, a the nation-state was almost invariably the subject number of scholars have focused their research of historical inquiry, for it represented the culmi- on specific localities, but most of these scholars nation of the process of modernization. "Be- selected these localities either because they coming modern" was seen as the pivotal experi- played significant roles in a national historical ence in human history, and this process necessar- narrative (for example, Choshu), or because those ily took place in the setting of the nation and localities were deemed typical or representative reached its fulfillment in the modern nation-state. enough to illustrate presumably "national" trends. Even when studying time periods (like the Toku- The few monographs published in the field of gawa period) in which the nation-state did not yet educational history follow this general pattern. exist, Western scholars of Japan nevertheless took For example, Ronald Dore's study of Tokugawa as their spatial focus the geographical territory education culls data from various prefectures, but that would eventually constitute the boundaries of Dore's purpose in using such local data is to find the nation-state. Indeed, if we see Japanese his- evidence of national trends.3 Richard Rubin- tory through the framework of modernization (as ger's book examines a number of private acad- it was defined by postwar scholars in the West), emies in Tokugawa Japan (many of which were local boundaries and particularities are significant located outside of the urban centers of Edo, To- only in their inevitable disappearance: since kyo, and Osaka), making extensive use of archi- modernization is characterized by centralization, val material relating to these institutions. How- standardization, and nationalization, then the im- ever, Rubinger examines these local institutions age of Japan as a "success story" of moderniza- precisely because their significance transcended tion presumes that Japan had overcome local dif- the locality: he argues that these schools played ferences to become a national unit.6 an instrumental role in breaking down regional As many critics of modernization theory isolation, cultivating a national consciousness, and creating a group of elites who would later assume roles of national leadership in the Meiji of Regions: Reflections on the Historiography of state.4 In other words, educational historians, Sub-National Places in Modern Times," American Historical Review, vol. 104, no. 4 (October 1999), too, have either assumed an explicitly national pp. 1157-1182. focus or have used local studies to reaffirm the 6 Perhaps the most systematic attempt at defining primacy of the nation as the legitimate unit of modernization can be found in John Hall's essay, analysis. "Changing Conceptions of the Modernization of This emphasis on national narratives and the Japan," in Marius Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese subsequent marginalization of local history is not Attitudes Toward Modernization, Princeton: Prince- surprising, given the influence of modernization ton University Press, 1965, pp. 19-23. It should also theory upon the Japan field in the postwar pe- be noted that Western scholars of Japan during the 5 riod. In Cold War-era modernization theory, postwar period rarely made an explicit connection between their focus on modernization and their geographical focus on the nation. For example, 3Ronald Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan, New the "seven essential features of modern society" York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965. Herbert generated from discussions at the famous Hakone Passin's Society and Education in Japan takes a conference in 1960 only mention the word "nation" similar approach, using national statistics whenever once—and even then, only parenthetically. They possible. focus on presumably universal characteristics of 4Richard Rubinger, Private Academies in Tokugawa modern society (rather than the particular space of Japan, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. the nation), but, in practice, the publications pro- 5In her discussion of the place of sub-national histo- duced by the conference participants invariably ries in the historiography on modern Europe, Chris- picture "modern society" as a nationalized society. tina Applegate demonstrates how postwar moderni- The nation is assumed to be both the natural out- zation theory has reinforced the emphasis on the growth of modernization and the setting in which nation as a unit of analysis and, in the process, has social, intellectual, political, and economic—and marginalized local history. Applegate, "A Europe educational—modernization takes place. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 22

have pointed out, this focus on modernization scholars taking this perspective usually privileged often leads scholars to privilege those elements of continuity over disruption, characterizing the the pre-modern historical experience that pre- process as a relatively smooth, consensual transi- sumably contributed to Japan's modernization, tion.9 while marginalizing those that presumably did While the emphasis on modernization, not.7 The case of educational history is instruc- viewed and modeled at the national level, con- tive here. Tokugawa education was, by all ac- tinued to prevail in the West during the first few counts, decentralized, unstandardized, and dis- decades after World War Two, the same period in tinctly local in structure and orientation. How- Japan generated a widespread interest in local ever, since postwar scholars studied Tokugawa history. Mainstream historical scholarship in education with the explicit goal of evaluating its Japan continued to focus mainly on the geo- contribution to educational modernization during graphic unit of the nation—or, to focus on spe- the Meiji period—in Dore's words, its "leg- cific localities in order to demonstrate how they acy"—they either de-emphasized these pre- exemplify and illustrate national trends. How- modern (or anti-modern) aspects of the Toku- ever, professional and amateur histori- gawa schooling experience or treated them as ans—especially those working in prefectural remnants that would eventually be overcome universities, archives, museums, and other local during the process of modernization.8 In turn, research institutions—began to produce volumi- when narrating the shift from Tokugawa to Meiji, nous scholarship with the primary purpose of exploring the particular historical experience of the locality. Though we can trace the geneal- 7 Tetsuo Najita makes this point in his “Introduction: ogy of Japanese local history back to prewar (and A Synchronous Approach to the Study of Conflict earlier) literary and intellectual developments, the in Modern Japanese History,” in Najita and Victor postwar local history movement (under the rubric Koschmann, eds., Conflict in Modern Japanese chihōshi) began in the 1950s and culminated in History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. the 1970s and 80s with the widspread publication Harootunian makes a similar argument in his essay, of local histories at the prefectural, city, and vil- "America's Japan/Japan's Japan," in Harootunian lage level.10 This burgeoning of local history and Masao Miyoshi, eds., Japan in the World, Chi- was fueled by a number of interrelated factors, cago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. 8 The term “legacy” is used in the title of the final including the reaction (particularly of leftist aca- chapter of Dore's Education in Tokugawa Japan, demics) against both wartime nationalism and the and also in his article, "The Legacy of Tokugawa postwar conservative government, the political Education," in Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese At- movement against excessive centralization, the titudes Toward Modernization. Richard Rubinger, critique of Western modernity, the fear that for example, addresses these characteristics of the high-speed economic growth would result in the Tokugawa educational experience in some detail, permanent loss of Japan's national heritage and framing them as "traditional patterns" and contrast- cultural identity, and the creation of formal insti- ing them with "modern portents" that were also tutions entrusted with the task of preserving the present in Tokugawa education. Rubinger, "Edu- cultural and historical resources of the locality.11 cation: From One Room to One System," in Marius Jansen and Gilbert Rozman, eds., Japan in Transi- tion: From Tokugawa to Meiji, Princeton: Princeton 9Harootunian, "America's Japan, Japan's Japan." University Press, 1986, pp. 196-202. Conse- 10 Kimura Motoi, "Kyōdoshi, chihōshi, chiikishi quently, though Rubinger gives "traditional pat- kenkyū no rekishi to kadai," in Asao Naohiro, et. al., terns" and "modern portents" equal treatment, the eds., Iwanami kōza Nihon tsūshi, bekkan 2: Chiiki- former are inevitably relegated to a marginal role in shi kenkyū no genjō to kadai, Tokyo: Iwanami Sho- the historical narrative when the goal of history is ten, 1994, pp. 3-30. modernity. As a result, "the local" again loses out 11Amino Yoshihiko traces some of the factors be- in the narrative of nationalization and moderniza- hind the postwar local history movement in "'Undō tion, serving as a witness to its own impending ir- to shite no chiikishi kenkyū' o megutte," in Asao relevance. Naohiro, et. al., eds., Iwanami kōza Nihon tsūshi, NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 23

Although this local history movement did not Newly appointed teachers were attacked, and develop as a critique of the postwar Western fo- some were beaten to death with bamboo clubs. cus on the process of national modernization, its Protesters perceived the new schools as a symbol explicitly local focus resulted in scholarship that of the unpopular reforms that had been enforced undermines some of the assumptions of mod- by the Meiji government—in particular, the new ernization theory. For example, in contrast to land tax, the conscription laws, and the liberation the image of the Tokugawa-Meiji transition as an of the burakumin. In turn, the destruction of the essentially smooth, consensual process, local schools expressed popular opposition and anxiety, historians in Japan who focused on the local re- both towards these reforms and towards the new sponse to the Meiji government's reforms re- government that had initiated them.13 vealed that this transition was far from con- But popular opposition was not confined to flict-free. This is particularly the case in the general statements of hostility or uncertainty. study of Meiji educational reform, which was Particularly during the second wave of anti-new often seen by Western historians as a success school uprisings in 1876-77, protesters expressed story of rapid change, a positive transformation more specific criticisms of the new educational that was initiated by a reformist state but one that policies. In particular, they resented the fact that received the full cooperation of the Japanese the new government expected localities to pay for people. However, local historians in Japan this intrusive institution. The principle of local discovered not only a tremendous gap between funding was not new: pre-Meiji commoner central policy and local conditions, but also un- schools, too, were funded by the community in covered a significant amount of local resistance which they were located. However, the new to Meiji educational reforms.12 Incidents that system of educational funding, outlined in the appear to be mere bumps in the road from the 1872 Fundamental Code of Education, departed perspective of long-term, inevitable nationaliza- from pre-Meiji precedent in two important ways. tion, often reveal themselves as moments of real First, while pre-Meiji commoner schools were opposition to the basic principles of the govern- funded by the tuition payments of children who ment's vision of education. actually attended the school, Meiji schools were The most obvious example of this resistance funded primarily by school taxes—which were took the form of the “anti-new order uprisings” usually levied upon all families, regardless of (shinsei hantai sōjō), in when villagers destroyed whether or not their children attended the new nearly two hundred new schools in around ten schools. Second, pre-Meiji schools were both separate riots in the years following the promul- funded and controlled at the local level; there gation of the new education laws in 1872. existed no institutional mechanism by which the Tokugawa bakufu or domain governments influ- enced the practices of these local institutions. bekkan 2: Chiikishi kenkyū no genjō to kadai, To- As a result, the schools necessarily responded to kyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994, pp. 105-113. the demands and expectations of the families who 12For example, see Kurasawa Takashi, Shōgakkō no paid for the school. In contrast, while the Meiji rekishi, vol. 1, Tokyo: Japan Library Bureau, 1963, government passed the burden of school funding pp. 1002-1019; Morikawa Teruki, "Meiji 9-nen onto the locality, the central government reserved Shinpeki-machi sōdō no kyōikushiteki kentō," for itself ultimate legal authority over the admini- Kyōiku undōshi kenkyū, vol. 15 (1973), pp. 19-29; stration of each local school. Both local offi- Morikawa, "Gakusei no minshūteki juyō to kyohi," cials and ordinary people recognized this contra- Kōza Nihon Kyōikushi Iinkai, ed., Kōza Nihon diction between local funding and central control, kyōikushi, vol. 2, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1984, pp. and often resented it. For example, protesters in 307-333; Hori Kōtarō, "Gifu-ken nin okeru shōgakkō setsuritsu katei to Ise bōdō," Nihon no kyōikushigaku, vol. 23 (1980), pp. 12-31; Chiba 13 I discussed these uprisings in detail in chapter Masahiro, "Gakusei gakkō sōsetsu jijō to funjō," four of my dissertation, “School, Community, and Kōchi daigaku kyōiku gakubu kenkyū hōkoku, vol. State Integration in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” 42 (1990), pp. 113-120. University of Illinois, 1998. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 24

Gifu articulated such a recognition when, after not the acts of a stubborn peasantry opposed to destroying several new school buildings, they the very idea of formal education; in fact, towns approached a new school held in an old building and villages throughout Nagano had established and destroyed only the new equipment housed over six thousand schools during the century and inside, carefully avoiding any damage to the a half that preceded the Meiji Restoration in 1868, structure itself. 14 Protesters in Mie also ex- with essentially no support from political authori- pressed a resentment of the new principle of cen- ties. Consequently, we should see these acts as tral control when they burned over forty schools strategic statements of opposition to specific as- while shouting the slogan, "Destroy and burn pects of the new school system that people everything that belongs to the government!" 15 deemed undesirable—for example, compulsory In other words, these protesters were arguing that attendance, centralized control, rigid schedules, the local school now "belonged to" the govern- school taxes, irrelevant curriculum, and so on. ment, by virtue of the fact that local administra- One does not necessarily have to do local tive control over the new schools had been history to identify these acts of resistance. In- wrested from the locality by the central govern- deed, some of the scholarship on popular resis- ment. Burning the schools, in turn, articulated tance to the new school system—particularly both an awareness and resentment of the fact that those works on large-scale, violent rebel- local people had to pay for an institution that did lions—has been done by scholars who probably not serve their interests. Other complaints ar- would not assume the mantle of "local historian." ticulated by the Japanese people about the content, Nevertheless, we are more likely to ascribe sig- schedules, and other aspects of the new schools nificance to these acts of opposition when the were informed by a recognition of this basic con- geographic focus is narrower: the stakes seem tradiction. much larger, the effects more immediate, the In Nagano prefecture, the focus of my own tragedies more personal. This is undoubtedly research, there were no such violent uprisings in one reason why Japanese scholars have posi- opposition to the Meiji school system. In fact, tioned the local overwhelmingly as a site of re- just as Western scholars have often held up Japan sistance—or, more broadly, as a site of alter- as a model of rapid, yet peaceful, educational ity—vis a vis the Japanese state. Unlike those reform, Nagano was often held up by the Meiji Western scholars who implicitly celebrated Japa- government itself as the model for other localities nese modernization and its concomitants, many to emulate: the project of establishing new postwar Japanese scholars have lamented these schools and encouraging parents to send their developments, emplotting them into a tragic nar- children to them proceeded more rapidly in Na- rative of loss, betrayal, and thwarted potential. gano than anywhere else in the country. And Neither Marxist historians nor People's Historians, yet, even in Nagano, I have found various who reflect the two major historiographical per- non-violent forms of local opposition to Meiji spectives in postwar Japanese scholarship, nec- educational reforms. For example, pre-Meiji essarily oppose modernity itself. Rather, they village schoolteachers who were both criticized espouse visions of an alternative modernity, one and left unemployed by the Meiji education laws that is more democratic and (for People's Histo- often spread rumors about the new schools, im- rians) more authentically Japanese than the mod- peded fundraising efforts, and even re-opened ernity that eventually took shape in nineteenth their old schools illegally. Families defied au- and twentieth century Japan.16 Because Marxist thorities by refusing to pay the new school taxes, and, more commonly, simply refused to send 16 their children to the new schools. These were See Carol Gluck, "The People in History: Recent Trends in Japanese Historiography," Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 38, no. 1 (November 1978), pp. 14Hori, p. 24. 25-50; and Kevin Doak, “What is a Nation and Who 15Tsuchiya Takao and Ōno Michio, eds., Meiji sho- Belongs? National Narratives and the Ethnic nen nōmin sōjōroku, Tokyo: Nanboku Shoin, 1931, Imagination in Twentieth-Century Japan,” American p. 305. Historical Review, vol. 102, no. 2 (April 1997), esp. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 25

and People's Historians in Japan link the suppres- state. Consequently, while using localist rheto- sion of these alternative modernities with the rise ric or pursuing decidedly localist goals, people of an absolutist, centralized Japanese state, the often fostered the integration of the locality into local becomes an effective site of alterity vis a vis the state. the Japanese state—a site where the Japanese A second problem with positioning the local- people attempted, nobly but futilely, to resist the ity in opposition to the Meiji state is that the local state. Local history, in turn, often functions to response to state policies was not always one of recover those voices of opposition from the past, resistance and recalcitrance.20 While some vil- and provides the weight of historical precedent to lagers did respond with indifference or even open voices of opposition in the present.17 The case hostility to the new educational policies, others of education is especially relevant here, as educa- responded with enthusiastic cooperation. In tional historians often emphasize the suppression particular, many village elites adopted the cause of local, dissenting voices during the formation of of educational reform as a personal mission, the modern educational system in order to cri- making every effort to meet—in fact, to ex- tique the highly centralized, bureaucratized edu- ceed—the government's recommendations. cational system of the present.18 Many village elites scurried around frenetically Although local history can indeed provide an during the early 1870s, raising funds, studying effective foundation from which to challenge the the architectural plans of the latest schools in narrative of a smooth, consensual, cen- Europe and America, overseeing the schools' trally-directed process of nationalization and construction, personally visiting with families to modernization, we should also recognize the po- convince parents of the value of education, and tential problems with a brand of local history that proclaiming proudly that their local school would automatically positions the local in opposition to bring progress to the community and glory to the the national state. First, localist loyalties are not nation. Of course, their cooperation was usually necessarily counterproductive to the cause of na- based on motives and assumptions that were quite tionalization. As Kären Wigen has demon- different from those of central policymakers. strated, local loyalties can serve as an integrative Furthermore, this cooperation was often condi- force for the nation.19 In the case of the Meiji tional: many people who had initially re- educational system, village elites in Nagano often sponded with enthusiasm to the Meiji govern- used local pride as a mobilizing force when col- ment’s educational project later opposed it as lecting funds for school construction or when their interests diverged from those of the new encouraging attendance, thus furthering national state. 21 Nevertheless, seeing the local exclu- goals while trumpeting local particularity. In sively as a site of resistance fails to capture the addition, efforts to preserve the autonomy of the complex range of local responses to the state’s local school in the face of an encroaching state were often successful, but usually were achieved by following proper administrative procedures, 20Sheldon Garon's new book highlights the coopera- which served to legitimize the machinery of the tive aspects of the relationship between state and society in modern Japan, although his focus is on private social groups rather than on the locality per pp. 299-309. se. See Garon, Molding Japanese Minds, Princeton: 17Amino, pp. 105-107. Princeton University Press, 1997. 18For example, see Ishijima Tsuneo and Umemura 21This was particularly the case with a large number Kayo, eds., Nihon minshū kyōikushi, Tokyo: Azusa of village elites who, after spearheading efforts to Shuppansha, 1996. establish new schools in local areas, grew disillu- 19Kären Wigen, "Constructing Shinano: The Inven- sioned with the Meiji government's educational tion of a Neo-Traditional Region," in Stephen Vlas- policies and infused the People's Rights Movement tos, ed., Mirror of Modernity, Berkeley: University with a sharp critique of the centralized educational of California Press, 1998, pp. 229-242. Applegate system. See chapter five of my dissertation, argues a similar point in "A Europe of Regions," p. “School, Community, and State Integration in 1177. Nineteenth-Century Japan.” NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 26

educational reforms. preemptive strike to dictate the terms by which A third problem that results from assuming the educational system would take shape in their an intractably antagonistic relationship between own local area. For example, villages often local society and the Meiji state is that such an took the initiative to raise funds and establish a assumption diverts our attention from the ways in school for an area that did not conform to the which local society influenced the state’s devel- newly drawn school districts. Villagers would opment. Most Marxist and People’s historians then write a petition to open the school, skillfully in Japan are heavily invested in claiming (and co-opting the language of educational reform ruing) the failure of local opposition to the Meiji sanctioned by the state to justify their local state: by denying that the people had any voice claims. Local officials would write the prefec- in the formation of the state, “the people” and tural government for guidance, and the prefec- “the local” are shielded from implication in the tural government would then send the query on to less desirable parts of Japan’s modern history. the Ministry of Education in Tokyo, which usu- In the process, localities are often denied agency ally responded by accommodating demands from as well, thus paradoxically celebrating the local below. Often, the collective weight of hundreds while reaffirming the primacy of national history. or thousands of these local claims would influ- However, if we study the local response to ence the central government to consider changes Meiji educational reform while keeping one eye in policy. In fact, following the promulgation of on the changes in educational policy made by the the Fundamental Code of Education in 1872, the central government, we can see how local society Ministry of Education was inundated with queries shaped the development of the national educa- and complaints from local officials about how to tional system. For instance, when state policies implement the often vague or impractical policies met with resistance at the local level, the central in their own local areas.22 In its responses, the government usually responded not with suppres- Ministry of Education frequently amended or sion, but compromise. While the large-scale qualified its initial policies in order to accommo- rebellions were indeed put down violently, many date the realities of local implementation. Fur- of the demands articulated in those rebel- thermore, by publishing its answers to these lions—demands that were expressed in more lo- questions and distributing them to prefectural and calized, non-violent forms at the village level and local governments throughout the country, the communicated to prefectural and central govern- answers functioned as precedence for future deci- ment officials through village notables—were sions, thus enabling local society in influence accommodated in subsequent policy changes. policy debates at the national level. In this The 1879 Educational Ordinance, for example, fashion, the Meiji educational system emerged represented a clear compromise by the Ministry out of a dialogue, or negotiation, with local soci- of Education to local demands for smaller schools, ety. shorter commutes, more relevant content, less This dynamic of compromise and negotiation demanding schedules, and more local autonomy. played a crucial role in the process of modern While the Ministry of Education revised this or- Japanese state formation, yet it can easily be dinance a year later to emphasize the prerogative concealed by a historical methodology that fo- of central government in education, many of cuses exclusively on the center or on the nation as these compromises remained, and local demands a whole. Consequently, much of the value of continued to find their way into central govern- local history lies in its capacity to expose this ment rhetoric and policy. important area of contingency in the formation of While localities often took an oppositional the national state, thus challenging the narratives stance towards the new educational system in constructed by modern states to legitimize their order to influence central policies, they could also authority. Of course, highlighting the agency of shape the educational system from below through an active, positive response to the call for educa- 22Many of these queries were printed in Monbushō tional reform. In fact, enthusiastic cooperation Nisshi, a Meiji-period education journal published by communities often functioned as a kind of by the Ministry of Education. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 27

local society in the process of state formation local historians the role of what Marc Bloch calls does not amount to a denial of the eventuality of "energetic gardeners," unearthing facts to be as- centralization and nationalization in Meiji Japan. similated into the national narrative, whether that In the area of education, for example, Japan did narrative is triumphal or tragic. Instead, by indeed have a relatively centralized and stan- recognizing the role of local resistance, local ini- dardized school system by the end of the Meiji tiative, and local identities in the process of state period in 1912. However, this does not repre- formation, local history can challenge national sent the triumph of the state over local society, as narratives by pointing out the ways in which the is often portrayed by both critics and supporters national state bears the imprint of local demands of the state. Such an interpretation relegates to and expectations.

Old Kaichi Elementary School Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.

This building, designated as a National Important Cultural Property, was con- structed in Meiji 9 (1876) and is the first Western-style school building in Japan. ©Arai Michimasa 新井通正, Sankubo-Cho 22-18, Kawagoe City, Saitama Pre- fecture. Reprinted by permission from Dejicame Shashinkan, Matsumoto-jō・ Kaichi Gakkō, at http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~JZ3M-ARI/dejicame/dejicame.htm.

NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 28

Sacred Sites and the groups defined themselves around these promi- nent places, they perpetuated the landmarks of DDyyynamicsnamics of Identity early modern Japan as important foci around Sarah Thal which to create new identities for themselves and Rice University their communities in the modern age. The study of landmarks in Japan almost in- Local histories have long examined both the evitably leads to the study of sacred sites. ties that bind communities together and the Throughout Japanese history, notable mountains, developments that make them distinct. As is caves, or springs have been identified as sites of evident in the term itself, "local" history takes as sacred power: worshipers approached them with the most fundamental of these ties the connection offerings, consecrated them with rituals, and pub- of a group of people to a particular location. It is licized their miraculous powers in performances curious, therefore, that writers of local history and in print. During the early modern period, this have often taken this geographic connection for focus on powerful religious sites blossomed granted. There are clear political reasons for this amidst growing prosperity, an increasingly com- narrative viewpoint: local governments of towns, mercial economy, and a prolific culture of print districts and prefectures have sponsored many of and performance to fuel a spectacular boom in these writing projects to cover the areas within pilgrimage and tourism by the early nineteenth their jurisdiction. But such politics of publishing century. In popular culture, the Bunka-Bunsei have begged the question of how inhabitants of period (1804-1830) became an age of gods and an area come to associate themselves not just miracles, inseparable from the famous sites in with local units of administration but with the which those gods resided.1 Thus, people from land itself. How do they define their communities every domain converged on pilgrimage centers in relation to the physical landscape, thereby lo- such as Ise, Kompira, Zenkōji, or Mt. Fuji in cating themselves not only in geographical, but in search of miraculous benefits and pleasurable social, political, and intellectual space as well? entertainments. Hundreds of thousands of visitors In Japanese history, this question holds par- each year offered donations and purchased amu- ticular relevance for the study of the nineteenth lets at these places in the hope of securing the and early twentieth centuries. The transition from gods' protection for themselves, their families, the early modern bakuhan system to the modern and their businesses. Impressive miracle tales nation-state has often seemed to imply the disap- were retold, embellished, and set in print, adver- pearance of distinctive, local identities into a sin- tising the power of certain deities and their gle sense of nation. The most prominent printed shrines to heal blindness, prevent fire, multiply images of each period reinforce this seeming di- wealth, or prevent drowning. Pilgrimage traffic chotomy: Bashō's poetry, Jippensha Ikku's hu- provided the livelihoods of souvenir sellers at the morous travel tales, and Hiroshige's and Hoku- most popular destinations, and supported inn- sai's prints of famous places depict vivid, vibrant keepers and boat operators along travel routes local color before 1868, while afterward, national newspapers, books, and prints of the emperor draw attention to Tokyo and the imperial institu- 1 Constantine Vaporis, in Breaking Barriers: Travel tion. Despite this image of centralization and and the State in Early Modern Japan, Cambridge, homogenization, local histories have shown that Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994, many elites throughout the countryside retained especially pp. 217-254, addresses the culture of pil- and, in some cases, increased their influence un- grimage as a culture of travel, thereby seeing -- der the new regime. Likewise, I contend here that along with many other scholars -- a "secularization" people continued to use the famous sites that had of pilgrimage. But the religious context within distinguished their communities in the early which commoners saw the places to which they modern period to maintain and create a variety of journeyed on their pilgrimages could simultane- intellectual, social, and cultural communities well ously work to associate seemingly a-religious ac- tions, such as travel, with the gods and their mira- into the twentieth century. As individuals and cles. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 29

throughout the country. sites into a nationwide system of state shrines The sacred sites around which this economy where deities were worshiped as kami and the and culture of pilgrimage revolved became focal priests lectured on state-defined teachings of points for the development of a national identity obedience, reverence, and patriotism.6 The Meiji that helped shape the modern nation-state. Not government thus confirmed the importance of only did the ceaseless travels of pilgrims and prominent Edo-period sites of the gods as out- sightseers bring people from throughout the is- posts of civic education, as ritual centers that en- lands into communication with each other, 2 but hanced the legitimacy of the imperial government, the sites of the deities themselves gained new and (at least for the most dedicated nativists) as significance as local gentry increasingly sought to institutions whose prayers harnessed the powers identify themselves and their homes with a na- of the gods in the service of the state. Despite the tional essence. It was around such centers of growing prominence of Tokyo and the nation -- worship that the nativist ideologies of Motoori or, rather, precisely because of it -- the sacred Norinaga and, especially, Hirata Atsutane devel- centers of early modern fame remained important oped and spread in the eighteenth and nineteenth and, indeed, gained new significance in the mod- centuries. Literary scholars near many sites ern period. identified their locally enshrined deities as Shinto The sites of the gods thus became pivotal kami named in the ancient texts. As Hirata's fu- points of connection between local communities sion of nativist literary analysis with Shinto ritual and the modern nation-state. As social, political, and religiosity spread throughout the countryside, and economic patterns changed throughout the increasing numbers of these scholars joined the Meiji period, people used the sacred sites, as they Hirata school, adopted Hirata's designations of had in the years before 1868, to negotiate new local buddhas and bodhisattvas as native kami, identities for themselves. The processes by which and, by the 1860s, began organizing in support of such identities were shaped were clearly evident reviving the imperial, kami-worshiping bureauc- at the shrine to Kompira on Mt. Zōzu on the is- racy of ancient Japan.3 When influential nativists land of Shikoku. In the mid-nineteenth century, swept to power alongside their sponsors in the Buddhist Kompira rivaled Ise as the most com- new Meiji government, 4 Hirata's focus on puri- mon destination of pilgrims nationwide. 7 Con- fying worship sites and governing in conjunction with the kami became, for a short while at least, official policy. In the wake of legislation issued influential Edo period temples, more than 98% were from Tokyo in 1868 separating kami and Buddhas, converted into Shinto shrines. Tamamuro, "On the nativist scholars who had become Shinto priests Suppression of Buddhism," in Hardacre and Kern, converted thousands of worship sites into Shinto eds., New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, 5 establishments. Soon, they incorporated the Leiden and New York: Brill, 1997, 504. 6 On the Great Teaching Campaign in English, see James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in 2 James H. Foard, "The Boundaries of Compassion: Meiji Japan, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Buddhism and National Tradition in Japanese Pil- 1990, 87-135; and Helen Hardcare, Shintō and the grimage," Journal of Asian Studies 41, no. 2 (Feb- State, 1868-1988, Princeton: Princeton University ruary 1982), 231-251. Press, 1989, 42-59. Sakamoto Koremaru has pro- 3 Sarah Thal, Rearranging the Landscape of the vided evidence that the appointment of shrines as Gods: A History of Kompira Pilgrimage in Meiji state shrines occurred as each shrine petitioned to Japan, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, the central government for that status, not due to 1999. centralized decisions in the Jingikan. Sakamoto, 4 Anne Walthall provides a vivid example of the Kokka Shintō keisei katei no kenkyū, Tokyo: Iwa- alliance between some of the more prominent na- nami Shoten, 1994, 69, n. 21. tivists and the Choshu samurai in The Weak Body of 7 In his magnum opus on the social and economic a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji functions of pilgrimage, Shinjō Tsunezō estimated Restoration, University of Chicago Press, 1998. the annual number of pilgrims to Ise, Mt. Kōya, 5 Tamamuro Fumio has calculated that of the most Honganji, and Kompira at approximately NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 30

verted to Shinto in 1868, Kotohira Shrine -- as it shrine. Every year during the annual festival of then officially became known -- lent the prestige Kompira, these relationships to authority were of its powerful deity to the new Meiji regime, reenacted ritually as priests, town officials, and which in turn conferred upon the shrine the offi- representatives of privileged households per- cial imprimature of imperial rank and state spon- formed important roles in the festivities.9 sorship. Kotohira Shrine thus stood at the nexus In 1868, this network of formal political and of popular religious practice and the authority of ritual ties was disrupted. The head priest of Kon- the emerging nation-state. kōin, relieved by imperial troops of authority As people in Shikoku and beyond renegoti- over his small domain, converted to Shinto in a ated their positions in the changing order of early bid to maintain control over the profitable moun- Meiji, many used their relationship to the shrine tain shrine, which he unilaterally converted to to define themselves and their status in their Shinto at the same time. Because the administra- communities. As they re-conceptualized the tion of the town was now separated from the ad- shrine, they used the site of the god in three ways ministration of the shrine, however, assignment that would shape both themselves and the modern of ritual positions in the annual festival and other age: first, as a source of semi-official social observances no longer directly mirrored local status; second, as the basis for promoting a re- political hierarchies. Moreover, after the official gional tourist economy; and third, as a marker of government designation of Shinto shrines as sites the intellectual and civilizational divide between for state worship in 1871, and the centralization rural and urban Japan. In each case, a group of of administrative power in Tokyo in 1872, priests people -- whether individually or in concert -- at the shrine were no longer determined locally created or affiliated themselves with a commu- on the basis of heredity, but were appointed by nity of their choosing through their approach to the national and prefectural governments. As the the shrine on Mt. Zōzu. state shrine system developed and new rituals were created and standardized, an official, formal style of reverence was regularly modeled at Ko- Site and Status tohira and other shrines. National and local gov- ernments provided monetary support for the During the early modern period, the social shrines, and representatives of the village and status that accrued from formal association with prefectural governments formally presented do- the shrine of Kompira was not always a matter of nations to the kami on national holidays and at choice, at least for residents of the area. The he- major shrine festivals. Thus, in the Meiji period, reditary priest (bettō) of Konkōin, the head sub- officially appointed Shinto priests and govern- temple of the Kompira complex on Mt. Zōzu, ment representatives joined prominent local ruled over the shrine and the 330 koku domain of families as formal participants in the annual rites. Kompira, swearing fealty to the Tokugawa sho- With the severance of feudal relations be- gun under the sponsorship of the lord of the Ta- tween village leaders and shrine priests, the way kamatsu domain. Priests of other sub-temples on was opened for more people to avail themselves the mountain acted as administrators of the vil- of the status offered by formal affiliation with the lage, collecting taxes and adjudicating conflicts.8 shrine. In 1874, Kotohira Shrine, like several Local officials or residents of longstanding local other shrines to which bureaucrats from Tokyo prominence were tied to the priests by the special had recently been appointed, established a new, 10 rights and responsibilities they received from the lay pilgrimage association. Intended in large

400,000-500,000 people per year in the eighteenth 9 Chōshi Kotohira 3, 105ff. and early nineteenth centuries. Shaji sankei no 10 For appointments, see Tokoyo Nagatane, "Shin- shakai keizai shiteki kenkyū, Tokyo: Hanawa Shobō, kyō soshiki monogatari," in Yasumaru Yoshio and 1964, 929-930. Miyachi Masato, eds., Shūkyō to kokka, Nihon kin- 8 Kotohira Chōshi Henshū Iinkai, Chōshi Kotohira dai shisō taikei 5, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1988, 3, Kotohira: Kotohira-chō, 1999, 57-59. 387. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 31

part to offset the loss of feudal land-based income survival on the battlefront.13 In addition to the with newly-instituted membership dues paid by privileges themselves, many members of the initiates, the Kotohira Shrine Reverence Associa- Reverence Association treasured the special rela- tion also provided a forum in which priests could tionship to the shrine that those privileges signi- inculcate into pilgrims new national teachings fied. Some votive plaques offered in thanks to the established in Tokyo. The priests of the Rever- kami explicitly mentioned the Reverence Asso- ence Association led initiates through a complex ciation affiliation of the donors, attesting to what bureaucratic registration process, preached to they saw as the god's partiality to association them about civic values, and guided them through members. A plaque donated to the shrine in 1881 the new set of prayers, purification rituals, bows, from Kii province, for instance, recorded the reg- and hand-clappings that had been defined as the istration number of the local Reverence Associa- proper form of Shinto ritual. Almost any pilgrim, tion and praised the sincere prayers of the asso- as long as he or she paid the membership fee, ciation for their special ability to rid a woman of could participate in a formal ceremony akin to the fox possession.14 rituals performed by government officials, com- Membership in the Reverence Association plete with access to the main sanctuary and the was thought not only to indicate a privileged receipt of a specially blessed amulet and a cup of status in relation to the deity, but in some cases sake in front of the altar. Through the sermons seems to have signaled higher status in the local and ceremonies of the Reverence Association, community as well.15 Within the Reverence As- then, association members were trained in the sociation itself, a clear hierarchy both reflected formality of elite obeisance; for the price of a and informed perceptions of social status in small membership fee, they, too, could pass by communities throughout Japan. To acquire formal less privileged worshipers to climb the steps to office in the association was considered a mark of the main sanctuary, thereby joining the ranks of prestige. The Reverence Association repeatedly the specially recognized. issued lists of the criteria for office, stipulating It seems clear that these special privileges that association officers must not only "have had were the reason that almost two million people deep respect for the gods for many years," but had joined the Kotohira Shrine Reverence Asso- must have "demonstrated particular skill in ciation by the end of the 1880s.11 Not only did a forming associations, be people of repute and recruiting pamphlet for the Reverence Associa- proper conduct, and possess more than the aver- tion prominently feature an illustration of the age amount of property."16 Because Reverence sanctuary ceremony in 1878, but letters to the Association office was contingent upon the num- shrine and association repeatedly inquired about ber of individuals and associations a person "procedures to enter the sanctuary" (naijin iri no tetsuzuki) and referred to members as "people who have received entry into the sanctuary" (go- 13 E.g., text of ema donated by Imamura Kichitarō naijin iri ōsetsukerareni sōrō). 12 Testimonials of Okayama, testifying to a miracle in 1879, re- written to the shrine also extolled the powers of corded in Kotohiragū shiryō, vol. 67; and the letter the special association amulet, attributing to it the from Hayashi Torazō, 5 June 1905. rescue of a child fallen overboard or a soldier's 14 Ema from Kii province (1881) in Kotohiragu shiryō, v. 67. 15 In some communities, membership in the Rev- 11 Kotohiragū shiryō, v. 11. This number is not im- erence Association or an independent Kompira kō plausible. See the introduction by Tamamuro Fumio was apparently limited to the leadership of the in Tamamuro, ed., Kotohiragū sūkei kōsha kōchō community, while in others it seems that almost mokuroku, Kotohira-chō: Kotohiragū Shamusho, everyone joined. Shinjō Tsunezō touches on this 1995. regional social variation among Tokugawa-period 12 Murai Shin'ichirō, ed., Sūkei kō no susume, Ta- kō in Shaji sankei no shakai keizai shiteki kenkyū, kamatsu: Murai Shin'ichirō, 1878; letters from 729. Takimoto Keisaku (ca. 1886) and Kadowaki Hi- 16 "Kotohira hongū sūkei kōsha jōrei" (1886), in roomi (16 May 1906). Kotohiragū shiryō, v. 14. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 32

brought into the organization, many ambitious were written the name of each village, or men vied to create Reverence Association groups "daily pilgrimage flag." Each flag was made in and around their home towns. Others applied of simple cloth, with writing in black ink. to the shrine for official recognition as associa- The people holding the flags also wore sim- tion leaders or Shinto lecturers. One man, writing ple clothes and straw sandals. They had se- to request recognition as a lecturer for the asso- rious expressions as they thought of the sol- ciation in 1896, not only avowed a long-standing diers abroad. . . . Around noon, we climbed faith in Kompira 17 but provided an extensive the mountain, arrived in front of the main resume detailing his military service, his mem- shrine, washed our hands and rinsed our bership in the Red Cross, and his leadership ex- mouths, and all together were serious and perience in such Shinto-affiliated groups as Ku- prayed.20 rozumikyō and Keishinkyō.18 Clearly, leadership in the association was considered a respected and Visits to the shrine had acquired a somber effective step upward on the social ladder of vol- overtone of social responsibility -- first among untary national service. village elites, then during wartime extending Village leaders also used worship of Kompira among the people they mobilized. As local lead- to unite communities under their direction. This ers used the site to bolster their social standing, was most conspicuous during the Sino-Japanese they transformed the shrine from a source of local and Russo-Japanese wars. During these conflicts, political status to a conduit of centralized state mayors and chambers of commerce in communi- power that lent its aura of national prestige to ties within walking distance of the shrine organ- each person to the extent that he or she cultivated ized residents into monthly, weekly, or even daily an official relationship with the shrine. Through processions to Kompira.19 The organizers who their participation in membership rituals or vil- coordinated the ritual with the shrine simultane- lage processions, worshipers proclaimed their ously reinforced their own authority within their affiliations with like-minded people both nearby community and demonstrated to outside observ- and across the nation, identifying with each other ers their unity in support of the troops. In these on the basis of religious, social, or national con- wartime rituals, villagers worshiped as represen- cerns through their actions on a mountain in Shi- tatives of their communities much as government koku. bureaucrats worshiped as representatives of the state. As one man reported on a group pilgrimage to Kompira during the Russo-Japanese war: Culture and Capitalism

[On the way,] we encountered people More than just offering the perquisites of returning from praying for the soldiers. Each status, however, the shrine of Kompira and its group held a flag bearing inscriptions for the prominent reputation made possible the economic health of the soldiers, the victory of the im- livelihood of people both in the town and perial troops, the defeat of the enemy coun- throughout the region. Throughout the nine- try, and the like. On the sides of the flags teenth and twentieth centuries, business leaders of the area joined together to promote the site, its

17 culture and its history, thereby developing the Although the official name of the shrine and the mountain as a profitable meeting ground for a deity were changed to "Kotohira" in 1868 (and the growing group of educated elites. Joining culture name of the town a few years later), all are still re- and capitalism at Kompira, they forged ties hori- ferred to as "Kompira" in popular parlance. For this zontally with fellow promoters that often rein- reason, when referring to the deity and site in gen- forced the vertical hierarchies of status. eral terms, this essay uses the term, "Kompira." 18 Letter from Saiō [first name illegible], dated 1 During the Tokugawa period, the domain of June 1896. 19 Matsuoka Mitsugi, Nennen Nikki, 18 August 1894ff. 20 Kagawa Shimpō, 12 November 1904. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 33

Kompira relied for its political and economic come for a limited elite not only a popular pil- prosperity upon business generated by pilgrims to grimage site but also a storehouse of culture. the mountain, which in turn relied upon the na- Both the popular and the elite cultural ver- tional fame of the site. There were two main sions of Kompira survived and flourished in the strategies through which promoters advertised the Meiji era. From the early 1870s, however, more pilgrimage during these years. The most common and more people threw their weight behind pro- was to focus on the miracles of the deity and the moting the shrine as an imperial and cultural in- pleasures of the entertainments nearby. Thus, stitution. The Shinto priests of the shrine -- and, playbills advertised kabuki performances, pam- increasingly, local elites eager for profitable as- phlets related famous miracles of the deity, and sociations with the semi-governmental organiza- flyers published in Edo and Osaka included the tion -- worked concertedly to publicize not just names and prices of Kompira's geisha within the "civilized" culture of the shrine's artistic heri- their national rankings.21 The Kompira section of tage (in contrast to what some saw as the "super- Jippensha Ikku's comedic travel tale, Hizakurige, stitious" culture of miracles and entertainment, published in 1810, publicized this mixture of unsuitable for the modern age), but, at the same miracles and entertainment throughout the coun- time, the shrine's ties to the imperial house, now try. 22 Periodic displays of the buddha image the symbolic center of modern Japan.24 During (kaichō) held on the mountain attracted large the early years of Meiji, the priests of Kotohira numbers of people to the shrine, to sideshows, capitalized upon the growing trend to display rare and to the inns, gambling dens, and brothels of and unusual objects not in kaichō (for, as a Shinto the town. This powerful mix of miracles and en- shrine, Kotohira no longer had a carved worship tertainment formed the popular image of Kom- image to display) but in nationally publicized pira. expositions. In 1879 and 1880, expositions at Among a small but influential group of intel- Kotohira Shrine attracted more than 250,000 lectuals and artists, this popular image of the pil- people to see objects shown no longer because of grimage was accompanied by a more erudite in- their miraculous, Buddhist attributes, but to terpretation. Poets and painters extolled the site dramatize the ties of the shrine to emperors or and the deity in imagery from the Chinese as well other cultural figures associated with the area.25 as Japanese classics. Nativists published local In 1904, the priests built a two-story, west- histories and gazetteers asserting connections ern-style museum within the shrine grounds, between Kompira and such imperial figures as making Kotohira the first shrine in the country to Sei Shōnagon or Emperor Sutoku, or identifying display Buddhist statues, scrolls, and other arti- it with ancient shrines mentioned in the Engi- facts permanently in its own museum. Inns at the shiki.23 The priests of Konkōin, like those at foot of the mountain likewise advertised west- other important religious institutions during the ern-style buildings and cultural displays, extol- Edo period, collected cultural objects, bolstering ling the area's cultural heritage and worldly pro- their positions through conspicuous consumption, gress in an attempt to attract affluent, culturally commissioning screens, scrolls, and ritual images knowledgeable guests to the town. as well as receiving donations of valuable art ob- Tourist promotion -- which, in the area of jects from neighboring lords. By the Kompira, was one of the most important strate- mid-nineteenth century, then, Kompira had be- gies of industrial development -- continued to rely heavily upon this cultural interpretation of

the shrine in the twentieth century. As the nearby 21 Chōshi Kotohira 3, p. 166. 22 Jippensha Ikku, "Kompira sankei zoku hizaku- rige shohen," in Hizakurige sono ta, vol. 1, Nihon 24 This imperial focus had, of course, existed before meichō zenshū, Edo bungei no bu 22, Tokyo: Nihon 1868 (especially in Konkōin's campaign for an im- Meichō Zenshū Kankōkai, 1927. perial monopoly in the eighteenth century), but 23 E.g., Ishizu Ryōchō, "Kompirasan meisho zue" during the Meiji period it intensified and became (ca. 1804-1818), in Kagawa-ken, ed., Kagawa more widespread. Sōsho 3, Takamatsu: Kagawa-ken, 1943, 365-369. 25 Chōshi Kotohira 3, 446. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 34

ports of Takamatsu, Tadotsu, and Marugame their participation in the broader "civilized" cul- competed for steamship traffic from across the ture of the country's elite. Inland Sea, boat operators funded the publication While schoolteachers and army officers in- of tour guides extolling the attractions of the area. creasingly toured Mt. Zōzu with guidebook in Often singling out the shrine as the centerpiece of hand, thousands more travelers brought their the region, they capitalized on the fame of the site money to Kotohira to offer to the god or pay for by calling their publications, "Guide to Koto- the women. The sheer economic power of these hira," or placing an image of the shrine or its fa- visitors encouraged many businessmen to focus mous insignia on the cover. The guidebooks on Kompira not so much as a site of sacred power functioned as cultural catalogs, filled with de- or as a cultural treasure house, but as the basis for scriptions of the art, scenery, and history of the the economic future of the region. As in decades shrine and neighboring attractions that their pub- before, makers of amulet boxes and owners of lishers deemed worthy of the educated tourist's brothels used Kompira's fame to advertise their attention.26 wares throughout the Meiji era, supporting a In many ways, this cultural emphasis was flourishing economy rarely acknowledged by the due to the audience targeted by local promoters. guidebooks or the shrine. Chambers of Commerce and business associa- In the late 1890s, the prefectural government tions in Takamatsu, Kotohira and elsewhere fo- began promoting the tourist business as well, cused on attracting the growing numbers of mili- seeing the drawing power of Kompira as a pow- tary officers, professionals, and well-to-do busi- erful engine for economic growth. Governor To- nessmen and their families who had the where- kuhisa, one of the most influential governors in withal to travel by rail or steamship, stay at the the history of Kagawa Prefecture, spent more most luxurious hotels, order the most expensive government money for the promotion of trade meals, and buy the growing number of souvenirs and manufacture per capita in Kagawa between sold at shops near the shrine. These people gen- 1896 and 1898 than did the governor of any other erally came from well-educated families of the prefecture in the country. Around Kompira, this rural gentry, proud of their local heritage and in- focused on tourism, not just for culturally minded terested in the culture and history of the region. If elites but for any traveler with a coin to spend.27 they came from outside of the prefecture, many Soon after his appointment as governor, Tokuhisa were interested in the culture and history of Ko- toured the prefecture and gave his impressions to tohira as part of the national heritage as a whole. a reporter: Some travelers kept diaries in which they re- corded the number of objects on display, or When I went to Kotohira Shrine, I commented on architectural details of shrine learned that there are no fewer than three buildings. For these educated gentry, a visit to million pilgrims every year. Now, of these Kotohira Shrine was a chance to demonstrate three million pilgrims, each person spends their cultural and historical knowledge, and thus on an average 10 sen in the area, which adds their erudition. This was not a new development up to 300,000 yen. If the pilgrims increased in the Meiji period: guidebooks from earlier in their spending to one yen each, that would the nineteenth century had related the local histo- be three million yen. Even if it were only ries of monuments on the mountain, for instance. one-third of that, it would be a large amount. But in an age in which a familiarity with history, It is the urgent work of this area to achieve art, and culture increasingly marked a man as a that goal. knowledgeable subject of imperial Japan, many The first item of business is to get the visitors valued their knowledge of the imperial pilgrims to spend more money. What indus- ties and treasures of the shrine as evidence of try would be most appropriate for this? At

26 E.g., Nagata Soreji, Kotohira Annaiki, Osaka: 27 Saitō Osamu, "Meiji goki no fuken kangyō sei- Nagata Soreji, 1902. saku," Keizai Kenkyū 35, no. 3 (July 1984), 243. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 35

Miyajima, they make plates and other items Kompira-san is," 30 their conceptions of the site from the local pine trees and sell them. This may as easily have included the cultural or eco- brings in a significant amount of money. I nomic assets of the mountain as the miracles of notice that there are some nice dishes for the god. sale in Kotohira. But these goods are not made in Kotohira; they are bought from Miyajima. … If dishes were made, this An Intellectual Divide would be a very profitable industry. In any case, if one made a souvenir in Kotohira, Despite their differences in emphasis, how- 28 pilgrims would buy it and take it home. ever, members of the shrine's Reverence Associa- tion, cultural connoisseurs and promoters of tour- Business groups, both in Kotohira and ism generally shared a basic respect for the gods. throughout the prefecture, swiftly pursued this Indeed, it was not infrequent for people to es- approach. They established a trade school in Ko- pouse a variety of these approaches to Kompira at tohira to make chopsticks and other souvenirs different times. Joining the Reverence Associa- patterned after Miyajima and Ise. The town built tion to pray for prosperity to an imperial kami, a park, and inn keepers constructed new inns and they then toured the mountain, paying a small fee amenities at the nearby hot springs, advertising to admire the gold-flecked screens and renowned the new resort to military officers and their fami- Buddhist images on display in the shrine's office lies. The journalistic and business community of and museum. Arriving at their expensive inns for Takamatsu increasingly spoke of Kotohira not as the evening, many would summon a geisha or a beneficent deity but as a site of economic de- venture out to the red-light district for the eve- velopment. Proclaimed one editorial in 1897, ning. Upon returning home, they might read the "Kotohira! Use your god-given capital to make calls for tourist development in the newspaper an entertainment fairyland! … Add to the and discuss the merits of such a move for the well-known spiritual sites and advertise your- townspeople of Kotohira. selves to the world as a great paradise of enter- The miracles of the deity remained an im- 29 tainment." The business leaders of Kagawa portant element in the mixture of worship, cul- Prefecture thus joined together around the pil- tural appreciation, entertainment, and trade that grimage not as worshipers but as regional plan- made up the practices of pilgrimage. Throughout ners, eager to promote economic exploitation of the Meiji period and well into the twentieth cen- the mountain and its pilgrimage. tury, people continued to believe in the magical As entrepreneurs promoted a growing tourist powers of the gods. They prayed to Kompira and economy based on Kompira, then, they simulta- bought amulets from the shrine to save them from neously provided fodder for new identities to be accidents, give them long-awaited children, or forged around the sacred mountain. While thou- ensure their profits on the stock market. The sands of people still flocked to the shrine to ask Reverence Association itself capitalized on the for miracles and enjoy the surrounding enter- continuing attraction of amulets and prayer rituals tainments, hundreds of others responded to the to prospective members. growing literature on Kompira's imperial culture Yet from the 1870s on, an educated chorus and artistic history. At the same time, promoters grew that denounced this so-called "superstitious" themselves could publicly debate over the best reliance on magic. Priests at the shrine repeatedly way to exploit the "capital" of the site. By the exhorted believers to revere the deity for its own turn of the century, when people as far away as sake instead of petitioning it for miracles.31 Most Tokyo identified Kagawa Prefecture as "where

28 "Tokuhisa chiji no monogatari," Kagawa Shimpō, 30 Miyoshi Tsunesaburō, "Waga shin'ai naru Sanuki 23 July 1896. seinen shoshi ni hitogoto su," Sanuki gakuseikai 29 "Shin Kotohira," Kagawa Shimpō, 15 August zasshi 13 (May 1901), 3. 1897. 31 E.g., Muramatsu Sūei, ed., Kotohira miyage, NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 36

vocal, however, were the growing numbers of of Kotohira's useless bus," which operated briefly journalists who prided themselves on their critical, from the railroad station to nearby Kotaki logical, Western-style ideas. Even in the most Springs: conservative newspaper in Takamatsu, which wholeheartedly supported the formal worship of According to the talk of people in town, Kompira as an expression of civic virtue and a salesman said that a simple bus was not upstanding social status, journalists ridiculed the interesting enough, and instead proposed the "superstitions" of less educated believers. Arti- latest, best, clog-wearing bus. On each of its cles and cartoons poked fun at a man who waited wheels were attached what looked like sev- at the shrine to hear the voice of the god (and eral wooden clogs. . . [An operator in Koto- who was finally sent on his way by the train hira] happily bought and drove it. He kept conductor speaking over the telephone), or a taking off his own clogs and putting them on military recruit who buried his books on the the wheels, until after a short while, he went mountain, praying that Kompira miraculously out of business.34 transfer the knowledge into his head.32 In this way, regional elites reinforced their own idea of Whether or not the tale was based on even a superiority based on their approach to the deity as small grain of truth, it dramatically illustrated the an imperial grantor of respectful petitions, not the viewpoint spread in national newspapers that object of magical rituals revered by the majority Kotohira was a place of stupid entertainments left of worshipers. Business leaders of the prefecture untouched by modern civilization: a site treasured shared this bias, focusing tourist promotion ef- only by a poor, uneducated rural population still forts on well-heeled and educated visitors, despite steeped in ignorance. Whereas regional promot- the fact that, as one writer remarked, "those ers had extolled Kotohira as a cultural repository so-called gentlemen who wear Western-style and thus, in some respects, a picture of the past, clothes and beards are the customers who will not these journalists depicted it as an uncivilized appreciate Kotohira, no matter what. Kotohira's backwater. Such critical views established a se- everyday prosperity is due to the people in straw ries of tensions defined according to religious raingear (minokasa) and leggings."33 Intellectual practice and location. Urban journalists and in- biases, translated into economic action, supported tellectuals despised the rural folk not only be- an increasingly negative image of rural folk and cause of their beliefs but because of their location their faith. in the countryside. Journalists and intellectuals from major cities Meanwhile, rural residents looked askance at outside the prefecture were even more critical. In the urban visitors, dolled up in their top hats. In 1912, when the priests of Kotohira Shrine and the eyes of many, denigrating remarks about entrepreneurs of Kagawa Prefecture sought to Kompira -- the famous symbol of Kagawa Pre- attract large numbers of people to a great, fecture as a whole -- reflected upon regional three-month-long festival, they invited journalists identity as well. The Chamber of Commerce in from newspapers around the country to write Takamatsu, for instance, was appalled when these about the town and shrine. In a series of articles ridiculing stories hit the presses, finding in them in the Osaka Asahi Shinbun, one journalist held not just a criticism of the ignorant peasants, up not just the worshipers but the entire town of which they had perpetuated themselves, but a Kotohira for ridicule. A prime example of the dismissal of the entire region.35 Kompira, after townspeople's stupidity, he wrote, was "the case all, was the pride of the prefecture, and much of the area's income was reliant upon its image on

the national scene. Just as intellectuals in Tokyo Kotohira: Kyokuō Gakkai, 1897, passim. 32 “Denwa o kakeru Kompirasan,” in Kagawa Shimpō, 10 June 1911; “Kimyō no shingan,” in 34 “Kotohira mairi” 4, Osaka Asahi Shinbun, 4 Kagawa Shimpō, 7 February 1908. March 1912. 33 Ezawa Shō, "Kotohirachō no shūeki," Kagawa 35 E.g., "Manzoku suruya ikan," Kagawa Shimpō, Shimpō, 22 October 1898. 17 March 1912, 1. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 37

and elsewhere joined a fellowship of urban skep- self-consciously skeptical, supposedly "Western" tics through their criticisms of Kompira and the identity. And it is how the majority of the rural gullibility of rural worshipers, then, so too did population continued to seek in the gods the an- worshipers, vendors, and many regional boosters swer to problems beyond their own capacity to unite against the comments of their attackers. solve. Worship sites such as Kompira, then, func- The localized history of famous places like tioned not only as arenas for the formation of new Kompira reveals the processes through which identities, but also as standards by which differ- people reshaped early modern into modern Japan ent interest groups measured themselves and oth- using familiar, site-specific strategies in a ers. Both religious centers and regional symbols, changed context. It highlights the ways in which these sites anchored the identities of the people they established their places in the modern na- who worked and lived nearby, as well as those tion: as members of communities defined in part who prayed and made pilgrimages from farther by their approaches to the sites of the gods. It was away. How someone approached the shrine in not just through action at the local level, then, but many ways defined who he or she was -- an ur- through interaction with the specificities of the ban intellectual and skeptic; a cultural connois- local landscape, that the people of nineteenth- seur; a respected leader of the community; a de- and twentieth-century Japan shaped the complex vout believer blessed by the kami; or someone webs of community and identity that characterize simply eager for a break from the routine, out on local, regional, and national society as we know it an adventure. Many of these identities overlapped, today. which is what gave Kompira and other sites like it the power to become both unifying and divisive symbols of various social, economic, as well as intellectual communities. As Kompira changed in the eyes of its be- holders, so, too, changed the beholders them- selves. When the sacred domain became an official organ of the Meiji state, associates of the new shrine were incorporated into a hierarchy that culminated in Tokyo. When urban intellectuals defined the shrine no longer as an institution of present power but as a site that enshrined either an imperial or an uncivilized past, they defined themselves as self-consciously modern, civilized imperial subjects. As may be expected in the modern period, the language and iconography of the imperial nation-state became an important part of much popular interaction with shrines such as Kompira. But the story of modern Japan is far more than the dominance of the nation-state. It is how vil- lage elites vied for status in the shrine association or led their communities on pilgrimage during wartime, dramatizing their own positions of lead- ership through the performance of semi-official rituals. It is how regional promoters used local shrines to maintain their place on the cultural, touristic map of the nation. It is how urban intel- lectuals used pilgrimage sites and their worship- ers as a foil against which to define their own, NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 38

3 Local HistoryHistory’’’’ss Challenge to tion, and Thomas Huber’s The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan.4 In the latter cate- National Narratives gory fall studies such as J.W. Hall’s Government Philip C. Brown and Local Power in Japan 500-700. 5 The clear Ohio State University early exception to these patterns of local history monographs is William J. Chambliss’s Chiarai- Local history’s Post-war boom in Japan jima Village: Land Tenure, Taxation, and Local has produced a tremendous volume of publica- Trade, 1818-1884.6 The book was recognized tions, hundreds of volumes that provide mate- as an interesting and well-done discussion of one rials for Japanese historians of all stripes, local village’s transition under the Meiji state, but has sophisticated amateurs and professional uni- not been treated as breaking new intellectual versity historians alike. As Gary Allinson ground: the explanations it invoked reinforced noted years ago, these materials also provide a the emerging interpretations (e.g., Thomas rich trove of materials for scholars outside of Smith’s “The Land Tax in the Tokugawa Pe- Japan: the best include not only surveys of riod,” 7 and Ronald Dore’s “Agricultural Im- prefecture, county, city, town and village his- provements in Japan: 1870-1900,” 8 ) that tory – surveys that often assume one of a stressed the latitude for villagers to expand their rather limited number of patterns – but also economic horizons and the positive contributions volumes of transcribed primary source materi- of traditional values during the Meiji transforma- als. American and Western historians have tions. Chambliss’s work is perhaps the excep- made some use of these materials, but often in tion that proves the general rule for local studies: the context of writing analyses of ostensibly despite the fact that he plowed through a number national developments.1 of manuscript sources, 1) his work did not deal with an epoch-making region and 2) it was not cast as a “nationally representative” case. The Trends in the Uses of Local Histories book found publication in the Association for Asian Studies “Monographs and Papers” series, a Although an increasing part of late twenti- very useful venue but one designed specifically to eth-century Western historiography, local history publish very specialized materials that would not has not been prominent in the post-war Japan fit the needs of other academic or for-profit field. Many of the early examples of it either presses. explored regions that had a special historical role During the 1960s and most of the 1970s, ad- or were used to provide a detailed example of vanced graduate students received encourage- presumably national developments. Examples ment to exploit the materials of local history. of the former include works such as Albert Two studies drew inspiration from the work of Craig’s Choshu in the Meiji Restoration,2 Marius both local and national-level historians: Peter Jansen’s Sakamoto Ryōma and the Meiji Restora- Arneson’s The Medieval Japanese Daimyō: The Ouchi Family’s Rule of Suō and Nagato9 and

1 Gary Allinson, “Modern Japan: A New Social History,” Historical Methods Newsletter 6:3 (June 3 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961. 1973), 100-110. Susan B. Hanley and Kozo Ya- 4 Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 1981. mamura, “Quantitative Data for Japanese Economic 5 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966. History,” in Val R. Lorwin and Jacob M. Price, eds., 6 Tucson, Ariz.: Published for the Association for The Dimensions of the Past: Materials, Problems, Asian Studies by the University of Arizona Press, and Opportunities for Quantitative Work in History, 1965. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 7 Journal of Asian Studies XVIII:1 (November 1972, 503-530, also noted the value of local histo- 1958), 3-20. ries. 8 Economic Development and Cultural Change 2 Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, IX:1, Part 2 (1960). 1961. 9 New Haven, Ct: Yale University Press, 1979. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 39

William Hauser’s Economic Institutional Change The early 1980s witnessed the publication of in Tokugawa Japan: Osaka and the Kinai Cot- six additional monographic studies that focused ton Trade.10 Both drew much of their import largely on specific regions. Thomas Huber’s from the fact that they studied regions that played The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan14 major political or economic roles in the medieval followed the early pattern of exploring “activist” and Tokugawa periods. regions, and James L. McClain’s Kanazawa: A During the same period, several works ap- Seventeenth-Century Castle Town,15 re-examined peared that drew heavily on social science meth- Toyoda Takeshi’s national-level generalizations odologies and its problem focus. These studies regarding daimyo management of castle-town were associated with the “new social history,” growth. McClain’s study drew its problem fo- comparative politics and demographic history and cus from Japanese historiography – how closely did not draw inspiration directly from problems were daimyo able to plan the growth of their cas- defined by past Western-language historical tle towns – and focused on the largest urban area treatments of Japan or even from Japanese his- outside the three great cities, Edo, Osaka and torical debates. Indeed, in a number of respects Kyoto. Conrad Totman examined Akita as a these studies were pioneering or nearly so even in case demonstrating the ways in which Tokugawa the Japanese scholarly context. Thomas Smith’s developments created precedents for modern for- Nakahara: Family Farming and Population in est conservation.16 On the other hand, Neil L. a Japanese Village, 1717-1830 explored demo- Waters, Japan's Local Pragmatists: The Transi- graphic history through family reconstitution tion from Bakumatsu to Meiji in the Kawasaki based on records of religious affiliation (the Region, explored Meiji grass-roots history and shūmon aratame chō).11 In the field of modern did so in an area that “did nothing” during the Japanese history, Smith’s student, Gary Allinson, Restoration and had no other claim to promi- contributed two monographs based on the study nence.17 In this regard, Waters’ work parallels of communities, works that raised questions often that of Chambliss. The decade produced one drawn from the theoretical and comparative lit- other local monographic study, Deference and erature of political science as much as from ques- Defiance in Nineteenth-Century Japan, and that tions derived from Japanese historical proc- not by an historian, but by an anthropologist, esses.12 William W. Kelly.18 While these studies all fall The results of a number of young scholars’ explorations of local history were not published at all; others found their way into print, but in the ward an analysis of demographic and economic form of periodical literature, not monographs. change in Tokugawa Japan: a village study,” Jour- Prominent among such publications were studies nal of Asian Studies 31, no.3 (May 1972), 515-537; of demographic history and related studies based “The Japanese fertility decline in historical perspec- on the use of records of religious affiliation. tive,” In: Cho, Lee-Jay and Kazumasa Kobayashi The early work of Susan Hanley readily comes to eds. Fertility Transition of the East Asian Popula- mind in this regard.13 tions. Honolulu, Hi: University Press Of Hawaii, 1979, 24-48; “Fertility, mortality and life expec- tancy in pre-modern Japan,” Population Studies 10 Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, (London) 28, part 1 (Mar 1974) 127-142 1974. 14 Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 1981. 11 Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977. 15 New Haven, Ct: Yale University Press, 1982. 12 Japanese Urbanism: Industry and Politics in 16 Totman, Conrad D. The Origins of Japan's Kariya, 1872-1972, Berkeley, CA: University of Modern Forests: The Case of Akita, Honolulu, Hi: California Press, 1975, and Suburban Tokyo: A Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Comparative Study in Politics and Social Change, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1985. Berkeley, Ca: University of California Press, 1979 17 Cambridge, Ma: Council on East Asian Studies, 13 Hanley, Susan B. “Migration and economic Harvard University: Distributed by Harvard Uni- change in Okayama during the Tokugawa period,” versity Press, 1983. Keio Economic Studies 10:2 (1973), 19-36; “To- 18 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 40

into the realm of social and political history, J. land, in Fishing Villages in Tokugawa Japan,28 Victor Koschmann’s The Mito Ideology: Dis- explored coastal village society in Kyushu. This course, Reform, and Insurrection in Late Toku- work employs historical materials, but its main gawa Japan, 1790-1864, is distinguished by its focus is to use them to reflect on issues of marine emphasis on locally based intellectual history that resource management, contextualizing them in a is intimately related to the mid-19th century res- broader network of economic and social activities. toration movement.19 While not local histories in the sense of being Local history production has reached a peak studies sharply focused on only one or two loca- in the 1990s. At the start of the decade, Hitomi tions, recent work by Herman Ooms,29 Edward Tonomura, in Community and Commerce in Late Pratt,30 and Mark Ravina31 all draw extensively Medieval Japan: The Corporate Villages of on local histories and local archive collections.32 Tokuchin-ho,20 explored the economic and social Finally, this decade has also produced the first history of a community on the shores of Lake essay collections devoted to particular regions, Biwa; my own work examined domain formation both with a number of contributions by Western in Kaga-han;21 Mary Elizabeth Berry examined authors: Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the Kyoto in the Sengoku era;22 David Howell ex- State in the Early Modern Era33 and Osaka: plored economic development in Hokkaido; 23 The Merchants’ Capital of Early Modern. 34 Kären Wigen explored the economic transforma- More such work is in progress, as the essays in tion of Shimoina;24 and Luke Roberts examined this symposium clearly indicate. economic policy in Tosa.25 James Baxter ex- plored the adaptation of Ishikawa Prefecture to the new Meiji state.26 In a study of Okinawan thinkers, Gregory Smits explored how the Ryu- kyu kingdom saw itself in relation to both Japan 27 and China. Finally, anthropologist Arne Kal- Early-Modern Thought and Politics, Honolulu, Hi: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999. 1985. Kelley’s work implies, but does not elabo- 28 Honolulu, Hi: University of Hawaii Press, rate, a much wider applicability for his findings. 1995. 19 Berkeley, Ca: University of California Press, 29 Tokugawa Village Practice: Class, Status, 1987. Power, Law. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: 20 Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 1992. University of California Press, 1996. 21 Philip C. Brown, Central Authority and Local 30 Japan’s Proto-Industrial Elite: The Economic Autonomy in the Formation of Early Modern Japan: Foundations of the Gōnō, Cambridge, Ma: Har- The Case of Kaga Domain, Stanford, Ca: Stanford vard East Asian Monographs 179, Harvard Univer- University Press, 1993. sity Asia Center, 1999. 22 The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto, Berkeley, Ca: 31 Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan, University of California Press, 1994. Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 1999. 23 Capitalism from within: Economy, Society, and 32 Hanley, Susan B. and Kozo Yamamura, Eco- the State in a Japanese Fishery, Berkeley, Ca: Uni- nomic and Demographic Change in Preindustrial versity of California Press, 1995. Japan, 1600-1868, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni- 24 The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750-1920, versity Press, 1977, might arguably be added to this Berkeley, Ca: University of California Press, 1995. overall list. While, like Ravina and Ooms, it does 25 Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The not fall within the scope of what I normally think of Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in as local history, it does use two domain case studies 18th-century Tosa, Cambridge, NY: Cambridge extensively to bolster their argument. University Press, 1998. 33 James L. McClain, John M. Merriman, and 26 The Meiji Unification Through the Lens of Ishi- Ugawa Kaoru, eds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University kawa Prefecture, Cambridge, Ma: Harvard Uni- Press, 1994. versity Press, 1994. 34 James L. McClain and Wakita Osamu, eds. 27 Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 41

The Challenges of Doing Local History mand for more detailed, sophisticated studies) created little opportunity for scholars to exploit Why, when a number of historians have local history materials and still get published. clearly discovered the value of local archival col- One suspects that such demands were among the lections and the expanding array of published variety of influences shaping the limited em- local histories, has the production of local histo- ployment opportunities of scholars like Les 36 37 ries been rather modest until quite recently? Metchnik and David Davis, who focused on The relatively low volume of locally-focused Choshu and the Kaga regions respectively, or the 38 histories is a bit puzzling, given the attention paid publication prospects of Franklin Odo or 39 to local studies in the 1960s to 1980s in the fields Ronald DiCenzo, who both made case studies of American and European history, studies which of local areas for their doctoral theses but did not 40 exemplified the “new social history” in fields ultimately publish monographs based on them. which broadly define the models that Western, The fact that most of the studies published to and especially American scholars of Japan often date overwhelmingly focus on the Toku- emulate.35 gawa-Meiji transformation in its various aspects Certainly individual career paths and per- may also suggest why the most populated field of sonal predispositions played some role, but Japanese history, kin-gendaishi has seen rela- structural factors also were important. tively few local histories: Late Tokugawa ad- In the period through the 1960s the field of ministrative units (villages, towns, cities and Japanese history was still quite new and small; counties as well as domains) were transformed there were few trained specialists of any stripe during the Meiji era into subunits of a centraliz- and very few Japanese history courses. In these ing state, largely dependent on Tokyo for direc- circumstances the demand for a clear, national tion and budget alike. Once we see the advent narrative for any aspect of Japanese history of a truly centralized administration, the large loomed large and conditioned what scholarship number of national-level administrative docu- could get published. American audiences in ments it spewed forth as well as the growth of particular, if not Western audiences generally, national political movements that produced fairly wanted quick, very generalized and readily com- centralized archival collections may have created prehensible analyses of Japanese history. That circumstances too convenient and easy to exploit, demand for a national narrative for Western au- further tempting students away from local history. diences dates back to well before the birth of Even for the Tokugawa era the volume of materi- modernization theory, to at least the nineteenth als available is daunting if we think about what it century, of course, and such demands early in the development of Japanese studies are certainly understandable. Nonetheless, they discouraged 36 “Traditional and Transitional Tax Systems Dur- the analysis of specific regions unless the author ing the Early Modern Period: A Case Study of could claim that the study played a readily evi- Choshu Han, 1600-1873,” (Ph.D. dissertation) Uni- dent national role or represented a broad national versity of California at Los Angeles, 1972. 37 development. In the end, the demands on the “The Kaga Ikkō Ikki, 1473-1580,” (Ph.D. disser- field and the small number of scholars available tation) University of Chicago, 1978. 38 to meet that demand (much less to meet any de- Odo, Franklin S. “Saga Han: The Feudal Do- main in Tokugawa Japan,” (Ph.D. dissertation) Princeton University 1975. Professor Odo moved 35 Two of the well-known works serve as useful into Asian-American studies. exemplars of a large literature: Merle Eugene 39 DiCenzo, Ronald J. “Daimyo, Domain and Re- Curti, The Making of an American Community; A tainer Band in the Seventeenth Century,” (Ph.D. Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County, dissertation), Princeton University, 1978. Profes- Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 1959, sor DiCenzo has taught at Oberlin College since and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Peasants of receiving his Ph.D. Languedoc. Translated with an introd. by John Day. 40 Nor, to my knowledge, have they published arti- Urbana, Il: University of Illinois Press, 1974. cles based on these very interesting dissertations. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 42

might take to explore local sources, even just ments that comprise an extensive part of prefec- printed sources; it was more convenient to exploit tural histories and the best of other local histories. the collected works (zenshū) of well-known Frequently only sample documents are included. thinkers, the printed materials of the Dai Nihon This is especially true for statistical data that shiryō and the like rather than brave the morass consume large amounts of space. A second is- of local materials. sue lies in the different emphases of Japanese as There is also much in contemporary Japanese opposed to Western scholars. The problem society that encourages a stress on the “national,” frameworks of each tend to be sufficiently dif- the presence of national uniformity, and policies ferent that Japanese local histories may not in- or social trends emanating from a clearly domi- clude an adequate volume of the kinds of material nant center such as Tokyo: Racial and ethnic of interest in some Western research.42 As just homogeneity is virtually a mantra, and juxtaposed one illustration, consider the contrast between by some to the impossible diversity of a society many Japanese local histories that are cast either such as the United States. To Tokyo is ascribed in the context of either Marxist frameworks or the premier role in setting consumer standards telling the story, local “progressiveness” or just and public opinion.41 The national government stressing the prominence of local eminences on exerts extensive control over prefectural and local the one hand, and the interest of American schol- administrative budgets as well as issuing exten- ars in issues requiring the use of repetitive, statis- sive and detailed regulations to guide local ad- tical data associated with family reconstitution ministrative and legal affairs. None of these or and inheritance (as studied by Susan Hanley, other images of contemporary Japan suggest that Laurel Cornell or Ann Janetta, for example). there is much room for diversity of experience, From personal experience, I can also indicate that initiative from below, or meaningful conflict in some local histories fail to treat local institutions, modern Japan. That image is replicated in (pro- such as land redistribution systems (warichi) be- jected into?) treatments of earlier eras with dis- cause there is no standard historical framework torting consequences (several examples are indi- cated below). 42There is a partial remedy to this situation, but it, Despite the volume of available materials, too, is often daunting for most young scholars: another challenging problem confronts scholars learn to work with at least some types of handwrit- who wish to study one region over a long period ten materials. Because the responsibility for cre- of time: the problem of getting sufficient data ating and using local documents shifted over time – for a good longitudinal study of just one area. among village headmen or village group headmen This is less of an obstacle for scholars who focus in the Tokugawa, from the private collections of on the nineteenth century, but even in the first Tokugawa village headmen to the offices of newly half of that century, and certainly earlier, this defined Meiji local governments, for example – represents a major challenge. In the realm of there are often sharp breaks in a single village’s printed materials, a major part of the problem lies documentary record. The problem is further com- in the need for editors of local histories to be se- pounded by a lack of trained archivists, inadequate lective in compiling the transcriptions of docu- indexing, restricted or closed scholarly access to private collections, and the like.

Pre-Meiji “public” documents such as village 41 びっくりデータ情報部編、『これがニッポン headmen’s records are typically treated as the pri- 人の平均値だ！』、東京：夢文庫、1997, presents vate family documents; they have never legally more than 200 pages of opinion and marketing sur- been classified as public records. While the com- vey results on issues such as when, if ever, single pilation of local histories in Japan seems to offer a women are planning to marry, what the average partial remedy to restricted access to these docu- time is when people go out for “a little drink”, and ments – locations of private collections are identi- other subjects. A disproportionately large share of fied and indexes are created – local archivists also the data was collected only from the Tokyo region indicate that in the process of researching and du- despite the fact that the book purports to discuss plicating documents, many are in fact misplaced or attitudes and practices of the average Japanese. lost, actually worsening the situation. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 43

into which it fits, despite the widespread presence Other potential approaches are less daunting: of the system in that region. Or if it is treated, it one might, for example, examine two or three is in a single, essentialized fashion, rather than in local case studies and develop a tentative typol- the context of change and development over time. ogy of e.g., village political evolution, factors The best remedy for the selectivity of printed conditioning the use of infanticide, or similar de- sources is to extend one’s research beyond them velopments. Still another approach might sim- and into the realm of manuscript materials. This ply be to show that other locations also exhibited is a challenge few scholars are willing to accept. the characteristics a scholar has identified, indi- Western graduate schools provide no training in cating that the case was not just a statistical out- reading manuscripts on a regular basis and for lier. Each of these approaches can establish that many the time that must be invested in mastering a small number of cases represent more than just the techniques of reading manuscripts is daunting. a statistical outlier, a freak example. The use of manuscript sources is further compli- In the first post-war decades even the less cated by the necessity of consulting collections stringent of these approaches may have been dif- that may be inconveniently located and indexed ficult to implement, but since then several Japa- to only a limited degree. nese publication projects considerably ease the I have hinted above at one final, significant task of getting a quick handle on the characteris- issue that stands in the way of more aggressive tics and development of most regions of Japan. use of local historical studies lies in the problem Scholars can more readily conduct a comparative of how to contextualize a local study. In par- exploration of developments outside the locale ticular, how representative is a given locality? that is the focus of their own work. Three major What does it represent? While many of the lo- examples of this kind of material may be briefly cal histories mentioned above do not directly ad- noted: One such project is the Yamakawa dress this issue -- leaving the impression that Shuppansha series of prefectural histories, a their subject was representative -- each of the number of which are now undergoing revision papers in this symposium as well as studies by and updating. The Heibonsha and Kadokawa Chambliss, Brown, and Waters (for example) prefectural place name dictionaries both contain raise questions of representativeness. Thall, considerable historical data as well as place Platt and Pratt quite explicitly broach the issue, names. All three employed pre-eminent local Van Sant’s does so by reflection since regions historians as authors. While not perfect or com- which actively participated in the Meiji Restora- plete in their coverage, they are useful in discov- tion were the exception, not the rule. ering parallel developments in a number of dif- Once we move away from those places that ferent regions. played unique historical roles such as activist domains in the Restoration there are a variety of ways in which one might frame questions of rep- The Potential Contribution of Local resentativeness. Three general approaches History quickly come to mind. One approach is that based on a statistical model. This method may Whatever the reason for their relatively low be possible in a number of cases, but seems to numbers, local histories have altered our under- impose very stringent, even insurmountable ob- standing of Japanese history and they have the stacles: substantial effort may be required to potential for even greater contributions. They collect sufficient data to determine a statistical have illuminated major players in epoch-making measure of central tendency such as a mean or political developments, the Meiji Restoration in median, or to help us to identify a pattern of particular. A number of studies provided con- behavior as the most commonly followed. This crete evidence for developments that were previ- is especially the case for the early modern era and ously described in relatively abstract terms. earlier when national compilations of data are Despite exceptions, however, many local studies rare and independent efforts would be required to served to underline and represent an existing na- generate a comprehensive database. tional narrative, one that focuses overwhelmingly NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 44

on the rise and collapse of shogunal regimes, or ture may simply be too “disorderly” to attract the birth of a strong, modern central administra- many scholars, especially non-Japanese scholars, tion. and that untidiness leads to a sense of discomfort. The demand for a national narrative in the The same issue confronts the problem of how we writing of Japanese was very powerful, powerful understand local histories that may not readily fit enough to be implemented even in the absence of the national narratives on which we have relied to a centralized state. We see it in descriptions of date. “estates” (shōen) the writing of medieval histo- The failure to cope with the diversity of local ries, histories of the Sengoku and Tokugawa eras. experience extends well beyond this example and, Even periods of civil war are treated in ways that in particular confronts the problem of how we assume that actors all share a “national” ambition, understand local histories that may not readily fit all but ignoring (for example) the more defensive the national narratives on which we have relied to posture of one of Oda Nobunaga’s most formida- date. Survey treatments typically describe the ble enemies, the Ikkō ikki. early organization of Imperial landholding under Delving into local history involves a will- the Taika reorganization, and then treat the later ingness to complicate our picture of Japanese organization of shōen as though it became the history, a willingness to come to grips with the dominant form of organizing landholding diversity of Japan’s historical experience; yet throughout the Heian era and beyond. While we when treated at all, diversity of historical experi- are beginning to treat Kamakura (and perhaps ence has been confronted in very limited degree, middle to late Heian) as a transitional era in and its acknowledgement has often been viewed which increasingly distinct military and aristo- in negative terms. John W. Hall’s observations cratic organizations co-existed, the tendency on early Japanese historians’ treatment of an ear- heretofore has been to treat the Heian as aristo- lier period, the medieval era, reflect this problem: cratic government and the period following Ka- “The Muromachi age, for all its cultural brilliance, makura as a military government with a superfi- has been regarded as a time of political weakness cial aristocratic appendage. The apparent pre- and institutional decay . . . . Some historians supposition behind such treatment is that there have gone so far as to claim that nothing which can only be one center of authority.45 We duti- happened prior to the Onin War could be consid- fully describe Ashikaga shogunal patterns of ad- ered relevant to modern Japan.”43 He noted ministration but largely ignore the regional and further, “Although historians have recognized the local forces that routinely operated outside its evidence of economic growth, they have seen it sphere of influence and even downplay the almost as a contradictory element, something to autonomy of some of the components of shogunal set against the picture of political decay. They administration.46 One outcome is that there is a have given little thought to the possibility that reasonable description of the precipitating events such growth might be related to the fundamental of the Onin Wars, but little sense is conveyed of changes in the popular substrcture of Japanese the dynamics that made shūgo administration society.”44 Despite the effort of several con- itself so unstable as to make the Onin Wars the ferences, the output since the late 1970s on me- trigger for a complete disintegration of any sem- dieval Japanese history is paltry in volume, a fact that I believe is related to the tentative nature of 45 the national narrative during this time and to the Bob T. Wakabayashi, “In Name Only: Imperial need to immerse oneself deeply in local history Sovereignty in Early Modern Japan,” Journal of materials for the majority of subjects. The pic- Japanese Studies 17:1 (1991), 25-57, confronts this problem of multiple political centers for a later pe- riod. 43 John W. Hall, “Introduction,” in John W. Hall 46 Lorraine Harrington, “Regional Outposts of and Toyoda Takeshi, eds., Japan in the Muro- Muromachi Bakufu Rule: The Kantō and Kyu- machi Age, Berkeley, Ca: University of California shu,” in Jeffrey Mass and William B. Hauser, eds. Press, 1977, p. 2. The Bakufu in Japanese History, Stanford, Ca: 44 John W. Hall, “Introduction,” p. 6. Stanford University Press, 1985, p.66-98. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 45

blance of order and the rise of endemic civil wars. The papers by Thall, Platt and Van Sant focus A more prominent place for discussion of the on how national administrative initiatives were tensions between shūgo, their deputies the implemented in the face of both threatened and shūgodai, jitō (land stewards) and local notables, actual local opposition. Thall and Platt suggest illustrated with pertinent local case studies, would a clear influence of the local on the central, dem- help convey the profound political frailty of the onstrating the potential for local manipulation Ashikaga political order. The orders of and use of the central initiatives for the ends of Hideyoshi are typically seen as propelling the local figures and organizations. Van Sant’s essay methods of land surveys, the separation warrior in particular, but also Platt’s, present evidence from peasant and other late sixteenth-century re- that strongly contradicts the dominant image of forms when local studies suggest a more compli- the Meiji transition as “peaceful”, analyzing the cated picture.47 Despite the diversity long ap- violence that the center visited on the local. (Van parent in the Japanese literature, mid-Tokugawa Slant’s analysis of the Bōshin War can be ex- political developments have long been largely tended to Niigata. Residents there also experi- treated as following a single pattern. Now, for- enced extreme increases in tax burdens; even to- tunately, that sense of diversity is being made day residents feel Niigata was punished for local available in English.48 resistance to Imperial forces. One might ex- These examples can be multiplied and sug- trapolate and conclude that native son Tanaka gest that failure to exploit local history materials Kakuei’s aggressive pursuit of “pork” was an act leaves us with a somewhat stilted picture of the of revenge for that hostile treatment.) unfolding of Japanese history and the processes Three of these papers (Platt, Thall and Van through which it evolved. Slant) constructively complicate our picture of Despite the challenges to doing good local Meiji political processes even while concerned history, Japanese local histories and materials are with the development of a national centralized sufficiently rich as to reward scholarly efforts administration. In this effort they assume that with important new perspectives and insights that the “national” equals the “state” and that there is can critique the narratives we have relied on to only one state in the period they discuss. Such date. There can be no better indication of this perceptions are natural in the context of the Meiji than the four essays that form this symposium. era, and certainly increasingly reasonable as we All present examples of how local histories might move from the early to middle and late Meiji pe- revise and extend our understanding of Japanese riods. Yet such and assumption should be taken history, moving beyond the dominant national as problematic for earlier eras. In this regard, narrative. These works suggest an alternative the works by Brown, Ravina, and Roberts men- approach to the criticism of “meta-narratives” tioned above all call into question the presence of voiced by literary theorists, one that is grounded either an effectively functioning central admini- in the inductive social science methodology that stration or the existence of a single state in the recognizes variation as well as central tendency Tokugawa era. That skepticism can be con- and the limits of one’s sample. All go beyond structively extended into even earlier periods. using the “local” to illustrate the “national”. Even when we exclude war, major riots such as those in response to compulsory education, conscription, and other despised national policies 47 E.g., Michael Birt, “Samurai in Passage: The or the more violent side of the people’s rights Transformation of the Sixteenth-century Kanto,” movement (jiyū minken), Ed Pratt’s essay shows Journal of Japanese Studies 11:2 (Summer, 1985), that in the normal course of village activities 369-399; Philip C. Brown, Central Authority and might encompass inwardly-directed violence. Local Autonomy in the Formation of Early Modern Such violence was not simply reflective of inter- Japan: The Case of Kaga Domain, Stanford, Ca: nal class conflicts, nor did its presence preclude Stanford University Press, 1993. persistent efforts to maintain “harmony” and the 48 Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Mod- continued functioning of cooperative endeavors ern Japan, Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 1999. within the village. Studies by Margaret NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 46

McKean of village management of the commons such a “new historiography” extend well beyond (iriai) shows efforts that parallel Pratt’s descrip- the boundaries of the scholarly world and into the tion. Only in one village she studied did a com- realm of changing public perceptions of Japan plete break result: a family that broke village and the way in which we teach about Japan. We rules over the commons (iriai) was denied assis- can discuss five general ways in which benefits tance during funerals, in putting out a house fire from increased use of local history that may ac- (perhaps set by other villagers) and other major crue to fields beyond the scholarly realm. activities associated with maintaining their day to Diverse images of Japan created by these and day lives. Such findings reinforce the comple- other studies of local history will increasingly mentary nature of conflict and cohesiveness that attack and wear down the perception that Japa- sociologist George Simmel postulated decades nese society and its history are composed of ago: communities are bound together by com- automatons. More concrete and detailed descrip- mon understanding as to how to deal with con- tions reveal diverse attitudes and conflicts will flict and when and to what degree violations of and help to humanize images of Japan. We will the group rules can be accommodated.49 see the role of the nation-state and its reach as Two papers suggest uses of local history in more limited and the unfolding of Japanese his- addition to examining the development of a na- tory as more colorful than heretofore. tional administrative organization. Thall ex- Beyond this, local historical study has the tends the potential of local history into the realm potential to promote a new historiography that of cultural and intellectual history, noting the role treats the vaunted “homogeneity” of Japanese of local sites in the efforts of urban intellectuals society differently and more critically. This en- for a critique of the countryside, and the rural deavor is important strictly within the context of residents’ use of the same sites as a device for Japanese history. It is important for people to carving out a new self-image during the Meiji. understand that despite racial and ethnic homo- Pratt takes us into the day-to-day relationships geneity, there were plenty of instances in which and processes of village society, a new direction that was inadequate to maintain a harmonious and in the context of Japanese social history. peaceful society. As a corollary, we will see that As a group, the perspectives raised by these such “homogeneity” does not make Japan papers certainly have the potential to transform uniquely free of significant lines of friction Japanese historians’ perceptions of Japanese his- within its social structure as well as its political tory. A “new historiography,” rooted in local structures. historical sources and studies would be a substan- Important as such revisions are, they may tial contribution for the scholarly world in itself. also provide useful fodder for us to reconsider the It would increase the sophistication and depth of whole problem of race and ethnicity: Japan has our understanding of Japanese history. But been a very interesting example of the creativity there are significant broader implications of a of a society in generating invidious ascriptive new emphasis on the study of Japanese history. distinctions. In effect, we have many examples here (as Ooms has begun to point out in Toku- gawa Village Practice) of creating discriminatory Broader Implications: Teaching and mountains out of molehills of social differences Public Perceptions even in the context of racial and ethnic homoge- neity. By stressing those concerns that plague Once we move away from a single national our contemporary world, we have ignored or pattern of development we complicate the task of downplayed issues of comparable import to the writing Japanese history; yet the consequences of people of past times. Local histories should help us uncover re- gional differences that have a significant impact on social, economic and political developments in 49 Simmel, Georg, Conflict, translated by Kurt H. Japanese history. It is common, for example, Wolff. The Web of Group Affiliations, translated by Reinhard Bendix. Glencoe, Il: Free Press, 1955. that economic historians divide Japan into ad- NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 47

vanced (read “large urban areas and the country- insights into Japanese history. There is still a side that directly serves them”) and “backward” significant place here for the study of unique regions but these distinctions do not permit us to events. Van Sant’s and Pratt’s essays provide see gradations that may have had a significant poignant evidence that in this realm, too, there is impact on economic diversification and devel- still much to investigate as part of an effort to tell opment. We have done little in the early modern a more conflict-ridden and human story in Japa- era, for example, to examine the impact of do- nese history. Even a study that simply tests ac- main size, territorial contiguity, distance from cepted generalizations and concludes that there Edo and similar factors on the effectiveness of were other similar cases without determining that domain administration, despite the fact that gen- they were broadly representative or part of a ten- eralizations abound. We hear of bifurcations tatively identifiable set of patterns will challenge such as eastern Japan’s agriculture was based on standing interpretations and suggest alternatives horse-power, western Japan’s was based on for future investigation. Such studies have the oxen/cattle, but one wonders if more complex potential to make the unfolding of Japanese his- considerations would not yield smaller, more tory appear more tentative, more open to recogni- meaningful regional differentiations. In the de- tion of choices made from a variety of options, velopment of greater sensitivity to regional varia- and less dominated by a sense of inevitability. tions, studies by non-historians such as Kelly and But we also may begin to think about pat- Kalland may also be useful. terned regional variation rather than just a simple Finally, local histories and the conclusions uniform narrative. The particular approach drawn from them may help us to eliminate clear taken as scholars deal with the issue of the degree oversimplifications that we inadvertently com- to which a given case represents broader phe- municate to non-specialists by virtue of the em- nomenon will have an impact on the picture that phasis we have placed on a national narrative of emerges from the use of local history. One that institutional development and progress. I have contextualizes a local study through statistical in mind the example of Alan Macfarlane, an as- analysis will give us a clear sense of how close a siduous scholar with degrees in history and an- given case is to the mean as measured by a num- thropology, who undertook an extensive com- ber of variables and it will also give us a sense of parison of how Japan and England escaped the variation through a statistical measure of devia- dual Malthusian traps. In the course of his tion. Other approaches may yield a relatively analysis of the English language literature, he comprehensive and final typology of some sort. pored over the volumes of the Cambridge History Some typologies may be more tentative or in- of Japan and based on its treatment, concluded complete, but still be very useful if taken seri- that warfare did not have a major impact on ously and investigated in relationship to other Japanese population trends because there were no issues. For example, we are already well aware major conflicts in late medieval and early kinsei of accepted means of classifying daimyo. To Japan!50 name just the most obvious -- large, contiguous domains and small, scattered domains; fudai, to- zama, and shinpan domains. Some of these Conclusion categories have been invoked to explain devel- opments in the Tokugawa economy or the degree With the aid of local histories such as those of political autonomy, but they have not been in this symposium, we can generate many new tested systematically to determine if the supposed relationship can be demonstrated.51 By using

50 Alan Macfarlane, The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap. Oxford 51 For example, Hanley and Yamamura, 21-22, and Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997, suggest the importance of contiguous and non-con- p. 57-58. Macfarlane specifically cites the treat- tiguous territoriality of domains; Ravina, 20, ment of war in the medieval and early modern stresses a distinction between country-holding and volumes of The Cambridge History of Japan. non-country-holding daimyo. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 48

local histories to recognize the presence of multi- have a substantial and positive role to play ple and varied actors, we again can contribute to in helping improve our appreciation of the telling the story of Japanese history in a less de- diverse Japanese. terministic way that places more emphasis on variation in both process and outcome, and hence provides an image that is less predetermined and perhaps more human. In discussion during and after this sympo- sium, Professor Donald Hata, California State University, Dominquez Hills, has noted that the images we create of Japan’s history bear on the way in which Japanese immigrants to North America are perceived. A sound understanding of Japanese history helps us to understand the Nikkei residents’ experience as they adapted to and became more fully assimilated in their new homeland. A greater sense of diversity in the Japanese historical experience can help break down the sense that Japanese immigrants were all part of a “perfect minority” and increase our un- derstanding of Nikkei as having diverse experi- ences. Such a new direction helps to correct a stereotyped image of Nikkei as seen from without, and consciously cultivated by many Japa- nese-Americans themselves.52 Whether in the restricted field of Japa- nese history, in the broader application of our subject to the fields of public images of Japan, the Japanese and Japanese - Ameri- cans, or in the field of public education, continued studies of the sort presented here

Two wooden Buddhist sculptures by Enkū 円空, d. 1695. 52 Comments during discussion of the papers pre- sented in this symposium, private discussion fol- Book Introduction: Questioning lowing the session, “The Diverse Japanese: Local History’s Challenge to National Narratives,” 114th Edo as a FreeFree---SexSex Paradise Annual Meeting of the American Historical Asso- Lawrence Marceau ciation, Chicago, Il, January 7, 2000, and personal University of Delaware e-mail communication of 27 February 2000. Pro- fessor Hata specifically noted parallels in the use of For those interested in the ever-expanding shrines as described by Professor Thall and the use discourse in early modern Japanese gender and of shrines in Garden, California. He also men- tioned efforts of some Japanese-American leaders sexuality issues, it seems that the temperature encountered in the course of research (his own or has risen a few degrees over the past year. In that of acquaintances) to deny the presence of pros- English, Timon Screech has published Sex and titutes in the Japanese-American communities of the the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, nineteenth century and intermarriage with blacks as 1700-1820 (Honolulu: U Hawaii P, paper ed. part of an effort to bolster the image of Japanese 1999) to supplement the version translated into Americans as a “perfect minority.” Japanese by Takayama Hiroshi, Shunga: Katate NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 49

de yomu Edo no e『春画―片手で読む江戸の 愛」礼讃論を撃つ』("Critiquing the Edo Fantasy: 絵』 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1998), and Gregory M. Shooting Down the Discourse in Praise of 'Edo Pflugfelder provides us with Cartographies of Sexual Love'," Tokyo: Shin'yōsha, 1999), Koyano Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Dis- attempts to stifle what he sees as a "love fest" of course, 1600-1950 (Berkeley & Los Angeles: U praise for a view of sexuality in early modern California P, 1999). In Japanese, Iwanami Sho- Japan that he considers uncritical, fad-driven, and ten's venerable quarterly Bungaku 『文学』, in its highly distorted. In his "Afterward" Koyano 1999 Summer issue (Vol. 10, No. 3) dedicated to states that he first realized he couldn't believe the Hyōshō to shite no shunpon 表象としての春本 claims on Yoshiwara as a cultural mecca, and by ("Erotic Books as Emblems"), features a shunga extension, the idealized view of early modern illustration as its first-ever color frontispiece. Japan promoted by the "Edo Boom-ers" when he This issue also provides not one, but two learned at an exhibition at the Edo-Tokyo Mu- zadankai panel discussions, the first, on Shunpon seum that Yoshiwara courtesans’ (=prostitutes) average age of death was 23 (p. 200). It seems bunka 春本文化(The Culture of Erotic Books), to Koyano ironic that the same "leftist" scholars by five males: Hanasaki Kazuo, Nakano who have so severely criticized the official Mitsutoshi, Yamaguchi Masao, Asakawa cover-up of the "Comfort Women" issue, would Shōichirō, and Nobuhiro Shinji (moderator), turn around and embrace early modern Japanese with the second, on Shunpon/Shunga kenkyū no sexuality, and its visual depiction in books and 春本・春画研究の臨界 rinkai (Criticality in prints, in such a broadly uncritical manner. Shunpon and Shunga Studies), by five females: Koyano's study is worth reading, given that Ueno Chizuko, Tanaka Yūko, Saeki Junko, and he reviews many of the classic studies of early Sumie Jones (moderator). One of many modern Japanese culture of the past twenty years. thought-provoking elements from the latter takes One way in which he connects individuals to up Screech's thesis that erotica was consumed by schools of thought is reflected in how he presents men as an aid in masturbation and turns it on its a kind of "genealogy" of these studies, by relating head, exploring the notion that women were also two works he views as the most groundbreaking busy reading "with one hand" while the other to the female author and her male mentors. In was busily engaged in self-gratification. A few the first case he identifies Tanaka Yūko with Hi- months later, Tanaka expanded on this theme totsubashi professors Hirosue Tamotsu and Ma- with a book-length examination of dildos in tsuda Osamu, while in the second he connects early modern Japan, Harigata: Edo wonna no Saeki Junko with her Tōdai professor, Haga Tōru. sei 『張形―江戸をんなの性』(Harigata: (Note that Koyano himself undertook his gradu- Female Sexuality in Edo, Tokyo: Kawade Shobō ate study in the same Tōdai Faculty of Compara- Shinsha, 1999). Of course, all of this discus- tive Literature and Culture as had Saeki in the sion, study, and publication is directly related to previous decade.) However, at the same time, the recent relaxation of censorship laws govern- the first half of his book seldom rises above the ing images of pubic hair, and the subsequent level of personal invective, while the second half, release of multi-volume anthologies of early which presumably presents examples of early modern block-printed erotica. (The prolifera- modern Japanese cultural studies as they "should" tion of contempory pornographic texts in Japa- be done, falls far short of the insights and con- nese and images over the Internet provides yet ceptualizations explored in the various books another subtext for all of this interest.) Koyano criticizes so severely in the first half. In the wake of all of this publishing, Koyano Koyano raises serious objections to the ten- Atsushi 小谷野敦 has taken the bold step of dency to idealize Japanese sexuality, especially in critiquing what he refers to as the "praise" of the early modern period. It is now up to the sexual practices in the early modern period. In historians, including those in literature, art, and his book, Edo gensō hihan—"Edo no seiai" rai- thought, to reconstruct and conceptualize a more sanron wo utsu 『江戸幻想批判―「江戸の性 accurate, albeit complex, view of social interac- tion, and its presentation in early modern Japan. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 50

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