dictators. In the main, however, and for quite an extended period of time, this interpretation confirmed the shoguns’ position and justified their consolidation of power. It also provided material for the clearer formulation of the warrior’s “creed” (bukyo) and the samurai’s “way” (shido)—both of which were to blend harmoniously in that particular code of honor known as “The Way of the Warrior” (bushido).
All these legalistic, philosophical, military, and social devices made it extremely unlikely that anything “unexpected” could happen within the country, in practice as well as in theory, without the Tokugawa being immediately informed. They are said to have acquired “the dubious distinction of being one of the first governments in the world to develop an extensive and efficient secret police system and to make of it an important organ of state. With the centuries of experience in such practices, it is not surprising that the secret police should have loomed so large in the political make-up of Japan in recent years” (Reischauer1, 83-84).
In such a martial culture, there was no place for new ideas or even for ancient but contradictory theories that might have forced a man to confront the problem of personal responsibility, of individual values different from, if not actually contrary to, those of his society. As in every military dictatorship the world has ever known, knowledge was considered a dangerous commodity and its wide dissemination strictly forbidden. Although limited “Dutch studies” (rangaku) were allowed under close official supervision, any breach of the regulations was punishable by death. Not only the members of other classes, but “intrepid samurai, such as Sakuma Shozan, Watanabe Kazan, and Yoshida Shoin, paid with their lives for their desire for wider horizons in knowledge” (Blacker, 305). And even during the declining years of the Tokugawa rule, when the country and its entire social structure groaned and shuddered within the confines of its military bonds, and afterward, when the restoration of political power to the emperor had activated an intense process of adaptation to a frighteningly new international reality, “almost any conceivable obstacle was placed in the way of the aspiring student of Western learning. There were no grammars and few dictionaries; the weight of feudal and Confucian disapproval and even the assassin’s sword was directed against him” (Blacker, 305).
The Daimyo
Immediately beneath the Tokugawa clan in order of importance were the clans headed by the daimyo—“the territorial rulers of self-contained political units called han which were at once minor states and fiefs” (Tsukahira, 18). The word daimyo may be translated as “great names” and seems to have been derived from a combination of dai (great) with myo or myoden (used to identify a rice-producing fief). Notoriously belligerent and generally rapacious, the lords of such estates capable of sustaining them and their military retainers had fought ceaselessly among themselves throughout the early and middle periods of Japan’s feudal era. Only leaders such as Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and, ultimately, Ieyasu had been able to coerce them into a sort of uneasy alliance wherein their individualistic and expansionistic tendencies were controlled by a severely repressive system of checks and balances. Ieyasu and his descendants were (and remained throughout the succession of Tokugawa dynasties) aware that the downfall of the emperor and his court nobles had, to a large extent, been due to lack of control over the provincial centers of military power, which, however necessary for peacekeeping purposes throughout the realm (as well as that of maintaining the other classes of the nation in a state of subjugation), had become increasingly self-sufficient and, in the end, alienated from the emperor and his nobles.
Due to this lack of centralized control, the feudal “barons” had been able to apply and tighten their stranglehold upon the crown and upon all the other classes of Japanese subjects who stood in their way, thus effectively displacing them all. Eventually, the only obstacle revealed itself to be themselves and their individual ambitions. For the Tokugawa, the feudal governors (from whose ranks they had emerged) were, and always remained, the chief source of trouble since they owned and ruled over independent fiefs, maintained their own cohorts of warriors, and had the necessary wealth to finance armed adventures. It was not only conceivable but, in an age of still rampant political instability and military turbulence, a relevant possibility that these daimyo might, if left to their own devices, increase and organize their own military forces beyond the limits considered advisable by the central government in Edo. Those forces, in turn, might be used to unseat the Tokugawa in accordance with the ancient and famous principle of displacing the superior in order to make room for the inferior (gekokujo)—a principle of political gamesmanship which had become almost commonplace during pre-Tokugawa times and which the Tokugawa themselves had successfully applied on several occasions.
Accordingly, if on one side these daimyo were not only the powerful leaders of military clans, but also the main instruments of indirect control over the country at large, on the other side, as Tsukahira wrote, “it became the chief preoccupation of the early Tokugawa to weaken and divide” them in order to maintain that control. The measures adopted by the Edo bakufu for this purpose were many and thorough. Differences in fief size, income, and rank at the court of the shogun in Edo were established to create artificial barriers among the daimyo, and, naturally, “mutual jealousies and rivalries were kept alive and fostered” (Tsukahira, 27). Continuous and intense surveillance by the shogun’s sinister censors (metsuke) of the various daimyo (when in Edo in periodical attendance, at home in their own territories, or even in transit from one to the other) insured that their activities would be properly assessed by the shogun on a regular and continuing basis. Finally, their obligatory attendance at the shogun’s court every other year, with the concomitant obligation to leave their wives and children in Edo when they returned home, reduced their freedom of action substantially.
The number of daimyo during the Tokugawa period seems to have been about 260. Their status was qualified according to several interconnecting criteria. The first criterion was based upon and determined by the feudal relationship between a daimyo and the shogun himself. Daimyo who were collateral members of the Tokugawa house, for example, were qualified as “related feudatories” (shimpan) or “family daimyo” (kamon). They included the “three exalted families” (sanke), occupied provinces closer to Edo, and held important offices in the central government.
The shimpan daimyo were followed by the “hereditary daimyo” (fudai), who had been vassals of the Tokugawa since before the great and decisive battle of Sekigahara. They also occupied important positions in the bakufu, and their fiefs protectively surrounded the central contiguous territories which were under direct Tokugawa supervision.
The “outside” daimyo (tozama) were those important clan leaders, once peers of Ieyasu, who had acknowledged his title of shogun after the battle of Sekigahara. Their fiefs were generally located beyond those of the fudai.
These major categories were further classified according to other criteria based on the type of territory assigned to each daimyo, his holdings, and the productivity at his disposal. Lords of a province (kunimochi or kokushu), for example, ranked above other lords of less definite territorial stature (jun-kokushu or kunimochi-nami), who were followed, in their turn, by the lords of a castle (josku), by those whose titles were equivalent to that of a lord of a castle (joshu-nami), those without castles (mujo), and the possessors of residences (jinya-mochi, ryoshu). Finally, daimyo were classified according to the seats they were authorized to occupy in an audience with the shogun. These seats, the assembly halls containing them, and the seating arrangement for each category of daimyo are illustrated in Chart 5.
When being invested with the title of daimyo, a subject of this, the highest rank in the buke class under the shogun, had to submit written oaths and swear personal fealty to the shogun. This ritual, and the registration of the oath in the records of the bakufu in Edo, was repeated by each daimyo every time a new Tokugawa leader assumed the title of shogun. With this oath, the daimyo obligated himself to perform a series of duties. Primary among these were his military obligations, such as maintaining his quota of warriors in active service and ready to move into battle at the shogun’s
