The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 4: Early Modern Japan
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THE POWER STRUCTURE 95
tween daimyo or between retainers. There were differences in family
status and kokudaka size among daimyo and among retainers, but
before their respective lords, whether the shogun or the daimyo, they
were equal, and the free development of superior-inferior relation-
ships among them was suppressed. The lord-vassal relationships be-
tween the shogun and the daimyo and between the daimyo and the
retainers were public, and any other conditions of subordination were
deemed private and were forbidden.
Finally,
kogi
authority had a group character: The warrior of early
modern times was recognized as being of the warrior class only when
he was a member of the
kogi
group. Individual warriors did not pos-
sess their own land and live on it independently; their income from a
fief or stipend, under conditions created by Hideyoshi and continued
by the Tokugawa, was guaranteed by their belonging to the kogi
group. The strict separation of the warrior and peasant estate was a
precondition for this. Conversely, a warrior was a warrior by virtue of
his conducting public service as a member of the
kogi;
this was also the
source of the logic by which the warriors were able to collect taxes
(nengu)
and monopolize government. If a warrior were given to willful-
ness,
he would be punished as one who had departed from the group's
rationale. The unification of Japan in the sixteenth century had given
risen to such a public authority.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER
3
THE SOCIAL
AND
ECONOMIC
CONSEQUENCES
OF
UNIFICATION
INTRODUCTION
Japan underwent
a
major transformation
in its
social organization
and
economic capacity during the latter half of the sixteenth
century.
These
changes were
of
such enormous historical significance that historians
see them as marking Japan's transition from
its
medieval
(chusei)
to
its
early modern
(kinsei)
age.
The
first
currents of this transmutation radi-
ated throughout Japan during
the
late fifteenth
and
early sixteenth
centuries, and the impulses manifested themselves in the appearance of
self-administering towns such as Sakai and relatively autonomous,
self-
governing rural communities, commonly referred
to as
soson.
These
communities were
the
ultimate products
of
social movements that ear-
lier
had
begun
to
shake
the
foundations
of
the medieval,
shoen-based
political and economic order. Central to this process
was
the appearance
of organized peasant protest, increasingly common
in the
Kinai region
and its environs in the late medieval period, and the emergence through-
out large portions
of
Japan
of
local associations,
or
ikki, that were
formed
for
military purposes
and
reasons
of
self-defense. Examples of
such leagues include
the
so-called
tsuchi
ikki, peasant organizations
formed
to
resist economic demands made
by
proprietory lords, a phe-
nomenon especially common
in the
Kyoto area from
the
fifteenth
through
the
sixteenth centuries;
the
kuni ikki, larger federations com-
posed chiefly of warriors
who
hoped to carve out spheres of autonomous
control; and the Ikko ikki, confederations associated with the Honganji
branch
of
the True Pure Land sect (Jodo Shinshu).
Under these unsettled conditions, the aristocratic houses and temple
headquarters that
had
held the highest level
of
proprietary rights over
private estates
(shoeri)
were displaced
by
local bushi proprietors
who
had fought their
way to
power during
the
Sengoku period. These
warriors eventually pushed aside
the
Muromachi shogunate, opening
the
way for the
appearance
of the
three hegemonic leaders,
Oda
Nobunaga (1539-82), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-98),
and
Tokugawa
96
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INTRODUCTION 97
Ieyasu (1542-1616), who forged the military unification of Japan dur-
ing the latter half of the sixteenth century. The elaboration during the
seventeenth century of
a
strong, unified political structure based on an
unchallengable military hegemony also unleashed new forces that gen-
erated their own enormous consequences, ushering in what Japanese
historians commonly call the
kinsei
period, or what Western historians
refer to more often as the early modern age.
Historians have expounded a number of interpretations to account
conceptually for how the two processes, the one social and economic
and the other military and political, worked together to produce the
kinsei
society. Among the most influential of these interpretations has
been Nakamura Kichiji's refeudalization thesis, presented in the
1930s.
1
Nakamura focused on the relationships between warrior lords
and their retainers, both in the medieval and Tokugawa periods, and
he concluded that the
kinsei
age witnessed the reformulation under the
Tokugawa shogunate of the essential components of medieval feudal-
ism in a more politically stable and highly organized form.
In the decades following World War II, Araki Moriaki challenged
this idea with his theory of a "revolution into feudalism."
2
Working
with documents that presented an opportunity to analyze the structure
of familial-based agricultural household units, Araki argued that the
medieval
shoen
system owed its existence to what he termed the "patri-
archal slave system"
(kafuchoteki
doreisei).
But, he claimed, Tokugawa
society was organized differently and was characterized by the appear-
ance during the seventeenth century of an agricultural system depen-
dent on labor supplied by the Japanese equivalent of serfs
(nodo).
This
shift from a slave to a serf system, Araki contended, meant that true
feudalism first appeared in Japan only during the age of
the
Tokugawa
shogunate.
More recently a third interpretation that has shaped the contours of
scholarly debate has been offered by Miyagawa Mitsuru.
3
Like Araki,
Miyagawa found his scholarly inspiration in village sources, and he
agreed that medieval society was characterized by a serf system and
that feudalism prevailed in Japan during the Tokugawa period. But
Tokugawa society, he believed, relied not on true serfs but, rather, on
what he called
reino,
a class of partially dependent, partially indepen-
dent, small-scale serflike families. Consequently, to distinguish Miya-
1 Nakamura Kichiji, Bakuhan taisei ton (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1972).
2 Araki Moriaki, Bakuhan taisei shakai no
seiritsu
to kozo (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1959).
3 Miyagawa Mitsuru, Taiko
kenchi
ran,
3 vols. (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1957-63).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
98 CONSEQUENCES OF UNIFICATION
gawa's concept of historical change from that of Araki, we may refer to
his ideas as a theory of "evolutionary feudalism."
American scholarship, of course, has been influenced by the theo-
ries developed by Japanese researchers.
4
Yet it is important to note also
that Western historians who work on Japan have independently con-
structed their own frameworks of analysis and that these in turn have
had their own impact on Japanese scholarship. One particularly promi-
nent and powerful idea has been to use the term "early modern" to
refer to the kinsei period, thus avoiding the Marxist categories of
analysis favored by many Japanese and, at the same time, drawing
attention away from the period's feudal aspects and toward those long-
term trends related to the emergence of the modern Japanese state and
economy after 1868.
5
This chapter will look closely at the events of the late sixteenth
century, the pivotal transitional years that separated the
chusei
from
the kinsei epoch. From the evidence that will be presented, it should
become obvious that many continuities linked the two ages. But it
should be equally evident that enormous changes surged through the
transition years and that the evidentiary scales tilt more to the side of
dissimilarity than similarity. The social and economic trends observed
in the late medieval period did not extend, undisturbed, into the
kinsei
period, nor did Tokugawa society merely represent a reconstruction of
medieval conditions. Indeed, the medieval and the Tokugawa systems
are so dissimilar that they should be conceived of
as
entirely different
societal types, and emphasis should be placed on the distinct character-
istics of each epoch. Such an understanding requires a clear evaluation
of
how
the early modern society was molded in the cauldron of change
during the late sixteenth century.
6
4 See, for instance, Edwin O. Reischauer's reliance on the concept of refeudalization in his
Japan: The Story of a Nation, 3rd ed. (New York:
Knopf,
1981), pp. 78-86.
5 See, for instance, John Whitney Hall, "Feudalism in Japan - A Reassessment," in John W.
Hall and Marius B. Jansen, eds., Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modem Japan
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968). Some of the most promising research on
the major questions concerning the transition from the medieval to the Tokugawa period is
contained in John W. Hall, Keiji Nagahara, and Kozo Yamamura, eds., Japan Before Toku-
gawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500-1630 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1981); and George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith, eds.,
Warlords,
Artists, &
Commoners:
Japan in the Sixteenth
Century
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1981).
6 For an introduction to the institutional changes of the late sixteenth century, see the following
by Wakita Osamu, Kinsei
hokensei seiritsu shiron
(Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1977);
"The Kokudaka System: A Device for Reunification," Journal of Japanese Studies 1 (Spring
1975);
"The Emergence of the State in Sixteenth Century Japan: From Oda to Tokugawa,"
Journal of Japanese Studies 8 (Summer 1982): 343-67; and (with James L. McClain), "The
Commercial and Urban Policies of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi" in Hall et al.,
eds.,
Japan Before Tokugawa, pp. 224-47.
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LAND SURVEYS AND THE EARLY MODERN PEASANTRY 99
THE TAIKO LAND SURVEYS AND THE EARLY MODERN
PEASANTRY
The expansion of the productive capacity of agriculture was the key-
stone supporting the economic foundations of Japan's early modern
society. Agricultural productivity had been increasing even during the
fourteenth century, especially in the Kinai region around the ancient
imperial capital of Kyoto. Initially, the prime
movers
behind
this
expan-
sion were the major proprietors, who
financed
large-scale land develop-
ment projects, and influential peasants, who were active on a smaller,
more local scale. In the capital area the redevelopment of
fields
devas-
tated by warfare and neglected during the fifteenth century boosted
overall yields. The opening up of entirely new
fields
also was common
in the Kinai environs. On this expanding land base, technological ad-
vances increased productivity, as did the spread of certain agricultural
innovations such as double cropping. A commercial economy also be-
gan to develop, as evident in the growth of towns and periodic local
markets. Elements of this commercial economy soon began
to
penetrate
the rural villages. Documents from Tara
shoen
in Wakasa, for instance,
reveal how farmers commuted almost daily to the nearby port town of
Obama to sell their produce. Another index of commercial growth was
the increased payment of the annual land tax in cash rather than pro-
duce.
Although this sort of economic development was at
first
the work
of rural entrepreneurs, eventually the proprietary lords also attempted
to promote commerce in their country estates.
7
The spread of the commercial economy into agricultural villages
had various consequences. Some village landlords
{kajishi
jinushi)
withdrew from the active management of fields and lived on the land
rents that they collected from the peasants, and other landlords kept
a labor force of subordinate personnel in a serflike condition. The
more commercialized economy benefited some cultivators, but it
caused others to fall into economic ruin, and many fled to nearby
cities and port towns, where they became day laborers, menials, or
beggars.
8
But on the whole, the trend was toward greater security for
7 For additional details concerning economic developments, see Kozo Yamamura, "Returns on
Reunification: Economic Growth in Japan 1550-1650," in Hall et al., eds., Japan Before
Tokugawa, pp. 327-72.
8 For further details, see Wakita Haruko, "Muromachi-ki no keizai hatten" in Koza Nihon
rekishi, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1976), as well as the article by Keiji Nagahara (with
Kozo Yamamura), "The Sengoku Daimyo and the Kandaka System"; and Gin'ya Sasaki (with
William B. Hauser), "Sengoku Daimyo Rule and Commerce," in Hall et al., eds., Japan
Before Tokugawa, pp. 27-63 and 125-48, respectively.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
100 CONSEQUENCES OF UNIFICATION
the peasant landholder. For instance, the designated portions to in-
come (shiki) that were based on one's function within the
shorn
sys-
tem, such as the landholder, peasant, and cultivator portions, became
legally defined entitlements. The peasants' rights to possess land also
were strengthened. The end result of these developments was that
ordinary farmers gained a great deal of influence within their village
communities and then went on to form confederations in order to
secure a greater degree of control over the political and economic
spheres of local life.
During the sixteenth century, two forces appeared to be in competi-
tion: the expanding autonomy of village communities, allied in ikki
organizations, and the opposing desire of military lords to establish
secure domains. These conflicting goals were resolved under the early
modern political order by adopting certain fundamental institutions
such as the nationwide cadastral survey, the separation of the warrior
and farming classes, and the kokudaka system of land-tax manage-
ment. The land policies begun by the Sengoku daimyo were co-opted
and carried out on a broader, more national scale by Oda Nobunaga.
But the perfection of early modern rural administration was not
achieved in his lifetime, and the institutional structure of rural admin-
istration took final shape only under the Hideyoshi and Tokugawa
regimes.
The main objective of both the Sengoku diamyo as regional over-
lords and Oda Nobunaga as the emerging national hegemon was to
gain systematic control over the productive capacities of the country-
side.
In the middle of the sixteenth century, landholding, tax collect-
ing, and military service recruitment systems varied greatly from loca-
tion to location. What the lords most required was information on land
area, productive capacities, and the distribution of manpower. Such
information could be had in one of two ways, by either direct or
indirect measurement.
9
The complete details of Oda Nobunaga's land policies in his home
provinces of Owari and Mino have never been fully revealed, but in
those regions that he occupied later, Nobunaga ordered new cadastral
surveys. Usually he tried to appoint his own representatives to con-
9 In Japan, one line of interpretation sees Oda Nobunaga's administration as representing the
more completely unified authority characteristic of the early modern period and views the
Sengoku daimyo as similar to early modern daimyo. The argument presented here identifies
Nobunaga as more of a transitional figure with greater access to the elements of centralized
political authority than the Muromachi shogunate had, but still weaker than the Tokugawa
shoguns. For more details on current research, see Nagahara Keiji, ed.,Sengoku-ki
no kentyoku
to shakai (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1976).
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LAND SURVEYS AND THE EARLY MODERN PEASANTRY IOI
duct them, but where that was not feasible, he required local lords to
submit their own land and tax reports, called
sashidashi.
However
compiled, the registers listed landholdings and the amounts of annual
tax customarily collected.
10
Under Nobunaga, direct land surveys were
conducted in Ise, Echizen, Harima, Settsu, and Tango provinces, and
the land-tax submission reports were collected in Omi, Yamashiro,
Yamato, and Izumi. Because the cadastral surveys were direct on-site
investigations, they included as much detail as the overlord deemed
necessary. Although the land-tax reports were submitted by individual
proprietors, who in turn relied on records supplied by village commu-
nities,
they too contained a considerable amount of detail. Some extant
sashidashi
from the Yamato region in the 1580s, as well as one from
Kofukuji, show that the surveys were based on actual plot-by-plot
field inspections by the proprietor and listed precisely the area of the
fields, the tax imports, and the cultivators' names.
11
The cadastral registers and land-tax submissions became the docu-
mentary foundations on which Oda Nobunaga based his claim to supe-
rior powers of control over provincewide units. The nature of his
authority was basically identical to the administrative and proprietary
powers that the Sengoku daimyo exercised within their holdings. In
other words, they had fashioned what were legally called "complete
proprietorships" (ichien chigyo or isshiki shihai). This meant that
within their domains, the daimyo, as proprietary lords, held the right
to assign fiefs, command military forces, and exercise police and judi-
cial authority. Of
course,
Nobunaga's political administration pursued
a more complete expression of these powers, in time asserting a rudi-
mentary central authority over the individual Sengoku daimyo that
was much stronger than that of the preceding Muromachi shogunate.
Oda Nobunaga was able to impose his claims to this superior author-
ity while at the same time assigning provincial lands as fiefs to the
more important members of his houseband, such as Shibata Katsuie
10 Those persons who discovered unregistered fields or who developed new paddy had to
conduct a survey or submit a sashidashi report. Because Owari and Mino constituted the
central core of Nogunaga's holdings, he was particularly anxious to impose his authority over
outlying areas within those provinces, but even at present, we have discovered no complete
set of land survey records for this region.
11 The cadastral surveys were carried out on a province-by-province basis, and the surveyed
land was granted to proprietors
(ryoshu)
as fiefs (chigyo). In other words, the Oda administra-
tion could lay claim to the rights to control land, possess land, and distribute it as fiefs. The
sashidashi were reports submitted by individual proprietors and, consequently, served as
confirmations of fief grants. In these cases, too, the Oda administration claimed superior
rights, but the sashidashi were different from the cadastral surveys in terms of thoroughness.
This was probably because the sashidashi reports came from areas where the proprietary
rights were claimed by temples and aristocrats.
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102 CONSEQUENCES OF UNIFICATION
and Hashiba (Toyotomi) Hideyoshi. Nobunaga authorized these re-
tainers to exercise proprietary rights, especially the collection of dues
and labor
services.
But there still were regional procedural differences.
Within any one unit of control, the means of measuring productive
capacity (taka) had been standardized, but as yet no one method was
applied uniformly across all of Japan. For instance, in the five prov-
inces around Kyoto - Yamashiro, Yamato, Settsu, Kawachi, and
Izumi - as well as in Omi, Echizen, Harima, and Tamba, grain was
measured in terms of
koku.
However the kandaka system, in which
dues and imposts were expressed in units of cash, was used in Owari,
Mino,
and Ise. Both systems indicated the actual amount of tax due in
goods and services from the land. In practice, the annual rents col-
lected under the kandaka system included some payments in grain,
and portions of the so-called
kokudaka
imposts could also be paid in
cash.
Despite Nobunaga's effort to exercise total control over the land
base,
the fact that he was obliged to accept
sashidashi
submissions
showed that he was still far from achieving this goal. Moreover, the
grant of a fief to a retainer
(kashin)
often merely reconfirmed existing
rights that the retainer already claimed over those units of land. Fiefs
were also granted in which temples and Kyoto-based proprietors con-
tinued to exercise their old
shoen-derived
prerogatives. Consequently,
despite surface changes, the old patterns of land possession often con-
tinued to prevail. In the same way, although Nobunaga imposed the
burdens of the tax and corvee levies on the peasants, he also recog-
nized the landlord-tenant relationships that already existed in peasant
society. Thus in several documented cases he affirmed that the
myoshu,
the man who held the plot of land and was responsible for paying the
dues levied against it to the overlord, could continue to receive his
customary profits and the traditional set of miscellaneous dues (ko-
mononari)
imposed on the families living on his holdings.
Following the death of Nobunaga in 1582, Toyotomi Hideyoshi
imposed his own hegemony over the country. At the outset of his
takeover, the pattern of land rights remained as they had been under
Nobunaga, a complicated mix of claims by local military proprietors.
The kokudaka system, a product of the cadastral survey ordered by
Toyotomi Hideyoshi and known as the Taiko
kenchi,
cut across this
welter of competing claims and both simplified and clarified rights of
land possession. Hideyoshi was able to carry out a nationwide survey
because he had assembled more military power than Oda Nobunaga
had and thus could extend stronger claims of national legitimacy. In
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LAND SURVEYS AND THE EARLY MODERN PEASANTRY IO3
particular, Hideyoshi was able to justify his action on the basis of
having received from the emperor the famous injunction: "You shall
exercise administrative functions over the more than sixty provinces of
Japan in accordance with what is best for the land and the people."
12
Thus,
Hideyoshi's survey might appropriately be called a "public
survey over the entire realm" (tenka no
kenchi).
As such, it literally
remade the land relationships that had existed up to that time.
The early modern form of landed enfeoffment rested on new princi-
ples of land possession as denned by this Taiko cadastral survey. At the
highest level, all proprietary rights became securely lodged in the
hands of the national hegemon. Now all bushi, and even temples and
Kyoto-based aristocrats, could hold territory only as grants-held-in-
trust
(azukarimono)
confirmed by the vermilion seal of Hideyoshi.
Moreover, certain rights and responsibilities concerning these hold-
ings could be reassigned to lower elements in the power structure. A
clause in the famous "Bateren expulsion decree" that Hideyoshi issued
in 1587 banning Christianity and ordering the Jesuits to leave Japan
within twenty days inadvertently confirmed this practice by stating:
"Fiefs granted to vassals belong ultimately to the state, that is, to the
provinces and districts, and each vassal holds the land in trust for the
present only. Each vassal must obey the laws of the realm
{tenka)."
11
This use of the concept of land held in trust for the overlord became
the basis for the new centralization of
power.
The rights to collect the
grain tax and corvee levies and to exercise judicial judgment, which
had been divided under the
shoen
system, were now pulled together
and held by a single authority.
To conduct the Taiko survey, inspectors
(bugyo)
were dispatched to
the provinces where they were ordered to investigate each parcel of
land in each village. This practice of relying solely on officials dis-
patched by the governing authority was a fuller declaration of the
powers of overlordship than Nobunaga had been able to develop.
Hideyoshi's intentions in this regard were revealed initially in 1582,
when he carried out surveys in Yamashiro without first receiving
sashidashi
reports. This new trend became more evident in the 1584
cadastral survey documents for some portions of Omi and then be-
came the normal method of conducting cadastral surveys from the end
of the decade of the 1580s.
12 "Shimazu-ke monjo," no. 345 in DaiNihon
komonjo:
Shimazu ke
monjo,
vol.
1
(Tokyo: Tokyo
daigaku shuppankai, 1942), p. 342.
13 See the "Matsuura-ke monjo." A reproduction of the document is contained in the lezusukai
Nihon nempyo, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Yush6do shoten, 1969), located in the Matsuura Museum.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
104 CONSEQUENCES OF UNIFICATION
Data compiled in the cadasters reveal a wealth of information about
land rights at the local level. The following is an entry from the survey
register for Fukita village in Ota district
(gun)
of Settsu Province. As
other documents of this type, it lists the location (or name) of the field,
an assessment of its overall quality, use, area, and expected yield
(kokumon),
as well as the person in whose name the field is registered:
Field name/location:
Kaito
Quality
(superior,
average,
poor):
Superior
Use
(paddy,
dryfields,
house
lot):
Paddy
Area:
I
tan (993
sq. m)
Yield:
1 koku
5 to
(approx.
7.5
bushels)
Registered to: Yohei
As this document shows, the Taiko survey relied on the kokudaka
system, which in turn rested on a new concept oitaka as being equiva-
lent to yield (kokumori). Each plot recorded in the register was as-
signed a figure that represented an assessment of the field's potential
yield. The total yield for all fields within a village was known as the
village's kokudaka, and this, expressed in units of rice, served as the
base on which the taxes and dues were computed. Even land that was
not given over to rice production, such as dry fields and house plots,
was assigned a computed, theoretical yield expressed in measures of
rice.
Under the
shoen
system, several different kinds of crops other
than rice were grown, and these were delivered separately as taxes.
The kokudaka system was designed to simplify this procedure by re-
ducing tax collection to a single calculation.
Why did Hideyoshi and the daimyo decide to collect taxes in an
agricultural commodity such as rice? The answer lies in the effort of
Hideyoshi and his vassal daimyo to gain firmer control over their
domains' resources and productive output. Because these domains
were composed of many different kinds of land whose productive
capacities varied enormously, the overlords needed some universal
standard that would allow them to impose uniform tax rates. For some
Sengoku daimyo, the kandaka system, which required that taxes be
paid in cash, served this purpose. But in reality the kandaka system
was difficult to manage because it was feasible only for those daimyo
who were able to regulate the minting and circulation of coins and
thereby to exercise some control over the marketplace and the conver-
sion into cash of rice and other products.
The Toyotomi regime, however, was attempting to extend its juris-
diction over the entire country and, in this process, found it impossi-
ble to maintain sufficient control over coinage nationwide. The
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