Modern Japan

A Historical Survey

Mikiso Hane

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429974601
• Edición: 5
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Asian Politics

Integrating political events with cultural, economic, and intellectual movements, Modern Japan provides a balanced and authoritative survey of modern Japanese history. A summary of Japan's early history, emphasizing institutions and systems that influenced Japanese society, provides a well-rounded introduction to this essential volume, which focuses on the Tokugawa period to the present.

The fifth edition of Modern Japan is updated throughout to include the latest information on Japan's international relations, including secret diplomatic correspondence recently disclosed on WikiLeaks. This edition brings Japanese history up to date in the post 9/11 era, detailing current issues such as: the impact of the Gulf Wars on Japanese international relations, the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear accident, the recent tumultuous change of political leadership, and Japan's current economic and global status. An updated chronological chart, list of prime ministers, and bibliography are also included.

1
Japan Before the Seventeenth Century

Early History of the Japanese People

There is no definitive evidence concerning when and from whence the original inhabitants arrived in Japan, but it is assumed that they came from different areas of the Asian continent and the South Pacific region. The predominant strain is Mongoloid, including a considerable mixture of people of Malayan origin. The Japanese language appears to be related to both the Polynesian and the Altaic languages. Evidence suggests that as early as 200,000 years ago, paleolithic humans (who used chipped stones for tools) inhabited the islands. Also among the early inhabitants of Japan were the ancestors of the Ainu, a people of proto-Caucasian origin who live in Hokkaido today. Currently only about 50,000 Ainu remain. Their early history and their relationship with the neolithic people who inhabited the islands are not known.

Jōmon and Yayoi Periods (ca. 8000 BC to AD 250)

The early stage of the neolithic age in Japan is known as the Jōmon period. It is believed that Jōmon culture started as far back as 7000 or 8000 BC and survived until about 250 BC. The term Jōmon (meaning cord-marking) describes the type of decoration found on potteries of this age. The people of the period were hunters and food gatherers, and they lived in pit-dwellings.

The next stage in neolithic Japan was the Yayoi period, which extended roughly from 250 BC to AD 250. This culture is believed to have been the product of a new wave of immigrants of Mongoloid stock who came to the islands in the third century BC. Yayoi pots (named after the place in which they were first found in 1884) were wheel-made and less elaborately decorated than Jōmon pots. They were fired at a higher temperature and are technically superior to Jōmon pieces. Around the second century BC bronze and iron tools filtered into Japan from the continent. The rice culture, which originated in South China or Southeast Asia, filtered in around 100 BC. This latter development revolutionized the entire Japanese way of life, for it established the basis for the economy until the industrial age.

The first written accounts about Japan are found in two historical records of ancient China: The History of the Kingdom of Wei (a kingdom in north China, ad 220–265), written in ad 297, and History of the Later Han Dynasty, compiled around ad 445. According to these histories, Japan underwent a period of civil strife in the second century ad, but the land was eventually unified under a queen named Pimiku (Himiko in Japanese). Pimiku, as The History of the Kingdom of Wei relates, was a shaman who “occupied herself with magic and sorcery, bewitching the people.” Whether Pimiku was related to the clan that established hegemony over Japan is impossible to verify, but in the years after the Second World War a great deal of speculation has taken place about the origin of the early Japanese rulers, in particular their links to Korea.

Yamato Period (ca. 300—710)

The period in which regional forces began to emerge in the Yamato area to roughly the time when a fixed capital was established in Nara is known as the Yamato period (ca. 300–710). It is also referred to as the age of Tomb Culture because huge keyhole-shaped tombs were constructed to bury the chieftains of the time. Numerous artifacts such as ornaments, tools, and weapons, as well as clay figurines known as haniwa, were buried with the dead.

From the fifth century on, Japan was exposed steadily to Chinese and Korean culture as immigrants from these countries arrived in fairly large numbers. Refugees from advancing Han Chinese armies probably displaced Koreans down that rocky peninsula. Some of those displaced Koreans probably migrated across the narrow Tsushima Straits to Japan. The social, material, political, intellectual, and cultural life of the Japanese was profoundly influenced by these immigrants. Prince Shōtoku Taishi (574–622) is traditionally credited with having played a major role in adopting Chinese civilization, strengthening the imperial authority, and propagating Buddhism. He is also credited with promulgating the “Constitution of Seventeen Articles,” a series of moral injunctions.¹ In 645 Nakatomi-no-Kamatari (614–669), the founder of the Fujiwara family, removed his rivals from the court and gained political supremacy. His descendants dominated the court down through the ages. Nakatomi and his followers are credited with having instituted the Taika Reforms, which involved the adoption of Chinese (Tang and Northern Wei) political institutions and policies as well as their land and tax policies.

Nara and Heian Periods (710—1185)

One of the practices adopted from China was the construction of a fixed capital city. In 710, Nara was made the seat of the imperial court, and it remained so until 784, when the capital was moved briefly to a community near Kyoto. In 794, the capital was moved again—this time to Kyoto, then known as Heiankyō. From then until 1868 the emperors resided in this city. The period from 794 to 1185 is known as the Heian period, or the era of the court aristocracy, because the court nobles led by the Fujiwara family dominated the political and cultural life of the society. Eventually cadet houses of the Fujiwara would dominate the imperial government during the feudal eras to follow. During the Nara and Heian periods Japan continued to adopt and assimilate Chinese culture and institutions as well as Buddhism. The Heian court aristocrats cultivated a highly refined taste in art and literature, and placed great emphasis on form, appearance, and decorum. Extravagant luxury, ostentatious display, and decadent sensuality prevailed at the court in its heyday.

Among the measures adopted from China during implementation of the aforementioned Taika Reforms was nationalization and equalization of landholdings. But this policy was not fully implemented, and land soon came to be concentrated in the hands of the court aristocrats and Buddhist monasteries. Eventually privately controlled estates, or shōen, came into existence. The estates were not taxed; they were also free from the jurisdiction of government officials. Estate managers, district officials, and local estate owners began to emerge in the form of local magnates with private coteries of warriors. Eventually major military chieftains, with large circles of warriors, managed to control numerous estates and challenge the authority of the central government.

In the 1160s, one of the samurai chieftains, Taira-no-Kiyomori (1118– 1181), gained control of the imperial court and had himself appointed chancellor. The Taira clan (also known as the Heike) soon found its supremacy challenged by the leader of a rival military clan known as the Genji (or Minamoto) family, led by Minamoto Yoritomo (1147–1199).

Kamakura Period (1185—1333)

After Minamoto defeated the Taira forces, he established his headquarters in Kamakura in 1185. Theoretically, he performed the role of supreme military commander (shōgun) in the service of the emperor, a post to which he was appointed in 1192. But his Bakufu (tent headquarters) became the actual locus of power. He controlled a large part of the land as his own shōen and acquired the right to appoint constables and land stewards (whose chief function was to collect taxes) throughout the land. Minamoto’s assumption of the position of shōgun, then, marked the beginning of rule by the warrior, or samurai, class. Thenceforth, except for brief periods, power was retained by the shōgun until 1867, while the emperor remained in Kyoto as the nominal ruler and high priest of the Shinto religion.

After Minamoto died in 1199, actual power of the Bakufu was taken over by his wife’s family, the Hōjō clan. Until 1333, the head of the Hōjō family wielded power as regent to the shōgun. Following an abortive attempt by the imperial court to regain power in 1221, the Hōjō family consolidated its control over the land both by confiscating the shōen of those who had supported the imperial cause and by tightening its surveillance over the imperial court.

With the emergence of the warrior class in the last years of the Heian period and during the years of warrior rule in the Kamakura period, political, social, and economic institutions and practices similar to those associated with European feudalism began to evolve. In 1232, the Hōjō government issued the Jōei Code, which defined property rights, land tenure, inheritance, and other social economic rights and obligations, thus laying the basis for later feudal laws and practices.

In the Kamakura period, popular Buddhism emerged and the code of the warriors began to take form (see Chapter 2). It was also during this period that the Mongols attempted to invade Japan in 1274 and again in 1281. Both attempts failed because devastating typhoons (known as kamikaze, or divine winds) destroyed the Mongol fleet.

Between 1333 and 1336, the imperial court led by Emperor Godaigo managed to regain power briefly with the assistance of certain disaffected military chiefs. But in 1336, one of these chiefs, Ashikaga Takauji (a relative of the Hōjō; 1305–1358), decided to take power himself; it was then that he drove the emperor out of Kyoto and established his own Bakufu. Godaigo fled south to the mountains of the Kii Peninsula, while Ashikaga placed another member of the imperial family on the throne. As a result, until 1392 there were two imperial courts—one in the north and one in the south. In 1392, the two courts merged with the understanding that the two branches would alternate in occupying the throne. But this agreement was not kept, and the Northern Court members hold the throne to this day.

The Muromachi Period and the Era of Warring States (1336—1590)

The Ashikaga shogunate, also referred to as the Muromachi Bakufu (after the district in Kyoto where the shōgun resided), remained in existence until 1573. In that year the last Ashikaga shōgun was driven out by Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582), a military chief who aspired to become shōgun himself. The Ashikaga family had failed to gain a firm grip on the land and was plagued by contentious lords. Eventually regional lords, known as daimyō (great lords), emerged. The country fell into a state of chaos as regional chiefs contended for power. This dog-eat-dog period, known as the era of the Warring States (Sengoku), lasted from the later years of the fifteenth century until the nation was unified under Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1590. It was during this era that feudalism became firmly entrenched throughout the land. These feudal lords built castles to defend themselves from first the Ashikaga and eventually each other. Towns formed around these castles. The merchants and artisans who gathered there to provide for the samurai residents gave rise to urban professional classes that changed Japanese society.

During the same era, the economy expanded as a result of improvements in agriculture and increased trade with China. Money came to be used more widely, and commercial cities and market towns sprung up throughout the land. Some cities—notably, Sakai (near Osaka)—became autonomous political entities with their own military forces. In the middle of the sixteenth century, Portuguese traders arrived. They were soon followed by merchants from other European countries as well as by Christian missionaries led by the Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier (1506–1552).

Oda Nobunaga, a daimyō in central Japan, managed to extend his power by making effective use of the firearms introduced by the West. He appeared to be on the way to establishing his hegemony over the land. In 1568 he succeeded in gaining control of Kyoto and soon deposed the last Ashikaga shōgun. However, he was attacked by one of his generals, preferring to commit suicide rather than be captured. Then Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598), who rose from the peasantry, subdued the regional lords and completed the task of national unification. He subsequently decided to conquer Korea and China and launched an invasion of Korea in 1592. His grandiose plan was frustrated, however, when the Ming forces moved into Korea to stop his warriors.

Toyotomi came up from the peasantry himself. But in order to prevent the political order he had established from being disrupted by free-wheeling peasantwarriors, he launched a campaign to confiscate all weapons from the peasants. He also forbade them from moving off the land and instituted a nationwide cadastral survey for tax purposes, thereby establishing the social and economic policies that his successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), eventually adopted to ensure social stability in his regime.

Tokugawa was one of Toyotomi’s major rivals. Because of Tokugawa’s formidable power base in the Kanto region, Toyotomi did not try to eliminate him by force but, instead, allowed him to retain his holdings in return for recognition of Toyotomi as the suzerain lord. Tokugawa, through patience, cunning, and good fortune, gained power after Toyotomi’s death. Thereafter, he established a sociopolitical system that enabled his descendants to remain in power for two and a half centuries, thus ushering in the Tokugawa period (to be discussed in detail in Chapter 2).

Traditional Culture and Institutions of the Pre-Tokugawa Years

The social systems, the culture and literature, the intellectual currents, and the political institutions that evolved in the pre-Tokugawa years not only persisted but also profoundly influenced the lives of the Japanese people throughout the ages.

Shinto

The indigenous religion of Japan is known as Shinto (the way of the gods). Starting as an animistic religion, which incorporated the shamanism that came in from Southeast Asia as well as from the northern Tungus, Shinto eventually became a part of the Japanese culture. The people go to Shinto shrines to pray, and during harvest festivals they join with other villagers to celebrate and give thanks to the gods for their bountiful harvest. The Japanese, like the Chinese, see no conflict in paying homage to different deities in numerous shrines and temples.

Before the imperial clan established its hegemony over the land, a number of clans (uji) contended for supremacy. Each clan worshipped its own patron god. The patron god of the imperial family was the Sun Goddess (Amaterasu Ōmikami), and the emperor or empress served as the high priest or priestess of the cult of the Sun Goddess. To this day the emperor undergoes the ritual of planting rice seedlings every spring and harvesting a few ears of rice in the fall. It was not until the Meiji period that this cult was elevated to the level of State Shinto, when the government designated most Shinto shrines as state institutions.

In short, the inhabitants of ancient Japan believed that gods and spirits were present in all aspects of the natural world. Some were cosmic forces; others resided in the woods, streams, and rocks and in animals such as foxes and snakes. The ancestral spirits were also respected and revered. Great military and political leaders were enshrined as kami (gods or superior beings). Even modern leaders like Emperor Meiji (1852–1912) and General Nogi Maresuke (1849–...