Daimyo Importance

The importance of daimyo was a major part of Japanese history. I believe it is best summed up as follows. .

AN INTRODUCTION TOTHE HISTORY OF JAPAN

BY

KATSURO HARA

1920

The Shogunate of the house of the Tokugawa was not an entirely new invention. It was a partial recognition of the old régime which Iyeyasu had inherited from Hideyoshi, as far as the territorial lords were concerned, who were installed or recognised anterior to the advent of Iyeyasu to power. Though a great many of the former feudatories, especially those who had been faithful to the House of the Toyotomi to the last, had been killed or deprived of their possessions after the decisive battle of Sekigahara, not a few of them survived, counting among them the most powerful of the daimyo, the House of Mayeta, who was the master of Kaga and two other provinces on the Sea of Japan. The lords of this kind had formerly been the equals of the Tokugawa, when the latter was standing under the protection of Hideyoshi, and it was difficult for the new Shogunate, in a country where the Emperor has ever been the paramount sovereign, to make those lords formally swear the oath of fealty to itself. The nature of the sovereignty, [Pg 294]therefore, of the Tokugawa over the feudatories aforesaid was only that of primus inter pares. The daimyo who stood in this relation to the Shogunate were called tozama.

The rest of the daimyo, together with the bodyguard of the Shogun, the so-called "eighty thousand" with their habitual residence at Yedo, made up the hereditary retainers or fudai. The non-domestic daimyo had nothing to do with the Shogun's central government, all the posts of which, from such high functionaries as the rôchû or elders, who were none other than the cabinet ministers of the Shogunate, down to such petty officials as scribes and watchmen, had been all filled with domestics of various grades. As far as these domestics or direct retainers of the Shogunate were concerned, the military régime of the Tokugawa can be held to have been a revived form of that of Kamakura. In the former, however, the disparity in power and wealth between the upper and the lower domestics of the Shogun was far more remarkable than it had been among the retainers of the latter, that is to say, the djito. The term "go-kenin," held to be honourable in the time of Kamakura, became, in the Tokugawa period, a designation of the lowest order of the direct vassals of the Shogun. A certain number belonging to the upper class of the fudai or domestics of the Tokugawa Shogunate were made daimyo, and placed on the same footing as feudatories of historical lineage, the former equals of [Pg 295]the Tokugawa, and formed with them henceforth the highest military nobility of the country. The remainder of the domestics, who were not raised to the rank of daimyo, were comprised under the name of hatamoto, which means "under the standard," that is to say, the Body-guard of the Shogun. Among the members of this body there were indeed numerous scales of gradation. The lowest of them had to lead a very miserable and straitened life in some obscure corners of the city of Yedo, while the best of them stood as regards income very near to minor daimyo, and were often more influential. Their political status, however, notwithstanding manifold differences in rank among them, was all the same, all being equally, direct vassals of the Shogunate, and having no regular warriors or samurai as their own vassals. They, therefore, belonged to the lowest grade of the privileged classes in the military hierarchy, and in this respect there was no cardinal difference between them and the common samurai who were vassals of ordinary daimyo. That they were, however, the immediate subjects of the Shogun, and that they did not owe fealty to any daimyo, who was in reality subordinate at least to the Shogun, if not his vassal in name, placed them in a status like that of the knights immediate of the Holy Roman Empire or of the mediatised princes of recent Germany; in short, above the status of ordinary samurai attached to an ordinary daimyo. Strictly speaking, between these two [Pg 296]there interposed another group of samurai. They were the vassals of the three daimyo of extraordinary distinction, of Nagoya in the province of Owari, of Wakayama in the province of Kii, and of Mito in the province of Hitachi. All these three being of the lateral branches of the Tokugawa, were held in specially high regard, and put at the topmost of all the other daimyo, so that their vassals considered themselves to be quasi-hatamoto and therefore above the "common" or "garden" samurai.

The daimyo acted as virtual potentates in territories granted to them, and held a court and a government there, both modelled largely after the household and the government of the Shogun at Yedo. The better part of the daimyo resided in castles built imposingly after the architectural style of the fortresses in Europe at that time, the technic having perhaps been introduced along with Christianity, and they led a life far more easy and elegant, though more regular, than the shugo of the Ashikaga age. It has been ascribed, by the way, to the rare sagacity of Iyeyasu as a politician, that the territories of the two kinds of daimyo, tozama and fudai, were so adroitly juxtaposed, that the latter were able to keep watch over the former's attitude toward the Shogunate.

The daimyo were ranked according to the officially estimated amount of rice to be produced in the territory of each. In the time of Kamakura, [Pg 297]the renumeration of the djito was counted by the area of ricefields in the manor entrusted to his care. By and by, the land which was the source of the renumeration for a djito came to be partitioned among his numerous descendants, and some of the portions allotted became so small, that it was but ridiculous to think of exercising the jurisdiction of military police over them. Area of land began to cease thus to be the standard of valuation of the income of a djito, when the office of djito meant only the emolument accompanying it, and no longer carried with it the responsibility incumbent on it at its first establishment. The ultimate result of such a change was that the quantity or the price of rice produced began to be adopted gradually as the standard of valuation of the income of territorial lords, and for a while the two standards were in use together till the end of the Ashikaga age. Moreover, infrequently part of the income of a shugo was reckoned by the quantity of rice, while another part of the income of the same shugo was assessed by the sale-price of the rice cultivated. This promiscuous way of valuation, however, caused great irregularity and confusion. For, added to the disagreement about the real quantity of rice produced and the amount registered to be produced, the price of the cereal itself had been so ceaselessly fluctuating according to the inconstant condition of crops, that there was no such thing as a regular standard price of rice [Pg 298]invariably applicable to any year and to any locality. Nevertheless, in an age when no uniform system of currency was established and to accept any coin at its face value was an impossible matter, in other words, when it was difficult to represent the price of rice in any sort of coin then in use, to make a standard of value, not of the actual amount of rice but of its unceasingly vacillating price, could not but cause a great deal of inconvenience and confusion. We can easily see from the above that the quantity of rice was by far the surer means of bargaining than the money, which was not only indeterminate in value but insufficient to boot. Hideyoshi, therefore, put a stop to the use of the method of indicating the income of a territorial lord by its valuation in money, and decreed that henceforth only the yearly estimated yield of rice, counted by the koku as a unit, should be adopted as the means of denoting the revenue of a territory, a koku roughly corresponding to five bushels in English measure. The land-survey, which he undertook on a grand scale throughout the whole empire, had as its main purpose to measure the area of land classed as rice-fields in the territories of the daimyo, according to the units newly decreed, and to make the estimate of the amount of rice said to be produced commensurate as nearly as possible with the average crop realisable. Withal, the inequality of the standard of estimate in different localities was rectified by this assessment of Hideyoshi's.

[Pg 299]This method of estimating the income of a daimyo had come into general use since the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate. As there was then no system in our country of gradating the daimyo by titles, such as dukes, counts, and so forth, the estimated annual yield of rice in koku was used as the sole means of determining the rank of the lords of the various territories in the long queue of the Tokugawa daimyo, with the exception of a very few who had been placed in a comparatively high rank on account of their specially noble lineage or the unique position of their families in the national history, though most of the nobles belonging to the latter class were classed as an intervening group. The minimum number of koku assigned to a daimyo was ten thousand. As regards the maximum number of koku, there was no legal limit. One who stood, however, highest in order was the above-mentioned House of Mayeta, the lord of Kaga etc., whose domain was assessed at more than a million koku. About three hundred daimyo, who were ranged between the two extremes, were divided into three orders. All those worth more than two hundred thousand koku formed a class of the daimyo major, and those worth less than one hundred thousand were comprised in a group of the daimyo minor, while the rest, that is to say, those between one and two hundred thousand formed the middle corps.

In the Shogun's court, a seat was assigned to [Pg 300]each daimyo in a specified room, according to the class to which he belonged. One could, therefore, easily tell the rank of a daimyo by the name of the room in which he had to wait when he attended on the Shogun. All daimyo, almost without exception, had to move in and out at fixed intervals between his territory, where his castle or camp stood, and Yedo, where he kept, or, to say more correctly, was granted by the Shogun, residences, generally more than two in number. The interval allowed to a daimyo for remaining in his territory varied according to the distance of that territory from Yedo, being the shorter and oftener for the nearer. He was obliged to leave his wife and children constantly in one of his residences at Yedo, as hostages for his fidelity to the Shogun. As to the vassals or samurai of a daimyo, there were also two sorts. By far the greater part of the samurai belonging to a daimyo had their dwellings in their master's territory, generally in the vicinity of his castle. These samurai were the main support of their lord, and had to accompany him by turns in his official tour to Yedo and back. The rest of the samurai under the same lord, a band which formed the small minority, lived constantly in Yedo, each family in a compartment of the accessory buildings surrounding the lord's residence like a colony. These were as a rule men who were enlisted into the service of a daimyo more for the sake of making a gallant show at his official and social functions [Pg 301]at Yedo, than for the sake of strengthening his fighting forces. It was natural that men accustomed to the polished life of the military capital were thought better qualified to fulfil such functions than the rustic samurai fresh from his territories who were good only for fighting and other serious kinds of business. While a daimyo was absent in his territory, a samurai of his, belonging to this metropolitan group, was entrusted with the care of his residences and their occupants in Yedo, and also with the duty of receiving orders from the Shogunate or of transacting inter-territorial business with representatives of other daimyo at Yedo. The meetings held by these representatives of the daimyo were said to be one of the most fashionable gatherings in Yedo. That the doyen of such functionaries had a certain prestige over others, was very similar to the usage among the diplomatic corps in Europe.

The samurai who had their abode in their lord's territory, however, represented the real strength of a daimyo, and were the soul and body of the whole military régime. The number of samurai in a territory differed according to the rank and the resources of a daimyo. Some of the powerful nobles counted more than ten thousand regular samurai under them, while minor ones could maintain only a few hundred as necessary retainers. In the latter case almost all of the samurai had their dwellings clustering around the castle or camp of their lord. If there were [Pg 302]any samurai who lived outside of the residential town, they led an agricultural rather than a soldierly life. The relation of vassalage in such a territory was simple, for under the samurai consisting of a single order there was no swords-wearer serving them. In the territory of the powerful daimyo, however, especially in those of the big daimyo in Kyushu and the northern part of Honto, comprising an area of two or more average provinces in Middle Japan, the relation of vassalage was very complicated, sometimes forming a feudalism of the second order. That is to say, the most influential samurai under those daimyo had also their own small territory granted by their lord, just as the latter had his granted or recognised by the Shogunate, and held several hundred swords-wearers, non-commissioned samurai, in their service. It was not rare that some of these magnates surpassed in income many minor independent daimyo, and had in their hands the destiny of a greater number of people, for their emolument rose often to twenty or thirty thousand koku. Their rank in the military régime, however, was indisputably lower than that of the smallest of daimyo, on account of their being only indirectly subordinate to the Shogun.

In all territories throughout the whole country, the emolument of the samurai was granted in the form of land, or of rice from the granaries of the daimyo, or paid in cash. Sometimes we see a combination of two or three of these forms [Pg 303]given to one samurai. Besides this pay a patch of ground was allotted to each samurai as his homestead, and a part of that ground used to be cultivated to produce vegetables for family consumption. In whatever form a samurai might receive his stipend, it was officially denoted by the number of koku, registered as his nominal income, and that very number determined his position in the list of vassals of a daimyo, unless he came from an extraordinarily distinguished lineage. As regards the maximum and the minimum number of koku given to samurai, there was no uniform standard applicable to all of the territories. Such powerful daimyo as Mayeta in Kaga, Shimatsu in Satsuma, and Date in Mutsu owned many vassal-samurai who were so puissant as to be fairly comparable to small daimyo, while in the territories of the latter, a samurai of pretty high position in his small territorial circle received an allowance of koku so scant that one of the lowest rank, if he were a regular samurai, would disdain to receive in big territories. Generally speaking, however, one hundred koku was considered to be an average standard, applicable to samurai under any daimyo, to distinguish those of the respectable or official class from those of the non-commissioned or subaltern class. Only the samurai above this standard could keep servants bearing two swords, long and short, as a samurai himself did. Not only all officers in time of war, but all high civil functionaries in the territorial [Pg 304]government of a daimyo were taken from this body of orthodox samurai. The samurai below this level could keep a servant wearing only one sword, the shorter, and they had to serve their lord as officials of the inferior class, such as scribes, cashiers, butlers, etc.

The lowest in the scale of the military régime was the group of ashigaru, that is to say, of the light infantry. Those who belonged to this group, though wearers of two swords, were not counted as of the corps of samurai. Being legally vassals of a daimyo, they had yet very rare chances of serving him directly, and often they enlisted into the household service of a higher samurai. Between the ashigaru and the regular samurai, there was another intermediate group of two-sworded men, called kachi, which means warriors-on-foot. In feudal times all warriors, if of samurai rank, were presumed to be cavaliers, though in reality most of them had not even a stable, and skill in horsemanship was not rigorously required from the samurai of the lower class. The name kachi, given to those who in rank came next to the samurai, implied that this intermediate group of quasi-samurai was not allowed to ride on horse-back. This group was, however, much nearer to the samurai than to the ashigaru group.

So far I have given a rough sketch of the gradations in the military régime in the territory of a daimyo. It should be here noticed that, besides the classes above stated, there were many other [Pg 305]minor groups below the regular samurai, and that there were also diverse heterogeneities of system in the territories of different daimyo. Needless to say that the gradations and kinds of hatamoto, who were samurai serving directly under the Shogun, were far more multifarious and complex than those of the samurai under a daimyo. There is no doubt, however, that the apex of the whole military régime was the Shogun himself, while at its foundation were the sundry samurai who numbered perhaps nearly half a million families in all.