As the night turned into day, a warning letter was sent off to the Edo government. The lord of Bichû [the senior official] noted that the distance between Edo and Osaka was 325 miles, and the roundtrip by relay couriers would take 10 days. Then, discussion [in Edo] would take at least one day [making the return time] 11 days. When a response was finally received, it would take at least 10 days for it to make the 878 mile trip by sea [back], and if the favourable westerly winds were not as they are now, it would take 14 to 15 days to arrive.21
In the event, thanks to the government's remarkable communications system, two generals and thousands of elite troops dispatched from Edo reached Shimabara by 17 February – less than six weeks after the shogun received the ‘warning letter’ and less than two months after the outbreak of the revolt. No European government possessed the ability to react so effectively to an emergency on the periphery of the state.
As soon as he had destroyed the remaining strongholds of his opponents in 1614–15, Tokugawa Ieyasu issued a plethora of regulations to be obeyed by daimyō and their followers, by the imperial court and even by the emperor himself (who, although lacking effective power, still enjoyed immense prestige). They ranged from the petty (court nobles must micturate only in urinals) to the drastic – above all, henceforth each daimyō could retain only one castle and must destroy all the rest. Ieyasu died the following year, but his son Hidetada (who ruled until 1623) and grandson Iemitsu (r. 1623–51) inherited his title of shogun and further consolidated and expanded the power of the central administration.22
The shoguns periodically dispatched inspectors to assess each fief's defensive disposition, legal system, economic means and general morale. An unfavourable report could mean confiscation. Perceived incompetence (for instance provoking peasant rebellion through heavy-handed policies or allowing vendettas among vassals) could also result in forfeiture of a fief. Thus, after his troops had brutally suppressed the rebellion by the vassals of Shimabara and Amakusa, Shogun Iemitsu deposed both of the daimyō whose unreasonable demands had caused the revolt, forcing one to commit suicide and keeping the other in prison. He then annexed Shimabara to the Tokugawa domain and issued an edict that ordered everyone to ‘return to living peaceably as in previous times’, forbade ‘riotous behaviour’, outlawed Christianity and prohibited ‘giving shelter or assistance’ to fugitive peasants or samurai. However, the same edict also addressed the vassals' grievances: it forbade ‘the buying and selling of persons’, abolished all outstanding tax debts and labour services, and offered the farms of condemned rebels to anyone who wanted to take them.23 In all, between 1615 and 1651 the Tokugawa confiscated the fiefs of 95 daimyō who thus lost all means of support – as did their retainers, who lost their stipends and became rōnin (masterless samurai). Over the same period the shoguns also transferred 250 other fiefs from one daimyō to another. According to Harold Bolitho: ‘Never in the history of Japan had so much violence been done to local autonomy.’24
Iemitsu also extended his control over daimyō in other ways. He forbade them to build big ships, levy tolls, or settle disputes among themselves; he required them to maintain roads, bridges and post-stations in their domains; he commanded them to extirpate Christianity and to decide all legal cases ‘according to the laws of Edo’. Above all, he transformed their visits to Edo into a closely managed ‘alternate attendance’ system (sankin kōtai: the first word meant ‘reporting for audience’, the second ‘to rotate’).25 Henceforth each daimyō had to reside in the capital for 12 months out of every 24, and leave his principal consort and his heir there permanently (in effect as hostages). Iemitsu appointed different months of the year for specific groups of daimyō to ‘report for audience’, both to prevent possible plotting among them and to avoid depleting sensitive areas of all local leaders at the same time. In addition, his guards at all checkpoints on the roads leading to and from Edo searched for weapons coming in, women going out (since a lord who removed his wife might be plotting treason), and ‘anybody else suspicious’ who could not produce written permission to travel. When a prominent daimyō arrived slightly late for his scheduled sankin kōtai in 1636, Iemitsu sentenced him to three years of house arrest.
Trying to avoid humiliation and punishment at the hands of the shogun encouraged the daimyō to compete among themselves in constructing and maintaining more (and more luxurious) mansions in Edo for themselves, their family and their retainers. Moreover, since ‘alternate attendance’ was, in theory, military service, each daimyō had to travel to Edo fully armed, with an entourage of samurai appropriate to his rank (in the case of less important lords, virtually all retainers might have to accompany their lord, and the greater ones might travel in a procession of several thousand people) and the various expenses created by ‘reporting for audience’ absorbed half the total revenues of some domains. By 1700 the capital contained over 600 daimyō compounds, housing at least 250,000 people.26
Iemitsu also issued uniform codes to regulate the behaviour of other groups of subjects. In 1643 he promulgated ‘Regulations for villagers’ on Tokugawa lands, which codified appropriate behaviour in annoyingly comprehensive detail, with special regard for the type of clothes and ornaments permitted for each social group. Thus only village headmen could wear silk, have gates at their compound or covered ceilings in their homes; no peasant could use red or purple dyes when making textiles; and so on. ‘Fashion was to be regulated by decree because it had to express degree’, in the felicitous phrase of Robert Singer, an art historian. ‘Consumption, especially public consumption, should not express personal wealth but should demonstrate one's subordinate or superior place in the polity, and one's acceptance of it.’27 Similarly, since all major commercial and industrial centres remained under the shogun's direct rule, Iemitsu issued edicts to regulate the production and distribution as well as the consumption of goods, and to urge urban craftsmen, artisans, artists and architects to increase their productivity through hard work. This comprehensive legislation formed the foundation of ‘the industrious revolution’.
Iemitsu also took drastic steps to limit Japan's overseas trade. Whereas his predecessors had encouraged Japanese merchants to build large vessels that traded with numerous ports in Southeast Asia, and promoted overseas trading colonies in Cambodia, Taiwan and Indonesia, in the 1630s Iemitsu banned all foreign trade, and residence abroad, by any Japanese. The only exceptions were a compound near Pusan in Korea and another at Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands, where Japanese merchants handled trade with the Asian mainland. For a while, Iemitsu tolerated the presence of Portuguese merchants – although in 1636 he confined them to Dejima, an artificial island in Nagasaki bay connected to the mainland by a single bridge and dependent on the Japanese authorities for everything, even drinking water.28 Three years later, since he blamed their missionaries for the Catholic overtones of the Shimabara rebellion, the shogun expelled all the Portuguese in Japan; and when, in 1640, an embassy with over 50 members returned to plead for the restoration of free trade, he killed them all and posted a notice at the site warning that
A similar penalty will be suffered by all those who henceforward come to these shores from Portugal, whether they be ambassadors or whether they be sailors, whether they come by error or whether they be driven hither by storm. Even more, if the king of Portugal or [Buddha] or even the God of the Christians were to come, they would all pay the very same penalty.
Iemitsu seems to have expected the Portuguese to seek revenge, and so ordered daimyō with fiefs near Nagasaki to stay at home with all their retainers instead of visiting Edo, but he need not have worried. Distracted by the rebellion against Philip IV (see chapter 9 above), the Portuguese dared not raise their hands against him. In 1641 Iemitsu relocated all Dutch merchants to the vacant island of Dejima, and for almost two centuries they remained the only Europeans allowed to visit and trade with the archipelago legally.29
The savage treatment of the Portuguese formed part of a coordinated campaign to control th
e religious beliefs of Iemitsu's subjects. In 1638 the shogun required everyone living on Tokugawa domain lands to present proof to the local magistrate that they belonged to a Buddhist temple. In 1665 his successor extended the same requirement to daimyō lands; and from 1671 the proof had to be presented annually. The magistrates compelled anyone suspected of deviance to trample on images of the Virgin Mary to ‘prove’ their indifference to Christianity; those who refused, and any missionaries captured, were tortured and executed.30 Tokugawa apologists sought to ‘sacralize’ the new dynasty, propagating the cult of the founder Ieyasu as shinkun or ‘divine ruler’ and sponsoring shrines in his honour. Over 40 ‘Tōshōgū shrines’ existed by 1624 (most of them erected by Ieyasu's son Hidetada) and many more followed (some built by Iemitsu, and the rest by nobles anxious to please him). The most important of these still stands at Nikkō, 80 miles north of Edo, where in 1634–6 Iemitsu constructed a stunning architectural complex covering over a square mile and filled with over 500 paintings and more than 5,000 sculptures.31 The shogun also sponsored tracts that mixed texts drawn from Buddhist, Confucian and Shinto sources to explain how the dynasty had acquired the Mandate of Heaven, and how Japan's warrior code (Bushidō) formed the ideal instrument to preserve it. Most of those who wrote such tracts were either warriors or the sons of warriors, and they stressed absolute obedience to authority as the supreme virtue for subjects, exalted military norms in peace as well as in war, and compared the primary task of civil leaders with that of generals: directing and coordinating the movement of great masses of people. According to Suzuki Shōsan, a samurai who became a monk, in a tract of 1652: ‘To receive life as a peasant is to be an official entrusted by Heaven with the nourishment of the world’. Suzuki also suggested (like Thomas Hobbes in England: see chapter 12 above) that subjects owed obedience to any ruler who provided them with peace and justice.32
Coping with the Kan'ei Famine
Tokugawa Japan thus enjoyed several structural advantages over other states in confronting the Little Ice Age. At the local level, the oyakata/kokata system provided a safety net for many of the most vulnerable people; while the kokudaka system created granaries that could be opened in case of famine. The separation of daimyō and samurai from their hereditary lands, together with the ‘sword hunts’, made resistance more difficult to organize; while the stream of edicts regulating behaviour both accustomed the central government to take the initiative in social and economic matters and predisposed its subjects to obey. Nevertheless, climatic adversity placed Japan under severe stress. During the terrible winter of 1641–2 (according to the memoirs of Enomoto Yazaemon) ‘the corpses of those who had starved to death filled the streets’; Edo ‘was full of beggars clad only in straw’; and ‘from 50,000 to 100,000 people starved to death in Japan’. One upland village informed the shogun in 1642 that the famine had eliminated one-third of its population: 147 householders had starved to death, 92 had been forced to sell all their land and 38 more had fled.33
To cope with the Kan'ei famine, Iemitsu convened a series of emergency meetings with officials from the regions around the capital to discuss appropriate measures. At the most basic level, he set up food kitchens and shelters for the starving, and instructed all daimyō and city magistrates to do the same. He also authorized magistrates to release rice held in the government's granaries both to the starving and to farmers who lacked seed grain, and he ordered daimyō residing in Edo as part of the sankin kōtai system to return to their domain and organize famine relief. Most striking of all, he forbade daimyō to impose labour services on their peasants without government permission, and he drastically reduced the state's tax demands. The outstanding records of one village showed that it paid to the central government 23 per cent of its total production in 1636, but 21 per cent in 1640, 11 per cent in 1641 and only 6 per cent in 1642.34
Despite all these prudent measures, food prices continued to rise and Iemitsu therefore ordered farmers to plant only staple crops (for example, no tobacco and other cash crops could be planted as long as the famine lasted); and prohibited the use of rice to make sake. His officials erected notices all over the country urging farmers to be frugal, to continue tending their fields, and to bring their crops to market. In July 1642, when he received accusations that certain granary officials and rice merchants were withholding rice reserves in the hope of getting a better price, Ietmitsu had eight of them executed, required four others to commit suicide and exiled many more after confiscating their property. The hoarding ceased. The shogun also issued a stream of other economic legislation: the peasants of each village would be held collectively responsible for paying its tax quota, so better-off farmers must help the rest; any abandoned smallholding could be confiscated to the common good; roads and bridges had to be maintained to expedite the transport of foodstuffs to famine areas; ‘because of the poor harvests, people are suffering extreme poverty so daimyō should be careful to avoid measures that would make their situation even worse’. When the lord of Aizu nevertheless provoked a peasant uprising, Iemitsu immediately confiscated his fief.35 Iemitsu's comprehensive response to the famine also included legislation that limited the ability of vassals to organize collective protests against abusive lords, and made petitioning higher authorities a capital offence. Henceforth discontented vassals of an abusive daimyō had recourse to only one ‘safety valve’: they might migrate collectively to a neighbouring domain, a procedure known as chōsan ikki, ‘organized flight’.36
Iemitsu's raft of proactive measures seems to have worked. Although Japan, like other areas in the northern hemisphere, continued to suffer periodic climate adversity, after the 1640s the surviving records no longer mention people dying in the streets. Moreover, the number of revolts by vassals against their daimyō dropped from 17 between 1631 and 1640 to 9 between 1641 and 1650; while scarcely 50 chōsan ikki episodes occurred between 1640 and 1680. Yet the shogun did not rest on his laurels. To prevent any recurrence of disorders and subsistence crises, he undertook more cadastral surveys and issued a stream of further edicts in 1648–9, later known as the Kei'an Laws. Some decrees aimed at reducing conspicuous consumption. Thus townsmen must not build three-storey houses, use gold in their homes (either in the structure or in household articles), ride in palanquins or wear wool capes, and their servants must not wear silk. Even the fabric used to make men's underwear was regulated (no silk!).37 Daimyō, for their part, must not commission elaborate woodcarvings, metal ornaments, lacquered mouldings or lattice work for their dwellings; they should serve only modest meals, accompanied by a small (prescribed) amount of sake. In short, the shogun ordered: ‘Do not have a liking for articles which you do not need, that is, articles other than military equipment. Do not indulge in personal extravagance. In all things, be frugal.’ Iemitsu left no doubt concerning the rationale for all this: at a time of general crisis, he stated, it was imperative to conserve resources. ‘Unless you are generally frugal, you will not be able to govern the country. If the superiors indulge increasingly in luxury, the land tax and corvées of their subordinates will increase and they will be in distress.’38 Iemitsu also sponsored public works that increased food production (especially canals, land reclamation and irrigation schemes: the annual rate of construction doubled after the 1640s) and set up a system of emergency loans that were immediately available to daimyō in the wake of a natural disaster (whether fire, flood, earthquake or volcanic eruption) and repayable in easy stages.39
The Kei'an Laws of 1648–9 also micromanaged everyday behaviour. The shogun instructed villagers to arise early each morning to cut grass and pull weeds, to cultivate fields all day, and to spend their evenings making ropes and sacks. They should eat only barley and millet, except on a few specified holidays, leaving the rice they produced to pay their taxes; they must drink neither sake nor tea; they should plant trees around their house to supply firewood; and their toilets should have ample storage for human waste to provide fertilizer for their crops. Other articles dealt wit
h the care of livestock, filial piety, health care and the need for all men to marry and procreate (the laws designated bachelors as ‘bad villagers’ and authorized farmers to divorce wives whom they deemed lazy). Others still repeated earlier legislation to limit peasant spending: farmers could not wear silk (even if they produced and wove the thread) or wear clothes dyed in patterns; only headmen could wear cotton rain capes and use umbrellas (everyone else must use straw capes and hats); and the ban on the consumption of tobacco, tea and sake became permanent.40
These energetic reactions demonstrate what a clearheaded early modern ruler could attempt and achieve in the face of a major catastrophe. Moreover, the shogun's example spread to daimyō fiefs. Thus, after the peasant rebellion at Aizu in 1642 (page 494 above), Iemitsu transferred the fief to his own half-brother, Hoshina Masayuki, who immediately imitated the shogun's policies. First, Hoshina initiated a new survey of the rice-producing capacity of each village, eliminating land made barren by floods or landslides. Second, he granted tax relief to villages whenever their crops failed, and he reduced the overall tax rate ‘in order to help those whose need is greatest and to prevent peasants who might otherwise default from being forced to become indentured servants’. Third, Hoshina established funding agencies that made loans (some of them interest-free) to villagers in distress or to outsiders wishing to settle in the fief. Finally, he sponsored land-reclamation schemes that added substantially to the areas under cultivation. Thanks to these measures, between 1643 and 1700 the population of Aizu – a fief with some 200 villages – rose by 24 per cent, and although the tax yield rose by 12 per cent, the average tax per capita fell by 11 per cent.41
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