In these circumstances, European visitors got a much warmer greeting than they had received in China. The Chinese had wanted to quarantine them, like an infection. The Japanese, as soon as they realized the mighty powers of these strangers—their ability, for example, to shoot down birds in flight—took them in with open arms and vied with one another to learn their secrets. They also sought to trade with them, because the gains were substantial. And the Europeans, on their side, seeing an opportunity to plant themselves in this welcoming society and get rich, scurried to make themselves useful. These wonderfully exotic Japanese had good tradables and placed an inordinately high value on European things and a foolishly low value on their own. Two worlds embraced, and each thought itself fortunate and the other generous.
JAPAN AND KOREA, C. 1850—THE END OF TOKUGAWA AND, BEGINNING OF MEIJI
The Japanese islands constituted a little world of trading and competing urban centers, semi-autonomous provincial units (the han), and offshore islands that nevertheless lay inside the wall of isolation.
The Japanese were learners because they had unlimited aspirations. Their mythology told of a ruler descended from the sun goddess and a land at the center of creation. They thought of themselves as a people specially chosen, as warrior-dominators with all of East Asia as legitimate domain.* They had long been culturally subordinate to China, takers rather than givers, students rather than teachers. Their ideographic writing and writing implements came from China; much of their language as well.† Their knowledge of silk, ceramics, and printing, their furnishings and the style of their paintings, their Buddhist beliefs, their knowledge of Confucianism—all from China. Yet learning never made them feel smaller; on the contrary, they thought themselves inherently superior to the Chinese.5
So, when the Japanese encountered the Europeans, they went about learning their ways. They copied their arms; they imitated their timekeepers; they converted in large numbers to Christianity. And still felt superior.
The vogue for Christianity seemed destined to sweep all. The new faith had much success among local rulers, and even more among the marginal members of a hard, edge-of-subsistence population. These were classical conversion strategies: get the leaders to come along and let them compel their subjects; or give love and nourishment to those in need of moral and material support. Some daimy (rulers of han) and samurai (members of the warrior aristocracy) became Christian out of conviction. Christianity offered a comfort and spirituality missing in traditional rites and gestures. Others converted for practical reasons: Christianity provided a channel to European trade and tech nological assistance in a tough political arena. For a time, even the topmost leaders, Oda Nobunaga (dominated 1568-82) and then Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1586-98), went along.
It couldn’t last. Older religious interests gnawed at this tolerance and planted seeds of suspicion about the motives of these foreign intruders. Their charges were reinforced by the innuendoes of non-Catholic rivals of Spain and Portugal—the Dutch of course—who painted Roman missionary activity as preparation for Iberian political and commercial ambitions. And truth to tell, Portuguese and, even more, Spanish captains and merchants gave color to these fears by their boastful and minatory behavior. They had picked up bad habits and sharp tongues to match in the Americas, the Philippines, and the Indonesian archipelago.
Example: In 1597 a rich Spanish galleon fetched up on Japanese shores. The Japanese wanted to keep the cargo. The pilot appealed to the taiko Hideyoshi, chiefest of warlords, and sought to intimidate him with the might of his master King Philip. Taking out his globe, he showed the worldwide extent of Spanish dominions, from the Americas to the Philippines. How come so small a nation has such extensive dominions? asked the taiko. Oh, said the incautious seaman, His Very Catholic Majesty would first send out priests to christianize the population, and these converts would then help the Spanish forces in their conquest. With that kind of encouragement, Hideyoshi refused to return the cargo and ordered the crucifixion of twenty-six Christians, seventeen of them Japanese, the others Jesuits and Franciscans from Europe.*
Besides, in this snakepit of conflict and intrigue, the one test that the Christians could not pass was that of earthly loyalty. For the rulers of Japan, no obligation stood higher than the personal allegiance a man owed his lord; no command more absolute than that of lord to man—even to the point of taking his own life. Even a hint that suicide was advisable amounted to a death sentence. How else prove one’s loyalty than to take the hint? (The ability of Japanese superiors to compel subordinates to commit hara-kiri and their readiness to exercise this power are fairly stupefying. When warlords Tokugawa Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga were allies, Nobunaga conceived the notion that Ieyasu’s wife and his son, who was married to Nobunaga’s daughter (ergo his son-in-law), were plotting against him. Kill them both, he demanded of Ieyasu. So Ieyasu had his wife executed and ordered his son to kill himself. Which he did. It is hard to say which act was cruder: Nobunaga’s demand or Ieyasu’s obedience. But to ask is to not think like a samurai.)
Now for Japanese Christians, the highest loyalty and duty was to God. They had stopped thinking like good Japanese. So, when suspicious chieftains put their Christians to the test, the Christians failed. The Buddhists, Confucianists, and xenophobes were right. Here was a threat to Japanese values and political stability. In 1612, then, after backing and filling, Tokugawa Ieyasu banned the Christian religion. How many Japanese were Christian at that point is hard to say. Perhaps 300,000. Some estimates run as high as 700,000, in a population of 18 million.
The Japanese went about eradicating Christianity with characteristic ferocity. Nero would have been ashamed for his softness. Christians were compelled publicly to abjure. Those who refused or backslid were tortured and burned or beheaded. Those who helped missionaries, the same. The third Tokugawa shogun (army chief), Iemitsu, continuing the policy of his grandfather and father, often attended the torture sessions himself. Those who resisted were killed to the last babe in arms. One hundred thousand warriors invested some 37,000 Christian men, women, and children at Shimabara in 1637-38. Thirteen thousand of these samurai died in the bitter fighting—no quarter given or asked. Later, in 1671, the Bakufu (the Tokugawa government) made sure that no more of these Catholics would be born. All births had to be registered, from Kyushu in the south to Hokkaido in the far north, with evidence of Shinto or Buddhist religious affiliation.6 This procedure lasted over a hundred years. It was the Spanish Inquisition all over again, this time against Christians.
Root-and-branch religious persecution stood apart at first from trade relations, which proved extremely profitable, but in the long run the two came together, leading to Japan’s commercial and cultural isolation. No other way to keep Christian missionaries and propaganda out. In 1616, all foreign merchant vessels—except Chinese—were barred from ports other than Nagasaki and Hirado. Foreign residence was limited to Edo (later named Tokyo), Kyoto, and Sakai. In 1624, the Spanish were barred; in 1639, the Portuguese. The English just stopped coming. That left the Dutch.
From 1633, Japanese vessels needed official authorization to leave the country; three years later, all Japanese ships were confined to home waters. From 1637, no Japanese was allowed to leave the country by whatever means—no exit. What’s more, no return, on penalty of death. Those Japanese who had moved abroad for trade, some tens of thousands to the Philippines and Southeast Asia, were now shipwrecked in exile. Then, in 1639, after suppression of the Christians at Shimabara (what the Japanese call the Shimabara rebellion), no foreigners were permitted to come and trade, except for Koreans at a small island off Honshu (the main island), and Dutch and Chinese on the artificial island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay. Except when summoned, the Dutch were held under house arrest. They had two streets of warehouses and offices to promenade in. Their food, drink, servants, and sex came in to them from the mainland. They drank, smoked, played cards, and languished in boredom and stupefaction. Not a good assignment. The Japanese wanted it t
hat way.
All of this was part of a larger process of self-petrification. Japan had had enough of discovery and innovation, enough fire and blood. The aim now: freeze the social order, fix relations of social and political hierarchy, prevent disagreement and conflict. Lines were drawn between statuses, and status was fixed from birth. As in medieval European schemas, each group had its social function. Samurai no longer owned land and ruled over its inhabitants. Once seigneurs, they now became stipendiaries, a service aristocracy charged to serve their lord; but no more to fight, because there would be no fighting. This stripped them of their raison d’être and promoted bluster. Strutting about with two swords, long and short (no one else was permitted to wear a sword), the samurai grunted their superiority to commoners. Many did nothing but live on their stipends and cherish vainglory and a military code (bushido) that entailed strenuous self-discipline and could be turned to better ends. A few devoted themselves to domanial (han) administration and cultivated an ethic of function that would one day turn personal loyalty into national duty. The poorer ones even took up the hoe; a samurai had to eat, and like his European counterpart (the French hobereau), he felt little shame in tilling the soil.
Peasants meanwhile were to stay put and grow food; merchants would trade and make money; artisans would create objects of use and value. Unions across status lines were forbidden, and even among samurai, high were not to marry low. Order and appropriateness above all, and this meant no change: “Generally speaking in all things the ancient laws must be followed. New practices must be prohibited.” This immobilism was typically justified in Confucian terms: “It seems that in state affairs, if the laws and practices of those who founded the state are followed exactly and are not changed, the state will endure forever. If the descendants turn against the laws of their ancestors and devise new ones, the state will fall into chaos and will surely perish.”7
It was one thing to enunciate principles; another to make them work. After decades of civil war, Japan’s new dynasty was determined to stifle the merest whiff of rebellion. When Nobunaga ordered Ieyasu to kill his wife and son, he complied; and once Ieyasu triumphed in the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) and was appointed shogun (1603), he purged his enemies with equal ruthlessness. The Toyotomi family were killed to the last of kin, saving only two small children. Thousands of their allies were hunted down and executed, and their heads capped on pikes as a lesson to others.
This was get-even time. Enemy clans lost domain and income. The lucky ones were deported to distant places and given petty fiefs too meager to support their retainers. As a result, the land swarmed with masterless samurai (ronin), angry men of thirsty swords, trained only to fight and looking for trouble. Many of them did vex the Tokugawa, but so doing, declared themselves and died in the purge.* Others came into being when a daimy died without heir. For a time the shogunate, seeking to consolidate its power, happily profited from such opportunities by escheating these estates and awarding them to allies and favorites. But the ronin problem so worsened that in 1651 the Bakufu decided to recognize the legitimacy of deathbed adoptions and leave these domains in the family.†
In order to ensure order in the empire, the Tokugawa conceived an extraordinary hostage arrangement. Under a system of alternate attendance (sankin kotai) instituted in 1634-35, all daimy were required to set up residence in Edo as well as on their domain (han), and to leave wife and children there under the eye and hand of the shogunate. And although the lord himself obviously had to live and attend to business in his domain, he was required to divide his residence between there and Edo—a year alternately in each. The lord in turn brought many retainers along with him: better to have them in view than making mischief far away. In emergencies, the lord could ask for temporary leave to return to the han for a specified period. The Bakufu posted troops at key points of passage to check on all comers and make sure the trip was authorized. Dual residence plus travel cost a small fortune. Sankin kotai aimed not only at keeping an eye on these potential troublemakers but at draining their resources.*
Along with these personal controls went a deliberate exclusion of foreign things and knowledge. European books, of course, were banned, and Chinese books, a traditional source of morality and science, were now subject to careful scrutiny. Christian doctrines might lurk between their covers.
Even potentially useful things were proscribed. Of the European artifacts that had so startled and impressed the Japanese, the most potent and tempting was the gun; but this too was banned. The gun had helped settle the battles of the civil wars. So well had the Japanese taken to it that they learned to make their own and improved on European models. Indeed, at one point in the late sixteenth century the Japanese may well have been manufacturing more muskets than any single European nation.8 Once these wars were settled, however, and the nation united under a single government, guns no longer served a useful purpose. On the contrary, they could only make trouble. Worse yet, the gun was an equalizer. With it, the merest commoner could slay the finest samurai swordsman. One couldn’t have that. So, no guns.† (But the skills that went into making guns were pertinent to a whole range of machinery production and work with metals: screw fasteners, mechanical clocks, eventually rickshaws and bicycles. One Japanese scholar has argued that these guns were “the roots of Meiji technology.”)9
The other two major European imports were eyeglasses and the clock. We know little about the former, except that the Japanese learned to make them. We know more about the clocks, because many of them have survived. Here again, the Japanese proved an ability to make a foreign object their own. Unlike the Chinese, they made clocks on a large scale, and not only for princes, but for a wider clientele and in forms distinctively Japanese. Nothing like them can be found anywhere else, and no other non-European country succeeded in so indigenizing this European innovation.10 The Japanese, moreover, took to personal timekeeping as the Chinese did not. After a while, they bought no more European watches; nor did they buy watches in pairs as the Chinese did in hope that one would work; or wear them in pairs in hope that one would be right (but which one?). Rather, they miniaturized their own clocks so as to make them portable and wearable (the definition of a watch). These worked adequately.
I say “adequately” because these Japanese clocks could not be really accurate. That was because Japanese time measurement gainsaid the mechanical clock, and they were not about to change their system. The Japanese kept unequal hours—unequal as between day and night, unequal across seasons. They divided daytime and nighttime separately into equal parts, so daytime hours equaled night hours only at the equinoxes; and of course day hours were longer in summer, shorter in winter, and vice versa for night hours.
The mechanical clock, for its part, kept an equal rhythm—equal hours at all times; at least that was its intended nature. The Japanese tried to solve this dilemma by devising clocks that beat at different rhythms night and day, or by varying the display to show different hours; but these were at best makeshifts. Every setting was wrong from the start. In theory the clocks should have been adjusted daily, but this was a pain; so one corrected every two weeks—when one remembered. No matter, the time indicated was inevitably approximate.
To be sure, these approximations sufficed for social purposes. Even today, with quartz timekeepers that are accurate to seconds, we run our lives to a margin of tolerance—whether as a courtesy to other people or comfort to ourselves. Meanwhile want of precision timekeeping kept the Japanese from exploiting the clock for its scientific and technical potential. When the Japanese decided on modernization in the late nineteenth century, they early on gave up their own time and went over to equal hours. (The Europeans had done this from the start—had exchanged church hours for civil time.)
Japan’s decision to isolate itself from the outside world, to return to tradition and live in a bubble, appears no different from China’s refusal of the West. If anything, it was more adamant in its principled rigor. But how different the outcome! I
t was the Chinese who, though changing in detail and passing from one political challenge to another, remained the same in substance; and the Japanese who, clinging to old ways, so changed that they had every prospect of industrializing, even without the Western challenge, on the eve of the Meiji Restoration.
One may distinguish two aspects of the paradox: (1) the forces making for change within Japan; and (2) the effect of contacts with the outside world.
To understand the first, consider Tokugawa Japan as an approximate, rough miniature of medieval Europe. It had one overall government, the Bakufu or shogunate—something like the empire or the Roman Church, but stronger—and a host of provinces (han). These were rather like separate nations—not sovereign, to be sure, but endowed with all manner of autonomies and capable of initiatives in law and in the regulation of the society and economy. Society in turn was ordered hierarchically: at the top, a landless nobility of warrior-retainers whose stipends were defined and paid in quantities of rice; toward the bottom, a new, “rising” mercantile class. In between, the peasants, respected for the food they grew, and craftsmen, for the quality of their work. At the very bottom were the marginal, hereditary “untouchables,” in particular the eta or burakumin, contaminated by their work with dead animals or humans. (Ironically, the samurai, who did their fair share of butchery, were honored for it.)
In medieval Europe, feudal lords owned land and took most of their revenue in kind or in labor (which produced income in the form of crops). Over time, however, with the rise of a new world of cities and towns and exposure to strange things and people, the seigneurs and their ladies conceived new needs and wants. To satisfy these, landlords converted more and more of their traditional income into money, which could be spent as one pleased; hence a long-run tendency in western Europe to commute manorial dues into money rents (the key to peasant emancipation).
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