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N lHON NO REKISHI O YOMINAO SU by Yoshihiko Amino

ZOKU NIH ON NO REKISHI O YOMINAO SU by Yoshihiko Amino

Japanese original edition of both titles published by

Chikuma Shobo Publishing Co. Ltd., Tokyo

English translation rights arranged with Chikuma Shobo Publishing Co. Ltd., Tokyo,

through Japan Foreign-R ights Centre

Published by

Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan

1007 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1690

Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies

Number 74

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Amino, Yoshihiko, 1928-2004.

[Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu. English]

Rethinking Japanese history / Amino Yoshihiko ; translated and with an introduction

by Alan S. Christy; preface and afterword by Hitomi Tonomura.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-929280-70-4 (cloth: alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-929280-71-l

(pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Japan-History-To 1600. I. Christy, Alan S. II. Tonomura, Hitomi.

III. Amino, Yoshihiko, 1928-2004. Zoku Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu. English.

IV. Title.

DS850.A4513 2012

952-dc23

2011044356

This book was set in Minion Pro.

This publication meets the ANSI/NISO Standards for Permanence of Paper

for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives (Z39.48-1992).

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS

Figures Tables

PREFACE

TR ANSLAT OR'S INTRODUCTION

A Map to Amino Yoshihiko's Historical World

FOREWORD

BOOK ONE

Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

,I !APTER ONE

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society?

CIIAPTER TWO

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago

Cl I APTER THREE

Th World of the Shoen Estate and Government Lands

< IIAPTERF UR

llandits, Pirates, Merchants, and Financiers

< IIAPTER FIVE

ll1·thi11I i11g Japan 'S' So i ·ty

vii

xiii

xxxiii

vi Contents

BOOK TWO Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

CHAPTER SIX

On Writing

CHAPTER SEVEN

Commerce, Finance, and Currency

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fear and Loathing

CHAPTER NINE

Concerning Women

CHAPTER TEN

T he Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon

AFTERWORD

INDEX

123

145

171

217

245

27 7

287

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES

1. 1849 population figures for Kubota Domain.

2. Map of Outer Noto.

3. The lower Tokikune residence.

4. The upper Tokikune residence.

5. Map of Noto Peninsula.

6. Petition for lead mining submitted by

Tokikuni Tozaemon to the Maeda House.

7. Layout of Tokikuni-mura Chozaemon House.

8. Thousand-layered rice paddies (Senmaida).

A Jomon-era purse found at the Sannai Maruyama site.

10. uso Ezoana Tomb.

11. ea hell rings from Matsunoo site,

Makurazaki ity, Kagoshima Prefecture.

I • Tribute to th d main lord.

11. C,oing upriv ·r on th' I lori River in Kyoto

wit Ii 1.dt� llliHk of logs.

vii

viii Illustrations Illustrations ix

14. Horse and cart transporters. 63 35. Eta boy killing a bird. 196

15. Map of the Eastern Inland Sea. 67 36. People moving on a cart with a hut. 198

16. Map of Niimi estate and the surrounding area. 70 37. A monk of the Ji sect attempting to drown. 199

17. Map of Tosa Harbor, Lake Jiisan, and Fukushima Castle 38. An inujinin attempting to drown and two inujinin watching. 200

in Tsugaru. 80 39. An inujinin attempting to drown and two inujinin watching. 201

18. Dance hut in a center island at Seki Temple. 88 40. Three inujinin at the deathbed of Ippen. 202

19. Rented ship from the Kamakura period. 90 41. A crowd gathering at the deathbed of Ippen. 203

20. Notes on wooden tablets (mokkan) from the Shin'an wreck. 91 42. Three inujinin and a group of nonhumans and beggars. 203

21. Map of the dominance of water transportation 43. Jishii monk prosely tizing to the nonhumans. 205 by the Saionji family. 111

44. Two inujinin under the shrine gate and beggars. 206 22. Anonymous flyer (rakusho) written in katakana

45. A man sitting next to a two-story gate at Ichinomiya from T6ji Temple. 128

of Mimasaka. 206 23. A document in kanji and hiragana

46. An inujinin and a nonhuman standing next to a fence. 208 from the Toji Temple estate. 134

Letter from Lady Tamagaki received by T6ji Temple. 135 47. A group of nonhumans walking toward Ippen. 209

24.

Family registry (koseki) of Harube Village, 48. A man in boys' clothing speaking to Ippen and Jishii monks. 210

25. Mihoma Gun, Ono Province, 702. 139 49. A group of inujinin and beggars from the market at

Blue and white porcelain pots recovered from the Tomono in Shinano Province. 212

26. Shin' an wreck. 148 50. Temple visitors sleeping in mixed quarters, using a board

Coins found in the remains of Namioka Castle. 149 as a headrest. 222

27.

A market scene from The Picture Scroll 51. Women in travel attire. 223

28. of the Holy Man Ippen. 154 52. An obese female financier. 232

29. Shamaness and a board game from The Picture Book 53. Playgirls (asobime) at riverside. 234

of Hungry Ghosts. 163 54. Rice seller and bean seller. 242

30. A man with a mask from The Songs of Seventy-one Amino Yoshihiko 277 Tradesmen. 165

31. An inujinin destroying the Tomb of Honen. 182

32. Beggars from The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen. 184 TABLES

33. Released prisoners (homen), with heavy beards, behind

imperial policemen (kebiishi). 191 I. I opulation of Kub ta Domain, 1849, by Occupation. 5

34. A cow herder child (ushikai warawa). 192 V1ll,1g · St,1lisli s for Fug shi and LI ZLI unti , 1735. 17

PREFACE

T he decision to publish translations of Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu and

Zoku Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu was made during the summer of 1996.

Funded by the Japan Foundation, Professor Amino was coming to the

United States in the fall of that year to offer lectures and seminars at four

institutions: the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Chicago,

Princeton University, and the University of Michigan. At the University of

Michigan, Professor Amino was going to offer a three-day mini-course on

"Outcastes and Boundaries: Social History of Premodern Japan." Accompa

nying Professor Amino as translator was Alan S. Christy. Discussions about

publishing the lectures and chapters of Zoku Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu

quickly evolved into an agreement to publish both of Amino's books. T he

details were finalized and contracts were signed in the summer of 1997.

Here we are fourteen years later, and I can say for certain that this trans

lation project would not have begun without the visit of Professor Amino to

the United States, and the project would never have come to fruition without

the dedication and perseverance of a number of people. Logistically, I must

begin by thanking Professor Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, who first suggested

bringing Professor Amino to the United States. Our institutional collabo

rators, James George S. Andre at the University of Chicago, Mack Horton

and Andrew Barshay at the University of California, Berkeley, and Martin

Collcutt at Princeton University, coordinated the schedule and helped create

a busy but meaningful trip for Professor Amino. In getting the necessary

Preface xi

funding and organizing the event, Lori Coleman of Michigan's Center for

Japanese Studies exuded her usual administrative excellence. Leslie Pincus

helped by writing a letter of support to the Japan Foundation. Brett John

son both oversaw the visit and wrote an outstanding article about Professor

Amino in The Journal of the International Institute. 1

I must give additional thanks to Martin Collcutt, who took the time

to read through the translation. He caught errors and omissions, made sug

gestions, and argued for switching the order of Amino's Foreword and the

Translator's Introduction. His comments were accepted without reservation.

This is a much better book because of his efforts.

Of course, no translated book should be published without including

the original illustrations, and Professor Amino's books happened to have a

rather large number of them. This meant someone had to track down copy

right owners, purchase high-resolution electronic scans or glossy prints,

obtain permission letters, request credit lines, and secure addresses for

deposit copies. Ms. Takei Masako in Tokyo graciously accepted our request to

perform this time-consuming and intricate task, an additional responsibility

to her work at Monumenta Nipponica. It took her months of intensive labor

over two years to obtain everything, but the finished product was a remark

ably detailed, organized photo album of illustrations with permission let

ters, captions, and copyright owner information. As a result of her work, this

book has wonderful illustrations of Amino's text. There is no way to thank

Ms. Takei sufficiently. This book is in large part a product of her efforts.

In making illustrations possible, we also express our appreciation to

Azumi Ann Takata. The captions and credit lines of the illustrations and the

addresses of the copyright owners were, of course, in Japanese. Ann trans

lated them into English or romanized them. Her work was invaluable for

page layout.

Sue TeVrucht handled page design and layout and cover design, and she

has been there from the beginning. Her patience over prolonged lapses in

work and during rounds and rounds of corrections is greatly appreciated.

Sh is an incredibly talented designer, and I know that Professor Amino

would have loved the cover design. We are also indebted to Sue for redraw

ing all th map beautifully and for substituting Japanese place names in

I l\11·11 Joh11"'"• "Ymhll11ko A1111110\ Conl('nliou� I lislory: Emperor and Outcastes in Medieval l,q,,111, • /111· /11111t111/ 11/ 1/11· /111,•11111111,1111/ /11,111111,· � I (l',111 1996). Wl·hsit : h11p://hdl.h,111dlc 111'1/ 1111,'/ 1111 I ,011 'H IIIHI I 1011

xii Preface

kanji with their romanizations or translations. Thanks also go to the indexer, Pamela Herzog.

Last but not least, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Alan S. Christy for

his excellent translation. From the start, Professor Amino was very happy

to be working with Alan, and the wonderful dynamic between the two was

evident during the visit to the United States. Prior to his death, Professor

Amino had received comments on how accurate and readable Alan's trans lation was. I think I am not wrong in saying how much the entire Japanese

studies community has looked forward to the publication of this important

work of translation. We all thank Alan for bringing this to reality.

In looking back over the decade and a half that have passed since the

project's inception, I admit that there were times of doubt and frustration

and even a dark sign of possible demise. But Bruce Willoughby, Execu tive Editor of the Center for Japanese Studies Publications Program, stood

with me and just wouldn't let the project die. He has spent hours and hours checking words and paragraphs and pages. He spent more time proofreading

text for this volume than any other. He, along with the others, is a part of

Rethinking Japanese History.

This book is part of the John Whitney Hall Book Imprint series, and we

again thank the late Mrs. Robin Hall for her generosity in creating this series

in our Publications Program. We are grateful for the financial and institu

tional help we have received from the Japan Foundation and the University

of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. Finally, I wish to close with an expression of deep appreciation to

Mrs. Amino Machiko, Professor Amino's lifelong companion who trav

eled with him to the United States in 1996 and in 2004, shortly after Profes

sor Amino's passing, entrusted me with his photo to be placed on the book

jacket. Many more years have passed since then, and I am very thankful for

her immeasurable patience. I am pleased to present this book to her, at last, and to commemorate the indomitable spirit of Professor Amino and the

indelible influence his scholarship has had on all of us.

Hitomi Tonomura

Ann Arbor, 2011

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

A Map to Amino Yoshihiko's

Historical World

Amino Yoshihiko was one of the most distinguished and recognizable names in the study of Japanese history for nearly a quarter century. His area of expertise was medieval history, but since the late 1980s he expanded his work

to include the entire span of time from the prehistoric to the early modern eras. What enabled him to make his mark and then sustained him outside his area of specialization was a trenchant critique of the prevailing wisdom and

practices of the study ofJapanese history in Japan. After he exploded onto the

academic stage in 1978 with his groundbreaking Muen, kugai, raku (Discon nectedness, Public Space, and Markets), Amino produced an enormous vol

ume of books, essays, and interviews in which he consistently attacked both

the narratives and presumptions of mainstream Japanese historiography. By

the mid-1990s, Amino's works and stature were so huge that bookstores fre

quently devoted entire shelves in their history sections to his work. Despite nll of that published work and his profound impact on the field, however, very

I it tie of his work has been translated into English for audiences outside Japan.

111e book that you now hold in your hands is a translation of a work

publi hed in two volumes in the mid-1990s in which Amino took his fight for ,1 n 'W vi ion of Japanese history to the lay reader. When he approached me

.1hout translatin his w rk, w both agreed that these two volumes, with their 1111 •11 I· I au Ii 'IK • of nonsp' ialists, w re likely to be easier to translate and

would 1 •,, Ii., h10,1d •1 ,llldi •11 • than a hi rhly s1 ializ d book on medi val

),q1,111 �111 It .,� A/11n1, A11gu1, 1uA11. Ulti111n1 ·ly, w • hop· that a translation

Ill

xiv Translator's Introduction

would serve a similar purpose to its intent in Japanese: to introduce to a lay

audience a radically new vision of how to approach the study of the past in

Japan. Ideally, it would also spur its non-Japanese readers to question some

of the fundamental premises of their own histories.

The original two volumes were compilations of five lectures. Since each

chapter was originally a stand-alone lecture, the present volume is probably

best approached as a collection of essays instead of a continuous narrative.

Nevertheless, when brought together, it was clear that each volume had an

underlying theme that distinguished it from the other. The chapters that

compose book one are held together by means of their "maritime view" of

the expanse of Japanese history. These chapters emphasize movement, the

creation of transport routes and interregional networks, and nonagricultural

production. The chapters that compose book two share a concern for his

torical ethnography of sacred and profane space. These chapters emphasize a

reevaluation of the status and functions of people who have been either mar

ginalized or effaced by mainstream historiography. 1 In both books, Amino's

goal was to raise a number of commonsense assumptions about the Japanese

past, to show that these were untenable in light of the actual historical evi

dence, and to stimulate his audience to fundamentally rethink their assump

tions not only about the past but about what it means to be Japanese today.

If there is any serious obstacle to making this book intelligible to a non

Japanese audience, it is that many may fear that the assumptions (and their

implications) that Amino attacks are largely unfamiliar and irrelevant to

Western readers. The major task of this introduction, then, is to enumerate

those assumptions, make clear the kinds of conclusions they support, and

indicate how Amino's criticisms of historiography may also prove suggestive

to those whose main interests are in histories other than Japan's. Fortunately,

I believe the reader will find that many of those assumptions will prove to

be not uniquely Japanese. Indeed, they resemble many of our own common

place assumptions about the process of history. As I see it, Amino's criti

cisms are basically of two kinds: ideological and procedural. In other words,

some of the assumptions Amino attacks have to do with ideas about what the

1. Book two (Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu [Rethinking Japanese History] [Tokyo: Chikuma shob6]) was in fact the first to be published, in 1991, while book one (Zoku Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu [Rethinking Japanese History Again] [Tokyo: Chikuma shob6]) appeared in 1996. l reversed the order in the translation because I felt that book one had more of the character of a survey and book two was more akin to a series of case studies. I anticipate that readers who are unfamiliar with Japanese history will find it easier to understand Amino's work if they enter it through the survey portion.

Translator's Introduction xv

past was like and how it relates to the present (the ideological assumptions)

and others have to do with how one actually studies the past (the procedural

assumptions). If the reader keeps these in mind, he or she will find it much

easier to follow the train of Amino's narrative and feel the impact of his evi

dence and conclusions.

THE AGRICULTURAL IDEAL

Let us begin with one of the most central assumptions about Japanese history :

the idea that the most important and fundamental activity in Japan prior to

the modern period was agriculture. The idea is that Japan has always been

an agricultural society in which the vast majority of the people were farmers

(u ually called peasants and estimated to have constituted about 80 percent

of the population) who lived in rural communities and paid taxes to the gov

l'rn ment in the form of harvested crops. Supporting this idea are such facts

,IS (1) the vast majority of official documents that survive from the past are

u>ncerned with land and agriculture, (2) native religious practices (Shinto)

,1 re deeply related to agricultural cycles, and (3) the premodern ruling class

valorized agriculture as the fundamental moral activity (after governance,

of ourse). In other words, it appears that classic historical (documents) and

,111thropological (studies of native beliefs) evidence are both nearly over

whelmed with references to agriculture. Moreover, the statements of moral

ists, philosophers, and petitioners of the past seem to be in near universal

.,grcement as to the ideological centrality of agriculture.

uch evidence is also reinforced by common assumptions as to what

l on 'titutes the modern condition: a radical break from the past that pro

du cd industry, commerce, urbanization, mass society, and the breakdown

fll ,1 nsensus on morality. If the modern era is marked by the rise of indus-

11 y, then the premodern era, we are inclined to believe, must have been its

e1pposite: agricultural. If the modern era is defined by a general obsession

wtlh ornmerce and currency, then the premodern age must have been a

11111 • wh n people were largely self-sufficient and bartered to meet their other

tll'l·ds. Ir the modern era is the age of great cities and rural depopulation,

t lH·11 pr ·modern lifi must have been overwhelmingly rural, with the majority

fll 11rn1 k living in small, mutually upporting (or stifling) communities. If

1111· 1110d ·, n •ra is th( h(yday of th ma ,c (with universal education, mass

, 11111111u 111 ,ti 1011, ,11HI 111,1ss l rnwl), l hl'n l he I re modern w rid mu, t hav

xvi Translator's Introduction

been composed of relatively isolated communities whose illiterate inhabit

ants lived in ignorance of the outside world. And if the modern age is a time

of relativism and ideological diversity, then the premodern past must have

been an era of philosophical absolutism and conformity. Thus, not only does

most evidence suggest that the premodern past in Japan was agricultural,

but, given our tendency to view modernity and premodernity as opposites,

we are inclined to find in the premodern past evidence of the opposite of our

present lives.

These assumptions about the difference between the modern present

and the premodern past are largely legacies of nineteenth-century European

thinking about what made "the West" great, and justified in its colonial

conquests. These oppositions were seen as reflecting real differences between

the "industrial" West and the "agricultural" East. Married to ideas about the

evolution of human societies, the difference could also be phrased as that

between the "progressive" West and the "stagnant" East. The "humanitarian"

project of the colonial powers was to free their subjects from the bonds of

premodern stagnation and raise them on the evolutionary scale to an indus

trial present. Lest we see this as merely a nineteenth-century conceit, a simple

scan of any daily newspaper, popular magazine, or television newscast in the

United States today will quickly reveal that this basic view of the world is

alive and well.

But how did Amino's Japanese readers, people who would have been

classed as members of the "stagnant" East, come to embrace these Euro

American beliefs? The answer is to be found in the ways in which the Japa

nese made sense of their country's success as the only non-Western nation

to successfully industrialize and modernize in the first half of the twentieth

century. There are many elements to this story. We might first note that with

the creation of Western-style universities in the late nineteenth century the

disciplines and methodologies embraced by these institutions were explicitly

Western. Studying a discipline such as history meant studying the great texts

of Western historiography and historical theory and learning to apply their

insights to the study of Japan. From the beginning, therefore, the study of

history in modern Japan has been guided by the basic assumptions of mod

ern European historiography that were generated during the age of high

imperialism.

Next, we might note that there was a strong inclination on the part of

the modern Japanese state, which came into being after the Meiji Restora-

Translator's Introduction xvii

tion toppled the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, to differentiate itself from the

regime that preceded it. As the modern state mobilized its people and strove

to inculcate in them a sense of Japan's modern destiny, the basic Western

historiographical notion about premodern societies, applied to Japan's recent

past and the soon to be colonized Asian present, became a way to measure

the progress of modern Japan. An emphasis on Japan's overwhelmingly agri

cultural past would serve to accentuate just how far the country had come

in a short time and thus give modern Japanese a sense of national pride. At

the same time as the modern present was valorized at the expense of the pre

modern past, there were many who switched poles and castigated the present

with a vision of a healthy past. Here, too, standard Western ideas about the

agricultural character of premodern life prevailed. In this view, the mod

ern present had produced industry, mammoth cities, war, and destruction,

and ultimately alienation from one's true cultural identity. For such critics

of Japanese modernity, the notion of a premodern agricultural past offered a

vision of community, self-sufficiency, and a true cultural identity.

In sum, Amino's Japanese audience was inclined to believe that the

modern present and the premodern past are nearly opposites and that the

modern present is industrial while the premodern past was agricultural.

Many non-Japanese readers will find that this view is also deeply ingrained

in themselves. If we recognize the power of this idea we are likely to find

it stunning that Amino takes it on as one of the main ideas that must be

debunked. How does he do that? Without giving it away (I'll let Amino do

that), I want to foreshadow his methods. Amino does not do this with a sim

pleminded numbers game. He does not claim that agriculture was an unim

portant activity and peasants a minority. What he does is draw our attention

to the ways in which our assumptions of an agricultural past blind us to the

rnmplexities and diversity of that past. He does not tell us that people in

rnral communities failed to grow crops, but he forcefully argues that agri

l u It ure was not the only dimension in their lives. The problem is one of the

degree to which we are captured by the terms we use. Amino points out how

h,1r I it is for most of us to picture someone we call a peasant also engaging

111 maritime commerce, proto-industrial production, or financial activities.

I .,1 rgc ale tatistics may lead us to believe that most people were engaged

111 agri ullur m t f the time, but when we let statistical generalization

101 c from si 1hl nll n tivity n t sub urned in that category, we have lost sight

of ,1 1 -.d ,111d import,1111 s ·t of a livitics fr m the pa l. ln ther words, the

xviii Translator's Introduction

agricultural assumption leads to a sterile, homogenized view of the past, with all nonagricultural activity being marked as "exceptional" and "abnormal." This is why, as the reader will discover, Amino repeatedly stresses that not all villagers were farmers.

Amino also undermines the agricultural ideal by homing in on its pre- sumptions of self-sufficiency and immobility, as these are represented by t�e ideal of the rural community. The idea of an unadulterated rural commumty has had a central place in most modern imaginings, as it has in Japan. The notion supports two powerful desires: that there be communities in which people create and sustain long-term interpersonal relationships and tha�, in being self-sufficient, they are free from outside contamination. The outlmes of this my th of rural communities become clear when we recognize that the my th was constructed as an explicit opposite of images of the city. Cities are seen as diametrically opposed to rural communities because they are places where people are alienated and there is constant influx of people and goods from the outside (making them places of"contamination"). There�ore, nationalist ideologues almost alway s place the ideal of pure self-sufficient, rural communities at the heart of their imagery.

Amino destroy s this illusion by undermining the notion of a pure, self sufficient community. Such a community, he insists, never existed. Even the prehistoric Jamon- era inhabitants of the islands ( he tells us in his maritime survey of Japanese history) engaged in constant, wide-ranging trade that both covered the archipelago (see his discussion of obsidian production) and spanned the East Asian oceans. Thus, the reader of this book will find that Amino's attention is consistently drawn to movement-networks, routes, and circulations-and exchange- of goods, peoples, and cultures. In that regard, he draws a distinction between administrative labels and popular presumptions, on the one hand, and actual practices on the other (see chap ter one). Early modern government labels, which designated all settlements without samurai as "villages," had more to do with the attempt to realize an ideological system than with a reflection of actual practices. These labels are compounded by contemporary popular assumptions about what consti tutes " backwater" places. For Amino, the terms rural and urban have little to do with scale and every thing to do with the character of daily life. An urban settlement is inescapably part of a circulation network. It is a place where exchange is a fundamental activity, where production is premi ed upon consumption elsewhere, and where equivalences between thing arc det rmined. Amino characterizes as urban town after town that most J a pa

Translator's Introduction xix

nese would think of as hopelessly isolated and miniscule. He highlights the vast networks and constant mobility that he believes animated the Japanese past. With the proliferation of urban nodes in a network covering the islands, even the images of rural communities where agriculture was dominant are unstable, for the "city" is no longer far away.

THE MAINSTREAM AND THE MARGIN

Amino's work has long been focused on those people and classes that have generally been disregarded in the mainstream histories. These include itiner ant merchants, miners, gamblers, pirates, wandering entertainers, slaves, ser vants, prostitutes, and outcasts. From the perspective of mainstream political histories, these were not the people who shaped the maj or political trends of Japanese history. They were the nameless many who were the object of gov ernance. For others, particularly those on the Left who are concerned with class struggle in Japanese history, these people are easily lumped into the category of the oppressed or else dismissed as residing outside the bounds of the maj or class conflicts between the ruling warriors and subjected peasants. Many have dismissed Amino as excessively concerned with marginal peo ples and experiences. They are willing to grant him some degree of accuracy in his deception of marginal ty pes and even allow that those voices might be legitimately recovered. But they accuse him of exaggeration in his insistence on their importance in Japanese history.

However much Amino argues that their experiences have been effaced by an overemphasis on the majority, his goal is not to simply recover their voices. His argument is much more ambitious. In placing these "marginal" types at the center of his view of Japanese history, Amino wishes to show us how the so -called mainstream is constantly engaged in a struggle with that which it wishes to place on the margins. It is the struggle that places some at the center and some on the margins, and both are equally constituted as such hy that struggle.

In this sense, Amino argues, we cannot understand the mainstream imply by the tories it tells itself, stories in which those on the margins are

dl' ·m 'd unimp rtant as to be invisible. Instead, he urges us to recognize t Ii.it the story of how th marginal ca me to be marginalized is absolutely 1 l'lltral to tlw story of how th· nt r be ame entralizcd. For Amino, the 11n1 111,llhl·111l'1/i11.1111'tn·.1111 is not 11;1turally so. It was histori ally onstitut d

xx Translator's Introduction

as such out of political and social struggle. As we live today in the society that resulted from the victory of the "now-center," the history of the margin alized, made to confront its opponent once again, offers us a rare opportu - nity to critically reevaluate what we have become. Amino tells his story in a variety of ways, for example, as a struggle between an "agricultural funda mentalist" and a "mercantilist commercial" ideology, with the latter being the worldview of those who would be marginalized. But while we might find heroic resistance in the stories of the despised outcast Amino refuses to romanticize. At one point, he strikingly indicates that there were serious "despotic" tendencies on the losing side as well.

At� more general level than the battle between the proponents of agri culture and commerce, Amino urges us to pay attention to what he calls "the world of relations" (yuen) and "the world of nonrelations" (muen). Again, he urges us to recognize that the marginalized people of the nonrelated world were not just passive victims who were excluded by the mainstream. Instead, he insists that they actively rejected the mainstream. A word is surely in order here about this key concept in Amino's work.

When explaining this concept to nonspecialists, Amino refers first to a phenomenon of the early modern period: the "relationship-ending temple" (enkiri-dera). These were Buddhist temples to which those seeking to sever a defining relationship in their lives could flee for asylum. Women who wanted to divorce their husbands (a right they did not have under the legal system) could flee to a relation-severing temple and thereby force their husbands to divorce them. Servants who wanted to break a relationship of servitude with their masters could do so as well. In many cases, these places functioned very much like Catholic churches in Europe: criminals who managed to escape to churches could claim asylum. The principle, in both Japan and Europe, was that these were places into which secular power did not extend. They were places through which one cut off one's mainstream relations in the world. When one entered these spaces, one was seen as unrelated, no longer defined by standard social relations.

Amino argues that these were not simply safety valves but emblematic of the social organization of space. In his view, we need to understand societ ies in which such spaces existed as composed of a patchwork of spaces and peoples, some of which were fully beholden to society and some of which were "free" from social constraints. Resisting such places as free spaces, Amino asks us to reexamine the activities that were linked to th rn and to rethink the meaning of freedom.

Translator's Introduction xxi

There is, for many, a stunning reversal at work here, for the people popu lating these free spaces were precisely those who could be labeled "outcast" by the mainstream and often called themselves "slaves of the gods." Ironi cally, the spaces of freedom are those in which the socially subordinate (such as women, servants, and slaves) and the socially despised (outcasts, wander ing entertainers, and prostitutes) moved and lived. In the end, we are left with a dilemma that cannot be resolved in our contemporary imaginative framework, for the people of the free places were both bound and superior. Viewed in this way, these remain social phenomena that we simply cannot understand. Amino's provocative juxtaposition of freedom and servitude in relation to differentiated social functions ultimately calls on us to reject such binary notions and radically reimagine that past.

CONTINUITY AND JAPANESENESS

Amino received his presecondary education prior to 1945 in the years when Japanese were taught (at the insistence of the Ministry of Education) that their country had existed since time immemorial as a unified and homo geneous nation under an unbroken line of divine emperors and distinct from all other peoples. Since the war, the worst excesses of this historical worldview-such as the insistence on the divinity of the emperor-have been removed from the curriculum. But there is still a strong tendency to view Japan as having been culturally and racially homogeneous for thousands of years and to see the distant past of archaic Japan as smoothly continuous with the present. Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro infamously articulated this vision of Japan when he argued that the root of America's economic woes l.,y in the nation's radical diversity. For Nakasone and many other cultural 1 onservatives, the key to understanding Japanese success in the 1980s was t h,1t the country always remained essentially Japanese, unchanged since the d.1wn f time. The guarantee and proof of that durable national character, for t ltcsc people, is in the unbroken line of emperors.

Amino's work throws buckets of cold water on this notion. Beginning 11 h the name Ni hon (the Japanese word for Japan), Amino insists on its his-

111111l y. 'I hat i , he in isl that the word has not meant the same thing-either 111111·pt 11n I ly or g ·ographi ally at all time . While the name may have been 111111·d 111 thl' .,ix tit o, M'Wllth ·ntury, Jnpan, as we think fit t day, did not 111111· 11110 lw1111• 1111111 tlw 111,wtl'l'lllh 11·111111 y. 'l'o dcmonstrute th, di(Ti•r•n ',

xxii Translator's Introduction

he painstakingly shows us how the borders have shifted over time and how

the idea of Japan as a kind of social-political unit also changed dramatically.

One of my favorite moments is when Amino inverts the famous legends of

the origins of the name Nihon. Since he does not spell this out, assuming the

familiarity of his audience, I will do so here.

The word nihon literally means the "origin of the sun." Popular lore in

Japan portrays this name as the invention of a proud people one-upping the

Chinese empire: China may be the central kingdom, but we are the source

of the sun! Chinese and Korean scholars, particularly since World War II,

have been known to claim that the name was invented in their countries as a

gesture of respect that was to be betrayed in subsequent histories of Japanese

violence against them. Amino's view is closer to those of the Chinese and

Korean scholars, but he focuses on its meaning within the islands. Rather

than seeing origin of the sun as a term of overweening pride, Amino sees it as

the moment when a ruling class in the Japanese islands forthrightly recog

nized the centrality of China in all things. For Amino, "origin of the sun" is

not a claim to priority but simply a statement of direction: Japan is to the east

(where the sun rises) of China (the point of reference for all things). There are

important, sometimes subtle differences between Amino's story and those

told popularly in Japan, China, and Korea. His view is the opposite of those

in Japan who see "origin of the sun" as a proud rejection of China's claim

to centrality and superiority. Unlike the Chinese and Korean stories, which

give agency in the act of naming to the "superior and civilized continentals,"

Amino sees the origin of the name in the islands as a sign that it was the

people of the islands who willingly recognized that superiority themselves; it

was not foisted upon them by haughty, self-important people.

Amino's vision ofJapan's geopolitical past is one that sees constant frac

turing, realignment, conquest, and fragmentation yet again. The only way

to accurately convey this geographical instability is to buck convention and

give up using the name Japan when talking about the past. As long as people

in the present think of Japan as naturally conforming to the present borders

with its current number of islands, using the name Japan will simply invite

confusion. The careful reader of this translation will notice that I have been

at pains to retain Amino's avoidance of the name Japan, especially when he

is discussing the time before the name Nihon was invented (at which times

he resolutely refers to the place as "the islands").

Some readers will note that while Amino sometimes refers to ti rn in

consistently broad strokes (often in terms of two-hundred year spans), h'

Translator's Introduction xxiii

is always agonizingly specific as to place. At its broadest, Amino's realm is

always culturally split between eastern Japan and western Japan. 2

At his

more specific moments, location, whether in mountains, on coasts, on plains,

near major continental travel routes, or along rivers, is crucial. At points, his

list of place names gets so detailed that I felt compelled to reduce them so as

to not spin the heads of those who are not Japan specialists.

Perhaps one of the most significant ways in which Amino upsets our

commonsense notions of what Japan is geographically is his adoption of "the

perspective of the sea," as he calls it. For too long, he argues, we have seen

Japan from a land-based perspective, one that views it as naturally isolated

as islands often are-from the rest of the world. From the land-based perspec

tive, the islands naturally cohere among themselves, apart from the Asian

mainland and the rest of the world. Of course, the history of Japan would be

contained strictly within these bounds, we are told. Japanese were cut off by

the ocean from the rest of the world, and that isolation enabled them to cre

ate a unique culture. In contrast, Amino argues that the ocean can also be

a conduit that links people. In general, water-based travel was always easier

and more fully developed in the islands than was land-based travel. People

traveled along rivers, across lakes, along the coast and across the ocean to the

Asian mainland. In fact, Amino argues that there is no real reason to believe

that the ancient "kingdom" ofWa, known to most as the name of Japan before

Nihon was invented, was restricted to the islands. In a stunning geograph

ical rereading, Amino argues that Wa was more likely an ocean-centered

polity, with settlements in the Japanese islands, on the Korean Peninsula,

and on the Chinese coast all linked politically, commercially, and culturally

by the ocean. With that claim, Amino sweeps aside decades of stale debate

about the location in the Japanese islands of the "kingdom of Wa," which

·x hanged emissaries with the ancient Chinese emperors. For Amino, the

key to understanding Wa is not to know where it was centered but the spaces

,1 ·ro s which it spread. With this change in perspective, he beckons us to

,1dopt a fluid vision of constant movement of people and goods across the

o cans, between the islands, and along rivers. He urges us to replace a static

vision with a mobile one.

A 11 in a 11, Amino forcefully argues that the belief that except for brief

1 1 •1 iods f ex hangc the people of the Japanese islands have always been

' 1\1"'1 11011 J,q1,11wst· 1111gh1 11<· 11a l11H'd lo r.111 ii northern and s uthcrn Japan, with the dividing line ,1111wwl11·11· ,1111111111 N111111y,1 '" Kyoto. ill11 lhl· J.q1,,,H',l' u111vl'11tio11 ih to ,.Ill this a divid, between 11\1 ,·,1'1 (wli.11 w,· ""' •" 111111lil ,11111 wnl hol11'1),

xxiv Translator's Introduction

isolated from the rest of the world must finally be put to rest. He argues that

we must instead recognize that the Japanese islands have always been linked

to multiple sites on the Asian continent, sites not restricted to China and

Korea but also located far to the south and north. For Amino, there is simply

no way to understand society in the Japanese islands without recognizing its

deep connection with the rest of Asia. He has a favorite illustration of this

idea, which has to do with how we draw our maps. Most maps of Japan are

framed so as to show the country surrounded only by water. Amino likes to

show his audiences a map of Japan turned so that west is at the top. The north

ern boundary of his map lies far north of Hokkaido far enough to include all

of Sakhalin. Likewise, the southern border of the map is located south of

Taiwan. In the center of this map lies not the islands, but the Japan Sea, broad

in the middle but remarkably narrow at the northern tip of Sakhalin and

the southern tip of Korea. Whenever Amino displays this map, he urges his

audience to reenvision the relationship between land and water and to see the

Japan Sea not as a vast, dividing body of water but as a kind of inland sea, like

Lake Superior. For those who recast their vision, the ocean loses its obstacle

quality and the land links come to the fore.

But a recasting of the usual geography is not the only way in which

Amino disrupts the common notion of the unity, continuity, and homogene

ity of Japan. He also pays close attention to real political divisions. For him

the continuity of the imperial throne was not meaningless-indeed, it was

more meaningful in some ways than otherwise imagined-but this continu

ity should never be mistaken for political unity. Instead, he is fond of pointing

to moments when political units formed that rejected the practical authority

of the imperial government in Kyoto. While some of these were short lived

such as the rival kingdoms formed in the tenth century by rebellions east and

west of Kyoto-others were quite durable, most notably the Kamakura sho

gunate. To emphasize the difference between the Kamakura shogunate and

the imperial government in Kyoto, Amino chooses the provocative terms

monarchy of the west (the imperial government) and monarchy of the east (the

Kamakura shogunate). While specialist scholars may be accustomed to such a

debate, this is very shocking language to a lay audience in Japan.

Amino has one further bucket of cold water for those who believe that

Japanese culture has been continuous since ancient times: his argument that

there are fundamental, radical breaks in sociocultural history. He refers to

these major transitions as periods when the relationship of humans to nature

undergoes a radical change. This is a gritty, material way of designating a

Translator's Introduction XXV

radical change in worldview. According to Amino, in certain periods prevail

ing worldviews become unsustainable and undergo radical transformations.

There are many reasons why a worldview becomes unsustainable. Some refer

to gradual changes in culture and society that eventually place earlier ways

of understanding in jeopardy. Others refer to such far-reaching changes in

human interaction with, and alteration of, the landscape that human beings

literally cannot interact with nature in the same ways as before. Whatever

the case, these major transformations may not happen overnight (he tends to

see them as occurring over a period of a century or two). But once the change

has occurred, earlier ways of viewing and living in the world become almost

unimaginable because they are so divorced from current physical and social

experience.

In his grand scheme of things, Amino locates one such fundamental

transformation in the fourteenth century in the Japanese islands. As he sees

it, people on either side of such a transformation are almost unintelligible

to each other. As he states in his foreword, the world the Japanese live in

now began in the fourteenth century. The time before that was not irrelevant,

but it cannot be understood within the conceptual framework that had its

beginning after the divide. To put it as radically as possible, modern Japanese

are far more conceptually and culturally attuned to modern Americans than

they are to their pre-fourteenth-century ancestors. The notion that a single,

unified Japanese culture made the transition unmolested and fully recogniz

,1ble across that divide is a fantasy. Moreover, to heighten our sense of what

l his means he suggests that we may be in the middle of another such long

ll'rm transformation at present. One or two hundred years hence, he specu

l.1tc , our descendants may live such utterly different lives, both physically

1 nd imaginatively, that we may be almost inconceivable to them. If they lack

historians who are sensitive to the enormity of historical change, we would

li.1 rely recognize their stories about us.

DOCUMENTS AND HISTORY

11 "lory is often seen as having a great deal in common with judicial law.

llnlh .ire con· 'rn 'd with stablishing an objective account of an event (in

ilu II Sl'.ll'lh fo1 till' "11 uth"), nnd b oth have rul f evidence that tend to

p11\il1•gc dm11111c11h l'nso11,il ll'slimo11y, parti·ularly that of y witn .. s,

111 1 l1,1v1• ,1 pl.111• 111 hnt II, httl II It 1111.1ll'ly ksl i mo11y rd,1111s too mu h pol 'ntial

xxvi Translator's Introduction

subjectivity, that is, the possibly idiosyncratic perspective of the individual.

Documents, however, are taken to constitute a kind of material and pub

lic witness and therefore are far more reliable. Of course, few historians or

judges would view all documents as inherently truthful, but the reliance on

them is nevertheless very strong.

One of Amino's most important and fruitful methodological attacks

on mainstream history in Japan is that it is far too uncritically reliant on

documents. His rereading of Japanese history is based upon his materialist

approach to documents and his generous embrace of the nondocumentary

evidence of the past provided by ethnography. By a materialist approach I

mean that Amino reads documents not just for their content but for evi

dence of how they were produced, circulated, and retained (or discarded).

For example, in chapter 6 Amino reminds his readers that Japan has three

orthographic systems (hiragana, katakana, and kanji) and that these systems

are not simply transparent renderings of meaning. Instead, the orthography

is itself a code that produces another set of meanings that accompany the

semantic meaning of the words. Take, for instance, the 1275 katakana peti

tion of the villagers of Kami village. The katakana is not a sign of the villag

ers' lack of sophistication, as Amino says he and most people once believed.

Instead when one understands the representative function of katakana one

sees that by writing the petition entirely in it the villagers may have been

signaling to their anticipated reader the immediacy of their testimony

(katakana being used to transcribe it) as well as the truthfulness of their

statement (katakana being related to speech, particularly that of the dei

ties). Likewise, the skill with which a letter is written in hiragana signals to

its reader the literary accomplishments of the writer. Beyond orthography,

Amino reminds us to pay attention to format as he notes the dizzying range

of writing styles that existed in premodern Japan.

In even more materialistic terms, Amino asks us to consider the physi

cal existence of a document. In his discussion of his investigation of the

Tokikuni family documents, he highlights for us the distinction between

documents that survived to the present because they were meant to be saved

(because they had been produced for and exchanged with the domainal lord)

and documents that survived accidentally (because they were meant to be

destroyed or recycled for other uses). Not surprisingly, Amino finds two very

different worlds represented in these sets of documents. And he finds that

mainstream historiography relies almost exclusively on documents that were

meant to survive and either ignores or discounts as aberrational the a cid '11

Translator's Introduction xxvii

tal survivals. As he is quick to point out, the mainstream historical narrative

is unsustainable when one takes "accidents" seriously.

The most serious problem with the accidentally surviving documents is

that they are at best mere traces of a world that has vanished. Disposal was

either conscious (an attempt to hide something) or incidental (lacking a dis

cernible value in keeping a document). Recovery of the consciously hidden is

the dream of every historian and so is familiar territory. But the other kind

of lost evidence relates to something far more mundane and yet difficult:

everyday life. Many of the documents found stuffed into walls, which Amino

discusses in chapter one, were of the most commonplace class: lists, receipts,

mundane notes, and such. Much like our grocery lists, laundry receipts, and

whatnot, these were items of no enduring value to the people who produced

them. After serving their original purpose, they were best used as insulation

But, like the innumerable scraps of paper we throw away today, these were

1t ·ms that filled and constituted daily life, the common ground and com

mon sense that formed the context for the remarkable "events" with which

historians deal. Although historians value "contextualization," the idea that

lttstory is the tale of "great men and great events" still holds true for many.

I he history of everyday life is a field that is still in its infancy.

Amino's concern with daily life led him to a fruitful engagement with

th nography, a field that specializes in the analysis of everyday life. The clear-

! l.'xample of Amino's use of ethnographic evidence is his use of notions of

t lil' sacred and the profane in relation to class and commerce. His rereading

11 1 the notion of pollution, a central concept of religious belief in the islands,

1 .11 the core of most of book two. It is ethnographic evidence that compels

h11n to rethink the status of the archaic and medieval groups known as non

h11111,1ns and divine slaves. It also allows him to show us how that which is

I 11w loathed was in fact once feared for its superior power. It is ethnographic

1dl·111.e related to sacred space that allows him to link marketplaces, monks,

11.I women and thereby reveal hidden circuits of exchange and production.

I 11 11 /\ 111 in pea ks about changes in "civilization" or "ethnic" history, it is

I , t l11·sl' di 111 'nsions of society and culture that he refers.

THE AUTHOR

I h I l'l'1 11·11u· ol Ww Id Wai 11, .i 11d 'SP 'Lially pr ·war and wart irn du a-

111 111 l q1i111, w.,� ll1111l.11111·11t.1I to 1111110\ 1kwlop11w11t ,1s ,1 histori,111, as it

xxviii Translator's Introduction

was for so many other postwar scholars. Born in 1928, Amino was seventeen

and on the verge of being drafted when the war ended. As he described in a

recent memoir, in the months after the defeat he immersed himself in books

on history and historiography in order to confront the momentous changes

of an uncertain future. As with so many, this study of history was critical,

one that was at least subconsciously driven by the question, "Why did we

lose?" The question could be posed in terms of defeat caused by incomplete

modernization (the "Japan was still feudal" argument), or it could be posed

in terms of a corrective to prewar Japanese ideology ("the lies my teacher told

me"). Whatever the intent of the study, immediate postwar Japan was a time

when the study of history was understood to have tremendous import for

contemporary political practice. If, as many argued, Japanese modernity was

tainted by the perdurance of premodern "feudal" characteristics, which then

gave rise to self-destructive militarism, a study of Japanese feudalism would

enlighten postwar seekers of true, modern democracy. If prewar Japanese

had been brainwashed by an educational sy stem that infused them with self

destructive my ths of emperor-centered history and divine nationhood, then

a free postwar Japan would need a people-centered, humanist history.

Amino's recollection of this time in his life is encapsulated in the title

of the introduction to his memoir of postwar historiography, "My Postwar

'War Crimes."' He recalled this as a time when, despite the belief that his

tory would reveal a new politics, it was political passion that ruthlessly drove

historical research. While in college, Amino became a leading member of the

leftist student movement. With the responsibility of a leader and in the midst

of political ferment, he spent more time in meetings, giving speeches, and

organizing on other campuses than he remembers spending in the classroom

or library. He insisted he had no regrets about having fought for "people's

history" at the time. "However," he writes, "without ever having put myself

into any physical danger, I merely went from meeting to meeting giving lip

service to 'revolutionary' things and writing stupid and embarrassing essays

about 'feudal revolution' and 'the concept of feudalism.' For the sake of my

'good name' I drove others to sickness and death. I was nothing other than a

'war criminal."' 3

Regardless of whether he was really responsible for others'

lost lives, I believe his self-accusation was primarily a charge against his hav-

3. Amino Yoshihiko, Rekishi to shite no sengo shigaku (Historicizing Postwar History W riting) (Tokyo:

Nihon edita sukuru shuppanbu, 2000), 4.

Translator's Introduction xxix

ing subordinated historical research to political ideology, precisely what the

prewar Japanese state did with its militarist indoctrination.

After graduation, Amino got a job at a research center called the Insti

tute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture, but he continued to be more

involved in the student movement and national historical association debates

than in his new position. 4 For reasons he did not make clear, he claimed that

problems he was having at the institute finally woke him up to the shallow

ness of his historical studies. With that, he dropped out of the student move

ment and the historical debates and rededicated himself to a "document by

document" study of history. It is likely that the force of his rejection of his

pre-1953 self was behind the fact that he was particularly harsh in his critique

of mainstream Marxist historiography in Japan. While Americans embraced

the labeling of Japan as feudal during and immediately after the war, it was

a term that was at the heart of Marxist historiography. And in the postwar

struggle to overturn prewar historical narratives, it was Marxist historians

who led the way. But as the struggles over a new historiography continued,

greater attention was paid to fitting Japan within the preexisting categories of

Marxist historiography than was paid to basic research. In other words, the

framework superseded the history, reducing the past to the supporting role

of mere evidence. Given Amino's attacks on historical categories and ideolo

gies, it is this aspect of Marxist historiography that continued to bother him

the most. Yet, when asked in a 1997 interview if he was no longer a Marxist,

h adamantly rejected the suggestion.

I don't think of myself as distanced from Marxism at all. When

I came to the conclusion in 1953 that everything I had done was

wrong, I struggled to return to the basics. I read all I could of medi

eval and early modern documents and of the best of modern his

tories, books by people like the legal historian Nakada Kaoru. I

also reread the entire selected works of Marx and Engels. As I did

I I l1<• tnsl_ilule was fo_�1ndcd in the early_ 1930s by Shibusawa Keiz6, grandson of the Meiji industri ,111'1 Sh1busawa b11ch1 and the m1111ster of finance in the first postsurrender Japanese cabinet. lh1• prrw,,r ins1Hute, kn wn until 1942 as the Attic Museum, had been one of the key organiza- 11011, I 11 I he native ethnology movement, which rejected the "great men, great events" version of h1,1or 11 ,ti wri1111g in favor of ethnographic histories of the "common folk." In the postwar years, 1 lw I r"I ti 1111· w." .111,1< hcd lo I he l'ishcrics Agency, due mostly to the interest in fishing history of \hth11,.1w,1 ,111d 'l'v1·1,il of 11, k1•y rnt•rnbcr�. While Amino spoke of "problems" he encountered I h,·11·, ti ", ll",11 I h,11 Ill' I"'·"'" ,·d l11, I 11111· .11 I ht• instil ulc and considered ils members, par I icularly !-.hth,".IWII I ,•111,. Ill,,.. ,·x,·,rrpl.11 y ''"'"' '·""

XXX Translator's Introduction

so, I came to see a Marx who was entirely different from the one I thought I had known. You know, Marx himself gradually changed his way of thinking. For example, when you read his Eighteenth Brumaire, you find that he was also a sup erlative critic of the "pres ent" [in addition to his historical talent]. I believe I still have much to learn from Marx, so I still call myself a Marxist.

Three years after his change of heart, the institute folded, and he spent a year, newly married, taking odd jobs until he finally landed a position teach ing Japanese history at a high school in Tokyo. Thus began the second phase of his disenchantment with the mainstream narratives of Japanese history. It was not the grind of teaching unimaginative and unmotivated students that we now commonly imagine high school teaching to be. In fact, Japanese high schools in the late 1950s and early 1960s gave their teachers time off for research. 5 But in several essays and interviews he has credited his students with asking questions that shook him out of a complacent reiteration of the standard narratives. To take one example that is closely related to the con tent of this book, while he was lecturing on the rise of the new Kamakura era Buddhist sects a student asked him why so many great religious leaders appeared in the thirteenth century. "Because it was a time of transforma tion," Amino replied, repeating the pat explanation. Unsatisfied, the student kept on. "But there were lots of other times of transformation [which did not produce great religious leaders], so why the thirteenth century?" he asked.6

With questions such as these, his high school students left him with itches that he scratched for the next thirty years.

In the late 1960s, Amino moved from teaching high school to university (at Nagoya University). His work on shoen estates from 1966 to the late 1970s was idiosyncratic, but it did not result in much notoriety. In 1978, however, he published the book that would make him famous and touch off a minor industry in historical studies: Muen, kugai, raku: Nihon chusei no jiyu to heiwa (Disconnectedness, Public Space, and Markets: Freedom and Peace in Medieval Japan). Amino's radical break with the prevailing historiography of medieval Japan was apparent in two words in the title: disconnectedness and

5. Amino published one book, a study of the Tara no sho estate, as a result _ of the research he conducted

while teaching high school (Chusei shoen no yoso [Medieval Estates m Transformat1onl, 1 lanawa sensho 51 [Tokyo: Hanawa shobo, 1966]).

. . . . . 6. Amino Yoshihiko, "Watakushi no ikikata" [My Lifestyle], tn Rek1sh1 to sh1te no sengo sl11gak11, 291.

Translator's Introduction xxxi

freedom. Against the standard characterization of medieval Japan as an agri cultural slave society, Amino argued that medieval society had a variety of "unconnected spaces" (muen no ba) that allowed for considerable free agency on the part of those whom the mainstream historians lumped together as the oppressed. Most of all, the book argues persuasively that these places and the activities that took place therein were not exceptions to the rule but were constitutive of the very fabric of economic life. Amino's argument was dis turbing to historians on both the Left and the Right. To leftist historians, his depiction of the freedom and agency of the "oppressed" seemed to deny their oppression and undermine the progressive narrative of history as a move ment from slavery to freedom. Many accused him of having an altogether too rosy vision of medieval society. To right-wing historians, Amino had shunted aside the beloved rural community as the central stage of Japanese history. He even had the audacity to claim that outcasts and degenerates were the closest associates of the emperor. There was little room in his history for heroic tales of loyal, self-sacrificing warriors and cultured, aloof courtiers.

I remember clearly my own amazement at first reading the book. When I met Amino in 1989 in a seminar at the University of Chicago, I visited him one afternoon to clear up some confusion about for whom it was that these "unconnected places" existed. My confusion turned to shock when it became dear that he saw these as places not merely for outcasts and wanderers. "This isn't just the history of a marginal few," I said incredulously. "You're telling me this is the history of the majority!" He smiled and nodded.

In the years since the publication of Muen, kugai, raku, Amino became one of the most prolific and sought-after historians in Japan. He also encour ,1gcd and trained a host of historians who are pushing his insights even fur l her. But while his "line" is becoming familiar to most readers of Japanese Ii 1slory, it still resides on the margin. I saw a perfect example of his continued 111,1rginalization in 1992. Kawai Juku, the national chain of college prepara- 1111 y schools, approached Amino about producing a series of videotapes on J.1p,1ne e history for its students. Always eager for an opportunity to take his li1slorical vision to nonspecialists, Amino quickly agreed. The tape, Japanese I /1,tory as Viewed from the Sea, was a fascinating presentation of Amino's 11 t ('11l work. But Kawai Juku never showed it to its students. Why? Amino's

11! 1t111 • of ma i nslream hi l riography was so trenchant and his rejection so l lin1 n11gh I hnt I awa i Ju ku rear d il wou Id prove counterproductive to its stu- 1111h' MOil's on lhc history portion or th •ir oil ge ntran xam . Herein

xxxii Translator's Introduction

lies the greatest obstacle to Amino's successful overthrow of the historical

myths of the mainstream. As long as those myths remain on t he colle�e

entrance exams (and the textbooks on which they are based), tea chers will

have no choice but to teach them and students will have no cho ice but to

memorize them.

FOREWORD

THE PROBLEM OF JAPANESE IDENTITY

l'he questions of who the Japanese are and where they came from became hol subjects of debate in the 1990s. For example, in September 1993 the Aus t r,dian National University in Canberra sponsored an international confer- 1 nee called Stirrups, Sails and Plows. Scholars from Australia, Canada, Great llrilain, Indonesia, South Korea, the United States, and Japan attended. The l,1panese delegation contained a good number of members, around forty, , 1th a variety of perspectives-Marxists, liberals, and conservatives-all of l10m took part in a lively debate on Japanese identity. I can neither speak

11111 understand English, so I do not know exactly what kind of argument ,1s carried on at the conference. But the debate crossed a broad spectrum of

11p1l s and fields, from reports in anthropology and archaeology to a paper ,11 I he Japanese army and "comfort women." The debate about the Japanese 1111y and rape was particularly heated.

·1 h' onference organizers gave me the topic "The Emperor, Rice, 111d Villager .. " Apparently the scholars in attendance from the West were 111111cst ·d in idcnlifying Lhe unique substance that made the Japanese so lt1I, 11•111 from th •111. 'I he I ndon sians and Koreans, on the other hand, were

1l'ly u iti ,ii ol thosl' chara terisli s of Lhc Japanese people that could 111'11'11 t "'t 11 t 1 111'I ,11 ts ,1s 1n,1ss rap· by th Japancs army. A. a r sull, Lh

l11

xxxiv Foreword

conference stimulated me to think about a number of things, my incom

plete understanding of the proceedings notwithstanding. Two years later,

the famous French historical journal Annale published its fi rst special issue

on Japanese history. No matter how late it came, this special issue was a

sign of the great interest in Japan that can be found abroad. With such

growing interest abroad, the time has come for the Japanese people to give

serious thought to who we are. We are undoubtedly being asked this in a

state of unprecedented tension. Unfortunately, I have recently come to feel

strongly that most Japanese do not accurately understand their own history

and society.

Of course, the way in which Japanese approach their own society and

history has undergone some changes. Signs of those changes were clear at

the Australian conference. But in general the dominant belief among Japa

nese is that Japan is an island nation isolated from its surroundings and

existing as a closed society. One supposed result of that isolation is that

Japan received little influence from others and developed a unique culture.

On the flip side of that coin is the belief that this culture is incomprehensible

to foreigners. Both arguments are made to support the belief that Japan is a

unique society. The next common assumption is that this culture has been

supported by agricultural production centered on rice paddies. Building on

this, the common notion holds that from the time Yayoi culture reached the

Japanese islands (about 300 B.c.) to the Edo period (1600-1867), Japanese

society was essentially agricultural. Japan only became industrial after the

Meiji period and truly so only during the period of high economic growth

in the 1960s.

The dominant view has been that simply by living in this island nation,

the Japanese-with their homogeneous and uniform language and rice as

the basis of their diet in a society based upon wet paddy agriculture-have

developed a unique culture in these islands. This view has been dominant

not only among ordinary Japanese but among the elite; since the Meiji

period, this view of Japanese society has been the basis of political and eco

nomic policy. Over time, the human sciences of history, economics, and

political science have failed to break out of the framework of this conven

tional wisdom.

But is this view of Japanese society really correct? I have had doubts

about this for some time and have made a number of statements about it.

In this book, I would like to take up a number of problem and use them t

reconsider the shape and history of Japanese society.

Foreword XXXV

THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION

In my ten years of teaching at a junior college I have encountered many sur

prises. During the roughly forty years that separate my students from myself,

the basic patterns of our everyday lives have completely changed. For exam

ple, for the past several years I have been using Miyamoto Tsuneichi's The

Forgotten Japanese in my seminar. 1

Reading Miyamoto's book with my stu

dents has alerted me to the ways in which the students and I approach even

the most basic issues from very different perspectives. This is due, I believe,

to fundamental changes in the way we live our lives rather than to superficial

differences in generational experience.

Take, as a concrete example, the word nawashiro (rice seedling). I

thought that all my students would naturally know the word. But in fact no

one did. Nor did anyone understand the word gotoku (a kind of brazier used in

traditional sunken hearths). None of them had ever seen a horse or cow used

for work. They at least knew that cows, such as Holsteins, give milk, but none

had ever seen a horse used for anything but riding, such as at a race track.

The word kattai or katai (leper) also appears occasionally in Miyamoto's

book, as does repura (leper), but none of my students had ever heard of this

disease. Even when I tried using a more common term raibyo (leprosy), none

of them seemed to grasp its meaning. Of course, they knew a variety of things

,1bout AIDS, but they knew nothing of either the word leprosy or the disease

itself. They did not know that people still suffer from it or of the discrimina

tion that accompanies it here in Japan, let alone in the rest of the world.

Confronting these differences has shown me that the relations between

Japanese society and its environment are currently undergoing a number

of drastic transformations on a variety of levels. The quality of the technol

ogy available to much of humanity at present has certainly progressed enor-

111ou ly. The very fact that humanity has extracted from nature the power

lo l'xlerminate itself possesses tremendous significance. While technological

1dvances raise a number of issues for world history, in the specific context of

I ht• history ofJapanese society the current changes have had a major impact.

What was considered common knowledge from the Edo period through the

k1ji, Tai ho, and into the early years following World War II is now almost

I Ill omprchcn iblc.

l1y,1111oln l\111wtd11, \V11,111t•u111•111 N1ho11ji11 (Tokyo: lwanami shoten, 1984). Translated into English •1 /111· / c>1g<1//rn /11/111111·\I" I 111111111/1•11 ll'llh /111111/ I i(t• 11111/ Fol�lor£' by J •ffrcy Irish (lkrkclcy: tone 11, '"t·\I' ""'"· 111111)

xxxvi Foreword

For example, my students no longer know anything of the stench of a

toilet. When I was a child, a trip to the bathroom was a frightening expe

rience. But living in today's houses, where there are no longer any dark

places, my students have no concept of the fear of the dark that gripped my

generation. Fear has now taken other forms, such as AIDS. Even such small

changes have far-reaching implications.

Until now, the flow of Japanese history has usually been analyzed by

dividing time into a general framework of primitive, archaic, medieval, early

modern, and modern periods. However, this periodization cannot fully

account for the fundamental ways in which the relationship between people

and nature has been transformed over time. And I believe that we cannot

truly comprehend history unless we take such changes into account.

It is my conviction that we must come up with alternatives to the usual

periodization. In my own work, I have focused on ethnic or civilizational

dimensions rather than "social formations" in order to arrive at working

periodizations. 2

Whether or not my formulations stand the test of time, the

orthodox periodization of Japanese history must be reevaluated in terms

of the immense changes that have taken place in the relationship between

human society and nature.

How far back can we trace the society in which the basic experiences of

my generation are rooted, a society that is in the process of disappearing and

being forgotten? Scholars generally agree that its origins date roughly from

the Muromachi period (1338-1573). That is, the fourteenth century served

as a turning point, with the immense transformations that took place in the

midst of the chaos of the Northern and Southern Courts resulting in huge

differences between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The ways of life

practiced since the fifteenth century have shaped my generation's common

sense, thus constituting a coherent unit of time. However, when it comes to

matters before the thirteenth century, we are dealing with something outside

our common sense, a world of a radically different nature.

2. This distinction is probably just as difficult for the lay reader in Japan as it is for the lay reader in the English-speaking world. In part, it is an oblique reference to a long-running debate Amino carried on with another medieval historian, Araki Moriaki. Araki defined the history of social formations as "the necessary, legal development" of a society. As practiced by Araki, this was a macrolevel form of historiography that attempted to discern the broad movement of history through a pre defined set of sociopolitical stages. Amino's reference to "ethnic or civilizational dimensions" is, first of all, a turn to historical specifics over broader generalizations. It is also a gesture toward a history that incorporates insights from the fields of ethnography and anthropology.

Foreword xxxvii

The current period of transition can in some ways be seen as akin to

the great changes that occurred during the chaos of the fourteenth century.

Reexamining the meaning of that transformation in light of the present

period of transition is, I believe, a significant undertaking in terms of both

the future of humanity and problems specific to Japanese culture and society.

My contribution to this project will be to offer a discussion of the concrete

forms in which the changes of the fourteenth century appeared.

ARCHAEOLO GICAL EVIDENCE OF THE ESTABLISHMENT

OF VILLAGES AND T OWNS

As a concrete illustration of this transition, I would like to make a few

prefatory comments about villages and towns, the sites where Japanese live

their everyday lives. The great ethnographer Yanagita Kunio estimated that

approximately three-quarters of all Japanese villages have their origins in

l he Muromachi period. 3

Further research needs to be done before we can

b confident of this figure. But if we examine the results of recent archaeo

logical surveys it does appear that towns and settlements formed after the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are significantly different from those that

t·xi ted prior to that time.

According to a recent study by Hirose Kazuo, archaeologists have not

Yt'l located sites dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that bear

111 y resemblance to the type of village that is most familiar to us today. The I 111d of settlement that we think of as a village today might more specifi-

,tlly be called a "concentrated village" (shuson). It is characterized by the

,h 11sc concentration of many houses into a compact settlement. It is ques-

1n11able whether we should call the settlements of the thirteenth century

1 I l,1gc at all. Rather, they took the shape of what might be better designated

ii 1sp 'r ed settlements" (sanson). In fact, the documentary evidence sup-

I 1 11 ls 11 i rose's archaeological data. The word mura (meaning "village" today)

111 pt·o1rs in documents from long ago. But from the ancient through the early

111 ,lit-val era lhe word mura was used to describe newly opened rice pad-

111'\ ., ml field r field not yet officially registered with the government. This

111•11\ 11 ,, l-.11111<> (IH7'i 1%1) "uunmonly known as lhc father of modern Japanese folk studies or 11,1111·1• 1·1l11111!1111y

xxxviii Foreword

is considerably different from the meaning of the word in the Edo period.

When we investigate the terminology and form of settle ments (shuraku) in

historical documents, we find "settlements" where there may have been two

or three houses in a small valley or settlements where h ousing compounds

were widely scattered. The type of settlement that was a direct precedent for

the Edo period, "the encompassing village" (soson), emer ged only around the

end of the fourteenth century.

The excavations at Shimofurudate in Tochigi Prefecture p rovide us with

evidence for a similar reconsideration of the history of "t owns" (machi). The

area under excavation was apparently a grassy commo ns during the Edo

period. When the commons was excavated, archaeo logists found a fairly

wide road passing through the middle of the site, with s ome sort of settle

ment, surrounded by deep ditches, on both sides of the road. That ruins of

this kind were found beneath a commons is itself though t provoking.

It was immediately apparent that the site was not a wa r rior's home,

lacking as it does the earthworks so often associated w ith a warrior com

pound . Archaeologists did not recover a large number of artifacts at the site,

but what they did find was unusual, for much of it cam e from quite distant

locales. They found green celadon and white porcelain, such as one usually

finds in Kamakura, and stone bowls originally made n ear Sonoki District

in Nagasaki, which must have been transported all the w ay to the northern

Kant6 region. The site also turned up pottery from Seto and Tokoname and

round wooden boxes (magemono). In addition, the site contains innumer

able small square pits lined up in rows, which appear to be divided by the

main road . In the southwest section of the dig, there is a shallow moat sur

rounding the remains of a small dugout structure-wha t may have been a

Buddhist worship hall. The area nearby is clearly a grav eyard. Archaeolo

gists have been able to determine that the site dates from the middle of the

Kamakura period because they recovered some wooden t ablets that had the

date Koan 8 (1285) written on them. The artifacts uncov ered here generally

accord with that date.

What kind of remains might these be? Many archaeologi sts argue that

the entire site was a graveyard. I feel, however, that this s ite may be seen as a

kind of urban space. I cannot say definitively whether th is was a post town

or a marketplace. Whatever the case, I believe these ru ins have an urban

character. 4 However, by the early modern period the site had disa

ppeared

4. See the translator's introduction for a discussion of what Amino means by "urban character."

Foreword xxxix

from view, having been abandoned for some reason or another, and the

area became a village commons. The abandonment of this site suggests that

marketplaces (or post towns) of the early medieval period operated under

extremely unstable conditions.

Let us turn to another, very similar set of remains, this time in Kasugai

City, Aichi Prefecture, near the famous medieval shoen estate of Shinoki.

Here, in a place called "the lower market" (shimoichiba), archaeologists are

excavating remains of an elusive character. Apparently once situated on a

riverbank, the site contains a number of foundation stones placed in a circle

two meters in diameter, with traces that suggest a fire was maintained there.

Archaeologists have confirmed that several dugout structures stood to one

side of this circle, and from these dugouts they have uncovered the stone

bowls from the Sonoki District-bowls that still have not been found at any

other site in this region. Archaeologists have also turned up Chinese-made

celadon items. Thus, this site has produced the kinds of artifacts one never

finds in a normal farming village. What is particularly striking is that even

though the site is very close to Seto, there are no Seto pottery shards to be

found. Nor is there any pottery from nearby Mino. Instead, there are a num

ber of pottery shards from fairly distant places such as Chita and Tokoname. 5

Although we cannot be absolutely certain, it seems likely that this was also

some kind of urban site, perhaps a marketplace. However, this, too, had van

ished from sight and memory by the Edo period.

The disappearance of these urban sites suggests that both "villages" and

"towns" of the thirteenth century differed considerably from such settle-

111cnts after the fifteenth century. In Japan, the harbors and inlets that became

port figured prominently in the establishment of towns. But there were also

111.1ny cases in which a town developed around a marketplace that was set

11p on a riverbank, or on an island in the middle of a river, populated by the

111l'rchants, craftsmen, and performers who gathered there. Since itinerant

111t·r ·hants and craftsmen often based themselves at harbors and anchorages,

tl11·s' sites naturally developed into towns. This trend became most marked

111 I h fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Sett I ment patterns are less clear in the case of eastern Japan, since there

111 ft·w 'r surviving documents. But in most of the archipelago it appears

11111 st.1bl s Ill mcnls that could clearly be called villages and towns only

l 1111., ,11111 11111111,11111· ,111• ,1h11 111 i\1, 111 l'1d1·, 11111· h111 wcll 10 1lw wu1h of K.1�ugni. 'lhcy arc on the I 1111,1 1'1·11111,111.1,11111" I" l\,1y it11111 '"'

xl Foreword

emerged in the fifteenth century. This coincides with the fairly intuitive

assessment of Yanagita Kunio, mentioned above. These towns and villages

continued to emerge and grow throughout the Edo period, consistently

maintaining a self-governing function and eventually constituting the basic

units of Edo period society. Katsumata Shizuo has labeled this development

the "town and village system." For our purposes, the main point is that this

system emerged in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Furthermore, we

should note that it was these settlements that formed the prototype of today's

hamlets and cities.

So we might next ask ourselves, why was it in this period that villages

and towns began to appear? The standard explanations have focused on a

growing social division of labor and a rise in productive capacity. This is

no doubt true, but there are a number of issues related to the appearance

of towns and villages that cannot be reduced to a matter of productivity. I

believe we should see the emergence of towns and villages as the cumulative

effect of major transformations on a variety oflevels. The significance of each

of these changes needs to be individually investigated. Only when we have

done that will we be able to understand the true significance of the growth

in productivity.

In the chapters that follow, we will explore these transformations in some

of their more specific dimensions, namely, religion, commerce, the status of

marginal groups, women, and writing. I will also reflect on the relationship

these transformations have with the form of the state in Japanese history.

With my interest in the cumulative effects, however, the discussion of specific

issues will frequently focus on their overlap with other transformations.

BOOK ONE

Circuits of the Sea

and

Nonagricultural

Production

CHAPTER ONE

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society?

WERE "VILLAGERS" FARMERS?

Many Japanese today believe, almost as an article of faith, that at least until

the Edo period Japanese society was agricultural. Such beliefs are commonly

affirmed by high school textbooks such as the widely used A Detailed History

of Japan (1991). 1

The section of this book covering the first years of the Edo

period reads, "Agriculture was the central form of production of the feudal

society, and the farmers (nomin) lived self-sufficient lives." Another text

book, A Revised History of Japan, 2

published in the same year, contains the

following description of farmers' lives: "Agriculture at the time was mostly

.1 matter of self-sufficient production carried out at the level of the village

(111ura) unit." Even in his fascinating study, W hat Was the Eda Period? 3

Bit6

fosahide develops his argument on the assumption that the agricultural

population constituted 80 to 90 percent of the total. Since even an excel-

11 nt historian of the early modern era such as Bit6 makes that assumption, it

'l'm reasonable that this would be the view of society held by a wide range

,,f Japanese people today.

�/111,l't,11 Ni/1()11shi (A Detailed I listory of Japan) (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1991}. \/111,tc, Ni/1011.1hi (AR ·vised I listory of Japan) (Tokyo: Tokyo shoseki 1991). 11110 M.1S,1hld,•, l'r/o 111lr11 to 1w1 11a11ika: Ni/1011 shijo 110 kinsei to kindai (What Was the Edo Period?)

(Tokyo: lw,111,11111 ,holt'/1, IIJIJ )

4 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

To reiterate, the key assumptions most high school textbooks make

about the Edo period is that the society was overwhelmingly agricultural,

that agriculture was dominated by rice production, and that villages were

self-sufficient (in other words, they provided for their own needs, without

significant consumption of outside production). The textbooks mentioned

above even refer to the same pie chart to prove this assertion (fig. 1). This

particular chart was constructed on the basis of 1849 population figures,

divided by occupation, for the Kubota domain in Akita. Of a total popu

lation of approximately 372,000 people, the textbooks tell us that farmers

constituted 76.4 percent, townsfolk (chonin) 7.5 percent, samurai 9. 8 percent, clergy (Buddhist and Shinto) 1.9 percent, and others 4.2 percent. If this chart

is correct, then the population of the Kubota domain at the end of the Edo

period was clearly and overwhelmingly agricultural.

Of course, the chart does not include categories for coastal people (kai min) or mountain dwellers (san'-rnin), neither of whom lived in areas where rice agriculture predominated. Even if those involved in so-called miscella

neous occupations, such as the people of mountain and coastal villages, were

added to the numbers for merchants and artisans, that segment of the popu

lation would still only hover around 10 percent. Therefore, if the population

of Edo period Japan was composed the way the pie chart suggests, one would

Clergy---- 1.9

Townsfolk---� 7.5

---- Samurai 9.8

Total p opulation

�--Farmers 76.4

Figure 1. 1849 population figures for Kubota Domain, in percent, divided by occupation. Source: Shosetsu Nihonshi (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1991).

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 5

have to conclude that nonagricultural people were indeed a small minority

in the society of the time.

There are very few passages in these textbooks related to such major

industries as fishing, salt production, or forestry. Since these textbooks pro

vide the basic knowledge for the college entrance exams, it is difficult to draft

exam questions related to fishing, salt, or forestry. In fact, everything that the

colleges deem unrelated to the exams has been left out. As a result, all one

can do in the classroom is let students know that the occupations of those

industries were also important. But from the perspective of the pie chart such

hort shrift would not be unexpected for such a small minority.

In examining this chart closely, one cannot help but wonder if there

were no fishermen, marine merchants (kaisenjin), or mountain folk in Akita at all. I began to wonder whether something odd was going on, so I bought

Sekiyama NaotanYs The Population Structure of Early Modern Japan, on which the chart was based.

4 The percentages in Sekiyama's table and those of

the textbooks' chart were the same, but where the chart lists 76.4 percent for

farmers (nomin), Sekiyama's table has 76.4 percent for villagers (hyakusho). So it is clear that the textbook version of the chart was produced with the

understanding that all hyakusho were farmers (table 1). However, careful consideration of whether the Japanese term hyakusho

originally carried the implication of agriculture reveals that the conflation

of hyakusho and farmer so common today is groundless. In fact, prior to the 111odern era the term described many nonagricultural people, that is, people

Table 1 POPULATION OF KUBOTA DOMAIN, 1849,

BY OCCUPATION

Number %

Warriors 36,453 9.8

Villagers 284,384 76.4

Townsfolk 27,852 7.5

lergy 7,256 1.9

Miscellaneous 15,720 4.2

Non humans 489 0.1

Totals 372,154

S11111cc: Sckiya111a Naotar6, Ki11sei Ni/1011 no jinko kozo (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 19,9).

"I 'l'•""·' N,1111.1111, /\111,,·, N1/1t111 110 1111ko ko::o ('llw l'opul.11ion Stru ·ture of Early Modern Japan) ( I 111, )'II: 'ml ill ,IIV,1 l,11'111111 ,111, I 'I','))

6 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

who participated in forms of production other than agriculture. If that is the

case, then premodern society in the Japanese islands was probably quite dif

ferent from the way we have commonly envisioned it. To be honest, I came to

understand this only recently.

THE TOKIKUNI FAMILY OF OUTER NOTO

Around 1985, I began to participate in a long-term historical study of an old

and prominent family, the Tokikuni of the Noto Peninsula, conducted by the

Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture at Kanagawa University. Our

readings of the premodern documents in the family's possession provided

me with an opportunity to reconsider the common understanding of the

term hyakusho.

The Tokikuni family is currently divided into two distinct lineages, the

"upper" and the "lower." My first visit to the upper Tokikuni family occurred

ten years ago [1986] when I went to discuss the return of family documents

that had been borrowed by the institute more than thirty years before. 5

The

matron of the family at the time told me that there seemed to be more docu

ments in the family's storehouses. She asked whether I might be interested in

examining the storehouses for her one more time.

Seizing the opportunity she presented, I entered the storehouses with

several young graduate students from Kanagawa University. Delving into

every corner, we found nearly ten thousand documents dating from the Edo

period; if we include documents from the modern period-the Meiji and

Taisho eras-the grand total of documents discovered comes to several tens

of thousands. We were also allowed to examine some of the holdings of the

lower Tokikuni household, where we also discovered many old documents.

Since the institute had failed to return the materials borrowed more than

thirty years ago, we decided to repay the Tokikuni family's extraordinary

patience by properly cataloging and repairing the newly discovered docu-

5. The institute borrowed several hundred family documents in 1954 and brought them back to Tokyo for transcription and cataloging. At the time, the institute was an adjunct research cen ter at the Fisheries Agency in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Shortly after borrowing the documents, funding for the institute was cut and its collection of documents, most of which were not returned to their owners, had to be maintained for nearly thirty years at the expense and through the efforts of former members. When the institute was reconstituted as an official research center in 1983 and moved to Kanagawa University, Amino and other members rediscov· ered the documents.

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 7

ments. From that time on, we visited both Tokikuni households twice a year,

in summer and autumn, for a period of ten years, to catalog and organize

their documents. We also gradually broadened our perspective to include the

whole region of Outer Noto (fig. 2). At the same time, we conducted a semi

nar for graduate students at Kanagawa University focused on the Tokikuni

family documents. As we read through them one at a time, we began to see

to what extent our previous understanding that all hyakusho were farmers

was mistaken. 6

At present, the lower Tokikuni household (fig. 3) is located downstream

(along the Machino River) from the upper, but originally both families

lived under one roof. In 1634, due to a division of ruling authority between

the Tokugawa bakufu and the Maeda clan over the lands possessed by the

Tokikuni, the family was divided in two. The upper household was located

-t

-. Wajima

I 1 •1111· 2. Map of ulcr Noto.

Sosogi Mt. Iwakura

l:,. 357.0

lower Tokikuni household

u�er Tokikuni household

\11111111 ,1<·drh ,Ill 1h,· 1111·11,lw" 11I th,· 1'11k1ku11i \1°111111,11 ,11 K,111,lf\,lWa lJnivcn,i1y for 1hc rcvbcd • '"" q•I 111 /,1•11k111/,,1 ,11 I 1, 11 l.1l1"d I II I 111• ll"si 11I I hr I h,ipll'I

8 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

in the Tokugawa-governed portion of the valley, and the lower resided in the

Maeda-governed portion.7 The current upper Tokikuni dwelling (fig. 4) was

constructed in 1831 and is a good example of the largest class of vernacular

housing in Japan. The lower Tokikuni dwelling is smaller in scale, but our

investigation confirmed that it was built nearly two hundred years earlier, in

1634, making it one of the oldest examples of Japanese vernacular housing

still in existence. If you visit them today, you will find the two houses only a

short distance apart, set back from the river along the base of the mountains

that form the walls of the valley. Facing the Machino River from the houses,

you will see a broad expanse of rice paddies opening up before them, giv

ing the impression that they are two extremely large houses belonging to

wealthy farmers.

The family name of the Tokikuni is a remnant of the medieval period.

Many paddies in the medieval period were named (myoden), 8 that is, they

were officially registered with two-character names such as Sadakuni,

Sadatoki, or Kunisada. The Tokikuni family undoubtedly took the medieval

paddy name of Tokikuni as its family name. For that reason, researchers

have viewed the Tokikuni as characteristic of the older families of the Outer

7. The Tokugawa shogunate, in order to check the power of large daimyo such as the Maeda, who ruled Noto and surrounding areas, claimed a number of small settlements throughout the domain, inserting itself into the domain like air pockets in Swiss cheese. These settlements were governed by vassals of the Tokugawa family. During the period in which the Tokikuni split, the governors were of the Hijikata family. The shogunate's holdings in the area were recognized by their designa tion as Tenry6 or "heavenly domains." It was the shogunate's decision to claim a portion of the lower Machino Valley in 1634 that led to the Tokikuni family's decision to split. Half of the family (the lower) moved to Maeda-controlled land slightly downstream, while the other half (the upper) remained in the large house the entire family had once occupied, which was now located in the heavenly domain. The split took the form of a retirement. The former head of the household retired from his position and moved into the newly constructed lower house while his son became head of the new upper Tokikuni family. The form of this division has lead to a heated debate between the two families as to which is the "main" lineage and which the "branch." The upper family claims status as main lineage because they stayed in the large house. Family members also cite the retire ment of the head of the household as the act that constituted the creation of a branch family. The lower Tokikuni argue that the split was carried out to enable at least a portion of the family to remain under the rule of Lord Maeda and that the creation of the upper lineage was the act that constituted a break from the family's long-standing position. Amino and the Tokikuni Research Group have argued that the concepts of main and branch family are meaningless in the kind of split the Tokikuni undertook. See chapter five for a further discussion of the significance of the Hijikata domain.

8. In the process by which rice paddies, the basic unit of taxation in the Ritsury6 state, were trans formed from imperial grant to privately owned lands, paddies were designated by a two-character combination, usually reflecting the name of their legal owner, more often than not an aristocrat in the capital. Thus, paddies with names are among the clearest residues of the Heian and medieval period system of land control. See the account of the dispute over the fields named Suetaka-my6 in "The Women of Tara no sh6" in chapter nine for an example of a named field.

l'igure 3. The lower Tokikune residence. Photograph courtesy ofNobuhiro Tokikuni.

1111· I Tia· uppl'I 'li,kikurw re�iden ·e. Photograph ourtc y ofNobuhiro Tokikuni.

10 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Noto region. That is, as Outer Noto still retains many traces of the medieval period, some historians have suggested that the Tokikuni were the managers of a well-known plot ofland called Tokikuni.

In fact, at the beginning of the Edo period, before its division, the Tokikuni possessed nearly two hundred indentured servants (genin). Most scholarship to date has viewed these indentured servants as slaves, particu larly agricultural slaves. So, the Tokikuni family has been seen as a large land owning family that made use of "slaves" to cultivate a broad expanse of fields (some tens of cho).9 The famous ethnographer Miyamoto Tsuneichi, who visited the Tokikuni families shortly after World War II, made a number of astute observations on their condition at the time. But in the end even Miya moto concluded that the Tokikuni were large-scale farmers who belonged to what scholars call the "patriarchal, large-scale, slave-owning class," a class with strong traces of the medieval era. However, a careful reading of every document in the Outer Noto Tokikuni Family Documents,

10 one character at a time from beginning to end, suggests that this characterization is mistaken.

The Tokikuni were of hyakusho rather than warrior status and pos sessed land valued at about 300 koku of grain.11 After they split, the upper Tokikuni possessed 200 koku while the lower had 100, so even after the divi sion both families were involved with large-scale agriculture. But apart from their agricultural activities the family had owned large ships since before the early Edo period. We were able to confirm, from a document dated 1619, that with these ships the family engaged in trade over an area ranging from Matsumae (southern Hokkaido) in the north to Sado Island, Tsuruga, and even across Lake Biwa to Omi, Otsu, Kyoto, and Osaka.

From quite early on, their ships carried such things as konbu (a kind of seaweed), which they acquired from Matsumae and sold in Kyoto and Osaka. But what did these ships carry to Matsumae from Noto? First of all, the Tokikuni family had a number of salt fields on the coast. We have docu ments from the early Edo period showing that they produced salt, which they carried to ports on the northern Japan Sea coast such as Noshiro in Dewa and Niigata in Echigo. So salt appears to have been shipped to the north. In addition, the mountains behind the Tokikuni lands were rich in wood,

9. One cho equals approximately 2.45 acres. 10. Oku Noto Tokikunike monjo (Outer Noto Tokikuni Family Documents), 4 vols. (Tokyo: J6min

bunka kenkyujo, 1956). 11. A koku was a cubic unit of measure that was supposed to equal the amount of rice necessary to feed

one man for one year, approximately 45 U.S. gallons or 180 liters.

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 11

from which they produced a great deal of charcoal. There is thus substantial evidence to conclude that salt and charcoal were produced for trade (and not just for subsistence).

Around the same time, the Tokikuni family bought a residence in the town of Ushitsu, a quiet harbor on the inner bay side of the Noto Penin sula, which was provided with docking facilities (fig. 5). Before its division, the family had a huge house of 990 square meters near the banks of the Machino River, and the large lagoon at the mouth of the river served as its harbor. Even today, that area, now dry land, is known by locals as "the har bor." Thus, we are certain that the Tokikuni worked out of this harbor and

---.s-- Rokugosaki

Wajima

. ushitsu

•Nakai

Fukuura •

Toyama Station

I 1 1111 , /\,!.1p nl Nnln l't•11im11l.1

12 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Ushitsu, engaging in marine trade on a grand scale. We also know that the

family received a variety of permits from the Maeda lords, which means

that the Tokikunis' trading had official recognition. Therefore, one cannot

simply call the Tokikuni "wealthy landowners" and hope to capture the full

extent of their activities.

In 1618, the Tokikuni found deposits of lead in the mountains behind

the nearby village of Najimi, and they petitioned the Maeda for permission

to mine the deposit (fig. 6). We do not know how this mining venture turned

out, but it is significant that the family extended itself to the operation of a

mine. Moreover, from the late medieval period, the Tokikuni owned store

houses near the Machino shoen estate harbor, through which they adminis

tered the transportation and storage of such items as the annual tax of rice

and salt. The Tokikuni served as the domainal lord's local managers (daikan)

for these storehouses. The lord issued orders to release appropriate amounts

of rice and salt as necessary, and on that authority the Tokikuni made their

own decisions as to when items in storage should be released and at what

volume. So, from the early Edo period on, the Tokikuni performed adminis

trative functions as storehouse managers. It is also likely that they provided

financial services with the silver equivalent of the goods they stored.

Thus, we can see how misguided it is to define the Tokikuni family as a

large-scale agricultural producer using slave labor in the fields. It is not com

pletely mistaken, but it only captures one aspect of their activities. There is no

accurate terminology at the current level of academic knowledge to describe

members of this class, so we may provisionally call them multiventure entre

preneurs. As awkward as this sounds, it most accurately describes the two

houses of the Tokikuni family (fig. 7).

Figure 6. Petition for lead mining submitted by Tokikuni T6zaemon to the Maeda I louse. From the collection of Kentar6 Tokikuni. Photograph courtesy of the Inst itutl' for the Study of Japanese Folk ulturc, Kanagawa University.

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 13

I igure 7. Layout of Tokikuni-mura Chozaemon House. From the collection of Kentar6 I o�i ku�i. Photograph courtesy oflnstitute for the Study ofJapanese Folk Culture, Kanagawa t 111vers1ty.

LANDED AND LANDLESS VILLAGERS

IN THE SHIPPING INDUSTRY

111 I he early Edo period, a shipper named Shibakusaya, who was closely asso-

1ll'cl with the Tokikuni, plied his trade from the harbor at the mouth of

11 Machino River. We know that one Shibakusaya lived in the residence the

1111 ii uni owned in Ushitsu in the late sixteenth century, so members of

lh Ma hino Shibakusaya family are probably his descendants. We believe

th '-lliibakusaya employed two or three large ships for their trade in the

I I 1 11 S 'a. D cuments show that the Tokikuni borrowed one hundred ryo

I • 11ld from the hibakusaya in the early Edo period, so it is clear that the h Ii.ii 11saya w re wealthy enough to handle that volume of money.

I l11wt•vcr, wh 'n w' r ad th Tokikuni documents of the early Edo

I r11HI, Wl' lllllitcd lhnl the Shibakusaya family was designated a member of

I 11/11111,1/111 1 (l1tr1 ally, lw,1d .... ha king) dnss. In 1h Ma da domains of Kaga,

1 11, ,111,l i•11'111, vill,1g1•1, who dtd 1101 p1odtill' l,1x,tbk lllljh wnt· l,ilkd

14 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

atamafuri. In the Tokugawa lands on the Noto Peninsula, atamafuri were called mizunomi (literally, water drinkers), which was the term most com monly use d in the Japanese archipelago to describe people who had �o land. Mizunomi had different names in different regions, for example, moto (gate men), mawaki (at the side), muen (unconnected), and zakke (various houses). Today's history textbooks explain that these were poor, small-scale farmers. That is what I also believed until I read these documents.

W hen we confirmed that there were people like the Shibakusaya, who, although their status was technically mizunomi, were actually maritime merchants able to lend large sums of money to such powerful families as the Tokikuni, the members of our study group could hardly believe their eyes. At the same time, it was something of an epiphany. Without a doubt, the Shiba kusaya were called mizunomi because they did not own land, but it would be wrong to think that they were poor farmers. Rather, they did not �eed t_o o�n land, since they were extremely wealthy people who specialized m sh1ppmg and commerce. However, we also saw that under the system that prevailed in the Eda period even these people were officially placed in the landless class.

To give another example, two or three years ago we discovered a �ocu� ment hidden in the insulated sliding doors (Jusuma) of the upper Toktkum house. It contained an appeal from a villager named Enjiro. Enjiro lived in a small hamlet called Sosogi, which was located on the right bank of the mouth of the Machino River. According to this document, Enjiro's father was a maritime merchant who had gone to Matsumae with his sailors. Hav ing failed to return home for several years, Enjiro believed :hat _they �ad been shipwrecked. As a result, the family members he left behmd, mcludmg Enjiro, his mother, and several small children, were having trouble suppor� ing themselves. In particular, they were unable to pay back money that their father had borrowed from a number of people.

Of particular interest to us were Enjiro's father's creditors. They included merchants such as Echigoya Chojiro in Dewa Shonai, Kamiya Chozaemon in Wakasa Obama, and Itaya Chobei in Noto Wajima. 12 Meanwhile, in their home village of Sosogi, their father had borrowed large sums from a man named Saburobei. We know that he traded throughout the Japan Sea with this capital, visiting merchants in every p ort. But when the loans were called in Enjiro fell into dire straits. After a time, he was able to scrape together a

12 Dewa Shonai is present-day coastal Yamagata. Wakasa Obama refers to the town of Obama_

in ·

present-day Fukui Prefecture. Amino's point is that these sites are quite distant from the Mach,no

River in Noto.

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 15

living by selling sundries such as wax and oil, so in the document he appealed to the domainal managers (the Tokikuni) to allow him to reschedule the loans over a fifty-year period.

Until recently, Sosogi had been considered an impoverished village with few resources other than salt production. So we were intrigued to learn through this document that one of its villagers sailed a relatively large boat (not the largest in the area-the Kitamaebune class-but large enough) trading in ports all along the Japan Sea and even going as far north as Matsumae.

It happened that during that summer a number of newspaper reporters visited Sosogi. I showed them this particular document during an interview. The first question they asked was, W hat was a "farmer" doing going all the way up to Matsumae? That is, they were wondering why a hyakusho-in their minds a farmer-would travel to Matsumae. I replied that this hyakusho was not a farmer but a maritime merchant, as indicated by the document. Still, the reporters did not seem to understand. They wondered why someone engaged in shipping would be called a hyakusho. I spent nearly two hours lrying to explain.

Among the journalists was a very enthusiastic reporter from the local newspaper, the Hokkoku Shinbun. This man followed up on our meeting with several phone calls, during which he asked many detailed questions. Afterward he showed me his article so I could check it for accuracy; I thought he wrote a fine piece. So, expecting an interesting article in the following day's paper, I arose to find it topped by the headline "Farmers (nomin) Also 1 ·:ngaged in Shipping." Two hours of explanation and several phone calls had ., 11 been in vain. The article itself was precisely written, but the copy editors, 1pparently deciding that this was not clear enough, inserted the word farm ( rs. But of course the headline was clearly in error. I could not help wishing thal they had at least written "Hyakusho Also Engaged in Shipping." But I

.,s also surprised to discover that the Japanese mass media refused to use l he word hyakusho (villager) since it was viewed as discriminatory.13

11 I lyak11shii, as a term that was used during the Edo period, has connotations of feudal submission today. As happens frequently elsewhere, a movement to raise the social status of farmers in post war Japan insisted on the use of a new term, one with the appearance of greater neutrality: niimin (lit •rally, agricultural people). The problem Amino encountered with the newspaper has to do with the f,1 t that sin c hyak11shii had come to be identified with discrimination (much the way Nrgm" no longer used in the United tales), the editors felt they had to choose a word that was 111111 · nhJl' tiVl', llut their d1oi ·c of 110111i11 was precisely counter to what Amino had spent hours t,•11111111lw 1q>rnt1'", 1h,1t I,, th,1t thl'Sl' people were not farmers but maritime merchants whose I do I'''' 111d, 1,.,, ,1.11 "' h,t1'1't'111·d to h • w,t h111 t Ill', ,\ll'J-101 y of hyak11s/1ci. 'I hat is why, in part, I have , l1m,·11111 tr,111,I.11,• /11•11k111/11111, "vill.111,·"" 1 ,,th,•1 th,111 uw th· ,t.111d,11 d 1,,111,I:111011 of"pcas,111ts." 1111 l11ll11wl,1f1,,.,tl11111· 1'111111 lltl d,·,l•,lrrrrlrrrthr•r

16 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

The other newspapers had headlines such as, "Noto Villagers Were Active on the Seas" and "A Farm Family in Outer Noto Participated in Ocean

Trade during the Edo Period." Never was it more clear to us how deeply

entrenched was the idea that hyakusho means "farmer." The prime example

was a veteran reporter who kept agreeing with me but, after listening to me

talk for thirty minutes, went back to his office and wrote, "A starving peasant in Sosogi named Enjir6 migrated to Matsumae for work." There was nothing

for us to do but laugh. It showed us how the deeply rooted belief that villagers

were invariably farmers can lead to grave misunderstandings.

CITIES DESIGNATED AS VILLAGES

After the misunderstandings with the newspapers, Izum i Masahiro, a

member of our study group and a historian at Atomi Wo men's College,

began to pursue the problem of wealthy nonagricultural v illagers. Using

some interesting materials listing the number of hyakusho a nd atamafuri

households in the Maeda-controlled counties of Fugeshi and Suzu in 1735,

including village productivity and tax rates, Izumi was able to draw some

important conclusions about the percentage of atamafur i households

(table 2).

Izumi found that in 1735 Outer Noto's largest city, Wajima, h ad a total

of 621 households with a probable population of several tho usand people.

Interestingly, a full 71 percent of those households were co nsidered to be

atamafuri. The remaining 29 percent were households with a verage produc

tion of only 4.5 koku (from about 4.5 tan of land). 14 Ushitsu, on the other

side of the peninsula, where the Tokikuni family also had a boathouse and

a residence, was also a large city. Its population of atamafu ri reached the

extremely high figure of 76 percent.

From this we were able to confirm that in addition to such coa stal cities

as Wajima and Ushitsu inland urban-ty pe settlements such as Iida, Kabuto,

and Hanami also had a high percentage of atamafuri. If the c ommon notion

that hyakusho were invariably farmers and atamafuri wer e poor farm

ers were true, then Wajima would have been an extremely p oor town since

farmers holding a mere 4.5 tan of land comprised 29 perce nt of the town

while the remaining 71 percent were landless. Ushitsu would have been even

14. One tan equals 0.25 acres.

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 17

Table 2 VILLAGE STATISTICS FOR F UGESHI AND

SUZU COUNTIES, 1735

Tax per

Number of Atamafuri Village Tax Tax Rate Household

Village Households Hyakusho Atamafuri (%) (koku) (%) (koku)

Kawai/ 621 183 438 71 823 88 1.210

Fugeshi (59

unnamed)

Ushitsu 433 104 329 76 540 83 1.247

Minatsuki 263 144 119 45 141 81 9.536

[ida 223 157 66 30 383 70 1.717

Nakai 190 110 80 42 342 79 1.800

Ma tsunami 184 120 64 35 901 58 4.897

Nakai- 174 90 84 48 255 70 1.466

rninami

Ogi 157 106 51 32 142 74 0.904

Kenchi 138 67 71 51 122 80 0.884

Ushitsu- 124 82 42 34 400 46 3.226

sanbun

Michishita 121 70 51 42 382 65 3.157

Ugai 117 76 41 35 460 55 3.932

K,1buto 114 36 78 68 552 50 4.842

N,1bune 108 57 51 47 222 70 2.056

I l,1narni 108 33 75 69 280 65 2.593

� ,liSO 105 38 67 64 31 72 0.295

11H1rc impoverished. We were able to prove that this conclusion is mistaken. \,1jima's atamafuri undoubtedly included many lacquer craftsmen, noodle

111.II crs, large-scale merchants dealing in these items, and traders owning l11ps of the Kitamaebune class. There were also a number of powerful mer li.111ts in the hyakusho class.

When we first went to Outer Noto, we thought of it as a poor region with

I 111t• farmland. A glance at the famous Senmaida-many extremely small

1111 tl'rraced paddies one above the other on a hillside-clearly conveys this 111 1gl' (11g. 8). Even the people of Outer Noto characterize their region as

llll 1 1111t;1inou., with little room in which to establish rice paddies. Moreover,

1111•1 Noto was I n wn as a place of exile. For example, Tokikuni family • 11d h.1s it that th ·y ar · the d s ndanL of Taira Tokitada, who fled to

1l11 ,dll'I llw I.di ol tlw 'l'.1i1,1 l,111 of I IIVi. I le w v r, our pre on pt ions of

Figure 8. Thousand-layered rice paddies (Senmaida). Photographed by Shibata A ki�uke.

Source: Kara Kaga Noto no miryoku (The Appeal ofKaga Noto in Color) (Kyoto: Tanko ha,

1978).

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 19

Noto as an extremely backward and undeveloped region-where one could

find until relatively recently many remnants of medieval "named paddies"

and where there were families who utilized two hundred or more indentured

servants and/or slaves in archaic farm management-were overturned once

we began to investigate conditions among members of the atamafuri class.

Until the Edo period, Outer Noto boasted many port towns and cities

where shippers were at the forefront of the Japan Sea trade. In fact, it was one

of the few regions that could be considered quite wealthy in monetary terms

(as opposed to landed wealth). But the consequences of our findings are not

limited to the Noto region alone. Rather, I believe they extend to society

in the entire Japanese archipelago. When I talk to early modern historians

about Outer Noto, they often claim that the area must be an anomaly. How

ever, even an amateur in early modern history can find similar conditions in

many other regions once he or she begins to dig.

For example, Kaminoseki on the Inland Sea side of Yamaguchi Prefec

ture has been a port town since the medieval period. Here as well we have

accurate figures for the number of villager households. Kaminoseki was

divided into two parts, the inland and the port-side sections. According

lo the late Edo period Bacho Land Development Plan, only nineteen of the

thirty-six hyakusho households in the inland section were engaged in farm

ing. Of the remaining households, ten were merchants, five were shippers/

wholesalers, one was a blacksmith, and one was a fisherman. Of the eighty

l'ight hyakusho households in the port-side section, only twelve (13.6 percent)

were engaged in farming, while fifty-four were merchants and others were

boat owners, sailors, ship's carpenters, fabric dyers, or tofu makers.

Landless villagers were called moto in this region. In the inland section,

98 of 135 moto were engaged in farming while the rest included twenty mer

l hants, ships carpenters, bucket makers, and wall painters. Of the 178 moto

111 the port-side section, none was a farmer, sixty-eight were merchants, and

l 1ghteen owned boats. Others were carpenters, blacksmiths, bucket makers,

f.1bric dyers, tatami makers, and so on-all urban occupations.

We can see that in the population structure ofKaminoseki, even among

l lie l,yakusho, farmers were in the minority while merchants, boat owners,

111d various craftsmen constituted the overwhelming majority. The moto of

this r'gi n were fundamentally the same as the atamafuri of Outer Noto;

tlH· majority wcr n na ri ultural, and it appears safe to say that many of

1hrn1 Wt'rl' w •II orT. Of ·ours , we still must on, id r why th re were o many

20 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

farming m6to in the inland section. But taken as a whole it is certain that the many por ts and inlets along the Inland Sea, from Shikoku to the San'yo region, had the same population structure as Kaminoseki. Thus, we cannot dismiss the Noto region as an exception.

To give another example, the city of Izumisano in Osaka has been well known as a fishing port since ancient times. There was a family in this city named Meshino, commonly known as Izumiya or Tachibanaya, that engaged in large-scale shipping, trading as far away as Akita and Matsumae. In the foreword to Ihara Saikaku's The Eternal Storehouse of Japan, this family is described as "quieting the waves in their ship, the Shintsu-maru." Saikaku describes another family, the Karakaneya, from the port of Sanoura in Waizumi, as "running swiftly with even 3,700 koku throughout the northern seas." Both of these families were of the hyakush6 class. Thus, we can say that there were likely a great number of hyakusho and mizunomi in the coastal towns of Edo period Japan who were engaged in large-scale shipping.

The Japanese archipelago is composed of over 3,700 islands with 28,000 kilometers of coastline. Only 25 percent of the land is level enough for agri culture. Thus, the landscape of the Noto Peninsula can be found in other peninsulas and islands throughout the archipelago. Moreover, the landscape has changed significantly since the medieval period. For example, the small lagoon at the mouth of the Machino River has almost completely disappeared, although it appears to have been much larger long ago. We also know that the coastline along the Japan Sea was full of such inlets. Meanwhile, on the Pacific side of Honshu, Gifu Prefecture is now a landlocked prefecture. But in ancient times the ocean was close to the town of Ogaki. Those sections along Ise Bay that are often submerged in water after a typhoon were also originally under water. Osaka Bay was similarly expansive, while southern Kanto was an alluvial plain. So, when we take into account the landscape as it was before the medieval period, my argument for the Noto Peninsula becomes applicable to the entire archipelago, since much of the land that is now agricultural was in fact covered in water. Thus, the common belief that Japanese society was overwhelmingly agricultural-and that by extension society was fundamen tally based on agricultural production-is also overturned.

This is not only an issue for coastal towns; one can make a similar case for the mountains. My home prefecture of Yamanashi is a mountainous area with few rice paddies, truly a nonagricultural region. For that reason, the people of Yamanashi also consider themselves poor. Yet Yamanashi i

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 21

famous for its Koshii merchants and conglomerates (zaibatsu). 15 One can resolve this apparent contradiction with the same kind of approach we took with the coastal areas. For example, the population of the village of Ichibe in Isawa, an area known for its hot springs and a market town from ancient times, was 51 percent mizunomi. Likewise, the village of Yamaoku became quite wealthy due to its lumber industry. There are also many mizunomi in the village ofKamiyoshida, at the entrance to the Mount Fuji trail, which was clearly a city during medieval times. Just as was the case with coastal villages, mountain villages cannot be considered poor just because they were remote and had little farmland.

Yet until recently most historians, including myself, did not take this into consideration. In a book I wrote twenty years ago, A Portrait of the Medieval Japanese People, I was well aware that not all hyakush6 were farmers in the medieval age.16 I knew that taxes paid in rice by hyakush6 were in the minor ity, with most being paid in silk, cloth, salt, iron, paper, and oil, so I knew that medieval villagers could not strictly be called farmers. But by the Edo period Japanese agriculture had made great strides, so I concluded that, "Just as we use the term 'o-hyakusho-san' today for farmers, we may conclude that villagers were farmers." As a result, I have had to add endnotes to subsequent printings of that book in which I clearly state that I was mistaken and that this was the result of my incomplete understanding nearly twenty years ago.

Since most historians read historical documents assuming that hyakush6 were farmers, the images they have produced are greatly distorted. This is not I united to the Edo period but is true for medieval and ancient Japan as well. Once we recognize that villagers included many people engaged in other industries-including many nonagricultural peoples-we find that we must r <:consider our image of Japanese society.

I will eventually discuss how this misunderstanding arose and spread throughout Japan, but first I would like to touch on one more area of confu- 1on. We tend to think of a village (mura) as a farming village. This belief has 111 extremely strong hold in Japan. In general, coastal and mountain villages 11 l' considered poor places with very little farmland and hence with very ltt l I· ocial standing. In fact, the terms fishing village (kaison) and mountain

I , l\mhu I, tlu• oltkr name for the Yamana hi region. 11, A,nlno Yo,hlhlko, Ni/1011 c/111sei 110 111i11s/11izii (A Portrait oft he Medieval Japanese People) (Tokyo:

lw,111,11111 ,holl'll, 1'1110).

22 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

village (sanson) have barely made their way into common usage, even though a harbor settlement was admittedly considered different from a village in the

Edo period land system.

I have found it difficult to understand why places like Wajima and

Ushitsu in Noto, Kaminoseki in Suo, and Sano in Izumi, all of which were

clearly cities in medieval times, were legally registered as villages in the Edo

period. During the Edo period, the only places recognized as towns were cas

tle towns and such venerable large-scale cities as Sakai and Hakata. Places that

were cities in fact but unrelated to the governing power of the daimyo were all designated as villages. Places designated as villages were allowed to conduct

their own land surveys, and people who owned and worked the fields were

designated hyakusho, while the rest were given the status of mizunomi. So, when one assumes that a place that was known as a village was in fact a farm

ing community, one ends up committing all kinds of ridiculous mistakes.

In fact, in medieval times the designation village was reserved for non

agricultural communities and was considered outside such administrative

designations as a district ( gun), hamlet ( go), and estate (sho). Village referred to communities that remained outside the category of aristocrat-owned lands

or to communities where farmland was developed late.

For that reason, many of the settlements known as villages in the medi

eval period were on the coast or in the mountains. An examination of an

early-thirteenth-century document called the Otabumi, a medieval land reg ister for Noto, shows that many of the communities designated as villages

were later known as port towns during the Edo period. Therefore, we need

to do away with the assumption that villages were farming communities and

take a fresh look at Japanese society.

TAXES LEVIED ON PADDY LAND

Why have Japanese held these mistaken convictions for so long? When we

consider the literal meaning of the Chinese characters Japanese have used for

hyakusho, we see that the term originally meant nothing more nor less than the common people, who have "many ('one hundred') names." This original

meaning does not imply "farmer." I believe the archaic Japanese reading of

the character was omitakara, which contains no reference to farming. In present-day China and Korea, the characters for the term hyaku hb

are used in their literal sense. When I asked a student from China how h ·

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 23

would translate the meaning of hyakusho, as it is used in his country, into Japanese, he replied, after brief reflection, "a common person." In other

w rds, anyone who was not an official was usually called a hyakusho. The term is often used that way today as well. The exchange student said that he

found it strange that in Japan everyone thought of hyakusho as farmers. The same argument can be made for the term village. The term is derived

from the word for a "gathering" or "group" (mure), so its original meaning Ii.id nothing specifically to do with farm villages. So why is it that many his

torians who otherwise strive to be strictly empirical-historians who empha-

1zc scientific history-forget about empirical principles and scientific rules

\\ hen it comes to interpreting words in documents? Rather than interpreting

vords by way of the meanings they had at the time the document was writ-

1111, these historians make the basic mistake of assuming from the start that

ln111kusho means farmers. I made the same mistake, so I am not speaking I, nm arrogance. Rather, this is a serious problem with no easy answer. How-

vcr, I believe I can suggest several reasons.

Perhaps the most important is that the first true state in the Japanese

111 hipelago-the archaic Ritsuryo state-designated the rice paddy as the

Inundation of the state system in the islands, excepting Okinawa, Hokkaido,

11d the northern parts of Tohoku. That is, the Ritsuryo state created a system

lr1·rcby its support would be drawn from taxes levied on land. This state

It lcd everyone under its control in family registers, everyone age six and

up. discriminating, however, between men and women. Each was allotted a

,, 1 , fie amount of land, and on that basis the state collected taxes in rice (so), I d,o, (yo), crafts (cha), and other forms. This system was an attempt to bring

I 11 · into being in a place that had not yet formed a centralized government,

h,11 ,IL lcrized by an overpowering will to treat all subjects as farmers, as pro-

111 c, s of rice. For example, even though nearly all of the villagers of Shima

Pt 11\ 1 nLc were fishermen, each was allotted paddy land by the state. Since

th 1 1· w re no rice paddies in Shima Province, they were given paddies in

,11 1 Nalu rally, the people of Shima were unable to till their assigned land.

l\1 give another example, the head of the early-eighth-century govern-

111 111, f > , in Nagaya, planned to establish one million cha of new rice pad

I his is an a. I ni. hing figure. Even by the medieval period, the entire

111111 \ paddy a ·r·ag pr bably did not reach this total. Since Japanese

11 I 111 I lil' •ighth c •ntury had a high pr p rlion of coastal and mountain

1111 . w,llr 111,111y long i11volv1.•d in trade, nd handi rafl pr du tion, il i

1 111 .. , 'th.11 1\1111111111111111111·\ W<'ll' st, i tly self su(lilil'nt. Nl'Vi.'rlh •I •ss, th•

24 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

government attempted to carry out this policy for one year, although in the

end it was found to be impractical.

So why is it that the Ritsury6 state chose a system based on the taxation

of rice paddies and tried so desperately to implement it, despite the fact that

so many communities lacked the material means? Granted, rice paddies and

rice itself supported religious rituals in the state's center of power in the Kinai

region as well as in regions as far west as northern Kyushu. But the fact that

this impossible task was even conceived reveals the importance placed on the

rice paddy by this state. As mentioned earlier, the decision of the Ritsury6

state to employ this system was to have great and long-lasting repercussions

in Japanese history. Even though this taxation system subsequently under

went significant change, its traces could still be found in the medieval estate

system (sh6en-kory6sei).

The estate system, which was clearly in effect by the early thirteenth

century, used rice paddies as the fundamental unit of taxation, with new tax

categories of annual tribute (nengu) and public service (kuji) added. Payment

of annual tribute was not restricted to rice but frequently included items such

as silk, cloth, iron, and salt. However, the latter items were collected in con

version equivalents to rice paddies, such as two bolts of silk per cho or five

ryo of iron per tan of paddy. This system proceeded from the assumption that

rice, silk, and iron would be exchanged, but the principle of taxation was still

based on the unit of the rice paddy.

The next state system to come into being was the bakuhan system,

which was formed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.17 It

designated the kokudaka-a volume of estimated rice production-as the

basic unit for payment of annual taxes on the assumption that income from

fields, homes, mountains, the ocean, and salt fields and even profits made

in commerce could be converted to a standard measure of value expressed

in terms of rice. In effect, fields, homes, mountains, coastal water, and salt

fields were all made equivalent to rice paddies. The domainal lord's income

was expressed in the standard price of rice, with taxes levied on that basis.

Production was measured in kokudaka, and a rate, called a men, was estab-

17. The term bakuhan system derives from the fact that the Japanese islands were ruled under a dual policy system during the Tokugawa era. On the one hand, the shogunate (bakufu) had many of the functions of a national government, at least in terms of its legal control of the warrior class and across national borders. On the other hand, the realm was divided into more than 250 domains (han) ruled by warlords (daimyo) who were principally semiautonomous rulers of their domain,. The political system in which a national bakufu coexisted with regional han, with slightly ovt'r lapping yet significantly different jurisdiction, is described by historians as the bnk11/11111 ,yst,·111

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 25

lished for tax collection; five men, for example, would constitute a tax rate of

50 percent. Therefore, the early modern bakuhan system of taxation used the

productivity of rice paddies as the basic measure of the value of land.

From the archaic Ritsury6 state through the governments of the medi

eval and early modern periods, the ruling class consistently took the stance

lhat "agriculture is the foundation of the country," aggressively promoting

an ideology of "agrarian fundamentalism." As a result, the ruling class also

consistently claimed that subjects should be farmers. It was the will of the

slate that taxes be levied on land production, and it was the state's decision

that the people would be tied to the land as farmers, all in its own interest.

For this reason, administrative terminology was largely focused on

,1gricultural matters. For example, our Edo period seaman-villager Enjir6

possessed land that produced only a minuscule amount of kokudaka. He

,pent most of the year engaged in shipping and trade, farming only occa

,1onally when home from the sea. However, his primary occupation of ship

ping was represented as "agricultural idle time income" or harvest interval

11 icome." In other words, according to administrative terminology, it was by

' 111ployment, a side job.

Yet properly speaking, for Enjir6 farming was "shipping idle time

111t ome," not the other way around. Even today, if a company employee has a

111,dl bit ofland that he farms in his spare time, he is designated a "second-

1 y, part-time farmer" by the government, a carryover from the Edo period

111110n of "agricultural idle time income." Official agrarian fundamental-

I I ·rminology thus persists to this day and for this reason the idea that

Ii ·11A11sh6 are farmers gradually spread among people in general.

THE WORLD OF THE FUSUMA DOCUMENT

, 111111d Lhe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this understanding of the

t 111 liy//k11sh6 began to spread throughout Japanese society, so that by the

11 I , ,1 I h Ed period a farmer "was commonly called a hyakusho." The idea 1 widespread Lhat cholars like myself must go out of their way to say that

I 11 1111·1" is nol whal hyakusho originally meant. Nevertheless, public educa-

1 11 111 !lit· mo I •rn ·ra ha nlr nched thi idea even more thoroughly.

If '11,101 i.111s w<.'1T slri ·t aboul lh m aning of words and upheld the

1111 11 11H 1plc, ol t> lllpi1 it,tl 1r�c.irth, this ki1 cl of mistake would have been

I II d 1q 1 ln11g ,1go lllll 1lw1c i, lllll' ollirr tr;1p into whith many hav fallen.

26 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Historians basically rely on written documents, many of which are produced

in the course of the administration of the state. In light of this, it is not sur

prising that the agrarian fundamentalist state mostly produced documents

about farming and fields. Moreover, the documents that have come down to

us today were selectively saved, so only a small portion of the many docu

ments produced in the past survive in the present. The state system has had a

decisive influence on this process of selection.

Since taxes were based on land holdings, nearly every household from

medieval to early modern times kept careful documents related to its fields.

Under these circumstances, it is natural that such documents as land reg

isters, land sale transactions, and materials related to the levy of land taxes

would be the ones most likely to survive into the present.

An examination of the documents in the Tokikuni family storehouse

shows that these kinds of documents constitute an extremely large propor

tion of the whole. The same holds true going back to the medieval period.

The vast majority of documents remaining in temples or in the possession of

aristocratic families are those related to the fields of estates or noble lands.

Moreover, many still extant appeals of the villagers relate to taxes levied on

fields. Generally, when villagers wanted their taxes lowered, they claimed

that the rice crop had been blighted by insects or that the harvest would be

reduced due to cold weather. In other words, they based their appeals for

lowered rates by claiming agricultural losses. It is natural that these appeals

were framed in this way since annual taxes were levied on fields.

If one only reads the tax appeals submitted by villagers, one would

think that they were all farmers, even though many spent the majority of

their time and effort engaged in nonagricultural production. For that reason,

we historians believed that the villagers we see in historical documents were

unquestionably farmers.

However, we have recently begun to examine other documents-whose

numbers are admittedly smaller-which were once meant to be disposed of

but were reused and, through their recycling, survived. The best examples

are the wooden tablets (mokkan) found at the excavation of Heijo Palace. 18

18. See chapters six and seven for more detailed discussions of these wooden strips. See also William Wayne Farris, Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures: Issues in the Historical Archaeology of Ancient Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998), chapter 4, "Wooden Tablets." As Farris reports (201), as late as 1978 only 30,000 such tablets were known to exist. In the twenty years since, approximately 140,000 more have been discovered. The discovery of the Hcij6 Palace tablets was made in the winter of 1961.

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 27

Many of these served as a kind of label; once used, they were thrown away.

However, since the Heijo Palace is situated on marshy land, the tablets were

unearthed in nearly pristine condition. Many were labels for marine prod

ucts. Under the Ritsuryo system, marine products were carried to the capital

from various regions, and it is only with the discovery of these tablets that we

have begun to realize how significant they were.

In another famous example, a number of family registries discarded in

I he Nara period have survived because the paper on which they were written

was reused by the great Nara temple Todaiji to keep records of the treasures

111 its possession. From the late Heian period as well, there are any number

of documents that were reused as scrap paper for diaries and other records.

Paper was a precious item, so many documents that might otherwise have

been thrown away were turned over and the backs used for diaries or records.

Japanese historians call these "backside documents," shihai monjo. In gen

l'ral, people who participated in nonagricultural industries appear more fre

quently in these backside documents than in the documents preserved by

I he usual routes. Another characteristic particular to these "backside docu

ments" is that many are related to movable goods. As a result, these docu

ments give us a picture of a world quite different from that preserved in the

mainstream documents.

Documents have also been discovered inside screens and sliding,

insulated, lattice-frame doors (fusuma) dating from the Momoyama to

I he Edo periods. We call these fusuma insulation documents, fusuma shi

ta/Jari monjo. They are documents that would ordinarily have been thrown

,1way but were recycled as a lining or insulation inside fusuma, and in this

way they were unintentionally preserved for us today. Both households of

I h Tokikuni, upper and lower, preserved their fusuma, so we were able to

1 nnove the insulation documents from some of the older doors and examine

I hl'm one by one.

After we completed our investigation of the documents kept in the store

muse, we turned to the fusuma documents. So far we have come across some

111 pri ing facts. We had heard that both households operated Kitamaebune

l11ps in the late Edo period, and we have the ships' storage chests themselves.

l\ul none of the nearly ten thousand documents preserved in the upper Tokikuni

tm ·hous dire tly ub tantiated the existence of these ships. W hen we exam-

1,wd th ·Jus11111a do um nls, however, we found many shipping receipts and

p111dt1( t lists. Without a doubt, th 'S w r do umenl that the upper Tokikuni

28 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

family no longer had any need for, so the papers were turned over to a crafts

man, who mounted them inside the fusuma for use as insulation.

Thanks to Izumi Masahiro's research of these documents, we were able

to confirm for the first time that the Tokikuni family owned and operated

four Kitamaebune ships. That is, they had at least four ships large enough to

carry eight hundred to one thousand koku of goods, which they sailed from

Osaka to Hokkaido, trading in goods worth more than a thousand ryo and

making a profit of three hundred ryo. Moreover, we were able to ascertain,

through Izumi Masahiro's and Kitsukawa Toshitada's investigation of the

fusuma documents of the Inoike Mitsuo family of Outer Noto, that these

ships sailed as far north as Sakhalin. 19

These documents also showed us that

the upper Tokikuni family acted as financiers, using the money earned by

the ships they owned. In other words, throughout the Eda period the upper

Tokikuni were large-scale entrepreneurs.

Research by Sekiguchi Hirao turned up other surprises. A sailor on

one of these boats, one Tomonosuke, appears in the documents kept in the

Tokikuni storehouse as an indentured servant (genin) who rented a small

portion of Tokikuni land for farming. In other words, if we go only by the

documents in the storehouse, we see Tomonosuke as a poor indentured ser

vant of the Tokikuni and a small subsistence farmer. But in the world of the

fusuma documents Tomonosuke was a great sailor who was entrusted by the

Tokikuni to make transactions of up to one thousand ryo. This illustrates

how big a difference there is between the worlds represented in the docu-

19. The fusuma documents of the Inoike family provide a great tale of historical accidents. The Inoike family is located in the hills well inland from the coast, but the fusuma in the house were brought there from the coastal village of Sosogi as part of a bride's dowry. Some years later her natal home burned to the ground. The only thing that survived of the family's history were the fusuma that she had taken with her to her new home in the hills, the very same fusuma that were filled with her family's decades of scrap paper. By the early 1990s, Inoike Mitsuo, grandson of the fusuma bearing bride, had replaced his grandmother's doors, but in the process he had the foresight to remove and store the thousands of scraps of paper that had filled them before he disposed of the frames.

These fusuma documents also revealed the tremendous amount of work facing historians of early modern Japan. In placing the documents inside the fusuma, little concern was given to preserving them whole. Since they were turned into scrap, they were frequently cut into several pieces to fit the door. When Amino's group was given access to the documents, the first task was attempting to reconstruct some of the documents out of the thousands of scraps jumbled together. It was literally like trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle. Thanks to hard work, several of the longer documents were reconstructed, but the task was so time consuming that little more study has been done. Multiply the situation at the Inoike household by the tens of thousands of other households in Japan that possibly (and unwittingly) possessfusurna documents, and you have ,111 idea of just how much more work remains to be done.

Was Medieval (Premodern) Japan an Agrarian Society? 29

ments purposefully preserved in storehouses and those unintentionally pre

served inside the fusuma.

Up to now, very few historians have carefully examined these fusuma

documents. Of course, the number of early modern documents is stagger

ing, and for the most part historians have not had a chance to examine the

fusuma materials. Yet because of that everyone fell into a trap. Much of the

world of sailors and mountain folk can be found in these latter documents,

which were meant to be thrown away. This was an alternative world that must

he brought to light or our image of Japanese society will remain distorted.

Academia was unable to avoid this agrarianist distortion for other rea

sons as well. Confucianists in the early modern period were for the most part 1grarian fundamentalists. The European scholarship that was introduced in

I he modern era was also largely economic history that centered on agricul-

1 tt re. Of course, there were also some Europeans who looked at commerce,

hut in general economic history has been focused on agriculture. The medi-

\ al period in Japan has been characterized as a feudal system based on agri-

11ltural slavery, and it is commonly assumed that the feudal lords who ruled

1 I H" farmers were in a position of absolute control. Marxist historians were in

1 :rccment on this point.

o Japanese economic historical terminology is dominated by words

wolcd in this agricultural mind-set, such as wealthy farmer, middle farmer, 1 111 farmer, wealthy landowner, subsistence farmer, agricultural slaves, and

1 on. Sea and mountain folk have been completely ignored. There are almost

, terms in academia to describe these people. Likewise, we possess no aca-

1 1111l Lerms to accurately express the multiple activities of a family like the

I 1 1kuni. Even if you coin terms for seamen who seem solidly characterized Ii 11•1 ms of indenture, such as sea slave (kainu) or fishing slave (gyonu), no

11 l 111 academia will understand. Nevertheless, since these people did not

I l'ss land, there is no way to use terms based on farming to convey an

111 .11' s nse of their lives. Thus, we are forced to conclude that academic

1111111ology is imbued with agrarian fundamentalist ideology. Even analysis

• f I I w llil in g class employs terms such as feudal lord, private domain holder,

I 1/ /111rl, and o on, all of which are linked to agriculture.

I 11 my r s ar h, I have focused on the lives of those who did not partici-

1 111 .,gri ullur . My work has often been seen as focused on an insignifi-

111 11111H11 ily lrom whi h lilll uld be concluded about Japanese society

1 \ 11011· ( )tlH·1s h,1v • .1rgu ·d that il is ridi ulous Lo theorize about the

30 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

emperor in terms of a connection to nonagricultural people. But if hyakusho

were not farmers, then nonagricultural people cannot be said to have been

a minority. Of this I am certain, so I have attempted to present a vision of

Japanese society that includes nonagricultural peoples along with farmers

and thereby set in motion a thorough reconsideration ofJapanese history.

CHAPTER TWO

The Maritime View

of the Japanese Archipelago

WAS JAPAN AN ISOLATED ISLAND COUNTRY?

1 n the previous chapter, I demonstrated how the deeply held conviction

.,mong Japanese that hyakusho were farmers was mistaken. As I suggested,

1 very high percentage of those classed within a category of hyakusho were

, ngaged in industries other than agriculture. The task of this chapter is to

111d icate the significance of this new insight in macrohistorical terms. When

·c reexamine the history of the society of the Japanese archipelago in light of

•III s new understanding, all of our commonsensical images become subject

n revision.

According to the prevailing view, rice cultivation was introduced into

I ltl' Japanese islands at some point between the late Jomon (14,000 B.C.E.-

00 n. .E.) and early Yayoi (300 B.C.E.-300 c.E.). From that time on, society

I , ,1 me essentially agricultural, with rice production at its core. Believed to

I isolated from the Asian continent by the ocean, this rice-cultivating soci-

1 was held to have been self-sufficient. But I argue that this view is biased

11cl pr ·s nt a false image of early society in the islands.

First of a 11, the idea that the islands were separated from the Asian

,111111 •111 is stri tly ne-sided. Without a doubt, the ocean can function as

, 11h,t,1 I· that ·an s ·pa rat' people. But that i only one way of looking at

lite ml',1111,111 .tlso h:1w th· opposit ', and xtrcm ly important, function

1 1111111•, ,1 pl1.1hl1· t1,111,1w1 t.1t1011 1m111• th,11 linl s p ·opl ·s.

32 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

The Japanese archipelago is composed of more than 3,700 islands, each

of which is linked by the ocean. We know that from early on people and

things circulated across the waters between the islands, the Asian conti

nent, the islands of Southeast Asia, and even islands further south. Within

the archipelago itself, lakes, rivers, and even mountains had important roles

as transportation routes. Each of these features also generated a wealth of

commodities. Thus, these environmental features all possessed great mean

ing for peoples' lives. Our inquiry into how society in the archipelago has

changed over time must examine not just the paddies and fields of the plains

but the functions of the ocean, lakes, rivers, and mountains.

We have recently obtained clear evidence that people were living

throughout the archipelago during the period when the islands were con

nected to the continent in the early Stone Age. Until this information came

to light, the culture of the people of the Jomon period was considered to be

unique to the Japanese islands. It is true that the culture of the Jomon period

constituted the most basic level of "Japanese Island culture." But we are often

presented with maps that depict the Jomon cultural sphere as restricted to

the territory of the present-day Japanese nation. As a result of these assump

tions, we find lines drawn on the maps (or, more commonly, shading) sepa

rating the island of Tsushima from the Korean Peninsula or Hokkaido from

Sakhalin. Okinawa, particularly the outer islands of Miyako and Yaeyama, is

also placed in a different cultural sphere. But this does not make sense.

Some time ago I had the opportunity to travel to Tsushima by boat. The

trip from Kyushu to Tsushima was particularly difficult for me. I did not

get seasick, but I had to endure several hours of the boat rolling from side to

side before we reached the island. In contrast, the Korean Peninsula is close

enough to be visible from Tsushima on a clear day. According to the maps we

commonly see today, Jomon culture is supposed to have crossed the rough

channel between Kyushu and Tsushima, but the same maps would have us

believe that Jomon culture was unable to cross the far shorter distance be

tween Tsushima and Korea. How is it possible that the Jomon people could

not cross the short distance between Tsushima and Korea but could cross the

rough waters of the Genkai Sea? Is it not unnatural to think that the Jomon

was an isolated " island " culture restricted solely to the Japanese islands? Thi

was the commonsense notion of archaeologists until quite recently.

Research conducted by Watanabe Makoto of Nagoya University has

swept this "common sense" away. Watanabe has shown conclusively that

a common culture characterized a region that in lu I d the ca. t and south

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 33

coast of Korea, the islands ofTsushima and Iki, and northern Kyushu, a fish

ermen's culture that used conjoined fishhooks, stone anchors, and Sobata

style earthenware. 1

According to Watanabe, the culture of this region was

also related to the cultures whose remains are found from Okinawa to the

San'in region of Honshu and the Inland Sea. With this evidence, we know

that people have traveled across to the Korean Peninsula and among the Jap

,1nese islands since the Jamon period. In no sense was Jamon culture limited

to the territory of present-day "Japan," nor was it limited to the Japanese is

l,1nds. In fact, it is clear that it had deep ties to the Asian continent.

Similar discoveries have been made time and again since Watanabe's

work first appeared in the early 1970s. According to Mori Kaichi, for example,

nbsidian from Oki Island has been recovered in archaeological digs at sites

di along the Sea of Japan, and obsidian from Kazu Island near Izu has been

lnund all over the eastern part of Honshu. Thus, obsidian was transported

11 ro s a wide area, which can only be attributed to the sea borne trade. Like-

1sc, stone tools closely resembling those of the early Jamon period have

1,, L'ntly been discovered in sites along the Japan sea coast. Thus, it appears

1 l ,Ii n that culture from northeastern Asia crossed the northern seas into ll1l Japanese archipelago early on.

In the field of linguistics, Ono Susumu has argued along similar lines,

l 11111ing that Japanese has its origins in Polynesian languages. He has also

1 , 11tly noted a relation to Tamil. I do not have the expertise to argue on the

I l 11h of his theories, but we must give due consideration to the movements

1111111 the south as well.

JOMON CULTURE

111,·11t ioned earlier, the ocean was an important means of transport within

1, hipclago, as can be demonstrated by countless examples. During the

I m1on of the Chitose airport in Hokkaido, a large amount of jade was

11, ,·1L'd at a Jamon period site that has come to be known as the Bibi

1111111�. Thi jade came from the ltoigawa area ofNiigata, on the Japan Sea

I nvn lime, a huge volume of goods was carried over the ocean from ,1., lo I lokkaid . Moreover, the remains of what appears to have been

\ ,, 11i.1l11• 1\t.,k11111, /1J1111111 111/,11 11,, gl'"$)'" ('I lw Jomon Period .ind Pishing) (Tokyo: YC.zankaku I "I I' 111, 1•11 I)

Cir uits of the Sea and Nonagricultura l Production

an obsidian mine have been found in Nagano. There was a very active trade

in obsidian in the Japanese islands, the widespread distribution of obsidian

being not at all incidental in nature. Thus, even in the Jomon period, obsid

ian was produced on the presumption that it would be traded. The standard

line has it that the beginnings of commerce dated from a later period, but it

is clear from the case of obsidian that commerce was already taking place in

the Jomon period. Obsidian was not the only commercial product of the time; salt presents

us with a similar case. Since there is no rock salt in the Japanese islands, it

had to be processed from seawater. The excavation of large vats on the coast

near Kasumigaura suggests that salt was produced in large stoneware vessels

in the late Jomon period. Salt was manufactured by extracting salty water

from boiled seaweed. When salt is produced in such stonewater vats, it can be

made in substantial quantities. I believe it is likely that this salt was produced

for trade. This salt also made it possible to preserve, and thus trade, fish and

shellfish. Therefore, trade in salt and preserved seafood was probably one of

the earliest forms of commerce in the Japanese islands and salt traders and

fishmongers the earliest merchants.

Our prevailing image of the Jomon period has been one of nearly

naked people-lightly covered with furs and skins and running about

barefoot-hunting animals with bows and arrows or stones. However, this

image must be revised. For clothing, they had textiles woven from the fi

bers of plants like wisteria and vines as well as woven bags for carrying

nuts (fig. 9). J6mon people also wore shoes. Their tools were not limited to

bows, arrows, and stones; they also used fairly highly developed wooden

tools. A neatly lacquered woman's hairpin was discovered at the famous

J6mon period Torihama remains at Lake Sanpogo in Wakasa. The Sannai

Maruyama remains in Aomori City also yielded a large number of magnifi

cent lacquerware items, along with a surprising number of stoneware arti

facts. The Sannai Maruyama site also contains the remains of a number of

huge, evenly spaced pillars, suggesting that the people of this era had some

type of measuring tools.

Thus, life and culture in the Jomon period was rich and complex. Al

though primarily a fishing and hunting society, it also exhibited some so

phistication in the gathering and processing of nuts, and archaeologists have

recovered some evidence of the cultivation of plants and trees. Gourds have

been discovered at the Torihama site along with sesame and bitter cucumber

seeds. Gourds, in particular, are not native to the Japa ne e isb nds, so on an

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 35

I 1r111l' 9. A )6111011-era purse found at the Sa nna i Ma ruyama site. Photograph courtesy of ll1111A11 ·<1i I logo-kn, Aomori-ken Kyoiku-cho.

1111ly on luck thal Lhcy were imported and cultivated. Millet has also been

11,,, ov •r ·ti al Jornon sites, leading to the hypothesis that dry field agriculture

l,11:,111111 the l,11 · )(1111011 pl'riod. 'lhus, while we tend l Lhink ofJ6mon people

, • till tly l11111tt·1 g.1tlw1l'r,, I hdicvc that planting and ·ultivalion l hnolo

•11 \ 'l'I (' l'\Lliil 1,hl'd I II I lil· ),ljl,llll'\l' ,11 l h 1Jll'l,1go .11 k.hl by I hl' l.11 lt·r pa rt of

36 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

the Jomon period. Since rice cultivation was also introduced at this time, it is

clear that Jomon people had a diverse culture.

As mentioned earlier, we have found pillars constructed from huge trees

at sites all along the Japan Sea coastline-from the Mawaki remains in Noto

to the Sannai Maruyama remains. So archaeologists also call this a "gigantic

pillar culture." We are not sure whether these pillars were parts of buildings

or sites of worship. Either way, these enormous pillars could not have been

raised without a fairly high level of social organization. Thus, it appears that,

along with a series of wide-ranging trade relationships, each local society was

considerably complex in and of itself. Of course, this does not necessarily

imply a hierarchical structure of power with rulers and ruled, but one must

consider the possibility that there existed leaders of some kind.

I began my discussion with the Jomon period because we have had a

tendency to view the Yayoi period as the era when rice cultivation began.

Fixation on this idea has led to an obsession with rice cultivation. As a result,

we have long believed that society in the Japanese archipelago was uniformly

centered around rice. This leads us to ignore the development throughout the

Jomon period of a variety of industries with their consequent technologies

and cultures. If we do not recognize the fact that the people of the Jomon

period engaged in a variety of forms of production and were linked across

a wide area, then we cannot fully understand the cultures and societies that

came afterward.

YAYOICULTURE

Rice cultivation in the Japanese islands is usually believed to have begun in

the Yayoi period. However, because rice cultivation actually began earlier, in

parts of the Inland Sea region and northern Kyushu, prior to the Yayoi era,

rice cultivation and Yayoi tools do not always come as a set. Nevertheless, by

and large the technology needed for rice cultivation arrived as part of a tech

nological system brought in by a group that emigrated to the islands.

Rice cultivation was not the only new technology. A variety of cultural

elements began to enter the western portion of the archipelago from China

and the Korean Peninsula around 300 B.C. We believe that new dry field

crops, bronze and iron tools, sericulture, and new weaving technologies, a

well as improvements in salt vat production, were introduced at that ti m .

Cormorant fishing also entered the western portion of the i. lands around

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 37

this time, spreading to the entire archipelago by the medieval period. In

other words, as a fishing method it was sufficient to support a lifestyle.

There are various debates over the sources of Yayoi culture, but it seems

likely that for the most part it came from southern China and the Korean

Peninsula. On the one hand, the know-how to make metal tools and gigan

tic stone dolmens spread from the Korean Peninsula into northern Kyushu.

On the other, cormorant fishing and the recently excavated remains at

Yoshinogari have drawn attention to connections with southern China.

Around 300 B.c. Yayoi-style rice cultivation quickly spread throughout

western Japan, affecting the territory west of a line from Ise Bay to Wakasa

Bay. It is true that remains of rice paddies have recently been uncovered in

the northern prefecture of Aomori, so we know that rice spread even that far

north. But this appears to have been a temporary phenomenon; rice cultiva

tion became permanently established in the north much later.

Yayoi culture originally crossed the ocean and spread along the coasts

,ind up the rivers; therefore, the people who brought it must have had a strong

lOnnection with the ocean and would have possessed advanced sailing tech

nologies. There are many shell mounds from the Yayoi period, so we know

I hat fishing, salt production, and hunting and gathering continued as before.

I bus, I believe that Yayoi culture cannot be understood solely with reference

lo rice, as is so common today. Instead we must also take into consideration

1 ls relation to the ocean.

Exchanges with the Asian continent and the Korean Peninsula were

111ore frequent and intimate than we have supposed. Yayoi stoneware pro

duced in Japan has been unearthed in the southern portion of the Korean

l't•ninsula. Although this is a topic of some debate, I believe that a group

I 11own as the wajin with a strong connection to the sea came into being

l Ii rnugh trade within the western portion ofJapan, the southern portion of

I orca, and the Chinese continent. Under no circumstances should the wajin

lic LOnsidered the "ancient Japanese." They were the bearers of Yayoi culture

111 l he western portion of the Japanese islands, but they were also a people

\\ hose I ives centered on the sea, moving among the regions of southern Ko-

1 .1 ,1 nd parts of the Chinese continent.

'f his is well documented in Wei zhi wei ren chuan, a Chinese text pro-

dt1l l'd in the latl r part of the Yayoi period. The text states that there was

111 .1grit ullur in Tsushima and that its people lived by trading to the north

111«1 ,1H1lh. '1 lw ll'xl r ·wrds a similar situation fi r fki, anoth r island located

Ii, t w1•1•11 l h1• I 01 l\t 11 Pen i 11.,11 l.1 ., 11d l lw J,1 p,111l'St' isl,111ds, whl'rl' l he..' fi w '1 Ids

38 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

that did exist were insufficient to support the population. On Iki as well,

trade was an important element of local life. In this regard, the text records a

similar state at a place called Matsura-now known as the Matsuura region.

As these observations all refer to islands, they can be applied to the Japanese

archipelago as a whole.

Since Yayoi society initially developed through trade, it is hard to be

lieve that there ever was a "self-sufficient" society in the archipelago, as the

history textbooks mentioned in chapter one assert. The assumption that a

certain level of population in a given area requires a commensurate amount

of paddy and dry field cultivation is based on the premise that a sustainable

lifestyle must depend primarily on agriculture. It ignores other forms of pro

duction such as fishing, hunting, and gathering and is thus misleading.

The Wei zhi wei ren chuan also states, "There are markets where ex

change is conducted in every province." The province referred to in the text

was approximately the size of a present-day county or perhaps even a little

smaller. Nevertheless, the importance of exchange in this society is demon

strated by the fact that each province had a market. Society could not have

developed without these marketplaces.

The people of the plains produced grains as well as such crops as mulber

ries, sumac (for lacquer), hemp (for flax), and ramie, not to mention the vari

ous products processed from these materials. Horses and cows were raised in

pasture lands at higher altitudes. Coastal peoples brought in foodstuffs from

the sea, while mountain peoples gathered fruits and nuts and lumber to pro

duce charcoal, wooden tools, lacquerware, and, with wood as fuel, pottery.

Iron and copper, mined and refined in the mountains, were processed into

iron and bronze implements. Once we take all of this into consideration, we

can see that this society was founded on the basis of a wide variety of prod

ucts that were exchanged over a broad area.

W hile a division of labor between mountain and coastal peoples

emerged during the Jomon period, it appears that specialization on the part

of the plains people emerged in the Yayoi. Thus, the primitive commercial

activity of the Jomon period- in which such materials as salt, seafood, and

stone tools were exchanged-became even more widespread in the Yayoi.

Specialized merchants probably did not exist; instead the producers them

selves traveled widely to conduct their trade.

We can tell from the distribution of remains and artifacts from Lh is

period-which are generally located along waterway -that rivers and the

ocean served as the primary means of tran portali n upp rtin, this tra I·.

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 39

It seems likely that these waterways were more active than previously imag

ined and that a number of transportation routes were established very early

on across the entire archipelago. For example, it appears that there was at

the time a heavily traveled route from the Inland Sea into Osaka Bay, up

the Yodo River, and further up the Uji River, where, after a brief journey

by land, Lake Biwa could be crossed. After another short trip across land,

the Japan Sea and points north were fully accessible. Moreover, curved jew

els called magatama from the Hokuriku region on the Japan Sea have been

uncovered in large amounts in Chiba Prefecture on the Pacific coast. This

suggests that there were well-traveled river and land routes spanning the cen

tral mountains and the Kanto plains, linking the Japan Sea and the Pacific

Ocean coasts of Honshu. River travel in particular was carried out on a scale

unimaginable today.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN

WESTERN AND EASTERN JAPAN

Nevertheless, despite the connecting trade routes, there remained stark dif

lL-rences between the eastern and western portions of the archipelago in this

period. Although this disparity had existed since the Stone Age and Jomon

periods, a major contributing factor to it was the rapid spread of Yayoi cul

tu re across the west as far as Ise and Wakasa. However, for two hundred

Yl'ars thereafter the Yayoi cultural sphere did not expand further because it

1 ncountered the stiff resistance of Jomon culture. As a result, a clear distinc-

11011 between the Jomon culture of the east and the Yayoi culture of the west

onlinued for a relatively long time. When considering later social develop-

111t·nls, we must keep this division between the eastern and western regions

t1f Japan in mind.

For example, Aoba Takashi's 1981 study, Vegetables, draws on research in

111 nip genes to show that turnips of the Siberian/European type were found

11 1 I anlo, Tohoku, and Hokuriku while the Chinese/Korean type was dis

t 11hut cl throughout the western portion of the islands. 2

Drawing on precise

, \t'.tr ·h f bolani l such as Aoba, we can conclude that a number of cultural

I I 11hut ·s •nterecl eastern Japan from the north. There was probably a route

f1t1111 f lokkaido lo north rn I Ion, hu, and goods also crossed the northern

111,,1 Id,, hi 111 111 (\'1w·1.1hl1·•) ('111 ·11 I lm,•i d,11g,1k11 ,h11pp,111kyok11 , 1981).

40 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Japan Sea. In any case, this shows that the routes from China and Korea to the

western portion of the archipelago were not the only routes into the Japanese

islands. Therefore, the difference between western Yayoi and eastern J6mon

cultures cannot be understood in reference to the Japanese islands alone.

Most theories ofJapanese culture and society have operated on the fol

lowing premise: advanced culture and technology from China and the Ko

rean Peninsula first entered northern Kyushu and from there moved into the Inland Sea and the Kinki region. In other words, advanced culture moved

from the west into the backward regions of the east. This cultural migration

was believed to have had a definitive influence on later social development in

the Japanese islands.

However, I believe this view must be thoroughly revised. We must also

look at the influx of a different culture from northeastern Asia, which en

tered through Sakhalin and Hokkaido into northern Honshu and the Kanto

Plain or across the Japan Sea into Hokuriku and the San'in coast. We must

construct a more synthetic and comprehensive understanding of the state of

culture and society at the time in light of such exchanges between the cul

tures of east and west.

The same thing can be said for rice cultivation. Traces of Yayoi cul

ture appear in the eastern portion of the islands from around 100 B.C., with

rice cultivation spreading to the southern portion of Tohoku. But we must

remember that equating rice cultivation with social progress reflects the perspective of western Japan. The culture of the east cannot be accurately

grasped from that perspective.

Even as the peoples of the eastern portion of the archipelago absorbed

and adopted the technologies of rice cultivation, they continued to develop

an independent culture. Recognition of independent eastern cultural devel

opment reminds us that one cannot simply say that the west was advanced

and the east backward. There were many progressive elements in the east, as is clearly reflected in the history of the islands after the establishment

of a state in the sixth and seventh centuries. Mulberries, for example, were

widely grown in the eastern portion of the islands, and sericulture wa

widely practiced there from the Yayoi period on. Moreover, the modes of

rice cultivation in the west and east were quite different. Rice cultivation

in the east was developed alongside dry field production of hemp, rami ,

and mulberries. The significance of this will become clear when we cons id r

what happened after the establishment of the first state.

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 41

THE TOMB PERIOD

l'he third to fifth centuries A.D. are usually called the early Tomb period.

l"his period was marked by early political activities around the Inland Sea,

I rom the Kinki region of Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara to northern Kyushu and

I he Izumo and Kibi areas to the west. Among the various "kings" of these

1 egions, one, known as the Great King (okimi), came to occupy a position of primacy within the group. Another well-known sovereign, Himiko of the

I ingdom of Yamatai, was known as "Wao" (The Queen of Wa). As men

I 1oned earlier, there is a great deal of debate among historians today over

whether Yamatai was in the Kinki region (Osaka-Nara) or northern Kyushu.

The movement of people and goods between the archipelago and China ,111d Korea became even more pronounced during this period, with a variety c 11 technologies entering Kyushu, the Inland Sea, and Kinki region from the

H'Sl. Horses and iron were among the most significant items to be intro

l11(cd at this time, raising the hotly debated issue of the arrival of a "horse

, 1d Ing people."3 While I am not a specialist in this area, even if we do not

t It Ink of their arrival as an "invasion" of a different race, it is clear that rid-

1 ng technology came as a discrete culture in a series of waves. Moreover, the

1111 m ber of people who moved into the western portion of the archipelago

I 11111 the continent during the Yayoi and Tomb periods was not on the scale

111 ll'n or twenty thousand but approached several hundred thousand to a

1111 II ion over the course of about a thousand years. Hanihara Kazur6 insists t I 1 11 l here are too many puzzles that cannot be solved unless the migration of

1 It 1\ period is recognized as having been on such a large scale.4 I will not go

I 11 Io I he details of his genetic research here, but according to Hanihara there

1 very close physical resemblance between the peoples of western Japan

111d I orea. In fact, the differences between the people of western and eastern

I 11,111 are far greater than those between the people of western Japan and

1111110" referring lo a debate begun by Egami Namio in 1948. For a good English-language over- 11,·w ol I he debate, see William Wayne Farris, Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures: Issues in the His '"' 1111/ I\ n haeology of Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai 'i Press, 1998), 62-63. In brief, Egami 1•ml11l.111·d ih,11 the Japanese islands were invaded by a horse-riding people from the continent who 1n·111 rn1 In c,tablish the archaic Japanese state.

, l111 ,. ,1111pli-, I l,1nih.ira Kazuro, '"I he Origin of the Japanese in Relation to Other Ethnic Groups 111 I ,1•,t \ ,1,1," 111 l\'1111/011•, 011 rl,c Jnp1111ese Past: Srudies in Archaeology and Prehistory, ed. Richard I I', .11,011, C o1n,1 l 1•1• ll,11 n,•,, and Karl I.. I I utterer (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, Uni ' 1 II) 111 1' I 1, lt1g,111, I 'IX<,); ,ind "J',t 1111,ll 1011 of I he Nu mbcr of Early I 111 migrants to Japan: A Simu-

11111, S111d), /1111111,,I 11/ 1/,.- \111/110110/og,rnl Soc1t'll'o/Nippo1195.3 (July 1987): 391 403.

42 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Korea. The people of eastern Japan, on the other hand, are closer to the Ainu,

who themselves are similar to the Okinawans. Hanihara argues that these

latter groups represent remnants of an old Mongoloid strain. People of a new

Mongoloid type came into the islands from the west during the Yayoi period.

While the issue of migration into the archipelago continues to be debated,

there is no question that a relatively large number of people moved into the

western portion of the Japanese islands from the Asian continent. Attendant

upon this long-term migration was the introduction of a variety of cultures

and technologies. However, we must also remember that the influx of over

seas cultures during this period did not come only from the west.

The conventional wisdom is that the spread of large tombs was itself

equivalent to the spread of the influence of the Yamato clans. As the Yamato

federation of clans with its Queen of Wa/Great King enlarged its sphere of

influence, leaders of other regions adopted the keyhole-shaped tombs of the

Yamato. 5 There were, of course, relations between Yamato and other regions,

but even in the case of ancient tombs we must recognize that there were cul

tural differences between Yamato, the northern Kyushu regions, and other re

gions in the archipelago. Each region, in other words, had its own tomb style.

For example, on Noto Island in Ishikawa Prefecture there is a peculiarly

shaped tomb called the Ezoana Tomb (fig. 10). This tomb has drawn a great

deal of attention for the ways in which it differs from the keyhole-shaped

tombs with which most Japanese are familiar. One theory suggests that it

was constructed under the influence of the ancient Korean state Kogury6,

which controlled the northern por tion of the Korean Peninsula and par ts

of nor theastern China. At a recent international symposium hosted by the

Japanese archaeologist Mori Koichi, there was a great deal of debate over

the question of whether the person buried in this tomb had come directly

from Kogury6. W hile there was no resolution of this particular point, there

was a general consensus regarding the distinctive character of the tomb. The

par ticipants also agreed that the possibility of culture being carried across

the Japan Sea from the north required greater attention, since in the eighth

century emissaries crossed the Japan Sea from the Bohai Sea region near

present-day Tianjin.

Variation in tomb shape is not the only indication of regional differ

ences. Recent studies have suggested that horses and "horse culture" did

5. For a nice visual illustration of this process, see the outline of regional tomb dcvcloprncnt in Joan It Piggott's The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (Stanford: Stanford Un ivcr,it y 1 1 1, "· I ')'17), '2 11.

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 43

I l)lllre 10. Suso Ezoana Tomb. Photograph courtesy of Board of Education, Nanao City, I ,ltikawa Prefecture.

not enter the islands solely from the west. This has not yet been proven irre

l 11 tably; never theless, riding gear recovered from fifth- and sixth-century

tnmbs in Northern Honshu and the Kanto Plain has provided suppor ting

, v idcnce. In addition, Kanto and the Koshin region just to its west, as well

t\ the Emishi region of northern Honshu, were known as horse-breeding

11 l',\S in the eighth and ninth centuries. So it appears likely that the intro

d 11l lion of horses could not have been only from the west. We must also give

l ltought to the likelihood of the diffusion of a number of cultural elements

I, om Lhc north.

'I he ame goes for iron technologies. The conventional wisdom has held

1 lt,tl materials necessary for iron production entered the islands from Korea,

I' 1ssrng through north rn Kyushu, dis eminating throughout the islands,

111d l'Vl"l1lu.illy gr.ivitaling Loward Lhc w stern Honshu Mountains and the

11111 Pl,1i11. '1 lw ll"l hnology lor minting is :1lso said Lo hnvc be •n Lrnnsmitt 'd

111111 w1·,1 lo t·,11,l lllll l.tll'i llH·11· Ii.ts lwt'll g1owi11g i111l'n•.1,l in lhl' sugg ·slion

44 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

that there was another, independent route from the north by which these technologies entered. Early kilns of a structure different from those in the west have been found in northern Honshu and Kanto. Moreover, the raw material for iron production in the west was "iron sand," while in the east it was probably produced from mined ore. In the case of minting, the remains of a ninth-century mint have been discovered in southern Tohoku. We also know that there was a mint in Noto during the Heian period. It has been sug gested that both of these were developed with northern technology. Thus, the influx of culture into the archipelago was not only from the west.

The same is true for the south. A tribe known as the Hayato in southern Kyushu clearly shared a common culture with Amami and Okinawa to the south. Likewise, the tombs of the Hayato are of a different character from the keyhole tombs associated with the Yamato clans. For these reasons, I be lieve that the attempt to examine Japanese culture as solely deriving from a cultural influx from the west-based on the spread of Yamato rice paddy culture-must be revised.

TRADE RELATIONS WITH SURROUNDING REGIONS

With the advent of the Tomb period, the flow of goods and peoples along the seas and rivers became even more active, and the federation of leaders in the Kinki region known as "the Yamato court" came to have an increasingly close-knit relationship with the leaders of the eastern portion of the islands. These relations were maintained in the form of tribute. Tribute would be offered to the Yamato court, which would provide return gifts in acknowl edgment. T he movement of goods and peoples as well as the transmission of information that went along with a tribute economy picked up pace again during the transition from the Yayoi to the Tomb period. T his was true not only in the case of relations between the Yamato court and other regions, for these regions engaged in independent and wide-ranging trade among them selves as well. A particularly well-traveled route cut across the archipelago from northern Kyushu through the Inland Sea and into Osaka Bay, over Lak Biwa, and up the northern Japan Sea coast (Hokuriku).

At the beginning of the sixth century, the royal line that ruled in Yamato produced no heir. In place of a direct heir, a man known as Keitai (r. 507?-31) moved south from the Echizen region into Yamato to bee n l' the new okimi. The traces of Keitai's movements can b found in E hiz •n,

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 45

Omi, Owari, Mino, Kawachi, and Settsu. After traveling across a wide area, visiting consorts in several places-including a consort in Owari named Menoko-hime-he finally settled in Yamato. It is also recorded that at one time all of the consorts gathered together in the place where the new okimi resided.6

In any c�se, it is clear that the routes from Echizen into Lake Biwa, pass ing through Omi to Kawachi-or again going upstream along the rivers from Echizen, crossing the mountains into Mino, and exiting into Owari-were im portant arteries for the circulation of goods and people. Thus, pan-archipelago routes for the exchange of people, goods, and information had become firmly established by the Tomb period. Only on this basis could a royal succession spanning several regions-such as that of Keitai-take place. Furthermore, given the existence of water routes through the Inland Sea and along the Ja pan sea coast, which connected Yamato and the Echizen region to the Korean Peninsula and the Asian continent, it does not make sense for historians to re sl rict Keitai's sphere of activity to the islands alone.

In fact, a war that historians call the Iwai Rebellion took place shortly .liter Keitai's succession. Although it is generally called a rebellion, the 1 011eept of a revolt presumes a single center (against which the rebellion is 1.,unched), which in this case was presumed to be Yamato. But Yamato was 110[ the only center of power during this period. Therefore, this disturbance liould not be considered a rebellion but a war between the Yamato king

dom and the Iwai kingdom of northern Kyushu. At the same time, we can- 11111 limit our view of the war to a struggle confined to the Iwai and Yamato I 111gdoms, for the Yamato had allied itself with the Kaya principality of the I nr ·an Peninsula, while the Iwai joined with the kingdom of Silla, also of

ml'a. Therefore, the Iwai war was not limited to the Japanese islands alone. I 11 h •r, these alliances linked the struggle between two kingdoms in Japan I I I Ii' struggle between two kingdoms on the Korean Peninsula. We cannot

1dcrstand this kind of war unless we recognize the existence of tightly knit It importation routes along the Inland Sea, northern Kyushu, and across the I j l ,111 Sea t the peninsula and the continent.

Shi ft i ng u r focus to the Japan Sea, we note that there was at this time 11 < • I rl'm ly a live route running along the coast from San'in north to

11 1 1 I ,11do. J •welry pr du cd by craftsmen in Sado and Echigo was exported I l111gl· q11,1111ities lo Yamato, and many pieces have also been found along

l.,w,il I I ,-111. Mn, I I 111. '11, 1111d A 1111,u, Ymhrhikn, ·ds., Kl'it"i 11Ai111i to 01v11ri 110 Mc11oko hime ( I 1111 11 1111 I dl,11 ,111d 1 1 1 lrh ,,, , �lt-1111111 111 I )w.11 I) ( I 11ky11 Sh11go1kk1111, l'l'M)

46 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

the San'in coast all the way to Izumo. This, too, would be inexplicable with

out reference to the Japan Sea routes.

Until quite recently, the waters in the Enshu Sea (off the coast of

present-day Shizuoka Prefecture) were very rough, and crossing them was

quite difficult. It was thus commonly believed that the Pacific coast route

was not fully functional until the Edo period. However, ocean trade routes

were surprisingly active even in those seas from early times. For example, we

have accurate evidence that pieces of Sue stoneware, produced on the shores

of Lake Hamana,7 were imported into the K anto region in great numbers as

early as the Tomb period. When editing the town history of Miwa in Ibaraki

Prefecture a few years ago, the editorial collective took all the pottery frag

ments unearthed from tombs and other sites in the town and carefully ana

lyzed them. We found that the majority were from the Sue kiln. This pottery

had to cross the rough Enshu Sea to reach Miwa. Transportation of large

quantities of pottery along land routes was impossible, so it was usually car

ried by water. Therefore, the discovery of Sue fragments in Miwa reveals that

the Pacific routes were already relatively stable by the Tomb period.

I also believe that there was considerable movement of people and goods

between the Okinawan islands and the Japanese archipelago. Gohoura shells,

used for making bracelets in the southern islands, were transported into

northern Kyushu during the Yayoi period (fig. 11). The custom of wearing

such bracelets even reached as far as Yamato. Thus, we must always think of

the Japanese islands as open on four sides (rather than closed in) by the ocean.

I mentioned earlier that trade had been conducted since the Jomon pe

riod and that by the Yayoi there were marketplaces in every region. By the

Tomb period, a certain critical mass had been reached that made possible

what might be called a cash economy. We find clear examples of primitive

currency in archaeological digs dating to this era. A wide variety of com -

modity currencies were used as means of payment and measures of value.

Thus, it is not unreasonable to call this a cash economy. Although there are

a number of debates concerning the origins of currency, in this period it

appears that the main commodity serving as a means of exchange in the

western portion of the islands was rice. In the east, it was cloth or silk. Rice

was a sacred grain-offered to the gods and received from the gods in return.

The same perspective applied to textiles. They became a kind of currency by

7. Lake Hamana is on the western edge of Shizuoka Prefecture and drains into the Enshu ea. Amino" stating that the pottery produced there would have to be carried across the rough Enshu Sc,, ,111d around the lzu Peninsula to be distributed in th' Kanto rTgion

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 47

figure 11. Seashell rings from Matsunoo site, Makurazaki City, Kagoshima Prefecture. Photograph courtesy of Board of Education, Makurazaki City, Kagoshima Prefecture.

being offered to the gods and then received in turn. 8

When similar exchanges

were conducted in the profane world between human beings in the form of

tribute and reward, cloth served to make the relationship particularly close.

I believe that rice and silk became general means of exchange, taking on the

function of currency through their role as offerings to the gods. In addition,

salt, iron, and livestock functioned as currency.

By the Tomb period a primitive form of finance known as suiko-a pro

tess in which the first harvest, once offered to the gods, was used as capital,

loaned out as seed, and recovered with interest as rice at the next harvest-was

being practiced. Management of the storehouses containing this first-harvest

, ice was probably originally the task of local leaders, and through this practice

"wealthy" people first began to appear. I believe it is reasonable to surmise that

this primiliv form of finance was conducted with capital in the form of rice

111d s,1 k ' in the west and si I k and cloth in the east.

H n•, lr,q•ll 1 ,·1,·11

48 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Again, as mentioned above, the topography of the Japanese islands was

quite different during the Tomb period from the way it is now. The ocean

penetrated far into what is now dry land. Miwa is now an inland town with

little water. But in ancient times it was on a large river and swamp, and dur

ing the Warring States period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a naval

battle was even fought there. Only those places where we have unearthed

Yayoi remains were not underwater. Along the Japan Sea coast, there was

a large inlet wherever a river flowed into the ocean. This is hard to imag

ine given today's landscape. The Noto Peninsula, for example, was almost

cut in half by the Ouchi Inlets. If we do not acknowledge the importance

of the natural features of the Japanese archipelago-the scarcity of plains

and the preponderance of mountains, rivers, and coasts-there is no way to

understand the development of its societies.

THE BIRTH OF JAPAN

The first true government to rule Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu-excepting

northern Honshu and southern Kyushu-was established with its center in

the Yamato/Kinai region around the end of the seventh century and the be

ginning of the eighth. It was with the emergence of this state that the name

of the country changed from Wa to Nihon (Japan). This state also changed

the name of its ruler from okimi to tenno (emperor). Thus, as I stated earlier,

it is anachronistic to use the name Japan or the title emperor to refer to any

period or ruler before the founding of this state. Such phrases as "Stone Age

Japan" or "Yayoi period Japanese" are misleading.

In fact, once the state of Japan was established, society in the islands

underwent a dramatic transformation. The ruling class systematically intro

duced the first genuine "civilization" into the Japanese archipelago through

exchanges with the Asian continent during the sixth century. At the core of

this civilizational influx was the Chinese Tang dynasty's system of governance.

Society in the Japanese islands at the time was still comparatively undevel

oped; one might say it was an "elastic" society. Onto this society the sixth

century ruling class grafted the rigid civilization of the Chinese mainland.

First, a family registration system was established in which all people li v

ing in territory controlled by the state were given uji (clan) and family nam •s

to be recorded, along with their ages, into registries. Then everyone over six

years of age, including slaves, was allotted a certain amount f paddy land

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 49

'!bis land formed the basis of the new taxation system in which taxes were

collected in rice (so), labor (yo), crafts (cha), and sundries (zoyo). A system

of land administration-from the basic unit, a settlement composed of fifty

registered households (go), to a county (gun) and province (kuni)-was then

•stablished to extend imperial rule. All official business was to be conducted

111 writing, making the administration of the state thoroughly grounded in

the principle of documents (monjoshugi). It was by means of this system that

Chinese characters spread throughout the Japanese islands.

The primitive financial system of suiko was incorporated into the paddy

based taxation system. At the same time, the prior development of transpor

t.it ion routes made possible the collection of craft and labor taxes in the form

of tribute (mitsugi). In other words, the new state drew upon developments prior to its establishment, but it also pulled products from every region to

w,1rd its capital in the Kinai region. Artisans and performers, as those who

possessed the accumulated technological knowledge of that society, were

1t !ached to general government agencies as well as regional administrative , t·nters.

One other area in which the new state made a significant departure

r I om prior conditions was in its emphasis on a land-based transportation

·stem; paved roads, ten or more meters wide and as straight as possible,

1 1diated out from the capital. The Takai, Tosan, and Hokuriku roads ran to

t lit• cast (and north), the San'in and San'yo roads to the west, and the Nankai

111.1d to the south, forming the axes of a broad regional system. The lone ex-

' pt ion to the capital-centered roads was the Seikai road, which ran south

, 11111 the city of Dazaifu. Since the reader will recall that most transportation

1 111r to this had been on the ocean or along rivers, the state's determination

, tr ·ate a transportation system based on land is a clear departure from the

I 1�t. Po t stations were established along the government roads at ten-mile

11111 rvals (despite the predominance of rivers in the islands, we find almost

110 1 vidence of river stations). Only on the Mogami River, in the distant and

I 11l.11l'd Dewa Province, do we find evidence of a river post. Thus, we must

111 ludc that, at least at the administrative level, no consideration was given ti 11wr travel.

·1 h •re arc a number of reasons why such an odd system was established.

, 1·11t d ·hits at the hand of Tang (Chinese) and Silla (Korean) forces

I' 111tl'd thi� L'Mly stat' with pressing military concerns. At a more fun

I 11111·111.d I ·wl, ii ,1bo ,1ppl'.\1� that d 'Spit' its small size this state had im-

1 1 1, ti , 1111 h I I In 11' t n 111 11H111 In , 1 1 t h. 1 i I d y n, 1 � I ks. A t 0111111 o 11 ·ha ra · t 'r is t i · of

50 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

archaic states was the desire to expand their power in all directions, and road building was a principle physical expression of that desire. The roads of the Roman, Persian, and Incan empires, for example, were all built as straight as

possible. On the basis of such common characteristics, we can see that the Ritsuryo state also aspired to the status of an imperial civilization.

Furthermore, as I stated in chapter one, the Ritsuryo state's governing

system was based on an ideology of agrarian fundamentalism. Along with the important step of designating the rice paddy as the basis of its taxation system, the state's agrarian fundamentalism, supported by Confucianism, came to have a strong impact on the entire archipelago, well beyond its main base areas.

Only at this point did the Tsushima Strait come to be seen as a national border, and the island of Tsushima was fortified for defense against king doms on the Korean Peninsula. However, the Tsugaru Strait in northern Japan did not constitute a national border. The rulers of the Ritsuryo state

saw the Eastern Country, stretching from the center of Honshu to the Kan to Plain, as a distinctly different region. This area was brought under control

only through a dual policy of invasion and confederation. Although the Yamato state was concerned with the Eastern Country from the beginning,

its control extended only to the Kanto Plain.

THE TERRITORY OF JAPAN

From the perspective of the ruling class of the Ritsuryo state (centered as it was in Yamato), all of northern Honshu and the northern part of Niigata then known as Koshi-was an area known as Emishi. It was inh�bited by a people the Ritsuryo rulers considered different. T he same is true, of course, for Hokkaido. Southern Kyushu, home of the Hayato, was also outside the territory of Ritsuryo Japan. For nearly one hundred years after its found ing, the Ritsuryo state fought to bring these territories under its control. In

the strictest sense, then, the history of "Japanese" invasions is not limited to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's sixteenth-century invasion of Korea or the modern invasions of Korea and China. T he ancient Japanese state invaded the lands of northern Honshu and southern Kyushu as well.

This clearly reveals the archaic imperial will of the first state of Japan. In order to extend its own power, the Japanese state invaded urrounding

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 51

areas and attempted to bring them under its control. The people of northern Honshu resisted the invasion so stubbornly that the northernmost areas re mained outside the state's control for centuries to come.

The province/county/hamlet administrative system was implemented

throughout the state's territories. But the two northernmost peninsulas on Honshu-the Tsugaru and Shimokita Peninsulas-were not subject to this

system until the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Until that time, these areas were composed of territorial units, or "villages," deemed to be outside the of ficial sphere. Therefore, northernmost Honshu could not be considered part of the Japanese state in the strictest sense. This is why Tsugaru Strait did not

constitute a national boundary. Jomon culture survived in Hokkaido even after most of Honshu had

l ome under the sway of Yayoi culture. To be more precise, northern Jomon l ulture was transformed into what has been called Satsumon culture in re- ponse to developments in the south.9 Satsumon culture possessed its own

I 1nds of stoneware and iron to ols, and while it showed some signs of agricul- 111 ral development, it brought fishing to an extremely advanced level. Most 1 n.haeologists believe that the Satsumon was not yet Ainu culture. It appears I hat Satsumon culture extended as far south as the northernmost sections of

I lonshu.

At about the same time, it appears that a branch of the Amur River li.1 scd Tungus people, either the Joshin or the Gilyak, had settled in eastern 1 lokkaido, bringing with them Ohkutsk culture. This culture was completely I I flcrent from previous societies in the Japanese archipelago. Its people were

u skilled at sailing and ocean hunting (of whales and so on) that they have I en called the Northeast Asian Vikings. The bear worship of the Ainu, who

1111 • later, is also said to have been influenced by this culture. In any case, I 11· Sat umon people were active traders, frequently traveling across North-

1 I Asia. Through their movements, northern culture influenced the peo-

1 I living in northern Honshu and on the Kanto Plain.

h)r example, recent excavations have uncovered the remains of a large ilc fciundry in southern Tohoku. As I mentioned earlier, it was assumed

Iii 11 l,lsling technology moved from west to east. Of course, if one only 111111 ·s do urnentary evidence, then it would appear that it was with the

II 1,, 111 \,11,11111,111, 11/1111<' d,•, ,w, foom lhc particular scraping patterns found on the pottery it 1•t1Hlllt Id

52 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

movement of blacksmiths from the west to the east in the twelfth and thir

teenth centuries that the technology was transmitted. 10 But when the Tohoku

foundry remains are compared to those found in the west, the Tohoku are

found to be much bigger. Traces of ironworks have also been discovered in

northern Tohoku. In addition, the "inner ear" pots of the Northeast Asian

hunting peoples can be found in Tohoku, Kanto, and the central Alps region.

Ritsuryo aristocrats and officials who were stationed in the Kanto area also

engaged in trade with the Emishi people. From about the eighth or ninth

century on, the frequency with which they bought horses from the Emishi

became a problem for the central government, since horses were a major mil

itary resource. This means that horses were being raised in large numbers in

the Tohoku region, with a culture of horse breeding and training already well

developed. There is a strong possibility that this culture came from the north.

We also have clear evidence in Okinawa of exchanges with the Asian

continent around the same time. There is still much archaeological work to

be done, but so far we have found no evidence of agriculture practiced in

Okinawa around the time the Yamato state was established. Rather, Oki

nawan remains from that time are characterized by a Shell Mound culture, 11

which was centered around fishing. With the recovery of pottery from the

eighth and ninth centuries, we now have evidence of exchanges with the

Asian mainland as well. Subsequent scholarship in this area promises many

new discoveries.

The various administrative systems implemented by the Ritsuryo state

in the areas under its control began to deteriorate in the early eighth century.

Given that the Ritsuryo system was governed by a land-based principle, all

official transportation had to take place on land. At first, commoners had to

transport their taxes-even craft and labor tax equivalents-overland to the

capital at their own expense, and officials such as regional governors had to

use land routes when traveling to and from the capital. But rather quickly

the land-based transportation system proved to be impractical, so permis

sion was granted in the first half of the eighth century to transport heavy

items on the seas and rivers. Archaeological excavation shows that by the

end of the eighth century the main highways had begun to deteriorate, with

10. This corresponds with the movement of the center of power from Kyoto to Kamakura with the founding of the Kamakura shogunate.

11. Shell Mound culture refers to a characteristic of many )6mon period finds in which evidence of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is found in large deposits of sea shells.

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 53

roads becoming more narrow and even unused in some places. By the ninth

<..Cntury, ocean and river routes once again served as the main axes of the

I ransportation system.

At the time of the Ritsuryo state's founding, there was a lively official

I rade with the Asian continent. However, these exchanges became less fre

quent in the ninth century, and extraofficial exchanges between the islands

,1nd the continent took the lead once again. For example, in the ninth cen-

1 ury Silla and Hizen (present-day Nagasaki Prefecture) aristocrats cooper

.tied in the production of weaponry in an attempt to bring Tsushima Island

11 nder their joint control. The Korean Peninsula and northern Kyushu had

long been closely linked as the territory of the wajin, and it appears that the

1 dationship continued outside the framework of the state, resurfacing again

111 the ninth century.

The Ritsuryo state also tried to bring commerce and distribution under

11 s control, officially licensing markets in the eastern and western sections of

I he capital and in each of the regional administrative centers. Yet the com-

111crcial and financial activity that had emerged before the founding of the

l,1te continued to grow and exceed state control. What is perhaps most in

Incsting about this official trade is that many of its practitioners were women

111d monks. It is difficult to say for certain why this was the case. One reason

1111ght be that the state held adult men over the age of twenty responsible for

l hL' various official taxes. In other words, while adult males were officially

rnognized as members of the state, women and monks were essentially out-

1dl' the state's purview.

This became one of the enduring characteristics of commerce and

f111,tnce in the Japanese archipelago according to documentary evidence

I, 0111 this time. However, I believe that women, particularly those from

11,1stal and mountainous areas, were centrally involved in commerce even

11 l he Yayoi and Tomb periods. Therefore, this role may not have originated

11 h the state's taxation system, as it reflects a particular construction of

0111l'n's sexual identity and its relation to commercial activity. 12

Whatever

1111 Lase may be, there is no doubt that women and monks were respon

rlik lor much of the movement of people and goods along rivers and ocean

11111ll's during this period. Moreover, this was not simply a radial movement

h •l\\"l'L'll rl'gion and capital but a complex web of transactions between the

, , , h,1pl1·1 111111• 1111 .11111111· d,·1.11kd disl11\s1<111 oil hi, issue.

54 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

various regions themselves. Indeed, demand from the capital did not lead to

a drain on the periphery; rather, commerce in every region prospered due to the demands of the capital.

When we examine the products brought to the capital as payment of

"craft" taxes in this period, we see that the technological level of regional

handicrafts was very high. As I shall discuss later, craft items such as salt,

silk, textiles, and iron, as well as horses, served as a means of exchange. Ocean products such as bonito, abalone, seaweed, and salmon were also fre

quently used to pay craft taxes. These products were considered divine of

ferings (shinsen) and were often given as gifts. Even today attaching dried

abalone (noshiawabi) to a package signifies that it is a gift, while seaweed (nori) and dried bonito are often given as gifts. The gifts we still give today have ancient origins (fig. 12).

O CEAN TRANSPORT AND TAX CONTRACT S

T hings changed even more dramatically from the ninth to the tenth cen

tury when the state system became a mere shell of its former self. During the

first half of the tenth century, it underwent a complete transformation. First,

there was the birth of the short-lived kingdom of Taira no Masakado in the

early tenth century, which contained the eight provinces of K anto and the

Izu Peninsula and was based on naval power along the Pacific coast. At the same time, Fujiwara no Sumitomo asserted his independence in the western

Figure 12. Tributes to the domain lord. From The Illustmted f fistory of Kokawa Te111/1lr Source: Kokawadera engi emaki, owned by Kokawadcra.

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 55

Inland Sea in conjunction with the increasing activity of local coastal leaders whom the Yamato court labeled pirates (kaizoku). 13 Pirates were also active

in the area of Silla, and it is believed that Sumitomo's grasp at power was

based on an alliance with these groups. In other words, a serious political

challenge to the Ritsury6 state arose on the basis of ocean transport that

linked the Inland Sea, northern Kyushu, and the K orean Peninsula.

As I mentioned earlier, maritime routes along the Pacific coast had become stable and active early on. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that

there was communication between Masakado and Sumitomo. Sumitomo ex

tended his control to the Yodo River, making his threat felt in the capital,

while Masakado attempted to conquer the Tohoku region. With these two challenges, the imperial court found itself in unprecedented danger. Had Masakado not prematurely provoked war and died young, the imperial court

in Kyoto might have been wiped out. However, since Masakado's kingdom lasted a mere two or three months, the Yamato state managed to maintain

1t elf as an imperial entity.

These two events marked major transformations in the state's tax and

regional systems. The first was the emergence of the tax contract system whereby governors and local officials contracted with local leaders to collect

1,1xes in their territories, taxes that had previously been submitted directly to the state. With this, the former bureaucratic system of regional gover

nance lost all practical effect, although provincial governors were still sent

lo their assigned territories. Meanwhile, storehouses for taxes were estab lished in strategic places around the capital-in places like Yodo and Otsu on I ,1ke Biwa-to which the products collected in each province were brought

111dependently along river and ocean transport routes. Products from each

111 ovince were brought to the storehouses near the capital via independent

,1lcr ways, carried by transporters-rowers (kandori) and pullers (gotei)

ho had contracts with local officials. The products brought to the official lorchouses were commodities that could be exchanged at the markets sur-

1111nding the capital for a wide variety of goods-in other words, storehouse

nm rnodities were those such as rice, silk, textiles, salt, iron, and horses,

111 h functioned as currency. The difficulties faced by commoners when

\ 1n I no l"l'd I ht· tl'l 111 111111 110 ryos/111 i nstcad of the more common kaizoku (pirates) in order to avoid l,l111dly ,1dop111111 tlw pnspt·t tivt· of lhc Yamalo government of the time. The term ryoshu itself 111<·,111, ", 11il'1 111 ., 1,·11 110, y" .111d" mo,t oltt•n ,1sso,,.\lcd with ontrol of land. As the discussion in , h,1p1.-, 11111, will ,how, hmv,•v,·,. t 111· 1t·,111, t •d '"'' ol I l''"'"' to dt'"!\11,11c only I he ruler of agricul- 1111,d I., 11d 1, 11,I 111 1 1·d11,, I ii, 111 1111 1, ,d I 111p1111.111«· 111 poht 1< .d, 0111, ol ol I lw \l',I and mou 111,1ins.

56 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

bringing payment of their craft and labor taxes to the capital via land routes had undermined the imperial system. Hence, there was a reversion to a mode of transportation more suited to the natural features of the archipelago. Pro vincial governors entrusted the actual management of these tax storehouses to specialized financiers and merchants possessed of the requisite expertise. In this way, the provincial governors provided for the needs of the imperial court by trading at the marketplace.

Second, the artisans and performers who had formerly been attached to the central bureaucracy began to form independent "professional" organiza tions. This was due in part to the fact that the central bureaucracies had fallen into arrears, so that artisans and performers were forced to pay their own costs. For example, iron casters had been attached to the Ironworking Agency and Bureau of Crafts. By the eleventh century, while they were still attached to the Office of Storehouses for the provision of lanterns to the palace, they had formed their own independent organization. Known as Lantern Purvey ors, they possessed a special grant to travel freely throughout the provinces. With this special dispensation, they roamed the islands casting and trading in the ironworks they produced. The same was true for others, such as cypress craftsmen and blacksmiths. The activities of such groups were again only pos sible after the development of an archipelago-wide system of transport. In turn, offices of the central bureaucracy were created on the premise of these artisanal groups' existence.

Therefore, after the tenth century the state system came to rely upon the independent development of industry, commerce, distribution, and water routes, despite the land-centered principles of the ruling class. The same held for trade with the Asian continent and the Korean Peninsula. By this time, there were no official delegations exchanged between states in Asia; however, exchanges among common people became more frequent than ever.

China at the time was ruled by the Song dynasty, while Korea was uni fied under the Koryo dynasty. Trading ships from both kingdoms arrived continuously in the Japanese islands during this period. Ships also traveled from the islands to the continent, and through this trade a huge amount of Chinese goods entered the archipelago. It was only through such unofficia I trade that Chinese goods eventually came into the hands of the rulers.

The layout of Kyoto also changed drastically in accordance with thes ' changes in the governing system. Until then, Kyoto had been crisscross d with straight roads, like a chessboard, administratively divided into left and right quarters, a city of aristocrats and officials. Howev r, lh' original pla111,

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 57

for the construction of the city were only partially completed. The eastern half was largely left as open fields. After the tenth century, the rivers border ing the city came to be indispensable. It was only through trade conducted on these rivers-the Kamo, Yodo, Oi, Katsura, and Uji as well as Lake Biwa just across the mountains to the east-that the capital began to function as a true city. That is, Kyoto was transformed into a "water capital" built upon a marine transportation system (fig. 13).

FINANCIER NETWORKS

As I discussed earlier, the management and operation of provincial store houses were contracted out to specialists, many of whom were active in fi nancial enterprises. We have a relatively clear picture of their activities when we reach the twelfth century. In 1136, a group of legal scholars attested in a ,1gned document that a group of people attached to Hie Shrine and known ,1s Otsu Shrine purveyors (Otsu jinin) were officially recognized as financial ll'nders. The document records a system in which local officials borrowed 1 ice from these purveyors, who are also believed to have managed tax store houses for the local officials. Local officials were thereby able to gather and ubmit the required goods when so ordered by the imperial court. The tax

l ontract was issued in the name of provincial officials and governors; how- 1 vcr, the financiers who managed the storehouses were responsible for the , dcase. In this way, a multilayered network supported the state.

The Hie Otsu Shrine purveyors used the shrine's "first-harvest rice" as 1pital for their financial enterprises. In other words, they used the rice that

h 1d been offered to the gods worshipped at the shrine for loans they made 111 pr vincial governors and bureaucrats. As security for such loans, provin- 1,d governors would offer an official promissory note called a kirifu, pro- 111 ial tax collection orders called kokufu, or imperial tax collection orders dhl kirikudashibumi. The Hie Otsu Shrine purveyors had an extremely tdl' ranging network, which extended from the provinces of Hokuriku

tl111n1 rh the Inland Sea to northern Kyushu. Their ability to collect taxes on 1111 i, own authority wa backed by their relationship to the Hie Otsu dei- 11 \ Hut it was with th provincial administration's tax collection orders in 1111111 lh,11 the shrin 'purveyors w nt fr m province to province withdrawing

11,d, 1,om lo ;ii stor -hous 'S. Mor ov r, lhc pr vin ial official ' tax collec- t 1111 111 I ·1, .111d !hi., wa., In,· lor the provimial gowrnor's ontra ts and

58 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Figure 13. Going upriver on the Hori River in Kyoto with rafts made of logs. From The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen. Source: Ippen hijirie, from the collection of the Tokyo National Museum.

receipts as well-were exchanged among the financiers themselves, with these documents functioning as primitive bills of exchange (tegata). It was this network of financiers that guaranteed the payment of the e bills. That much is made quite clear in the document from ll36.

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 59

The prior development of water transport made possible the financial and commercial networks that collected the state's taxes. The system also de pended on the exchange of primitive bills. These conditions suggest that the economy of that time had already developed a high degree of sophistication. I believe that a system of regular ocean shipping was also established around this time. Its first appearance in historical documents is in the twelfth cen tury, but I believe that regular ocean routes and sailors' organizations were formed throughout the archipelago in the eleventh century. Ocean transport on the Japan Sea was particularly active. After entering the harbor at Tsuruga (to the north of Kyoto), merchants from the north would make the short land Lrossing to Lake Biwa and sail across to the town of Otsu, after which there would be just another short trip on land to Kyoto. Likewise, boats from the San'in region would put into shore at Obama in Wakasa, from which point their cargo would be carried across Lake Biwa to Otsu and Kyoto. These routes then connected up with the main arteries intersecting the archipelago I rom the Inland Sea to northern Kyushu.

The harbors of northern Kyushu in those days welcomed many Chi nese boats, known as karabune. These boats were also sailing into Hokuriku h,\rbors at Tsuruga and Obama and on the Noto Peninsula. The pottery and other Chinese goods shipped into the harbors of Noto were also conveyed ,1Lross the Lake Biwa route to the capital. W hile there is little doubt that the route from northern Kyushu through the Inland Sea was the most heavily t r<1veled of these ocean arteries, we must remember that there were a variety o( ocean routes from China.

Recent excavations have shown that the settlement at Tosa Harbor on the far northern Tsugaru Peninsula functioned as a city quite early on. Ar l haeologists in the area have unearthed Chinese porcelains as well as pottery I rom every region of the Japanese Islands. The remains near Tosa Harbor l ontain an especially large amount of pottery from the twelfth century, so it .,ppcars that Chinese porcelains were transported there from the end of the I kian period. In the thirteenth century, Suzu stoneware from the Noto Pen- 111sula was also transported to Tosa Harbor, as well as to Kaminokuni and \oiLhi in Hokkaido. Thus, Tosa Harbor functioned as one of the major bases nl th' early Japan ea trade route . Recent excavations at the Yanagi no gosho 1 1,tl,1 'r •mains in lliraizumi (in pre ent-day Iwate Prefecture) show that the l',tl d1t mast rout ·s w ·r · als > 'Stabli, h d far earlier than previously thought. I hl' Y,lll,1gi P,ll,1u· w,1s th· bas· of Fujiwara no I lid hira and Fujiwara no .1,1il111,1 ,It ,1 l1111l' wlH·11 thl' i1lllt1t'lllt' ol th' Pujiwara in lht: capital was on

60 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

the wane. Excavation of this site has turned up a great many Chinese por celains. Since the nearby town of Hiraizumi fell into decline from the end of the twelfth century, it appears that the porcelains made their way from China along the Pacific coast to Hiraizumi before the twelfth century. A huge amount of pottery from the ancient Japanese pottery towns of Tokoname and Atsumi has also been unearthed at the Yanagi Palace. Some of the pieces recovered are enormous Atsumi jars, which must have arrived via the Pacific coast and the Kitakami River. Regular shipping routes on the Pacific had to be well established for this amount of pottery, manufactured on the distant Chita and Atsumi Peninsula, to be transported to Hiraizumi. In particular, boats had to be able to safely pass the dangerous seas of the Izu Peninsula, the Boso Peninsula, and Cape Inubo.

Tokoname pottery was transported around the Kii Peninsula and into the Inland Sea, as well as passing around the Tosa Sea and the island of Shikoku, for delivery to Kyushu. We are certain that the ocean route around the Kii Peninsula west toward Kyushu was already in operation in the elev enth and twelfth centuries, but it is likely that it was opened even earlier. The shippers probably did not make the entire trip in one boat. Instead, it appears that shorter routes from port to port around the entire archipelago were es tablished by the eleventh century.

Okinawa also imported a great deal of Chinese porcelain in the twelfth century. In fact, Okinawa probably had the largest amount of Chinese pottery in the entire Japanese archipelago, going back to the Tang dynasty. However, the intensity of this trade seems to have increased in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. During the same period, people from Honshu and Kyushu also exerted a great deal of cultural influence on Okinawa. For example, we see at this time the beginnings of agriculture and the construction of fortresses (gusuku) at all the sacred sites that functioned as the religious, political, and military centers of the Okinawan islands. In this way, Okinawa took its own steps toward becoming an independent state.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF REGIONAL CITIES

Around this time, various cities began to form at regional centers and im portant points in the transportation network.14 That Kyoto was among these

14. 11,e n n Japanese reader fa ed with the following list of unf,1111il1,11 pl.H ,. 11,11111' 'hrnild 11·111 •111hc1 Jhal Jhc signifi_,rn,,· of A1111110\ d,ii111 i, 1h,11 IIWst' pl,i.1•, w,•11 1111I ,ill.,�, , , ,1111<q11 th,11 h1,

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 61

goes without saying. However, undoubtedly Hiraizumi in the Tohoku re gion was also one such city, as were Tosa Harbor, Akita, Tagashiro, and the administrative centers of the Mutsu region. Kamakura, the capital of the Eastern Country, was a city even before Minamoto no Yoritomo established his base there. Mutsuranotsu, closely linked to Kamakura, became an im portant port town. Likewise, many of the inlets in the Kasumigaura and Kitaura areas, such as O funatsu in Kashima, had settlements that were urban in character. Mikuni Harbor, Tsuruga, and Obama in Hokuriku, and Otsu, Sakamoto, Umitsu, Katada, and Funaki on the shores of Lake Biwa were ,ill cities. The Uji and Yoda Rivers had urban settlements in Uji, Yamazaki, Yoda, Suita, Eguchi, and Kanzaki. Countless other regional cities existed l'Verywhere, including such towns as Kurashiki, Onomichi, and Komada; 1 lakata and Munakata in northern Kyushu; Kanzaki on the Ariake Bay; and Bonotsu in southern Kyushu.

The ruling class during this period naturally took the true state of com merce and distribution into consideration when constructing their govern- 111g system. In the latter half of the eleventh century, leading families, such ts the imperial family and the Fujiwara imperial regents, as well as large

ll'mples and shrines-such as Todaiji, Kofukuji, Enryakuji, Shimogamo and I ,11nigamo, Ise, Hie, Kasuga and Iwashimizu Hachiman shrines-each pos ,essed shoen estates and fiefs in every province. Taxes were collected by each 1 \late owner's independent administrative organization from specially des tj.\llated fields, estates, and public lands to pay for the costs of the Buddhist t rvices and festivals that had become regularized ceremonies.

In the course of these developments, the difference between a shoen es I le and state lands (kokugaryo) gradually became more distinct. The estate 11 id public land system was firmly grounded by the first half of the thirteenth • nlury, and on this basis aristocrats and religious organizations constructed 11dependent economic orders. An examination of the process by which aris-

lnt rats and religious orders established estates and public lands shows that 111 I ,1 t the system was quite well thought out. Consider, for example, the

1w of the family of the Fujiwara imperial regents (the Sekkan family). In tlJIWara no Yorimichi's day (990-1074), they had a villa in Uji, the famous \odoin, but they also had two mansions at Lake Ogura. The Uji River and ii t' ) 1ura were strat gi p ints on the water routes to Kyoto. Having laid

l,q>,1111·"' ,111dii-111 .- I, Iii l'iy l11 '""" l,11,· ,1111 I ly wll Ii ,1111 "ull u 11· lly ,1 rcssing I heir urban charac- 11 I, Ii, I I ,ii I I Ill: ,111, Ill 11111, II 1111111)-\ 111 hrl I hi llf\'· 111 I Ii,· ll'III I ,1111 y of lfllllllll'l ll' to I hes ' SCI I lcmcnts.

62 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

claim to these points of access, the regents established further bases along the

Yoda River in Yamazaki, Kuzuha, and Yoda, as well as at several important

points along the Inland Sea.

The imperial family's bases during the Insei period 15

included the east

bank of the Kama River and Shirakawa. The latter was a key point in the

Lake Biwa transport route, situated at the intersection of the mountain roads

crossing into the Kyoto plain and an entry to the lake. Here the imperial fam

ily built Shirakawa Palace as well as two temples, Hoshoji and Rokushoji. In

the twelfth century, the imperial family built another villa, the Toba Palace,

at the confluence of the Kama and Katsura Rivers. Meanwhile, they not only

built a palace on the floodplain between the Uji and Yoda Rivers, but they

had a number of craftsmen assigned to the palace. Thanks to the presence of

these craftsmen, the imperial family was able to establish Toba Palace as a

vital political and economic base. Thus, we see that the imperial family accu

rately read the state of river transport around Kyoto. The Office of the Retired

Emperor (insei) further claimed land in northern Kyushu at Munakata and

Kanzaki, important sites for trade with the Asian continent.

The same was true for temples and shrines. The temple of Shingoji held

the estate ofNishizunosho in Wakasa Province while also claiming the har

bors of Tagarasu and Tsurube some distance from Nishizu. While Shinhie

Shrine's Kuraminosho estate was an inland territory, the shrine also claimed

the harbor of Mikao at the tip of Tsunekami Peninsula. One thus occasion

ally finds examples of estate owners possessing harbors geographically sepa

rated from their estates. This fact shows how much consideration the ruling

class of the time put into obtaining possessions related to ocean shipping.

Similar considerations are evident in the rise of power of the Taira uji in

the latter half of the Heian period. First, the Taira became managers of the im

perial stables at Toba Palace. With that position, they were in control of the

oxen and horses in the stable as well as the people who worked there-the cattle

herders, cart drivers, stable hands, trainers, and horsemen (fig. 14). Many of

the retired emperor's stables were allotted pasture land along riverbanks.

One such stable, called Mizunomaki, near Lake Ogura to the south of Kyoto,

was both a pasture and a port. There were many such pasture/port lands

along the Yodo River, and once the Taira obtained control of the stables, the

lands attached to them also came under their control. The Taira also pas-

15. In the I nsei pe riod, ruling p wer was divided between the Office oft he Rc111'11t ,, 1111 t h1• Office oft he Retired Emperor (i11sci). 'lhe period lasted roughly from 1087 to 12 I

The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago 63

I tHure 14. Horse and cart transporters. From The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen. ource: Ippen hijirie, from the collection of the Tokyo National Museum.

cs ed a number of strategic estates along the Inland Sea, including one at

ltsukushima (near Hiroshima). In Kyushu, they controlled Munakata Shrine

1 nc.l, by monopolizing the office of governor of Dazaifu, they brought that

1t y, together with the major port of Hakata, under their control. Further-

111ore, by becoming the managers of the retired emperor's estate in Kanzaki

111 the Ariake Bay on Kyushu, the Taira gained control of trade with Song

< hina.

Until recently, historians have spoken of shoen estates and state lands

n11 ly in agricultural terms. But members of the ruling class of the time,

who struggled desperately to preserve their positions, did not think of their

l1old i ngs olely in terms of fields. Although there was concern for the annual

11hul · taxes that were levied on estate fields, as well as for the unique prod

lH ts of various states, thi was not their own preoccupation. They also took

111 ou 11 l of the wea Ith g ·n ·rated in p rls, th r ugh water-borne traffic, and

11tlic 111<H1nt.1i11,si11lotlwi1 ,II ul:1tio11 s,'lhalis,lh ytooka comprehen ive

11'1'10,1 Ii to the 1•st.d1l1sl1 1111·11t of thv11 ,l1C11'11 c1,l,1ks.

64 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

As I discuss briefly in chapter seven, shrines, temples, the imperial fam

ily, and the Fujiwara regents independently organized the shipping, mercan

tile, and artisanal groups in their domains, designating them shrine pur

veyors (jinin), imperial purveyors (kugonin), or temple purveyors (yoriudo).

Thus, the rulers of this period sought to control both land and the largely

water-based transportation system. By these means, the medieval govern

ments (both the imperial government and the shogunate in K amakura)

came into being around the end of the Heian period.

Most historians have described medieval society as a feudal society

based entirely on agriculture. But the society I have just described cannot

be understood in terms of that limited notion. Moreover, the standard view

of the shoen estate as representing a self-sufficient economic order is clearly

mistaken. Rice, silk, and textiles-the products of these estates-fulfilled the

functions of currency, that is, a means of exchange, a means of payment, and

a measure of value. Though still linked to the divinities as offerings, these

goods also became irrevocably linked to trade. This economic order emerged

in the twelfth century and represented the transformation of the state from

the disintegrated Ritsuryo model to the new medieval model.

CHAPTER THREE

The World of the Shoen Estate

and Government Lands

THE SHOEN ESTATE/GOVERNMENT LANDS SYSTEM

I lie medieval land system-which I call the shoen estate/government lands

} ,I cm-developed between the latter half of the eleventh century to the first

It ti f of the thirteenth century. Government lands were divided into admin-

1, ,1tive districts (gun), hamlets (go), neighborhoods (ho), and fields (myo),

It rle shoen estates were simply described as (sho) estates. Shoen estates

11d government lands were in fact subcontracting units for the collection

l,1xes-yearly tribute and public fees-with the district, hamlet, neigh

I 111 hood, and field units submitting their taxes to the provincial governor

I Ir, ough the provincial office (kokuga). Shoen paid their taxes directly to the

111perial family, the Fujiwara regents, or large temples and shrines-in other

111ds, to their proprietors. Each of these administrative units were assigned

•ovcrning officer (tsukasa) who contracted to gather taxes from a fixed

111cH111l of agricultural land in the unit and sent them on to the provincial

11\ 1·111or or the proprietor of shoen estate. This, simply put, was the shoen

t 11 ·/government lands system.

·1 h · ·stablishment and distribution of districts, hamlets, neighborhoods,

11 Id,. ,1nd s/10 administrative units were particular to each province. Differ

I 11, l'Xisll'd bclwl ·n caslcrn and western Japan and between Kyushu and

II 111111'1 ,llt'.ls. In th' L'.lsl and Kyushu, lhc unils l 'nded Lo be larger; in some

1 "· d 1 ,I, ills IH•1 .111H• ,/,11,•11 1''-1 ,111•s I h1•111.,dws. I 11 the I( i n:1 i r 'gion, /,{,en

i,,

66 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

could be composed of widely scattered paddy fields. Despite such variations, the shoen/government lands system covered all of the three main islands of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu.

Scholars have tended to see shoen as self-sufficient economic units pri marily composed of paddy fields whose cultivators paid annual rice tribute (nengu) and public service fees as land rent. But shoen were not actually agricultural units. First of all, the payments of annual tribute owed by the villagers farming shoen and government lands were not made strictly in rice. A wide variety of items could be submitted as annual tribute. For example, estates in provinces in the east, such as Ise, Owari, and Mino, tended to pay their annual tribute in silk or cotton cloth. Iron was sent from the mountains of the Chugoku region, and paper was submitted from Tajima. In Mutsu, payments were made in gold and horses, and the islands of the Inland Sea sent salt. Rice did not even constitute the majority of the taxes submitted from estates. All of these products could be exchanged and could even func tion as currency, as rice did.

So why is it that we tend to assume that annual tribute meant rice? We do so because annual tribute was levied, in principle, on rice paddy land. In other words, for each unit of paddy land-usually one tan (about .25 acres) five ryo of iron might be paid; or for one cha (about 2.5 acres) of paddy land two bolts of silk might be submitted. That is, the value of products other than rice would be calculated for tax purposes in terms of equivalent units of paddy land. Submission of iron or silk as annual tribute thus presumed an exchange. For example, if five ryo of iron were levied as a tax on one tan of wet paddy land then the rice from one tan of land had to be exchanged by some method with five ryo of iron. There were many possible means of car rying out such exchanges, but the main point is that the tax system itself pre sumed exchanges of goods. Therefore, this system had nothing whatsoever to do with self-sufficient economies.

YUGESHIMA: THE ESTATE OF SALT

In the Inland Sea, in the province oflyo, there was a shoen called Yugeshima estate (fig. 15). Since this shoen was on a small island, there were very few ri l' paddies, and the villagers all fished or produced salt. Ac ordingly, annual tribute from this shoen was paid in salt, and publi ftl's (�11j1) wrn: paid in s a produ ts. On pap r, it appeared as if th' offiti.tl 011 tl11� 1,l.111d took fro111

The World of the Shoen Estate and Government Lands

Aki Province

11kahara •

Imabari •

I 1111· 15. Map of the Eastern Inland Sea.

Fukuyama •

Iyo Province

0 20km

I h , 1 I lagers wheat in the summer and rice in autumn as annual tribute, and I h 11 loaned it back to the villagers as "wheat for salt" (shiotenomugi) and

1 for salt" (shiotenoyone). In actuality, wheat and rice were probably never 11 ltl·ttd from the villagers. The official formally received a document from

th villagers acknowledging the loan, which they vowed to pay off in salt. 1 h villager them elves termed this an exchange of wheat or rice for salt, I t 111 cf(,, t, the i land paid its annual tribute in salt, becoming famous as 11

l st,11 • of salt."'

Ju I .1 ,111111· ,·,1.11<·, h,111 ., 'Y't,•111 111 ", lu• lo, ,,lit," 01 h1•1 1/1CJ1•11 p.1id I hci r annual I ributc in iron, which

.1 , 0111·1 to-d hy II' ,111111111 I 111 vii l,111''" l0,11" 111 , i, ,. to, 111111 'I lwr t' Wt'I( prnb,1hly also ri c for silk,

I h I l111 l\'lld, ,11111 I Ii I' lo11 p,1p1'1 1111111,11 I

68 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Since Yugeshima estate was on an island on which there was little paddy

land, scholars have assumed that it was an extremely poor shoen. This is one

of those cases in which we need to overturn our mode of thinking. We tend

to leap to the conclusion that wherever agriculture was poorly developed,

or where there were no paddy fields from which to produce rice, the people

must have been extremely poor. Scholars have long assumed that, lacking

paddy land and being isolated by virtue of living on an island, the islanders

were cruelly forced to take up the hard labor of making salt on the beaches.

But, when we investigate the real situation of the villagers ofYugeshima

estate, we find this evaluation to be completely off the mark. To give but one

example, around the end of the Kamakura period the property of a villager

named Kiyosakin was confiscated by the estate's official. Kiyosakin was a

"small villager," with just the tiniest amount of paddy land. But his confis

cated property included ten head of cattle, five indentured servants, silk,

and a limited number of household items, including kosode kimonos. 2

other words, he turns out to have been very wealthy. The cattle were prob

ably used to carry the "salt wood" that was used as fuel to boil the water in

salt production at the beach. The salt wood itself probably came at a fairly

high price. Since this small villager possessed ten head of cattle, we can

easily discern how well off these islanders were and how ridiculous it is to

call them poor.

Yugeshima was not an island isolated by the sea. Just the opposite, it

was an island connected to places in all directions by the sea. This was not

an island impoverished by its lack of rice paddies. It was an island on which

there were many other items that could be produced and exchanged. The

salt of Yugeshima estate passed through the Inland Sea and traveled up

the Yodogawa River from Yoda to Toba, where it was transferred to rented

carts and carried to Kyoto. The boats that carried this salt were owned by

the islanders themselves. The annual salt tribute was handed over to the

temple ofToji in Kyoto, but we can confirm that the islanders also sold their

salt at Yoda.

In the fifteenth century, the salt of Yugeshima was shipped in large

quantities to the harbor of Hyogo so that even at the end of the medieva I

period the island was famous as a salt production site. The harbor at tiny

2. Kosode-style kimonos are formal wear and are not normally associated with the clothing of pom starving islanders.

The World of the Shoen Estate and Government Lands 69

, ugeshima was so lively that it was said there were courtesans there even in

t hl' Edo period. Imagining this kind of shoen estate as a self-sufficient econ-

11111y is clearly nothing more than an illusion.

NIIMI: THE ESTATE OF IRON, PAPER, AND LACQUER

1imi in Bitchu Province (present-day Okayama) is another example of a

\ ·1 ,dthy nonagricultural estate (fig. 16). Niimi estate was located in the

1 nuntainous interior near the border with Izumo and Koki, at the headwa-

1,, of the Takahashi River, which flows into the Inland Sea near Kurashiki.

I I ny of its land registers from the Kamakura period have survived and

llllw that a fair number of rice paddies were developed along the valley in

11111i estate. Because so many of these registers have survived, it is famous

111 H mg historians for providing us with detailed information on the system

tllager-contracted fields (hyakusho-myo). Like Yugeshima estate, Niimi

, 1111c to be possessed by the Kyoto-based temple ofToji around the end of the

l 1 1.111 period (most of the surviving documents are kept at Toji even today).

11y studies of the surviving documents have tended to portray Niimi as

1 I 111dlocked estate located deep in the mountains and not easily accessible.

In fact, it is far up in the mountains, far upstream on the Takahashi

I 1 \ l'r. There is far more mountain terrain than rice paddies, and until re-

11 t ly those mountains have been the site of slash and burn agriculture. So, it

110! surprising that many scholars have seen Niimi as a remote, backwater

I 11c. But if we approach this estate without assuming that hyakusho were

11 1 t I y farmers, a rereading of the documents of this estate will produce a

I "ively different picture.

First, the part of the estate closest to the deepest mountains of the

11goku region is called Yoshino (present-day Takase village). Until the lat

' Ii.ii f of the thirteenth century, the villagers of that area submitted their

1111111,II tribute in iron. As mentioned above, the tax burden was expressed

11 the pr portion of five ryo of iron for every tan of paddy field. If you visit

I h ., ,ca today, you will find a good deal of slag dating from the medieval

, 1 I here i o much slag left over that during World War II a company was

I 1111H·d Lo try t rcfin iron from it one more time.

lh · Yoshino ar a has a hrine where those involved in the metal

I 11 •11 .ii trad ·s ·am· to worship the Kanayako hrine-and there the

Thick white lines: Ancient roads Thin white lines: Cross-archipelago roads, connecting the San'in and San'yo

Highways • Ancient post stations

1. Izumo Province 2. Hoki Province 3. Inaba Province 4. Mimasaka Province 5. Bingo Province 6. Bitchii Province 7. Bizen Province 8. Sanuki Province 9. Aimi

10. Mt. Daisen 11. kokufu (provincial

capital) 12. Yoshino 13. Niimi estate 14. kokuga (govern

ment administrative headquarters)

15. Takata 16. kokufu (provincial

capital) 17. koshiro (tribute land) 18. ichiba (market) 19. Aga County houses 20. Tetsuta County

houses 21. Takahashi River 22. Ukan 23. Uji 24. Kana River 25. Nariwa River 26. Kino Castle 27. San'yo Highway 28. Oda 29. Kawabe

Figure 16. Map ofNiimi estate and the surrounding area.

30. kokufu (provincial capital)

31. Kannabe 32. Shitsuki 33. Kibitsu Shrine 34. Minami Bay 35. Tsura Island 36. 0 Island 37. Kasakami rock steele,

carved with writing 38. Takahashi (possibly

the Bitchii Province headquarters)

The World of the Shoen Estate and Government Lands 71

111etalworkers maintained an association. Members of the association also

h,1d a small amount of paddy land, but it appears that these people essentially

111.ide their living in the metalworking trades. Should archaeologists under

I 1 ke a dig up there, they are likely to find any number of furnaces.

With these ironworkers serving as its base, Niimi estate also had an of

ltl ially recognized organization of blacksmiths; there were even some metal

1sters among the villagers. These metal casters were not organized as impe

, 1,d or shrine purveyors-professionals, in other words-but as hyakusho who

were metal casters. Although blacksmiths in those days also made swords,

t ltt<y were more closely related to the construction trades, making nails and

I.imps in particular. We know from the Toji documents that this estate had

1 I aside fields to pay the wages of blacksmiths, as well as the carpenters who

1 re associated with them, and that both groups had organizational head

q11,1rters in the area.

Niimi estate in the medieval era also produced paper, as the area still

d 1cs today. Manufactured in hamlets throughout the estate, a certain amount

ot paper was assessed as a public fees tax per field owned by the villagers. In

1 ld1tion to the paper produced by average villagers, the estate also contained

I 1pcr making "artisans" who produced the high-quality paper known as

ii 111shi. Nevertheless, despite the presence of professionals, we should not lose

• Ii I of the fact that the technological skills needed to manufacture paper were

,tidy disseminated among the villagers.

Niimi estate also had many lacquer trees, and again it was the villagers

110 <..ultivated them. For each lacquer tree, the villagers were responsible for

11H,1 c than one shaku (.02 liters) of lacquer as a public fees tax, which they

,t lo Kyoto. With this sap production, the estate also developed an orga-

11 1 I 1011 of woodworking lathe turners who worked with the lacquerers who

I pl 1 ·d the sap to the wood. Thus, finished lacquerware was manufactured

n 11 mi. The lathe turners were officially recognized as artisans and received

g1· fields as compensation. 3

To u 111 up, the villagers in Niimi estate mined iron ore and manufac-

1 ttl'd ironware. They also made paper, drew lacquer sap, and manufactured

I 1111·1 ware. These industries were not restricted to "professional" groups

I 1111-. villa 1crs throughout the estate also participated. Moreover, Niimi

\ 1p, 111•ld, Wt'll' fields whose 1,1xable produce was granted to officials, craftsmen, and such in "pay- 1111·111 ' 1111 ,,•1 v1, ,•s 1t'11<1<'1 ,•d, 'I h,• wry idea I hat these people w ulcl need a source of rice as com- 1'' 11,.,111111 ,hould "'!Ill'''' 111 th,• 11•,1d,•1 Jllsl how 1111po1 1.1111 rice was .is the slanclarcl measure of v d111· I his 111 1111 w,11·, 11111, ,1111, 1, 11111111\ '" 111111w111, how,·v,·, 11 h pn,111 "that we should 1101 let 1111 II ,. 111 I,, I ., ,, 1.1111l,11.I 1111',I 1111 111 v,d,11 hl111d '" Ill till' Ill-, 1.,d 111h,•11111111' 111 p1 11du<110111h,11 I 11 t I t, ,I uul 1111 1 ht. l1, h, , , 1, ,I., ,, � 111,I 11111111v,, ,ol 1·q1111·,ol1·111

72 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

villagers hunted, gathered, and processed a wide variety of mountain goods

such as quail, firewood, charcoal, deerskins, and mushrooms.

There is simply no way to encompass the various forms of production

and lifestyles in this estate with the term farm village (noson) that is so popu

lar among historians. We must give further thought to the way in which

villages with multiple characteristics might be defined, but Niimi estate

consisted of farm villages, settlements with typical mountain village char

acteristics, and manufacturing villages that were home to many craftsmen.

To borrow a term from Shibusawa Keizo, we might call the settlements of

Niimi "manufacturing villages" (koson). The term manufacturing village has

not gained currency in academic circles, yet there were undoubtedly many

places that could be called blacksmith villages or metalworking villages. The

term has solid grounds for adoption.

Rice, wheat, and soybeans grown in the fields of the estate were sent

to the capital as annual tribute along with the iron, paper, and lacquer. In

addition, these products were sent to markets and exchanged as commodi

ties. We know for a fact that they were traded for coins in the thirteenth

century. There were at least two markets on an island in the middle of the

Takahashi River where it flowed through Niimi estate (markets were gener

ally located on islands and sandbars in rivers, as noted in chapter seven). One

was the estate proprietor's market, and the other was the military steward's

(jito) market. The goods exchanged at these markets were loaded onto boats

and carried down the Takahashi River to Kurashiki. From Kurashiki, they

passed through the Inland Sea to the capital and many other ports.

In fact, this estate had a rather large number of professional boatmen,

all of whom received more wage fields than such lower level estate officials

as clerks (kumon) and field overseers (tadokoro). Furthermore, oarsmen in

these boats received their rations through a levy on the villagers of the entire

estate, a tax known as oarsman's rice. There are many cases in other parts of

Japan of coastal villagers having to pay oarsman's rice to support the ship

pers who passed through their areas, but Niimi is a rare case of villagers in

an interior, mountain-bound estate paying such taxes. This gives us a good

indication of how active these boatmen were and how lively was the trade in

commodities at the Niimi markets. We may also assume that these markets

had merchants who brought in a variety of goods for exchange from a wide

range of locations outside the estate.

Neither the Yugeshima nor the Niimi estates were exceptional; they ar ·

simply well-studied estates that provide excellent examples of the slat' of

The World of the Shoen Estate and Government Lands 73

Japanese society from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. In fact, no

matter which estate we examine from this period, we find villagers engaged

1 n a variety of production processes and a number of professional groups

.dso working on that basis. Seeing shoen as self-sufficient entities composed

simply of farmers plowing the fields is mistaken.

Likewise, to consider a place to be remote because it is deep in the

111ountains or on a small island is a completely modern notion. From the pre-

111odern perspective, a remote island was open to the world by virtue of the

,ur rounding ocean-in many cases making the island an important point on

transportation routes. The deep mountains had more travelers traversing its

1 oads and running its rivers than might otherwise be expected. To say that

, reas were poor because millet and deccan were consumed instead of rice is

.1 mply prejudicial. In fact, those regions were often quite well off.

THE TASKS OF A CONTRACTOR OFFICIAL

N11mi was divided in the middle of the Kamakura period into a military

tl'ward's portion and a proprietor's portion. In 1334, the first year of the

I l'nmu Restoration, the manager of the steward's portion, a man named

111ji, issued a report on the previous year's submission of annual tribute and

other miscellaneous goods. Sonji's document, with the final calculations,

111 vives at the temple of Toji today. What does that document show us about

1 I ,c responsibilities of an estate manager over the course of a year?

Emperor Go-Daigo established the short-lived, revolutionary Kenmu

111\'l'rnment in 1333, so it was an unusual year in many ways. Since the pro

I 1l'lor, Toji, had requested an advance on that year's tribute, Sonji borrowed

I 11 kanmon from local merchants in the third, fifth, and seventh months of

t , 11 year. He forwarded those sums to Kyoto in the form of bills of exchange

(k1111111s tegata). Purchase of these bills also incurred transaction fees; the

11\l of . ending the notes from Niimi to Kyoto was essentially fixed at fifty

1111111. Sin e the cost of sending a bill of exchange from Yano estate in Harima

I 1, ,vi 11 e (pre ent day Hyo go Prefecture) to the capital at the beginning of the 111 t hcrn and Southern Courts period was 30 mon, it seems that these trans

, t 1t 111 f ·cs w ·re based on distance. Moreover, we can sense just how established

th ,l'11di11g ol su h bills was by the fa t that the fee wa fixed. We can also get

, :l1111p,t' of'tlw st.1bility of the nl'lworl that bound mer hant in Niimi estate

1111 I I ntn. '1 IH· \.11111· w,,., t I lit', oft 1llt1 \t\ lo, th • rnut 'b 'l w' •11 Kamakura and

74 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Kyoto. In fact, bills of exchange were used throughout the country, with these

ten-kanman bills of exchange circulating much like negotiable securities.4

By the tenth month, rice, millet, soybeans, and buckwheat had generally

been harvested from the fields of Niimi. According to the 1334 document,

the manager had these grains placed in storehouses and then, in celebration

of the harvest, the villagers held a banquet. A similar banquet was held on

the second day of the new year, with participants consuming sake, tofu, and

fish. The costs of these banquets were met through the sale of a portion of the

rice and soybeans.

In addition to storing grains, the estate manager closely watched the

setting of prices at the market before putting the rice and soybeans up for

sale. Rice and other grains were brought to the market on the third, thir

teenth and twenty-third days of the month and sold at the market price de

termined on that day. The market price would be set for a certain area, and

the manager would keep a close eye on fluctuations in order to sell the grain

at as high a price as possible. If the grain were sold cheaply, or sold at high

price but reported as having been sold cheaply, the manager might be ac

cused of laxity in his duties and be subject to an inspection and dismissal by

the estate proprietor. In addition, while small amounts of lacquer and paper

were sent directly to Kyoto, the villagers of Takase also sold iron at the local

market. The manager collected a portion of these proceeds as the cash tax

levied on iron expressed in terms of paddy fields.

The important point is that by the beginning of the fourteenth century

the steward's portion on Niimi estate had already taken on the character of

an urban system. First and foremost, there was the market on the island in

the middle of the Takahashi River where much of the commercial business of

the estate was carried out. The houses on the island were officially inspected,

and thirty-one were granted authorization to engage in trade. These houses

were most likely lined up on both sides of a main thoroughfare. It is likely that

there were also unregistered rental houses in the market area. In fact, histo

rians believe that there were quite a large number of buildings at this market.

My characterization of Niimi as urban is based on more than an assess

ment of its layout and function. Evidence suggests that it was also officially

recognized as such. The term ho was used to designate the territorial unit of a

neighborhood in shoen estates and public lands. Originally ho was an admin

istrative unit in the city of Kyoto. The city of K amakura also came to use ho

4. s,c S,1kL1rai Eiji, "Saifu ni kansuru k satsu" (Obscrvati ns concerning lli\l, 1111'.xrhangc), S/1/i:11�11 1m/11 (111'to, y )011111 ,11) 104, no. 7 (199S).

The World of the Shoen Estate and Government Lands 75

to designate its neighborhoods, and ho have been identified in Bungo Prov

ince and the Yamazaki District of Yamashiro Province. In sum, ho became

the term used to describe territorial administrative units for urban-type set

tlements. The market in Niimi estate at the beginning of the fourteenth cen

tury was also designated a ho and was under the jurisdiction of two overseers

known as hoto. One of these overseers was ordered by the estate's proprietor

to specifically oversee matters of the market. Thus, the market of Niimi es tate was administratively treated as urban by the beginning of the fourteenth

l<.'0tury.

Urban land in the medieval era was recorded in official registries with

the character ji (land), upon which was levied a tax known as jishi (land

111terest). 5

This was true in Kyoto and K amakura, but we should also note

I hat the thirty-one authorized houses at the market in Niimi also paid jishi

c ,n their land. This constitutes further evidence that this market was officially

I rcated as a city.

In 1333, the manager, Sonji, pooled the coins paid for the market land

Ltx and the money earned from the sale of grain to purchase two bills of ex

l h,1nge (worth twenty kanman in cash) in the ninth month and five bills of

Lhange (worth fifty kanman in cash) in the twelfth month and sent them

c 111 to Kyoto. The transaction fees were sixty man in the ninth month and fifty

11 the twelfth. Final settling of the estate's account books usually took place

!I the end of the year, but since 1333 was a year of civil strife, it took place the

I, ,I lowing year. Under accounts receivable, Sonji recorded the cash earned on

the sale of grain and iron for the annual tribute tax. He also made entries for

I hl· public fees on the marketplace, money earned from the sale of mulber-

1 cs, and fifty man for an excise tax of five sho of rice per tan of paddy land

u IHI •r the heading "extra cash." The money earned from the sale of grain was

I s than the money paid in cash for the annual tribute for iron; grain con-

t 11 ut d no more than 41 percent of the total. At that percentage, could this

1.,t · really be characterized as agricultural?

nder accounts payable, Sonji recorded the ten kanman loans taken

111t by th state proprietor, Toji, in the third, fifth, and seventh months. I lu payment period fell in the tenth month, with a monthly rate of interest

11 p ·r nt added to the principal. The total was calculated by adding the

11 111s.1 lion fi»s for s nding the bill of exchange to Kyoto, butSonji kept this

u ,n ., :-.l'l rel by recording it on a s pa rat pi c of paper.

\ li,11 1, ,1g11II,, ,1111 ,1li11111 11t1, 1, 1\1111 w\ti\,• l.1111\ w,", '"lom,11 ily 1,,xl'd vl.1 the rl 'tllx, bas 'don an ,, .,. 1111•11111I ,1111 I, 11 11111,il p111,l11, llvlty, 11, I, w," 11111 1111·, ·"'' l111 iii\, 111h1111 l.111d l,1x,

76 i rcuils of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

In addition, he recorded the total of the two bills of exchange (and their

transaction fees) that he had sent to Kyoto in the ninth and twelfth months.

Paid accounts included offerings to the Suwa Shrine within the estate, costs

of other religious services, New Year's celebration costs, and the costs of a

banquet for the villagers when the annual tribute was collected. All of these

were listed as authorized expenses. Furthermore, under the heading of recep

tion and entertainment expenses, Sonji recorded expenses related to the visit of a messenger from the new provincial governor who had been sent to the

estate on an inspection tour by the new Kemmu government in the twelfth

month of 1333. Sonji probably held a three-day banquet (mikka kuriya) for

the official; we know for certain that he had rice prepared for the visitors and

provided soybeans for their horses, and that he bought refined and unrefined

sake at the market as well as dried squid, radishes, fish, eels, and fowl (prob

ably quail) for the banquet.

The cost of this entertainment and gifts for the provincial governor were

officially recognized as necessary expenses, just as they would be today. Sonji

recorded all of the details on a separate sheet of paper. After making these

calculations, he was to take whatever funds were left over and send them

with the bills of exchange to Kyoto. Sonji made some slight mistakes in his

calculations, but his accounts payable were supposed to be equal to his ac

counts receivable.

An account book in which expenditures and receipts would match

exactly-in effect a balance sheet-required a rather precise set of records.

And in the fourteenth century we find a manager who was able to carry out

such a complex task. We do not know much about what kind of monk this

Sonji was, but in this period many of the people who were capable of carrying

out these kinds of managerial tasks were monks of the Zen, Ritsu, or Pure

Land sects or mountain ascetics ( yamabushi). It is to these latter characters

that we now turn.

THE MOUNTAIN ASCETIC AS OFFICIAL

As we saw above, the person contracted to be the manager of a shoen estate

had to understand market prices, be able to keep an account book, and po -

sess a considerable managerial ability. In addition to these economic skill a shoen manager had to have the personal skills needed to r iv important

visitors and conduct negotiation .

The World of the Shoen Estate and Government Lands 77

In the particular year covered by our document, Sonji only had to con

l l'rn himself with entertainment for the messenger of a provincial governor.

I lowever, we also have access to rare documents that show the daily expen

ditures of the manager of Niimi estate for the entire year 1401. The person

"ho kept these records was one Ozaki, who had been sent by a mountain

1scetic named Senshin, who himself had been contracted by the proprietor

lo manage the estate. Ozaki recorded the following under the heading of

penditures: the costs of food and daily necessities purchased at the mar

l l'l, transportation costs for various messengers, and alms given to itiner-

1nt who passed through the estate-picture preachers (etoki) and felicita

tnrs (senshu manzai). 6 We also find extraordinarily high entertainment costs

tor banquets held for local leaders and the governors and officials of nearby

11 eas. For example, Ozaki would buy badger at the market for stew which

hl' supplemented with tofu and small fish to go along with the sake. Since

1 I tl' market was an urban space, it is also possible that these expenses were

Ill urred at a restaurant, bar, or outdoor stand. In the end, Ozaki's entertain

llll'l1t expenses for that year amounted to quite a sum! Since the more enter

I 1111ment costs rose, the more the proprietor's profits fell, Toji tried to keep 1 lll'se expenses as low as possible. In response, the manager argued that these

, 'l're necessary expenditures. Thus, the manager not only had to be some

I It 111g of an entrepreneur, but he had to have good negotiating skills.

In the fourteenth century, one could also find people with this kind of

tl11 I it y among the leaders of the villager class. The Miyata estate in the prov

me of Tanba was also a mountain shoen with its own lively trade in com-

11odities and currency. We have evidence of a wealthy villager in Miyata who

,ts able to quickly pull together one hundred koku of rice and two hundred

k1111111on in coins. In the neighboring Oyama estate, the villagers contracted

1th the proprietor to undertake all of these complicated tasks themselves.

I 11doubtedly, there were villagers of this caliber in Niimi estate as well. It

,1 s the e kinds of people who acted as the lieutenants of the estate manager.

'I he manager's account books also reveal that, despite its location deep

111 th, mountains, not only could one buy such marine products as dried

q11 i I and large fish at the fourteenth-century Niimi marketplace, but in t 111• fi fll' •nth entury one could buy sea bream, small fish, and wakame and

k,,11/1t1 seaw ·eds as well. Konbu is a seaweed that grows in the northern seas;

1111· ,. w,·11· p,·11plt• wh111111·,11 l11·tl l\11ddh"1 "'11111111, 11s111fl p1cll11,• SL rolls .rnd painting and itinerant

111·11111 1111·1, wh11 w,·111 I 111111 111111 , 111 11111"1' 111ln I "fl I" ,1y1•1, ,111d d,111u•s 101 f\O<HI 101 I 111H' on i mpor 11111 l111l1d,1y Ill I,,, N, \\,,II 11.,1

78 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

it had to be carried by ship down from the waters around Hokkaido and

northernmost Honshu, then either across the mountains of western Honshu

from the Japan coast or all the way around to the Inland Sea and up the

Takahashi River to the mountains of Niimi. In the fifteenth century, fish roe

from the Kinai region was also available. The availability of all these products

in a mountain estate reveals that a shipping route around the entire archi

pelago was in place by the fifteenth century. The duties of the shoen managers

functioned as a precondition for the development of such a shipping route.

One other point of importance is that among the owners of houses in

the market at Niimi there were many people who, as far as we can tell from

the documents, resembled monks. For example, we find in the registers peo

ple who incorporated the names of Buddhist deities in such names as Gyo

Amidabutsu or Ho Amidabutsu. In terms of class status, these people were

villagers not monks. They were also different from people who had left their

homes to take the tonsure. They may well have been lay monks of the Pure

Land or Ji sects. But even among the villagers and landowners there were

some who held the ranks of full-time monks (such as the Hokyo or Hogen

ranks). Whatever their particular situation, it is noteworthy that a signifi

cant portion of those who lived in marketplaces and urban areas, and those

merchants and financiers who became estate managers, were either monks

or had the appearance of monks. This connection to religion cannot be over

looked when we consider commerce and finance in this period.

For example, in the early fourteenth century there was a shipper named

Hon'a in the port of Hoshotsu, Etchu Province, who owned one of the largest

of the twenty ships registered by the Kamakura shogunate. His name sug

gests that he was a member of the Ji sect. In the port of Obama, Wakasa

Province, there were a number of moneylenders, warehousers, and other fi

nanciers who had names just like Hon'a's, with the a suffix demonstrating a

devotion to Amida Buddha. These people were engaged in moneylending and

other financial operations while identified as mountain ascetics, some even

eventually reaching the rank of priest. Thus, from ancient times many peo

ple involved in commercial and financial enterprises in Japan were monks.

By the medieval era, examples of monks from the new Kamakura Buddhisl

sects who were involved in commerce, finance, and shipping are particularly

prominent. The commercial aspects of shoen and the central roles of m n lo,

and their ilk are therefore the keys to a reworking of our understanding ol

shoen estates.

CHAPTER FOUR

Bandits, Pirates, Merchants,

and Financiers

BANDITS AND PIRATES

I c ,sa Harbor was the base of the powerful Ando uji on the Tsugaru Peninsula

(fig. 17). As I discussed briefly in my "maritime" survey ofJapanese history,

hl' city reached the height of its prosperity in the fourteenth century, rival-

11g the prosperity of Hakata in northern Kyushu. Tosa Harbor's once lively

le ,wntown district has yielded to archaeologists large numbers of Chinese 11111s and porcelain as well as Koryo (Korean) celadon. Indeed, from the

lu111 tcenth to the fifteenth centuries Tosa Harbor may well have been the

11ll'rnational hub of the north.

To the far south, the city of Bonotsu on the southernmost tip of Kyushu

c ll omed many ships from the Asian continent from the twelfth century

1111, ,1nd excavations in Kanzaki on the Ariake Bay have uncovered large 11111nbcr of Chinese porcelains. But coastal towns are not the only places

l1e•rc hinese porcelains have turned up. They have also been found in

'111ni, high up in the mountains of Okayama, demonstrating its close links

I Ilic ontinent.

But lurking beneath all these traces of trade lies a major problem for

h 101 i,1ns: what kind f p litical power guaranteed the flow of goods and

I lh nf ·x ·hangc? Wh •n" h' ks b unced," exchanges were deemed invalid,

, tlH·1l' w.1s .1 disagrl'l"llll'111 over hills, who ould offer the guarantees that

1111ld 1 •,olv 1lw di,111tn�

?•1

Sotome ya hi (field)

present-day port

Mae Inlet

Shichiri nagahama , , (shoreline)

Kashimo Port

Shinmei Shrine es go Temple •G nryu Temple

Shariki Village

2km

•

Fukushima Castle

Lake Jusan

Figure 17. Map ofTosa Harbor, Lake Jusan, and Fukushima Castle in Tsugaru.

Bandits, Pirates, Merchants, and Financiers 81

The government did not fulfill this function. The imperial government in Kyoto, the military government in Kamakura, and the managers of shoen and government lands focused their attentions on the resolution of land dis putes, establishing procedures for handling such problems. Without a doubt, disputes over land and fiefs were among the most serious social problems of the time. In particular, the Kamakura shogunate's power was dependent upon its vassals' well-being, and the vassals' livelihoods, in turn, were de pendent on their fiefs. So, the shogunate was extremely meticulous when it lame to litigation over titles to fiefs. In contrast to lawsuits relating to land disputes, which the shogunate called its property affairs (shomu sata), litiga t ,on relating to loans, commerce, or distribution were designated "miscella ncous."1 As the category implies, these lawsuits were not taken seriously. This h,1d been true since the archaic Ritsuryo state, once again revealing the state's ,1grarian fundamentalist ideology.

However, the imperial and shrine purveyors who were outside the state I 1 nd system had organized their own financial and distribution networks by the eleventh century. These groups held their own trials in matters related t 1, commerce and had the power to enforce their decisions. Of course, the llllperial government did not find this alternative authority acceptable. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the government strove to strengthen l LOntrol over the activities of imperial and shrine purveyors, designing an

11f11cial system that could incorporate them. However, as the cash economy n11tinued to grow from the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries, com- 11n ial and financial organizations and shipping networks also expanded 11d grew more complex. At the same time, the organizations for imperial

11111 hrine purveyors continued to expand beyond the framework previ- 111,ly provided by the state, becoming more independent. In particular, new , nups that managed the traffic and transportation routes became more ac- 1 l' during this period.

As far as the government was concerned, these people were bandits (0�11/0) and pirates (kaizoku). For example, a picture scroll depicting the trav- 1 of I pp n, the founder of the Buddhist Ji sect, relates the famous story of his

1 v IL • at the temple of Jimokuji in Owari.2 In the story, Ippen's followers ran 11 nf food during an especially long ceremony. Just as they began to show ;11, of fatigue, two wealthy "virtuous men" (tokujin) in nearby Kayatsu had

I 111 I ,1111,1 � 111 ,t ,lt11f11111,11.- 11·1 tlf\td11·d I It, n•, l,t"t'' t1l l,1w,u11'. Lt nd, u 11n111,1l, and miscellaneous. , , lt.q1lo-1 1•1gltl 1111 ,I 1111111 , nlllJ'i, l1 d , 11 ,1111111I ilt1, 'll'llt'

82 'ircuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

a dream in which the Buddhist deity Bishamon ordered them to give alms to

Ippen and his monks. In the scroll, these men are shown in unusual attire,

with long, loose hair, wearing tall geta, and holding fans. According to the text

accompanying this scene, the bandits of Owari and Mino had erected an edict

board warning that anyone who attempted to interfere with Ippen's evangeli

cal work would be executed. 3

As a result, Ippen's group was able to preach in

that region for three years without interference from bandits in the mountains

or pirates on the seas.

In Ippen's time, the ocean reached far inland at Owari and Mino, quite

different from the way it is today, and the "outlaws" of that area included

groups of "pirates" who worked the oceans and rivers. Even though these

groups had no relation to the public authorities, they were able to raise their

own edict boards and guarantee the safety of Ippen's passage themselves.

In fact, it might be more accurate to call these armed groups masters of the

sea (umi no ryoshu) or lords of the mountains (yama no ryoshu) rather than

pirates and bandits. Their power derived from their relation to roads and

waterways. Many of them were also mountain ascetics or monks from the

Tendai monastery on Mount Hiei who engaged in commercial and financial

enterprises. Thus, the circulation of bills of exchange from the thirteenth to

fourteenth centuries that the network of merchants and financiers guaran

teed was in turn secured by the control of transportation routes by these

bandits and pirates.

These people were originally known as wanderers (yushu fushoku no

tomogara), and many of them had once been gamblers. By the thirteenth cen

tury, however, bandits and pirates possessed an organization covering a wide

area. Whenever there was trouble of some kind within their territory, they

would take bribes and gratuities, hear lawsuits, and resolve the problems by

their own authority. Since they would take up lawsuits refused by the author

ities, the disputants would actively seek them out and pay tribute in the hopes

of a speedy resolution. A bribe paid before the fact was called a mountain to! I

(yamagoshi ), 4

while a gratuity paid afterward was called a contract (keiyaku).

3. Edict boards were the standard means of proclaiming new laws and ordinances. That the bandit, would erect such a board suggests that they had arrogated to themselves the practices of offi ia I government.

4. Yamagoshi means "crossing the mountain" and may originally have referred to a payment of a kind of toll to the local powers to guarantee safe passage across a pass.

Bandits, Pirates, Merchants, and Financiers 83

In a well-known incident at the beginning of the fourteenth century, a

large group of bandits broke into the border post at Hyogo. It was reported

that a number of women were seen among their number. Thus, we know for a

fact that women were active in these groups and that many of the merchants

and financiers who depended on the bandits' organization were women.

Some among them, in fact, were probably known as courtesans.

WHAT WAS "EVIL"?

Of course, the state could not ignore their activities. Since its power was based

on the real estate holdings of its military estate, stewards, and vassals, the

Kamakura shogunate in particular often found its local authorities entangled

with the activities of bandits and pirates. The authorities could not look on

quietly when order in their domains was thus disrupted. The shogunate issued

order after order calling for the suppression of bandits and pirates through

out the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Such domestic disturbances were

particularly disadvantageous to the shogunate when the Mongols were threat

l't1ing to invade from the Asian mainland. Having labeled the "rulers" of the

,ca, mountains, and roads "bandits" and "pirates," the shogunate used mili-

1.1ry means to suppress and pacify these independent organizations.

Within the shogunate, the harshest opponents of the bandits were those

who advocated what was called "beneficent government" based on the prin

l iples of "agrarian fundamentalism," the ideology of military landed power.

l·rnrn the perspective of agrarian fundamentalists, "evil" was represented by

I 1l'ople who were attracted by the "magical" powers of coinage and currency

I hl' merchants and financiers who pursued profit and interest-and those

who inhabited the roadways of the mountains and rivers, who enjoyed the

t.1king of life in hunting and fishing and engaged in gambling.

'n1e word evil in those days was applied to phenomena that disrupted

, Yl'ryday peace, to that which exceeded the power of ordinary people. The

1.1 I i ng of profits or interest in and of itself, and by extension commerce and

I 111,111Lc, were seen as evil in this sense. Such activities as gambling-which

,kt idl'd rnallcrs by means of a roll of the dice-and sex, as well as the condi-

111111 ol pollul ion (kcgnrc), wer all seen as related to evil powers that exceeded

IIH· 1wwl.'r ol ordin.11y humans. Many of tho e who were seen as possess-

111g '11\ It l' t 1,1<>1d111,11 y powc, Wl.'r · ofliciully called evil, being referred to in

84 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

documents as Evil Shichibei, Evil Genta, or Evil Safu. It was this view of evil

that labeled organizations of financiers, merchants, and rulers of the ocean

and mountains "evil bands."

But while the Kamakura shogunate's attacks on evil bands were part of

an attempt to suppress the nonofficial networks of merchants, financiers, and

distributors, we may also discern an aggressive attempt within the shogunate

not to suppress but to acquire control of these groups' activities. Based as

it was on lord and vassal relations in which fiefs were divided among one's

own family vassals, the shogunate approached the task of controlling the

bandits in an essentially "agrarian fundamentalist" mode. But the private

vassals (miuchibito) of the H6j6 regents (the Tokus6 line), who controlled

the office of the shogun, took a different approach. The miuchibito actively

attempted to establish links with merchants and financiers and bring riv

ers and roadways under their control. They appointed the heads of financial

groups to the position of domainal manager and placed them under contract

for the collection of land taxes. The case of Niimi estate is one such example

where monks and mountain ascetics, otherwise deemed evil bandits, became

land managers. However, in addition to the standard contracts for land taxes,

they were encouraged to engage in the currency transactions necessary for

the development of a prosperous consumer economy.

The Tokus6 H6j6 also acquired specific harbors and ports that were im

portant to maritime shipping and issued special licenses for their use. Thus,

the Tokus6 H6j6 derived a significant income from maritime trade. The exis

tence of approximately twenty huge "Kanto-licensed Tsugaru ships," licensed

by the H6j6 to ply their trade between Kamakura and Tsugaru from the be

ginning of the fourteenth century, reminds us of this often unrecognized

source of H6j6 wealth. Such ships could also be found in H6sh6tsu Harbor

in Etchu and Tagarasu Bay in Wakasa, both on the Japan Sea coast north of

Kyoto. Even though it was directly opposed to the agrarian fundamentalist

policy that formally characterized the shogunate, the H6j6 family exploited

the maritime trade and distribution system for its own profit.

In fact, politics from the late Kamakura through the early Northern and

Southern Courts period was characterized by a tense struggle between these

two political lines. This ideological split played an important role in the well

known Shimotsuki Incident of 1285 in which Adachi Yasumori-a repre

sentative of the shogunate's vassals and advocate of agrarian fundamentalist

policies-was defeated in a coup by Taira no Yoritsuna-a representative f

Bandits, Pirates, Merchants, and Financiers 85

the H6j6 family vassals. This was a turning point for the shogunate, which

then shifted from trying to suppress the bandit and pirate networks to trying

to incorporate them within its systems of control.

The H6j6 family also came to monopolize trade and diplomatic rela

tions with the Asian continent by the beginning of the fourteenth century.

Until that point, aristocratic families such as the Saionji and a number of

, hogunate vassals had sent their own trade missions to China, but by the end

of the thirteenth century, as virtually all important harbors became H6j6

family holdings, they were supplanted. Thus, the H6j6 family sought to bring

domestic and foreign commercial and financial networks in the islands un

der their direct control. In the end, their policies aroused the intense opposi

tion of other maritime powers in the islands.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the "pirates" of Kumano

staged a major rebellion in western Honshu. We do not know many de

tails of the incident, but it appears that the Kumano Shrine purveyors, who

wielded great power over an area that included the Kii Peninsula, the Inland

Sea, and northern Kyushu, rose up against the H6j6 family's tyrannical con

trol. In response, the H6j6 family mobilized troops from fifteen provinces to

put the rebellion down. The fighting lasted two or three years. The mobili-

1,ation of troops from fifteen provinces matches in scale the mobilizations

undertaken to put down the famous Jokyu Disturbance of 1221 and the bat

tles against Kusunoki Masashige at the time of the Kamakura shogunate's

demise. The sheer numbers and time it took to quell the Kumano rebellion

gives us a good idea of just how serious and widespread this rebellion was. 5

The "Ezo" disturbances, in which the maritime powers of Hokkaido

lhallenged the H6j6 incursions into their area took place at nearly the same

, The Jokyu Disturbance and the rebellion of Kusunoki Masashige at the end of the Kamakura period are events that would be very familiar to a general Japanese audience. Both would be covered in high school history textbooks, and both have found expression in other cultural forms (plays, paintings, novels, and so on). But the fact that the uprising of the Kumano pirates was on the same scale as these two would take many of his Japanese readers by surprise, since many would not have heard of it before. While Amino is not explicit about it here, one reason is that the first two incidents involved fighting by warriors against other members of the war rior class, with one side being backed by the aristocracy. The rebellion of the Kumano pirates, however, was a civil war fought by warriors on one side and nonwarrior people on the other. This ,tresses Amino's general point about "rereading Japanese history." The mainstream textbooks restrict their narratives to stories involving the elites-the aristocracy and the warrior class. To the degree th,11 th ·y mention su h rebellions as that of the Kumano pirates, they depict them as 111.11g1n,1l to thl' 111,1111 ,1oi y line. Amino's insistcn e that the mobilization to suppress the upris- 1111-1 "'·" ·" h11-1 ·" tlw 111ohil11,1t111ns to suppress the Jokyu Disturbance and Kusunoki Masashige I, .111 ,llflllllll'lll lo th,• di,·, t lh.11 111·1th,•1 till' "ll111,lll<l upr1S1ng n<lt the pirates were marginal.

86 ir uits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

time. The rebellion pitted factions of the Ando uji-who controlled a com

mercial network from the Japan Sea to Hokkaido from the Tsugaru Peninsula

city of Tosa Harbor-in alliance with the Ainu-who were then quite active

in trade-against the H6j6. This rebellion broke out several times, and the

H6j6 were ultimately unable to suppress it before their own fall from power.

Emperor Go-Daigo made his appearance on the historical stage in

the midst of this chaos. Go-Daigo employed the military power of these

bandit groups to topple the H6j6 family and the Kamakura shogunate.

In doing so, he expanded upon the miuchibito's policy of aligning them

selves with commercial groups. Even before proclaiming the demise of

the shogunate and the establishment of his new imperial government,

Go-Daigo attempted to place Kyoto under his personal control by tax

ing the sake brewers of the city and making all shrine purveyors from

Hie, Kasuga, and Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrines his direct attendants. He

also ordered that the products of all military steward's fiefs be converted

into currency and taxed at 5 percent. This revenue was turned over to

Kyoto financiers and lenders to be used to meet government expenses.

Go-Daigo also planned to mint coins and issue paper currency. His poli

cies were thus founded on commercial and financial interests rather than

agrarian fundamentalist principles. They were also ultimately despotic.

Although he did not achieve these goals, their failure was not necessarily

due to impracticality, given the frequency with which bills of exchange

were traded at the time.

Politics from the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries was thus char

acterized by a division between agrarian and mercantile lines. The agrarian

line was supported by a system of land taxation that emphasized maintain

ing warrior control of fiefs and that drew annual tribute from the fields of

private and public estates. In contrast, the mercantile line sought to orga

nize the activities of the rising merchants, financiers, and shippers, to build

its strength on networks of distribution, and to develop trade to the north

and west as well as across the sea.

These two ideological strains came to blows amid the violent transfor

mations of society during this era. The mercantile line gradually came to

dominate. By the end of the fourteenth century, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu came

close to achieving what Go-Daigo had planned but failed to do. For a period

thereafter, agrarian fundamentalism ceded to mercantilism the dominant

position in government.

Bandits, Pirates, Merchants, and Financiers 87

URBAN RELIGION: THE TEACHINGS OF IPPEN

l'he clash of these two ideologies was not limited to the realm of politics.

Religion had to deal with many of the same issues, most notably the problem

of evil.

In the early thirteenth century, Shinran, the founder of the True

Pure Land Buddhist sect, proclaimed the theory of "evil's advantage." Ac

u>rding to Shinran, faith in Amida Buddha's vow to save mankind was the

only path to salvation. If even a good man could be reborn in Amida's West

l'rn Paradise, Shinran argued, then an evil man had a much greater chance

, ,f achieving that rebirth since he would be much less likely to think he would

g,1in a propitious rebirth through his own good deeds. Evil's advantage thus

, epresented a positive approach to evil. After Shinran, Ippen, the founder of

the Ji sect, developed a thoroughly universalist theory of salvation in which

he claimed that anyone-good or evil, pure or impure, faithful or unfaithful

could be reborn in Paradise if he or she would receive a wooden plaque

with the inscription "In the Name of Amida Buddha" on it. Through his

belief in the unconditional vow of Amida Buddha, Ippen was able to face

.,nd accept what society at the time called evil. For this reason, his support-

1·rs included the evil bandits as well as the wealthy merchants and financiers

who called themselves virtuous men. Many women also became believers

of Ippen's credo at a time when they were increasingly being stigmatized as

, mpure. A great many became nuns and roamed the country with Ippen's

group. Ippen's supporters also included many outcastes, or "nonhumans," as

I discuss in further detail in chapter eight.

What is important for our discussion here is that Ippen's teachings

,pread quickly in such urban settings as port towns. As an examination of

! Ii 'Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen shows, Ippen's evangelical work cov-

1 rec.I a broad area. This, of course, would have been impossible had trans

portation networks not been stable. Ippen is also known for his attempt to

distribute wooden plaques to six hundred thousand people. Considering the

I iopu lation of the islands at that time, this was a tremendous task that would

h.1ve been possible only after urban areas, where people gathered in large

tlllmbcr , had developed.

lppen is also known for the nenbutsu dance, a kind of religious ceremony

p1·1 lorn1 ·ti on a special stage that w uld be constructed in areas where people

g,1th ·r ·d in l,ll)'l' ,rnmlwr\ in tlw hop of attra Ling a ignificant audience

88 ircuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

(fig. 18). This method of prosely tization was predicated on the existence of

urban spaces. Indeed, a reading of a document called "A Record of Ji Sect

Buddhism" shows that many of the people converted by Ippen's group were

"saved" in urban spaces such as ports and markets.

The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen, which was painted in the late

thirteenth century, differs from earlier picture scrolls, which usually de

picted agricultural scenes. Through the scroll's depictions of a number of

urban scenes, we get a view of one of the major social currents of the time, the

growth of urban spaces. Indeed, Ippen's teachings constitute a truly urban

religion; its adherents were primarily urban denizens.

Yet from an official standpoint these people were evil and impure. The

monks of major temples and shrines, aristocrats, and warriors-particularly

those who supported the agrarian fundamentalist line-all saw Ippen's

preaching and the composition of his followers as "the work of goblins," as

activities, in other words, that had to be censured. Two contemporaneous

works, a picture scroll called The Picture Book of Goblins (Tengu soshi) and a

poetry collection called A Mirror of Pastoral Life (Nomori no kagami), illus

trate this position, harshly criticizing the fact that Ippen included "impure"

women and nonhumans in his traveling corps. These texts explicitly depict

Ippen's sect as a licentious, mendicant group supported by evil bandits that

welcomed polluted outcastes and women.

Figure 18. Dance hut in a center island at Seki Temple. Monks of the Ji sect are perform in, a nenbutsu. From The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen. Source: lppe11 hijirie, from th, collection of the Tokyo National Museum.

Bandits, Pirates, Merchants, and Financiers 89

RELIGIOUS SOLICITORS AS TRADERS AND ENTREPRENEURS

During the early Kamakura period, other religious figures, such as Shinran

and Nichiren, adopted the same tactics as Ippen, purposefully going to

preach among the nonhumans and bandits. Monks from the Ritsu and

Zen sects also sought to save the nonhumans as a positive response to new

developments in society. In addition, there were monks who, even though

they wielded great power in the management of shoen estates, linked them

selves to the H6j6 family's aggressive pursuit of commercial and distributive

power and thus came to function as venture capitalists. How, exactly, did

they do this?

The monks of the Ritsu and Zen sects first obtained the permission of

the Hojo family, or the imperial court (if they were in the west), to travel the

country soliciting contributions for temple construction or some such reli

gious project. Originally these religious solicitors (kanjin shonin) had to walk

from province to province and house to house soliciting donations from

individual families. But by the Kamakura period they were constructing

checkpoints (like tollbooths) in harbors and post towns, collecting their

"contributions" as a kind of transportation tax. Another method was to em

ploy provinicial constables, with the permission of the Hojo family or the

imperial court, to collect ten man in cash from every house in a particular

region as a contribution. This forced contribution was known as "roof beam

money." By the fourteenth century, religious solicitors were thus accumulat

ing capital through obligatory contributions at checkpoints and the activities

of constables. The accumulated capital was sometimes immediately put to

l he use for which it had been solicited, such as the repair of temples.

However, from the fourteenth century on, such funds were occasionally

u ed to construct large trading ships-karabune or "Chinese ships" -which

were sent to China on trade missions to earn even more money (fig. 19). Be

cause these vessels were called Chinese ships, many have assumed that they

were built in and operated from China. However, while that may have been

the case with many, these ships were not exclusively Chinese in origin. I be-

1 icve that the Shin'an wreck, which I discuss in chapter seven, was probably

wnstructed in the Japanese islands. The ship was made of Taiwanese red

pi nc, , southern tree, so there are some who argue that the ship was built in

China. But a �r 'al d ·al of Japanese cypress was crossing the ocean to China

for ll�l' in 011st 111t t 1<lll t l1t·n· from th' thirteenth century on, so it is not in

t Oil l"1v.d1iv tii,d 111.11!'11.ds f1n1n s1111tlw111 :hina would have made their way

90 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Figure 19. Rented ship from the Kamakura period. From The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen. Source: Ippen hijirie, from the collection of Sh6j6k6ji.

to the Japanese islands. In fact, we have already been able to confirm that

some karabune were constructed in northern Kyushu.

Nevertheless, construction of such a large, sturdy ship would require

the organization and mobilization of a variety of tradesmen. It is here that

I find support for my hypothesis of the Shin'an wreck's Japanese construc

tion. The construction of large ships at the time was undertaken by profes

sional sailors known as net attendants (goshi) or net masters (gosu), who

were contracted to organize ship's carpenters and blacksmiths and hire

sailors for the trip across the ocean. The recovery of the Shin'an wreck ha

produced not only large numbers of coins and porcelain but many wooden

tablets (mokkan) (fig. 20). These tablets contain the names of what appear to

be Japanese people, such as Iyajiro, so we know that there were many sailors

from the Japanese islands onboard. The ship's crew also included a gosu and

a religious solicitor. Assuming that this ship began its trip from the arch i

pelago, it was probably loaded with such goods as pearls, swords, gold du t,

and mercury when it left.

When the Hojo family dispatched a religious solicitor on a trip lo

China, they sent him with goods from Hojo lands to be sold in ex hang·

l 1Hllll' 20. Not 'Son wooden tablets (111okkan) from the Shin'an wreck. Top: net attendants ( •11,/11). lint tom: rdi�ious solicitor (k1111ji11 /1ijiri) Ky6scn. From the collection of the National M1isn1111 of "°'l",I l'll()tog1,1ph (0111 t(·,y or Shukan Asahi I lyakka, ed., hi11tei zoho Nihon 11111,·/,1,/11, vol l)

92 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

for an enormous amount of porcelain and Chinese coins. The religious so licitor would bring these back to the Japanese islands and travel from prov

ince to province selling the pottery for profit, using the coins themselves as capital. We know that the solicitor on board the Shin'an wreck was work

ing for the temple of Tofukuji in Kyoto, so it is likely that the Shin'an wreck

was a Tofukuji-owned karabune. There were also karabune employed by the

Hojo family to gather funds for such temples as Kenchoji, Shochojun'in, and the Great Buddha in Kamakura. Since the Shin'an wreck was working for a

Kyoto temple, it is unclear whether or not it was dispatched on orders from

the Hojo. I personally believe that the ship was dispatched by Emperor Go

Daigo, but in any case the ship's mission was clearly frustrated by its sinking.

If the ship had been able to return safely, its profits would have been

used for a large-scale construction project at Tofukuji. Such construction

would have required that the religious solicitor mobilize a labor force of non

humans and "riverside people" as well as temple carpenters, blacksmiths,

plasterers, shinglers, coppersmiths, casters, stone cutters, and other such

craftsmen. There is really no appropriate academic term with which to de

scribe the monk who could have organized and mobilized such an array of

workers, but if we were to use a contemporary referent, we might describe

these men as half venture capitalist and half construction contractor. It is im

portant to remember that the Ritsu and Zen Buddhist sects were particularly

active in this capacity. We should also recall that Emperor Go-Daigo and

the Hojo had the political power to protect, support, and impel these monks along these paths.

The disturbances of the Northern and Southern Courts period consti

tuted a watershed for Japanese society. After that era, commodity circula

tion, currency, and a credit economy developed on a scale unlike anything

before, driving politics and religion in new directions. That is why I see this

period as representing a major turning point in the history of civilization in the Japanese archipelago. Moreover, since people in Japan, the Ryukyus, and Hokkaido began to formulate a sense of their own identities at this time, one

can also say that this was a turning point in the ethnic history of the islands.

THE FORMATION OF VI LLAGES AND TOWNS

As these disturbances came to an end in the fifteenth ntury, th, lose trnc.1,

r lationshipb'tw' n th'Japan s ,r hipclago andth·Asi,111w1lli11•11t1"°lw

ll.111d1t\, 1'11,,tl'\, Ml•1d1a11ts, and Fin.inti 't& 93

even closer, largely a a result of A hikaga Yoshimitsu's mercantile policies.

Trade relations also expanded to a wider area. At the beginning of the fif

teenth century, ships from Palembang in Sumatra, known to Japanese as "southern barbarian ships," entered the harbor of Obama in Wakasa. These

hips did not arrive in Obama by accident but came on regular, annual visits.

The official ambassadors on these ships brought documents addressing Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu as the "king of Japan." On one of these occa-

ions, the first elephant ever seen in Japan was brought as a gift to the king.

Yoshimitsu reportedly saw the elephant once, but since he was not able to care for it he had it sent back to Sumatra. Be that as it may, the transport of an

elephant all the way from Sumatra shows how securely Japan was incorpo

rated into the pan-Asian trading sphere, which even included Southeast Asia. The Ryukyuan kingdom, which was first established in the late fourteenth century, was founded on this kind of trading activity, with Ryukyuan ships

plying the maritime trade routes in all directions.

We know, too, that relations with Northeast Asia were quite close. Tosa

I [arbor in Tsugaru was, as mentioned earlier, deeply engaged in trade with ,1reas all along the west coast of the Japan Sea. However, it also appears to have been engaged in trade with Northeast Asia. Therefore, our understand

mg of fifteenth-century life in the Japanese islands must take into account

the close trade relationship with all of East Asia.

Such conditions as the proliferation of urban spaces, the entrenchment

of a cash economy, and the spread of a manager-contract system for sh6e11 l'State and government lands contributed to the stability of the fifteenth n tu ry and promoted the formation of a number of self-governing village and

towns. While the form of the sh6en system remained as a legacy of earli r

ti mes, Japanese society was shifting to what might be called a village and

town system. These settlements were generally governed autonomously, the

l 1ty of Sakai being the most famous example. Many villages also began to operate on the village contract system (mura-uke sei), whereby the village

, at her than an overlord contracted with the government for the collecti n .111d payment of the annual tax. This suggests that the inhabitants of villag ,

,111d towns had accumulated the necessary skills to manage affairs that had

111cviou ly been the domain of specialized e tate managers.

When Japanese soci 'ty enter -d the Warring State peri din the fifteenth 111tl sixt '•nth t.·11t111 ks, ,1 1111ml er of small r ional tat , rul d by �'udal

ln,ds ,111d huilt 11po11 tltis vill,tgl' ,111d tow11 syst •rn engng •d in viol 'nt struggl'

with l',H It ntitl'I Wit.it It,,� l.11gl'i; l11·t·11 1g1101t.•d i11 our studi •s of this p •rio I

94 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

is the surprising degree to which "rulers of the sea"-pirates, merchants, and

shippers-strengthened their organizations and increased their activities.

For example, traffic on Lake Biwa had long been heavy, but transport

on the lake during this period was controlled by pirates from the town of

Katada. These pirates had bases in all the ports and inlets on the lake, and

when anyone sailed on it they always took a pirate from Katada onboard with

them. Since these people were sought out by the shippers themselves, they

were paid a gratuity, which functioned as a kind of transport tax to Katada.

This in turn provided a guarantee of safe passage. Indeed, the Honpukuji

Temple Memoirs, written by a True Pure Land monk named Myozei, noted

that if a ship flew the banner of Katada it could cross the lake safely. However,

if a ship tried to cross the lake without paying a gratuity, its cargo would

be impounded by Katada. This made the people of Katada the equivalent of

pirates, for if a ship did not pay the toll, they would not only attack it and

impound the cargo, but they would kill everyone onboard, even children.

Such rumors undoubtedly helped spread the word that safe passage would be

assured only if deference were paid to the pirates.

CUSTOMARY LAW OF THE SEAS

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, a Korean diplomat named Song

Hiiigyong wrote a record of a trip he made to Japan. His text provides a rich

account of the customs and society of western Japan at that time. The text

also contains precise information on pirates. Son's description of his embas

sy's stay on the island of Kamagari in the province of Aki on the Inland Sea

resembles the situation in Katada. If boats coming from the east carried an

eastern pirate, then western pirates would not touch the boat, and the same

held true for the reverse. Kamagiri Island served as the border between the

eastern and western halves of the Inland Sea and as the contact point be

tween the pirates of each region. Son wrote that he paid seven kanmon to an

eastern pirate on Kamagiri for safe passage to the west.

This kind of practice was common on the seas at the time. The various

regional maritime powers maintained contact with one other, and as long as

checkpoint tolls and warning fees were paid, passage within the linked lcr

ritories was safe. The affirmative term for these marilimc pow r at this tim ·

was kaizokushu (buccaneer). In other words, th · t ·1 111 /1iu111' was not u · d i 11

a derogatory mann r. ft was th a tpl ·d tcrm ol 11 r .1111tlll)', tltr prnpll1 I a111

Bandits, Pirates, Merchants, and Financiers 95

now calling rulers of the sea. The same situation held for mountain roads,

although the affirmative term was not mountain pirates (sanzokushu) but

mountain yeomen (yamadachi).

In order to maintain control over their territories, these groups built

r ortresses on islands and capes overlooking entries to the harbors or wa

ters through which all boats necessarily passed. These were both defensive

posts and watchtowers for the observation of passing ships. For example, on

the tips of the Taichi and Shio Capes, there are mountains known as castle

mountains (shiroyama). During the Edo period, these mountains functioned

,IS whaling lookout points. When whales were spotted out to sea, the watch

men would light signal fires to inform the whaling bosses. The whaling bosses

would then use handheld banners to guide the boats and help them surround

,tnd capture the whales. This fishing method can be traced directly back to

the practices of the pirate organizations. As on Lake Biwa, there would be no

trouble if deference were paid, but if a ship attempted to pass without pay

ment, men in the lookout would light signal fires. A number of small boats

I rom the pirate leader would then surround the offending ship on all sides

.1 nd impound the cargo.

The Inland Sea and Japan Sea regions had a high concentration of

\IICh pirates. There were also many of these lookout posts near harbors in

1 lokkaido, such as the Katsuyama Fort in Kaminokuni. Most Japanese think

llf a castle as signifying a mountain fortress in inland regions. However, to

t I u ly grasp the nature of fortresses in Japan, we must consider these coastal

fll1 tresses in the same terms as the inland mountain castles.

When I first went to Okinawa in the winter of 1993, I found that the cas

t !vs there, called gusuku, all overlooked the sea. These castles closely resem-

1,hl Lhe ocean fortresses of Honshu. Moreover, these gusuku were sometimes

ilso located on sacred land known as utaki. In fact, the same was often true

, ii f<>rtresses in Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, where capes were considered

,ll n:d places and deities were worshipped there. The "first rice" offered there

111 worship by passing ships may have been the origin of checkpoint tolls.

In Lhis way, the networks of merchant and local maritime powers be

,111w more Lightly organized in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Ac-

111 di 11gl y, it was al this time that customary law for shippers was codified.

I II t lw ,11· ·ha ic pasl, any objc l thal approached on the ocean from afar was

, , 11 ,1s h ·longing to the deities, lo b used, therefore, by temples or shrines.

\\, ,tlsn know lrn1n dm 1111 l'l1lS that uslomary pra ti cs existed lo deal with

11 q 1st lut st 111 I I l'l'f s 01 Wl'l l' ot lw, wi.sl' wrl'Li'l'd. 'I hl'Sl' t ustoms were finally

96 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

written down in the sixteenth century in a text known variously as the "The

Greater Law for Shipping" (Kaisen daiho) or "Shipping Customs" (Kaisen shikimoku), which was composed of thirty-one items. Ten more items were added to these codes in the Edo period, and the text was copied and carefully

maintained in harbors and ports throughout the islands.

It is not clear who compiled these laws or how. Based on form alone, the

common claim that it was issued by H6j6 Yoshitoki in 1223 or by emperor

Go-Horikawa appears to be false. These codes were probably written in the

sixteenth century when someone gathered information regarding customary

law among shippers and wrote it down. People from B6notsu in Satsuma,

Urado in Tosa, and Hy6go in Settsu clearly had a hand in their compilation,

with the people from Urado playing an especially important role.

There was a similar move to codify merchants' customary practices.

Such documents stressed "the history of the commercial way" and referred

to previous "merchants' decisions." None of these codification's of customary

merchant law survives today, although we can see traces of such documents

in genealogical texts such as The Principles of the Scales (Hakari no honji) and Important Affairs of Renjaku (Renjaku no daiji). However, much work remains to be done on this topic.

By the sixteenth century, feudal warlords had taken control of every

region, having established small estates and drafted their own laws. Yet the

networks of merchants, financiers, and shippers remained independent of

the feudal lords. They maintained their own customary laws, which they had

compiled themselves, and actively maintained their relationships outside the

Japanese archipelago. It would take the interdiction of foreign trade by the

Tokugawa shogunate in 1638 to bring this to an end.

6. For a further discussion of this, see Amino Yoshihiko," ,hus<:i ,!1<111111 1111 , .. k.11" ('I lw Wo, Id nf Mcdk•v.11 Merchants), in Rel/6 110 ln111knshi ( ultural I li,t<ny of 111,· A11 hq11·l,1f'."l 1111 'I ('111kyo N1ho11 t·d11.1 sukuru shuppanbu, 1992).

CHAPTER FIVE

Rethinking Japanese Society

THE TERM FARMER

In the process of the fifteenth-century transformations I have described, a

derogatory view of agriculture formed in Japanese society quite contrary to

I he aims of agricultural fundamentalism. As I have repeatedly emphasized,

I he term hyakusho did not mean farmer until modern times. From ancient limes, there has been a different word for farmer: nomin. A close examina t 1011 of historical documents will also turn up another word for farmer, non in, which was used surprisingly far back in time.

The first known use of nonin is in the ancient history A Record of the Latter \g('S of Japan (Nihon koki) in an entry for the year 8ll. It also appears in official

, I, Ku men ts of the Grand Council of State in 824. Moreover, in a text called The

I Vl/y of Household Instruction (Teikin orai), we find the following statement: "If t ha' i land that should be developed, summon farmers (nonin) and have them , kvelop it." If we skip forward to the end of the Edo period and examine the

I, ll .1 I al ma nae compiled by the Mori clan, A Report on the Customs of the Bacho Jl,·g1011 (Bacho Judo chushuan), we find statistics on hyakusho divided into l1nt1\ ·holds of farmers (nonin), merchants, blacksmiths, and so on. It is clear 111>111 this that l,yakus/10 did not refer strictly to farmers. Instead, nonin was tlw word used for form rs from an i nt lime through the early modern era.

I lt·,c Wt' nmc upon ,111 imporlant qu ·st ion. In a fifteenth-century poetry

11111,•,t pit 11111• s1 rnll 1.ill1•d 'l/11' S1111,�-' of '1/,irt /1vo 'J' r111ics111c11 (S1111jO 11ib1111

•17

98 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

shokunin utaawase), we find a farmer (nonin) listed among the "people of the various trades." This is the only example of a farmer appearing in any poetry contest picture scroll. We should note that this scroll was made at a time when the trades it depicted were beginning to be denigrated. It begins with a pair ing of a senzu manzai1 and a picture preacher2 and goes through a range of performers, such as bell ringers, 3 monkey trainers, and bird catchers. At the time this scroll was probably produced, all of these people were considered debased. Indeed, the introduction to the scroll contains the statement, "we thirty-odd people are of despicable stature."

An aristocrat produced the scroll, whose contents were represented as a command performance of song making by members of the trades just be ginning to be stigmatized. What is of interest to our present discussion is that the farmer is paired with a garden sweeper. The sweeper with whom the farmer is paired was originally a riverside dweller4 who worked on con struction projects, including garden construction. In effect, then, farmers are treated here as one of the stigmatized.

One of Japan's most famous garden designers, Zen'ami, was known as a gardener for the shogun (kubo oniwamono). Gardeners in the service of the emperor were known as kinri gardeners. 5 In general, garden people (oniwamono) were riverside dwellers who had connections to court nobles. Despite these illustrious connections, there is no doubt that by this time they had come to be despised. The reason why garden sweepers and farmers are paired in this scroll is probably that both work with the soil. In ancient times, it was believed that causing a change in nature produced a state of pollution. By the fifteenth century, simply tampering with the earth was considered polluting, so farming was understood to be filthy work. 6 Thus, from the per spective of this picture scroll, farmers were despicable.

The late-fifteenth-century Honpukuji Temple Memoirs provides u with corroborating evidence. The Memoirs was composed by a man named

l. Senzu manzai were itinerant people who made their living going from house to house setting up a portable shrine at the entry gate and praying for the good fortune of the household. Since this practice does not appear to have been specially requested by the people of the household, the se11z11 manzai may be seen as a form of beggar.

2. Etoki were popular preachers who traveled with picture scrolls depicting various Buddhist scenes. They would gather an audience and preach a Buddhist sermon by explaining the contents of thl' picture.

3. Like the senzu manzai and the picture preachers, bell ringers were itinerant people who chanted Buddhist sutras while ringing a bell or banging a small gong.

4. See chapter eight for a detailed discussion of riverside dwellers. 5. The kinri in kinri gardeners suggests someone who has access 10 forbiddt•n l111 •1 ior spaces. 6. When Amino writes about pollution, he is not referring 10 c11vlt11111111•111,d 1111ll11tio11, as umtc1n1H1

rary us:1gc understands ii, bu1 to 1hc an1hropologk,1I 1111!11111 111 1 111111111,111 ,, ,1111,· of 11hrlud 111111

Rethinking Japanese Society 99

Myozei, a priest of the True Pure Land sect temple Honpukuji in the town of Katada on the shores of Lake Biwa. The text relates the activities of the famous monk Rennyo7 during his visit to Katada as well as miscellaneous town matters. It is an extremely valuable document for understanding the true character of life in those times.

Related to our discussion here, Myozei observed in the Memoirs that "there is no harder work than working in the fields." In contrast, black smiths, coopers, grinders, and carpenters were all depicted in the Memoirs as rich. According to Myozei, "even in bad years" these people "do not starve." Myozei's Memoirs reveals in several places that he considered merchants and artisans to be better than farmers.

In the letters of Rennyo, we find an early example of the use of the term samurai-peasants-artisans-merchants (shi-n6-k6-sh6), which we associate with the Edo period class structure. Interestingly, Rennyo uses the char acter for talent, also pronounced no for the second occupation (peasant) rather than the usual character for agriculture. We may also note that he did not seem to view samurai as occupying the highest position. For Rennyo, 116 (farming) was performed by people "based in production" who submit ted themselves to tilling the soil. He also evaluated commerce very highly: "Morning and night they endeavor to sell, sometimes riding on the rough seas, never turning away from the risk that they will encounter terrifying waves." In his description of artisans, however, he writes that they "revel in I he arts and seduce people; they fill books with lies and oddities and troll I he floating world." This would seem more appropriate to performers than ,trlisans, but in any case this is a far different stance regarding these classes I ha n that of the Tokugawa shogunate.

Nevertheless, at the time there were certainly members of the True Pure I .1 nd sect who viewed agriculture as one of the lowest forms of work. At I lie very least, we could say that farming was not a respected occupation. I 11slcad, it appears that a high opinion of commerce and manufacturing was pl'rhap more common among True Pure Land adherents. The True Pure I ., 11d sect appears to have been in the vanguard of the mercantilist politics I It.ti '111 rgcd in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

'I'" 11u,1I dcfilcn1cnl. People get dirty when performing many kinds of tasks, but the point is that ,11111,· ,11 ,• ,,·,·n as rcflc, 1 ing on I he haracter of the person who performs the task. Today, gardeners ,111d 11,1 d1,1g<' wll,·, 1111, 111,1y hol Ii gt'I cqua lly di rl y from a day's work, but gardeners do not face the ,1lg,11,1111,111011 I h,11 g11, h,1g,· , olln Im, do. Sec chap1cr eight for more details.

H1 1111)11 ( I 11 • 'I I) w,,, 1111' ,·111h1 h ,1hho1 111 1lw 'I', u,· l'u,c l,111d Shin se I and one of its great prosely- 1111 ",1111I Ill g,111l1r1

100 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

Until recently, scholars have seen the ikko ikki insurrections of this time

as provincial and peasant uprisings, sometimes going so far as to call them

"peasant wars." It is true that the ikko insurrections toppled the shugo gov

ernor of Kaga Province and that the insurrectionists declared Kaga "a land

held by the hyakusho." But historians' representation of Kaga as a "kingdom

of farmers" is a mistake based on our present-day presumption that hyakusho

meant farmers. Inoue Toshio was far closer to the truth when he looked for

the main base of support for the True Pure Land sect among seagoing folk:

fishermen, wealthy shippers, and warehousers. 8

THE CLASH OF MERCANTILISM AND

AGRICULTURAL FUNDAMENTALISM

In fact, most of the bases of the True Pure Land sect from the fifteenth cen

tury on were in urban areas. The town of Katada, once the largest city on Lake

Biwa, was one such base, even serving as Rennyo's headquarters for a while.

Rennyo also claimed that until he established a practice hall in the town of

Yoshizaki, in Echizen, the town was a place "of foxes and badgers," meaning

that it was utterly rustic. In fact, it is likely that Rennyo established a hall there

because Yoshizaki was well located to function as a port. Yamashina, the site

of the temple of Honganji, 9

was also an urban site. Another important base of

the True Pure Land sect, Ishiyama, is actually a section of Osaka, so naturally

it was urban also. Nagashima, in Ise, was a city surrounded by rivers and the

ocean, as was Hiroshima, and both were strongholds of the sect. If we go on

to look into the Hokuriku region, we find that most of the big True Pure Land

temples and practice halls were located on the coast along shipping routes.

We also find a huge True Pure Land temple in the mountains of the

Noto Peninsula in a village called Yanagita. This may seem an exception to

our rule. However, Yanagita was not a simple mountain village but a place

where a kind of lacquerware known as gorokunuri was produced in great

quantities. Due to its character as a site for craft production, Yanagita can be

8. See, for example, Inoue Toshio, Yama no tami, kawa no tami: Nihon chilsei no seikatsu to shi11ko (People of the Mountains, People of the Rivers: Life and Faith in Medieval Japan) (Tokyo· Heibonsha, 1981); and Jkko ikki no kenkyu (Studies of the lkk6 Rebellions) (Tokyo: Yoshikaw,1 k6bunkan, 1968).

9. This was the headquarters of the True Pure Land sect.

Rethinking Japanese Society 101

considered to have had an urban character. Furthermore, large numbers of

merchants and craftsmen lived in the precincts of True Pure Land temples in

places like Kaizuka in Izumi Province and Imai in Yamato Province, making

the temple itself the center of a town.

We must be careful here to remember that by the fifteenth century Japa

nese society was undergoing a major transformation. Fear of the deities and

pollution was waning, and stigmatization of such people as nonhumans,

riverside dwellers, courtesans, and gamblers was beginning to permeate so

ciety. The religious position of the Ji sect-which held that there is no differ

ence between good and evil and that everyone has to be saved-gradually

lost its power over these stigmatized people. In the fifteenth century, more

and more of these groups associated themselves with the True Pure Land

sect, which pointedly contrasted good and evil and positively proclaimed

support for "evil."

It appears that the Ji sect bases were taken over by the Ikko movement 1°

in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Just like the Ji, the True Pure Land sect

was a thoroughly urban movement. In fact, the Nichiren sect, another of the

new Buddhist sects of the Kamakura period, was also based in urban areas.

The reason why the Nichiren sect's Lotus Sutra movement and the True Pure

Land sect's Ikko movement struggled so violently against each other during

the Warring States period is that they were both trying to expand their bases

in the same areas. 11

When Christianity was brought to Japan in the sixteenth

century, it adopted the same evangelical strategy. As a result, the Christian

111 issionaries of the sixteenth century felt that their greatest competition was

l he Nichiren and True Pure Land sects. Religions that targeted urban areas

received their support from "mercantilist" powers. These merchants and ship

pers were, like the wako pirates, 12

linked to areas outside the archipelago, and

l hey possessed a vast trading network that extended from Southeast Asia to

\outh America. 13

However, in opposition to this interregional network, local warlords

,u h as Oda Nobunaga sought to unite all the small regional states in the

Ill I he lkk6 was a True Pure Land sect movement promoted by Rennyo. 11 hu ,1 description of these struggles, see Mary Elizabeth Berry, The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto

(lkrkeley: University of California Pre s, 1996). l' l li.-se w,•re prr,\les who oper.tled in the seas between Japan, China, and Korea. 11 A11111w\ son, /\1111110 T,•1s11y,1 (,1 professor of Latin American history at Tokyo University) has

1111«1v,·11·d do, 111111•111, 111 '>p,1111 1w1 l,1111111g lo a J,1p,1nesc scttlcmcnl in Peru in the sixteenth cen- 1111 y I h" "wli,11 A 11111111 t•, 1.-1,11111µ lo wlwn lw writl's or nel works extending lo outh A mcrica.

102 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

archipelago and to rule "Japan" as a single country. This drive to unify the

country came into direct conflict with the mercantilist religions, resulting in

the famous collision between Oda and the Ikko sect at Ishiyama. Toyotomi

Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu's later conflicts with Christianity had the

same roots. In order to reunify Japan, the warlords felt compelled to reas

sert themselves on the issue of land-based tax revenues. The direction taken

by the warlords meant the revival of ancient Japan's "agrarian fundamental

ism," as we see in Hideyoshi's attempt to solidify the system of land taxation

(based on the annual rice tribute of the kokudaka system) by making war

lords throughout the country submit land survey registers to the emperor.

Tokugawa Ieyasu took the same path when he established the final shogunate

ofJapanese history in 1603.

As a result, the attempt to reunify and stabilize Japan on the basis of

agricultural land came into direct conflict with those who sought to build

networks of commercial circulation on the sea and who aimed to build trade

networks that extended beyond the Japanese islands. This conflict ended

with the victory of the "agrarian fundamentalists" in a great bloodletting.

The network of the seafarers was shattered. The unified country of Japan, for

which the ocean was now a border, was revived.

This victory also resulted in the early modern state. Under this state,

the mercantilist valorization of commerce was suppressed and agrarian fun

damentalism became the orthodox principle of society. With the revival of

agrarian fundamentalism as a governing principle, the idea that hyakusho

were farmers began to take root. Our image of Japanese history has been

formed on the basis of this belief. But when we reexamine history by looking

at forms of production other than agriculture, we find a very different image

ofJapanese society coming to the fore.

A NEW HISTORICAL IMAGE

As I describe in chapter seven, in the latter half of the Kamakura period coin

circulated widely and something approximating a credit economy developed.

We have evidence of the deployment of financial capital, commercial trad'

capital, and even large-scale capital invested in construction projects in this

period. While this may be a bit of an exaggeration, I believe this activity a 11

be seen as having a capitalist character.

Rethinking Japanese Society 103

Evidence of such conditions can likely be found on the Korean

Peninsula and the Chinese mainland. But the agrarian fundamentalism of

the Confucian thought, centered as it was in China, exerted a tremendous

influence on the entire East Asian region. As a result, we have overlooked an

important aspect of the social life of our past.

For example, there is a strong oceangoing strain in Korean society, par

ticularly in the islands along the southwestern coast. When in the thirteenth

century the Mongols attacked the Koryo dynasty in Korea, the Korean mili

tary unit that held out against them the longest, the Sambyolch'o, had its

base in the southern islands, including Jeju-do. It was probably particularly

skilled in naval battles.

However, when we look at the entire course of Korean history, we see

that people with a link to the ocean, including fishermen, have been den

igrated and relegated to nearly outcaste status. The Korean Peninsula was

even more thoroughly permeated with Confucianism than was the Japanese

archipelago, and so an intense agrarian fundamentalism may have been the

source of the denigration of coastal peoples. Nevertheless, if we dig a little

deeper we find that Korean society also had a fairly strong nonagricultural

productive aspect to it.

We know that commerce and trade have flourished in China, especially

south of the Yangtze River, since the Song dynasty. Still, there is much room

for further research. For example, an oceangoing people in southern coastal

China called the Dan, a minority group that has been subjected to some dis

l ri mination, has received little scholarly attention. Moreover, the ocean has

been important not just for minority groups but for all those in China who

have ventures on the sea. If we reconsider the trends in Japan with an eye

I oward movements on the Korean Peninsula, the Chinese mainland, and

\outheast Asia, our grasp of Asian history will change considerably.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the governments of Japan,

I orea, and the Ming, then Qing, dynasties in China all adopted what we

li,1vc commonly called an exclusionary policy. Each state undervalued and

dl'nigrated its society's commercial and industrial elements, a condition that

jll'rsi ted until the modern era. The same kind of historiographical mistakes

1 li,1t we have been making in Japan have been made throughout the East

\ ",111 r gion u ndcr the sway of Confucian-style agrarian fundamentalism.

I re cntly inquired into, h larship in Korea and was told that, indeed,

tlll't • hav · h ·t·n w, y f ·w studi s of o cangoing peoples or nonagricultural

104 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

production. China appears to be the same. It seems that most people have

leaped to the conclusion that nonagricultural production was of little im

portance in Asia. East Asian societies as a whole have consistently underes

timated their own nonagricultural and commercial aspects up to the present

day. What kind of new images of society or the state will come into view

when we finally correct this evaluation? Of course, to return to the Japanese

case, the task of rereading historical documents has just begun, so it will take

some time before a new understanding of society develops. In anticipation of

that day, I would like to examine several historical problems that continue to

be surrounded by confusion.

WHAT CAUSED FAMINES?

Famines have been gravely misunderstood. T hey first became a serious prob

lem around the thirteenth century. I am not denying that there were poor

harvests in ancient times as well. However, famines first had a decisive social

meaning, that is, for the first time the government had to directly confront

this problem, during the famous Kangi (1230) and Shoga famines (1258).

Other great famines in Japanese history include the Great Kansho Famine in

the fifteenth century and the Kan'ei, Enpo, Kyoh6, Tenmei, and Tenpo fam

ines of the Edo period.

These famines originated in severe climatic changes that brought about

bad harvests, but how a bad harvest developed into a famine is a question

that has not yet received sufficient attention. We must take a fresh look at the

actual conditions of a famine. For example, we have in A Record of Myohoji a

very detailed account of conditions at a temple in the region of Fuji Yoshida,

Kai Province, from the latter half of the fifteenth century to the early sixteenth

century. According to this text, there were occasional small-scale famine

when the price of rice, wheat, millet, and other grains were high. When price

were low, the world was said to be well off, but when the price of food rose,

people starved. The text makes use of an interesting term, seni kekachi, which

refers to shortages of coins caused by attempts to rectify currency problem

by rejecting "bad coins" at market. 14

In other words, the removal of bad coins

14. Without a centralized mint, the currency siluation in medieval Japan wa, oftc11 , h,1ot1 . Mu ·h of the currency used in Japan in the fourteenlh cntury w.1' $0111-1 Ch11w"· "'l'I'''' «1111,. S,11,1· tlw«• was frequent rem int infl of coins ,ind sever ,1 I cliffor cnt pr t•dou, 11wt,rl• wr11 t 11 11•, 1111 '", ,1\11111 t 111•

Rethinking Japanese Society 105

from circulation caused a shortage of coins, so that even if prices were osten

sibly low, there were no coins with which to buy commodities.

Most scholars have read A Record of Myohoji as an account of an ex

tremely poor area subject to frequent famines. Even today Fuji Yoshida is

an area with very few rice paddies. According to the conventional wisdom,

which equates the lack of rice paddies with poverty, the entire prefecture of

Yamanashi has always been poor. So, when A Record of Myohoji notes a coin

shortage (kekachi) when "things got tight," scholars have assumed that there

was a famine in Yoshida because it was poor. Somewhat tautologically, this

poverty was assumed in turn to have derived from the fact that there were

few rice paddies there. However, as noted above, famines occurred when the

price of grain was high. This region had to purchase its food supplies from

elsewhere, which is why people became rich when grain prices were low. 15

How did the people of this area earn their cash? Large numbers of pilgrims

Lo Mount Fuji came to Yoshida, which was at the foot of the mountain, and

paid for their lodgings in cash. In other words, in the fifteenth and sixteenth

<..enturies Yoshida was an urban area.

Famines generally occur first in these kinds of urban places. Indeed,

Yoshida became famous at the end of the Edo period for the social disruptions

<..aused by insufficient food. According to Yamaguchi Keiji, the disturbances

111 Yoshida, like the Kamo uprisings in Mikawa Province, were perpetrated by

"rice-purchasing farmers" (shokumai konyu nomin).

This phrase strikes me as very odd. Yamaguchi presents us with the im

.1ge of rice-growing farmers who also have to buy it, forcing one to conclude

I hat they were extremely poor farmers. But is it not more likely that these

people were not farmers? Yoshida had been urban since the medieval era, so

1 hese were "rice-buying city dwellers" who were starving. The same was true

for the riots on Mikawa, where people living on both the coast and in the

mountains had to buy their food. Unless you recognize this, you cannot truly

11 nderstand either these famines or these riots.

I was recently reading the documents of the Tokikuni family on the

Noto Peninsula and came across a document from 1681 in which four

1-1overnment would intervene in the market and declare a number of the circulating coins "bad." When these were wil hclrawn, prices would rise, as usable currency became scarce.

h lhe key point h •re rs that 1-1rai11 pri cs were high, not that grain was necessarily in short supply. As A 1111110 w, II t•xpl,1111, th,· 0111• 011st,1nt ,1hout Yoshida is that there was always a short supply of local fl' ,1 I 11, ,o If f.1111111,·, wc·, c·, ,111\t"d hy ,hcu t supplies then Yoshida would have experienced constant f.11111111· A11111111 w11111 111 p111• 11,· tlw ,.11"'"' of f.1m11w 111 conditions of om mer ial exchange, not ,lflll< 1111111,rl 11111tl11, 111111

106 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

atamafuri of the nearby coastal village of Sosogi submitted a petition asking

for rice rations since they had been "driven to desperation" by starvation.

Certainly, there were bad harvests around this time. Had I read this docu

ment ten years ago, I would have assumed that these were impoverished

farmers asking for famine rice rations. But, having come to understand that

I could not assume that atamafuri were poor farmers, I realized that I had

to investigate what kind of people these four atamafuri were. In fact, one of

them was from a wealthy family that owned two ships and traded in salt.

There is no evidence whatsoever that these were poor people. Rather, they

engaged in nonagricultural production and possessed monetary wealth.

Sosogi had long been an urban-type settlement whose inhabitants en

gaged in salt production and shipping. When there was a bad harvest and

rice prices rose, these inhabitants were unable to buy food. So, they had to

petition for rice rations or emergency silver with which to import food from

other regions. They were not starving because they were chronically poor

people scraping by on the product of a few rice paddies.

If what I have just described is true, then a primary reason why famines

occurred from the early thirteenth century on was the phenomenal growth

of urban areas throughout the country, which began about that time. Fam

ines first appeared in urban places. Those of us who experienced World War

II may remember that there was little starvation in the food-producing areas

of Japan. It was the city dwellers-the ones who had to buy their food-who

first went hungry.

As for the great famines of the Edo period-the Ky6h6, Tenmei, and

Tenp6 as well as the devastating famines that were restricted to northern

Honshu-none happened simply because the northern Honshu region, for

example, was poor. We need to thoroughly reinvestigate whether farm vil

lage districts were truly devastated by these famines. It may turn out that

northern Honshu had far more urban characteristics than we previously

thought. There is cause to believe that poor harvests wreaked such damag

because much of the region was engaged in other forms of production.

Famines are the major symbol of the poverty and cruelty of the Edo

period. However, the overall trends may well have been in the opposite di

rection. An increasing number of famines in the Edo period did not mean

economic stagnation and grinding poverty. Instead, Japanese society experi

enced expanding urbanization and increasing density in the urban p pu la

tion. This is why a famine could have uch a deva laling cffc l on an 'nlire

Rethinking Japanese Society 107

region. We might well take the severity of famines as an indication of how

much urbanization had advanced.

WHAT WAS FEUDAL SOCIETY?

The members of my seminar and I recently had an opportunity to examine

an Edo period writing practice book at the Kamikaji family household in

Outer Noto. 16

We were looking at a section from 1700 when we found the

following sentences: "For the past three or four years, the people have been

truggling without cease, some even dying of starvation. We ask in your wis

dom that you grant us funds for food." In fact, there were no famines around

the time this sentence was written. Since this was a collection of sample sen

tences for use when villagers wrote petitions, this was merely practiced as

an example of what to write in hard times. Since these were evidently stock

phrases in village petitions, we should be wary of taking at face value appeals

from villagers claiming that many were on the brink of starvation. One occa

sionally finds this in the medieval era as well, so one must not underestimate

villagers' shrewdness when reading documents. 17

We need to revise our definitions of feudal society in light of the above.

Our understanding has been that the lord's control of farmers constituted

the basic production relationship in feudal society. This has been the case not

only for the Edo period, but for the Kamakura, despite clear differences in

social organization and territorial administration before and after the reuni

fication efforts of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi.

The late historian Araki Moriaki argued that the medieval era was a

"patriarchal family/slave" society, with full-fledged feudalism only coming

into being in the early modern era. 18

According to Araki, the medieval era

was more backward than feudalism, essentially a slave society. However,

si nee Araki believed that the family-owned slaves of the medieval era were

put to work at farming (that is, they were agricultural slaves), his basic view

I h. 'I his was a book in which local vii lagers learned how to write by copying set phrases and sentences. Unlike today, they did not learn to write by memorizing a full set of Chinese characters. Instead, minimum literacy was achieved by copying out the kinds of phrases that would be necessary for 1hc documents they would have to produce.

It S,·c ,111 essay by Kilsukawa Toshita<la on this practice book, "Shiryo to shite no teshii.hon" (Writing Pr.1 ·1kc Books ,Is Pr 1111,11 y Sources), Rckishi to 111i11zoku (l listory and Ethnos) 12 (1995).

Ill A1,1kr Morr,1k1, N,/11111 /"lk,•11,/111ka11<'111/m ,hiro11 (On lhc Establishment of Japanese Feudal Soci rly) ('l\1kyo lw,111,11111 ,hotrrt 1'1111).

108 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

of both eras was really not so different. Nor was Araki alone in this approach.

The widespread idea that Japanese society in both the medieval and early

modern eras was feudal, in that it was founded upon the slave-like control of

farmers by feudal lords, is the one that is presented in school textbooks today.

One of the premises of this viewpoint is that the lords bound farmers

to the land by force rather than economic means. By depriving them of

freedom of movement, the lords were able to collect a land tax. Yet, one of

my main arguments has been that not all hyakusho were farmers, indeed,

that many hyakusho were sea-going people, or mountain-dwellers, or mer

chants and artisans. Many of those who were not farmers did not need the

land to survive. This relatively high proportion of hyakusho who did not

hold land was not only difficult to tie down, but had to move around to

make a living. In such a case, are the concepts of noneconomic restrictions

and forced ties to the land in fact effective concepts for understanding this

history ? Is it not simplistic to claim that the lords could bind villagers

people who were engaged in a variety of forms of production, who were

intelligent and possessed a high degree of managerial knowledge-to the

land and control them with nothing more than the threat of violence?

This much, I believe, has been made abundantly clear in my discussion

to this point. For example, in the medieval era territorial lords possessed

land that they managed themselves. Agricultural lands called shosaku and

tsukuda were situated in the immediate vicinity of the lord's headquarters.

The lands surrounding the headquarters were farmed by his own servants,

while the lands beyond were farmed by other villagers. The prevailing im

age is of a medieval lord unable to pacify the surrounding populace by

mobilizing wealth generated from his own lands. In the early modern era,

the lord and his military vassals, the samurai, moved to urban castle towns,

thus effecting a separation of farmers and warriors. Shogunal control wa

maintained by the organizational manipulation of urbanized lords. Thi

conventional wisdom is by no means completely erroneous, but it does re

quire major revision. Upon reexamination, I think it highly unlikely that

we will be able to continue to say that medieval society was simply a feuda I

system based on farming villages or that early modern society was a feud a I

system centered on agriculture.

I base my contention, first of all, on the fact that a highly active sea

transport system had developed in the Kamakura period. Beginning in tht'

latter half of that period, commodities were circulated on su h a scale th al

credit transactions became common. How could a ruling I l.1,s extra l tax

Rethinking Japanese Society 109

revenues and control such a mobile and fluid society while sitting in their

headquarters?

I would argue that for the most part medieval lords were not very skilled

at controlling commerce and distribution. Single-minded in their emphasis

on "agrarian fundamentalism," since basic taxes were levied on land, they

failed to grasp the potential of the era's developing economy. Nevertheless,

because of the degree to which commerce and distribution developed in this

period, they were unlikely to have been merely disinterested. Rereading his

torical documents with this in mind will lead to all kinds of new insights.

Although I discussed this somewhat earlier, I would like to provide a

few more examples. Recall again the conventional view of shoen estates. They

were large, private landholdings and essentially large-scale agricultural oper

ations. Prominent and powerful local families owned and managed these ag

ricultural operations, but in order to protect their rights of private ownership

they "commended" these lands to high-ranking court nobles in the capital. 19

'(he higher the rank of the nobility in the capital the more vigorously would

local families compete to commend their lands to them. As a result, court

nobles would naturally accumulate holdings throughout the country.

But to believe that court nobles could acquire landholdings throughout

the country without making an effort is unrealistic. Without a doubt, the ac

l umulation of shoen estates proceeded in accordance with some form of in

tention, plan, or strategy. If we reexamine the geographical distribution of

shoen estates in this light, we will see that there was nothing accidental about

their accumulation. The intentions of the temples and shrines, the imperial

lamily, the Fujiwara regent family, and the other nobles are revealed in the

way estates were accumulated. We can thereby uncover their strategies as a

ruling class.

THE HOLDINGS OF THE SAIONJI FAMILY

'-lh ri nes, such as Kamo Shrine, attempted to acquire estates and pasture lands

.dong the coast; their holdings were located along the Inland Sea and in ports

.111d harbors of the northern Japan Sea. Many of the pastures of Ise Shrine

1 oul<l b f, und al ng the Pacific coast, while estates and subsidiary shrines

I •J I his w,is ,, t.,vo11·d l llll l "' ol ,,1 I 11111 h •1,1u,' when com mending the land to a court noble the com- 11H·r11ll11g p,11ty worrld" ri.t!I lw 11,111wd tht• 101,il 111,1n,1gcr by that noble. 'lhc noble would rarely 11 l'ITI llt,il I ,lllY I J.,t Ill 11111111 t 111 111,111,IHl'llll'llt ol t h1• l'\l,lll' ,1' long.,, I l'Wl1UC, .llll 11cd to 111111.

110 Cir uils of lhc ·ca and Nonagricultural Production

of the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine dotted the Inland Sea coast and the

west coast of the Japan Sea. T he same was true for the imperial family, the

Fujiwara regents, and the Taira uji, as discussed earlier. One of the most inter

esting cases I've investigated recently is that of the distribution of the holdings

of the Saionji family. T his aristocratic family held the post of moshitsugi

"the service desk"-representing the "monarch of the east" (the Kamakura

shogunate) to the "monarch of Kyoto" (the emperor). From the perspective

of the emperor, the Saionji were the diplomats through whom the imperial

government conducted its "foreign relations" with the shogunate in Kanto. It

was an immensely wealthy and powerful family.

When we look into the distribution of this family's holdings (fig. 21), we

find that, first, they had villas on two rivers-at Makijima on the Uji River

and at Suita at the entrance to the Yodo River. They had administrative of

fices at both of these villas and employed a variety of tradesmen, including

boatmen. The Saionji family also owned a number of pastures covering the

area from Lake Ogura to the Yodo River. These pastures were created by put

ting up fences on land enclosed by a bend in the river. The Saionji pastures

operated like the famous Kinto pasture near the capital, where horses and

cattle were raised to be offered as tribute to the imperial court's Bureau of

Horses and to the stables of the retired emperors. Like the Taira at the end of

the Heian, the Saionji served as the hereditary directors of the retired emper

or's stables in the Kamakura period. As such, they had the right to appoint

officials to the Left Bureau of Horses and to acquire pastures in the Lake

Ogura-Yodo River and Kawachi regions.

Horse packers and teamsters were attached to these stables, so the

Saionji also acquired control of these transportation workers. Since the pas

tures were located along rivers, they were always supplied with docks. They

thus formed the point of contact between land and water transportation net

works. In this way, horses and cattle were always paired with boats, demon

strating the strong links between pastures and water transport.

Other holdings were scattered along the banks of the Uji River, Lak

Ogura, and the Yodo River. For example, the Toba Palace, a large imperial

villa, was located at the confluence of the Kamo and Katsura Rivers near the

Yodo. The Saionji managed the Toba Palace for the imperial family, and as a

result its lands also came under their control. Since the Yodo fish market w, s

located on these lands, the Saionji controlled the mo t e sential part of th·

Yodo River. In fact, all of the estates neighboring Toba Palace w ·r • u nd ·r I hr

management of the. aionji.

I.... ·, >-.r-

( I

112 ircuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

When we look at all the waterways from the Yoda River to Osaka Bay

and the Inland Sea, we find that the Saionji had holdings in the area of Settsu

and Harima, both of which were entrances to the Inland Sea. Furthermore,

they possessed holdings in key ports such as the Kayo estate in Shimotsu

Harbor in Bizen Province and the Nuta estate in Aki Province. The Nuta

estate is famous for its marketplace, and the area as a whole was well known

as a major base for fishermen.

In addition, the Saionji family held the hereditary post of governor of

Iyo Province, located on the edge of Shikoku nearest Kyushu. Apart from an

interim during the Kenmu Restoration, Saionji family members continued to

staff that post throughout the Muro ma chi period. The Saionji base in Iyo Prov

ince was Uwa District, the same area where Fujiwara no Sumitomo made his

headquarters in the tenth century.20 The Saionji also held the Anami estate

in Bungo Province, just across the straits from Uwa District. Whoever con

trolled this area controlled the Bungo Straits, which served as the passage

from the Inland Sea to northern Kyushu.

Saionji possessions also included the famous Munakata Shrine in

Chikuzen Province, which had such close ties to the continent that for

two generations the wives of the head priest were Chinese, and Uno no

Mikuriya, which had been the base for the famous "masters of the sea," the

Matsura band. The Matsura District boasted many harbors and inlets, and

its pastures produced not only horses but the famous Mikuriya cows, which

were sent to the capital as tribute every year because the Saionji family man

aged the retired emperor's stables. To sum up, the Saionji family had hold

ings that allowed it to control river and ocean transportation routes from

the Uji River, just south of the capital, through the Inland Sea to northern

Kyushu.

As mentioned earlier, Saionji Kintsune sent a trading mission to China

using his own capital and importing 100,000 kan of copper coins in the mid

dle of the Kamakura period. The Saionji family was clearly tremendously

wealthy, but wealth alone was not enough. It was able to conduct this kind of

trade because it controlled important points of waterborne transport in the

archipelago. As this makes clear, certain aristocratic families of this period

were quite careful to control key points in transportation routes. Later th

20. Fujiwara Sumitomo was a court noble who staged a revolt against the imperial court in the tenth century and attempted to construct a new kingdom that included territory in western Japan and southern Korea. See chapters two and four.

Rethinking Japanese Society 113

Saionji became one of the daimy6 families of the Warring States period, con

structing such castles as the Matsuba in Uwa. Even superficial investigations

of the Matsuba Castle have yielded a good number of Chinese celadon por

celains; more serious archaeological digs would surely turn up much more.

THE LORDS' IN TEREST IN OCEAN TRANSPORT

The situation just described was not limited to the Saionji family. Whoever

held the posts of head of the Left Bureau of Horses or director of the re

tired emperor's stables was able to control the pastures of the Yoda River and

the Uno Mikuriya domain of Hizen Province. The governor of Iyo Prov

ince could control the entrance to northern Kyushu and the Inland Sea. So,

combining the posts of head of the Left Bureau of Horses and the governor

ship of Iyo Province meant being able to control these vast ocean transport

networks. The Taira family was the first to acquire these posts, and Kiso

Yoshinaka and Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the famous protagonists of The

Tale of the Heike, followed suit. Control of the transportation networks of

the west through these two posts was crucial for those who wished to op

pose Minamoto no Yoritomo's control of the "Eastern Country" at this time.

We have further evidence of the importance of these ocean routes when we

note that when Kiso Yoshinaka was offered the post of governor of Echigo

Province, he refused it, demanding instead the governorship of Iyo. He ac

tively sought to acquire and control this post and other shoen estates and

government lands. There was nothing accidental about the distribution of

his holdings.

Not surprisingly, many aristocrats and warriors vigorously competed

with each other whenever a certain shoen estate or government post opened

up somewhere, employing myriad schemes and going to all kinds of lengths

to acquire it. The local lords that we have been calling feudal lords-that is,

the hogunal vassals and military stewards-did not rule their territories by

passively sitting in their headquarters at the center of a concentrically struc

tured domain.

F r example, the Kobayakawa family had its main base in Sagami Prov

ttll ', wh r il built th family home . It also possessed such holdings as the

N11ta, Tsu, and Tai ehara 1.:slal . in Aki Province (present-day Hiroshima).

'1 h · Kohay,d',IW,I h,1d 111,1i11t.1i11 ·d an inl r'sl in th ca from the time when

114 Circuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

they were based in Sagami, but eventually they gave up their Sagami home and moved to Aki Province, in the process becoming "lords of the sea."

The Miura was a Kamakura era shogunal vassal family whose original base was on the Miura Peninsula, an important point in sea transportation networks. From the beginning, this family was consciously concerned with controlling sea transport bases. First, the Miura became military governors of provinces that had strong connections to the sea, such as Kawachi, Izumi, and Tosa. They also became military stewards of Munakata Shrine and Kanzaki estate in Hizen Province, a key point in sea transport facing the Ariake Sea. These possessions were distributed in a way that appears to have had Pacific Ocean transport and links to the Asian mainland in mind. Since the Hojo had an even greater interest in sea transport, they and the Miura carried on an intense rivalry over the control of these networks.

The military stewards and shogunal vassals of the Kamakura period were all keenly aware of ocean routes and mountain roads. When ocean travel and trade became even more active in the Muromachi period, with the increased circulation of goods, military governors became even more sensi tive to such issues. There are, however, very few studies of Muromachi era military governors or the Edo period lords who followed in their footsteps that take such issues into account.

Yet the fact that the Date family of Sendai possessed an outpost at Itako on Lake Kasumigaura, well outside its domainal boundaries, was no doubt due to its desire to control important points on water transport routes. In a similar vein, the ten-thousand-koku domain of the Hijikata family wa established on the Noto Peninsula at the beginning of the Edo period? While the Hijikata were not vassals of the Tokugawa family (fudai), 22 they were extremely close to Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate. The ten-thousand-koku domain of the Hijikata appears insignificant in com parison with the million-koku domain of the Maeda family, which covered the provinces of Kaga, Noto, and Etchu. In fact, the Hijikata domain on Noto, which is scattered in different locations within the Maeda domain,

21. See the discussion of the Hijikata in relation to the Tokikuni family in chapter one. 22. All warlords (daimyii) during the Edo period were divided by the shogunate into three typl'"

shinpan (collateral families of the Tokugawa),fudai (warlords who served Tokugawa Ieyasu as h" vassals and thus owed their positions and land to him), and tozama (warlords who possessed ten, tories independently of Tokugawa Ieyasu and who either joined forces with him or were ddl•,11,·d by him at the final battles of the Warring States period). The I !ijikata received their l.inds 011 Not11 in a form reminiscent of the way fudai warlords received their lands. In f.Kt, the l l 1J1 k,ll,1 l,llld, on Noto were known as tenryii or shogunate lands. But, they were not v,\\S,il, of till' Tok11g,1w,1 111 the strictest of terms.

Rethinking Japanese Society 115

has been understood to be indicative of the generosity of the Maeda in granting them such land as they had. The common story is that the Hijikata originally possessed a domain of ten thousand koku in Etchu, but the Maeda complained that it was inconvenient to have to pass through the Hijikata domain en route to Edo in fulfillment of its alternate attendance obligations. 23 As a solution, the Maeda are said to have offered the Hijikata land on Noto Peninsula.

This is what I also believed at first, but when I asked a member of the Tokikuni investigation group, Oikawa Kiyohide, to locate all the Hijikata possessions on a map of Noto, we found that their lands were neatly distrib uted at key points on the coastline. Their occupation of these points means that, although they may have been lords of only ten thousand koku, they were by no means insignificant.

Coastal villages and cities had a high proportion of atamafuri, so their value measured in koku was low. However, the Hijikata systemati- 1."ally controlled a number of crucial ports. It appears that the Tokugawa shogunate drove the ten-thousand-koku domain of the Hijikata like a series of wedges into the million-koku domain of the Maeda. The Hijikata owed their domain to the will of Tokugawa Ieyasu, not the Maeda. In light of the f,\ct that the million-koku domain of the Maeda, the largest domain after that of the Tokugawa family itself, was perceived as a major threat by the shogunate, the distribution of the Hijikata holdings within the Maeda do main makes sense.

The aforementioned Tokikuni on Noto Peninsula was a "dual polity ltyakusho" family, with holdings in both the Hijikata and the Maeda domains, one hundred koku under the Maeda and two hundred under the Hijikata. With the powerful backing of the shogunate, the Hijikata attempted to make .di of the Tokikuni family's indentured servants, livestock, and boats subject to their control. In response, the head of the family at that time, Tozaemon, decided to split the household in two, forming the upper Tokikuni lineage 111 the Hijikata domain and the lower Tokikuni in the Maeda domain. It was h · a use of the struggle between the Hijikata and Maeda lords that the family ts still divided into two households today.

• I In order lo secure peac · after nearly 140 years of civil war, the Tokugawa shogunate instituted a ,ystt•in wh,•,ehy ,di w,1rlo,d, kl'pt their families in Edo near the shogun's palace as permanent ho,1.1g,·s whilt• till' wu1l,11d, tlw111s.·IVl's divided their time between their castles in their domains .,ml tlw11 1u,111,111m 111 I du I It 1, w,h k 11ow11 ,1, l he alternate attendance system (sankin kotai). The 101111•, ,il1111p. with I, w.11l111 d 1,,1,i-lnl wlt1·11 l11lf1lli11g t lw11 ohl111.it1om were predetermined by the ,h11t11111,1t, , ,1 1\1 11 t ii, 1111111l11 1 111 .11tr11d.1111, .111d t ht• g,·111•1.il , mt, of t lw in111 ,wy.

116 ircuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

It is likely that many of the isolated outpost holdings of Eda period

lords, such as that of the Date family, were related to important points on

transportation routes. If we examine the strategic placement of lords carried

out by the Tokugawa shogunate in this light, we are likely to come up with a

new understanding of the position and interests of the lords. The lords lived

in their castles and controlled their domains, managing their lands as the

head of a kind of enterprise. They were able to rule their domains only after

they had gathered a number of house vassals who had the management skills

to deal with taxation, finance, and personnel. A reexamination of the Eda

period from this perspective will yield many new questions.

MERCANTILISM IN JAPANESE HISTORY

One final issue relates to the way the ruling class consciously began, from the

thirteenth century on, to tax not just land but entrepreneurs. Emperor Go

Daigo, in particular, attempted to construct a monarchy that relied entirely

on the financial support of entrepreneurs. He levied taxes on sake brewers

and deposited tax revenues with moneylenders (doso) to use as capital. He

used his authority to establish and remove toll barriers, and he took back the

right to collect tolls, transport taxes, and port entry fees. Furthermore, he

ordered that the value of proprietors' holdings be expressed in terms of cop

per coins (a value known as kandaka), levying a 5 percent tax on their value.

The Muromachi shogunate followed Go-Daigo's example, levying a 2

percent tax on territorial holdings and collecting taxes from sake brewers

and moneylenders. Thus, the trend toward actively seeking tax revenues from

commercial and financial enterprises began in the latter half of the Kamakura

period, from the despotic rule of the Tokus6 H6j6, continuing through the

Kenmu Restoration of Go-Daigo, and finally becoming the established sys

tem of the Muromachi shogunate. This mode of governance could be called

mercantilist in its dependence on commerce to maintain itself.

It is interesting to note that this kind of rule tended to become despoti

in Japan. For example, the Kamakura shogunate had an assembly of power

ful vassals called the Hy6j6shu (the Board of Inquiry). The basic principle

of the shogunal regent's rule was that politics proceeded according to deci

sions reached through debate in this bod�,. But during the era of Tokus6 d s

potism the Tokus6 H6j6 family eviscerated this ass mhly, .1l111osl tomplct ·ly

Rethinking Japanese Society 117

ignoring its decisions, and ruled on its own according to decisions made at

meetings of its own vassals.

Go-Daigo did much the same. He broke up the assembly of the high

est ranking courtiers in the Grand Council of State, a body that had been in

existence since ancient times. In its place, he appointed nobles and officials

to official posts who would act according to his desires. With these men in

place, he attempted to rule autocratically. Two of the most powerful shoguns

of the Muromachi shogunate, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and Ashikaga Yoshinori,

also ignored the assembly of powerful military governors and ruled in an

autocratic manner. It seems to be more than a coincidence that all of these

polities were monarchies that relied on commerce, distribution, and foreign

trade. The absolutist monarchies of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries in

Europe also ignored the assemblies of feudal lords as they built autocratic

regimes by relying on commercial sources of wealth. A variety of debates

on European absolute monarchy has been employed in analyses of the Meiji

state in Japan. But we should remember that this approach to rule had been

developed in Japan as early as the late thirteenth century; it did not have to

be imported from Europe.

If we look at early modern Japan with this in mind, especially the tran

sition from the late medieval to the Eda period, we find ourselves dealing

with virtually unexplored terrain. Undoubtedly, the formal principle of the

Eda period was agrarian fundamentalism based on land taxes. But what

went on beyond that formal principle is difficult to grasp. The prevailing

trend in research has been to point out the "capitalist" aspects of commer

l ial activities and to designate them the foundations of an "economic soci

l"l y." But scholars who argue for this are grounded in the preconception that

the hyakusho were farmers. When they go on to claim that the overwhelm

, ng majority of the population was agricultural, they significantly diminish

I he force of the economic society.

Just after World War II, Hattori Shis6 characterized the Momoyama pe-

1 iod a "early absolutism," which was, I believe, accurate. 24

His argument that

",1bs lutism miscarried" in the Eda period, however, was widely ignored. Yet

I believe that his theory can be extended and will likely gain further accep

t.111cc in the future.

I I l,1tto1 i Simo, '/i•11110,1•1 u/1111 .1/111i:1 110 k11k/lrilrn (lhe Establishment of Emperor System Absolut- 1"11) (Tok yo,< 'lu111!«1111ml111, I '1-18) :-.c,· .d.so 1/,('l/(lis/ll(gi 110 shiteki le11kai (77,e 1-1 istorical Develop- 11u·11t 111 Al"ol1111'1t1) (T11� y11 I re� 11111111,1 ,hrrpp,111, 1974),

118 ircuits of the Sea and Nonagricultural Production

If we follow this line of thinking, we come up with a truly different per

spective on the Meiji Restoration and Japan's subsequent "modernization."

The Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa, and Hizen domains, which backed the Meiji

Restoration, were not remote and backward. They were all domains that had

conducted maritime trade. 25

It is clear that the Satsuma conducted a secret

trade to both the south and the north. Indeed, it is likely that the other do

mains were doing similar things. We must not underestimate the accumu

lated volume of commercial and financial enterprises or the growth of capi

talist society up to and throughout the Edo period.

It is interesting, for example, that all the commercial terminology used

today derives from historical terms used since at least the medieval era. Our

term for "market price" (soba) has been in use since the medieval era and is

derived from the fact that people gathered in a place (ba)-in other words,

a marketplace-to decide on prices. The kitte of kogitte (check) and kirifu

(ticket) are words that have been used since the Heian period. The word

kiru (to cut) had great significance; tax orders from that period were called

kirifu or kirikudashibumi (cut orders). Financiers would receive repayment

of loans of rice made to governors and officials in the form of these kirifu.

So kirifu and kitte were used in the Heian period to mean " bill." Bill (tegata)

is itself an extremely old word, as is invoice (shikiri). The terms for stock

and bonds are similar. The kabu of kabushiki (stocks) was used, at the lat

est, from the Edo period on, and shiki was used in the medieval period

(although it employed a different character). There are any number of other

interesting words from the past still in use today, such as opening session

(yoritsuki) and closing (obike). If we were to investigate these commercial

terms in a historical and ethnographic fashion, we would surely make som

interesting discoveries.

Since ancient Japanese words are still used as commercial terms to

day, there was no need to develop translations of Western terms for the c

activities upon contact with the West. Words already in use were sufficiently

comprehensible. This was true not only for commerce but probably for in

dustry as well. Yet research has consistently underestimated the depths of

these antecedents in Japanese society. Europe has been perceived as the m st

advanced civilization, and through such catchphrases as Fukuzawa Yukich i's

"Leave Asia, Enter Europe," our eyes have been turned exclusively toward

25. For a recent English-language study of the economic policies of one of these domains, naml'ir Tosa, see Luke S. Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese D0111ai11: t/1e Men /,011/ < )11g1111 of l:rn1101111, Nationalism in 18/h-Cen/ury Tosa ( am bridge: ambri lgc U11iw"11 y 1'11·•1 l 1J 1JH)

Rethinking Japanese Society 119

European models. We have never looked at our very feet for the richness of

Japanese society or, for that matter, of Asia. Rather, politicians and academics

have sought to break that Asian base apart since the Meiji period.

Economists and historians all use translated words in academic ter

minology, hardly ever using words like those discussed. The translated aca

demic terms have a very strong agricultural component. The same may be

said for all of Asia, perhaps; in any case, we are still trapped in this problem

atic in Japan.

Now, fifty years after World War II, we are at a point where we should

l hink about agricultural reform. Postwar reforms were based upon the no

t ion that hyakusho were farmers, and they were carried out without taking

regional differences into account. We still live with this legacy. W hile the

problem of whether or not to import rice is by no means easily resolved,

l do not believe we can truly understand all the angles of the issue if we

LOntinue to approach it from the perspective of agrarian fundamentalism.

l f we remain captive to this ideology, we will be unable to formulate ap

propriate responses to foreign pressures. Our attempts to deal with rice in

lcrms of a self-sufficient food supply misses the point. How accurately do

I hose economists, politicians, and others who oppose the opening of rice

markets understand the historical significance of rice in Japanese society?

l he responsibility of historians in this matter is grave, and I cannot help

hut feel that debates are being carried on based upon dubious and baseless

LOnventional wisdom.

In order for us to live in an international society, in order for us to fulfill

l he mission that we truly should, we must have an accurate understanding of

J,1panese society. We must have an accurate assessment of ourselves. Without

l hat, we crush what should be nurtured, we waste our energy, and we create

the danger that we will expend our efforts in ridiculous directions.

In that sense, the study of history has never been more important, nor

ha there been a time when the field of history has borne a heavier burden. At

I he ame time, this is an exciting period in which new things are constantly

l om i ng to light. We are beginning to discern an image of the past that is en

I ,r ·ly different from that which we have had so far. It is my deepest hope that

young pe pie will confront these problems with ambition.

BOOK TWO

Sacred Space

and the People

on the Margins

of History

CHAPTER SIX

On Writing

LITERACY RATES AMONG THE JAPANESE

The Japanese people use three types of script every day: kanji (Chinese char

acters), hiragana, and katakana (two parallel phonetic syllabaries). These

three scripts can be combined into seven kinds of written expression. 1 There

are few people in the world who possess seven forms of written expression,

l'ach of which can express a variety of thoughts and feelings. This variety of

meanings can be expressed because the three types of script each have their

own histories and functions. Nevertheless, there has been surprisingly little

t bought given to the roles these scripts have played in Japanese history and

literature, and little exploration of the meanings they have come to possess

,1s systems of writing.

The dissemination of writing in Japan was far more extensive than we

have hitherto supposed. Even today, one finds old documents and books in

th Ider houses in farming or fishing villages. Such books might include the

lwicultural Encyclopedia (Nogyo zensho) 2 or treatises on Confucianism, but

011 an al o find a surprising number of volumes intended for the education

I llw,c ,even ,lie (I) /.;1111ji alone (2) himga11a alone (3) katakana alone (4) kanji and hiragana (5) kanji ,,ml k11t11k111111 (6) A11t11A,11111 ,llld /1ir11g111u1 (7) k1111ji, /1iragn11a, and katakana. The term kana is u ed wlw11 ,p,-.1kl111, ol till' 1wo ph111ll'lk ,yll,1h.11k, 1ogcthcr, wi1hout making a distinction between tlu• two

tit""'·" p11hli,hnl lty �lt>·'"'I t Y,, 11 ,,d., (thl I '17) 111 1697 in ten volum •,. Miyllz,1ki ba,cd the w111I 1111lt11tlt< lti111, 1111t.11lt11i.dtr t• ,111dhi"1w111·x11r111·11u·\,111doh,,·1vnllom.

1 1 1

124 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

of women. Of course, the literacy rate among women was relatively low com

pared to that of men. But literacy among women had reached a level that

cannot be slighted. For example, the famous late-eighteenth-century traveler

Sugae Masumi found that many of the families that provided him with lodg

ing on his journeys held poetry gatherings in which even the mistress of the

household joined. 3

Thus, I think there is little doubt that members of the lead

ing families of the villages, including women, could read and write. There arc

those who say that the literacy rate was as high as 50 to 60 percent during the

latter years of the Edo period, but we can safely say that on average 40 percent

of the populace could read.

Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov noted in his Recollections of the Meiji Restoration� that the literacy rate was extremely high, particularly in the cities and town .

Mechnikov, a Russian who lived in Japan around 1874-75, was astonished

to see that rickshaw pullers, stableboys, and young girls working in the tea

shops in Yokohama would pull out books and read whenever they had a free

moment. He wrote that in comparison with the various Latin countries and

his own Russia, the Japanese had a much higher literacy rate. This is a signifi

cant point to keep in mind when considering premodern or modern Japane c

society.

Turning to my own experience, I have examined Edo period documenb

from all over Japan in the course of my research. Although I have been read

ing and copying these materials for years, it just recently occurred to me to

wonder why I was able to read documents from Kyushu when the spoken la n

guage there is otherwise so different. Once, four or five years ago, when I was

visiting the city of Kagoshima in southern Kyushu, I found myself waiting al

a bus stop next to two elderly people who were enjoying a nice chat. Out ol

curiosity, I began listening in, trying to understand what they were saying. I

simply could not follow their dialect. Of course, I understood a few words h n·

and there, but I could not make out the gist of their conversation. I reca I led

that experience as I was reading historical documents one day, and sudden I y I

thought it strange that I could read documents from all over the country.

3. Sugae Masumi (1754-1829), born Shirai Hideo, left his native region of Mikawa in middle agt· ,111d traveled throughout the northern areas of Honshu for the remainder of his life. His many wril 11,g,, left scattered throughout the areas in which he stayed, were collected in the modern era and p11l, lished as Records of the Travels ofSugae Masumi (Sugae Masumi yuranki) in 1966. "Jhcsc w, 1111111 have since been recognized as an early precursor of modern Japanese ethnography.

4. Mechnikov (1845-1916) was a Russian-born zoologist and biologist who worked 111 P,,111-,· ,111ol visited Japan in the early Meiji period.

On Writing 125

As a part of my work at the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Cul

ture at Kanagawa University, I visited the Tokikuni household on the Noto

Peninsula for one week every summer and fall from the mid-1980s to the late

1990s to examine documents in their possession. It so happened that our

group found a couple of documents from the Warring States period (1482-

1558) in which a number of local place names appear. We decided to ask

some older people from the area about the relationship between the names

111 the documents and the place names used today. We were soon introduced

lo a man of seventy or eighty years. He happily answered our questions, but

we were able to understand only about half of what he said. I had a similar

l'Xperience when I went to Tosaminato in Aomori Prefecture. When I arrived

1t the inn, the owner, who had been drinking, came out to greet me quite

Jovially, evidently thanking me for coming from so far away, but I could not

understand him at all. Some time later it occurred to me that ethnologists

have an incredibly difficult job, for in order to carry out their field work they

lllust be able to understand old folks and drunks. An ethnologist working

111 Japan must also be able to comprehend the different dialects from such

disparate regions as Kagoshima, Tohoku, Kansai, and Kanto. They must cull

I rom speech the depths of human feeling and attempt to grasp thereby the

deepest layers ofJapanese society. On reflection, I realized that I could never

I >l' an ethnologist.

The topics with which historians deal are similar to those of the eth

nologists. Nevertheless, I can read documents from any region, even though

l hey always have something unique from their place of origin. Until recently,

I !tad never thought to question this phenomenon, but after these experiences

I realized that it was impor tant to ask why I can read historical documents

, om any region. In short, the answer lies in the fact that the lettered society

111 Japan-the realm of documents-is relatively homogeneous. In contrast,

1 ltl' unlettered society-the world of the spoken word-is far more heteroge-

111·ous than we have imagined. Therefore, when we peel away the outer layer

111 homogeneous, literate society, we reveal an extremely diverse folk society

he low il. Even today, Japanese society is by no means homogeneous. This

I 111d of r lationship between the written and oral worlds is an issue com-

111nn lo many of the world's cultures, but in the case of Japan it strikes me as

1 •,11 Ii u la rly cvid nt.

'I his pro hi ·rn of l he r ·lat ion ship bet ween lettered and unlettered society

11 J,1p,111 lt-.1ds us to I ltl' qul'sl 1011 of I he rel at ionshi1 between history and folk

126 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

studies. 5 But the major task we must perform before we can pursue those questions is to consider more completely the functions of the three forms of script in Japan. To that end, we will now look at how historically hiragana and katakana have been used differently.

THE WORLD OF KATAKANA

Documents containing a mixture of hiragana and/or katakana with kanji (known as kana-majiri) began to appear around the tenth century. In the late thirteenth century, kana-majiri came to comprise approximately 20 percent of all documents. T he ratio did not change much during the Northern and Southern Courts period (1336-92), but in the fifteenth century, during the Muromachi period, this percentage rose quickly, with kana-majiri compris ing 59 to 60 percent of all documents.

These numbers are based on the documents that have survived to the present day, and we should remember that, for the most part, they were in tentionally preserved. However, there is another class of documents, which we call shihai,6 that were meant to be thrown away but happened to survive when their reverse sides were used to write another document. The propor tion of documents with a mix of kanji and kana in this class is much higher than the rate just cited for documents that were meant to be kept. Therefore, I think we can say that the kana-majiri form of writing was widely practiced from the late thirteenth century on.

However, the increase in the numbers of this kind of mixed script docu ment was principally an increase in "kanji with hiragana" documents. Kanji with katakana materials comprise only 1 to 2 percent of all the documents that have survived. This trend becomes particularly apparent after the Muro machi period. If we look at regional documents from the Eda period, such as the more than twenty thousand documents from the Tokikuni household, we do not find a single example of a kanji-katakana document. Grammatica I

5. Amino is referring to the fact that in Japan both history and folk studies are seen as disciplines th.11 deal with the past. But, while history is understood to do so through written documents, folk studies is understood to be a field that relies on an analysis of spoken material and performal 1v,· culture.

6. Literally, these are "on the back of the paper" documents. As Amino notes, these were documcn1, written on the backside of paper that had been used for another purpose. '!hey are not cx,1 1ly palimpsests, but the layering of documents on both sides of one ,h,·,·t of p,1pcr makes 1h ·111 ,1 similar phenomenon. Amino's point is that one only writes 011 I lw h,11 I ,1d,• nf 11,1p,·1, 011t· do,·, 11111 intend lo save, so lhc survival of this cla�s of d<Kun1<·nt, 111,1r lu , , 11 1 .11, hie 111,il

On Writing 127

particles such as ni and wa were commonly written in katakana, but we have not found any written strictly in kanji and katakana, or just katakana, such as can occasionally be found in documents dating from the medieval era. Thus, we can infer that the diffusion of writing took place almost exclusively as the diffusion of hiragana.

To what uses, then, was this "minority" class of documents (kanji katakana) put? Basically, katakana was used to express in writing words that had been spoken, such as oral testimonies. Moreover, many of the documents from the medieval era in which speech was transcribed turn out to have been on matters related to the deities (Shinto and Buddhist). For instance, katakana was conspicuously used in documents recording a vow made to the deities (kishomon, komon) or a prayer requesting something from a god (ganmon). The same was true for documents recording words received from the gods, such as divine oracles (takumon) or records of dreams written im mediately upon waking (muki). In other words, katakana was deliberately used when the document recorded speech, particularly when it was related to the realm of the divine.

Trial records that contained statements from both the defendant and the plaintiff were often written in a mixed kanji-katakana style. This was rnlled the imperial edict style (senmyogaki), and it was also commonly used to record the confessions of defendants. Perhaps the clearest case of katakana usage is that of graffiti and anonymous flyers (rakusho) and anony mous pledges (rakusho kisho), almost all of which were written in katakana (fig. 22). The term rakusho literally means "writings that have been dropped." According to Katsumata Shizuo, the act of dropping something was signifi tant, for it meant that once it was dropped the object was no longer in the po session of human beings.7 Instead, "dropped things" were seen as belong ing to the deities. Therefore, documents that had been dropped were seen as having entered a realm beyond the powers of humanity, where they took on the character of the voice of the deities.

The same was true for rakusho pledges. To take a hypothetical example, \ttppose that one member of a group has stolen some property from another 111cmb r and the theft has been discovered. If no one is willing to confess to the l I i me, the rim i na I will often be revealed by someone who anonymously writes ., m/..11s/10 pledge in whi h, swearing to the deities that he or she is not lying,

7 s.-.,, 1111 n,1111plt-. J,..its,1111,,1,1 Sh 111111, \,·11gcJk11 ,1'i111111 .1/11ro11 ('I he For111,1tio11 of the Warring States 1'1•1 l11d) ( I 111 )'" 1 nl y11 d,tlp,,d 11 l111p11,111k,11, I 11711), ,111d C .l,11,.·1/1110 ,w _,.·,A111.111 ., .. k,11 ( l'w1 yd,1y I 1fo ol 1\1, dit v,il 1'1·11111, If 1111111 Y.1111.1� .111·,1 l11q<J'•""h,1, 1 1111h)

128 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 22. Anonymous flyer (rakusho) written in katakana from Toji Temple. From the collection of Kyoto Furitsu Sago Shiryokan.

the criminal is named. Since dropped writings were believed to transcribe the

voice of the deities, the institutionalization of this belief produced the rakusho

pledge. Rakus ho pledges first appeared in the middle of the Kamakura period,

and up to the Muromachi they were almost all written in katakana.

Thus, katakana's basic textual function was to record the spoken word.

But, while the relationship between katakana and the deities was central lo

the script, the use of katakana was not limited to sacred subjects or con

texts. Katakana, not hiragana, was used to write down the names of things

and places that had been orally described to the writer. For that reason, on

also often finds katakana being used in petitions, for example, the petition of

Kami village in Ategawa estate, Kii Province, famous for its depiction of tlw

violence of its military steward (with his threat to "cut off ear and n ses").

This document, dated 1275, is so well known for having been wrillen i11

katakana that it i ometirnes simply called the kolr1kr11111 1wtilion. l\arly 111

my arcer, when I !aught highs hool, I lrl'nll'd tlw k11/11k,111,1111 tit 1, dm unwnl

On Writing 129

as a childish and faltering mode of expression, the kind of thing one would

get from simple villagers suffering at the hands of a tyrannical constable.

From that rough appearance alone, I told my students, one could sense the

emotions of the villagers. Actually, most other scholars said the same thing.

But on further reflection it does not make sense to say that just because it is

written in katakana it is faltering. Katakana is certainly difficult to read, but

it is equally difficult regardless of whether it was written by a villager or an

l'ducated priest. Those of us of the wartime generation who learned katakana

before hiragana in elementary school have a tendency to view katakana as

,1 childish mode of expression. Thus, we have mistakenly assumed that the

katakana in this petition indicated that the villagers were unfamiliar with

writing in hiragana and therefore were unsophisticated.

Since the word used to describe this document as a "petition" literally

means "to speak to a superior" ( genjojo), it is possible that it was originally

read aloud. One further reason why it was written in katakana is that the

document itself contains a direct quotation of a threat made by the military

steward to the villagers: "If you do not turn over the wheat, I will cut off your

l'ars, slice off your noses, and cut off your hair. Do not resist or I'll shave your

heads and tie you up like criminals."8

In a related area, diaries (nikki) in the early medieval era were texts in

which the events of the day were written down soon after they occurred.

What is noteworthy for us is that many of these diaries were written in a

l ombination of kanji and katakana. Drawing upon that observation to re

l onsider the Ategawa petition, it seems to me unlikely that the petition of the

villagers of Ategawa estate was submitted through official channels. I make

that inference because most villagers' petitions from the Kamakura period

that were properly submitted were written in kanji alone. The Ategawa peti-

1 ion is a remarkable exception. It may well be, then, that it was written like a

diary under conditions in which events had to be recorded immediately after

they happened.

Turning from documents to the world of literature, we find that

k 11 I a kana was used in many of the books related to Buddhist temples. It was

f11 st used in temples to gloss the pronunciation of Buddhist sutras-which

II Io lOnlemporary readers, cutting hair and shaving heads may not sound as devastating as cutting oil noses and ears, but, as Amino discusses in chapter eight, clothing and hairstyles in ancient and 11wd,cval Japan were considered to be important markers of status and occupation. Losing one's h.111 ,ould not only be humiliating, but it might seriously damage one's liveliho d. For example, I lw ph, ,isl' "sh.we your heads," appears to mean, literally, "I'll 1l1111 you 11llo nuns" (11111r1111 1111shi1t'). 1111, w,IS ,1 ,1,1tu, l h.11 signifil·d ,cpa, al inn from the scuil.11 wo, Id ,111d ,is o, nq>,11 ,om

130 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

were, after all, written in Chinese-so that the monks could read them aloud.

This origin of katakana meshes well with its continued use in temple books.

Tsukishima Hiroshi has spoken of "the monkish love for katakana," and even

though waka poetry was customarily written in hiragana, monks tended to

write it in katakana. 9

The tenth-century text Illustrations of the Three Jewels

was written to explain Buddhist teachings to women in a simple fashion, so

it was written in hiragana. 10

But the version of that text that was kept and

transmitted within temples was written in katakana. Similarly, the oldest

extant copies of The Tale of the Heike are the Enkyo, a version held in temple

that was also written in katakana. 11

Another genre of texts related to the temples are the transcription

(shomono) of lectures given by Zen monks on the Chinese classics from

the Muromachi period on. We have copies of such books as Comments

on the Records of the Historian (Shikisho) and Comments on the Analects

(Rongosho). The vernacular Japanese used by the lecturers is transcribed

in these books in katakana. Thus, Zen monks-and the Confucian schol

ars associated with them-frequently used katakana as late as the Edo pe

riod. However, there is no doubt that by the Edo period commoners used

katakana only on special occasions.

WOMEN AND HIRAGANA

Hiragana, clearly the most frequently used of the two phonetic scripts, was

first used by women. Long after its invention, it was known as women's script

(onna no ji), and this association eventually gave rise to a unique style of

writing known as women's writing (onna bumi). If we also remember that

when men wrote letters to women they used a large proportion of hiragana

characters, we can clearly see that hiragana was understood to be feminine.

During the Muromachi period, when the king of the Ryukyus sent pri

vate letters to "the king ofJapan"-in other words, the Muromachi shogun-

9. See, for example, Tsukishima Hiroshi, Kana (Syllabary) (Tokyo: Chii6 k6ronsha, 1981); and Rekishiteki kanazukai: Sono seiritsu to tokuchii (The Historical Uses of Syllabary: Its Format 1011 and Special Characteristics) (Tokyo: Chiio koronsha, 1986).

10. Sanbo ekotoba, was compiled in 984 by Minamoto no Tamenori for Princess Sonshi, who had)'"' become a Buddhist nun. The Three Jewels of Buddhism were: the Buddha, the Buddlmt I .11v (dharma), and the priesthood. See Donald Keene, Seeds i11 the I lenrt: Jnpn11ese Lilem/1111• /1Cl111 Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Ce11/11ry (New York: I lcnry I lolt, 1993), 570 7 I.

II. Enky6 is the reign name of a three year period (1108 10), so thh is th,• pniod 111 wh 1d1 tlm tr. t was produced. For an English I r.111,l.11 ion oft ill' Int,,,.,. '/Ill' liif,, of//,<' I l,•1k<', t 1 ,111s I klrn ( 1,11p M,Cullough (St,11do1 d· St.11do1d lJ111v,'l\lly l'1<•ss, 1 1>HH)

On Writing 131

the letters were written in hiragana. We do not know why it was hiragana and

not katakana that came to be used in the Ryukyus-it may have been because

women were involved in its transmission. In any case, when the shogun re

l l'ived one of these hiragana letters, he would pass it on to one of his consorts

, t nd have her write the reply. This example also demonstrates that women and

l1iragana were closely related.

Thus, it is absolutely indispensable to an understanding ofJapanese cul-

111 re that we recognize that women used their own script from very early on.

I he long-standing tradition of women's literature, from the tenth-century

l lassics The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon and The Tale of Genji to the medi

l val diaries The Confessions of Lady Nijo and An Account of Takemuki Pal-

11ce, was made possible by this fact. 12

I cannot think of any other culture in

which women produced such exemplary literature well before the modern

l ia. But the more important question is, What made it possible for women to

play this role in Japanese culture? I am afraid we do not yet understand how

important this phenomenon was. This question is also linked to the ques

t ion raised in the foreword-about the origins of modern Japanese villages in

the fourteenth century-because the women's literature I just referred to was

produced up until the fourteenth century. We still find women's diaries after

the Muromachi period, but there is nothing that we can really call literature

1111 ti I the modern era. This is surely related to the social transformation that

took place in the fourteenth century.

Setting that question aside for the moment, hiragana was first used as

\ omen's script and then spread when men began using it as well. From the

I kian period through the Edo, most men used mostly kanji when writing

lnr official purposes. The aristocracy used kanji for all official documents as

1 matter of course. The warriors did as well, although from the beginning

there was something different in their documents that produced a climate

nl ,1eceptance for the use of some mixture of kanji and hiragana. To get a

1·11se of the specialized spheres reserved for each script, consider the offi-

1,tl decisions on litigation handed down by the Kamakura shogunate. This

, l.1ss of documents, known as "Kanto's orders" (kanto gejijo), was written

, 11t1r•ly in Chinese characters. Even when these decisions quoted letters

111d deeds of transfer-I will return to these later, but for the moment I

11111·1• 111 tlw,l' ,111• ,1v,11l,1l>I,• i11 t1,111,l,11Jo11 s,,, Shona!\on, 'Ilic l'illow Hook of Sei Slw11ngo11, trans. 1,,111 f\lo11h (Nrw \\ 111 I 11h1111l11,1 l/11iv,·1 S1I) I'll'", 1%7); l ,1dy Mu1a,.1ki, '//1t• '/i1/!' of (;e1111, 1 1 ,111 1 d\\,11 11 s,·1d,·11 1 1, I, 1 ( ,·w \oil \11,nl /\ k.1 111ph, 1')7'1), ,,nd l..1dy N,jo, l/1t' C'<111/1'"ic111, ,1// 1 1</l'Nl/11,11\11 I 11111ll1.,1,ll(N I \1111 l>1 111hli-d,1) 1 11,t)

132 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

wish to note that these documents contained a fair amount of hiragana-thr scribes took great pains to rewrite the hiragana-enscribed sections in ka1111 (man'yogana).

13 The officials of the Kamakura shogunate clearly felt that ·.t was unseemly for hiragana to appear in official judicial decisions. The do u ments produced in the masculine world, the public world, continued to UM' primarily kanji until the end of the Edo period.

That is why men began to use hiragana only in private letters. By thr end of the Heian period, however, it was also being widely used in deed of transfer ( yuzurijo). Yuzurijo, documents that were unique to the medieval era, were used to bequeath or transfer assets; they had all but disappeared by the Edo period.14 We do not really understand why deeds of transfer wen· often written in hiragana. But ifl were to hazard a guess, it seems to me that one important expectation of a deed of transfer was that it be written by tlw issuer himself. This is partly related to the degree to which writing had been disseminated, for it was members of the warrior class who wrote most ol these deeds, and it was in the Kamakura period that they learned to write i 11 hiragana. So, we might conclude that it was natural for them to write thcst' documents in hiragana.

These deeds were necessary at that time because the transfer of asset, could not be accomplished solely within the bounds of the relationship bt· tween the one who bequeaths and the heir. There were no registration pro t· <lures whereby some official body could grant recognition of ownership, and no transfer of property could be carried out without the acknowledgmc111 of a certain portion of the society in which the partners to the transaction resided. So, unless the people of that social sphere could read and understand the document, there would be no point in writing it. The greater popularity of hiragana may have been the reason why deeds of transfer were written i 11 it. Whatever the reason, it is worth noting that this genre of document, wh i Ir creating the conditions for social recognition, was essentially private.

In fact, during the medieval period there was a general tendency for pub lie documents to resemble private letters. Official documents from an ienl times did not include such epistolary forms as an address. But the medi v,d

13. The first poetry collection in Japan, the Man'yoshu, was compiled before the invention of a pho,wl h syllabary, so the scribes who recorded these "Japanese" poems used kanji phonetically. ·1 lrn plt11 netic use of kanji (to be pronounced in a Japanese manner, not the customary Japanese app,11 1 mation of the Chinese pronunciation) came to be known as the man'yogana or 111a11'y11 ,yll,1!,,1 1 )" Amino's point here is that changing the hiragana portions of quoted documents into 111011°)•C1go11,1 would preserve the all-kanji appearance of the official documents.

14. We do not really understand why this type of document fell into disuse. 'I hat in itself ".1 p, 11ltlr111 worth investigaiing.

On Writing 133

1 1 developed a widely used form known as the epistolary style (shosatsuyo 1n11jo), which contained the date and the name of the sender as well as the

11 11 nc of the addressee at the end. Another ty pe of document that came to be 1ddy used was the service order (hosho). These were written when a high-

1 111king person asked his vassal to communicate his desires to the vassal of 1 1101 her high-ranking person. 15 Direct imperial edicts (rinji), edicts of the re l I ll'll emperor (inzen), and the instructions (migyosho) of nobles of the third 1 11 k or higher all took this form.

As these documents began to be written in hiragana, other official docu- 1 11 nl were as well. This process began in regions outside the political centers 1 I "yoto and Kamakura, and the group that initiated it was the document- 11 oducing class most firmly rooted in such locales: the jito military stewards

11d the shoen estate managers (azukarisho). Documents passing from the , , ions to the capital, and from low rank to high, also began to use hiragana 1, l.1 11vely early on. These included reports and intelligence from shoen estate 111 1 11agers sent to proprietors in Kyoto or Kamakura, appeals from villagers I , their superiors on every kind of matter, and so on. What made the rapid 1 , in the number of these documents possible was the increasing use of k,1111i hiragana documents (fig. 23).

The use of this kind of document increased exponentially during the I momachi period, but we can see the incipient signs of it in the late thir-

1 11th century. By the fifteenth century, documents written in a mixture 1 I k 11 nji and hiragana dominated the written world. For example, 70 to 80 I' 11cnt of the surviving documents of Niimi estate in Bitchii Province were

111 ten in a combination of kanji and hiragana. Considering that the sheer 1,1 11 me of documents increased tremendously during this period, and that

111.111y among them were in kanji-hiragana, there can be no doubt that the I, 111 t ·cnth and fifteenth centuries constituted an extremely important epoch fl I the diffusion of writing in Japanese society.

From the late Kamakura to the Muromachi period, literacy spread to 11 w Lias es and constituencies, including the lower levels of the warrior I 1 ,,, leading families in the villages, and women, all of whom were able to 1111• documents in a mixture of kanji and hiragana. For example, the wives

th 1, ",1 somewhat indirect way of describing an indirect mode of communication. Give n the intri

' ,, ,.., of communication when all the hierarchical forms must be strictly observed, th e service

,11drr w,1s a way of making requests without involving the high-ranking person who initiate d

11 11 ,·x, h,1ngc. In other words, the letter would be written in the style "My master desire s of your

111."11·1 1h,11 ... " and then exchanged as ifit were a communication between servants rather th an

I 111·11 1 1 1,1\ll"I S.

134 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 23. A document in kanji and hiragana from the T6ji Temple estate. From the collection of Kyoto Furitsu S6g6 Shiry6kan.

and daughters of shogunate vassals and nonvassal warriors 16

were writing

letters in hiragana in the Kamakura period. We can also confirm examples

from literate women in the five home provinces around Kyoto from the up

per levels of the villager class.

From the Muromachi period we have the example of a very famous

and beautifully written letter by a woman named Tamagaki of Niimi estate

(fig. 24). 17

Tamagaki was probably a woman of low status who served under

the priest who was chief administrator at Niimi. Some say that she may have

been a courtesan. W hen the priest she served was murdered, she wrote a

letter to the estate proprietors at Toji in truly beautiful hiragana relating her

thoughts on the incident. As these examples suggest, the spread of literacy

among women probably paralleled that among men.

Later, the construction of the governmental system in the Edo period

was itself predicated upon the dissemination of writing among the common

16. These were warriors who were not vassals fthe shogun in Kamakura. 17. For .i furth •r discussion oft hi\ woman, sec drnptcr three.

� � ��-::?,- - � �� .....

< ../� \ �� '1�

�� r

,, -f.. �,,...._,_��- � r-.....At S::--�'\'V -�

. ---c:,---- � 7 ,,.. "<S' -.,.::::__

�'� ..J rl. � ��- . � �-e.. �--- . - ,'):_ ��- ��\....l ..... � �-�-0-, ��-- ��'-l..��-��-...i..i ;p��.., .,NJVJ """'< �-- \-_.)(IIV ��

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ti.�� ,-.

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��;:--0 ��---- -...<;;--�.Ji"'-'��; --::-��--,;.-� ��

�� .. -�� -�-\----x�R' ��, ;� f'->'t' t; ::,--:;;.- "t-';'- � �"'-./...,�-� r,-.�'-........,-.,�

,�,�� ....... �--� ---c �-=

,&).-_� "'-, �--�-�,;��

�-� �s-� ,I.� .l.� �-,s--�t'--f �,.J

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- -. -

136 acred pace and the People on the Margins of History

people. From the beginning, the Edo shogunate's system of rule assumed that there were people in the towns and villages who could read and write. 18

That presumption made this government highly unusual in world history, and it suggests how we might investigate the correspondence between the structure of the Tokugawa state and the high degree of literacy among the populace.

Documents written through the Kamakura period are extremely pleas ing to the eye or, as Kasamatsu Hiroshi puts it, "elegant." This is true of the writing not only of the aristocracy but also of the warriors and literate vil lagers. As we enter the Muromachii period, we find many more documents, but the quality of the writing clearly declines. As a result, these documents are extremely difficult to read. The best example of this is the wooden tablets found at the Kusado Sengencho excavation in Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture. 19 Kusado Sengencho (sengencho means "town of one thousand buildings") is a famous excavation of a medieval town that is now at the bot tom of a river. The tablets recovered at this site are not at all like the mag nificent examples found at the recent excavation of the residence of Prine Nagaya.20 The Kusado tablets are roughly planed wooden strips with char acters written on them in hurried brush strokes. These strips were probably much like those used until quite recently to post prices at fish stores. Many wooden strips at the Kusado dig appear to have had something scrawled on them quickly in the middle of a transaction. We can barely read them; the writing is that hard to make out. This suggests to me that the social attitude toward writing changed significantly after the Kamakura period. This is also why I think the process of the dissemination of texts is so important.

I believe that prior to the Kamakura period people had a certain reveren c toward writing. This led them to value the beauty of the script itself. But even as that reverence lived on writing gradually became a far more utilitarian matte,

18. The ability of villagers to write was presumed because, given the requirement that all warriors mus! leave the countryside and reside in the castle town of their masters, villages were charged wilh .1 relatively high degree of self-governance. Ordered by their lord to pay a certain level of taxes, 11 was the villagers themselves who gathered tax rice, calculated and recorded its volume, and sto, \'d it locally or forwarded it to domainal warehouses. All of these procedures required the product l01 1 of documents attesting to their completion and recording their details.

19. The original text has a photograph of one of these wooden tablets. For more on the Kusado Sengencho excavation, see the excavation web page http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/-suzuki-y/indcx , .html (current as of April 2011).

20. Amino is referring to the discovery of thirty-five thousand wooden tablets in Nara in the late 198th at the site of what was believed to have been the Nara era residence of Prince Nagaya. Amino w,1111 his readers to contrast the Nara period production of the Prince Nagaya tablets with the 111cd 1,·v,il era production of the Kusado tablets. For a detailed discussion oft he Nag.,y,, t,1hlc1s sec Will 1,1111 Wayne Farris, Sa creel Texts a,11/ /l11riccl Trc11rn1·es: Issue. i11 tit,• I li.it,11 1n1/ A" /111,·c>logv of/\ 11, 1,·111 /"fl"" (I l011olulu: Univl'rsity of I f,tw,ii'i l'n·ss, 1 1)1)8), 221 10

On Writing 137

for those who wrote. It was in relation to this growing instrumentalism that the change in writing technique occurred. At the same time, I believe that the growth of towns and villages is deeply connected to the spread of writing and its increasing instrumentality.

I agree with Ishii Susumu that the wooden strips at Kusado Sengencho are the forerunners of account books.21 Account books were being indepen dently created in villages and towns no later than the Warring States period. l l is also quite clear that the people of these villages and towns kept two sets of books, one for the ruling lord and one for their own use. We have examples of "hidden" account books (ura chobo) from the Warring States era that were different from the "formal" books produced for the lord. Villagers decided for themselves how to divide the tax burden of the yearly tribute levied by the lord. That is why they kept their own books. Significantly, the lords never interfered with the villages' internal bookkeeping.

This system continued into the Edo period when villages autonomously 1 lctermined how they would pay the yearly tribute levied by the lord. This "vil- 1 age contract system" would not have been possible had the villagers not been .tble to write or do complex mathematics. This is why I say that the diffusion of writing and the establishment of stable villages were inseparable processes. What was true for villages was all the more so for towns, where even more pl'ople had a good command of writing and numbers. It was thanks to these kills that towns and villages maintained a degree of self-governance.

THE STATE A ND THE DISSEMINATION OF WRITING

< l nc further point I would like to make about the dissemination of writing is 1 hat the motor of this dissemination was not katakana but hiragana. T his is 1 major issue for our consideration of writing in Japan. Katakana, the script 111ost closely related to the world of speech, did not become the script used for hook ." Hiragana, on the other hand, was intended from the start to be used

Int writing and reading. So, when we think about how writing disseminated 11 J.1pan, we should remember that it occurred by means of hiragana, the

11pl intended for reading and writing, and not through katakana, the script 11111st ·losely associated with speech.

I , ..... 101 ,·x,ttnplc, Ishii '>u,umu, C/111sci o hirogcru: Atarashii shiryoron o motomete (Opening up l,·d 11•v,1l J,1p,1 11 1 11 �,·.11,h ol ,1 Nnv'fhcory ofSourccs) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1991). ln

I llf\l"h ,1'1' \m11 11111 I 1111 1/1,/111 ,, 11/ i\/1•c/frl'<1I /11/'"" (C<'nir,' ror E,ist Asian ,ultural Studies, t•J h)

I 8 acred Space and the People on the Margins of History

This is also related to the way in which writing entered the Japanese

archipelago, as kanji imported from the Chinese mainland and the Korean

Peninsula. The Japanese syllabaries were created out of kanji after it had been

used phonetically as man'yogana. But more than anything else it was the

establishment of the Ritsuryo state that had the greatest significance for the

ways in which writing was used and disseminated.

The establishment of the Ritsuryo state had a major impact on all as

pects of society in the Japanese islands. For example, the most common ele

ments of male villagers' names during the Edo period, such as bei, zaemon,

uemon, and umanojo, were all slight variations on names of official posts in

the Ritsuryo system. And when it comes to writing, what was truly decisive

was the fact that the Ritsuryo state adopted a "documentist" (monjo shugi)

approach to governance.

By documentism I mean that the Ritsuryo state prescribed that all ad

ministration, including those matters that had previously been implemented

verbally, would from then on be dependent on documents. The Ritsuryo

state put this documentist system into practice in the strictest terms. That

meant that anyone living within the state's domain who expected to have

interactions with the authorities was compelled to learn how to write. The

establishment of this state was, from the perspective of those in the regions,

a major event. In a certain sense, one could say that this state was received

as a "sacred world" created in the distant capital. Whatever the case, it was

a window opening onto the glittering world of civilization. For those in the

regions, writing was the link that connected and mediated the relationship

between that world and the self. That much is clearly demonstrated by dis

coveries at several excavations of wooden strips that show traces of kanji as

it was practiced by candidates for office in preparation for the government

examinations.

Tono Haruyuki has written a fascinating book on these wooden strips

called Ancient Japan as Revealed by Wooden Tablets. 22

Central to Tono'

book is a set of wooden strips uncovered at the excavation of Heijo Palace in

Nara. These strips have inscribed on them repetitions of sets of two or three

characters. Tono has won high praise for performing the laborious ta I

of attributing each of these two- and three-character sets to their original

texts. According to Tono, it appears that candidates practiced their writin,

22. Tono I !aruyuki, Mokkan ga kataru Nil,011110 kodai (An icnt Japan as Revealed by Womkn 'J\1bl •ts) (Tokyo: lwan,1111i sholcn, 1981).

On Writing 139

by copying from a Chinese classic called Selected Writings (Monzen), which

contained most of the questions used on the examination.

These wooden tablets have also been discovered in the ruins of Akita

Castle in Dewa Province. It would not be surprising to find these in sites

near the capital, but it is noteworthy that they have also turned up at the

northernmost outpost of the Ritsuryo state. One explanation for this is that

the state ordered the creation of family registries for all areas under its con

trol. It was the district magistrates or village heads who had to write the

characters in the registries. That being the case, we can see that in every one

of the areas under its control the state produced people who could write. It

is worth noting that the writing in the family registries tends to be in a very

good hand. The writing in the registry currently in the possession the temple

of Shosoin in Kyoto, for example, is good enough to be appreciated as a work

of art (fig. 25). I find it remarkable that an official of the lowest level was

able to write characters this well. The characters in the Shosoin registry leave

no doubt that the people of that time were extremely serious about writing,

treating it as something very valuable. In succeeding eras, the Heian court

and the Kamakura and Muromachi regimes all followed the example of the

Ritsuryo state with regard to documentism. The Edo shogunate was perhaps

I 1�11 I l' 2,;, F.1ntd} 11-gi,11 r (k,nrAi) of I l,11 uh.: Village, M ihoma un, Ono Province, 702.

< 11•d1t '1'1 l',1'1111·, 11I <,Jim11111 (\/111111111 /1111110/111).

140 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

the most thorough, and successful, in its application. Whenever the shogu

nate or the regional lords ordered their subjects to produce a certain kind of

document, the people of the villages and towns were able to comply. From th

Edo period on, Japanese society began to produce a huge number of docu

ments. This volume was no doubt due to the state's continuing employment

of a documentist ideal of governance.

But notwithstanding the state's determination to ground itself in writ

ing, we cannot conclude that writing was simply forced on society from

above. Rather, the establishment of the Ritsuryo state called forth a sponta

neous movement from below, one that gave birth to hiragana and katakana.

I believe the evangelical Buddhist sects that began to appear around the

end of the twelfth century had a particularly important role in the spread of

writing.23 Such major religious figures as Honen, Shinran, Nichiren, Ippen,

and later Rennyo all wrote a great number of letters in hiragana, and even

an occasional letter in katakana, as part of their evangelical work. The new

sects used hiragana and the speech-related katakana because they deliber

ately sought converts among the masses. Many prayers and songs that wen·

meant to be sung aloud were written and disseminated in katakana. We ev 11

find some texts, such as the ones written by monks at the Ikko sect temple ol

Honpukuji in Katada, in which dialect is recorded in katakana.

This trend continued from the medieval period to the beginning of the

early modern era and even included Christian literature produced in Japan

But these religious movements were suppressed by the secular military clas�

After their suppression, no religion in Japanese society was able to maintain

the kind of independent power base that Islam and Christianity enjoyed else

where. The suppression of the new religions also deeply affected the subse

quent existence of the emperor. But for the issues raised in this chapter tlw

defeat of the new religions resulted in the strengthening of the state's do u

mentist regulation of society, which in turn helped bring about the current

state of writing in Japanese society. 24

I have been working with historical documents for many years now, a 11d

I am able to distinguish medieval from early modern documents at a gla nt i·

23. See chapters four and eight for more detailed discussions of these Kamakura sects. 24. This may seem unclear, since Amino has just stated that the new Buddhist sc ts of the Ka,n,,k11, 1

era relied heavily on writing, especially in hiragn11n and kr1r11k,11111, 111 thl'i, cvangcli al wo, Amino's point is that the suppressi n of the new r·li1111111\, wh1,h h.1d ,•111h1,l< 'd w,1111111, ,.,,,_,.! some possibilities for alternative devclopnwnt, 111 I 111· lit to, y 111 11·, II I "fl 111 J,q>,111 It p,11 t 1, 111,11 I leads to his following point th,11 tlw woild ol d11, 111111111 111 J.q,,111 1 , 1111111·lr ho11111g,•1H'n11 , , h,111111gl'n,·,1y that ,k, 1w, 110111 th,·, low ,rl.,111111 1,q, I,, tw , 11 , 11111 11111H111T1 11,111< 1·

On Writing 141

A trained eye can determine whether Edo period documents are from the

l'arly, middle, or late Edo without even seeing the date. True experts in Edo

documents can come even closer to the precise reign date without seeing the

date on the document. I am not that good, but the ability to distinguish gen

nal periods holds true for documents from all over the country, regardless

of region. Given the amount of difference in spoken dialects, this uniformity

1 mong documents is striking.

My good friend Tsukamoto Manabu tried an experiment with Edo pe

t iod documents for an exhibition at the National Museum of History and

lthnology. He lined up tax levy documents sent from a certain domainal

lord to his villages from one period with sales documents exchanged among

, ti lagers from the same period. On examination, Tsukamoto discerned

I hat changes in textual styles clearly originated with the domainal lord.

S11ch changes spread very rapidly among the documents written by villag

' 1 s. W hen the lord's documents changed, the villager's documents-at least

1 hose being sent to the lord-also changed.

This transformation in textual style was especially dramatic in the Meiji

1•1 riod. Styles that had been specific to particular families underwent a dras-

11, and sudden change with the abolition of domains in 1871. As a result, 1 ltose who can easily read Edo period documents find that documents from

I ltl' Meiji period are very difficult to decipher. I have a very hard time reading

I hl letters of the Meiji statesman and author of the Meiji constitution, Ito Hi

I, ,bu mi, for example. 25 But the style prescribed by the Meiji state was quickly

I 1, I cd up by village heads and district administrators throughout the coun

t,} We must admit that this stylistic change came from above.

A good example of this can be found in the town records of Katada in

1111 Province. Katada was legally designated as a village during the Edo

110d, but in actuality it operated as an independent town. 26

The town had

111111ber of elders who took turns keeping the community's daily records.

lt>wll r cords from the entire Edo period still survive today. In the third

,1 r of the Meiji period (1870), however, the writing in the Katada town

II 11 y suddenly alternates between someone who wrote like a government

11!11 1,t I and someone who wrote in the old style of the town. Within two

1111 111101>111111 (1841 1909) w,1' one oft he two most important of the Meiji oligarchs from the 1880s 111 1 111· ,·ml nl th1· 1·1,1 Ito d 1,1lt1·d thl' 1'fr1ji onstitution and served as the first prime minister 11111it-1 I 111• Ulllsl 11 Ill 1011,ii ,y,11•111

I 111 ., 111111,• 1kt.11lnl "'" 11•,,11111 111 tli, d tlli-11·11«· lwtwn•n .1 vill.1fll' .ind a town in the Ed period, see

1, . .,,1,·1 ""''

142 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

years, the grammatical style of the document had been entirely adjusted to

fit the new Meiji style.

As I mentioned earlier, this change was due to the influence of the state

and its emphasis on the production of documents. If that is the case, then

one might conclude that the Japanese masses were always looking up to their

masters, and adjusting their lives to follow their dictates. There is much sup

port for that argument, but we should remember that these changes were

taking place in the public realm of official documents. The same kind of situ

ation could not be said to have prevailed in the field of letters or the more

private diaries. When we recognize that difference, we find ample reason

to believe that there were different trends behind the immediately apparent

world of officialdom in the Edo period as well.

So what was behind this homogenization of the world of writing in Ja

pan? On the one hand, we clearly have the power of the state pressing down

from above. But, on the other hand, we also have the attitudes of those be

low, who were responding to that pressure. What I would ask the reader to

remember is that the will to respond among those "below" is something with

very deep roots in Japanese society. 27

Furthermore, if we remember to always

distinguish between the surface world of officialdom and the undercurrents

of society, we find that the will of the ruled to respond to the official homog

enization became particularly strong from the Muromachi period on. But we

cannot forget that this process began with the Ritsuryo state.

It seems to me that we have not given sufficient thought to the state of

writing in Japan. Nor have we thought about what kind of changes are likely

to take place or what kind of changes will be desirable from here on out.

For example, the use of katakana suddenly increased in the Meiji period.

Legal and military texts all used katakana, and elementary education in th

Meiji period began with it. But hiragana was dominant in ordinary people

daily lives, and there was very little literature written entirely in the kanji

katakana mixed style. Scholars, especially of the Chinese studies lineag

initially wrote in the kanji-katakana style. But this, too, soon disappeared,

and almost all scholarship came to be written in the kanji-hiragana mix.

27. Amino is pointing out that they were not passively formed by the dictates of those above but acLivt'iy sought out that relation. This is not necessarily to say that there was a natural and mutual rel al 1011 among the rulers and ruled but that by actively responding the ruled were working to crea1c 11t, conditions of that relation. In other words, Amino is urging his readers to think of governan ,• '" a series of ongoing negotiations between rulers and ruled. Unequal I hough I hey 111igh1 be, A 111 I 1111 believes it is still possible Lo discern the roles of the ruled in c,1.,hl "11111111111· 11·1 111, ., nd pro ·('d111, , ofgovcrnan c.

On Writing 143

Literature since the Edo period has been written in the kanji-hiragana

style, whereas Confucian scholars of that era used kanji-katakana. Why was

it, then, that under these conditions legal and military texts of the Meiji era

were composed in a mixture of kanji and katakana? This question has not

yet been resolved, but I suspect that the answer touches upon the very es

sence of the Meiji state. After World War II, elementary education began with

hiragana. I doubt that this change was effected after deep reflection on the

history of writing in Japan, but I will leave that question up to historians of

education.

It seems to me that, particularly in recent years, the realm of written rep

resentation has undergone enormous change on a variety of levels. I believe

that our discussions on the state of writing in the Japan of the future must

be based upon a consideration of the issues I have raised in this chapter

issues of power, ideology, and the historical uses of the scripts with which we

write today.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Commerce, Finance, and Currency

THE FLOW OF COINS FROM SONG CHINA

In chapter six, I noted how the social function of writing changed consider

ably around the fourteenth century. I believe this change is closely related

to the fact that coins also began to circulate in the islands with regularity

from the late thirteenth century on. Of course, coins had been used in Japan

prior to the thirteenth century, with minting having begun in the eighth

century. These early coins, made of silver and copper, were known as wado

kaichin. 1 The court later minted imperial twelve-sen coins until the middle

of the tenth century.

The character of these early coins raises a number of issues for our con

sideration. To begin with, it is no accident that they were first minted at the

same time that the Yamato state was adopting the Chinese governmental

sy tern. They were often used to pay taxes in kind (cha) and corvee labor taxes

(yo). But in fact the only place where these coins actually circulated was the

I i nai region, which comprised the five provinces surrounding the capital.

We have no evidence that they were in use throughout the islands. Further

more, wado kaichin were not used simply as a method of payment and cir

t ulation. They also had magical uses. For example, they were always placed

011 the foundation when a new temple was constructed. Several coins were

1 1111'11,ttll<'lllltll' lto11111I,, ,1, r1ol11 �u .. r,.,Br-,whtd1Wl'rcin,cribcdonthcu1inclockwi,carnu11d th, ',·1111 t 11111,

11,

146 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

also usually placed in a corner of a building, as we know from the excavation

of the Fuwa barrier in Mino. This kind of placement appears to have had a

magical significance. Since society in the islands had not yet experienced the

conditions that make currency necessary, the minting of coins came to an

end in Japan after the tenth century, just as the power of the central govern

ment went into a significant decline. Nevertheless, the fact that this primitive

society had coins had critical consequences for the subsequent relationship

between coins and society.

There were, however, other items that circulated as currency (in other

words, as a medium of exchange). Foremost were silk and rice. For example,

records show that silk and rice were used as the measure of the price of land

until the middle of the twelfth century. But from that point in time through

the thirteenth century coins from Song China flowed into Japan in great

quantities. Taira no Kiyomori,2 in particular, put tremendous energy into

developing trade with the Song.

However, just as this process was getting underway, the Japanese island1,

were hit by a series of epidemics popularly called "the coin pestilence" b

cause of rumors that it was the use of coins that caused their outbreaks. These

rumors provide us with evidence that coins were beginning to circulate with

greater frequency. But they also show that the tendency to view coins as mag

ical items was still strong. In other words, the idea of coins as a mere medium

of circulation had still not permeated society.

Nevertheless, according to Matsunobu Yasutaka, payments that used

to be made in silk were almost all made with coins by the first half of llw

thirteenth century. 3 This trend continued in the latter half of the thirteen t II

century, as land sales were no longer conducted in rice but in coins. As a re

sult, the importation of Song coins had reached an enormous volume by t lw

thirteenth century. While there are very few examples to give us a concr !(

sense of the volume of coins that entered Japan, we do have records of a hi 1 >

sent to Song China by the Saionji family in the early thirteenth century th al

brought back 100,000 kan in coins. A kan was a string with 1,000 coins on i 1,

2. Taira no Kiyomori (1118-81) was the head of the Taira clan at the zenith of its power at the end ol the Heian era. It was his rise to power that exacerbated growing tensions between regi nal w,11 rior groups and warriors associated with the aristocracy in the capital, and it was his de,1t h I h,,t precipitated the events leading to the five years of civil war known as the Genpei wars. Tnl 1 11 1 111 Kiyomori was portrayed as a great villain in the romance of that war, The Tale of the f leik,·.

3. Matsunobu Yasutaka, "Zeni to kahei no gainen: Kamakuraki ni okeru kahei kin6 no henka 11 1 1\1 1 111 (T11e Concept of Money and Coinage: Regarding the Chang in th(' Fu11rtlo11 ofColnuµ • 1 11 11 11 Kamakura Period), in Retta 110 /Ju11kns/1i ( ultural llistorynf1lw A1tl1ll',·l,1p.11), 110. 1,, 1·d /\ 11t l1111

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 147

\O 100,000 kan would amount to 100 million copper coins. This enormous

volume of coins was most likely placed in the bottom of the ship as ballast.

Not long ago a sunken ship from the same era was raised from the ocean

floor off the southwest coast of the Korean Peninsula. The ship, known as the

'-,hin'an wreck,4 was a rare find, for its cargo was raised almost entirely intact.

I he ship contained a large number of wooden tablets by which we know that

there were many people with Japanese names onboard, including a religious

,olicitor (kanjin hijiri) who was gathering funds for construction work at the

1cmple of Tofukuji.5 The ship contained vast stocks of celadon and porcelain,

,ind about twenty-eight tons of Song coins were placed in its keel as ballast, an

.,mount far exceeding the 100,000 kan the Saionji family imported. We do not

I now whether all of this was intended for import into the Japanese islands,

liul a significant proportion was surely destined for the archipelago. Accord

, ng to the wooden tablets found onboard, the ship sank in 1323.

Documents of the time reveal that a great many ships traveled between

the archipelago and the mainland through the fourteenth century. From

I he latter part of the eleventh century on, ships like these, loaded with cop

pl'r coins, sailed continuously from the Asian mainland to every part of the

l,1panese archipelago. Many ships also were sent to the mainland from the

"1,rnds. The level of intercourse was so high that Chinese merchants and

,tilors formed Chinatowns in Ky ushu ports such as Hakata, Imatsu, and

l\onotsu and Japan Sea ports such as Tsuruga. Most of the goods imported

I I om China on these ships were copper and pottery (porcelain and stone

.t re). Again, the Shin'an wreck provides evidence of this, for several tens of

1 housands of unbroken blue and white porcelains were recovered from the

1 eek (fig. 26).

This volume of imports testifies to the fact that there was a tremendous

It rnand for Song coins precisely at the time when Japanese society was un

i, 't going a major transformation. We have very few extant records of transac

t inns in commodities, but the documents concerning sales of land from this

11 11oc.l suggest that value was being measured more frequently in coins in a

1dc variety of transactions. Coins became the primary medium of finance,

Ymhihiko, Tsukamoto Manabu, and Miyata Noboru (Tokyo: Nihon edita sukuru shuppanbu, l'Hl'i), 177-210.

I 111· ,11 ,-.1 in which it sank is called the Shin'an Sea. � ,1111111 /11jiri, as the reader will see below, were wandering priests who traveled the country collect-

111p. do11,1tion for large-scale temple construction projects. Tofukuji was a Rinzai Zen sect temple 1111111,kd 111 1236 in eastern Kyoto by the aristocratic Kuj6 family.

1118 Sacred Space and the People on t he Margins of History

Figure 26. Blue and white porcelain pots recovered from the Shin'an wreck. From the collection of the National Museum of Korea. Photograph courtesy of Shiikan Asahi Hyakka, ed., Shintei zoho Nihon no rekishi, vol. 9.

but, as I shall discuss in further detail below, we should also remember that

rice did not lose its function as a measure of value or a means of exchange

and payment.

The coins brought back by these ships began to circulate in Japane e

society in the thirteenth century-in the early part of the century in eastern

Japan and in the latter half in western Japan. The dissemination of coins,

however, was not uniform, for eastern Japan-where until the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries silk and cloth had circulated as currency-took to coins

earlier than western Japan. Since a "bolt" is a unit of measure for silk or cloth,

the saying of the time that "ten copper coins will get you a bolt" suggests tha I

silk and cloth were traded for coins.

In contrast, rice was used quite early in the Kinai region and the rest

of western Japan as the primary means of exchange and measure of value.

At the end of the Heian period, there even appeared rice promissory note:-.

known as kaemai (exchange rice). With the appearance of these notes, thl'

rice itself did not have to be transported in order to make rice payment . I 11

other words, these notes effectively fulfilled the function of currency, ther by

delaying the adoption of coins in the area.

In the east, however, the Kamakura shogunate authorized the circulation

of coins in lieu of silk and cloth in the early thirtc nth c ·ntury. 'lhus, rrom th·

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 149

thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries the shogunate began to express the value

, ,I annual tribute from stewards "vassals" fiefs in terms of cash: for example, as

, "one-hundred-kan" holding or a "five-hundred-kan" land tribute. Likewise,

the Kanto kuji, a tax levied on vassals themselves, was also collected in coins.

In this way, we can see the end of the thirteenth century as a period

m which a cash economy was developing as coins permeated the Japanese

1 rchipelago. In addition, it marked the beginning of a credit economy, with

l11lls of exchange circulating instead of coins. The reason is simple: the large

, olume of coins used in many transactions was too unwieldy to be practi

' .d. Ten kanmon in coins-bills of exchange were customarily issued in that

., mount-were equal to 10,000 coins, quite a healthy sum. One string held 100

,non-usually about ninety-six coins-which by itself would be quite heavy.

l'i:n of these made one kan, so ten kanmon would be 100 strings, which would

hc extremely heavy (see fig. 27). Transporting actual coins could be danger

ous, so safe and portable notes of credit came to be the preferred means of

cnding payment. We should also remember, however, that these bills of ex

' hange could only work if there was a widespread network of merchants who

1 l'cognized and honored them.

I tflllll' J7. Coins found in the remains ofNamioka Castle. Photograph courtesy ofNamioka

I 11w11 l\o,11d of Education, Namioka-machi, Tsugaru-gun, Aomori.

Sacred pace and the People on the Margins of History

SYMBOLS OF WEALTH

The normal result of a massive influx of coins is inflation. We expect price:-.

to rise, and indeed for a time in the late thirteenth century the price of

rice, silk, and other commodities did rise. But, as Matsunobu Yasutaka has

shown, prices in general, including those of land, had a tendency to fall i 11

the fourteenth century. Not many historical materials have survived from

that period, so there is little that we can say for certain. But Matsunobu

believes that the reason prices did not rise was that it was the value of tlw

coins that rose-that is, the demand for coins increased-which would

have caused the relative value of other commodities to decline. The latt·

thirteenth through the fourteenth centuries represented one peak in this

demand, as we can see from the frequent discoveries of what are called

" buried offering coins" (mainosen) or "set aside coins" (bichikusen) fron1

that era. The next peak came during the Warring States period and into thr

first years of the Edo period.

The standard view of buried coins is that they were buried because of

some from of social chaos such as war. That is conceivable for the period

of the second peak in demand, which was a time of extended civil war. But

Matsunobu believes that the peak in coin burials in the late thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries represents attempts to accumulate, rather than simply

safeguard, wealth. This is a sign that Song copper coins had come to posses,

great significance.

I am basically in agreement with this. However, I should point out th,11

people at the time considered buried things to be ownerless. Our inve, ti

gation of the significance of buried coins must take this into account. 'J lw

fact that coins were buried suggests that they still retained a certain magi ,1 I

significance (to which I shall return in the next section). This is a somewhat

different meaning from that attributed to the accumulation of coins after tlw

Warring States period, when burial had ceased to signify the same kind of

alienation. In any case, we can say that coins had definitely become a mea 11 \

of accumulating wealth. The fact that coins-which, unlike rice and silk,

have no use value-became a symbol of wealth demonstrates that there was .i

major transformation in the image of wealth. This constituted a moment nu�

shift in the way society understood coins.

In Yoshida Kenko's Essays in Idleness, there is mention of "an 'X ·t·nl

ingly rich man" who said of coins: "Money should be fi ar d an I drc,1dnl

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 151

Ii ke a master or god, not used as one pleases."6 That is, one should seek to

uppress one's desires and single-mindedly save one's coins. For this rich

111an, the accumulation of coins was itself a virtue. In fact, wealthy people in

that period were called "virtuous people" (yutokujin). This gives us a good

1 ndication of the way in which society's understanding of coins was chang-

111g. Nakamura Naokatsu has called this late-thirteenth-century approach to

loins "money worship."7 By the fifteenth century, coins had become more

I han just a measure of wealth. They had begun to function as a means of pay-

1ncnt and exchange.

There are a number of things that we can say about the fact that coins

111ade the transition to functioning as currency in this manner. In chapter

1 x, I wrote that the dissemination of writing propelled the homogeniza-

11011 of society. Here I believe we can say that the circulation of these round

loins with square holes throughout the archipelago (except in Hokkaido and

1 >kinawa) also contributed to the trend toward homogenization. This trans

lmmation was an epochal event in the formation of a national consciousness

(111inzoku) in the Japanese archipelago.

Nevertheless, I must admit that there are many things about premodern

opper coins that we do not understand. The biggest question relates to the

I 1d that these coins were all from the Chinese mainland-Song, Yuan, and

ling dynasty coins. Yet, there was a great amount of copper being mined

111d processed in the Japanese islands at that time. So much copper was pro

dm.ed that it was counted among the archipelago's top export items. Casting

In hnology had long been available, and casters were active in Japanese soci-

1 y. o, there is no doubt that the ability to mint coins existed in the islands.

l'vertheless, the ruling class in Japan showed no desire to mint coins after the

l,tll' Heian period. Apar t from the administration of Emperor Go-Daigo-a

1 1 re exception among emperors in that he planned, but was unable to bring

d iout, the minting of coins and the printing of paper currency-neither the

1111pcrial government nor the shogunates (Kamakura and Muromachi) seem

111 have conceived of the possibility.8 W hy was that? This should be a major

\ o,lrnl,1 Ken k6, Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkii, trans. Donald Keene (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 179. The essays were originally written between 1330 a nd 1332.

l,tk,t 111u ra Naokatsu, Muromachi jidai no shomin seikatsu (The Life of Commoners in the Muroma , lt1 l'criod) (Tokyo: l wa nami shoten, 1935).

I li t 1, ,1.1tcmcnl only applies to the Kamakura and Muromachi shog unates. The Tokugawa shog un ,tll' d id 1111111 coins and in fact made recurrent debasements of its coinage a central feat ure of tis 1111,111<1,1\ polily.

152 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

topic of investigation in the history of the relations between China and Japan. What might this have to do with the fact that Japanese society already had a government that produced currency (the wado kaichin)? Historians have not yet answered these questions.

Matsunobu calls the society of the fourteenth century "a society that had converted to currency too early."9 Whether or not that was true, thl' practical circulation of coins as currency had a decisive and transformative effect on the meanings of trade and finance as well as on the social status f those members of society who were involved in such activities.

HOW DID THINGS BECOME COMMODITIES?

The act of exchanging one thing for another-treating each thing as a com modity-took time to develop the form we know today. In earlier societi s, the exchange of goods was conducted within a so-called gift economy. In th b kind of economy, relations between people were cemented through the a t� of giving a gift and receiving something in return. This was not an exchangl' of commodities. How, then, did things become commodities?

Katsumata Shizuo suggests that the exchange of one thing for anoth 'I requires a particular kind of place in which to facilitate the exchange. Thi i� the marketplace. It is only when the particular space of a marketplace com(� into existence that things can be separated from a gift economy and circulall' in trade. In this sense, a marketplace is a site that must be cut off from th • everyday relations that bind people together. If I were to put it my own way, I would say it is a site of disengagement (muen no ba).1° Katsumata propo, l':. that these sites have existed since ancient times. For example, there was a 11 ancient custom that a market can be set up wherever a rainbow appears. 1 hi., custom appears in the writings of Heian period aristocrats, and there we, l' still traces of it as late as the Muromachi period. In one case, a rainbow ap peared in the compound of Fujiwara no Michinaga, the grandfather of th n.'l' Heian emperors.11 So, following custom, Michinaga set up a market in hi,

9. Matsunobu, "Zeni to kahei no gainen," 208. 10. "Muen no ba" is a phrase that comes from Amino's groundbreaking book, Muen, kugai, raku: N//11111

chusei no jiyu to heiwa (Disconnectedness, Space, and Markets: Freedom and Peace in Med It-vu I Japan) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1978). The fundamental issue of that book was the function ()f ,111• outside the control of the state where goods and people circulated in an alternative economy.

11. Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1027) led the Fujiwara clan at its zenith of power nncl was I he 1111 I 1111111 master of marriage politics, succeeding in establishing five daughtl'I, 1is i 1111w1 I,, I rnnl 11hl 11,·,, 111 was grandfather to three successive emperors.

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 153

1 ompound and allowed merchants to enter and ply their trade. Of course, one never knows exactly where a rainbow touches ground, but this did not

I >revent the custom from being followed. According to Katsumata, Japan is not the only place that had a custom

, ,r holding a market where a rainbow appeared. He conjectures that this cus tom arose in the Japanese islands because rainbows were seen as a bridge l>l'tween the next world and this one-between the sacred and the profane.12

< onducting trade at this kind of site was believed to please the deities, who 1 csided in the other world. Katsumata's point, then, is that markets in general

ere established at the border between the world of the deities and the world of human beings, at the boundary of the sacred and the profane.

I agree with Katsumata completely. In fact, markets in Japanese society Wt're usually established in places that marked boundaries (such as river !, inks or the islands in the middle of a river), on the beach (the boundary lid ween the ocean and the land), or in foothills between mountains and pl,lins. A functioning market was seen as a place separate from the everyday \ ,orld, in large part by virtue of the significance of its physical location. It , ,1s seen, in other words, as a place linked to the sacred world, the world of 1 lil' deities. Upon entering such a place, both people and things were severed !tom their mundane relations. It was only in an "unencumbered" condition It.it objects could be exchanged as simply "things in themselves." To put it 11other way, both people and things became possessions of the deities once hey entered the space of the marketplace. Or we could say that in a market-

1 l.1le objects became ownerless. At the very least, they were no longer seen l'mblematic of the person who possessed them. That seems to me to have en the condition that enabled the exchange of objects for other objects.

ince markets in Japan were places where the worldly relations between I ople were severed, they also became a place for activities such as the baccha- 11 d 1,111 revelries known as utagaki.13 During festivals, the everyday relation I II p of marriage was severed and men and women could freely come into con-

t , t with one another, at the festival site, as unattached individuals. What is I ., well known is that the same principle held true in the marketplace. Thus,

I line is a more detailed discussion of this notion in chapter eight (as well as in the Foreword), but 11•,1dcrs should know that a basic tenet of the ancient Japanese worldview is that there are two pl,111 •s of existence: the present everyday world and an invisible "other world" that exists close In th is one-even potentially overlapping it-but is nevertheless distinct. The borders and lim l 11,,I ,p,1,c. Amino writes of in this chapter were understood to be borders between the world of h11111o111� and the other world of spirits or deities. 1111110 1 •1urns to utagaki in the context of his discussion of medieval sexual practices in chapter 11ll1t'

154 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

the exchange of objects as commodities became possible only under condi

tions in which both people and things were cut off from their relations in the

everyday world (fig. 28).

This severance of objects from human ownership as a precondition for

exchange is, I believe, a key to understanding the significance of the buried

coins discussed above. Since the area beneath the ground was seen as the

"other world," burying things in the ground would mean removing them

from the hands of humans and consigning them to the world of the dei

ties. It appears that by burying things in the ground, and thereby making an

offering to the deities, people may have been seeking divine permission to

use the land or the coins. Or perhaps making something ownerless trans

formed it into an offering, a sacred possession, and thereby made it possible

to reuse it as a form of financial capital.

Important questions are raised if we say that the principle of the market

and the modern exchange of commodities were based on the state of disen

gagement from mundane relations that appeared in the market place. What

could account for the change from this market conception, which lasted until

the medieval era, to the one with which we are more familiar today? We will

come to that.

Figure 28. A market scene from The Picture hijiric, from the ollc lion ofSh6j6k6ji.

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 155

HOW INTEREST WAS TAKEN

The practice of finance raises the same issues. Just how did it come about that

things were loaned and interest was charged on that loan? There is nothing

natural about it. I do not know how things would look if we approached this

on a world historical scale. But if we trace the origins of finance in the case

of Japanese society, we eventually arrive at the concept of suiko. Suiko was a

practice intimately tied to rice agriculture. In ancient society, the first rice of

the season (known as hatsuho) was offered to the gods and kept in a sacred

storehouse, which was probably managed by the leader of the community.

The next year the rice that had been offered to the gods and placed in the

storehouse was loaned to farmers as sacred seed. At harvest time, the farm

ers would return the amount of rice they had been loaned for seed and add

to that "interest rice"(rito) as thanks to the deities. This cycle constituted the

basic principle of suiko.

Just how this fit into the system adopted from China by the Ritsury6

state is a point of some debate. But, however they meshed, the Ritsuryo state

cemented this practice within its governmental system in a practice known

.1s public suiko (kusuiko). Tax rice stored in provincial government store

houses was originally used as principal. Lent to farmers in the spring, the

loan was to be repaid in the fall with interest rice. This interest, called the

proper tax (shozei), was used to pay regional administrative expenses.

However, the custom of suiko was not restricted to the government. It was

,dso practiced in society at large, where it was called private suiko (shisuiko).

Whether public or private, it is important to remember that this lending re

lationship was expressed as suiko. Interest rice was usually collected at a rate

of 50 percent. Both state and private suiko strictly abided by the restriction

that interest could not be more than double the principal. Interest rates of 50

.rnd 100 percent may appear to be extraordinarily high, but if the interest is

l ollected on agricultural production in kind it is not that high.

Financial activities were conducted as the lending of something owned

hy Lhe deities, and, through the process of agricultural production, that loan

was returned with an extra amount as an expression of gratitude. The initial

nflcri ng of the first harvest to the deities was still occasionally called hatsuho

111 Lh medieval period, but more often it was called an offering (jobun). For

1 x.1mpl , the first products of the harvest offered to Hie Shrine were called

goods ffered to Hie (Hie jobun butsu), rice offered to Hie (Hie jobun mai),

n1 t0pper oins offer d Lo Hie (Hie jobun seni). The offerings to Kumano

156 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Shrine were called either Kumano's first grains (Kumano go-hatsuho butsu)

or goods offered to Kumano (Kumano jobun butsu).

These rice and coin offerings-which, as offerings, had become the pos

sessions of the deities-were then used as capital for loans. We can confirm

that loans were widely executed in this form in the twelfth century and that

in such cases the act of making a loan was still called suiko. This lending of

sacred possessions continued after the Muromachi period as well under the

name of temple coins (shidosen). By this time, the loans, offered at low rate

of interest, were generally made with the coins that had been offered to the

Buddhas at temples.

W hatever they were called, whenever human beings made use of some

thing that had been offered to the deities, the return of those sacred pos

sessions was accompanied by interest as a gesture of gratitude to the deitie

whose objects had been used. Financial activities therefore were carried out

in a close relationship with the realm of the sacred. Earlier I mentioned that

coins that were buried in the ground became ownerless. We might also sec

burial as a way of giving the coins to the deities, in which case whoever bur

ied the coins may have meant to consign them to the deities for a time so that they could later be used as financial capital.

Thus, whether we are discussing trade or finance, both were only pos i

ble through the construction of a relationship with the sacred world, a world

that transcended the mundane. Merchants and financiers were thus set apart

from ordinary people, for they were continually in the presence of that sacred

world. That is why merchants and financiers in the medieval period took on

the physical appearance of people in the service of the deities and Buddhas

(i.e., religious workers). In the terminology of the time, people who served

the native deities were called jinin (or jinnin), and people who served the

Buddhas were called yoriudo. The emperor, who was likened at the time to

a deity, was served by people called kugonin. 14 The kugo of kugonin origi

nally meant "food eaten by the emperor and the nobility," but it eventually

expanded to include anything used by the emperor. Those people who pro

vided the emperor with the things he needed every day were called kugoni11

or "imperial purveyors." All of these purveyors-to shrines, temples, and tlw

emperor-were considered servants of sacred beings. They even called th 111

selves "slaves of the gods" (shinbutsu no nuhi).

14. Following Andrew Goble's usage, l (the translator) would call these people shrine, temple, ,11111 imperial purveyors. The reason for choosing the term purveyor, de pile the mnrc liter.ii tr,111,l.1 lions ("shrine people," "people who approach," and "people who 111,1k,• nlk1111gs,"

will b,•,01111 clc,1r in Amino's discussion of their fun,tions 111 d1,1pt,·1 l'1ght s,,,. A111l11·w I d111111HI C,oltl, /\flll/1111' c;,, /la1g11\ /frvo/11/ltlll (C,1111h1 idl(l' I J.11 V,lld l11IIVl'"ll} 1'11 , )'J•/1,j

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 157

In concrete terms, then, the people who conducted financial activities

through lending offerings, from Hie Shrine, for example, were known as

the Hie Shrine purveyors. Lower level monks and mountain ascetics put the

offerings made to the temple of Enryakuji into circulation as loans, and the

Kumano Shrine purveyors and mountain ascetics ran lending enterprises

with Kumano's offered goods. At Ise Shrine, it was a group called the oshi

that used Ise's offerings. It is important to note, then, that financial opera

tions were conducted by people who were recognized as serving the deities

in their various forms.

PEOPLE WHO SERVED THE GODS AND THE EMPEROR

The same was true for those engaged in trade. For example, the casters who

made the metal lamps used in the imperial palaces were granted in return

the right to travel freely throughout the country buying and selling iron and

iron goods. Given the weighty title of "lamp purveyors of the emperor's pri

vate office" (kurodo-dokoro taro kugonin), metal casters thus engaged in pub-

1 ic trade through their status as imperial purveyors.

Manufacturing and trade were not yet specialized fields at the time, so

Lraftsmen, such as the lamp casters, were also merchants. The cypress crafts

men (hinonoshi) who made round wooden boxes (magemono) both made the

boxes and sold them at market. They were also given imperial purveyor sta

tus or else were attached to shrines throughout the islands as shrine purvey

ors. In short, all merchants from the ancient and medieval eras made their

livings as servants to one of the divine entities; performers, in the narrow

ense of those who engaged in the performing arts, were in the same situ

ti ion. Merchant manufacturers, financiers, and performers possessed the

tatus of servants to the deities and emperor because the activities of trade

,tnd finance, as well as the performing arts, were seen as having a deep con

tll' tion to the divine world. To return to an earlier topic, their status also derived from the character

ol the spaces in which they made their livings. In those days, purveyors of

.di kinds moved about from market to market within a particular area or

1 ven across the whole archipelago. They naturally had a base somewhere, liut many wcr on th' road for long periods of time. In the end, the places

t It rou rh wh i h I hey p.,ssrd th roads, harbors, and anchorages-and their

d1 ,tinatio11s tlw 111,1 I ,·h on I ivcrhanks, b a h s, and foothill -wer all

11111111.tl pl.1 1· 1111 l1111111.tl1l\ nl tlt1•s · sp., l'S l.111 b s ·n in ustoms oth •r

158 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

than those related to market activity. For example, it was the custom in those

days that any incident that occurred within a marketplace had to be resolved

within that space. Grievances could not be carried to outside authorities for

redress. The same turns out to have been true for roads. Even in the case of

murder, the parties involved had to resolve the situation at the site itself, and

relatives of the victim could not launch a vendetta against the murderer once

everyone had left the scene of the crime. Traveling in such places, itiner

ant purveyors adopted attire that distinguished them from ordinary people.

Mountain ascetics, as Buddhist monks, were naturally very easily distin

guishable. But shrine purveyors also wore yellow robes to signify that they

traveled as servants of the deities.

As mentioned above, shrine, temple, and imperial purveyors occasion

ally called themselves slaves of the deities, slaves of the bodhisattvas, or tem

ple slaves. As a result, historians have treated them as people of extremely low

status, as being, in fact, slaves. But closer investigation reveals that during the

medieval era these so-called slaves were occasionally of the same high class

as vassals of the shogun. From the perspective of their own society, therefore,

these people were in a position comparable to that of the warrior class.

These groups have not yet been precisely situated within a world histori

cal framework. Doing so will help us understand them better, for Japan was

not the only society that had servants of the deities or slaves of the sacred.

They could also be found in societies with divine kingship. For example, the

Incan empire had slaves of the deities-slaves of the sun god and slaves in the

service of the Incan emperor.15 In Japan's case, there were women known as

court servants (uneme) as far back as archaic times. Shamans (miko) in Japan

were of a similar status. We also know that a similar group of workers at

Kashima Shrine were known as divine menials (shinsen). The problem for us

today is the use of the character sen (Im) in reference to these people. Our

modern sense of the character is that it means "base" or "despised." But it

would be a mistake for us to employ our modern sensibility and conclud

that ancient menials were socially despised.

The class system of the Ritsuryo state designated five kinds of menial

known literally as the five colors of baseness (goshiki no sen). Four of the c

groups-public slaves (kunuhi), government slaves (kanko), private slav ,

(shinuhi), and domestics (kenin)-may justifiably be called slaves, eith r

state or privately owned. But the fifth class of menials were the tomb guards

15. 1 n 1hc 1 ncan world, female ,laves were called 11k111 y11 ,ind 1n,il1• ,l,1\n, 1•,11111J.11,1,1

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 159

(ryoko), who stood guard over the imperial tombs. These people were classi

fied as menials, but they could not be called slaves in the same sense. Later,

in the medieval era, we find that tomb guards had the same status as shrine

purveyors and were considered "slaves of the gods." Notably, it was because of

this status that they were granted special rights and engaged in commerce. We

must thus think of menials who were in direct attendance on the deities, like

those whose function it was to guard such sacred spaces as the graves of the

aristocracy, as having possessed a character that was radically different from

the way a modern sensibility understands the term baseness. Even though

they may have been called slaves of the gods, they were in fact people with a

status comparable to that of warriors. Some even received court rank.

As a consequence, the status of purveyor groups was explicitly distin

guished in a variety of ways from that of the common people, who were

known as hyakusho. The homes of shrine workers (i.e., the houses that

formed their base of operations) were exempted from the duties levied on

the homes of commoners. There were even cases in which purveyors were

granted tax-exempt paddy land from which they could draw income. In ad

dition, their privilege of free travel granted them exemption from the trans

portation taxes collected at barrier gates, river crossings, ports, and harbors,

thus making it possible for them to move freely about the country. That is

one more reason why these people wore the yellow or persimmon robes

characteristic of monks when they traveled: to distinguish themselves from

ordinary people.

They also distinguished themselves by the unusual things they carried:

remarkable staffs, sticks, and so forth. Shrine purveyors who sold fish carried

sacred buckets on their heads into which offerings to the gods were usually

placed. It was believed that if an ordinary person laid a hand on a purveyor

on his possessions, or on his person so as to cause injury or death-the

offender would be subject to a terrifying divine retribution. In addition, sites

where the corpse of a shrine or imperial purveyor was found were considered

sacred places, now possessed by the deities. Therefore, whenever the villag

ers of a shoen estate that was owned by a temple or shrine failed to submit

their yearly tribute, the purveyors (not warriors) would be mobilized to act as

ba i Ii ffs and collect the tribute from the villagers. We even find cases in which

the purvey rs put on d rn n ' ma ks or carried statues of the buddhas with

th ·mt intirnidnt •th· villag ·rs into turning over the tribute.

Whall'vcr tlw ,1lli ity, till' sh1 in' and imp rial purveyors lived a pa-

1,lll- l' isl '11ll' 1111111 tli.11111 1111 1 ,,11111h111 rs, th ir status pr< vi I I G)r in th'

160 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

state system itself. I believe we should call this the purveyor system, although

this term has not yet achieved currency in the academic world.

FROM THE SACRED TO THE PROFANE

In sum, until the early part of the medieval era-the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries-commerce and finance were conducted by these purveyor groups

because commercial activities could only be carried out in a relationship with

the deities. Their involvement was based on the magical character of com

merce. The contemporary problem of the group known as "discriminated

people" (hisabetsumin, or burakumin) is related to this condition because

there was another group in ancient Japan that had shrine purveyor status.

These people were known as "nonhumans" (hinin) or "dog shrine purvey

ors" (inujinin). Female entertainers such as courtesans (yujo) and dancers

(shirabyoshi) also had a social status comparable to that of the divine servant

groups up until at least the early part of the medieval era, but I will discuss

these groups further in the next chapter.

The special character of commercial activities and of those who par

ticipated in them underwent a major transformation in the latter half of

the thirteenth century as the increased circulation of copper coins created

new conditions for commerce. In contrast to the earlier financial practice of

suiko-in which the possessions of the deities were loaned out-loans of coin

simply for the sake of earning more coins in interest became more common

in the late thirteenth century. One could call this a more worldly use of coins,

signifying the fact that financial activities were becoming more secular.

Of course, not all financial activities were immediately secularized. It

is well known that the most important financiers of the Muromachi period

were the doso moneylenders. 16 Originally, many of these moneylending in

stitutions were managed by monks from Enryakuji temple or purveyors from

Hie Shrine. These institutions began to appear in the Kamakura period, and

the principal they originally used for their loans were offerings to the d i

ties. In particular, the doso moneylenders were characterized at first as divine

16. Daso literally means "earthen storehouse" and referred to the thick-walled, white-plastered stn, 1· houses in which these institutions kept their caches of coins and objects handed over as sc u I It) for loans. Since many loans were made on the basis of movable collateral, these in litutions ,;11 sometimes called pawnshops. But their activities were more varied than a modern pawnshop, ,111d the scale of their loans may have been much greater, making them more like banks. In g,•1w1,il, they will be referred to in thi book a moneylending institutions.

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 161

storehouses, which were even considered to be a kind of disengaged space.

For example, in time of war anything placed within a doso storehouse was

considered safe. Daso storehouses never entirely lost this character, but in the

Muromachi period the managers of these storehouses began increasingly to

make private loans of coins. The debt cancellation edicts (tokuseirei) of the

Muromachi period were aimed at bringing an end to this form of private

lending. 17 The period also saw the continuation of previous kinds of financial

activities, such as the lending of the deities' rice and the Buddhas' copper

coins (shidosen), but the debt cancellation edicts of the Muromachi period

did not apply to these kinds of loans.

In this way, financial practices gradually took on more of the secular

character that a modern sensibility can understand. Nevertheless, the reac

tion against interest money (rizeni) loans also grew stronger, often culmi

nating in debt cancellation uprisings (tokusei ikki) in which people would

demand the cancellation of cash loans and the return of pawned goods. In

that sense, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were an epochal period in

which the prior relationship between finance and the sacred realm gradually

changed and finance settled into a secular practice. Merchants and trades

men were also affected by this secularization. One sign of this was the fact

that a distinction between merchants and artisans slowly emerged at this

time. In a related development, shrine and imperial purveyors retained their

status but the meaning of that status was undermined as the act of commer

Lial exchange gradually became seen as secular.

We can explore this transformation by considering an example involving

artisans. From the latter half of the thirteenth century, a genre of picture scrolls

developed that was known as tradesmen poetry contests (shokunin utaawase). 18

I hese scrolls depicted several kinds of skilled workers arranged in pairs. In the

17. ·1 he Japanese term tokuseirei literally means "decrees of virtuous government" and were essentially general cancellations of most debts. These decrees are found periodically in the late Kamakura period, although most took place in the Muromachi.

I H. ·1 he third volume of The Cambridge History of Japan defines shokunin as "a general term for those engaged in nonagricultural occupation, that is, artisans. Entertainers were sometimes included in this category." While most scholars follow the convention of translating shokunin as "artisan" (� r lack of a smoother alternative), I am uncomfortable with the way that tends to restrict our noti n of this group to those who work in handicrafts. Since one of the major thrusts of Amino's reinterpretation of Japanese history is to argue that our modern understanding of premodern term in logy is trapped in modern-day conceptions, I am tempted to break with convention and 11,c a broader, alb,•it 111011· dum,y, translation. 11,us, I am going with "tradesmen" and "skilled wn, kL'1 ," to dh1 i111-111 hh ,/1ok1111111 f, 0111 th,· more restricted group kogyonin, which I am translating 11, '\ 1,1 ft ,nwn "Wit I; t 1,1d1•"111•11 ,111d ,k ii l1•d wo1 kcrs, I hope 10 suggest the concept of a person who pm,1·"1•, ,I polhli,·d ,� 111l,11111111· lh,1111n·d 1101 lw 1 ·'11 k1cd to material production. "Jhis also has th,• 1111•1 It 111 .1v11ld1t11-1 tl11 wli11, , 1111.11, 11111111t.1tl1111s ,11 tod,1y\ th• ol"prnf•ssi,)11,1I."

160 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

state system itself. I believe we should caU this the purveyor system, although

this term has not yet achieved currency in the academic world.

FROM THE SACRED TO THE PROFANE

In sum, until the early part of the medievaJ era-the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries-commerce and finance were conducted by these purveyor groups

because commercial activities could only be carried out in a relationship with the deities. Their involvement was based on the magical character of com

merce. The contemporary problem of the group known as "discriminated people" (hisabetsumin, or burakumin) is related to this condition because

there was another group in ancient Japan that had shrine pmveyor status.

These people were known as "nonhumans" (hinin) or "dog shrine purvey

ors" (inujinin). Female entertainers such as courtesans (yujo) and dancers

(shirabyoshi) also had a social status comparable to that of the divine servant

groups up until at least the early part of the medieval era, but I will discuss

these groups further in the next chapter.

The special character of commercial activities and of those who par

ticipated in them underwent a major transformation in the latter half of

the thirteenth century as the increased circulation of copper coins created

new conditions for commerce. In contrast to the earlier financial practice of

suiko-in which the possessions of the deities were loaned out-loans of coins

simply for the sake of earning more coins in interest became more common

in the late thirteenth century. One could call this a more worldly use of coins,

signifying the fact that financial activities were becoming more secular.

Of course, not all financial activities were immediately secularized. It

is well known that the most important financiers of the Murornachi period

were the doso moneylenders.16 Originally, many of these moneylending in

stitutions were managed by monks from Enryakuji temple or purveyors from

Hie Shrine. These institutions began to appear in the Kamakura period, and

the principal they originally used for their loans were offerings to the dc1

ties. In particular, the doso moneylenders were characterized at first as divi rw

16. Dosii literally means "earthen storehouse" and referred to the thick-walled, while-plastered ,rn11· houses in which these institutions kept their caches of coins and objects handed over a, �c�u, 1h for loans. Since many Joans were made on the basis of movable collateral, rhese institution, ,11, sometimes called pawnshops. But their activities were more varied than a moJcrn pawn,lm1,, .11111 the scale of their loans may have been much greatc.>r. making them more like b,1 nk�. In !lt'nn .d 1hc) will he referred to int hi� book JS moncylenJing 111st 1luliuns.

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 161

storehouses, which were even considered to be a kind of disengaged space.

For example, in time of war anything placed within a doso storehouse was

considered safe. Doso storehouses never entirely lost this character, but in the

Muromachi period the managers of these storehouses began increasingly to

make private loans of coins. The debt cancellation edicts (tokuseirei) of the

Muromachi period were aimed at bringing an end to this form of private

lending. 17 The period also saw the continuation of previous kinds of financial

activities, such as the lending of the deities' rice and the Buddhas' copper

coins (shidosen), but the debt cancellation edicts of the Muromachi period

did not apply to these kinds of loans.

In this way, financial practices gradually took on more of the secular

character that a modern sensibility can understand. Nevertheless, the reac

tion against interest money (rizeni) loans also grew stronger, often culmi

nating in debt cancellation uprisings (tokusei ikki) in which people would

demand the cancellation of cash loans and the return of pawned goods. In

that sense, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were an epochal period in

which the prior relationship between finance and the sacred realm gradually

1.hanged and finance settled into a secular practice. Merchants and trades

men were also affected by this secularization. One sign of this was the fact

that a distinction between merchants and artisans slowly emerged at this

time. In a related development, shrine and imperiaJ purveyors retained their

�tat us but the meaning of that status was undermined as the act of commer

da I exchange gradually became seen as secular. We can explore this transformation by considering an example involving

., rtisans. From the latter half of the thirteenth century, a genre of picture scrolls

developed that was known as tradesmen poetry contests (shokunin utaawase).18

I hese scrolls depicted several kinds of skilled workers arranged in pairs. In the

'The Japanese term tokuseirei literally means "decrees of virtuous government" and were essentially general cancellations of most debts. These decrees are found periodically in the late Kamakura period, although most took place in the Muromachi.

If ·1 he third volume of 771e Cambridge History of Japan defines shok1111in as "a general term for those engaged in nonagricultural occupation, that is, artisans. Entertainers were sometimes included in this category." While most scholars follow the convention of translating s!iokunin as "artisan" (for lack of a smoother alternative), l am uncomfortable with the way that tends to restrict our notion of this group to those who work in handicrafts. Since one of the major thrusts of Amino's reinterpretation of Japanese history is to argue that our modern understanding of premodero t<·rin lnnltlgy" r rnpprd in modern -d.1y conceplions, I am tempted to break with convention and 11w .i brmu.ll"r. ,1llic1t n1u11· d111nsy, tnin�l,,t,on Thus, lam going with '"tradesmen" and "skilled workc1 , .. Lu dl,tw11,u1,li /,,,� 11111111!0111 tit,• mnrl" rt•�lridcd group ktigJ1611i11, which I am r ranslating .,s '< 1 .1 lt,111c11 'With 1, 11I, ,11w11 111cl •klll,·,1 wo, k,·"· I hope ttl su11ge�t the rnnccpt of u pcr�on who I'' '"r ,n , l'ohslu ,I �1(111 1>111 ,111r t Ii II n,, ii nnt h, 1<·,tn< t1•tl to 111,llennl p1 oJu� tlon. 'I h,� ,11,o h.1, tlu 1111·1 It ul l\<11.111111 tt,, 1,hlll' ,.,11,, [Ullt111l.1ll1111, nl lud,1y\ UM 111 "pwk"lon,11 •

162 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

standard format, each member of a pair creates a poem, and then the poems

from each pair are evaluated by a judge. In effect, these scrolls feature a variel y

of tradespeople whose crafts are represented in song and picture. This genrl

became quite popular and was widely disseminated in the Edo period unck1

the rubic of "an illustrated catalog of tradesmen" (shokunin tsukushi).

When these scrolls first appeared in the late thirteenth century, they

were produced in a way that revealed a relation to the deities. One exampk of the early form of this genre is the Tohoku-in Poetry Contest. This scroll

depicts a poetry contest held among a gathering of tradesmen and women

for a memorial service (hoe) at Tohoku-in Temple. Another early exampk

is a scroll called the Tsurugaoka Bird Release Poetry Contest (Tsurugaol-.a

hoseikai utaawase), which depicts tradesmen reciting poetry while gathered

at Tsurugaoka Hachman Shrine for a bird-releasing ceremony. Both of thc:-l'

scrolls therefore take the form of a poetry contest among skilled workers hdd

in conjw1ction with a sacred event at a sacred site. In these poetry contest scrolls, the tradesmen and women are placed i 11

pairs, seated left and right, and there appears to be a logic to the way cert:.1111

occupations are paired. For example, one often finds blacksmiths paired with

carpenters. When we look into why these two were paired, we find that blad,

smiths in those days were more closely associated with making nails a 11d

clamps than with making swords. Since blacksmiths were associated w1\ h

construction they were often attached to temples and shrines and given I ht

status of shrine or temple purveyors. Since the blacksmith was a constructin11

worker, he was paired in the picture scro11s with the most important wo1 kr 1 on a construction site, the carpenter.

Thus, each pairing of trades in the scrolls was based upon a logical I l'

lationship between the two. What is particularly interesting is that in till

Tohoku-in Poetry Contest scroll we find a shaman paired with a gambler. "1 IH

fact that a gambler is included in a picture scroll of tradesmen at all rew,ds the different mind-set of society before the thirteenth century. Most Ii kch

the pairing here has to do with the way in which each one communicntn

the will of the deities: the gambler through the roll of the dice and the 1,h,1 man through spirit possession. It is in this sense that these two are paircJ ,1•.

skilled workers. But how are we to understand their place in this gal he, i 11g of people who might otherwise simply be labeled artisans? On the one hand

gambling was something that was subject to social condemnation. On tlu other, it was placed in the same domain of activities as the drawing ol lot .

which was common in so much communal activily. In eitlll'r c.1sc, gamhlr11g

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 163

was considered to be a form of artistic practice that had its own "Way" (do).

We know from documents of the time that there was something known as a

"Way of gambling." We know, too, that at the end of the Heian period there were positions in the headquarters of the provincial government of Kaga for

''the director of the dice" and "the director of the shamans." We can also

confirm that there was an office tl1at oversaw dice players, gamblers, and sha

mans in the imperial government in Kyoto. In fact, the famous picture scroll, ·11,e Picture Book of Hungry Ghosts (Gaki soshi), depicts a scene in which sha mans were present when the wife of a retired emperor gave birth (fig. 29).

!he shamans-whose job was to become possessed by any evil spirits that

might otherwise possess the mother-were seated behind a Buddhist ascetic

who had been brought in to pray for a safe birth. A sugoroku board (a kind

of backgammon board) was placed next to the shamans. The shamans then

gambled" by playing the game and rolling the dice. This was also practiced hy commoners, but such gamblers and shamans had a particularly close re

l 1tionship to the imperial palace. Gamblers and shamans can thus be seen

ts types of skilled workers, forming a natural pair Ln the tradesmens' poetry

�ontest scrolls. We can also see that the other "tradesmen" -handcraftsmen,

merchants, and performers-were understood via their relationships with

I he deities in scrolls produced in the thirteenth century.

l(!lllt' l'J. Sh,1111Jnc,,. ,ind ,1 ho,inl g,1mc frnm TI,e Picture Book of H1111gry Ghosts. Source: (, 1/,,1 �,h/1i 110111 lilt' u1llr, 11,111 ul 1h1 lukvo Nallun,11 Museum.

164 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

However, scrolls produced in the fifteenth century, such as The Songs o f

Thirty-two Pairs and The Songs of Seventy-one Tradesmen, still portray a great number of tradesmen-handcraftsmen, merchants, and performers-but the opportunity for their gathering no longer has anything to do with the deities. In particular, in The Songs of Thirty-two Pairs the tradesmen call themselves "base" (iyashiki mono) and the contest is presented as a gathering of those whose occupations have become socially stigmatized. This is inextricably bound up with the issue of discrimination, which is discussed in greater de tail in the next chapter, and this scrolJ indicates to us that a portion of the professional class had become denigrated by the _fifteenth century.

In The Songs of Seventy-one Tradesmen, the now stigmatized commer cial and performing tradesmen are clearly divided according to their appear ance rather than their function. For example, they are divided according to whether or not they wrap their faces in cloth or wear an eboshi cap (sec

fig. 30). Female professionals are also distinguished according to the styles of headgear, coiffure, and makeup that marked their occupations. In this manner of dividing the tradesmen, these fifteenth-century scrolls are quite different from their thirteenth-century predecessors. The fifteenth-century poetry contest picture scrolls clearly attempt to realistically depict the trades men's work itself For handcraftsmen, the scrolls show their tools and work ing styles, whiJe for merchants the scrolls show their wares and their selJing styles. On that point alone, we can see that commerce, handicraft produc tion, and performances were being separated from their sacred functions and becoming more secular.

All of this points to the fact that during the disturbances of the North ern and Southern Courts period Japanese society underwent a major change in the structure of authority. Along with that social transformation, those

tradesmen who bad based their distinction from ordinary people on tbei r direct relationship with the gods (thereby becoming sanctified themselves) were no longer able to maintain their special privileges. That is why in the fifteenth century these merchants and craftsmen frequently appealed to such temporal powers as military governors (shugo daimyo) to maintain Lhc11 privileges. Thus, the fourteenth century constitutes an epochal period in the transformation of the conditions of commerce, trading, and fin a nee as

well as of the existence of the people who were involved in those activilic,. And there is no doubt that the increased flow of meta1 currency, discussed in chapter three, had a deep connection to this transformation.

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 165

I 1gure 30. A man with a mask from The Songs of Seventy-one Tradesmen. Source: Shichiju ,d1iba11 utaawase, from the collection of the Tokyo National Museum.

THE ROLE OF NEW BUDDHIST SECTS IN KAMAKURA

< h1 r attempt to understand this transition raises an important problem 11 this point. That is, it is precisely during this period of change that the Buddhist sects known as the Kamakura New Buddhist sects came to play 1 m,,jor role in solil·ty hu l'\,1111plc. during Lhc Kamakura period the "i,11d,11j1 h1,t11d1 of th, R1t�11 'l'l I ,1l liil'Vl'd grl·at popularity due to Lwo of its

166 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

evangelists, Eison (1201-90) and Ninsh6 (1217-1303).19 We find that Ritsu monks of this branch were extremely active by the middle of the Kamakura period. One of their most notable activities was an attempt to bring salva tion to the nonhumans, as I shall discuss in chapter eight. But one other important role they played involved the collection of contributions-what today we would call donations for temple refurbishment. In those days, coins and rice were collected for the native deities and the Buddhas and were used to pay the costs of temple or shrine construction and repair. The monks who went out and collected contributions from donors throughout the country were known as "donation-gathering holy men" or "religious so licitors" (kanjin jonin). Although we find evidence of their activities in the twelfth century, the monks of the Ritsu sect played a significant role in this endeavor in the middle of the Kamakura period, collecting contributions on a far greater scale. Furthermore, the Ritsu monks did not merely gather donations. They also organized groups of craftsmen and tradesmen.

For example, Eison employed stonecutters who came over from Song China to construct the pagoda at the temple of Hannyaji.20 Ninsh6 had a close relationship with stonecutters as well. Ritsu monks also had connec tions with metalcasters, and by mobilizing all of these artisanal groups they built and repaired temples and shrines. In other words, the monks acted as contractors.

At the time, there was also a number of tribute ships plying the seas between the archipelago and the Asian mainland. It was likely that some of these Chinese-style boats (called karabune) were built in Japan for the China trade.21 For example, I believe there is a very good chance that the Shin'an wreck, discussed earlier, was made in Japan. In any case, many of the men sailing these ships and conducting trade were in fact Ritsu monks. From the late thirteenth through the fourteenth centuries, a religious solicitor was al ways on board when one of these ships left for the Asian mainland. The prof its earned by these monks paid for the construction work on a number of temples. Therefore, the monks were also entrepreneurs and traders who Look the donations they collected and used them as capital.

19. Transmitted to Japan in 754, I.he Rilsu sect's Japanese headquarters are al Toshodaijl in N.ir,1 Known as one of the six "Nara sects,» it focused its activities on establishing the rult?� orlluddh1,1 discipline and ordination.

20. This was a Shingon-Ritsu temple in the city of Nara established by the Soga clan in 65•1. lhc �111111· pagoda Amino refers to Is currently designated n national treasure.

21. Whether these boats were built in Chinn or the Japanese islands is an important hsuc 111 <.h,11'lr1 four. Amino points out there that the consc1,,u, is thJt all th� bo,ll� wm: hullt 111 ( hl11.1, ,,nil Ii, a1gues ogain,t thot rnnt,·ntinn

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 167

The same was true for Zen monks. To date, scholarship on the Zen sects has focused almost entirely on the intellectual history of their founders. But in fact Zen monks played a variety of roles in the temporal world. We know that, like the Ritsu monks, Zen monks rode as religious solicitors on China bound ships to engage in trade. We also know that it was Zen monks who brought back from China a number of new art forms-such as ink painting, the tea ceremony, and garden design-as well as performance arts such as Noh. At a more mundane level, many of the street performers known as hoka were in fact Zen monks. 22 In the Muromachi period, they also commonly acted as shosu, or "contractors" in the management of shoen estates. This is most likely due to the fact that Zen monks had superior accounting skills, which were needed for the administration of the estates.

Again, by the Muromachi period, temples of the new Kamakura Bud dhist sects were replacing the shrine purveyors and mountain ascetics with these monks when investing their temple and shrine offerings. With these c.hanges, the temples began to underwrite their operations with a variety of financial activities that centered on the lending of temple coins (shidosen). !his period also saw the widespread appearance of temples known as "places of disengagement" or "non.related places" (muensho). They were called places of disengagement because they were cut off from the kind of worldly relations that supported clan temples and patronized temples. Again, the majority of disengaged temples were of the new Kamakura sects: Zen, Nichiren, and Ritsu as well as Pure Land, True Pure Land, and Ji. Muen temples gener- 1lly did not own land. They were thus different from clau temples or tbose that had received land from powerful patrons. If we view tbese temples I rom a real-estate-centered perspective, it would appear that they had a very weak financial base. In fact, there are many scholars who see them as hav- 111g been poor. But the distinctive characteristic of disengaged temples was thal they supported themselves on a "capitalist" basis-through such finan ual activities as the lending of coin offerings or such commercial activities 1s donation investment-rather than on the basis of real estate holdings. In particular, temples of the True Pure Land sect frequently anchored the lormation of a town as merchants and craftsmen gathered on the "sacred �1ound" surrounding the temples and their practice halls. True Pure Land km pies were supported on l he same principle as other disengaged temples,

' /111k11 w.1, ,l l}l" 111 111 d lh, .,1, r 111 I\ hi, h th1 ,,, 1111 would du 11u· Jlld ,t,111 wlul,• p�·r 101m111111t•11,1111 ,1,1111>,llh I, 1h

168 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

with contributions known as kindnesses (shi) and through the commercial

activities of their surrounding "temple towns."

Why it was that so many of the new Kamakura Buddhist sects oper

ated in this way remains a major question in need of further investigation.

As the character of commerce, trade, and finance-which had been sup

ported by the old, magical authority of the deities-changed during thl'

major social transformation of the fourteenth century, the new Kamakur.i

Buddhist sects appear to have begun to confer a new kind of sacred meaning

on commerce and finance. It appears that the new sects attempted to fuJfi 11

the same function in Japan as the European historian, Abe Kin'ya, has sug

gested Christianity fulfilled in Europe. 23 That is, in a society based upon a

gift and reward economy, finance and the exchange of commodities came to

take place at a site or according to a method that was related to the foundc1

of a monotheistic religious sect rather than an earlier, more generalized no

tion of divinity. 24

In fact, an examination of the overall conditions of faith among trades

men and merchants reveals that their connection to the new Kamakura Buel

dhist sects remained extremely strong from the Edo period on. I believe Lhl·

time has come for a reconsideration and reexamination of the state of reli

gion in Japanese society from this perspective. Even if we do not go in tlw

direction of Max Weber's Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism, we can

find in the relationship between the new Kamakura Buddhist sects and com

merce, finance, and hanclicraft production issues that Japanese society share,

with Weber's work.

But in Japanese society the new religious groups-including Christi

anity, which was introduced in the sixteenth century-were bloodily sup

pressed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Oda Nobunag,1.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the Edo shogunate. As a result, these groups wen·

unable to establish an independent power base. Wby clid things turn out Llw,

way? This may in fact be the most important issue in the overall hislory ol

Japanese society.

23. Abe Kin'ya, Ch1,sei o tabimru hitobito: Yoroppa shomin seikatsu tenbya (People Who Trnwlt-11 111 the Middle Ages: A Portrait ofrhe Lives of Commoners in Europe) (Tokyo: [icibonsha, I 9/ll),

24. The difference may appear subtle at first, but Amino frequently contends that the new K,rn111k11, ,, Buddhist sects represented the possibility of the generation of a mono1heis1ic ,tyle ol 1<·lij,t111111 belief in Japan because of their emphasis on exclu�ivt> worship of Amida Buddh,1 or 1h,· I ,,1111 Sutra.

Commerce, Finance, and Currency 169

After the disturbances of the fourteenth century,25 the emperor com

pletely lost his power, and even his authority was greatly diminished. The

1nswer as to why the emperor survived despite all this may be related to the

tiuestion of why a monotheistic religion never took root in Japan. In the end,

1 he fact that this kind of religion was suppressed and was unable to sustain

1Lself as an independent religious authority is also closely related to the tech

nological condition of merchants, financiers, and artisans in the subsequent

� ourse of Japanese history.

In the class system of the Edo period-which was anchored by the four

main classes of warrior, peasant, artisan, and merchant-handicraft pro

Jucers, merchants, and financiers were not ascribed high social status. Even

1 hough the merchants had a great deal of power, they had the lowest status.

Moneychangers were also subject to social stigmatization. It may be worth

lOnsidering the idea that the decline in social status of commercial activities

,tnd the people who participated in them was inseparably related to the sup

pression of monotheistic religions. But we must also consider the relationship

this has with the style of capitalism found in Japan in the modern period.

I hat is beyond my abilities, but if we are to fully and clearly understand the

pilrticularities ofJapanese society, we will have to make the effort.

', Amin() is referring 1u 1he Kenmu Resturation of Emperor Go-Daigo, which overthrew the K,1mnkuru h.1k11f11 111 I ,,6. �ubsequently split the imperial line into the Northern and Sou1hcrn I ourh ,II 1lu h,111il, ,,1 A,h,k11�a l'okauj,, and established the Murumachi shogunnte.

<. 'HAPTER EIGHT

Fear and Loathing

DISCRIMINATION IN THE ANCIENT PAST

'c.:search on the discriminated groups (burakumin) in Japan, particularly

111 medieval nonhuman (hinin) and riverside dwellers (k arwaramono), has

11ade great strides in recent years. T his research has not only uncovered a

number of new documents, but, as in Niunoya Tetsuichi's Kebiishi (The Im-

J'l'rial Police), it has also concretely shown how the state and religious organi-

1tions (temples and shrines) controlled nonhumans and riverside dwellers.1

I has also become clear how the miyagomori of the Gion Shrine in Kyoto

ind the sarugaku dancers should be included in the broader category of dis

r riminated people in medieval Japan.2 In addition, Kuroda Hideo, Kawada

l\lllsuo, and Rotate Michihisa have used pictorial evidence to reveal the

N1unoya Tetsuichi, Kebiishi: Chflsei 110 kegare to kenryoku (Imperial Police: Pollution and Power in Medieval Japan) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986).

'l,u ugoku is defined in Lhe Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 3, Medieval Japan, as a type of early medieval theater involving music, dance, and other kinds of entertainment. It was a precur sor to Noh theater, which developed in the fourteenth century. lt is not entirely dear who the 1111y11go111ori were, bul, as Amino notes later in this chapter, they seem to have been a lower cust� of �hJmans who performed .(,1r11g,1J.u anJ completed other tasks for shrines. From pp. 110-11 or tlw ,,rigin.1I· "A"ord11111 to N11111ny,1 TcbuiGh,. the lower caste shamans, known u, n11yagomorl (r,·"dl1111 within 1h,· ,l11 lnc) I\ llu JWI lcu uwJ 'tll 11g11ku <lonce� and picked tea, should probably be Im luJ,•d io tlw hr n,1d 1111 ,11111111 ctl 111111h11111,1m. lht· 111i>•,1g,m1or1 in p.Hlicular l,ucr ran ,heap l(-a hn11s,·, A It,•, t 11<· Nor 1111 1 11 111,I So11lh1·1 u I 111111, p,·rtml, thC)' fulfilled mJIIY ul lhc�c s,une fun, 111111, ·" tr 1111,I"" 1ml 111111111/11

171

172 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

concrete conditions under which nonhumans lived. 3 T here has also been excellent research on the major cause of discrimination, the concept of pollu tion (kega re), by Miyata Noboru in the field of ethnology and Yokoi Kiyoshi and Yamamoto K6ji in history.4 Furthermore, there have been several recent studies on the efforts by the Ritsu, Zen, and Ji sects to bring salvation to the nonhumans and on the relationships of specific religious figures with a vari ety of nonhuman groups.

Researchers are divided regarding the social position of nonhumans in ancient and medieval times. The dominant interpretation of nonhuman status is that of Kuroda Toshia, who argues that they occupied a "status outside the status system."5 Kuroda believes that nonhumans originally had an existence that was completely alienated from society. Oyama Ky6hei, on the other hand, argues that they were essentialJy of the same status as villagers (hyakusho).6

I believe that nonhumans were different from both common villagers and bonded servants and that they possessed the same status as the shrine and temple purveyors discussed in chapter seven. They also shared certain char acteristics with skilled tradesmen. I should warn the reader, however, that my interpretation has not yet achieved fu]J acceptance in the academic world.

In our approach to the question of discriminated groups in Japanese his tory, let us first consider a form that is different from class discrimination: discrimination against the physically handicapped and those afflicted with terrible diseases. If we go all the way back to primitive society, we find no evidence of such discrimination in the Jomon period (10,000-300 B.c.). The average life expectancy at birth during the Joman period is believed to have been seventeen years-suggesting ext remely harsh living conditions. Human remains containing evidence of such conditions as harelip, leg damage, and so on demonstrate the existence of physically handicapped people during llw period. According to some archaeologists, the Jomon era was a time when

3. Kuroda Hldeo, Sugata to shigusa 110 chiiseishi: Ezu to emaki 110 Jake/ kara (Form and Gesture 111 Medieval History: From the Landscapes of Pictures and Picture Scrolls) (Tokyo: Helbonsh,,, 1986); Kawada Mitsuo, Shinran to hisabetsu mins/ia (Shinran and the Outcaste Peoples} (Tokyo. Akashi shoten, 1994); Hotate Michihlsa, Chrisei no al to juzok11: Emaki no naka no 11/kutal (Lnv< and Dependency in Medieval Japan: Bodies in Picture Scrolls) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986).

4. Miyata Noboru, Kegare no minzokushi: Sabetsu no b1mkateki yoin (An Ethnographic History ol Pol lution: Cultural Factors in Discriminalion) (Tokyo: Jinbun shoin, 1996}; Yokoi Kiyoshi, Mate, t,, ena: Chaseijin 110 sel to s/ii (Target and Placenta: Medieval Life and Death) ('lbkyo: He1b<rn�h.1 1988); Yamamoto Koji, Kegare to oharae (Pollution and PurificaMn) (Tok) o: I leibonsho, 199.l\

5. Kuroda Toshio, Jisha seiryoku: Mii /ritotsu no c/iasd slwAai ("lhl• Pm,w nf T,·111pb .rnd Shrine�: An Allernale Medieval Society) (Tokyo: lwanam, shot,·11, 19111)).

6 Opma Kytihei, Nilw11 r/uim 11ilso11slcl 1wl.1•11J..v11 (Studk, 111 :'-.lt-dh 1�1 J,IJ'•III• , A1-11 i. 11ll1tH') ( l'nk111 lw,111,1111 i \hnt.-n, I 'l7/I)

Fear and Loathing 173

simple survival was extremely difficult. The evidence of physical handicaps in remains from the time suggests that human life itself was so highly valued that discrimination against those with physical difficulties may not have existed.

There is evidence, however, that in Japanese society from the Yayoi pe riod on certain classes of crime called crimes against heaven (amatsutsumi) and crimes against the realm (kunitsutsumi)-such as mother and son incest, bestiality, and activities that obstructed agricultural production-were also considered forms of pollution (kegare). But by the late seventh century, it ap pears that, in principle, there was no thought of excluding the handicapped from the community, as later happened to those who suffered from Hansen's disease (leprosy).7 In fact, when the Ritsury6 state was founded, the imperial government earnestly attempted to implement the idea that everyone in the land should be listed in a household registry. Rather than providing sepa rate entries, the early household registries recorded the existence of those stricken with severe diseases or injuries (who were designated as disabled [haishitsu]), and those with the most severe debilities (who were designated ,ls invalids [tokushitsu]), along with the entries for other members of the fam ily. These people were not subject to taxation, and a caretaker was to be as signed to them.

In its zealous attempt to place every person in the realm into a family registry, the early Ritsuryo state also doggedly pursued itinerants who had fled their homes. So, from the standpoint of the government system there was no tolerance for the existence of those who bad fled their communities. l·or that reason, exclusionary discrimination was neither possible, at least ,1s far as the system was concerned, nor demonstrable, as far as we can tell from surviving records.

However, as I mentioned in chapter seven, the Ritsury6 state established within its system the statuses of the "five colors of baseness." A distinction was made between the base groups and the commoners and officials ( known as the good people" [ryomin ]). Slaves in the service of the bureaucracy or the

,t,1te were called official menials (kanko) and public slaves (kunuhi). Privately held slaves were called domestics (kenin) and private slaves (shinuhi). Of these lour groups, official menials and domestics were allowed to form families (which would then receive a separate listing in the registries). In any case, t hcsc lour groups of debased people were slaves, having lost their freedom

? Amino 11tlm1hth,1t 111 11111 ilcu 111,w 1l11 .i,�,-1,nl ,11111 h,111Jk,ippl'd w�·n· tn·atcJ in 11l111;1l p1.1d1�l' 1115 p11111l hrtl' i tlt1i 1111I u11l) 111111lt,1t 1111, 1<·.11 p1111<1pl1 lor ,•xdml111i: lhl'\< p.-,,pl,• hut th.-11 \\Tl c' d1•,1 I t � IIIIJ'ii) I ti \ ill lt>II

174 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

due to criminal acts or unresolved debts. Even though they were not labor

ing slaves in the sense of those in ancient Greece or Rome, they were "unfree

people" possessed by a particular master.

Moving from the ancient to the medieval era, we still find a caste of un

free people called "indentured servants and slaves" (genin), but most schol

ars acknowledge that medieval indentured servants and nonhumans lived

completely different lives. If that was the case, then the four groups of de

based people in the Ritsuryo state may have been clearly distinguished from

free subjects but they were not necessarily stigmatized as the medieval non

humans were.8

Scholarly opinion is sharply divided on the fifth of the five colors of

baseness of the Ritsuryo state-the ryoko-whose mission it was to guard the imperial tombs. 9 It appears that they were considered the closest to "good

people," in other words, to officials. We do not really know, however, why

they were included within the category of debased people since they were in

proximity to officialdom. One of the prevailing theories is that their inclusion

among the debased was related to the pollution that arises from death. The

argument is that the tomb guardians were stigmatized as a group because

of their connection to the polluted space of graves. In fact, there are some

who believe that these tomb guardians were one ancestral source of today's

stigmatized burakumin. But an examination of the condition of graves and

tombs in those days shows that they were sacred sites and not polluted places

that had to be avoided. As sacred places, they had to be strictly guarded.

I touched upon this in the previous chapter, but it should be recalled

that even in the Middle Ages, the guardians of the mausoleum of Fujiwara no

Kamatari had tremendous authority and pride.10 Indeed, they had attributed

to them the special powers of the servants of the gods, that is, the shrine and

temple purveyors. Tomb guardians, like the various purveyors, were also in

volved in commerce. Theirs was not the existence of outcastes but of sancli

8. In other words, if the non humans did not derive from the four slaveJike groups of the debased pco pies, then the discrimination against nonhumans did not derive from n relation to slavery, ns 1, commonly held, but from something else. Amino's point, l believe, is that stigmatization or 11011 humans, which was the key form of discrimination in the early modern period, was different from caste-based discrimination such as that applied to slaves. Drawing this inference back in lint<', then, his argument is that the fact of slavery itself did not generate discrimination, so we c,11111111 infer that the "four debased groups" suffered stigmatization. 1he subtle difference in the mod�, of discrimination, between one that is status based and one that is based on the magico relt111ou, notion of pollution, is the crucial concept of this chapter.

9. Sec the related discu�sion of this group in chapter seven. 10. Pujiw.\rn no Kamatari (614-69) was the founder of tht powerful t 111iw,1rn, h111, wht, h 1lum1n,11t d

i;o11r1 politk� throughout mo,1 nf tlw Nnra and l l,•1,1111w11o1d,

Fear and Loathing 175

fied guardians of a holy site. But if that were so, then why were these people

given a base status? 1he shrine menials (shinsen) at Kashima Shrine appear in just one doc

ument of the archaic period. It is clear that these people were in direct atten

dance on the gods, but since they had greater military skills than common

ers, they were mobilized by the Ritsuryo state to fight against the peoples of

northeast Honshu, then known as Ezo. This may co unt, then, as one further

distinction from the outcastes who appeared from the seventeenth century

on. These people as a whole-the tomb attendants and shrine menials-were

distinguished from the common people by the fact that they were in direct

service to sacred things. The fact that they were accorded base status was due lo the Ritsu_ry6 state's imitation of the Tang Chinese system, not a reflection

of their actual position in society. Tomb guardians were in a position similar to the shrine, temple, and

imperial purveyors. That is, in their service to the native deities and Buddhas

they may have been characterized as menials or slaves, but in fact they had

special rights. Therefore, when we consider the problem of discrimination

in ancient times as a matter of status, we should recognize that there were

two kinds of distinction. One was found in the distinction between slaves

and good people. The other was the distinction accorded those people who

were in service to sacred beings whose power exceeded that of normal hu

man beings.

BUDDHIST HOSPICES FOR THE SICK AND ORPHANED

The Ritsuryo system, under which everyone was supposed to be recorded in

a register, began to fall apart in the eighth century. The government's regula

tory power weakened, and the number of vagrants and absconders began to

rise. Among these, people with serious diseases, people with no close rela

livcs (such as orphans), and others suffering misfortune became a major

political problem. Responding to a growing need for relief, the government

established hospices known as hiden' in and seyakuin. 11 Not only were these

fodlilies constructed in the capital, but there are archaeological traces of hos

pices established near the government outposts in each region. When the

11 1111· l'll11rl 111 ll11 !1111111)'<\ ,1 Ill''" I''"' 11tc rdh I ,ll llll'"' hmp,,,., W,h in p.nl H'l,11,•d lO 11mpH''� f 11111y11\1•111l>1,llllll\•lllhhl1lhi [II

176 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Ritsuryo state established the official regional temple system (kokubunji), it

also paired relief facilities with official temples in each provincial capital. 12

Put this way, it looks like the Ritsuryo state did nothing but good works.

But the attempt to include everyone in a registration system was more for the

purpose of levying heavy taxes than providing relief. And it was because of the state's attempt to increase the tax burden that incidences of vagrancy and

absconding rose. Therefore, we should keep in mind the intent of the Ritsuryo

state to control the population when evaluating its actions. In any case, when

the abandoned children and orphans who had been raised in the hospices grew

up, they were attached to the family registers of a normal person's household.

'Thus, at least during the Nara period, it would appear that these people were

not subject to discrimination simply because they had grown up in a hospice.

When the capital was moved to Heian (Kyoto), hospices were built at the

far eastern and western ends of Ninth Avenue. We have evidence that they

retained their fw1ction through the ninth century. During this period, we

know that people raised in the hospices were added to the household regis

ters of the capital, given the new surname of Maraji, and granted one house per family registry. When those without relatives gave birth to their own

children, they established an official household and were thereafter treated

the same as other commoners. However, if all were given new names, then

it would be possible to know at a glance that they came from a hospice. This

may have become a source of later discrimination.

By the end of the ninth century, the government faced a fiscal crisis as

the Ritsuryo system weakened. As a result, it could no longer support the

hospices. All government agencies faced this crisis, so all of the artisans at

tached to these agencies were forced to fend for themselves in their own in

dependent groups. Or, to put it another way, the artisanal classes distanced

themselves from government regulation and began to freely form their own

groups. The same was probably true of courtesans (asobime). 13 The singers and performers in the Office of Female Dancers and Muskians of the Bu

reau of Music, one of the agencies in the Ritsuryo government, and the lower

grade maids serving in the women's quarters of the imperial palace prob-

L2. The system, which was established in 741 by order ofEmperor Shomu, pro1tided that an official But! dhist temple be built in every province, subject lo the 01terall control of the headqua rtcrs temple, Todaiji, in Nara.

13. The same two characters for courtesnn are 1tariably glossed in the original with lhr<'e pro11unn1 lions: asol1ime, ukareme, and yrijo. There may well haw been dlffo,�m:e� In th� detail ,rn,I lmtori cal circumstance of each pronuncia11on, but for the ,ake of 11 an\l,1111111 I 11111 r,·111h-1111ii ,ill 11I I lw,11 ,1, n1111t,·�11u II i.. importJnt to O(ltc th,ll ,111n1t•m11 dm•s 11ot ,111L1i1· 1111ply p1,"tt111111111 \Vh1h• ,,.,11.11 v.·mk 111.1y li,1w h,·L·II .1 parl nl llw lut1, 111111111 ,0111 ln,111,, It "•" 11111 ,.,., ,·u 11 lh t, 11r 1111111

Fear and Loathing l77

ably formed female entertainers' associations. Handcraftsmen and shamans

(miko) were attached to the regional government outposts as well, and it is

possible to confirm the traces of an organization of courtesans (ukareme)

in the city of Dazaifu in northern Kyushu during the Nara period. So, it is

likely that there were professionaJ associations that included courtesans in

every region. These craft and entertainment associations appear most clearly

in the tenth and eleventh centuries. As the ninth century fiscal crisis pushed

tradesmen out of the bureaucracy and into their own associations, the people

of the hospices (except for those with the most debilitating diseases) found

themselves forced to resort to similar means to support themselves.

In the latter half of the ninth century, a great famine left so many dead

and sickened from starvation that the banks of the Kamo River in Kyoto were strewn with bones and corpses. Titis kind of famine occurred from time to

time from ancient times through the sixteenth century. Documentation shows

that in order to deal with the disaster the government ordered the people of the

hospices to remove the dead from the riverbanks. It was from the time of this

late-ninth-century famine, then, that the government first granted them a sti

pend and put them to work disposing of the dead. However, since commoners in the capital and low-level officials in the headquarters of the Middle Palace

Guards (hyoefu) and the headquarters of the Inner Palace Guards (emonfu)

were also made to do some of this work, we can see that it was a task that was

not yet exclusive to the people of the hospices. The origins of the gradual sepa

ration of the people of the hospices from the communities of commoners to

work with the disposal of the dead and at funerals may be found during this

period. Nevertheless, since people from hospices were included in the family registers of commoners, it is not possible to directly link the early Heian hos

pices and the communities of discriminated groups that appeared later.

THE PROBLEM OF POLLUTION

l n I he tenth and eleventh centuries, it was impossible for the government and

its regional outposts to support the sick and orphaned. Moveover, by this time

"-yolo had outgrown the classic Chinese model of a capital-that is, one con

t.lining only the aristocr .. 11.y, burcaucralic officialdom, and the small number

11l llw111, 11111 v..,t 11 1i1c p11111,11) l l'k 11I 111051 nl 1 h,·111 Jlw tt•rrn rn11r1t·st111 fond lhe num• ,1wkw,1rtl 1,•11111/1 I,.,,.,,,,,,,, I)'"'' llnle I "hi, I I Ull'C 11l l'"'"hh• ,I( tlVlllt·, .1nd ,1 \ 1.-,lfl'I ,rn,t ul the p1t•k� �11,11,11 I Ill, lmuh, ,I 111•11 ,111 11111 1110.I, 111 11,,111111 ,,1 jllnSIIIHll1111

178 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

of merchants needed to support a market. Kyoto had become a full-scale city in

which all kinds of people lived. With this development, pollution became a se

rious problem for the city and particularly its leading citizens, the aristocracy. Determining the precise nature of pollution during this time is itself

a problem. I agree with Yamamoto Koji's notion that it was connected to

the fear and uncertainty that arose in human society when the state of bal ance between human beings and nature was disrupted or lost. While thnt

is a viable definition of pollution in general, the people of ancient society

distinguished among a wide variety of specific forms. For example, death

was considered a loss that caused death pollution (shie). At the opposite end

of human life, birth, which was also held to be a disruption of an existing state of balance, caused birth pollution (san'e). Pollution could also arise

from animals whose existence was closely tied to that of human beings, such

as dogs, horses, and cows. Pollution was not limited to purely biological conditions. Conflagra

tions, the grand expression of the power in fire that can escape the control

of human beings, gave rise to a form of pollution known as destruction by fire (shoboe). There was also a kind of pollution specific to the commission

of a crime (tsumie). Of course, murder was connected to death pollution, but even theft was considered a form of pollution. It was believed at the time

that objects themselves were closely tied to human beings, so the intentionnl

removal of a thing from its owner in the act of theft was believed to cause a particular kind of po!Jution. As I will discuss below, major changes made in

nature by human means, such as cutting down a large tree or moving a large stone, were seen as causing yet another kind of pollution.

People who entered a site that had been transformed by any of the above forms of pollution would become polluted and would have to seclude them

selves for a certain period while it was removed. Since the deities (kami) and

the emperor were seen as beings whose existence was affected by changes in nature, a serious crisis would ensue if the deities or the emperor became pol

luted.14 To be specific, if the emperor were polluted, vital religious and slak

14. Western readers may be prone to think of emperors in strictly political terms and deilic� ,1' 1101 subject to human conditions, which would make this passage difficult to understand. ln on1.11·111 Japan, the emperor was understood principally as an arahitogami (a deity personifie,1), ,rnd 1hr deities were understood to be spirits apart from humans but by no means omnipolenl. ·nw Jdt1,· resided principally in "the other world," a kind of parallel universe, but they also hod on i inp1irt,1111 impact in the tempornl world. The deities were parlicufo rly assuciJtcd with n,11u ,.,,, prnct·�W\ ,11111 as the growth of plants und 1hc !low of wind oml w.1tcr 'I he ,·n1pc.'1 or, ,1, .111 ,•111bnd1cd .l,·1t) 1, .,�

Fear and Loathing 179

u:remonies could not be conducted, and aU political activity would com.e to ,\ standstill. A state of imperial pollution actually occurred on occasion at

the end of the Heian period. While this kind of fear of pollution probably

goes back to the very earliest society of the Japanese archipelago, this nervous

,IVoidance of pollution grew to enormous proportions and became system

,tl ized in Kyoto, with its large, densely concentrated population.

TI1is anxiety stemmed from the belief that pollution could be commu nicated under certain circumstances even to the deities. For example, when

,1 case of birth or death pollution occurred in a closed space, such as one

surrounded by a fence and gate, the entire space became polluted. This state

1.an be called primary pollution. If someone entered that space not knowing 1 hat it was polluted and then returned to his or her home, that home would

,tlso become po11uted. 'lbis is a state of secondary pollution. If someone else then entered a space in a state of secondary pollution and then, unwittingly,

returned home, that home would also become polluted to the third degree.

I here was no fourth degree of pollution, but the first through the third were

di considered pollution in gradually diminishing levels. All levels required

purifying rituals, and a system for recognizing and dealing with communi lable pollution was developed by the government. Yet, interestingly enough,

pollution was not considered communicable in open spaces such as river

banks and roads. For example, one would not become polluted if one came

,11.ross a dead body lying on the riverbank. It may well be that the riverbanks became a funerary site for that reason.

THE EMERGENCE OF NONHUMANS AND THEIR LABOR

( 1roups labeled nonhuman first appear in historical documents at about the

�.1me time as this fear of communicable pollution began to spread among the ,1ristocracy of Kyoto. The title "chief of the nonhumans" appears in a docu-

111t·nl from the latter half of the eleventh century, so we can surmise that at

the primory intermediary between the world of the humans and the world oflhe deities. There for<.', his (or, occasionally, her) primary function was understood to be conducting the ceremonies nc,ehSar)' to 111ilinl,1111 1hc bal,1nce in the universe between the temporal world and the world oft he dc1tw,. As tlw l'''"I'"° "' tl1e time"'" It, hecoming polluted would prevent the emperor or the dei 111·, from p,, tu, 1111111\ 1h, ii, rul 1111 lunclion� und llrn� would result in nalural disasters. 'lhe do,e ,1,11t.1d nt th, 1111111<1, wltli tli�, 1111•,•ror ,·xpl,1in, why A111i11n di,,u,sc\ this J.s,1 particular p1obk111 !ill I lw ,111\111,1 " I

180 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

the time there were already groups that had their own independent organiza tions. The severely diseased and orphaned-who had formerly resided at the Buddhist hospices but now had to fend for themselves-were surely among these groups. As I noted earlier, these independent organizations were groups of people whose vocation-I choose to call it a vocation-was purifying pol luted spaces. Over time, they came to be called nonhuman (hinin).

Limiting our discussion to those who appear in historical documents, these nonhuman groups were particularly conspicuous in Kyoto and Nara. As provincial government headquarters, especially in western Japan, began to take on the appearance of towns around the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, nonhuman groups also began to show up in the regions. Since many kinds of people took part in purification work, it is impossible for us to treat them as a homogeneous group. I will therefore discuss them one at a time.

The most conspicuous of these professional purifying groups (the one documented in the greatest detail) were those people simply called nonhu mans. We have a fairly clear understanding of their life conditions from around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One of their main bases in Kyoto was on the hill leading up to Kiyomizu Temple, on the southeast side of the city, which came to be known as "The Quarters" (slwku). The same Chinese character (ffi) served for post towns in general, making it difficult to distin guish between the two in writing. However, in the Warring States period a new Chinese character (M) that was pronounced the same way was used to orthographically distinguish the bases of nonhumans from the other post towns. The quarters below Kiyomizu became known as "The Headquarters" (honshuku) where the chief of the non humans, who controlled not just the non humans of Kyoto but all those living throughout the Kinai region in com munities known as "outposts," resided. ts Another group of nonhumans, which appears to have been opposed to the Kiyomizu group, was headquar tered on the Nara Hill in Yamato Province. This latter group, known as the Kitayama Quarters, was a powerful association associated with the temple ot Kofukuji and Kasuga Shrine.16 It also controlled a series of nonhuman out posts scattered throughout the Kinai region.

15. Kinai refers specifically to the five provinces surrounding the .inc tent capttal, on the YamJto 1'1�111 Today, the Kinai region corresponds to parts of Osaka, Kyoto. NMJ, I lyul\11, .ind W,1k,1y,1111,1 Prcfoct u res.

16. ·1hl',l' were, rc,pcctively, a BmldhM temple and ,1 Shtnto .111111t 111 N"' 1 llul h "' It' .15"'' 1.1tnl wit I, tht· art\tocr au, I UJI\\U,1, l,1n

1�ear and Loathing 181

Each outpost also had its own leader. The word used for these leaders, chori, later became a generalized term of discrimination, just as the word used to differentiate nonhuman shuku from other post towns later became a derogatory lcrm. However, at the time the same term was generally used to designate the head of any group of people, such as the head of a temple. C our tesans, to take another example, were also characterized by a hierarchy based on seniority. The same kind of organization existed in Buddhist monks' as sociations and trade guilds. S o again, we find nonhumans working within a general, not a distinct, model.

While the Kitayama group was closely linked to Kofukuji, the non humans of Kiyornizu Hill were closely tied to the temple of Enryakuji and Gion Shrine. Among the latter were people who sold strings for archers' bows. In later eras, these people were called string sellers (tsurumeso), but at that time they appear in documents as inujinin. Their name is a result of the word dog (inu) added as a prefix to the term for shrine purveyor ( jinin). The group was composed of shrine purveyors at Gion Shrine and temple purveyors at the Shakyamuni Hall of Enryakuji. But inujinin were not restricted to these two sites. These two inujinin groups were simply the most famous. A close look at historical records shows that there were inujinin groups at shrines in other regions. It is clear, for example, that there were inujinin at Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura, a rare case for eastern Japan.

As far as we know, the work for these inujinin and non humans was pd marily concerned with funerals. Documents from the Muromachi period �how that the nonhumans of Kiyomizu Hill were in charge of the funerary biers upon which corpses were carried to the funeral grounds in Kyoto. As ,1 reward for their work, inujinin and nonhumans had the right to goods of kred to the deceased at funerals. If we recall the activities of the people of l he hospices during the early Heian period, we may surmise that non humans I ulfilled the function of purifying death pollution going back to the Heian period.

[n addition, these people also had the task of purifying other forms of pollution, such as that arising from crime and punishment. For example, • ,tpital punishment was carried out by released prisoners. Buildings that h,1d been polluted by the commission of a crime within their walls or by the \.Om mission or a u1mc by their owners were commonly torn down, and I lw, w,,., dom· b} 111111111111 I or Kyoto, the demolition was carried out by the K1)·11mi111 group I 111 l'S,1111pll I pil'turc suoll l.allcd Pictorial Glca11i11gs of

182 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Ancient Virtues (Shui kotoku den'e) depicts inujinin destroying the grave site of a holy man named Hemen during the government's suppression of Honen's Pure Land sect (

ig. 31).17 Documents from the Muromachi period show that riverside dwellers and

nonhumans were employed to deal with afterbirth. LS Young people these days know very little about afterbirth. Since most people are now born in a mater nity clinic, we do not have to worry about where to dispose of the afterbirth. But in an era when people were born at home, disposal was a significant problem. In Kyoto and most of western Japan, people were extremely concerned about

Figure 31. An inujinin destroying the Tomb ofH6nen, from Pictorial Gleanings of Ancir11f Virtues. Source: Shiii kotoku den'e, from the collection of Jofukuji. Photograph courtesy ol Bukkyo University.

17. Konen (1133-L212} was defrocked and banished from Kyoto for heresy (he advocated the excluqlVl' practice of nenbutsu, calling on Amida Buddha for salvation at the exclusion of all other Buddh"I prayers and practices). One of his disciples, Shinran (1173-1262), was also banished, anti �evc,,il others were executed. This marked the beginning of an extended government suppression ol th, Pure Land sects led by H6nen and Shinran. The campaign to suppress Pure I.and doclnnc, .uni praclitioners was propelled by many of the major Buddhist institutions, particularly Lhe T�nil,11 monastery on Mount Hiei. The scene Amino refers to in this picture scroll depicts a11 ep,�u,k In that suppression campaign that took place after 1-liinen's death (thus the destruction o1 ., ,m,,ll building at his grave).

18. Because these documents date from the Muroma�hi period, Amino c,111t i,111,I) nllle� 1 h,11 w,· ,t., 1u11 know how for back this custom d,Hes

Fear and Loathing 183

"birth" pollution. For example, during the Muromachi period, nonhumans Look the afterbirth of the shogun's family to distant mountains for buria].19

TI1ese examples serve to demonstrate that the "skilled labor" of these groups was the purification of various kinds of pollution.

FEAR OF SPECIAL POWERS

While these nonhuman groups were quite diverse, they shared the charac teristic of being unable to live as, and among, commoners. As stated ear lier, we know that the category of nonhumans came to include orphans, the handicapped, lepers, and other people who were unable to live normal lives. But it also appears that not all lepers had to enter these groups. In the lat ter part of the Kamakura period, it appears that one leader of a nonhuman organization forced lepers out of their homes and into his group. A priest of the Ritsu sect who had worked for the relief of nonhumans stopped this practice and forced the leader to vow to leave the decision to enter the group up to the individual.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the gravely sick or handicapped-in other words, those who were unable to move about freely-were frequently mcluded among the nonhumans. We know from such picture scrolls as The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen (Jppen hijirie) that these people begged for a living. Yet according to Buddhist thought in this era, begging was con ,l<lered a method of spiritual training for those who turned their backs on I he secular world. It was a widely held article of faith that donations to beg �Ms were equivalent to virtuous acts toward the Buddha. Nonhu.mans took to begging in this sense of a religious practice. But since begging also gener .ited income, it had to take place in a clearly marked area, just as commerce h.id Lo take place in the particular space of the marketplace (fig. 32). It seems likely that the leader of the non humans mentioned above tried to force lepers 11110 his group in order to increase the number of beggars and therefore the urga nization's income.

1 •1 I tlrnologisrs note a general difference between customs related to afterbirth in western and eastern J,tp.111. I II wc�tcrn fapon, induding Kyoto where the Muromachi shoguns resided, the afterbirth w,I\ 1.,1111C(I fa, (\\v.iy and buncd in lhc moun1ai ns where no one would come in contact with it. In r.1'l�tJ\ )llp,111, 1h,• .111,•rh1rth w,h cu,tom,lril)' buried in the entryway of the family home in the hd1d 111.11 till I n·.1111111-1 ut 111,111)' kt•I ,1uw,, the ,loorway would toughen the spiril of the children who" pl.1<1·111,,s 1,,•11! 11111 ll·,I 1111"

184 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 32. Beggars from The Plclure Scroll of the Holy Mnn Ippen. Source: lppen hijirie, from the collection of Shojokoji.

Inujinin and nonhumans were also involved in the performing arts.

For example, inujinin pulled and led the floats in the Gion Festival.20 Today, the Gion Festival features a number of very tall floats called mountain floats

(yamaboko ). But in ancient times, the procession of the Gion Festival probably

consisted of a series of tall poles upon which, it was believed, the gods would

descend from the heavens. We have very early images of released prisoners

carrying strange long poles with vines attached that are probably the pre cursors of the Gion floats. During the Muromachi period, the inujinin were

known to approach the emperor and give performances as part of a realm

purifying ceremony and a ritual prayer for the long 1 ife of the imperial da 11.

This custom continued until the Edo period. These examples point to the fat I

that nonhumans had important roles to play in the purification of the realm

and prayers for long life, which they f ulfilled through the performing arh.

It has commonly been believed that the use of the Chinese character fo,

dog (pronounced inu in Japanese) in inujinin, or the use of the prefix no11 (/,1) for nonhumans (hinin), reveals that these people were excluded and oslra

cized from the communities of commoners. From this, it has been suppost•d

20. 1he Gion Festival i, perhap� Kyoto', mo�l farnou� city festiv,,I 11 1,1ke, place 111 Jul} ,111J 111v11h<', 1 p.iradl' of huge llonts tha1 drdcs 1ht- down I own �(·t I ton ol lhl' ulv l lH" 11-,11v,tl is ,,smd,tll'd w11 It (,1011 Shrine, lllH' nl I he ,llmw, (11.11 /\11111111 ll"l'<',llnlly 1111 11H,111 H, 1111l,1111111g ., 1111111111 111 ft.ttllr,, t 1011 uf slir Im· pur Vi"\'nr�

Fear and Loathing L85

that nonhumans and inujinin constituted a society outside of society or a

status outside of the status system-in other words, outcastes. But consider

ing the actual conditions we just covered, it was not likely to have been that

simple. A somewhat different approach must be taken, beginning with the

recognition that the core of these nonhuman organizations was constituted

by commercial artisans and performers. Temple and shrine purveyors were

clearly given status within society, just as tradesmen were. Nonhumans became temple and shrine purveyors because of the social

fear of pollution and because nonhumans were seen as having the special

ability to purify people, places, and things. Fear of pollution at the time de

rived in part from a utilitarian problem: once a person came into contact

with communicable pollution, he or she would have to remain confined at

home for a long period of tin1e. Beyond that, fear of pollution was probably

tied to fear of the power of nature, a power that far exceeded that of human

beings.

In short, people at the time did not just avoid and despise pollution; they

feared it. They had similar feelings about those who had the power to purify

polluted sites, in other words, nonhumans. Because they performed a special function that went beyond the powers of a normal person, nonhumans were

accorded the special status of temple or shrine workers and recognized as direct servants of the native and Buddhist deities. This fear of and respect for

those linked to higher powers extended to beggars as well, for they were seen

.ts incarnations of Buddhist deities. As a result, disrespect toward beggars

was believed to result in divine punishment. This idea was first propagated

to support the spread of Buddhism, but it also contributed to the idea that

beggars had special abilities to purify scenes and states of pollution. In time,

l hese special powers became linked to a fear of their very persons. Finally,

r\.·turning to the question of social status, we should keep firmly in mind the

l,1ct that nonhwnans were seen, like other tradesmen, as temple and shrine purveyors. In other words, they were people with skills.

NONHUMANS IN THE SERVICE OF THE GODS

I he term 11011f111ma11 itself, the propensity for nonhumans to present them

Sl h c-; .is s!.lves of the gods, and !heir association with pollution, beggars, and

llw s1 .. k h.wc kd m,111} In, ll.,., nonlrnnrnns through a conlemporaq1 lens as hl1gmnl11l•d Hui 1111111111111-111, Ii.id p1 idl· in 1lwi1 spl•linl "kills. For \.'X,lmplc,

186 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

in a petition written in the thirteenth century, members of the Kitayama organization described themselves as "the nonhumans who have performed the weighty task of purifying the temples and the homes of the people." This

petition portrayed their "weighty task" not as a painful or burdensome job,

but as an extremely important one, which they insisted they had fulfilled

from ancient times as a sacred calling. W hen a shrine purveyor was murdered, for whatever reason, the site

where the body was found became that person's grave, and it would revert to

the control of the shrine to which he or she had been attached. Kasamatsu

Hiroshi has called this "the legal principle of graves."21 The principle con

formed to the logic of sacred possession: by the fact that the dead shrine

purveyor had been in service to a sacred entity, the place where he or she died

would itself become sacred, and the site would come under the jurisdiction of the gods. The same principle held true for inujinin. Moreover, in a peti

tion that presented this arg ument, a group of inujinin claimed that, like their

shrine purveyor adversaries in the particular lawsuit, they were important functionaries of the monastery on Mount Hiei. This is probably the same

kind of claim as that made by the nonhumans mentioned above. The gist of the suit was that since they performed essential services, they should lw

entitled to the same rights as the shrine purveyors.

Of course, the problem remains as to why the inujinin had the char

acter for dog as a prefix to their status name. This term probably did not suggest a lower, or bestial, order of humanity, as it might today. Rather, it

indicated a certain distinction from other sacred workers. 1hat differenc �

notwithstanding, it is significant for OLLI' understanding of the history of db

crimination in Japan that nonhumans and inujinin considered themselves 111

be the same as other sacred workers and pressed this claim in lawsuits. It Lhu,

appears that inujinin and nonhumans were incorporated within the sysLc111

of shrine, temple, and imperial purveyors that functioned from the Hei.111 through the Kamakura periods.

In addition to being attached to specific temples or shrines, nonbum,111�

and inujinin were associated with a section of the bureaucracy directly , r

lated to the emperor, the imperial police (kebiishi). For example, the stm:ti; ul

Kyoto had to be cleaned whenever the emperor left his palace or in Lhe CVl'III

of festivals since the emperor and the native deities were exlrcmcly ,lVl'I ,.,

21. Kasama1su Hiroshi. 116 to koto/111 110 d1us1•is/ii (Law .,nd l n11gung<' ill M,·,li,•v.d r,,,•.111) ('J11�y11 I lc,bon�hn I !!11-1)

Fear and Loathing 187

to pollution. At times, the residents of Kyoto would be mobilized for Lhci;e tasks, but usually the nonhumans under the control of the imperial police

would do the cleaning. The Imperial Police Agency was, like the emperor's

Private Office (kurododokoro), part of the bureaucracy in direct service to

the emperor, and it functioned as a police force within the capital city alone.

During the Muromachi period, the courtesans of Kyoto came under the ju risdiction of the imperial police, but, as Niunoya Tetsuichi has clearly shown,

nonhumans had been placed under the supervision and control of the impe

rial police at an even earlier date.

Taking al L of this into consideration, we can see that it is a mistake to view

non humans prior to the fourteenth century as having been subject to the same kind of discrimination as the outcastes of the Edo period. Nonhumans were,

like shrine and temple purveyors, clearly distinct from the general classes of commoners. They were also quite different from the indentured and enslaved

classes in the quotidian world. They were sanctified as "slaves" of the Buddhist

,rnd native deities and thus were understood as existing within the realm of

the sacred, for which they were feared and respected. It is true that it was

thei r association with the particular problem of pollution that distinguished them from other sacred purveyors. But their ability to purify scenes and sites

of pollution can be understood as the socially necessary skill that situated

I hem as a class with in the broad category of tradesmen.

PEOPLE OF THE RIVERSIDE

111storical records also reveal a group of people who may be classified as

111>nhumans in the broad sense, although they differed from those I have

,lrscussed so far. This group was known as riverside dwellers (kawaramono).

on humans in the narrow sense, such as inujinin, wore a special white facial

• 1,1p and persimmon-colored robes, which made them look like monks. In

11 t, sometimes nonhumans have been named in historical documents as

, 1t•ndicant priests. However, the people who appear in historical documents

11vcrside dwellers had the same kind of personal names as commoners,

1111 I Ike Lhe monklike nonhumans.

We do not know when and under what circumstances riverside dwellers llm to be known ns such, nor do we know what tasks they performed. We

� 11,1\\ l.Ompar,llin-1) l,11 rnorc ,1bout Lhe non humans. However, one late Heian

1 1 dol''- -.1.1ll' 1h.11 ,,,,., 1ch· 1hvdl1•r-; t.•xt,aclcd a valuable medicine from the

188 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

intestines of cattle, so we may surmise that they were involved with the disposal

of domesticated animals. One likely origin for this group was the people em

ployed by the falcon handlers of the Office of Imperial Fa lcons to gather food

for the birds. Overall, there are few references to riverside dwellers in historical

documents. However, we have been able to confirm the existence of a group

of riverside artisans, in the early years of the Northern and Southern Courts

period, that was organized under a leader attached to Gion Shrine. These

people are reported to have made a kind of footwear called uranashi (heel

less sandals). Since the people who provided uranashi at the temple of Daigoji

and Kita.no Shrine were also called kiyome (purifiers), it may be that riverside

dwellers were also known as purifiers and had formed their own groups inde

pendent of the nonhumans. Tf they were involved in the disposal of cattle and

other animals, then it is likely that they dissected the bodies and worked the

hides of sacred horses and cattle22 on the riverbanks. To put it in terms of the

nonhurnans we have discussed so far, one of thfa group's skills was undoubt

edly the purification of pollution arising from the death of horses and cattle.

But the work of the riverside dwellers did not end there. We know that

in the Northern and Southern Courts period they also took part in such con

struction projects as well digging and the moving of large boulders and trees.

These tasks also fall within the purview of the problem of pollution. Since

the peo ple of the time viewed any major changes to nature as momentous

acts, such changes aroused a certain fear. Thus, for example, it appears that

there were magical ceremonies requiring a diviner that had to be performed

when a well was dtlg. The same was true whenever a large tree or boulder was

moved. Riverside dwellers probably took part in such work from early on. ll

is well known that they constructed gardens during the Muromachi period,

producing such exceptional artisans as the noted garden designer Zen'ami.21

In addition, riverside dwellers were called in to repair or dig new wells. Whik

we are only able to confirm their participation in such projects dating from

tbe Northern and Southern Courts period, its seems likely that their involve

ment began well before the Kamakura period.

Again, the paucity of materials makes it uncertain, but it seems th,11

riverside dwellers were organized under a leader, attached to certain temples

and shrines, and given the same kind of status as other trade groups. ln othc,

words, they were also in direct service to the Buddhas and deities. ln fact, in

22. '1 hese woL1ld be horse� Jnd cattle owned by ,h I inc, .,ml k111pk, und 11'1 ,I 111 1 ,·h111,111, ,1°1t•111onk 2.1 Zen t\ll\1 ( 1.393 ?) wa, a famous dcs111nt1 ol I lw t.lur,1111,1, hi I" 1 ind I 11,m II l,u ,lc�IJ,1t1ln11 Mil h J,1,11

dcn, ,1, tla 1111 y,1k�11 .11 Soko�ltll Ill l<)'utn

Fear and Loathing 189

the middle of the Kamakura period the riverside dwellers' group at Kita.no

Shrine referred to itself as inujinin.

One of our pieces of do cumentary evidence concerning riverside

dwellers is a petition dated 1307 at Kita.no Shrine submitted by a "river

side dweller" named Rokurodan. What is of note in this petition (which was

probably submitted to Kita.no Shrine) is that this man, who would later be

ca lied a riverside dweller and a mendicant, referred to himself as "an honor

able purifier." The use of the honorific in this do cument is in deference to

Kita.no Shrine, but it also recalls the dignity the nonhumans claimed in the

lawsuit discussed above.

This reinforces my contention that nonhumans (in a broad sense)

viewed their functions as extremely important. It is also clear that non

humans, riverside dwellers, and purifiers were able to act as plaintiffs in liti

gation at judicial facilities within temples and shrines. Since they were willing

to press their claims in formal procedures at socially recognized institu

tions, I do not believe we can view them as constituting a society outside of

society or of holding a status outside of the status system. Rather, we should

see them as tradesmen with a particular skill and a professional esprit.

RELEASED PRISONERS

fhe ho men constituted yet another group that differed from non humans and

riverside dwellers but might still be included in the broad category of non

humans. Homen refers to people who had been released from prison. Their

penal origin is also recognizable in their alternative name, chakuda, which

r cfers to the leg irons they had worn. In other words, they were people who

had committed some crime and after release from prison were assigned to

work u oder the direction of the imperial pol ice.

We have solid evidence concerning this group's existence from the elev

l'Olh cent ury. It is also clear from the tales collected in Konjaku monogatari24

lhal they participated in the capture, punishment, execution, and crema-

1 ion of criminals. However, these people had official titles assigned by the

21 K1111}11k11 mu11a>:11t,11t ,/111 h II rnll1"< t Ion of approximately onl.' thousand �hor1 talcs, many of which ill'picl llw ,pr1•11d ol Huildlmm 111 lup,rn lls rxnct date of' compilation I� unknown, ,11ihu1111h 111,u 1,111 l I y tlu 11.1111l.11,u uJ �1�1} lw,, 111 1h1· 1.,le, into r.nglish, s(.'ls 1hr C!arly twrlhh u·nt1111 '" ,, llkl'lv tl.11<• ._,.,. /11/, J ,,f I 1111,•, Nt1u /',111, It ,Ills, M,1rl,111 \ lry (lkrkdt•)' Un11t•1s1t y ul < ,1ltltt1111,1 111 1'"• 1'1''1), 11p1111l11I Ill tlu � 11, M1d11gu11 I l,1��11• Ill j,1p,1111'\I' !'tlttdtr\, 1111 11 (An11 \il1111 ( !"llhl "'' 1••1'•111• I M11,h, 1111 l 1111,1 11y111 M1d11g.111, 1•1 11\),

190 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Imperial Police Agency such as Prison Guard of the Left and Prison Guard of

the Right. By the late Kamakura period, they had organized themselves into

something like a g uild-known as the Servants of the Four Posts in reference

to the four guard offices under the imperial police-with their own system

of leadership. Since the Imperial Police Agency was directly answerable to

the emperor, we can situate released prisoners as yet another group in direct

service to a sacred being.

The actual appearance of this group is portrayed most clearly in The

Pictorial Biography of the Holy Man Hemen. In the scene in which the monk

Anraku is beheaded on the banks of the Kamo River near Sixth Avenue in

Kyoto, they are the heavily bearded men holding long halberds and standing behind the police officers (fig. 33). We cannot tell what kind of hairstyle they

had, but I believe their hair was not bound up in a topknot. In this scene, they are not wearing folded eboshi hats but completely cover their hair in standing

eboshi hats, and they are quite lavishly dressed. They were undoubtedly the

men who beheaded the prisoners.

Released prisoners also carried out punishments such as the destruction

of houses (as did the inujinin) and participated in the capture of criminals.

In other words, their work was probably comparable to that of detectives

during the Edo period. Moreover, they participated in the procession at the

Kamo Festival, carrying their halberds and wearing their gaudy clothing.

Their clothing got so outlandish at this festival that it eventually became an

issue that had to be addressed in the laws for aristocratic households (which

employed them). In any case, in fulfilling all of these functions their tasks

closely resembled those of the inujinin.

Interestingly enough, during the Northern and Southern Courts period

the homen were given allotments of indigo taxes as a salary (this practicl'

probably goes back to the Kamakura period). They received the materials

for indigo dye from wholesalers. During the Edo period, indigo dyers were ,, stigmatized group. This later discrimination appears to have been con nectcd

to the homen in some way.

PEOPLE WITH CHILDREN'S NAMES

Although we do not know many individual nonhumans' names, rivcr1,kk

dwellers and many comparable nonhumans (that i<i, all l'xrcpt those wlw

Fear and Loathing 191

Figure 33. Released prisoners (homen), with heavy beards, behind imperial policemen ( kt>biishi), from The Pictorial Biography of the Holy Man Hiinen. Source: Hon en shonin den'e, I rom the collection of Chion'in. Photograph courtesy of Kyoto National Museum.

dressed like monks) generally had the suffix maru attached to their names.

l'hc same is true, without exception, for all the released prisoners whose

names we have been able to identify. In the late Heian period, when released

prisoners were still generically called "leg-ironed," we know, for example,

of a Kuroyu-maru. We also know of an important executive officer in the

I l'l�ased prisoner organization of the Kamakura period named Kunirnatsu-

111aru. And we have records from the Northern and Southern Courts pe-

110d of released prisoners named Teimatsu-maru, Yoshimitsu-maru, and

l llkosulo ma, u

192 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

What makes this so striking is that maru was also a suffix used for chil

dren's names.25 Most Japanese today know that maru was used in children's

names, but released prisoners in ancient times had maru appended to their

names even as adults. This suggests the need for a deeper level of social in

vestigation. There are other examples of adults with children's suffixes in the

medieval period, but the resemblance to children did not stop with names.

Adults who bore children's names also took on the physical appearance of

children, most notably in their hairstyles.

The best-known example of that is cow herders (fig. 34). According to a

document from 1035, cow herders inevitably had children's names, such as

Kota-maru and Takiyu-maru, and were known collectively as "cow-herding

children" (ushikai-warawa). Whenever they appear in picture scrolls, they

are shown with their hair grown long and bound in a ponytail, like children,

rather than in a topknot. Their one distinction from children was their oc

casional facial hair.

Figure 34. A cow herder child (ushikai warawa), from Pictures and Poems of Ban Dni11,1gr111 Source: Ban Dainagon ekotoba, from the collection ofldemitsu Museum.

25. People in lhe Japanese islanJ, commonly had ,cv.-r,1I 11,11111•\ ln I lu• dilli 11•111 ,1,1w·, ul lhl'II I 1,,, 'lhl·sc could i.:orrc�po11d to ugc. occu1i.11ion,1I 1,111 l.1111il1 ,� 11\1Jf11111&, ,rl1M1• wn,h 1111d "' ,.,, C hi11l11•11\ n.1111,·, would lht•1<'h11t· h1• l1111u.-,1i,tlt 11· 1.I, 111111 ,hi,

Fear and Loathing 193

In contrast, adult commoner males of the time bound their hair in the

topknot (motodori) style and covered their heads with an orieboshi cap. To

have one's topknot cut and one's hair flowing free was equivalent to being

stripped of one's status as an adult commoner. In fact, cutting off the topknot

was a form of punishment that was considered deeply humiliating. However,

adult cow herders are portrayed without a topknot, with their hair in a long,

loose ponytail in childish fashion. While it is not clear from the picture scrolls,

released prisoners do not seem to have worn their hair in a topknot either.

A similar group of people living to the north of Kyoto, called Yase chil

dren (yase-doji), carried the palanquins and coffins of the aristocracy. The

Yase children were in the public eye again as recently as 1925, when there

was a dispute between the army and the navy over which branch would bear

the coffin of Emperor Taisho at his funeral. In the end, the descendants of

the Yase-children were called from Kyoto to carry the imperial casket.26 This

group possesses an ext remely long history, appearing in historical records as

early as the latter half of the eleventh century. Accordjng to these documents,

the Yase children originally produced charcoal for the temple of Sh6renji.

But, what concerns us here is that all the people who appear in this docu

ment have the maru suffix to their name. We do not know what they looked

like, but since they were called Yase children in the Northern and Southern

Courts period, it seems likely that they, too, had the appearance of children.

'I here is also a legend that they descended from demons, which adds further

fuel to my contention that they should be included within the category of

10nhumans in medieval society.

The childish appearance ofYase children can be explained along similar

hoes as the appearance of released prisoners and riverside dwellers. That is,

,ti I three groups had contact with the sacred realm or pollution, particularly

death pollution. But we are still left with the problem of why cow herders also

had children's names. They were neither strictly confined to sacred service

nor apparently involved in purification. It seems to me that the answer lies in

I he way medieval society viewed these animals. In later eras, horses and cows

wc.:re derogatorily called "beasts" and "four-legged" because their unenviable

lot in life was to toil for humans. But there is evidence that the view of these

i.:n.·atures prior to the medieval era was considerably different.

t, n ... ,pit<' the 11,1111(·, ,1ll 111' limn were adults. and (as n sign 1hnt they had long since stopped ploying tlm rnk) 111<·1,· v., 1 11111111r, th.1111,cy h,1d been nl'n•ous,,hout dropping the hcavycnllin I hey ,ilso p,1111, 1p.,1, .I 111 I In lu 11t1 11 I'"" 1 ,'Ion ol 1.mpt'ror Show.; in I 'lllll.

194 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Depictions of cows in ancient picture scrolls all show animals with ter

rifying faces. TI1ey are painted with glaring eyes, often charging, brandishing their horns, and dragging their herders behind them. In the picture scrolls,

cows do not appear to be gentle creatures. This suggests that the dominant

social image of cows was that they were nearly wild and not easily controlled

by humans. While the same can be said for horses, horse drivers are not as well

documented as cow herders. Horse drivers appear in Heian period documents

and are fairly well understood in the Muromachi period. There is a documen

tary gap, however, during the Kamakura. Since we know that cart drivers were

also cow herders, it seems certain that horse drivers were also affiliated with

the stables of the imperial family or the Fujiwara regents. We also know that

they were occasionally called imperial stable purveyors (miumaya yoriudo). Insofar as they appear in picture scrolls, the styles of those who attended

horses are fairly distinctive. For example, there are pictures of boys galloping

on horses, with their ponytails flapping in the wind. As above, their appearance

and hairstyles were different from those of the common people because they

fulfilled similar functions to those of inujinin. The association with animals and children receives further support from the fact that cormorant :fishers also

let their hair flow free, and monkey trainers had the appearance of children.

The thread that ties all of these examples together is the medieval view

that wild or nearly wild animals possessed powers exceeding those of hu

mans. Those people who dealt with such animals were seen as having special

powers unavailable to common people. This view likely extended to the ac

tivities of those riverside dwellers and purifiers who dealt with the carcasses

of horses and cows. Quite unlike the view in later eras of animals as four

legged beasts, people of the ancient and early medieval eras saw them as hav

ing an existence that exceeded that of hwnans. Even if we cannot quite ca II

them "sacred beasts," to slaughter these animals was to risk the punishment

of the Buddha. Thus, riverside dwellers who were able to deal with anim.al

carcasses safely were understood to be able to do so because they were sancti

fied, because they existed on the edge of the sacred realm.

FROM SANCTIFICATION TO LOATHING

Let us return for a moment to the problem of children's names. The suffix

maru was attached to the names of many things lwsidl·, hu1m1ns. I l,1wk, an<l dogs were given names with 11u1rtt, ai-. Wl't1.· ,1111\ 111.1111101 .rnd ll1.·l11wh

Fear and Loathing 195

Musical instruments such as flutes, reeds, and flageolets were given names

with the maru suffix, as were boats. In short, all kinds of things were called "something-maru." Why this was so is still a matter of debate. There are

some who say that maru was used to name beloved things. Others argue that people whose name carried that suffix were slaves or servants. But these

seem like insufficient explanations to me.

Rather, I believe we need to take note of how these things called maru existed on the border of the sacred and profane worlds. Hawks and dogs, be

cause they were used in hunting, were certainly seen as existing on the border.

At the time, the world of sound was thought to be connected to the deities;

sound called them forth and pleased them. Musical instr uments were clearly

a way of mediating between the sacred world of the deities and the profane

world of humanity. The same may be said for boats. People risked their lives

when they went out onto the ocean, so it is understandable that they would

want to give ships some kind of magical power. The same was true for the

swords and armor, to which soldiers entrusted their lives on the battlefield.

The fact that these various items were given children's names is inti

mately related to the society's view of children themselves. In short, children

were believed to exist on the border between the sacred and the profane. In

fact, near the end of the Heian period, records indicate that the accusation of

a child was sufficient cause for arrest by the imperial police.27 The common

saying that "until the age of seven a child is with the gods" gives us a clue

to the reason why children were presumed to be inherently truthful. That

1c;, whatever children said was taken as an expression of the will of the dei

ties. I believe that the custom of giving certain adults, objects, and animals

1.hildren's names is related to this belief in the borderline existence of various

dasses of beings and objects. Thus, until the early part of the medieval era,

.inything with a child's name was considered at least partially sacred.

The discriminatory word eta (greatly polluted) first appeared in a picture scroll from the latter half of the thirteenth century, the Tengu soshi cn,e Picture Book of Goblins). 28 Toe eta in the scroll is also called a child and ts drawn with freeflowing hair. The eta child is also shown killing a bird on a riverbank (fig. 35). The scroll's text states that the bird is a goblin (tengu) that

J.7, An ,•xa111plc oft hi, 111,1y he found in 77,e Tale of rl,e Helke, where it is reported that Taira no Klyo- 111on r,·1.11,wd ,1 tiuop of young boy� employed as spie, in Kyoto. Whal made them effective, .1nnrd "'II 1,1 i\ 11111,u "·" not \1111ply lhc1 r ability to slip into ploces unnoticed, but the presumed t111thl11l111 I 111 thdr al.11, 1111111,

211 /-111 "the wu"I 11 , d lu I, h 111t, 11111, .1Jli'\ th.11 1, prnl1.1hly moM l,1rnil1a1 tn 11011 J,1r,1111:,c

196 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 35. Eta boy killing a bird, from 17rn Picture Book of Goblins. Source: Tengu s6sh,, privately owned. Photograph courtesy of Chtiokoron-Shinsha, lnc.

had taken the form of a kite, and that the eta child had captured and kille<l

the bird with bait. The text further describes esoteric Buddhist incantatiom

and "eta disembowlers" as things that are terrifying to goblins. As stated ear

lier, riverside dwellers were known for removing the entrails of cows, so thi!>

may have been a specific reference to them. Thus, riverside dwellers, or eln,

were presented as having the power to exorcise goblins. This power of non humans in general deserves special attention.

I must reiterate that this is the earliest appearance in writing of a dis

criminatory word (eta meaning "greatly polluted") in reference to thcsv

people. The scroll was produced sometime in the 1290s, marking the early

stages of a shift toward the use of a clearly discriminatory appellation fo1

nonhumans and riverside dwellers. A dictionary of ancient terms complkd

in the latter half of the Kamakura period explains that "purifiers are calk·d

eta" because "eta" is a slurred pronunciation of etori, meaning "procurt•r, ol

food for animals." The entry ends by noting that "they are evil pl·opk who,1

Fear and Loathing 197

bodies are polluted from killing and selling animals." This clearly reveals a

trend within society toward stigmatizing nonhumans and riverside dwellers.

There are many debates as to why this shift occurred, but I believe it

had to do with a change in views concerning pollution around this time. The

fear of pollution that had held sway in earlier eras began to dissipate. In its

place, there grew an aversion to pollution as simple filth. I believe th.is shift

was the result of changes ½rithin Japanese society in the relationship between

humans and nature. As people began to see nature more clearly, the fear of

pollution diminished. Accordingly, those who dealt with pollution also lost

their claim to special skills. The fear with which they had been regarded was

superseded by loathing.

However, the transformation was quite complex. The end of the thir

teenth century was an era of great intellectual tension over the question of

how to view "evil" and pollution (as well as the nonhumans, women, and

others most closely related to pollution). W hile the tendency to despise, de

base, and reject "greatly polluted" people as evil represented one end of the

spectrum, there was also a counter claim that those associated with pollu

tion, such as nonhumans and women, could be saved through the power

of the Buddhas. The Buddhist priest Shinran claimed in a famous dictum

that "if a good man may be saved, how much more so an evil one." That is,

Shinran held that it was the very people associated with pollution who were

most representative of the human condition.

Ao intensely strained relationship between these two trends developed

in the late thirteenth and early four teenth centuries. We can get a good sense

of that tension by examining the contrast between The Picture Book of Gob

lins and The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen, which were produced at

,1bout the same time.

THEMES IN THE PICTURE SCROLL OF THE HOLY MAN IPPEN

I fie Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen is famous for its depiction of an un

usually large number of nonhumans and beggars in contrast to other scrolls

ol its lime. There is a later Illustrated Biography of the Holy Man Ippen (Ippen

shc111i11 ekotobaden), from the Northern and Southern Courts period, that

idso shows many beggars and nonhumans, but they are drawn in a stereo

l )'pH:.,11 and unanim.111:d t,1shion. In contrast, the beggars and nonhumans in

198 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

the picture scroll are each drawn individually, more true to life than in any

other extant scrolls, even including beggars who moved around in wheeled

huts and some who walked in wooden clogs on their hands (fig. 36).29

To date, discussions of this scroll have focused on the beggars, non

humans, and inujinin, identifiable by the cloth covering their faces. But if

we look at the scroJI more closely, we will also find a considerable number of

people who appear to have been closely related to nonhumans and beggars,

including many who look like children, without the familiar eboshi hat, their hair flowing freely or tied in a pony tail. When we broaden our examination

of The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen to include these childlike figures,

hitherto unnoticed details begin to reveal themselves.

Turning first to a portion near the end of the scroll, two scenes imme

diately preceding the final image of Ippen's memorial chapel are shown in

figures 37 and 38. Figure 37 shows the same scene, not from the best-known

copy of the scroll (from Shojokoji), but from an unusual, sketched copy (in

the collection of Miedo). The two are very similar, but they differ in some im

portant respects. Both show that after Ippen's death some inujinin (again, the

ones with their faces covered with cloth wraps) attempted to follow him into

the afterlife by drowing themselves. In figure 39, there are two monks from

lppen's sect, Jishu, flanked on the left and the right by two inujinin who arc

watching two others move off into the water. I think it is very significant that

the final scene of this scroll shows nonhumans (here inujinin) attempting to

Figure 36. People moving on a cart with a hut, from 771e Picture Scroll of the Holy Mn11 lpf!, 11, Source: Ippen hijirie, from the collection ofShojokoji.

29. In the nrigin�I /opancsc, Amino points out 1ha1 the I�I1cr 1yp1: of lwg�.11· w,1s r�p111kdly ..-, n 111 OsJk,1 t11111I rd,1tivcly recently.

,:.

I 1gurc \7. /\ 1111111!-; 1111111· J1 M·, l ,1lll'mpl1ng l.o drown, from The Picture Scroll o.fthe Holy M1111 IJ•/•1·11 Sm1H ,. f/'/'t 11 /111111,, t,rn11 tlw u1lll·dio11 of Sh6jok6ji.

Figure 38. An inujinin attempting to drown and two inujinin watching, from 7/w />i<1111t' Scroll o

the Holy Man Ippen. Source: Tppe11 hijirie, from the collection ofShojokoji.

Fear and Loathing 201

Hgure 39. An i1tujinin attempting to drown and two inujinin watching, from The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ip pen. Source: Ippen hijirie (Miedo-bon), from the collection ofZaidan llojin Maeda lkutoku-kal.

follow Ippen into the other world. This final scene offers the key as to why the

scroll depicts so many beggars and nonhumans.

Let us shift to the scene oflppen's dying hour, which takes place just be

fore the scene discussed above (see fig. 40). Ippen is lying on his deathbed on

the left. We can clearly see three inujinin among the many people who have

,ome to pay their respects. In the Mied6 sketched version of this scene, there

are five inujinin, one of whom is crying. Note as well that next to the three

,nujinin there is a man with a ponytail and beard. We have no idea what kind

of man he is, but I believe he has some relationship with the inujinin. The

k.amakura era dictionary referred to earHer claims that the "greatly polluted"

lannot go about among the common people. But in this scene those inujinin

who were later to be labeled "greatly polluted" have come along with many

, ommoners to witness Ippen's passing.

Figure 41 also shows many people who have come to witness Ippen's fi

nal hour. I believe that all of them belong to a group like the nonhumans. The

man with some kind of scroll attached to his umbrella is said to be an etoki

(,1 Buddist layman who delivers popular sermons using pictures). The man in

the lead has a topknot, so it is unlikely he is a non human. But the others, such

,t'i I he one carrying the basket or the one wearing a headband, are probably

Imm some kind of nonhuman group.

Figure '12 11hmvs tlw scene immediately preceding that shown in fig

llll' 110: tht· Ml'lll' crl l1 11w11\ fin.ii 1,cnnon. lppcn is lecturing on the left, while

202 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 40. Three i11ujinin at the deathbed oflppen, from The Picture Scroll of the Holy Mr111 lppen. Source: lppen hijirie, from the collection ofSh6j6k6ji.

the people shown in the figure are located in the far right corner. The thrct·

inujinin shown on the bottom may be the same three that appear in the nexl

scene. Considering the continuity of the tale form, this seems likely.

The upper half of figure 42 shows a number of characters, who are usu

aUy taken to be beggars and nonbumans, encamped immediately outside t lw

grounds of a shrine. One among these has an extremely large nose, is holding

a rounded fan, and has something strange hanging from his waisl. There u rt·

also some people with pony tails or headbands, and on the far left are wh,11

appear to be beggars in small huts. While there are many things of note iii

this picture, we should observe in particular that the three inujini11 arc focing

lppen and listening to his sermon with looks of true concern. Yet these thH·t•

are not standing among the rest of the people listening to the sermon.

Taking these five scenes into consideration and following them in till'

order of the scroll (from figs. 37 to 42), we can sec that the p,lltllt·r h.1s

dcpickd .in t'motinr1.1I dr.1111.1. 'I he 11111i1J1i11 who h.1w lollmwd lppt·n ,1•,

Figure 41. A crowd gathering at the deathbed of lppen, from The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen. Source: Ippen hijirie, from the collection ofSh6j6k6ji.

l ll{Ull' 12. I h111• 111111111111 ,111.I a g1nup uf nonhum,rns nnd beggars, from 7111' Pu t11rc 'icm/11�/ 1/11• / foil- \l,111 I/'/'• 11 S11111u IJ•/•• 11 /11//111 I llllll till' l.Oilcttion ol Sh1i1nk1)j1.

2(),1 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

he nears death still show signs of restraint by staying outside the ground,

during his final sermon. But upon his death they give up that restraint and enter the grounds to mix with the peopJe and see Ippen off to Paradise. l 11

the end, one among them is so distraught at the loss that he attempts 111

follow Ippen into the other world by drowning himself. In other words, tilt·

painter of the scroll shows in a number of frames the emotional story ol how the inujinin bound themselves to Ippen and followed him everywhc1r.

including into the afterlife.

VIEWING THE PAST IN PICTURE SCROLLS

Of course, this is not the only theme of The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man

lppen, but it can be considered one of the most important I believe that 0111'

of the goals of the painter of this scroll was to convey Ippen's efforts to san the nonhumans. It is for that very reason that the painter so persistenlh

depicted nonbumans in a variety of guises. When we go back through lhl· scroll from this perspective, anticipating the climax, we can catch a mm1lwi

of things that have rarely been noticed before.

Figure 43 is a detail from a scene in Ippen's final journey in which lw

performs a memorial service at the shrine to Sugawara no Michizane in the·

town of Shizuke on Awaji Island. It clearly shows Ippen preaching his dol

trine to people who are undoubtedly nonhumans, suggesting that his lll'I t

intentionally proselytized among them.

Figure 44, a detail from the same scene, shows the exterior of the gdlt·

to the shrine. Immediately inside are two inujinin and a number of begg.11,

in lean-tos. While it is difficult to determine the exact character of the perM111

we see running toward the gate, it is clear that these nonhumans kept thl•111

selves on the periphery oflppen's group in the position of observers.

When we take into consideration the cumulative effect of the dirn 1 proselytizing to nonhumans in figure 43, the position of the nonbumani- 111

figure 44 relative to Ippen (similar to that in the scene oflppen's final sermon.

i.e., outside the gate), and the scene depicting Ippen's final sermon, it is 1111

possible to argue that the nonhumans depicted in the scroJI ha<l no con1wl

tion to Ip pen and his followers. 1t makes far more sense to view then, and t hi' beggars as followers oflppen.

Lel us go back to an even earlier point in the scnlll: to Lhl.' st.cm· .11

lchinomiya Shrine of Mimus,1kn. �hown in figun· l'i 'I Iii, 'll'l1l' dqiil h ,1

Fear and Loathing 205

I 1gure 43. Jishu mon_k proselytizing to the non humans, from The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ip pen. S ource: Ippen hijirie, from lhe collection of Shojokoji.

visit to the shrine by Ippen and his followers. The text of the scroll notes

h,1t Ippen directed those "polluted ones" in attendance to build a structure

nutside the shrine grounds. It also records that "at this time, the nonhumans l'mained outside the gate, while the holy man and his followers entered

he shrine." The structure he ordered built was a shed for the performance

11 the nenbutsu, although it does not appear in the picture. The reference

, , nonhumans outside the gate is to the nonhumans and beggars who are

lH'ding a temporary shelter in the top right-hand corner. I Jowever, we should also take care to observe the two people sitting be

ll It· the gate, one with free-flowing hair and an umbrella and the other with lwadband. Some feel that the one on the right is a woman because of the

lngh stilted wootkn ... andals, but I believe it is a man. These two appeared in

Figure 44. Two inujinin under the shrine gate and beggars, from The Picture Scroll of till Holy Man Tppe11. Source: lppen hijirle, from the collection ofSb6j6k6ji.

Figure 15. A rnnn �it ling next to a two :.lory g,llc .ii lch1m11111y,1 Shr111�· nl M1111,1\,1k,1, 1111111 lit, /1/c 111/c' "' w/1 "' t/1,· /111/l'll-l,111 /l'Jl<'II '>Uutll.'· lpf11'll l1tji1tt', r, 0111 th, I 1)111•1.11111111(Slill111l •IJI

Fear and Loathing 207

an earlier scene, and they are probably either nonhumans or closely related to

them. Since these people are outside the gate, the one with the unbound hair

and high geta is probably of that general category of people who appeared in

childish guise.

At first glance, the figure of Ippen and his followers inside the shrine

appears to be unrelated to the nonhumans outside the gate. But when we

take into account the text, particularly its emphasis on "at this time," it seems

likely that the nonhumans are waiting outside at Ippen's request. The phrase

"at this time" suggests that these procedures were exceptional. Unlike their

usual practice at Mimasaka, in which nonhumans traveled everywhere with

the holy man and his followers, Ippen appears to have responded to some lo

cal concern, departed from the usual custom, and asked the nonhumans to

wait outside. Backing up further into the scroll, we come upon a scene in which

Ippen and his followers give alms at Jimokuji in Owari, shown in figures 46,

47, and 48. Jimokuji is a famous temple that even now preserves an image

of this event. According to the text of the scroll, Ippen began a service here that lasted seven days. In the course of this service, his monks "so exhausted

themselves that each paled with the effort." In other words, they ran out of food, sapped their strength, and found themselves unable to continue. At the

time, there happened to be two wealthy people, called "wor thy men,, in the

text, staying in a nearby inn. According to the legend, the deity Bishamon

appeared to them in a dream and commanded them to give offerings to

Ippen. When the two went immediately to give alms, the text records that

Bishamon's statue in the temple miraculously moved. Again, figures 46, 47, and 48 show portions of this scene, with fig

ure 47 being an enlargement of a portion of figure 48. The entire scene shows

a hedge on the right side, which surrounds the temple. Beside the hedge

stands an inujinin holding a medium-length staff positioned at the head of

a number of nonhumans as if he is guarding the fence (:fig. 46). To the left of this scene (which does not appear in the figure) some people are carrying

J Chinese casket filled with food to be used for alms. They are walking to

ward the entrance gate to the temple on the left. There are also depictions

of women carrying boxes and buckets of food on their heads. The people in

llgt1re 47 can be seen walldng in the garden between the gate, the bell tower,

,tnd Lhe main hall. There are three people walking proudly, one with hair

in a simple ponytail, dressed as a child, wearing high geta, and carrying a

wund fan. '1 lw l wo olhtrs arc in fact women, one of whom is carrying a baby,

208 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 46. An inujinin and a nonhuman standing next to a fence, from The Picture Scroll Cl/ the Holy Man lppen. Source: lppen hijirie, from Lhe collection ofShoj6k6ji.

leading a fourth man with unbound hair who is carrying an umbrella :rnd wearing some kind of backpack. These people are truly out of the ord111n1 y One of the women is carrying l>omething undiscerniblc al hl'r waist. '1 lw

man in the back carrying the umhrdln is proh,lhl} a nonhum.rn ill lh\· hro.1d

Fear and Loathing 209

Figure 47. A group of nonhumans walking toward lppen, from Tfre Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen. Source: Tppen hijirie, from the collection ofShoj6k6ji.

sense. In any case, this strange-looking group is heading toward Ippen. In

addition, in figure 48 there is one more man with a ponytail in front of the man in high geta, kneeling with one hand on the veranda, who seems to be informing Ippen and his followers of something.

As with the scenes examined above, this one reinforces my contention that the two childish figures and the nonhumans by the hedge are all part

of a group related to Ippen. So far, Httle thought has been given to what the painter mjght have been trying to convey through these childlike figures. I bcl icve they are none other than the "worthy men" described in the text. As t see it, the man in high geta in front of the people carrying the food is walk ing in .i gr

.indiost· 111,rnncr. thus making it reasonable to view him as one of lhi.' wml hy 111t·11 I ht 111.111 1w,11 I lw vrrnnda is kneeling in a dignifie<l mannt.•r, p1oh,1hl> 1111111111111g lpp1•11 lli.,t Ilic ,il1m .trt· being offered.

llO Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 48. A man in boys· clothing speaking to Ippen and Jish(1 monks, from The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen. Source: Ippen hijirie, from the collection ofShojokoji.

Some may doubt that these strange men in childlike garb couJd be the

rich worthy men of the text, but consider the example of the so-called chi I dren of the capital (kyowarawa) who were found in Kyoto up to the begin

ning of the medieval era. Some members of this group, who included cow

herders and those who had connections with nonbumans, were wealthy. Fo,

example, cow herders were also known to drive carts for hire, so it is not surprising that they could accumulate wealth as transport tradesmen. Then.>

is evidence that these people may also have been involved in gambling be

cause the "children of the capital" and gamblers often appear together in Llw

literature of the time.

Of course, we cannot tell for sure what the worthy men in the piclur�

were doing or what function the people with them fulfilled. But to insist that

it is impossible for the pony tailed men to be the worthy men is to fall into tlw

trap of presuming that nonhumans and childlike figures were strictly lowly

people.

Until now, most scholars have seen the beggars and nonhumans in '//w

Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen as unrelated to Tppen and his followr..·1,

The tendency has been to study the nonhuman figures as if they \Vl'n: simpl)

Fear and Loathing 211

nonhumans, while Ippen and his followers have been studied separately. But

as I read the scroll, the two childlike men are connected to Ippen through

the mediation of the nonhumans. Through such scenes, the scroll depicts the

gradual conversion of the childlike men and nonhumans to Ippen's sect. The

scroll is much easier to understand as a whole when we view both lppen and the nonhumans together. To further reinforce my point, consider the written

text of the scroll after this scene at Jimokuji:

As they passed through Nlino and Owari, they found occasional

signs erected by bandits, saying, "Those who wish to attend upon

the holy man may proceed to the practice hall without fear. Those

without sympathy will meet with retribution" and so on. For three

years, they traveled over land and sea, and during that time they

never feared high waves day or night, nor did they meet with trouble

in the forests.

The " bandits"30 in this passage were independent, local, armed groups

that the government treated as "mountain bands" or "pirates." It is in1portant for our understanding of Ippen's movement that we recognize that the ban -

dits not onJy protected him but aggressively supported his evangelical work.

At the time, these bandits were closely related to the childlike people, non

humans, and gamblers we have been investigating. Therefore, the text and im

ages at this point in the scroll are naturally linked, with the text underscoring

the importance of the nonhumans, who might otherwise appear tangential.

Let us take a look at one more example. Figure 49 illustrates a scene at

the market in Tomono in Shinano Province. Although it is not shown in the

picture itself, the accompanying text tells us that the good omen of a purple

cloud appeared while Ippen and his group were at the market. We can see a

group of monks, with Ippen at their head, sitting to the left and looking at the

cloud. Immediately behind the monks is a group of beggars with an inujinin

at its head. These beggars and nonhllmans have conventionally been understood as

receiving whatever was left over from the alms given to lppen. However, in

the scene al Jimokuji the inujinin is sitting with an extremely conscientious

posture, facing lppcn, while the rearmost monk appears to be calling to lhe

10 llw kt 11111 ,·,I 11, tl' 11,1l.111t\ 111, rully •,., ti p,111 I,·�.· l·or mnrl! nn 1hc,e group,,,,·� d1,1p11•1 fn111

212 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 49. A group of inujinin and beggars from the market atTomono in Shina no Province, from The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen. Source: Ippen hijirie, from the collection ol Sh6j6k6ji.

non humans. I believe it was precisely because the painter had this perspecliw

and these themes in mind that the nonhumans appear in such great number:.. and are so vividly portrayed from the beginning. This suggests that, apart

from its portrayal of Ippen's career, one of the major themes of The Piclllr<' Scroll of the Holy Man lppen is undoubtedly the salvation of the bandits and nonhumans.

THE EVOLUTION OF DISCRIMINATION

As I stated above, The Picture Book of Goblins offers a sharp contrast to ils

near contemporary, The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen. While thl'

Ippen scroll treats its subject with love and respect, the text of The Pict111,

Book of Goblins treats Ippen's activities as the deeds of a goblin. The scroll heaps abuse on Ippen in both text and image, such as when it depicts a nu11 holding a bucket up to lppen so as to receive his urine, or when il show, .,

goblin causing flowers to wilt. In an almsgiving scene comparnblc lo the 0111

we examined in Lhe lppen scroll, The Piel 11re Hoof... c�f Gol,li11� shows,, giou)'

Fear and Loathing 213

of lazy monks gorging on the food they have received as alms, while to the side it shows a number of slovenly beggars receiving the excess.

As mentioned above, the text of the scroll also uses the clearly discrimi natory term filthy child (eta warawa) for the first time. This fact is truly signif

icant. In contrast to The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen, which depicts

the monk saving and being supported by beggars, nonhumans, and bandits,

The Picture Book of Goblins ridicules and dehumanizes these people as being "full of filth." This contrast clearly reveals the intense intellectual discord at the end of the thirteenth century concerning pollution and evil. This discord

resulted in a tremendous decline in the social position of bandits, childlike

people, and nonhumans.

This decline was not confined to these groups: the status of merchants, artisans, and even courtesans suffered similarly. It was around this time that

courtesans began to be stigmatized in the same way that nonhumans were.

For example, The Pictorial Biography of the Holy Man Honen equates the problem of courtesans with that of nonhumans in its portrayal of the former

appealing to Hemen for salvation and of Hemen answering their pleas. Indeed, there was also an extremely sharp intellectual division at the

time on the issue of sex. The new Buddhist sects that arose in the Kamakura

period all dealt head on with the problems of evil and pollution, particu larly as they concerned bandits, nonhumans, and women. As a result, these

groups were subjected to a thorough suppression by the military govern ments up through the seventeenth century. 31 As the new Kamakura sects

were disenfranchised, discrimination against the people we now call bura

kumin, prostitutes, and gangsters (in other words, nonhumans, courtesans,

and gamblers) took root in Japanese so ciety.

As I have suggested, I believe these changes are rooted in a major transformation in the relationship between society and nature. The various

changes that took place in this relationship made possible a number of differ ent responses, leading to a great deal of political turmoil. We have only taken

up a smal1 part of that problem. But the discrimination against eta, or non

hu mans, courtesans, and gamblers, that hardened during the Edo period was not a problem confined to these people alone. Instead, it is a major problem

lhat involves all of Japanese society, thought, and culture.

11 !he rcnson for thu, govc:rnmcnt suppression is made dearer in chapter four. where Amino deals llirl·ctly wll I, 11,� wmprtln!I ,nd.1I ideologies of ngrarianism and mcrcnntilism.

214 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EASTERN AND WESTERN JAPAN

By the beginning of the fifteenth century the epithet eta was being used more widely to refer to nonhumans and riverside dwellers. Even the term purifiers

came to denote a debased person. This trend continued until the discrimina

tory status of these people became firmly fixed with the religious suppression

of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Still, there is little agreement as to why this occurred. While there is no easy answer, surely one important

source of this trend was the shift that took place during the fourteenth cen

tury concerning the concept of pollution.

Before the fourteenth century, pollution produced a certain amount of

fear, as I discussed above. But around the fomteenth century the ways in

which humans related to nature began to change. In short, society became

more "civilized." In the process, pollution came to be less feared and seen more as contamination, something to be avoided. This is somewhat closer to

our present-day concept of pollution.

The same thing happened to the social view of animals. The idea that

animals could not be easily controlled by humans was gradually replaced with a more denigrating perspective, which is revealed in such derogatory

terms as beasts (chikusho) and four-leggers (yotsuashi). 32 This transformation

was essentially compJete by the Edo period, and its effects extended to peopJe

who worked with animals. These conditions formed the background of the

Tokugawa shogunate's Jegal prescription of outcaste status for the groups we

have been discussing. The final issue I would like to address in this chapter concerns the ways

in which the problem of discrimination manifested itself from region to re gion. The transformations I have been discussing were centered in western

Japan, including the western half of the island of Honshu and all of Shikoku

and Kyushu. 33 Eastern Japan, excluding Hokkaido, has far fewer surviving do cuments, so the evidence is less complete. But extant materials from the

east rarely contain the word nonhuman. The eastern city of Kamakura was

an exception to this rule, for we know there were beggars and nonhumans in

the city. We also know of a group of inujinin that was formally attached lot lw

premier shrine of Kamakura, the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine. The only

other example of nonhumans we find in the east is the "nonhuman pince"

12. A fopanese reader will reco!(nize th� stigma of thC�l· lerllls, lor they ,,re rnmmnn, ur,t· wo11i, tod,,y, ll Wil<'l1 Amino rctcr� 1n western I lon,h11, he mcons<'vcrytlnn11 lro111 l.,1k1• r\11,,1 w,•\I I ,1,k111 f11p,,11

r,·for, tu CVCI ythillll c,1,t nf N,11\llY,I ,Ill I h<· w,1r 11!11 lh Ill 11111 k.11,lo

Fear and Loathing 215

established in the shoen estate of Okuyama in Echigo. Even today, there are

far fewer communities of burakumin in eastern than in western Japan. In fact, according to data compiled in the early twentieth century, the

number of discriminated communities and their total population in eastern

Japan is far smaller than those in western Japan. I was born in Yamanashi Prefecture, and my first experience with this kind of discrimination came

from reading the novel The Broken Commandment by Shimazaki Toson. 34

At first, I did not discern what the novel was about. It was only when my

grandmother explained it to me that I began to understand. A friend from

western Japan, where almost everyone has witnessed discrimination against

burakumin from early childhood, had a very different experience.

What caused this regional difference? The answer may relate to the dif ferent sensibilities regarding animals and pollution in the two regions. For

instance, as an example of pollution, afterbirth was treated very differently in

western and eastern Japan. While we should not draw overly harsh distinc

tions between western and eastern Japan, in the east the placenta was gener

ally buried in a place where as many people as possible couJd walk over it, in

a doorway or at a crossroads, for instance. In western Japan, the placenta was taken as far away as possible, either buried deep under the house or, better

yet, taken far into the mountain. In another example related to the issue of

pollution, released prisoners or nonhumans carried out capital puujshments

in Kyoto, but in Kamakura, samurai from the Kamakura shogunate would cut off a criminal's head themselves. This may be one of the reasons why non

humans were unable to form effective trade guilds in eastern Japan.

The treatment of horses also differed between the two regions. Good

pastureland was plentiful in the east, so people came into contact with horses

that were nearly wild. This closely resembles the case of middle Kyushu,

which should remind us to be cautious about making too rigid a distinction

between east and west. In any case, the custom of eating horse meat still ex ists in places that had pastureland. However, in places where horses were kept

inside the house, eating horse meat was probably unthinkable.35 In general,

I he treatment of animals vades according to region. And it may be that this

difference in sensibility is also related to the fact that nonhuman and river

side groups did not form effective organizations in the east.

34 Sh,mazaki Toson, 77,e Broken Commandment, trans. Kenneth Strong (Tokyo; University of Tokyo Pres,, 19.,,f).

l1 th 1, would h, 111 111 c.1tth1·11 llnored �cction o(the house, next to the kitchen, known ,h 1hc do/llrl 111 ,1 t,11Hl,11d I 1111,h,111"' ilw would be,\ 1.irgc �tor,11;1c (11"1.'0 when: not only 1lw horw 1111d otlwr li1<'d<1<l..i>11I 1111l.1111,l1111I 11111l11tlw1 ,11p pl1<·,i.:oul1lh1•k1•pt.

216 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Communities of stigmatized groups are also known by different names

in different regions. In Hokuriku, these communities are called tonai,

while in Dewa they are called raku. In some areas, they are called chasen or

hachiya. Why these names should be so different is not yet entirely clear. It

seems that there are no discriminated communities in Okinawa, as there are

in the rest of Japan. However, we cannot say that Okinawa was without dis

crimination since there was a group of stigmatized performers called annya,

and ar tisanal people were also subject to some forms of discrimination. But

pending further research, it appears that there were no segregated communi

ties of stigmatized people in Okinawa. There were no such hamlets in Ainu

society, either.

In conclusion, we must recognize that this problem has specifically re

gional dimensions and differences within the Japanese islands. Without rec

ognition of this kind of regionality, one is likely to indiscriminately general

ize from one's own experience or even unintentionally hurt other people. For

those of us who would like to overcome discrimination, this is something

that we must always keep in mind.

CHAPTER NINE

Concerning Women

FROM THE TEXT OF LUIS FROIS

In this chapter, I will address the problem of the historical shift in women's

status. The new Buddhist sects of the Kamakura period preached salvation

for both nonhumans and women. This overlap suggests that the situation of

women at the time was closely related to the status of nonhumans. Women's

history has recently become a hot topic in Japan. Many studies have shed light

on women's lives, and with the feminist movement the problem of women's

status has been debated from a variety of angles. Nevertheless, there is still

much about women's lives in Japanese society that needs to be investigated.

One source that will help us in such an investigation is a small book

written by a Portuguese missionary named Luis Frois called A Comparison

of Japanese and European Cultures. 1 Frois came to Japan in 1562 and stayed

in the islands for the last thirty-five years of his life, that is, until his death in

1597. As indicated by the title, the book records various differences between

the customs of Europe and Japan, as observed by Frois.

The second chapter of his book is caJled "Women: Their Appearance

and Manners." Frois himself was surprised by what he observed of women's

lives, but those of us who read his text today are also likely to be shocked by a

l llw )l1pane,t• 11,111,l.1111,n wos published by lwanami Publishers as a part of its series on the Great Ag..- ,11 .,,.,11,1111111, .111d 1h, ,,111\\' lt"l(t w.1s e,lited ,rnd published by M,11,uda Taka�hi as l'uro/rn 111> 11lw1·1:,1A, ( 1111 /\1, '"""'''l I 111� J w1,) ( l'nkyo, Chuo koron�h.1, 1')!13).

218 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

number of his claims. For example, on the issue of sexuality, Fro is contended,

"The women of Japan do not value chastity in the least. Even if they lose their virginity, there is no loss of honor, nor is this an obstacle to marriage." Con

trary to our notions of patriarchal control, Frois claimed, "in Japan, daugh

ters may go any where they like, for one or many days at a time, without their parents' permission. Japanese women have the freedom to go wherever they

like without informing their husbands." On the topic of property, Frois held that "in Europe, a family's property is held in common between husband

and wife. But in Japan, each one has his or her own property. Sometimes a wife will lend hers to her husband, at a high rate of interest." With regard to

divorce, Frois flatly stated, "In Europe, divorcing one's wife is the highest dis

honor. In Japan, one may divorce whenever one likes. The wife's honor does

not suffer, and she may also remarry. In Japan, sometimes it is the wife who

divorces the husband." In one of his more shocking assertions, Frois insisted,

"In Japan, abortion is very common, and there are women who have had up

to twenty. When a Japanese woman is unable to raise a child, she will kill the child by stepping upon its neck." And in a statement that would seem to

strain credulity (and suggest Christian bias) Frois insisted that "in Japan, a

Buddhist nunnery is practically a brothel." These observations are so counter

to our commonsense views of the time that one is likely to wonder if any of

this can be true.

When I first read his book, I felt that these claims probably stemmed from Frois's prejudice. Rather than take his claims at face value, I thought

the text probably required a great deal of historical contextualization. At the

same time, however, he included some observations that seemed less tainted

with disapproving prejudice, such as: "European women cannot write, but in

Japan, an aristocratic woman who cannot write is of little worth."

As l began to investigate Frois's assertions, I gradually came to wonder

whether they might not in fact be true. Let us take, for example, his claims about divorce. The idea that a woman could divorce her husband and that she

suffered no loss of honor and faced no obstacle to remarriage was not at nil

in accord with our understanding of the time. The mainstream view todny is that women had no right of divorce in the Edo period, much less in earlier

eras. When a woman went to a family as a wife, she could easily be sent away

if she did not please her husband or her in-laws. We believe that there w:.is

simply no way she could petition for a divorce herself. So we have concluded that women suffered terrible oppression at the hands or men in the Ldo 1w

riocl, with no right to speak for lhcmsclw.,,

Concerning Women 219

Toe recent work of Takagi Tadashi argues that things were not quile

as we have been accustomed to believe.2 Takagi, a specialist in legal history, combed through a large number of divorce documents to investigate in min ute detail the conditions and processes of divorce in the Edo period. Ac

cording to him, the divorce rate at the beginning of the Meiji period was

very high. It gradually fell thereafter, but from these statistics he surmised that the divorce rate during the Edo period had also been fairly high. While

our knowledge of divorce in the Edo period is imprecise due to a lack of firm numbers, since the Meiji period shows a number of continuities from

the Edo period, I believe that it is entirely reasonable to infer that the earlier

divorce rate was also high. Much is still open to debate, but this book has

convincingly demonstrated that the conventional wisdom is inaccurate and

one-sided.

When we examine actual divorce documents, we find that we have been

greatly mistaken in our belief that initiating divorce was exclusively a male right. There were in fact a significant number of women who gained a divorce

by fleeing their marriages, one option being to go to a "relationship-ending

temple" (enkiri-dera). 3 Takagi gives many examples of flight-initiated di vorces such as a case in which a woman went home to her family and refused

to return to her husband. The husband wanted her to come back, but she re

fused. In the end, he was forced to write a letter of separation (rienjo), which

he did, reportedly "shedding tears." In other words, what th_is particular case

shows us is that a woman did not always have to flee to a place of asylum, such as a relationship-ending temple, to obtain divorce.

According to shogunal law, letters of divorce-called mikudarihan

were legally recognized only when issued by a husband to his wife. The

stipulations of the legal code made it impossible for a letter of divorce to be

issued from wife to husband. So, if we limit our historical investigation to

documents, we are likely to conclude that men held an exclusive right of di vorce. However, it would be more accurate to say that it was the husband who

had the obligation (rather than simply the right) to write a letter of divorce. Without the document, neither the husband nor the wife could remarry. Of

course, it is important to note that only men issued letters of divorce, but we

}., See Takagi Tadashi, Mikudariha11; Edo 110 rlko11 to joseitachi (Letters of Divorce: Women and Divorce in Edo Japan) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1987).

I Rclnlionship-ending temples functioned as places of asylum for anyone who needed (<>r wanted) l(l csc.1pe punhhmcnt or an unpleasant social situation. This was not dissimilar lo thi: way tlw ru1holi, c·h111, I, 11111, 1,n11nl 11� ,1 place of asylum In 1hc West. Amino·� poinl here i, thnt womcr, h,111 .1 v,11 Ill) 111 upt11111• Int ,·11dli1� .1 ,narriagc. of which flight was only on.:.

220 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

must also remember that the conditions ofJapanese society were quite differ

ent from those stipulated by law.

If this was the case, then Frois's sixteenth-century claims that "in Ja

pan, one may divorce whenever one likes. The wife's honor does not suffer,

and she may also remarry. In Japan, sometimes it is the wife who divorces

the husband" may well be accurate, and these conditions may well have

continued into the Edo period. In the Edo period, the formal and legal prin

ciple of men's exclusive right to divorce produced such institutions as the

temples of asylum. We must be careful, therefore, not to overestimate the

strength of women's right to divorce. Nevertheless, Takagi 's research has

shown us just how great the gap can be between conventional wisdom and

the historical facts.

MEN'S AND WOMEN'S SEXUAL PRACTICES

Frois's claims that Japanese women did not value chastity or virginity, and

that daughters and wives could leave on extensive journeys without objec

tions from their fathers or husbands, also struck me as dubious at first. But

there is corroborating evidence, both textual and ethnological. For example,

sometime after Frois a Spanish mjssionary named Cori.ado wrote a text ca I led

A Record of Confessions in which he described women who spoke openly in

confession about their many relations with men. In more recent ethnologi

cal examples-such as Miyamoto Tsuneichi's Forgotten Japanese and The

Lessons of Home and Akamatsu Keisuke's Folk Customs of the Anti-Folk

we find similar evidence of popular sexual customs up until world War Il.1

Miyamoto's and Akamatsu's texts reveal that at least the practice of yobm

(literally, "night-crawling") continued in western Japan well into the twen

tieth century.5

I have heard testimony concerning this practice myself. Once, when I

visited a town in the mountains of northern Okayama Prefecture, in Bilchu

4. Miyamoto Tsuneichi, Wasurerareta Nihonjin (Forgotten Japanese) (Tokyo: rwanami shoten, [1%01 1984); Miyamoto Tsuneichi, Knkyo no oshi (The Lessons ofF!orne) (Tokyo: lwanami ,hot en, ( I \M II 1984); Akamatsu Keisuke, Hijomin 110 mi11zok11 l1t111ka: Seikatsu 111i11wku to s11ln·ts11 m11A11,/11/1,1 nnshi (Folk Customs of the Anti-Folk) (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 1986).

5. Yobai was a custom through which unmarried young pt>ople in a village could engage 111 J�cep1,1l>lt premarital sex. !Ls practices varied, but, as the literal tmnslat,on of Lh� term ,ugt,tc,1,, Lill' Lyp1, ,ti practice was for J )'<lllng rn111110 '\nt·,1k" into the lied of.1 young wo111,1n ,IL night 'lhr1t \\I'll' 111,1111 ()Lhcr w.iy, ol doin� Lh,,, how,·1c1, ,,nd J� /\11111111 nult, 111 tlw rn·xl 1'·"·'11'•'1'1,, H w,1, 1101 1lw,1i� "1"1!1 .1111!11111 lnu,I� 11 l)'J'i.Ultf lumL1,111t·d ,1, ,1 l<1rm 111 to1111,h1p II 1l tu11t11111rd t,, twrr1111111 Iii.Ill 111,I uw w1111i.111 101 ,1 M·I p r111111 ol 11111.-, I h, \ 1,·,1111,t 1"11,1111 111• r, roy,1111.-.I .,, 111 1111r,I

Concerning Women 221

County, some of the older folks there told me they had continued night

crawling up until the mid-1950s. 1he mountains of Bitchu County form a

border between Okayama and the Izumo region and, as the people from the

village described it to me, men from Izumo would form a defense line in the

mountains, anticipating that men from Bitchli would attempt to come night

crawling to their village. My Bitchli informants regaled me with tales of their

heroics in breaking through the defenses of the men oflzumo to make it over

the mountains to the women of tbe villages on the other side.

Likewise, orgiastic celebrations known as utagaki continued to occur

in many places until quite recently.6 According to Miyamoto Tsuneichi,

the utagaki custom of free sex was also commonly practiced at events such

as festivals and popular Buddist services. Miyamoto noted that during the

festivals at the Kannan Hall in Tsushima and on saint's days at the Taishi

Halls in the Kawachi region, men and women openly engaged in unrestricted

intercourse. My Okayama informants confirmed this for me, noting that the

custom came to an end only when police arrived to investigate a murder in

connection with the utagaki in the 1950s. Their testimony strikes me as quite

plausible.

The same was true during retreats at temples and shrines in past eras.

We occasionally see scenes in medieval picture scrolls in which men and

women can be found sleeping together in front of the deities. In one picture

scroll, we even see men and women sleeping together using a large board as a

headrest (fig. 50). At the time, it would have been pitch dark, but since these

are picture scrolls we can see everything dearly.

Documentary evidence can also be found that indirectly points to the

prevalence of these sexual practices. In 1261, the priests and attendants at

Kasuga Shrine in Nara signed a vow stating that from then on they would

avoid "secret assignations with women visiting the shrine or with senior and

junior councillors in the vicinity of the worship or greeting hall." The very

fact that they had to take this vow suggests that such things were going on

at Kasuga Shrine. In another fascinating document, Emperor Go-Uda sent a

letter in 1285 to the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine ordering that "men and

women shall not mix when visiting the treasure hall or spending the night."

Emperor Go-Uda's admonition clearly suggests that men and women were

rcgu larly sleeping together in the retreat halls, and it is likely that even after

th 1s order was issued mixed residence continued.

,. r '111�11k 1 w,•,r 1,.,,, l,,,11.dr.,11 ,•1·,·nt, wrt h 11111�h sing1n11, dan, 11111, and �cxual intercourse, After mud, 1H"11 11111 \1111110 lr, 111 I It 1111.,t "liH• 1, tht· hc,I lr,111,l.111011 ol 11tu>?1ll..1 In chopter sevc11, ht• ul 11 111, ul 11111 Ill 11 I <11 la - 1, n111n1n11 1 II 1111\ l,11 t1t<1,:,,�, l\lr),111\fllll, \1'11,111,•1,11·1•1<1 N//11111/111

222 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 50. Temple visitors sleeping in mixed quarters, using a board as a headrest, from 7/Jr Pictorial History of Jshiyama Temple. Source: Ishiyamadera engi emaki, from the collection of lshiyamadera.

The same was probably true of the festivals and Buddhist services men tioned earlier. Being in the presence of the native deities and Buddhas meant being in a place subject to their power. In places subject to the power of the deities, the relations of the secular world were canceled. As with the utagak, that appear in the ancient poetry collection the Man'yoshu and various re gional almanacs,7 these were places where men and women were not con strained by their secular relations as husband and wife.8 As another sign ol how different these places were seen to be, there are many stories of pilgrims receiving instruction from children upon visiting a temple or shrine. 11, i1- was of course also partially based on the belief that children were imbued with the powers of the deities.

7. Portions of Lhe Man'yiishu, the oldest collection of poetry in Japan, have been translated i11to l'nt: lish. See The Ten 11iousand Leaves, trans. Ian Hideo Levy (Princeton: Princeton Univcr�lty Pre,, 1981). Local almanacs, known asfudokl, featured compilations of local iales and h1st0rie� J'ur ,tn English translation of one such almanac, see Records of Wi11rl 11111/ Eart/1: A ·1rm,�/11tit>11 of f'111/ilk1 trans. Michiko Y. Aoki (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studie8, 1997).

8. Unlike marriage in the West. which is seen as a union authorized nm! S,ltlll 111nt•d hy C ,od, 111-u 111<11•· in Jop�n was considered a secul,1r mt her th,111.1 ,:1Crctl rd.1(11111,hip.

Concerning Women 223

However, this release from the rules of social propriety was not limited to exceptional events such as festivals or restricted spaces such as temples and shrines. I believe that the act of travel created a similar condition. In Forgot ten Japanese, first published in 1960, Miyamoto Tsuneichi described young women undertaking long pilgrimages in groups of two and three. What is shocking about Miyamoto's ethnography is that he records how these women could travel with very little money for months on end with complete ease. According to his informants, there were inns that allowed traveling women to stay for free, making it possible for them to take to the road easily. There are also stories of women going quite far to work, picking cotton or planting rice. This was certainly going on in the Edo period, when women took long journeys in the name of pilgrimage (okagemairi). Further evidence of this can be found in picture scrolls, where we find many images of women in traveling garb-deep, face-covering, sedge hats (ichimegasa); baggy kimonos known as jar costumes (tsubo shozoku); and straw sandals (fig. 51).

hgurc 51. Womt'n 111 tr.m·I ,1tl1rl', Iron, 7/w Pictorial llistory of Jshiyama Tempk Soun.:c: /5/r1r11111mfr111, 11i:1 r11111�,. 1111111 1 lw ,nll,•dion 111 l�hiy,un,,dcra.

224 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Travelers, especially those visiting temples and shrines, were believed

to have severed their ties with the secular world, just as if they were on re treat. But the "nonconnectedness" of travelers was not only due to their re

ligious destinations. During the Middle Ages, roads and crossroads wen:

also considered places apart from the everyday world. When an untoward

incident took place on the road, its consequences could not be extended into

tbe everyday world. Rather, the custom was that no matter how grave the

incident, everything had to be resolved at the site itself. This is supported by

a document in the Kamakura era text known as the Kanta Formulary (Kantc>

onshikimoku). According to this text, murders that occurred in "mountain::.,

harbors, market towns, and roads" could only be resolved by those who were

there. Such incidents could not be carried into the everyday world in fonm

such as vendettas.

During the Middle Ages, women walking the roads were sometime::,

victims of incidents known as "taking a woman" (metori) or crossroads kid

napping (tsuji-tori). Rape was often involved, so at least in principle, such

actions were strictly forbidden by law (for example, in the Joei Formulary

[1232)). On close examination, however, we see that the punishment stipu

lated in the formuJary was not very severe. In fact, the Joei Formulary even directs that "allowances should be made in the case of monks."

Why is it that allowances could be made for monks, even for such seri

ous crimes as rape and abduction? Kasamatsu Hiroshi surmises that sine<.'

even low-ranking monks were subject to the rule of abstinence-a restriction

apparently felt to be beyond most men's capacities-it was understandabk (and therefore cause for aUowance) that they might occasionally abduct u

woman.9 Of course, this is onJy conjecture, but it is not unfounded.

The Muromachi period short-story collection Otogizoshi contains a

story, the "Tale of Monogusa Taro," that suggests that monks were not lh{.'

only ones gra11ted such "allowances." In the tale, the protagonist, Monogus.1 Taro, travels to the capital and is told by the owner of an inn that the abdm.

tion of an unaccompanied woman walking on the road instead of riding i 11

a palanquin is "permissible in this realm." In other words, female abduction

was publicly permissible under certain conditions. Subsequently, Monogus,1

Taro goes to visit the temple ofKiyomizu, where he meets a woman lravclin�

alone. In the course of their meeting, Monogusa Taro solves a poetic riddll'

9. Kasamatsu Hiroshi, Ho to kc1tol,a 110 chllgislii (I ,1w ,ind I ,1ng11,1g,· in M,·cl11•v,1I J,1p,111) ( In�)" ! l�1l,011sh,1, !!JR4).

Concerning Women 22;,

posed by the woman and thus wins her hand in marriage. Although this

is not a violent incident, the narrative refers to the encounter as "taking a woman." Thus, we cannot immediately assume that all cases of metori were

rape. In another case, the protagonist of the late Kamakura diary, The Con

fessions of Lady Nijo, is a woman who, when she leaves the imperial palace lo embark on a long journey, finds herself having to have sex with a number of men.10

That the custom of taking a woman actually existed, whatever form it took, demonstrates that what men and women did while traveling was quite

different from what they did in their everyday world. More importantly, we

must recognize that this was sanctioned by society. Might it not be, then, that such contemporary sayings as "one has no shame when traveling" are traces

of these customs?

These records help us to see that customs that are inconceivable by to

day's standards of propriety and common sense actually existed in premod

ern Japan in a variety of forms. Frois's observations regarding the lack of

import given to female chastity and virginity need not be considered outright

lies. In particular, his assertions regarding women's freedom of travel can be seen to have been quite possible. So I have come to conclude that on these

points Frois's text is not at all inaccurate. The boldness with which he made

his claims elicits surprise, but he was apparently faithful in his narrative. It

is also important for us to take these facts into account when thinking about

historical transformations in women's lives.

On the matter of abortion, Frois depicted Japanese women as extremely cruel. In his view, they placed no value on the lives of children. Coupled

with his opinion of Japanese women as sexually loose and unrestrained, the

condemnation is clear. Frois despised these attitudes from the standpoint of

his Christian morals. Since Japanese society was not regulated by Christian

morals, we may set aside his denunciatory tone, but we must recognize the

veracity of his observations.

There was no religion in Japan capable of exerting the kind of total

infiuence that Christianity did in regulating people's everyday lives in the

West. Thus, at the time, the common practices of abortion and infanticide-

1 n which a woman stepped on the neck of a child she knew could not be

IO lbwazugatari, literally "A Tale Nobody Asked For," has been translated into English. See 7/Je (.011 J,·ssions of Lndy Nijo, trans. Karen Brazell (New York: Doubleday, 1973). The diary cover� c:vc111� from 1271 to 1306. We can imagine the rarity of the circles in which she moved by 1hr l,1,11h111 I mly Nijli w,I\ ., love•, 111 I 11t1wrm Go-ruknkusa.

226 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

raised-were seen as simply acts that grew out of poverty and the harsh con ditions of life.

I believe that poverty alone does not explain these practices. The sexual practices discussed above allow us to reasonably conclude that there were many "unwed mothers." Setting aside the moral dimensions of such behav ior, we can see abortion and infanticide as ways in which the women of the time coped with the conditions under which they lived. Moreover, the flip side of the belief that "a child is with the gods until seven" was that a child was not yet considered a human being. Infanticide in the Edo period contin ued trends of the medieval era. Here as well, most historians have sought an explanation in the travails of life. I am not arguing that we should fail to take into consideration the kinds of poverty that prevailed, but there are many aspects of that society that were not the result of poverty.

In any case, as a Christian missionary, Frois viewed the state of Japa nese society with an extremely moralistic attitude. In the future, it would be instructive to explore the attitudes taken toward such problems by such Japanese religious groups as the lkko or the Nichiren sect. Whatever their views might have been, these sects were suppressed by secular powers (the military class) from the sixteenth century into the Edo period. Their sup pression also had a great deal to do with the subsequent state of society in the Japanese islands.

THE WOMEN OF TARA-NO-SH()

There is little doubt that our conventional view of women's lives from tl1l' Warring States period to the Edo period is fairly far off the mark. Until re cently, we have seen this as the time when the patriarchal family was estab lished and women had no rights and suffered terrible oppression. But wt· must admit that actual conditions were quite different. W hen we go even further back in time to explore the state of women's lives before the four teenth century, the documentary evidence clearly shows that women mowd even more widely throughout society than they did in the Edo period. I 11 order to illustrate this point, I would like to take the example of a sh6e11 cstak I first studied as a student: Tara-no-sho in the Wakasa region. Tarn-no sho was a smalJ estate, but since many of its documents have survived in IIH· possessions of the temple of Toji in Kyolo, it provides a rare window on llw operation of estates during tlrnt period.

Concerning Women 227

At first, Tara-no-sho was an imperial territory (kokugaryo) said to have been established by a monk named Niu Dewanobo Ungen from the monastery on Mount Hiei. Ungen's grandfather acquired the fields of this settlement and decided to make it his financial base. When his grandfather died, Ungen's grandmother, a woman named Ozuki-no-uji-no-jo (literally, "woman of the Ozuki clan"), passed the land on to the infant Ungen, who was known at the time by his childhood name of Wakamaru. This was near the end of the Heian period, but we know from this example that women had the right to dispose of family territory.

Sometime after the property had been passed to the infant at the end of the Heian period, Ungen's father died. In the official documents concerning his father's death, we encounter for the first time the wet nurse who raised him in the Tara settlement. Around the same time, this wet nurse's husband also died, and Wakamaru was sent to the monastery on Mount Hiei to be come a monk of the lowest rank, at which time he received his Buddhist name, Ungen. W hile on Mount Hiei, he left the management of his property to his wet nurse. This example shows us that women were able to manage property. And it also reminds us that wet nurses-and their husbands fulfilled important functions in those days. This is a significant point to keep in mind as we examine women's lives.

In the end, Ungen became a vassal (gokenin) ofMinamoto no Yoritomo (the founder of the Kamakura shogunate) in Wakasa Province. The stan dard procedure for acquiring vassals in the western part of Honshu was that the governor (shugo) would make a list of potential vassals residing in the area to send on to Kamakura for the shogun's approval. In the eastern half of Honshu, vassals would meet with Yoritomo and submit their "registries," thus establishing a direct relationship of service. ll Since Wakasa was in the west, the governor drafted a list and sent along some thirty-odd names, one of which was Ungen's.

On the same list of vassals was a woman named Fujiwara-no-uji-no-nyo (literally, "woman of the Fujiwara clan"), who was the widow of a warrior named Miyakawa Mushanojo. We must be careful to note that her status was that of a widow, so in a sense she was acting in her husband's place. Never theless, it is extremely interesting that this document provides evidence that a woman could become an offidal vassal of the Kamakura shogunate.

11. 'lh,•,1• 11·K1,11 •c:• !111 /'!1•1,1 w, 11 Iii IA ,,I ll11· l,111d, fl• wl111.h lh1•y held tlllc

228 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

In fact, women were not entirely excluded from donning a warrior's

armor and acting in a military capacity in the medieval period. We believe

that two women well known in tales for their military abilities, Tomoe-gozen

and Hangaku-gozen, did indeed exist. Moreover, women not only acted as

vassals; in the province of Hizen, there was a female commander (onna jito)

among the Matsura bandits. There are more than a few examples of this, so

if it is true that women were able to take on the duties and territory of a con

stable (jito), then they may have been able to fulfill any number of functions

at this time.

Returning to Tara-no-sho, Ungen soon sank into ruin and came under

the protection of the largest vassal of Wakasa, one Nakahara Tokikun i (also

known as Inaba Tokikwtl). W hen Ungen accepted Tokikuni's protection, the

job of estate manager (kumon) in Tara settlement-the most powerful posi

tion within the administration of the estate-passed from Ungen to Inaba

Tokikuni's mother, a nun named Nakamura-ni. Again, Tara-no-sho provides

us with the example of a woman in a position of high responsibility, this time

an estate manager.12

The income of the estate manager was provided by a grant of rice pad

dies and dry fields. Since Ungen was a vassal ofYoritomo, these lands could

not be passed on to someone who was not also a vassal. Thus, Tara-no-sho is

an example of an estate in which a woman governed territory received from a

vassal and acted as the chief administrator. Tara-no-sho was not the only e�

tate where this kind of situation prevailed. Similar situations could be found

in many other regions as well.

Among Ungen's lands there was a set of fields, registered as Suetakc

myo, measuring about five acres. After Ungen's death, this land became tlw

object of a long-running struggle between two women, the daughter of one ol

Ungen's house vassals, Fujiwara-no-uji-no-nyo, and Inaba Tokikuni's grand

daughter, Nakahara-no-uji-no-nyo. Note that both plaintiffs in this case wc1 l'

women. Since this was designated as land that only a vassal of the Kama ku 1.1

shogunate could hold, both of these women insisted for many years thal th�·\

were the daughters of vassals. In the end, Nakahara won the suit, but cw11

the loser, Fujiwara, was named the owner of the land for a shorl time. Con

sequently, we must conclude that in the Kamakura period women could lw

named vassals and be recognized as owners of vassal land.

12. The l.11111011 of ,111 estate was the on-�ite manager whn prnduccd ,111J h,111tlll·d llm 111m·111,, ·"�11111, ii tax burden,,, am! so on. A� Amino �uggc�t�. 11 w.1� ,1 pm1ll(111 of gn•,11 1111p1Ht.,11 .. · .111d pnh 1111.il p01wr.

Concerning Women 229

WOMEN'S SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

In the early part of the Kamakura period, Ungen's Tara settlement became

the property of Toji and finally came to be officially known as the Tara estate

(Tara-no-sho).13 Upon obtaining this territory, Toji immediately appointed

officials to manage the property. The first manager was a monk named Joen,

but after a time the position of manager came to be considered a post that

should be passed from woman to woman. As a result, Joen's female descen

dants held that position throughout the Kamakura and Northern and South

ern Courts periods.

Joen was of the Fujiwara clan, so his female descendants were all known

in the documents as Fujiwara-no-uji-no-nyo (woman of the Fujiwara clan). In the middle of the Kamakura period, a woman who went by the name

Higashiyama Nyobo (Higashiyama's woman) and her daughter, also known

as Fujiwara-no-uji-no-nyo, came to hold this office. These women were not

managers in name only. Over the years, they struggled to maintain T6ji's

rights in lengthy lawsuits with local military constables. Some of the descen

dants of J6en even went out on tours of the territory, suspecting that the vil lagers were not properly paying their yearly taxes. On these tours, they made

the villagers carry their palanquins and collected all the taxes due without

granting exceptions. In some cases, the villagers complained to T6ji that

these women were too harsh. Thus, there was nothing merely symbolic about

female management.

Apart from their activities in the field, we should note that these women

produced a great many documents, written in hiragana, which remain in Lhe possession of Toji today. It goes without saying that the female managers

of the estate and the daughters of vassals could write. But even the Fujiwara

woman who was briefly named as owner of the five-acre Suetake fields-who

was eventually determined not to be a vassal but a mere villager-was able to

write magnificent hiragana letters. The documents at Toji bear this out. Thus,

we know that by the latter half of the thirteenth century the writing of letters

in hiragana had spread even to commoner women.

Around the ntlddle of the four teenth century, during the North

ern and Southern Courts period, a dispute broke out in Tara estate over a

LOuple of fields belonging to villagers. Three women, named Zennichi-nyo,

I\. T(Jji was the Kyoto headquarters of the Shingon sect, one oft he two major esoteric sects of the Heian 11cdod. It continued to be a major factor in national politics and one of the area's largest landhold ers until the Warring States period.

230 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Kannon-ny6, and Wakatsuru-nyo, were among the disputants in this case. These women's names are unlike the clan names described earlier. Instead, they are in the form of children's names. Since these women were involved in

a suit concerning the complicated problems of villager ownership, it is pos sible that many village women were designated as proprietors of such fields by the four teenth century. Thanks to documents like these, we know that by the fourteenth century women were publicly involved at every level of activ ity on the estates and imperial lands. Such involvement included appoint ment to official duties, in payment for which these women obtained and held land in thefr own names.

We can confirm this from another area of documentation: the family genealogies of the Shinto priests at the first and second shrines in Wakasa Province dating from the Northern and Southern Courts period. Most fam ily genealogies show only the patriarchal line, but the Wakasa docwnents include the matriarchal line reproduced in great detail. In other words, these genealogies show both lines. This was not only true for the Muku clan, which served as Shinto priests, but for many warrior clans of Wakasa, including the Tada and Wakuri.

Perhaps matriliny was particularly strong in Wakasa. Then again, we know so much about Tara estate because so many of the documents show ing us these women's activities have survived. Other estates do not have such detailed records, so we might not be able to immediately generalize from the case of Tara. But I believe that at least in western Japan we can infer that conditions in general were similar to those of Tara estate. On what grounds do I say this?

Since Takeuchi Rizo completed his monumental work, Kamakura Dow men ts, we now have nearly all surviving documents from the Kamaku ra pc

riod in print. When we look at documents relating to the sale or transfer ol fields and residential lands-particularly when we examine the names of tlw documents' supplicants and addressees-we find a rather high percentage of women's names. This has been statistically confirmed, so we can be sure th.11

women elsewhere also held, transferred, and bought land. I must stress th.ti this can be ascertained from legal records.

However, by the Muromach i period women's rights lo ownership of land and property had been undermined. ln the Edo period, women did not pm, sess the formal right to own land, although their rights to movable prnp1..•1 t} were maintained. Thus, if a woman's dowry was pawned by hi:r husb.rnd, slu wuld press for a divcm.c. lncidcn1ally, the.· foct thal wnm<.·n in the 1-.tlo fWI 11111

Concerning Women 231

maintained their rights to movable property, such as their dowries provides, support for Frois's observations on property and divorce.

Regarding women's relationship to landownership in general, we have been able to confirm that women appear more frequently as the owners of or

participants in the sale or transfer of residential land than in similar trans actions involving agricultural land. For example, the temple of Daigoji cur rently possesses a late Kamakura period household register from a harbor near Tomaura (presently Toba) in Shima Province. An examination of this register shows that a great many of the house owners formally listed in the

area were women. In his book Love and Subservience in the Middle Ages, Hotate Michihisa

has made some interesting observations concerning the close relationship women had to houses and residential land.14 Hotate has made a careful study of the way in which nurigome-later know as nando or "storerooms"-of medieval houses were depicted in picture scrolls. Considered the most "sa cred place" in the house, these rooms doubled as the parental bedroom and the storeroom for the family's valuables.

Rotate points out that it was women who managed this space. In his torical documents, we often find women recorded as "the house woman" (kajo); their management of the most crucial spaces in the house may be the reason why they were also called "master of the house" (ietoji). In fact, from the Kamakura to the Northern and Southern Courts period, we find that many of the financiers popularly known as lenders (kashiage) or money lenders (doso) were women. This must have had something to do with their position in the home. The late Heian Scroll of Diseases (Yamai no soshi) re fers to a female moneylender who "lives near the Seventh Avenue bridge in a wealthy home and has much to eat." She is portrayed in the scroll as an enormously obese woman who cannot get around without assistants to help carry her bulk (fig. 52). Other examples abound. In the late Kamakura period, a female moneylender in the port of Obama in Wakasa Province was known as "the matron of the beach.'' Again, in Yamashiro Province, a

woman known as the "woman of the Taira clan" dealt in loans as great as one hundred kanmon. I could go on listing women who owned warehouses, but all of this is simply to underscore the fact that the managers of ware houses were generally women.

11 1 l<llJlC Mich1hiq, Clw�ci 110 ni to jujun: Emaki 110 11ak11 110 nikutai (Love and Subservience in lhe Mi<l<llc A11r,) ( lukyo I lt'fho11sha, 1986).

232 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of Histor y

Figure 52. An obese female financier, from The Scroll of Diseases. Source: Yamai no so1l11 from the collection of the Fukuoka City Museum Matsukata Collection. Photograph ta kl'II by Shi n'iclii Yamazaki.

This also has to do with the social views of money discussed in chapll'I seven. The first-harvest rice (hatsuho) and money offerings (jobun) made lo the native deities and Buddhas were deposited in storehouses. These item• in turn were used as fi11ancial capital for loans on which interest cou Id h, charged. The fact that a major proportion of the managers of these M11.1nl storehouses were women may well have had something to do with the p,11 ticularities of women's sexual being itself. Hotate Michihisa points out 1h,1t in the Middle Ages women were often given care of important dm.u111u11 and property, for example, in lime of wa1. Pl,tl 111g these items in llw c11t· 111

Concerning Women 233

women guaranteed a degree of safety. I believe that this, too, had something to do with the particularity of women's sex.15

Elsewhere, I have described this as the belief in "women's unconnected ness" that prevailed until the Northern and Southern Courts period. Women possessed powers beyond those of men, and these powers marked them as bound to the sacred. The fact that women were managers and messengers of peace in the midst of upheaval in the secular world points to this belief. Thus, Frois's claim that women would loan money to their husbands was not absurd. It is supported by the fact that women had their own property and engaged in financial activities.

The infamous Hino Tomiko (1440-96) has often been criticized for amassillg a fortune by loaning large sums of money to daimyo while mar ried to the Ashikaga shogun Yoshimasa. In fact, she was not an evil woman who overstepped her bounds; she may have been just the tip of the iceberg.

THE EMERGENCE OF WOMEN'S PROFESSIONAL GROUPS

The sacred character of women's sexual being was also linked to the issue of their vocations (shokuno). For example, we have evidence of itinerant wom en's groups from very early on. Female shamans, known as «walking miko," were active in ancient times. We can also find traces in ancient documents of the origins of courtesans, described as asobime (playgirls; fig. 53) or ukareme (wandering women).

One well-known ancient example of courtesans is from a record writ ten by Otomo Tabibito upon becoming a major counselor in the imperial government. The records note that officials gathered to see him off on the occasion of his departure from Dazaifu, where he had been an officer, to take up his new post in the capital. Among them were a great many courtesans, who exchanged poems with the new major counselor. Judging from the later

I'\. Amino is referring to his discussion in chapter eight of the concept of pollution in ancient Japanese society. According to Amino, the archaic Japanese believed that a state of pollution was caused by a breach in the border between t.he present world and the "other world" (the world of the gods or the afterlife). Because women give birth, thereby ushering life from that other world into the present one. their very sexual being places them on that unstable boundary. M the term pol/111io11 \ugges1s, this i� a situation to be feared and avoided. But looked at from another angle, the ability to come into cont.act with that other world without being destroyed is what marks women as pos �cssing ,1 puwl·t ht-yoml 1hnt of men.

234 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 53. Playgirls (asobirne) at riverside, from The Pictorial Biography of the Holy M,11, Honen. Source: Hemen sh6nin den'e, from the collection of Cbion'in. Photograph courtesy ol Kyoto National Museum.

functions of courtesans, it seems possible that by this time they were alread�

formally associated with the imperial offices at Dazaifu. In chapter eight, I discussed courtesans in relation to nonhumans. Un

der the Ritsuryo system, various imperial offices had jurisdiction over dif

ferent vocational groups; as this system decayed and the offices' functio11,

changed, these vocational groups became independent. It is likely that cm11

tesans followed the same path. The female officials and singers attached t11 the Women's Quarters of the Palace and the Bureau of Music formed thl

nucleus of this movement.

From around the tenth or eleventh century, courtesans began to fo1111

independent vocational groups under the leadership of a woman. "ll1e low 11,

of Eguchi and Kanzaki were the best-known places for these women. In gi:11

eraJ, courtesans made ports and harbors their base, and in western /Jp.i 11

these women also traveled by boat. Unfortunately, we have no concrcll' l'V 1

dence as to whether the many regional groups had any conn�ctiom, among

themselves. Tt does appear, however, that these courtesan groups, org.111i1t'd

as they were hy a leader, had a seniority systt·m 11111ch like th.it o/ tlw 1111·1

Concerning Women 235

chant and artisanal groups. Puppeteers (kugutsu), usually female, were prob

ably organized along the same principles, and in eastern Japan female pup peteers and courtesans overlapped, often locating their bases in post towns.

ln the east, they appear to have made little use of boats. At the capital , we see that, despite the decline in the Ritsuryo bureau

cracy in the medieval period, courtesans still held a prominent place in the imperial court. In his early Kamakura text, The Record of the Right, Ninnaji

Omuro explicitly stated that courtesans and female dancers (shirabyoshi)

were permanently employed in the imperial place. Many aristocratic diaries

also reveal that courtesan groups were placed under the jurisdiction of the

Bureau of Music and the Office of Female Dancers and Musicians. They were managed by a special officer, organized in ranks, and summoned to partici

pate in imperial rites and ceremonies. Shirabyoshi dancers and puppeteers were employed under similar

conditions. For example, we have clear evidence of an official post called

"shirabyoshi service" in the early Ka makura period. Th.us, courtesans,

shirabyoshi dancers, and puppeteers were like shrine purveyors: female vo

cational groups in the direct service of the emperor and the deities. If shrine purveyors possessed the kind of authority I described in chapter seven,

then the social position of these female professionals was far from low. In deed, up until the Kamakura period we have clear evidence that courtesans,

shirabyoshi dancers, and puppeteers were giving birth to children fathered

by the emperor and nobles and that their poetic compositions were being in

cluded in imperially commissioned poetry collections. Th.is is not at all what

one would expect from a debased group.

Th.is status was not limited to women who were in the business of en

tertainment. From the late Heian period, we have ample evidence of women

who participated in significant numbers in such nonagricultural occupations as craftwork and religious performances, and who conseguentJy became

1 mperial or shrine purveyors. These tradeswomen may be traced back to at

least the eighth century. The early Heian era text Accounts of Miracles in Ja

pan presents images of women selling flowers and stories of women becom

ing wealthy by loaning offerings made to the deities (suiko). 16 One sermon

deals with a woman known as Tanaka Mahito Hiromushinome who loaned

le, I his is the Ni/Jon ryoiki, a collection of 116 stories compiled by the priest Kyokai around 822. l'urlions oft he collection are available in English. See Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Bud d/11st fmdition: 77,e Ni/ton ryoiki of the Monk Kyokai, trans. and ed. Kyoko Motomochi Nakamura (',u1 n•y: Curzon, 1997).

236 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

sake and rice as suiko in small boxes and measured payments of interest in

large boxes. Another story tells of a woman who became wealthy on interest

earned from loans she made with cash offerings that had been given to the

Buddha at the temple of Daianji.

All in all, there is little doubt that there were a great many female mer chants in Japanese society. For example, :fishmongers were almost without

exception women. Likewise, the vendors from Lake Biwa who sold fish in stalls in the Rokkakucho section of Kyoto in the early Kamakura period,

later becoming imperial purveyors, were all women. The cormorant fishers

on the Katsura River near Kyoto, later know as the Katsura imperial purvey

ors, also included women known as Katsurame, who sold a fish called ayu. In

addition, female imperial purveyors from Ohara and Onoyama, to the north

of Kyoto, sold charcoal and firewood, while others sold konnyaku, vegetables,

and shrine offerings. At Gion Shrine in Kyoto, female sh1·ine purveyors sold

silk and padded garments (kosode). All of these examples predate the North

ern and Southern Courts period. As mentioned above, the role of shrine, temple, and imperial purvey

ors as servants of the deities was clearly linked to their engagement in wide ranging, intinerant, tax-exempt commerce. Many of these purveyors were

women, which leads us back to my argument regarding the sacred character

of females. As with the nonhumans, clothing was an important marker of

sacred distinction. For example, Katsurame traveled wearing special hats,

thereby signifying that they were distinct from women in general. This prac

tice of signifying status difference by means of clothing was also an impor

tant element in women's ability to undertake long journeys. In sum, up u nti I

the Kamakura and Northern and Southern Courts period, itinerant female

merchants were far more active than previously supposed.

THE EXCLUSION OF WOMEN FROM PUBLIC LIFE

So how do we reconcile these facts with the conventional wisdom thal

women were excluded from public life and lived under conditions of con

tinual oppression? In recent years, research in the history of the family has made grc,1t

progress. Prior to these studies, the assumption was Lhal si nee a rch.1 ic l i ll1l''

Japanese society had been a patriarchal syt.tem based on male s11pl·riont }' 1 lowcvcr, scholars of women's history such as Takamun.> Jt,ul' h,,vl.· wl111

Concerning Women 237

tered this view, arguing that up until the Northern and Southern Courts pe riod, Japanese society had strong tendencies toward matriarchy.

The most recent research suggests that lineage groups in archaic Japan

did not take the form of clans. In other words, there were no clan groups,

matrilineal or patrilineal, that operated on a system of marriage outside the

clan and in which men and women within the same clan would be consid

ered blood relatives and therefore subject to a marriage taboo. Under such a

system, marriage to partners from other clans is necessary. Instead, one of

the noteworthy characteristics of Japanese society since ancient times has

been a loose attitude toward marriage with close relatives (consanguineous

marriage). In the Japanese islands, there appears to have been a dual lineage kinship system under which membership was recognized through both the

father's and mother's lines. As a result, the taboo on marriage to close rela

tives was very weak in Japanese society; the taboo on marriage to those who

have the same family name, still strong in China and Korea, simply did

not exist.17 Ancient documents reveal that marriage between children of the

same mother was taboo, although mention was made of cases of sibling love,

for which the lovers suffered. We even have some examples in which they married. We also find many marriages between uncles and nieces, or aunts

and nephews, prior to medieval times. Turning to the world of the impe

rial court, we find that consanguineous marriages occurred to a surprising

degree up until the end of the Kamakura period, supporting the conten

tion of Tsuda Sokichi that the ancient uji were different from clans.18 Tsuda

contends that uji were actually political associations that were first formed

among the ruling strata under the influence of the Chinese.

Under such conditions, women's and men's social positions would not

be that unequal. The Chinese legal system was grafted onto this dual lineage

situation. This is important because Chinese society developed a patriarchal

structure early on, taking on a formal structure in which men were legally

superior and patriliny and patriarchy were the rule. Formally and in legal

framework, lineage relations were understood to descend from the father on

a patrilineal principle.

17. In the Japanese text, Amino notes, "T myself am a product of a marriage between dose relatives; my parents were cousins. My father's and mother's parents were also cousins.! have five brothers and sisters, and we sometimes note with relief that none of the potential negatives of consanguineous 111arriagc 1i.1VI' .1ppe.ircd In u�."

18. v,, ore, 011w11t111n,1lly tr�n,hHs·cl ,,s "clans," thus presenting the problem ol translating the sentence ,._ "Jr1Ut-11t I I 11" \\'1'1t" d11l1•1,•111 trurn cl,,n� ... Por this specific example I huve left uji untranslated. �,·1· 1�111I, !iukh 111 /,•i/111 11/11111 1111 ,/111kr11 1>yC1lll sltiso ('thought .111d Socic1y 111 A11ek11I Jap.111) (111�)'1' 1\1.1111111I h11l111 l•IH)

238 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

When this system was grafted onto the society of the Japanese archi

pelago, the public obligations of commoners-taxes in kind and corvee labor

taxes-were borne by men (adult males only), and the officials who deter

mined policy were also strictly male. Meanwhile, women receded into the

background, into the inner recesses of the palace in the case of the aristoc

racy. But this formal situation was vastly different from the actual conditions

of society in Japan at that time, opening up a gap between appearance and

reality.

The signs of friction produced by this gap are most easily found in

those instances in which women made exceptional appearances in the for

mal system of the Ritsuryo state. For example, we occasionally find women

designated as the head of the family in household registers. Similarly, in the

eighth century there were a number of female emperors, which I believe was

the result of the intervention of noblewomen of the inner palace in politics.

While there are a variety of explanations for the appearance of these female

emperors, I believe their rise to power was made possible by the fact thaL

the formal gender principles of the Ritsuryo system-in which the public

world was male and the inner, private world was female-had not yet com

pletely permeated society. But that was only through the eighth century. Al

the beginning of the ninth, during the reign of Emperor Heizei, the Kusuko

Incident led to significant changes.19 Emperor Saga came to power as a result

of this incident, establishing the dynasty of the Saga line. From that point

on, the formal principles of the Ritsuryo system came to be more thoroughly

implemented. After this incident, women in the inner palace were unable lo

publicly engage in politics; men came to the fore, and women receded into

the background.

The fact that women seldom made an appearance in the official regis

tries was also due to Ritsuryo ideology. For example, inspection reports werl'

19. The Kusuko Incident refers to a complicated series of events that occurred between 807 and KIil It began with the eradication of a branch of the Fujiwara clan when its scion was accused of co11 spiring against Emperor Heizci. The accusation came from a member of another branch ol th, Fujiwara clan, Fujiwara Nakanari, but it has been widely blamed on his sister, Fujiwara Ku�uko, who held the highest post in the Office of the Women's Quarters of the imperial palace. Shnrtl) after the plot, Emperor Heizei retired, citing health problems, and was succeeded by l11S )'Oungrr brother, who became .Emperor Saga.Nevertheless, Kusuko, who had the ear or t leizci, rcpon,·dl)• harbored ambitions to become empress. When Heizei recovered from hi� ii Ines�. �he and nlhl·1 • worked to get him reinstated to the throne. In response, Saga dismissed her from her po,t u11d demoted her brother, Nakanari. "lbc following day Hcizci and Kusuko left the capital ,rn,1111•,ulnl east to raise troops and retake lhe throne.Their uprising $Mil failed I ldtcr wnk thl' 11111,111,· ., 1111 became a priest, Nnkanari was executed, and Kusuko comn11llcd �u11.1dc.

'lht l111pu1t.111,c nf thi, ln,ld,·rtt tu Amino\ ,111:11111,•111 is th.,t It, 111n11vc luru- w,,� lt1,,11cd 111 Ku,ulw ,ind 1h11, l>1nu11ht 1111,·11"• ,,rutl11y rr, 1hr poll11,.1l ,,.t111tlr� 111w11111,·111111lu 11111n

Concerning Women 239

compiled for shoen estates and public lands until the eleventh century. These

reports record the owner of each and every plot of agricultural land. When

we consider the fact that women had the right to buy, sell, and transfer land,

it should not be hard to find the names of women in the registries. However,

apart from a limited number of exceptions, the owners in these registries

were always listed as men.

Until recently, historians have taken the exclusive male presence in

these registries at face value, concluding that Japanese society has been pa

triarchal since the archaic past. But exclusive male registration was in fact

only a formal principle adopted as a result of the Ritsuryo system. As we

saw in our discussion of the spread of writing, the world of Chinese char

acters (kanji) and public affairs was considered masculine. Yet the world of

hiragana and the activities of women in the recesses of the private world

were by no means insignificant. The truth is that writing had disseminated

among women. Moreover, the unique women's literature that developed in

the inner palace shows that women firmly maintained their own perspec

tive. A hard and fast patriarchal system had merely been grafted onto a dual

lineage society.

The transplanting of a patriarchal system into a society in which wom

en's social status was by no means low produced conditions rare in world

history. I believe this gap between formal appearance and actual practice was

critical to the development of the women's literature of the Heian period. We

cannot understand the genesis of this literature as Long as we see it as having

been produced in a context in which women were firmly under the control

of a patriarchy. The same applies to understanding the meaning of the very

public social activity earlier noted in women.

POLLUTION AND WOMEN

Just as women were being excluded from public life, a similar situation was

developing in the Buddhist world. Takagi Yutaka claims that the first formal

monks at the time of Buddhism's entry into Japan during the Nara period

were probably women-nuns in other words.20 In fact, there were many

palace. Saga's response, according to Amino, was to strive to make the formal principles of patri· orchy the practical principle of governance.

�o l',1k.igi Yutak.l, I111Hyosl,i 110 11akn 110 11yo11i11 (Women in Lhe History or BLtddhism) (Tokyo: I 1l·ibtll1\h11, 1111111),

240 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

female monks (soryo) during the Nara period who had undergone formal ordination procedures.21

However, after the ninth century we find no female monks seated at the altar or receiving formal rites. By this time, women were completely excluded from the formal, state-recognized, Buddhist altar. This exclusion was closely connected to women's exclusion from politics and public society, but in lhc case of Buddhism it was argued that women's sexual being itself was polluted. As a result, the teachings of the Buddha came to be seen as being beyond the reach of women. Nevertheless, women's f unction as mothers, particularly as the mother of monks, was recognized as valuable; this was how Buddhism in the late Heian period classified women.

This relation between women and pollution presents us with the reason why discussions of women and nonhumans are inseparable. Th.e so-called new Kamakura Buddhist sects that made the salvation of nonhumans a ma jor goal also worked for the salvation of women as another group cast off by mainstream Buddhism. For example, the monks of the Ritsu sect were famou \ for their strenuous efforts toward the salvation of nonhumans. But Hosokawa Ry6ichi has recently demonstrated that the Ritsu sect also built convents, thw, providing a way for women to be welcomed into the religious association.�' Unlike the Tendai and Shingon sects, which formally and systematically ex eluded women from receiving rites of ordination, the Ritsu sect made it pos sible for women to become monks (or nuns) by pledging before the Buddha, to observe the commandments. In this way, the monks of Ritsu turned whnt had previously been temples into convents. The Ji sect's founder, Ippen, abo explicitly welcomed women into his group from the beginning. In the Ji sc1. t, female monks took the character for the number one into their names, wh1 ii: male monks attached the first two characters of Amida Buddha's name, amt, to theirs. For example, Ji nuns with the character "one" in their names fr'l' quently appear in the fourteenth-century nobleman's diary known as The !fr cord of Moromori. Likewise, The Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen show, female and male monks traveling together, and the salvation of women is orw

21. There is a speci fie term for nun (ama), but Amino insists on using the term soryo, which i, rn 11-.-1111) gendered male. This suggests that the English word 1111111k, which is also gendered male. i� 11nt t 111 best translation for the practice of this early period. In effect, Amino is talking about nutldh1 nt before and during a gendered specialization of lab<>r. As the following scntcm.e ,uf1g,•,t,, 11w11k (soryo) was more a 1em1 of rank and accompli�hment rhon genJcr.

22. Hosokawa Ry6ichl, C/11,sei 11<1 rissl11i jii11 to m111sl111 (M,·d1l·v,1I R,r-u Scd 1,·mpl,•s .11111 rhe 1 1, • .,1 ,tr) (Tokyo: Vosh,kawo kobunkan, 1987).

Concerning Women 241

of its major themes. In essence, Ippen's Ji sect dealt with the issue of women's salvation in the same way that it dealt with the salvation of non humans. An other of the new Kamakura Buddhist sects, Sb inran's True Pure Land sect, is famous for allowing monks to marry. This was unprecedented in the history of Buddhism in Japan. Meanwhile, the reader may recall my mention of the scene in The Pictorial Biography of the Holy Man Honen in which courtesans appeal to H6nen for salvation. Without doubt, the salvation of women was a major issue for all of the new Buddhist sects of the Kamakura period.

But we can also read this trend against the grain, from the perspec tive of those who saw non.humans and similar groups as highly polluted. The Picture Book of Goblins tooklppen to task by alleging that relations between men and women within his group were improper. On that point, The Picture Book of Goblins attacks Ippen's group as immoral.

llrns, there was a violent intellectual and religious conf rontation over how to understand women's sexual difference, just as there was with the ex istence of nonhumans. It was a struggle, in other words, over the concept of pollution. This, in turn, was linked to the fundamental issue of evil. On the one hand, we have Shinran's doctrine of "the advantage of evil," in which the evil person is seen as the one most likely to be able to understand and embrace Amida Buddha's vow of unlimited compassion. On the other hand, the warrior government in Karnakura was engaged in the ever more urgent suppression of groups it had designated evil bandits (akuto).

Relatively speaking, women's social standing went into decline in the Muromachi and Warring States periods. Nevertheless, we still find many tradeswomen in the late-fifteenth-century picture scroll, The Songs of Seventy-one Tradesmen (fig. 54). Indeed, this scroll contains a surprising number of images of saleswomen and female artisans. But they appear in de creasing numbers in the popular "Scenes in and out of the Capital" (Rakuchu rakugai) paintings of the Momoyama period and the early Edo tradesmen's songs collections.

For example, fan selling had traditionally been a women's profession. We naturally find images of these women in The Songs of Seventy-one Trades men and even some images of them at their stands in the "Scenes in and out of the Capital." However, from the Edo period on, these jobs were often taken by men. Although this had been an artisanal field in which women were ,1blc lo work in the public sphere, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries women were forced into the background even here.

242 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Figure 54. Rice seller and bean seller, from The Songs of Seventy-one Tradesmen. Sour,� Shichiju-lchiban utaawase, from the collection of the Tokyo National Museum.

THE DECLINE IN THE STATUS OF WOMEN

Discrimination against itinerant women and courtesans also came clearly to

the fore during the Muromachi and Warring States periods. In one histori

cal document from the Northern and Southern Courts period, we find that

a courtesan house in Kyoto, called the Keiseiya23 and run by the courtesan,

themselves, began to be popularly known as Hell's Corner. In the Murom,,

chi period, we find increasing use of the epithets "hell's corner" and "worldly

corner" in relation to courtesans. The discriminatory nuance in "hell's co1

ner" is obvious. While the worldly of "worldly corner" comes from a cryptil

23. 1he term derives from an ancient Chinese story of a ruler who lost his kin1:1dom brrnuw hl· 11,1, so enamored of a woman. !1 literallr means ··1 he house ol lhc foll en 1.,1slk • llul k1·,,�, ,ll,n , ,11111 to serve as a euphemism for a beautiful wn111an 'lhe na111� ol lhl' upc1;1tion W,l\ thus 1111,k, 11111,I mort· ,i- "1 hr house of bNul les." I hat ts the imphcallon 111 A 11111w s tin,, 1pt11111 of llw ,h111 I 111111 1'.t'i�cly,1 lu I kll\ ( llrlll'I

Concerning Women 243

word used in women's quarters, it, too, appears to have had a negative conno

tation. There is a great deal of corroborating evidence that courtesans came

to be looked down upon during this period, and we have documents showing

that men began to sell women into work as courtesans, or keisei, in the late

Muromachi period.

This was entirely different from the way courtesans lived and worked

prior to the Northern and Southern Courts period. In this change, we can

discern the same kind of social stigmatization to which the nonhumans

were subjected. Frois's observation that convents and nunneries were houses

of prostitution may have been a reference to one extreme of the temples of the new Buddhist sects in this later period. The famous traveling Kumano

Bikuni nuns were also said to be prostitutes.24 The stigmatization directed at

the Kumano Bikuni came to be directed more generally at traveling women

of all kinds during late medieval times.

Things also changed for commoner women in the shoen estates. We still

find a few examples of women involved in disputes over land ownership in

the documents ofTara-no-sho in the Muromachi period, but conditions had

changed dramatically compared to the situation before the Northern and

Southern Courts era. It is not entirely clear why things changed so drasti

cally, but after the fourteenth century women hardly ever appeared as the

named parties to legal disputes in shoen and government states. The same

was true in the world of the warriors. W hile the principle of male superiority

went into decline when the Ritsuryo system broke down and women could

once again make an unrestricted appearance in the secular world from the

end of the Heian period into the Middle Ages, by the Muromachi period

women's exclusion from center stage had been reinforced by a newly recon

stituted patriarchal society.

It is likely that women were still quite active behind the scenes, but the

principles of patriarchy took an even more thorough, systematic form in

the Edo period. This is not to say that patriarchy had achieved total domi

nance. Once can still find Edo period documents that hint at more flexi

ble conditions for women behind the scenes. For example, on the island of

Manabe in Bitchu Province, we find what was, as far as we know, the only

case of a village beadwoman. Some have claimed that this was only possible

24. Kurn.ino l\tku111 W('lt' I do period nuns who traveled to the fumous Kumano Shrine (in present day W,1k,1r11111,11• .. 1i,t111r) tn 1wrfor,11 a series Qf rituals. On their relurn home, they �old .1nrnlc1, ,d,111·.I 111 th, t 11111.11111 �ht 111r lhl'Y .tlsu b,·,.11nc known :1\ singer� of popul3r Htngs .ind os d1v111 11� \• l\111111, 111 11 tl11 y "',. , v, 11111.tll)· ,1,,oc 1,ued wi1h proslflulum

2•1•1 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

in the case of an island fishing village and was unthinkable under normal

conditions during the Edo period.25 Nevertheless, for two years running a

woman named Sen was the village headwoman of Manabe. This took place

in 1638-39, when the Edo shogunate's system was not yet in place. Yet it in dicates that women still possessed certain qualifications requisite for them to

assume such a position of responsibility.

At the very least, the conventional view that women in the Edo period

were simply and absolutely oppressed is unable to account for Sen's (admit

tedly brief) leadership. By th is time, many women were still able to engage

in travel, such as on okagemairi (thanksgiving ) pilgrimages, and literacy

among women had reached a fairly high level. There were women who di

vorced on their own will, and it appears that women in merchant families

had signHicant power. In addition, since many of the founders of the ''new

religions" of the Edo period were women, one can say that women still pos

sessed a strong link to sacredness.26 Thus, echoes of women's condition from

before the early medieval era continued to reverberate into the Edo period,

albeit in hushed tones.

There is no doubt that male superiority became the norm during the

Edo period and that Meiji civil law inherited and strengthened that principle.

But the often overlooked history of women's authority and activity over the

centuries reminds us that even in the modern period, which we tend to as

sociate with the often brutal oppression of women, we also need to bring to

light the valiant dimensions of modern women's lives. Miyamoto Tsuneichi 's

Forgotten Japanese is contemporary proof of that.

25. This means that the population was too small and the men were oul al sea for 100 long ltl fulfill 1h, obligations of the office.

26. The major example of a new religion founded during the EJo period by a wmm111 is knrtk)'••

CHAPTER TEN

The Title of Emperor and

the Name Nihon

THE TITLE EMPEROR

With the death of Emperor Showa (Hirohito), many of us had a number of

new experiences during the postwar era. People around the world may have

thought it strange that, despite the fact that Japan is one of the most ad

vanced capitalist nations, it also has what could be called primitive religious

ceremonies. That Japanese seem to have few misgivings about the thirteen

hundred-year existence of a single imperial line or about its continued exis

tence as the symbol of the nation has also led to debates about the Japanese

mentality. The following discussion will be about bow Japanese might con

sider these questions.

To begin with, we should remember that the title of emperor (tenno) is

inseparable from the formation of a state in the Japanese islands. This oc

curred with the establishment of the first state in ancient Japan, which histo

rians call the Ritsuryo. While this state was comparable to those formed by

peoples in other parts of the world, it was also characterized by a number of

particularities that arose from the specific historical and geographical condi

tions in which it was formed.

Society in the fifth and sixth centuries in the Japanese islands was

characterized by the growing power of the leaders oflarge familio-political

groups (known as uji) of the Kinai region, the area surrounding the

.?I,

246 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Yamato Plain.1 Through struggles and confrontations with the leaders of

uji in northern Kyushu and the other regions of western Honshu, the Kinai

uji gradually came to dominate most of western Japan and even made their

power felt in the nearby eastern regions. As a whole, it was a society that

was still "uncivilized," controlled by primitive animism and magical pow

ers, as we can readily see in the large mounded tombs they built. We have

been able to confirm a rank of okimi (great king), which later became thal

of the emperor, among the leaders of the Kinai region. But at the time many

uji were still resisting, so the Kinai uji were unable to create a strong sys

tem. C onditions were not yet right for the system in itself to stably main

tain the position of okimi.

Meanwhile, occasional exchanges took place across the sea and along

the Korean Peninsula with societies on the Asian mainland. Jn China, there

was already a well-established imperial system built upon a long history of

civilization in the Sui and Tang dynasties. There was also movement, un

der the strong stimulus of the Chinese, toward the formation of governmenl

systems on the Korean Peninsula. It was within these tensions, in a society

that was still extremely "soft," that the leaders of the Kinai uji began on their

own initiative to adopt the "hard," rational, and civilized legal system of the

Chinese mainland.2

There are many examples in world history of an uncivilized sociel }'

adopting a civilized system under a variety of conditions. In the case of tht·

Japanese islands, the choice of the uji leaders' decision to accept a world re

ligion (Buddhism) and a governmental system based on Confucianism had

an impact on the subsequent development of Japanese society that cannot

be underestimated. It is also important that we recognize that this influentl

came to Japan via the sea, which functioned as both a transportation routl

and an obstacle to intercourse.

l. While uji Is usually translated Lnto English as "clan," Amino is apprehensive about the gent·t 1I tendency to understand it as referring to a familial organization in which all members are rcl,11, 11 by blood. In chapter nine, Amino look pains to argue that such was not the case in the ard1111 Japanese islands, Lhal uji were instead largely political groupings that might be compm,t'J 11I several different bloodlines. So, while l have tried to minimi1,e the number of Japanese word, I, i'I in romanized form in this translation, uji appears to be one of Lhose terms where leav, ng ,1 rn Japanese will help the reader distinguish the concept from the commonplace undcrst,11111111 of clan.

2. Amino used hard here to describe a society that has constructed or adopted a stab!<· anti 111111111 passing system, while soft means a society without a strong enough system to prt•tlctt•1111111,• ,uul organize relationships of power.

The Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon 247

The title of emperor for the ultimate head of the government was es

tablished in the process of forming the state. This is usually believed to have

begun with the rule of Empress Suiko (592-628). Recently, however, the

consensus among historians of the archaic Japanese islands is that the stable

use of the title emperor as part of a state system began with the establish

ment of the Ritsuryo system and the Kiyomihara Codes around the time of

Emperor Tenmu (673-86) or Empress Jito (690-97). 3 Thus, if we are to view

the past in strict accordance with this theory, we must state that there was

no "Emperor" Yiiryaku, Sushun, or even Tenji.4 Although many textbooks

still carelessly count emperors from the legendary Jinmu, or according to

lineages developed in the Edo period, it is very important that we uphold a

stricter standard.

Historians have traditionally dated the coining of the name Nihon (Ja

pan) to around the reign of Empress Suiko. But recently it has been argued

that it came into use around the time of Emperor Tenmu or Empress Jito,

when the Ritsuryo system was firmly established. In other words, it came

into use in tandem with the title of emperor. This is an important point, for it

forces us to recognize that there was no "Japan" or "Japanese people" before

trus time. In this sense, the people of the Jamon and Yayoi periods were not

Japanese, nor was Shotoku Taishi. 5

Whatever date we assign to the origin of the terms tenno and Ni

hon, the manner in which the still undeveloped society of the islands was

linked to the highly civilized Chinese legal system determined the shape

3. The adoption of Lhe Ritsuryo system was actually a drawn-out proces� of working and reworking legal and administrative codes. The very term Rltsury<i refers lo laws and regulations for govern mental organization (ritsu) and civil and criminal law (ryo). Ovenilt, there were fo ur sets of codes produced, each one superseding the previous set, which constituted the adoption of the Ritsuryo system: the Omi Codes of 668, the Kiyomihara Codes of 689, the Tai ho Codes of 702, and Yoro Codes of 718. The Yoro Codes are the only set that is extant. See Karl F. Friday, Hired Swords: The Rise of Private Warrior Power in Early Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 9.

Japanese imperial legend dates the beginning of the imperial line from Emperor )inmu, grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu, who supposedly reigned from 660 Lo 585 B.c. According to the leg endary genealogy, the rulers Amino discounts as havlng been "emperors," in part because the title was not yet in use, were the twenty-first (Yiiryaku, r. 457-79), Lhe thirty-second (Sushun, r. 587-93, and the thirty-eighth (Tenji, r. 662-71). While most of those listed prior to Yiiryaku in the imperial lineage are probably legendary, there is archaeological evidence for the existence of people who later generations knew as Yuryaku, Sush1111, and Tenji.

� Shotoku Taishi (574-622), commonly called a "a prince of the imperial family," is credited in history anti legend with important achievements in the creation of the imperial state as well as with the lutroductlon of Buddhism to lapan. As Amino sees it, however, he lived before there was a �Japan," so i1 1s incorrect lo see him as a great Japanese. Since he predated the use of Lhe Litle emperor, it is ,11'.u .111Jd1rt111 ht ic lo c,1I J him a member of the imperial family.

248 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

and development of the state and society in Japan, including the emperors themselves, for centuries to come. To begin with, the Chinese legal system was built upon a foundation of Confucian ideology, particularly the theory of the Heavenly Mandate (the idea that the emperor attained his position through the will of Heaven) and the theory of dynastic succession (the idea that if the present emperor is not moral be will lose the Heavenly Mandate, which will then devolve upon a new imperial line; that is, a new dynastic succession would be established). W hen the nascent state in Japan adopted the Chinese legal system, however, attempts were made to exclude the ideas of the Heavenly Mandate and dynastic succession.

Yet the idea of the Heavenly Mandate could not be entirely erased, since the adoption of the legal system meant the acceptance of Confucian ism. According to Hayakawa Shohachi, documents from the period that record the oral statement of the emperor clearly contain ideas related to the theory of the Heavenly Mandate.6 In one case discussed by Hayakawa, the Heavenly Mandate was used as a justification for explaining why the direct descendants of Tenmu and Jito should become emperors, thereby excluding other people of"imperial" lineage from the succession. However, in the end it was the theory of Heavenly Descent that comprised the main pillar for supporting the imperial position. In other words, this was the theory that my generation, educated during World War II, was taught: that a descendant of the Sun Goddess came down from the Heavenly Sphere (Takamagahara) to the earth (the Japanese archipelago) and established the imperial seat. The Chinese theory of the Heavenly Mandate was only used to rationalize this myth.

But while the Chinese theory of the Heavenly Mandate was compara tively rational, the theory of Heavenly Descent was magico-religious in its characterization of imperial succession based on a lineage originating with the Sun Goddess. That is, it was supported by myths of an uncivilized society, myths that were utterly different from the universalistic and clearly concep tual premises of the Chinese conception of Heaven. Therefore, the theory ol heavenly descent was distinctly different from the theory of the Heaven I} Mandate.

6. This class of documents was known as senmyo. See Hayakawa Shohachi, Rits11ry6 kQA/..11 11111 Ritsuryo State) (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1974).

The Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon 249

But was the imperial lineage really unbroken, as the theory of Heavenly Descent would require? During his reign, Emperor Kanmu (r. 781-806), a de scendant of the branch of the imperial clan founded by Emperor Tenji, mas sacred all the descendants of the Tenmu line, the bloodline that had ruled throughout the eighth century. This act can be read as the establishment of a new dynasty, and Emperor Kanmu further demonstrated the novelty of his rule by practicing Chinese-style imperial ceremonies unused by his predecessors. This was a way of claiming the legitimacy of his position in contrast to that of the Temnu line. Even in this case, however, the theory of the Heavenly Mandate did not replace the theory of Heavenly Descent. After the ninth century, the Heavenly Manadate was no longer necessary to secure the legitimacy of the emperor. 1he theory would not reemerge until the imperial succession crisis in the early fourteenth century (I will return to this later).7 The fact that the the ory of the Heavenly Mandate was downplayed in the adoption of the Ritsuryo system is crucial to any account of the character of the early Japanese state.

The fact that the emperor had no family or uji name is also impor tant for our understanding of the early Japanese state. This practice prob ably emerged around the time of the adoption of the title of emperor. As discussed earlier, archaic society in the Japanese islands was not organized along the lines of an exogamous clan system. Instead, before the establish ment of the Ritsuryo system, uji were probably political groups established among the ruling strata. Before the Ritsuryo system, each of the uji possessed an uji name, such as Ataj, Muraji, or Kimi. These names may also reflect a degree of influence from the Asian mainland, or they may have been respect ful forms of address for the leaders of the uji.

Yoshida Takashi argues that the okimi had the uji name of Wa and that okimi referred to his or her rank before the adoption of the title of emperor. 8

According to the History of the Sui, an emissary from Wa came to the Sui court in China in 600. The emissary claimed that his king was of the Ame (this would correspond to the family name), his name was Tarashihiko, and his title was okimi. The way in which the emissary represented his king gives us a glimpse of the state of transition that led to the establishment of the title or emperor.

7. I he crisis he refers to is the struggle between two imperial lineages that finally resulted in the split of the Northern and S outhern Courts.

H Yo�hida Takashi, Kodai kokkn no ayt1mi (The Path of the Archaic State) (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1988).

250 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

THE HISTORY OF THE NAME NIHON

Most likely, society in the archipelago was already loosely unified, with an

okimi at the head of many uji, which were organized according to rank,

even before the introduction of the Ritsuryo system. At that stage, the okimi

probably bad both uji and family names. But when the title of emperor was

established, the emperor came to occupy a position in which he or she gave

family names to all the people, beginning with the nobility (which was con

stituted by the heads of the most powerful uji). It is wel 1 known, for example,

that Emperor Tenmu bestowed "many ranks" (yakusa no kabane) on the

various uji and thus established an order of families. T hese uji names in

clude such well-known uji as the Fujiwara, the Nakahara, the Minamoto,

the Taira, and the Tachibana. At the same time, all commoners in the ter

ritories under the control of the state had uji and family names recorded in

new family registries in imitation of the system on the Asian continent. This

was done in such a way as to make it appear that the emperor had given them

their names. But in the process of granting names the emperor lost both his

uji and family names. In effect, there was no one who could grant an uji or

family name to the emperor. T his illustrates one way in which the emperor

in Japan was distinct from the emperors and kings in China and Korea. It

is possible for there to be a king without an uji or family name in a society

without uji names, but there are very few examples of such in world histor}.

Jumping to the sixteenth century, we see that even Toyotomi Hideyosh1

followed the ancient form of receiving his name from the emperor when he

began to use the new name of Toyotomi. It became common in the Heian pe

riod to use place-names as surnames (so that almost all surnames today an·

place-names), but even those who fell in this category were given uji names

when they were granted positions in the court by the emperor. For instance

during the Edo period a warlord named Satake received an honorary COlll t

position from the emperor. The documents announcing and recording his

imperial office necessarily referred to him as possessing the uji name and

court rank of Minamoto no Ason. That this practice continued even into lht

Edo period shows bow deep its roots were.

These days, the search for family roots has become quite popular, but

when surviving genealogies are used without being subjected to any critiq111

of their historical production, everything seems to originate with the i 111

peria1 family or the ancestral gods of the emperors. Genealogies have hl't'II

1be Title of Emperor and the Name Ni hon 251

structured in such a way that many Japanese naively came to believe that

they were all descendants of the imperial family. But we must recognize

that this structure originated in the establishment of the Ritsury6 state and

the institutionalization of the imperial title.

These issues also have a bearing on the name of the country, Nihon,

which is not a dynastic name, nor is it the name of the tribe of the person who

established the dynasty. I believe that Fra11ce, Prnssia, and Deutschland are

based on names of tribes rather than place-names like England. Apart from

such dynastic names as Yuan, Ming, and Qing, it seems that the Chinese

dynastic names derive from the name of the place where the founder of the

dynasty was born. But Nihon is not that kind of name.

If we read the Chinese characters for Nihon with an alternative Japanese

pronunciation, we have hinomoto, which means " the place where the sun

rises." It means, in other words, the east. There have been many debates and

much confusion since ancient times about the meaning of this name. If we

depart from the proper reading of the characters themselves and read them

as Yamato, as was occasionally done, then we have the place of origin of the

dynasty itself (the Yamato Plain). But Yamato is usually written with other

characters. Why the characters for Ni hon came into use rem a ins unclear, but

in the last analysis the name is only comprehensible from the perspective of

the Asian continent, as the eastern direction where the sun rises.

Therefore, we should begin by recognizing that this is a national name

that is powerfully conscious of the Chinese empire on the Asian mainland. It

also derives from the deep roots of sun worship in the archipelago, indicating

that this was a country ruled by a "heavenly son" emperor whose mythical

origins represented him as the child of the sun deity. This kind of national

name was unusual even for countries in East Asia at the time.

In addition, since Nihon (alternatively read as hinomoto) also means

"east," the location of its referent shifted over time. The ancient Suwa

tlaimyojin engishi (The Origins of the Deity of Suwa) records the existence

of three groups, the Hinomoto-t6, the Watari-t6, and the T6shi-t6, in the

fourteenth century.9 The fifteenth century saw the appearance of a person

who dubbed himself the Great Generalissimo of Hinomoto. This man was

'' I l111nmo10-t6 can be ren<lere<l as the "Band of the East," the Watari-tii ,an be translated as tbe "Band nt ihl' Cro,sing," and 1 he Toshi-to literally means �The Band of the Children of China." Suwa is in till' muthw,·s11!'rn n:gion oft he Konto Plain, which was itself usually called "east."

252 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

the head of the Ando family, whose power base included the Oshima Pen insula of southern Hokkaido and the northernmost section of Honshu lwaki Hoga of Mutsu, who appears in the popular sixteenth-century se, mon Sansho dayu was also said to have taken the title Great Generalissinll of Hinomoto.10 When in the sixteenth century the great merchants of Om 1 petitioned for the right to travel throughout all of Japan, from Kumano In the south to Sado in the north, their petition named the east Hinomoto (i11 this case, an alternate character was used for moto, one meaning "below ) For a final example, we may point to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's use of the term hinomoto to designate Oshii Province at the northern end of Honshu whL t he ordered the great land surveys.

In other words, the eastern border of the country of Nihon was gen erally ca11ed Hinomoto, or "the east," with the same characters being used to designate both the country, Nibon, and its eastern border, hinomoto. 11H location of hinomoto gradually shifted over time, moving further up the 1� land of Honshu toward Hokkaido as population density increased in eastern regions such as Kanto. 11 Since Ni hon was the name of the Ritsuryo statl which was centered in the Kinai region, Hokkaido, Tohoku, Okinawa, an<l southern Kyushu were not in it. If we remember that eastern Japan, which includes the Kanto Plain, was called Azuma-ebisu (Eastern Barbarians), Wl also have room to doubt whether the people there were considered "peopl of Nihon" (i.e., Japanese). As Tohoku and Kanto finally became part of th country of Nihon in the medieval era, hinomoto came to designate different areas, places outside of Nihon. As a result, there are different views of Nihou and the emperor in each region of the Japanese archipelago.

Since the point of departure for this discussion was the fact that th name of the emperor and the name of the country are deeply bound together we may find that someday in the future, when the emperor is no longer sec11 as necessary, our descendants may reconsider whether or not to continue u-. ing the name "Nihon." What is important for the present is a recognition nl the specific history that is tied to the name "Nihon."

IO. Popular sermons (sekkyo-bushi), of which the Sansho day1i was one of the most famous and cmlu, ing, were narrative tales set to musical or rhythmic accompaniment. The Sans/to day1i date� fn,11 the sixteenth century but has been given a second life in the mt)dem era in childr�n·s Morie� ,111<1 films.

11. While we tend to see northern Honshu as being "north," the Japanese spoke of I lonshu 11� an ,,l,rn I stretching west to east, so while not entirely accurat.e in geographical terms, the northern trHI 111 Honshu was imagined to be its eastern extremity.

The Title of Emperor and the Name Ni hon 253

TWO FACES OF THE EMPEROR

Under the Ritsuryo system, the emperor stood at the pinnacle of the council of the aristocracy, known as the Grand Council of State. This could be called Chinese-style imperial government. Under this system, the population was governed as "the people of the realm" (k6min). The emperor stood at the pin nacle of the realm, and in a sense he was the essence of it.

On the other hand, the Ritsuryo state differed from its Chinese model in that its foundation was a system under which all paddy land was designated as state land and then formally distributed to the people. In turn, the govern ment drew revenue from taxes on rice, craft production, and corvee labor. With its emphasis on distribution of paddy land, the state natw·ally placed rites related to the production of rice at the center of the system. The impe- 1·ial accession rite, the daij6sai, for example, is in part a rice ritual.12 On that point, then, the emperor dearly could be described as a king of rice.

But there is one other face to the emperor. As a system, it is not hard to understand the practice of making divine offerings, known in the Japanese islands as nie.13 Originally, nie were offerings of the year's first produce made lo the deities by people living on the coast and in the mountains. Prior to the Ritsuryo system, offerings of first produce were made to communal and 11ji leaders, who were placed in a position comparable to that of the deities. With the establishment of the Ritsuryo stale, this kind of nie was given to the emperor, who then consumed the offerings. Native practice was thus in .,, itutionalized but not actually within the Ritsury6 system. Instead, we have recently come to understand that this practice existed outside the Ritsuryo ,rs tern. Until recently, we have only found traces of this system of offerings in l he text of the early-tenth-century Institutes of the Engi Period (Engishiki).14

But in the excavation of Heij6 Palace in the 1960s, archaeologists unearthed

11 ·the daij6sai is the accession ceremony that Japanese emperors perform upon taking the throne. Much of the ceremony remains secret, but it is clear that the soon to be emperor consumes rice and 1s supposedly imbued with the sacred spirit of his divine progenitors. There are two book-length, F.ngUsh-language studies on the ceremony, Robert S. Ellwood's, The Feast of Kingship: Accession Ceremo11/es /11 Ancient Japan (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1973); and Daniel Clarence Holtom, 77ie Japanese Enthrouement Ceremonies; With an Account of the Imperial Regalia (London: Kegan Paul International, 1996).

I\ Sec chapter seven and Amino's description of offerings as financial capital (suiko) for further details. 11 the fifiy-volume Engishiki was commissioned by Emperor Daigo in 905 and completed in 927. lt

was com rnissioned as a compilation of guidelines to and precedents for court etiquette and proto «11, dhcussing ond establishing the details of ceremonies, official duties, and so on.

254 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

a huge number of wooden placards related to nie offerings. 15 From this, we have come to understand that these offerings had considerable significance from the very beginning of the Ritsuryo system.

In receiving these offerings, the emperor was likened to a divinity. This fact clearly reveals that the emperor also possessed something of the character of "divine kingship," such as existed in the Incan empire or with certain African kings. In the Ritsuryo state, the people who actually made the offerings to the emperor as a divine king came to be directly associated with him by virtue of the fact that they shared the offerings With him. For this they acquired enormous special privileges. In the Nara period, people known literally as "slaves of the deities" (kami no nuhi) or "divine menials" (shinsen) possessed the same status as the earlier bearers of offerings.

The divine kingship role of the emperor, which differed from his role as the head of a Chinese-style imperial state, as stipulated in the Ritsuryo system, is most clearly seen in the system of offerings. Since the emperor had these two sides to him-as a primitive king and a civilized emperor-the Japanese Ritsuryo system was also characterized by a blend of "primitive" and "civilized" rituals and practices. In that sense, the daijosai is not simply a rice festival; it also expresses the divine succession of an emperor who is considered to be a descendant of the gods.

W hat I am saying here is not so different from Inoue Mitsusada's argu ment about the dialectical relation between the Ritsuryo state and the clan system, or Ishimoda Sho's about the relationship between primary and sec ondary productive relations in the early state system.16 However, I would express this situation in terms of the emperor's two faces-as the Ritsuryo Chinese-style emperor and the divine king of a primitive society.

THE SYSTEM OF TAXATION

The coexistence of the primitive and the civilized can also be observed in thl• Ritsuryo state's system of taxation. The Ritsuryo state exacted four kinds ol

15. Heijo was the main imperial palace in Nara when it was the capital city. Among the most importo111 archaeological findings was a large cache of wooden tablets with inscriptions that appear to h,I\ been used to mark offerings made to the emperor that originated in various regions.

16. Inoue Mitsusada, Kodai kokka no kenkyu (Studies in the Archaic State) (Tokyo: lwannmi sho1,·11 1985); lshimoda Sho, Ni/ion kodai kokkaron (The Theory of the Archaic Japanese S1atc) ('I ok)• lwanami shoten, 1973).

The Title of Emperor and the Name Ni hon 255

taxes from the common people: rice (so), labor (yo), crafls (cho), and miscel laneous (zoyo). According to the lalesl research, so taxes were a type of first harvest (hatsuho) offering thal was not submitted to the capital but kept in provincial and country storehouses. In aU likelihood, it was originally used as a kind of capital and loaned Lo people ln lhe form of suiko, as discussed in chapter seven. In the fall, the rice was returned to the storehouses with interest. This interest rice, called "proper taxes" (seizei), covered regional gov ernment expenses. This tax system, then, was developed by systematizing customary practices based on the agricultural cycle, especiaLiy the production of rice. Thus, the tax system that took root in Japanese society took the form of"rice taxes."

. Yo taxes were originally paid in the form of cor vee labor, but they

quickly became indistinguishable from cha taxes. Cho referred to local prod ucts, the specialties of every region. It was also called "tribute" (mitsugi), rep r�senting th� institutionalization of submission rituals in which local special ties were offered to the local leader. Cho included a wide range of products, such as silk, cloth, salt, iron, and so on, but rice was almost never offered in this capacity. As had been the customary practice before the Ritsuryo state, commoners cauied these goods directly to the capital at their own expense. Since rice was submitted as so to provincial storehouses, the goods submJtted as yo and cho supported the cost of operating the central government. The zoyo category, on the other hand, included labor for maintaining communal infrastructures, as well as military service.

My point is that these offerings were customary practices carried out at the local level, which were then institt1tionaJized as offerings made to the state or the "realm" (ko). Over time, they gradually changed in name, be coming the nengu (yearly tribute), kuji (public matters), and buyaku (corvee labor) of the medieval era and the nengu, komononari (miscellaneous goods), and kaeki (corvee labor) of the early modern state. However, the way in which lhe customary practices of commoners were institutionalized as offerings to I he state remained unchanged.

We can trace the long-term effects of this redirection of customary practice toward the state by observing the durability of the term ko (the realm, the public), which was used to identify the new state. Originally, "the realm" was pronounced oyake and was written with the characters meaning "large house." This word referred to the residence and storehouses of the lo l al lcader, which were not, however, his private property. Instead, the word

256 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

referred to the facilities of the community, with the leader as the reprC.sl'llt , tive of it. With the establishment of the Ritsyury6 state, the term kuge (lit 1 ally, "house of the realm") came to be used in reference to the empero1 \) the Middle Ages, the shogun was called kubo (the public person), and in I Ii early modern era the shogunate and the regional lords were called kog, ( ii fairs of the realm). While the person or institution identified with the real ,n itself changed, the tax burdens established by the Ritsuryo state continued 1, be seen as service to the realm (whoever or whatever constihtted it).

It is worth reminding ourselves that the realm was created by th Ritsuryo state but not through a simple imposition. By institutionaliz111r, the existing customs of the commoners, the Ritsuryo system of taxation , n be seen as having organized the subjective inclination of the commo1H r themselves. Of course, this institutionalization was backed up by force and resulted in a rather harsh expropriation of wealth. Yet it is important to not that the particular form of this first taxation system had a major impact 1111 society in the Japanese islands for centuries thereafter.

Since the tax burden was established by systemizing the common ers' own customs, they tended to resist strenuously when the govern ml 1 deviated noticeably from prevailing forms. Over time, as commoner li\l and forms of resistance changed, the tax system was also modified. But \\ should be careful to observe that in the many cases of commoner resistan� c to changes in the tax system, from ancient to early modern times, we almost never encounter an open appeal for the abolition of rice taxes. There Wl re countless movements for the reduction of taxes but not for outright abol it1011 Of course, the commoners firmly believed that if the realm did not fulfill it proper function there was no need to submit yearly tribute. But that did not lead to an open call for the abolition of annual taxes since yearly tribute\\ not seen as a private payment for land but as a public tax.

In sum, this concept of the realm was the most enduring creation 111 the Ritsuryo state, in part because it was established upon a foundation u( commoner freedom and creativity.17 One further important result of tht creation was that from the founding of the Ritsury6 state the emperor alw.1y stood at the pinnacle of the realm in one capacity or another.

17. By freedom and creativity Amino is suggesling that commoners had a kind of subjective inWsl1111111 in maintaining the system, since il made use of practices that were familiar. In J �ens�. Arn11111 1 assuming that those customary practices were developed by the people themselves ,tr1J nol '"" ply forced upon them by earlier leaders. Reader� may not,• lh,11 tlm 1� nu1�hlcnt with hh 111·11, 1 al evaluation uf ethnological data.

The Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon 257

"THE SYSTEM OF PROFESSIONS":

THE PURVEYOR SYSTEM AND THE EMPEROR

\l the beginning of the eighth century, when the Taiho Ritsuryo codes were written, the heads of the uji of the Kinai region (the future aristocracy of the imperial court) were still fairly powerful. Under the Ritsury6 system, the , >aijokan (the Grand Council of State, comparable to today's Cabinet), the Ii ighest department in the state, was composed of representatives of the most powerful uji in the K.inai region. This council could check the power of the 1•mperor on a number of points. For example, without the agreement of the < ;.-and Council of State, there could be no imperial succession. Moreover, ti was the council that proposed the daij6sai ceremony as the rite of impe t in! succession. In this way, the daijosai became something that the emperor ,ould not perform of his own free will. The council's willingness to place r (.'Strictions on the emperor led to a great deal of tension between the two t nstitutions.

The eighth century was a time of nearly continuous struggle and in fighting over the imperial succession, both within the imperial family and itmong members of the aristocracy who constituted the Grand Council of \late. Since the patriarchal principles of the Ritsuryo system had not yet thoroughly permeated society, this period also occasionally produced a kmale emperor. However, after Emperor Kanmu's coup against the Tenji line, and after Emperor Saga's suppression of the Heizei Insurrection led by Kusuko, it was no longer necessary to legitimize imperial rule using the ideology of the Heavenly Mandate. 18 With that question settled, friction be I ween the emperor and the council also subsided. One can say, therefore, that it was during the ninth century that the imported legal system finally look root in the islands ofJapan, at least in principle. In general, this was the period in which the culture of the Chinese Tang empire was in ascendance 1n Japan.

In the ninth century, however, the most powerful of the aristocratic 11/i-the Fujiwara-came to hold an overwhelming advantage in the noble untncils. In addition, the emperor's pronouncements began to carry greater ,n1thority with the aristocracy. At the same time, government bureaus di- 1cctly controlled by the emperor-the Sovereign's Private Office (Kuroudo

Ill l·w d,•1.111, 1111lw I lt-111'i lnsurrrction, �Cl' Lh.1ple1 n11tc.

258 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Dokoro) and the Imperial Police Agency (Kebiishi)-assumed much of the

power that had previously been held by other departments of the government.

As a related development, a system began to develop in the ninth cen

tury whereby particular uji possessed hereditary control of particular offi

cial posts or departments in the government. By the late tenth century, this

had become the norm.19 This had been common in western Japan (eastern

Japan may have been different) before the formation of the Ritsury6 state,

since particular functions had been hereditarily performed by particular

kinship groups.20 What became the norm by the late tenth century was a

system that had in fact existed prior to the establishment of the Ritsury6. In

fact, we see the same kind of principle at work in the iemoto system of the

Edo period.21

In other words, what we see is a historical tendency toward what I call

a system of professions, in which particular functions were hereditarily con

trolled by particular uji. By the eleventh century, the imperial government

was running entirely on such a contract system. To give a few concrete exam

ples, the Bureau of Housekeeping (Kamonry6) was the agency in charge of

cleaning and maintaining facilities for rites in the imperial palace. The head

of this agency was always a member of the Nakahara uji. The top officer of the

Grand Council of State's secretariat was always a member of the Ozuki uji, a

lineage known for its possession of advanced mathematical and accounting

skills. The Bureau of Divination was managed by the Daoist adepts of the

Abe, and the Bureau of Medicine benefited from the superior medical skills

of the Tanba and the Wake uji. As this system took hold, the relative statuses

of the noble families became fixed.

The descendants of Fujiwara no Michinaga of the northern house of

the Fujiwara clan held such a tight monopoly on the posts of regent (sessho)

and chief imperial adviser (kanpaku) that their line became known as the

19. This has been concretely demonstrated by Sato Shin'ichi in his famous study Nihon no ch1isl!i kokka (The Medieval Japanese Statt.) (Tokyo: lwanami shoten, 1983).

20. Over time these functions bad tended to become concentrated in the hands of particular fomillt� within the.se uji. The vast Fujiwara uji is a good example of this.

21. The lemoto system is a kinship-style procedure for the transmission and licensing of technical skilh, In a typical case, a particular school of an art form (tea, acting, painting, and so on) is controlleJ by a group with a leader who is invested with the authority and status of a father (the head of th� "family,n or ie). The leader's control of the group aims to guarantee a certain consistency and standard of practice. Acquisition of skills involves submission to the group, through its le,1dl·r 111 a form of familial relation. Leadership of the group is understood to be herl'llitary, pas\l nt: from father to son, but in practice it was not at all uncommon for a teacher to adopt the mn,t tJlcnt<'li m1dent as his son so that leadership of the group would be ,M,trtuted h> both f.im1hal authmll) (through adupt1on) and skill

The Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon 259

Sekkan (regent-advisor) house.22 The families that inherited the posts of

grand counselor, minister of state, and general were known as the Seika (pure

and brilliant) families. The Kanj6ji line of the Fujiwara supplied officials for

the secretariat, while members of certain other families could only rise as far

as major counselor (essentially a second-in- command position). Therefore,

even among the nobility official function was determined by family, not by

talent. Moreover, working functionaries (as opposed to titular heads) also

came to inherit their posilions. This trend began in the ninth century, was

common by the tenth, and was dominant by the eleventh.

At the top of this system of professions was the emperor. To put it in

modern terminology, we might say that the emperor succeeded by heredity

to the office of the emperor. That i-;, the functions that should be performed

by an emperor could only be fulfilled by a member of the imperial family. It

appears that on the whole this system contributed lo a stable imperial succes

sion. At the same time, however, it effected a real separation between the per

son who performed the functions of the t·mpc.•ror and the emperor h11nself.

That is, the functions of the emperor came to be Larricd out by tht: Sekkan

(regent-adviser) house as the representative of the emperor. In the I.titer half

of the Heian era, retired emperors seized the praLlicJI fund ions of the em

peror from the Sekkan family.

As a result, the government could continue to operate even if the em

peror himself was just an infant. 'Ihe same process occurred in the govern

ment agencies. A post, such as the head of the Bureau of Housekeeping, might

formally be held by a son, but it might well be the father, who was accustomed

to the job, who ran the office. This kind of situation was common. Therefore,

the medieval relationship between the emperor and the retired emperor-the

man who actually fulfilled the functions of the emperor-was based on a

well-practiced norm and was not at all an anomaly.

The imperial state was supported by a land tax system that by the

eleventh century had taken form as a system of shoen estates and imperial

lands. Until recently, historians believed that shoen estates were similar to

22 By the early I leian period, the Fujiwara was an enormous uji-too large to function along the lines of 11ji self-interest-with which many readers may be familiar. For the sake of more specific identi fication, the h1jiwara ujiwas split into several layers of subdivision. The northern branch, to which Amino refers, was one of the higher-level subdivisions. 1hat is why Amino specifies the descen dants of Michinaga in the northern branch, a distinction lhal would rule out most members of 1hat branch. For an explanation of uji and 11)1 names, see Jeffrey Mass, �Identity, Personal Names, and Kamakura Society." 10 Antiquity and Anachronism in Japanese History (Stanford, Stanford L1nm�r,1l y P11 ,\, 1992).

260 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

European manors; the term shoen system was coined to correspond with

the European historical term manorial system. But the term shoen/imperial

lands system was more appropriate for at least two reasons. First, while Eu

ropean manors were largely independent fiefs, the shoen in Japan were more

along the lines of an administrative unit. Second, the imperial lands con

trolled by provincial governors had approximately the same total area as did

the shoen estates. In any case, the hereditary system of professions I have

described for the nobility and the central government permeated the land

system as well. The administration of both shoen and imperial lands was

carried out through various levels of offices such as the office of the owner

(ryoke shiki), the office of the manager (azukarisho shiki), and the office of

the lieutenant governor (geshi shiki), all of which were managed through

subcontractors. In other words, it followed the model of the system of pro

fessions as a multilayered contracting system. If we return to my metaphor

of the "two faces of the emperor," this whole system was an extension of the

emperor as pinnacle of the Ritsury6 system. In the medieval era, the power

to establish or revoke shoen estates was held by the Office of the Retired Em

peror, that is, the person who controlled the office of the emperor. It was this

"ruler of Heaven" who controlled the actual functions of the government.

The system of taxation under the shoen/imperial lands system was of

course based on the rice paddy. It relied on the fact that the common people

(designated "the many names") paid service, or tribute, to the realm in the

form of rice, labor, and specialty products. Yet even as the shoen/imperial

lands system was coming into being, it was paralleled by another system of

administration for nonagricultural peoples, for such tradespeople as shrine

and imperial purveyors. TI1e majority of tradespeople, though not all, were

shrine or imperial purveyors. As I mentioned earlier, shrine, temple, and im

perial purveyors were called "slaves" and were in direct service to the deities

and the emperor. Their institutionalization by the state was realized in the

shrine and imperial purveyor system discussed in chapter eight.

In this parallel system, the emperor functioned in the other aspect of h b

position, as a sacred being. That is, this system was formed as an extension of

the ancient practice of tribute being offered to the emperor by specially desig

nated tribute bearers. Therefore, here as well the emperor was at the pinnacll·

of a system-just as he was at the top of the government's subcontracting

system for official posts. The emperorship entered the medieval period with

these two functious still intact.

The Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon 261

BUDDHISM AND THE EMPEROR

One of the greatest changes effected by the establishment of the Ritsury6

state was brought about by the official promotion of Buddhism. The first of

the Ritsury6 codes, the Y6r6 Codes, created an institution called the Sojo

(Monks' Organization) and a special set of laws by means of which the gov

ernment could rigidly control Buddhist temples and their inhabitants. How

ever, with the construction of the Great Buddha in Nara,23 the relation be

tween the state and Buddhism changed dramatically, and the state became

less able to control the Buddhist institutions. By the ninth century, the posi

tions of relative power had been reversed such that Buddhist rituals, particu

larly those of the Tendai and Shingon sects, became fimtly insinuated into

the ceremonial practices of the imperial palace. In the tenth century, large

Buddhist temples with connections to Shinto shrines began to wield a great

deal of power. The changes were so sweeping that the emperor himself came

to be called a "slave of the Buddhas."

How did the emperor and the native shrines react to this rise in Bud

dhist power? Recent studies have clearly shown that the authority of the em

peror did not depend on a relationship with the native deities alone. From the

beginning, imperial authority was also sustaiued by a deep, continuous rela

tionship with Buddhism. In fact, apart from two or three exceptions, all em

perors-from the first to be known as such (Empress Jit6, 690-97) to those of

the Edo period-were cremated in accordance with Buddhist practice. From

Emperor Sh6mu (724-49) on, all had Buddhist funerals and were buried in

Buddhist temples, not interred in a funerary mound as was common during

the period immediately preceding the founding of the Ritsury6 state. The

type of funeral we saw in 1989 when Emperor Showa died was actually in

vented for Emperor Meiji's funeral in the early twentieth century. Since mod

ern imperial funeral rites were invented as a faux "revival" of funerals from

lhe pre-Ritsury6 period, a time when the title of emperor had not yet come

into use, it makes no sense to call this "an ancient tradition."

23. Construction ofTodaiji and its e.normous statue of the Buddha was begun in 745 at the command of Emperor Shomu and completed in 751-52. For Amino, the scale of investment in time, money, and administrative energy in the construction ofTodaiji marks a turning point in the relation b�I ween the �Late and Buddhism in Japan. For a good description of the importance ofTodaiji in I he early Rilsuryo state, see William H. Coaldrake's study of Japanese architecture, Architecture ,:ml /\11//rpri/y i11 Japan (London: Routledge, 1996), chap. 3.

262 Sacred Space a11d the People on the Margins of History

While the links between the emperor and Buddhism are not fully un

derstood, we have recently discovered that in the latter half of the thirteenth

century the emperor performed an esoteric Buddhist baptismal rite (the

kanjo rite) at his accession ceremonies.24 We have verified that this esoteric

ritual was performed at the accession of Emperor Fushimi (1288-98), and it

is possible that something similar took place earlier. In any case, the strong

link between Buddhist-style rituals and the emperor is worth renewed

consideration. Reevaluating the significance of this relationship is likely to

highlight important transformations in the existence of the emperor after

the ninth century.

MULTIPLE S TATES IN THE JAPANESE ARCHIPELAGO

In the ninth century, the power of the state, which was centered in the Kinai

region and known as Nihon, became more and more precarious. Not only

did its authority not extend to Hokkaido and Okinawa, but there are even

some doubts as to how far it extended to eastern Honshu. The separation

of eastern Japan from the ruling authority of the emperor had begun by the

tenth century. The event that clearly signaled the beginning of this trend was

the Tengy6 Disturbance of the early tenth century.

The Tengy6 Disturbance was actually two uprisings, one led by Taira no

Masakado and the other by Fujiwara no Sumitomo.25 Sumitomo is remem

bered for having led a rebellion of pirates in the western Inland Sea region,

but we believe that he also forged an alliance with pirates from the kingdom

of Silla on the southern end of the Korean P eninsula. In the end, he was un

able to establish an independent state. Masakado, on the other hand, drove

off the imperially appointed provincial governors of eight eastern provinces

24. The kanjo rite is a kind of Buddhist baptismal ceremony involving the application of water�, oil LO the forehead. The fact that a Buddhist rite is part of imperial succession rituals is significJrll for AmJno because it suggests bow much the emperor, as the post is historically known, w., dependent upon the new system imported from China. This means that despite the continua11011 of what Amino calls �lhe magical face of the emperor," the emperorsbip never was a pure link le• an unadulterated Japanese past.

25. As is often the case in Japanese history, the incidents that comprised the Tengyo Oi$turh.111u received their name from the years in which they took place, the Tengy1) era (937-48). Fuj1w,1n no Sumitomo's uprising was centered io the western region of the Inland Sea and was quid Ii suppressed in 941. Taira no Masakado's uprising was centered in the Kanto region 1n Shi11111 , Province. Masakado captured the provincial headquarters ofShimosa, Sh I molsu kc. Mu�a,h 1. I, 11 Sagami, Kozuke, K azusa, and Awa before his defeat in early 940.

The Tit le of Emperor and the Name Nihon 263

and established a new stale (even though it only lasted about three months).

Masakado named himself lhe "new emperor" (shinno), a title he claimed to

have received from the Hachiman cl<:ily, Sugawara no Michizane.26 He lo

cated his capital on the Shimosa Peninsula, added the province oflzu to the

traditional seven provinces or Kan lo, and appointed his own provincial gov

ernors. As short-lived as iL was, Masakado established a kingdom in Kanto

that was completely separate from the monarchy in Kyoto. Indeed, its estab

lishment had a decisive impad on the archipelago's subsequent history, one

that long survived its brief existence. ·n,e "eastern provinces" were reclaimed

by the Kyoto monarchy after Masakado's defeat, but from then on powerful

local leaders operated as independent l'.ont ractors in the delivery of goods to

the capitaJ. In other words, a system developed lhal largely bypassed the local

organs of imperial rule thal had been eslablished elsewhere. Therefore, it is

historically inaccurate to claim lhal there was just one state in the Japanese

archipelago. It would be more acu1 rate lo recognize lhe existence of (and will

to establish) multiple sovereign slates in the islands.

Around the time of Sumilomo and l'vlasakado's uprisings, the Abe, the

K iyohara, and finally the Oshft Fujiwara 11ji n>sl' M, i11dcpcndenl powers in

northern Honshu. Such was their indcpl'lldcncl..' of all ion that it h, possible

to view these uji as constituting a suc..c.cssion of slates. [·in.illy, al the end of

the twelfth century, these states were superseded by the est.1bl ishmenl or the

Kamakura shogunate, which placed under its Jurisdiction everything east of

the provinces of Mikawa, Shi nano, and Echigo.

Scholars are deeply divided in their evaluations of the Kamak ura sho

gunate. One school of thought holds lhat the Kamakura shogunate was in

fact an independent state and should thus be recognized as constituting a

form of the medieval state in addition to the model of the imperial govern

ment in Kyoto. Another school holds that it was essentially a branch office

of the monarchy in Kyoto that undertook military functions and was thus

nothing more than another power center. In general, those scholars born in

Tokyo (the east) hold with the first school, while scholars from Kyoto favor

26. Sugawara no Michizane (845-903) was an apt choice for Masakado for he was an important coun selor in the late-ninth-century court whose efforts Lo curtail Fujiwara dominance led to his exile from Kyoto in 901. His death in exile in 903 was followed by a series of calamities in the capital, which were blamed on his wrath at having been wrongly accused. in order to appease his vengeful spirit, he was cnshri ned as the deity Ten man Tenjin. Not only was his associalion with Hachiman, the deity of war, propitious for an uprising. but his reputation for having been wronged by the ,ourt would have had an obvious appeal to the rebels.

264 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

the second. Scholars from Tohoku are allies of the scholars from the west,

while those from Kyushu are allies of scholars in the east, a breakdown that

reflects old regional animosities.27

To measure sovereignty, we should examine the functions of medieval

government. On this basis, I believe the evidence suggests that there were

two medieval states. During the Kamakura period, judgments in disputes

over the boundaries between provinces were issued by two authorities since

disputes at the provincial borders exceeded the authority of governors and

could only be decided by an authority with greater power. If the dispute was

in the east, the Kamakura shogunate handed down the decision; if the dispute

was in the west, the decision came from the imperial government. Military

and civilian governors in the provinces had the authority to adjudicate cases

within provincial borders. The same regional breakdown was applicable in

the case of barrier gates (a kind of checkpoint and tollbooth). The authority

to establish a barrier on trans portation routes (or to pass through a barrier

unimpeded) was divided between eastern and western Japan, held by the po

litical body with the highest authority in that region. In the east, this was the

shogun, while in the west it was the emperor. The same could even be said

for laws. Laws issued by the Kamakura shogunate after the Joei Formulary

(1232) are known as the New Kanto System.28 Historians refer to the laws

issued by the imperial government after 1232 as the New System for Noble

Houses. In other words, both juridical and legislative authority was split.

27. The dispute over the location of Yamatai. the ancient country depicted in the fifth-century Chine,c text History of the tatter Han Dynasty, also Lends to reAecL such regional identifications. The old est recorded reference to the Japanese islands is found ln another Chinese text, The History of t/11 Wei Dynasty, which was compiled in 280 A.O. by Chen Shou, in a section on "Eastern Barbarian The text refers Lo the people ofWa, composed of several countries, the most powerful of which w,1> called Yamatai. The controversy over the location ofYamalai arose for several reasons. The tell gives directions which, if followed precisely, would put one in the middle of the ocean south o Kyushu. Several of the listed slops along the way are clearly in Kyushu, but the name of the cou11lr} resembles the name of the plain where the imperial family rose to prominence, Yamato. For thoM interested in establishing the antiquity of the imperial family, it is important that Yamata1 rct1:, to Yamato, thus demonstratmg its preeminence from the beginning. Scholars from Ky ushu ten to believe that Yamatai was located there, and they are supported by scholars from Tokyo. Kyoto scholars make the argument that Yamatai was located in Kina I. These are examples of how cwn today regional history affects us unconsciously. For a detailed discussion of the historical qucs11u11 and controversy, see William Wayne Farris, "The Lost Realm of Yamatal," in Sacred Tnts <1111/ Buried Treasures: Issues in the Historical Arc/,aeo/ogy of Ancient Japan (Honolulu: Um\'CNI) 01 Hawai'i Press, 1998).

28. The Joei Formulary (foei shikimoku) was a set of legal principles articulated by the Kamakur.1 ,ho gun ate in 1232 that many historians assess as having represented a perma11cn1 rei:ognltlnn of 1l11�1 polity in Japan, a split between the imperial court and the K(1makura sho11unatc 1\, kfli�-� i\l,, l notes, it resulted not in a settlement of legal questions, but 10 a rapid 10crc,1Se in lcgisl,1111111 d1, 1.11

The Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon 265

While there were points of contact between the two institutions, this

division of authority implies that the Kamakura shogunate was a state. How

ever, their differences went beyond questions of administrative jurisdiction.

The Kamakura shogunate adopted organizing principles different from those

of the imperial government. In Kamakura, it was the secular relationship be

tween lord and vassal that supported the state, with the system of professions

and the shoen/imperial lands system having little effect. This, at least, is how

historians in eastern Japan see it.

If we take the perspective of scholars from the Kyoto region, however,

the most salient point is that the shogun was appointed by the emperor.

Moreover, the Kamakura shogunate measured time according to the year

names of the imperial government, while its system of offices was incorpo

rated as a part of the imperial government's system of offices. Kyoto scholars

also point out that the Kamakura shogunate did not designate a new name

for its "country."

Naturally, other arguments are made, but the points about year names,

the system of officials, and the name of the country are extremely important.

These are clearly indispensable items for a state. In fact, a number of times

the shogunate used a different year name from that being used al the impc

rial court, even though there are no cases of it determining a year name on its

own. The argument for overlap in official posts also hai, serious limitations.

For example, even when Minamolo no Sanctomo, the third shogun of the

Kamakura shogunate, accepted the post of minister of the right 111 the impe

rial government, he did not attend the nobles' councils. Likewise, when the

shogunal regent became minister of the right quarter of Kyoto, be had noth

ing to do with the administration of the city. Although appointments to posts

in the imperial government stiU had significance in the Kamakura period,

the imperial offices granted to members of the shogunate were given in name

only. As for the question of an independent name, Kan to, the general name of

the region in which the shogunate was located, clearly functioned as a form

of national name in distinguishing the shogunate from the imperial court.

ing how disputes of property and inheritance were to be seuled. As such, it can be seen as a kindof declarauon of independence, even as it acknowledged an authority (imperial) outside itself. For a translation of1he Joei Formulary, see John Carey Hall, "Japanese Feudal Laws: The Hojo Code of Judica1ure," 'l'ra11sactio11s of tire Asiatic Society of Japa11 334 (1906). For a fuller discussion of their sigmficance, see Jeffrey Mass, Tl1e Developme11t of Kamakura Rule, 1180-1250 (Stanford: Stanford Univers1tr Pre�s. 1979), chapters four and fi\'e.

266 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Thus, both sides have some basis for pressing their claims. While there

is still much to learn, it is important to remember that the authority of the

emperor did not extend to the east. In fact, after the Mongol invasion, the

authority of the emperor did not even extend to Ky ushu. Moreover, the right

to conduct foreign relations was held by the shogunate. Finally, after the thir

teenth century, succession to the office of the emperor was carried out ac

cording to the will of the shogunate, not the will of the imperial family or the

Grand Council of State.

THE CRISIS OF THE IMPERIAL FAMILY

The reader should be aware that an important element of postwar historiog

raphy in Japan has been the reaction against prewar and wartime imperial

centered history. In that context, postwar history textbooks have almost en

tirely limited their discussion of the Kamakura period to the history of the

warriors as a way of downgrading the importance of the emperor and his

government. While this emphasis on local leaders and the functions fulfilled

by warriors made an important contribution to resisting imperial history,

one unexpected result was that the history of the imperial court and the no

bility since the Kamakura period has been almost left blank.

Fortunately, progress is being made in filling in the gaps. Nevertheless,

the textbooks still have nothing to say about the Kamakura era emperors

after Emperor Go-Toba's loss to the shogunate in the J6kyt1 Disturbance.29

This silence notwithstanding, the emperor and the retired sovereign clearly

wielded power in the imperial government and its effective territory during

the Kamakura period. TI1e rule of the regents or retired sovereigns, from the

late Heian through the Kamakura periods, is usually portrayed as a timt

when the emperor was powerless. But I believe this view is an outright mis

take. There were times when the imperial government was controlled by the

29. In greatly simplified terms, the Jokyu Disturbance was a struggle between the imperial court 111 Kyoto, led by Emperor Go-Toba, and the Kamakura shogunate. Go-Toba declared war on thr shogunate in 1221 and was militarily defeated one month later. The postwar settlement gJv, the shogunate greater rights to intervene in Kyoto court politics, which is why Amino sugge\l that the textbooks slight the empe.rors who ruled between Go-Toba (who initiated and 10s1 th1 war) and Go-Daigo, who began the conflict that led to the fall of the shogunate. I le iMi�h I h.il the claim that the emperors were powerless is a drastic misunderstanding of 1he relations hrlWft·n the shogunate and the court. IL is, in other words, a mistaken equivalence of power wllh ,\ul 1101 ti} categories that Amino argues should be considered separately.

The Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon 267

emperor hjmself (tenno shinsei), and in the world of the nobility the person

who controUed the office of the emperor still carried a great deal of weight.

As mentioned above, the imperial government issued its own set of

laws, known to historians as the New System for Noble Houses, from the

Kamakura to the Northern and Southern Courts period. These laws were

not meaningless, for even after the imperial defeat in the Jokyfi Disturbance,

the court still held actual power in western Honshu. It is precisely because the

imperial court still had power that we can foUow the trail of the shogunate's

gradual encroachment on it. We should be careful not to equate the trail with

the outcome. But the trail does point to something important: the imperial

system entered a period of severe crisis from the late thirteenth to the four

teenth centuries, as its ruling authority and the right to determine the office

of the emperor were gradually usurped by the shogunate.

One element in this story was of couise the strong external pressure

brought to bear on the "monarchy of the west" (the imperial court) by the

"monarchy of the east" (the shogunate). But the decline in imperial power

was not just due to external pressure. As the court faced pressure from the

shogunate, its system for controlling the large temples and shrines broke

down, and aristocratic families began to fracture. These internal crises even

tually led to a major division within the imperial family, which manifested

itself in the tense confrontation between the Daikakuji and )imyoin lines or

emperors.30

Emperor Fushimi, of the Jimyoin line, and Emperor Kamcyama, or the

Daikakuji line, had both made such strong efforts at lhe end of Lhe thirteenth

century to revive imperial rule that they were suspected by the shogunate

of plotting an insurrection against shogunal authority. By the first decades

of the fourteenth century, the sense of crisis pervading the imperial family

led Go-Daigo (of the Daikakuji line) and his contemporary Jimyoin rival,

the retired sovereign Hanazono, to argue that virtue, not simply lineage,

should be the foundation of imperial succession. They argued that if the

30. The division in the imperial family arose from a series of succession dispute.s in the post-Jokyu era. 1he shogunate exercised its rigl1t to determine the imperial succession, won in the Jokyu Distur bance, by demanding the enthronement of Emperor Fushimi in 1297, against the wishes of the dominant retired sovereign Kameyarna. A split within the imperial family ensued in wllicb rival parties, centered on Emperor Kameyama (the Daikakuji line) and his nephew Emperor Fushimi (the Jimyoin line), struggled to place their own descendants on the throne. The shogunate's solu lion LO the struggles was 10 institute a system of alternate succession, from Jimyoin to Daikakuji .,nJ back, with reigns oflimited extension. Tt was Emperor Go-Daigo's attempt to end this system that sparked rhe civil war thnt toppled the Kamakura shogunate.

268 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

emperor lacked virtue, chaos would ensue and the monarchy would collapse.

A persuasive argument could thus be made that Go-Daigo and Hanazono had thereby taken up the theory of Dynastic Succession, which had been dropped from the Chinese model of the emperor following the adoption of the Ritsury6 system. Go-Daigo clearly gambled on a "great insurrection" as

a means of overcoming the crisis. In the end, he succeeded in toppling the Kamakura shogunate but not in restoring exclusive imperial rule.

However keenly the members of the imperial family may have felt this

sense of crisis, there was a deeper pattern of social change underlying these events. The sali ent condition here was the continual and decisive decline in the "sacredness" of imperial authority, an authority that itself had been staked to the power of the deities (both native and Buddhist).

As I argued in chapter eight, I believe that around this time a major transformation took place in the relationship between nature and human society that shook the authority of the deities. The imperial family was

forced to search for new support when its relationship with the deities no longer sufficed. That is why emperors Hanazono and Go-Daigo drew close to the Zen and Ritsu monks who rose with the tide of the new Kamakura

Buddhist sects. Monks like Monkan (of the Ritsu sect but with deep roots in the esoteric Shingon sect) were for this reason well situated to gain imperial

confidence and influence. Hanazono and Go-Daigo's interest in Song Neo

Confucianism bad similar motivations, although Go-Daigo was more deci

sive in this matter. Both men attempted to mobilize new religions and new trends in foreign thought, under imperial leadership, to overcome the crisis

in imperial authority. But Go-Daigo did not limit himself to a search for a new religious au

thority. In the secular sphere, he mobilized shrine and imperial purveyors

as well as nonhumans-into a military force. He sought control of commer cial forces and planned to issue his own money. He even attempted to create a new framework for governing all the shoen estates and imperial lands in

the country, which was later institutionalized by the Muromachi shogunate. The new system taxed fief income (from yearly tribute) at a rate of 5 percenl,

while corvee labor was to be mobilized at a rate of one day for every ten cha of

paddy land. Go-Daigo also sought to make the district a far more important administrative unit. 31

31. For a detailed English-language study of Go-Daigo's career, see Andrew �dmund C,oblc, K,·11111111 Go-Dnigo's Revo/utio11 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, l996).

TI,c Tille of Emperor and the Name Ni hon 269

Go-Daigo thus groped his way loward a new system-centered upon an

emperor with a new source of authority-that would completely transform society. Upon his failure, the imperial family fell into even more dire straits.

The imperial clan splil into a Southern Court in Yoshino that opposed the

new Muromachi shogunate and a Northern Court in Kyoto that was sup

ported by it. The Southern Court reached its low ebb when in 1348 it was driven out of its stronghold in Yoshino by Ko no Moronao, leader of the sho gunal forces. Had Ko or Lhe shogunate pursued the Sourthern Court until it was destroyed, it is likely that the imperial family would have disappeared.

But since the shogunate failed to do that, the 1392 agreement to reunify the

imperial clan after fifty-six years of fighting revived its chances of survival. The criticism of the military class that emerged in the latter years of

the Edo period could not look lo an imperial family descended solely from the Northern Court as an alternative authority to the shogunates of the

warriors. Because the Northern Court had collaborated with the warrior clans, it could not establish a lruly independent existence. Only the Southern Court, with its legitimate history of resistance, could provide the emperor

with the mantle of authority in a struggle against the military houses. That is why Emperor Meiji, himself a descendant of the Northern Court, acknowl edged the legitimacy of the Southern Court when the question of historical

legitimacy arose in the modern era.

But we may also approach this problem from another di rection. We

might ask why it was that the Muromachi shogunate was tumble lo destroy the Southern Court. For some reason, Ko no Moronao was held back. Therein lies another problem for us to consider.

AUTHORITY AND POWER

After the events that initiated the Northern and Southern Courts period, the next crisis faced by the imperial family came in the time of Ashikago

Yoshimitsu, the third shogun of the Muromachi shogunate. In the early

1370s Prince Kaneyoshi, a son of Go-Daigo and the commander of the Southern Court forces in Kyushu, exchanged envoys with the Ming emperor

in China, representing himself to the Ming as Yoshikane, of Japan.32 The

.U. Prince Kancyoshi is more familiar!)' known as Kanenaga. That is how he appears in most indexes in 1he I ngli\h l,111guage literature.

270 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Ming emperor sent an emissary in return, who conferred official recogni

tion on K aneyoshi's claim. K aneyoshi's Headquarters of the Western Com mand {Seiseifu), located in the ancient city of Daizaifu in Kyushu, was rela

tively powerful at this time, and it seems that Kaneyoshi, unlike his father

Go-Daigo, attempted to use that position of strength to establish an inde

pendent country in Kyushu. Yoshimitsu must surely have felt concern upon

hearing of this.

Yoshimitsu rushed his close adviser Imagawa Ryoshun to Kyushu to ne

gotiate with the Ming emissary while continuing to fight with K aneyoshi.

Negotiations with the Ming had to proceed under specific conditions: unless

supplicants brought documents recognizing the superiority of the Ming, the

emissary would not receive the petitioner. Since Yoshikane had brought the

necessary documents and indicated his subservience to the Ming, he had

received investment as the king of Japan. Yoshimitsu, held back by the court

nobles of Kyoto, was not in a position to do the same so easily. However,

Yoshimitsu ultimately pushed aside aristocratic concerns and submitted a

petition to the Ming emperor, which he signed "Your servant, Minamoto

Michiyoshi." Having thus indicated his submission, Yoshimitsu received in

vestiture as the king of Japan in place ofK aneyoshi.

This chain of events returns us to the central problem of this chapter:

the connection between the name of the country, Ni hon, and the title of the

ruler. That is, from Yoshimitsu's investiture to the end of the Muromachi period {with one exception, discussed below), the state that called itself

Nihon was represented by the Ashikaga household of the Muromachi

shogunate, which had taken the title "king of Nihon." Up to this point,

Yoshimitsu had been working toward a compromise with the Southern

Court of the imperial clan, which he hoped to absorb into the Northern

Court. He was able to do this because he had complete control of the office

of the emperor as well as "the ruler of the realm." W hen Yoshimitsu later made his son Yoshimochi shogun, he tried to make another son (Yoshitsugu)

emperor and himself retired sovereign (daij6 tenno). Had Yoshimitsu lived

longer, he might have been able to realize his ambitions. In fact, after he

died, some court nobles tried to have him posthumously designated retired

sovereign. But his son Yoshimochi, feeling that Yoshimitsu had gone too far, squelched the plans for posthumous honors and then cut off relation,

with the Ming. Yoshimochi 's actions ended the possibility that somc<1m

'The Tille or l· mprnu ,1 nd the Name Nihon 271

from outside the imperial family would bcrnmc emperor, at least during

the medieval era. 33

The next crisis visited upon the i111pc:r1al family came during the era of

Oda Nobunaga. As we know from what Christian missionaries wrote about

him, Nobunaga clearly had ambit ions lo bcu,me a deity himself. He received

the imperial post of greal minisltr or lhc: right from the emperor but im

mediately resigned it, preferring to lkwlop a new authority unencumbered

by imperial restraints. There is no telling what might have happened had

Nobunaga also lived longer. I lowcvcr, his ambitions were crushed when one

of his generals, Akechi Mitsuhidc, bctrnycd and killed him at the temple of

Honnoji in Kyoto. The next warlord nn I he scene, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, ad

opted a different strategy, seeking lo tom hi nc his power with the authority of

the emperor to re-create the Japan or the Ritsu ryo system.

The threats presented to Lhe intpl'rt,1 I fornily by the attempts of Ashikaga

Yoshimitsu and Oda Nobunaga lo usurp monnrchical and divine power pose

important dilemmas for our cfforLs Lo understand how Lhc imperial family

has survived to the present day. Most rmporl,rntly, why is il that Yoshimochi

and Hideyoshi chose different courses ,�fie, the grandiose .1tlcmpts of Lheir

predecessors Yoshimitsu and Nobunaga? I believe the answer Lo this ques

tion is related to the failure of monotheism to take root in Japan, particularly

as a result of the suppression or the lkko sect and Lhe Christians by the mili

tary powers. This may even require extending our inquiry into the continu

ing survival of nature worship among the Japanese.

We must remember that after the reign of Emperor Go-Daigo, the im perial family lost almost all political power, so much so that the office of

emperor was stolen from them by Yoshimitsu at the end of the fourteenth

century. But if we ask whether they were completely passive, we must admit

that they were not. When the shogunate stripped Emperor Go-En'yu-the

last of the emperors of the Northern Court-of the right to govern the capi

tal, it obtained the right to levy taxes on the sake brewers and moneylenders

of the city, one of the few rights that had remained to the imperial family. In

the midst of this radical change, Go-En' yu did something remarkable. Be

lieving that his main consort had carried on an illicit affair with Yoshimitsu,

33. Amino recommends a book by Tmatani Akira on Ashikaga's flirtation with imperial rule: lmatani Akira, Muromachi 110 oke11: Yoshimitsu. 110 oken sandatsu keikaku (The Muromachi Kingship: Yoshimilsu's Plan to Usurp the Throne) (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1990).

272 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

Go-En'yii drew a sword in his own palace and struck her on the crown of her

head in what came to be known as the "Bloodletting Incident." This action

caused a huge commotion because it was unheard of for an emperor to strike

a consort and draw blood within the palace. Go-En'yu was so distressed by

the uproar caused by his attack that he threatened to retire to a mountain

villa in Tanba and cut open his stomach.

The individual character of Emperor Go-En'yu himself was largely re

sponsible for this incident. But in addition to personal instabilities one can

discern an element of resistance against the shogunate in Go-En'yu's out

burst. Neither were the emperors after Go-En'yu, from the Warring States

through the Edo periods, simply submissive yes-men bending to the will of

the shogunate, Emperor Go-Mizuno-o's resistance to the Tokugawa sho

gunate being the best-known case of imperial struggle. 34

From the fifteenth century through the Edo period, the emperor re

tained the authority to designate and make promotions in court rank, even

if in name only. Accordingly, court rank conferments and transcriptions of

imperial edicts continued to be published in the Edo period. The actual de

termination of new reign names was carried out by the Tokugawa shogunate,

but the decision remained the emperor's in form. Thus, even though the sho

gunate placed increasing limits on imperial power, the emperor continued to

possess not just authority but a modicum of power. If he had not possessed

some degree of power, I do not believe the kind of emperor system that devel

oped after the Meiji Restoration would have been possible. Some argue that

the emperor was completely stripped of power, but that argument has not yet

passed beyond the realm of anecdotal evidence.

THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION

Historians have not yet sufficiently clarified the structure of authority in Jap

anese society after the fifteenth century. Neither Buddhism nor Shinto had

any particular commanding authority, and Christianity had been completely

suppressed. It would not be out of line to say that religion in general had no

34. Go-Mizuno-o attempted to resist the shogunal imposition of laws on the court and nobillly by retiring from the throne and then working behind the scenes through the office of Lhe rNlrc,I emperor, a le.gacy of the Heian period, to control his four successors. While he is usually rc11w111 be red as a patron of the arts, and certainly as a political maneuverer hopt'le�sly \truggling llfl,1111'1 the unstoppable rise oft he Tokugawa shogunate, Amino's point is that 1hc will lo rc,l�t 1t·n1.1l1w,I

The Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon 273

authority. Confucianism possessed great significance, but it is not yet clear

how far it had disseminated to the masses. The emperor had something to

do with this issue, but it is not at all clear what kind of influence he had on

society at large.

If we shift our perspective, we find that there are many points in com

mon between the structure of power in the Edo period and after the Meiji

Restoration. The position of the emperor changed dramatically, but the

structure of authority in and the composition of both eras show an unex

pected number of continuities.

While I am not an Edo period specialist, it is obvious that in systemic

terms, the Edo and modern periods must be considered separately. But when

we look at the conditions of towns and villages from the Edo through the

Meiji period, or when we consider the continuing problem of discrimination

against burakumin, there are grounds Lo wonder whether things changed

very much after all. We need to take a closer look at conlinuity in the struc

ture of authority from the Edo period.

A key point in the structure of aulhority-and the emperor's func

tion within that structure-u1 the Edo period is that consciousness of the

"realm" was very strong among the masses. Yearly tribute (nengu) and other

taxes (kaeki) as obligations to the realm (ko) kept such awareness alive for,

as noted earlier, villager uprisings did not call for the abolition of yearly trib

ute. Of course, the idea of an obligation to the realm contained the seeds of

a counterpart notion. That is, over time the idea developed that when the

realm was not fulfilling its duties-acting as the realm should-then public

obligations could be refused. I believe that this particular consciousness of

the realm shaped the structure of the rule of the shogun and the daimyo and

at the same time supported the continuing existence of the emperor.

Moreover, writing practices and family and uji names further fed into

this consciousness. For example, components of official titles of the Ritsuryo

system were widely used in villagers' names during the Edo period. It was

common for villagers to have names with such elements as saemon, uemon,

hei, sakin, ukin, sakyo, ukyo, dayu, and so on.35 All came from Ritsuryo sys

tem guard titles. These official titles were first used as both pseudonyms36

and actual names of villagers in the late Kamakura period, becoming com

mon throughout the country by the Edo period. In some cases, one even

35. The result is names such as Jinzaemon, Yajibei, and so on. 36. Villagers in the Kamakura period could not use their real names in official correspondence, so they

u�t·c.1 p�cudonyms.

274 Sacred Space and the People on the Margins of History

finds villagers calling themselves yon'i (fourth rank) or goi (fifth rank), thus

making reference not just to guard posts but to more elevated court ranks.

Their use of Ritsuryo titles in their pseudonyms appears to reflect the "public

consciousness" of the villagers.

In addition, professional castes often possess mythical genealogies that

locate the group's origins in a particular emperor, including ones tracing

their beginnings to an aristocrat who left the court to practice the art. Metal

casters claim their origins in Emperor Konoe (1141-55), woodworkers look to Prince Koretaka (844-97), burakumin claim Emperor Daigo (897-930), and

courtesans claim Emperor Koko (884-87). In fact, many of these trade groups

began in direct service to the emperor and the deities as offerers, shrine me

nials, and shrine and imperial purveyors. Their own geneaologies mythicize

these actual origins, but behind such legends is the fact that up until the Edo

period these people were in some capacity actually related to the aristocracy.

We must pay careful attention to the meaning of this social conscious

ness. We also need to recognize that legends of the emperors and princes

of the Southern Court were fairly widespread, revealing something about

popular views of the imperial court. Moreover, in addressing contemporary

social problems, consideration of the future of the emperor will prove to be

indispensable. The question is, then, where do we place our present society within this

historical framework? When historians divide the past into periods on the

basis of social formation, they usually come up with the following periods:

ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern. Whether we see the present

as a continuation of modernity, which began in the Meiji period (1868-1912), or as having begun after World War II (in which case present-day society is

different from modern society) has a great impact on how we understand our

lives today. Mainstream postwar historiography places a heavy emphasis on the de

feat in World War II and the promulgation of the new postwar constitution,

so the second view-that the present is different from the modern-prevails.

However, based on my personal experiences in the years before the war, I

tend to view the present as a stage in the modernity that began with the Meiji

period.

When I consider the long history of Japan, I see crucial turning poinls

in each of the major periods. The tenth century was a time of major change in

the archaic era (which is usually dated to the end of the twelfth century). 'Jh11>

was not necessarily due to the influence of outside elements but, as mcnl iorwd

The Title of Emperor and the Name Ni hon 275

earlier, was largely attributable to the fact that the character of the Ritsuryo

system changed. The medieval period is seen as extending up to the sixteenth

century, but in the middle of that epoch the split of the Northern and South

ern Courts constituted an important turning point. The Genroku and Kyoho

periods marked a major boundary in the early modern period, while the loss

in World War II constitutes the same kind of transformative border in the

modern era. Each social formation appears to go through a period of estab

lishment, a period of development, and a period of stagnation and decay. Of

course, the present day could not be said to be the developmental period of

modernity.

My personal preference would be a historical periodization along the

lines of civilizational or ethnic history rather than using the above periods

based on sociaJ formation. From this perspective, the present is a period of

significant change, particularly in the nature of authority, rather than power.

There is little doubt that the villages formed in the fourteenth and fif

teenth centuries are disintegrating. The popular consciousness is also chang

ing radically. As we can see in the ways people deal with illness or in their

relations with animals, the relationship between humans and nature is

changing on a major scale. In fact, I believe Japanese society is now under going the greatest transformation since that of the fourteenth century.

Since the present is a transformational period-whether we view it in

terms of the history of social formation, civilization, or ethnicity-the em

peror is also affected by these changes. The cumulative effect of the two

transformations of the fourteenth century and the present may result in the

disappearance of the conditions in Japanese consciousness that have sup

ported the emperor. When that time comes and the position of the emperor

disappears, we will also have to reevaluate whether or not we still want to use

the name Nihon for our country. We will have to directly confront the issue

of the state known as Nihon. But will this be a problem that young people to

day will want to confront? What should Japanese do today in order to build a

peaceful, free, and equal society? Since these questions are related to the past

and future of the emperor and Nihon, my greatest hope is that young people

wiJJ develop a far deeper and more accurate understanding of the history of

the state in the Japanese archipelago.

AFTERWORD

Amino Yoshihiko

Amino \oshihiko P<ls�cd away in

2004, and in a manner befitting the

p,hsing of a monumcnt.11 figure,

publishers quickly reformallccl pre

viously published titles anti issued

books of recollections. As is typical

of exceptionally prodigious Japanese

authors, Amino's works were sorted,

organized, and compiled into Amino

Yoshihiko chosakushu, (The Works of

Amino Yoshihiko). The publication

has eighteen thematic volumes and

one supplement (bekkan), each ending

with explanatory notes by a scholar.1

The collection as a whole helps us find

our footing in surveying the vast in

tellectual territory Amino traveled in more than four hundred published titles over a period of more than half a

century. In the tracks that Amino left in these works, we come to understand

I, Amino Yoshihiko, Amino Yos/1ihiko chosakushu (The Works of Amino Yoshihiko), 19 vols. (Tokyo: Jwan.11111 ,hoten, 2007 ·2009). The volumes contain what the compilers deemed "researched" work, (l.l'IIA)•ris/w), not general history.

1.77

278 Afterword

how he approached sources, gained new insights, and shaped and reformu

lated ideas. The broad scope of Amino's interpretation won him a readership among

historians of all periods, who found "Amino-shigaku" ( Amino historical

study) interesting, highly relevant, and sometimes controversial. Amino

wrote dense scholarly books with meticulous and intense analyses of sources,

while also authoring easy-to-read digests of his findings and ideas. The pres

ent two volumes belong to the latter category of his output. Amino was a talented writer who delivered intricate new ideas with clarity and conviction.

And the reading public swarmed to obtain his books, which were stacked

high in an eye-catching "Amino corner" that extended from floor to ceiling

in major bookstores.

In the English-language world as well, Amino's scholarship has ap

pealed broadly to those of various interests and specialties. Interestingly, as I write this, it is primarily historians of modern, not medieval, Japan who

have translated or written about Amino's works.2 Considering that Amino's

scholarly home is medieval, this is curious. Perhaps modernists feel a greater

urgency to disseminate his ideas than do premodernists. Or, it may simply

reflect the dearth of premodern historians in the English-language world.

Whatever the case, I comment on some features of Amino's scholarly en

deavor from the perspective of one premodern historian, and serve it as an

Afterword to Alan Christy's masterful translation.

Amino began in the 1950s with what one might call a fairly conventional

Marxist analysis of feudal Japan, and he moved in the 1960s and 1970s to

new interpretations of medieval society and its legacy. During these years, he

taught at a high school and held a post at Nagoya University and the Institute

for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture. Amino was an indefatigable cham

pion of textual and material evidence and an empathetic and imaginative.; spokesperson for the medieval population with a smaU voice and big strides

Yet his conceptualization of history was not limited to the medieval period

or to the Japanese archipelago. He extended his ideas to encompass the en

tire trajectory of historical development, from prehistory to the present, .tnd

to a far wider space, including the sea and beyond. According to Amino,

2. For e>.ample, �ee the translation by Ga,·an McCormack, ¥Deconst rue ting 'Jap.in't in hat,\ 11,m //,s tory 3 (June 1992): 121-42. William Johmton, whom 1 Cite hdow, 1s a dl',u l·x.-·pt1<>11

Afterword 279

his experience in lecturing on the entire history of Japan as a high school

teacher required him to consider fundamental historical questions, such as

the continuation of the imperial (tenno) institution, and nurtured his ability

to "think big." The ethnographic methods (minzokugaku) that the Institute

fostered influenced Amino's approach to material culture, while vigorous

archaeological excavations in the sixties not only broadened the types of

sources he could read but also added the important concrete material dimen

sions to his understanding of medieval peoples' livelihood and movements.

His work at the Institute also led him to encounter hither-to unseen and,

for him, eye-opening sources about commoners with nonagricultural liveli

hoods, such as ukai (cormorant fishermen) and imoji (metalsmiths).

In the late 1970s and 1980s, fresh waves of innovative work were stream

ing through the halls of research institutes. These waves came from many

angles. The history of marginalized people regained force, especially with

the discovery of new documents and the involvement of some scholars in

the research related to the liberation movement. The history of women made

a dramatic entry as a vital new field of investigation. Visual material, espe

cially scrolls and portraits, won citizenship as a legitimate source of histori

cal inquiry. In this trend, chf�seisl1i (medieval history) became bracketed as

a shining field with special attraction. Titillating titles, such as Mato to ena:

Chuseijin no sei to shi (Target and Placenta: Medieval Life and Death) by

Yokoi Kiyoshi3 or Suga ta to shigusa no chflseishi: Ezu to emaki no fflkei kara

(Form and Gesture in Medieval History: From the Landscapes of Pictures

and Picture Scrolls)4 by Kuroda Hideo, flourished and caught the imagina

tion of readers. Amino, of course, played a central role in this trend, inviting

his own "Amino boom."

Needless to say, before the Amino boom struck, he already had pub

lished a number of significant works. For students studying the shoen (es

tate) system, then a core topic in this field, Amino's Chusei shoen no yoso

(Medieval Estates in Transformation) on the Tara estate was a must along

with dozens of other books on estate history. Published in 1966, it signified

the culmination of fifteen years of research, during which he was active in the

leftist movement and teaching at Kitazono High School.5 He wrote spin-off

3. Yokoi Kiyoshi, Mato to ena: Chuseijin no sei to slii (Target and Placenta: Medieval Life and Death) (Tokyo: lleibonsha, 1988; first pub. in S/Jnkaishi kenkyri, 1983).

4. Kuroda Hideo, Sugntn to slrigusa no chuseishi: Ew to emaki no f,ikel kara (Form and Gesture in Medieval History: From the Landscapes of Pictures and Picture Scrolls) (Tokyo: He1bonsha, 1986).

S. Amino Yo,h1hiko, Cluim 110s/,oen no y6s6 (Medieval Estates in Transformation), Hanawa sensho 51 (fokyn ll,1n,1wa �hoh6, 1966). In Amino Yoshihiko d1osakush11, bekkan, 3-17.

Afterword

articles on the Tara estate, some important but little known. For example, one confirmed descent along both the maternal and paternal lines in early medieval Wakasa through a study of a genealogy, which marked, surpris ingly, the years of death using Chinese era names.6 In 1974, Amino published Moko shurai, or Mongol Invasions,7 which features the rare use of an event for the book title, probably not his choice but the publisher's. The book be gins with three puzzling words-tsubute, bakuchi, and sai no kami (rocks for stoning, gambling, and border gods)-and then discusses the rapidly trans forming society and economy that developed around the time of the Mongol invasions. According to many, this book introduced the investigative and narrative style that would become quintessential Amino. 8

For most English-language medievalists, this period marked a time of liberation from postwar scholarship, some of which had pained us with a largely inflexible theoretical construct. Many works dealing with the state, lordship, and landholding analyzed the material through the lens of a Marxian vocabulary and concepts that fitted the medieval world into a linear teleological framework of progress. They entertained questions associated with the timing, nature, and meaning of feudalism, a slippery entit y that, we understood, had evolved out of "the Asian style dictatorial state structure" (Ajia teki sensei kokka) of the ancient Ritsury6 state. Commitment to dia lectical materialism, class-based conflict, and a hope for a possible socialist future-a future devoid of the imperial institution and class disparities explicitly or implicitly underlay most of the scholarly writing. Admittedly, this is an oversimplified description of the multidimensional and continu ously shifting postwar decades in which, as Amino has described, historians were segmented into different theoretically driven factions, rivalries, and al liances.9 Moreover, it would be unfair to ignore the large corpus of publica-

6. Amino Yoshihiko, "Chusei ni okeru kon'in kankei no ichi kosatsu: Wakasa lchininomiya shamu keiiu o chilshin ni" (An Observation of Medieval Marriage Relations: Focusing on the Geneal ogy ofWakasa Province Ichi and Ni no Miya Shrine Genealogy)," Chihos/1i kenky1i 107 (Oc10 ber 1970): 1-24.

7. Amino Yoshihiko, Miiko shurai (Mongol Invasions). Nihon no rekishi, vol. JO (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1974).

8. Nakazawa Shin'ichi, Boku no ojisan, Amino Yoshif1iko 110 omoide (Recalling My Uncle, Amino Yoshihiko) (Tokyo: Shileisha, 2004), 55-60. Amino, Moko sluirai, 16.

9. Amino segmented the postwar years into phases. The first phase includes the immediate postwar years through 1955. As of 1979, the second phase was stUI continuing, but the third was about 10 begin. ln terms of historiography, the first phase began with the publication of lshimodn Sho\ Chliseiteki sekai no keisei (Formation of the Medieval Style World) (Tokyo: llo shoten, l 946). which founded the field and set the course of study thereafter. 'Ihe book 1s considerell tlw mml significant contribution to postwar medieval studies. Another exemplary writi11g of the l'r,1 1, Clrlisei slrakni no kenkyu (Study of tbe Medieval World) (TOk)'O: Tciky0 daigaku sh11pp,111k,11,

Afterword 281

tions that do not fit the above description. Especially noteworthy are those on subjects that Amino would later expand or reformulate, including merchants, artisans, commerce, markets, coins, flow of goods, and the discriminated, by scholars such as Toyoda Takeshi, Kobata Atsushi, Hayashiya Tatsusabur6, Tanaka Takeo, Nagahara Keiji, Sasaki Gin'ya, and Takeuchi Rizo. Amino's own participation in the postwar scholarship began with two articles on the Tara estate, published in 1951 and 1952, which fit the teleological model of Marxist analysis. He later denounced them as shameful. to His book on the Tara estate, mentioned earlier, hardly employed Marxian terminology and took a decidedly narrative style to describe "the history of the people who lived on the stage of one small medieval estate," while noting the pattern of conflict along the vertical social axis nonetheless. 11 At any rate, the seminal change in the 1970s and 1980s was marked by the diminution of the debate over who held the means of production; whether or not a particular group of servants were serfs, slaves, or something else; how land levies defined the nature of control by the state and the estate lords; or what kind of landhold ing or what degree of exploitation in particular should be called feudal. The historical vocabulary no longer served the ends of historiography.

In this atmosphere, Amino was thrust into the limelight with the publi cation of Muen, kugai, raku: Nihon chusei no jiyu to heiwa (Disconnectedness, Public Space, and Markets: Freedom and Peace in Medieval Japan).12 Written in an easy writing style, the book revises the hitherto dark chusei era, char acterized by conflict and contradiction, into a bright and energetic space of self-determination and the movement of commoners. The puzzling title with three unfamiliar terms draws the reader to an imaginative world of the un known. Open the first chapter, and another strange term, engaccho, jumps into view. Amino probes the meanings of these terms by placing them in context, examining associated terms, recalling words of similar sounds, and

1956) by Matsumoto Shinpachiro, whom Amino characterizes as an abstract U1inker with a multi disciplinary and broad vision (Amino Yoshihiko, Chusei Toji to Tojiryii shoen [The Medieval Toji and Toji EstatesJ [Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1978], 3-63). Also mentioned in chapter 1, "Sengo rckishigaku no gojunen" (Fifty Years of Postwar Historical Studies), in Amino Yoshihiko, Rekishi to shite no sengo shigaku (Historicizing Postwar History Writing) (Tokyo: Yoseosha, 2007; originally pub. Tokyo: Ni hon edita sukuru shuppanbu, 2000), 21-68; idem, Chusei saikii: Retlii no chiiki to shakai (Rethinking the Medieval: Region and Society of the Archipelago) (Tokyo: Nibon edita sukilru shuppanbu, 1986), 3-4, based on an interview conducted on April 2, 1979, and pub lished in the newspaper, Nihon dokusho shinbim, no. 2000.

10. Amino, Amino Yoshihiko chosakushu, bekkan, 3-17. 11. Preface, p. l, in Amino, Chasei shiien no yoso. 12. Amino Yoshihiko, Muen, kugai, raku: Nihon clnisei no jiyu to heiwa (Disconnectedness, Public

Space, ond 1\forkets: Freedom and Peace in Medieval Japan) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1978).

282 Afterword

consulting ethnographic wisdom. He constructs an image of a social and cultural space unfiltered by modern rational logic, and allows the reader to understand and empathize with the worldview and activities of commoners, who are detached from the reach of political authorities but linked to the sa cred and profane, including the abstract and symbolic prestige of the tenno. 13

By stating that English-language medievalists were rescued from the Marxian teleological paradigm, however, I do not imply that Amino and other authors of the 1970s and 1980s had abandoned Marxism. As Wil1iam Johnston clarifies, although "skeptical toward what he saw as inflexible theory," Amino "never completely rejected a materialist view of historical change," and that his "views remained informed but not determined by theory."14 In various interviews, Amino describes how he began rereading the works of Marx and Engels in 1953, after fallout from his activist move ment, and observed how Marx's ideas transformed over time.1 5 Marx's "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1851-52" showed Amino the po tential of forces that lay deeply beneath visible events, and "Letter to Vera Zasulich, 1851" influenced him to reconsider communes and communities in relation to medieval commoners on the Japanese archipelago. Nakazawa Shin'ichi explains what Marxism may have meant for Amino in the follow ing way: Historical consciousness emerged when the Asiatic mode of produc tion rose, but there existed a space for transcendental ideas, which remained outside the consciousness of history. The transcendental ideas did not vanish with the birth of history in the manner predicted by Hegel; they lived on. The "transcendental" for Amino was represented by the abstract and real space of asylum (ajiru) or sanctuary. 16

1 3. A precis of this work can be found in Eiji Sakurai, "Foreword to 'Medieval Japanese Construc tions of Peace and Liberty: Muen, kugai, and raku,"' translated by Gaynor Sekimori, lnternafional]our nal of Asian Studies 4 (2007): 1-2. The translation of chapter 11 of the book by William Johnston, who is completing a translation of the entire book, follows Sakurai's "Foreword" in the same issue of the journal, pp. 3-14.

14. William Johnston, "From Feudal Fishing Villagers to an Archipelago's Peoples: The Historiograpbi cal Journey of Amino Yoshihiko," Edwin 0. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies Occasional Papers in Japanese Studies, no. 2005-1 (March, 2005), 13.

15. His behavior around that time was considered odd. His affiliation with the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture invited a half-serious comment that he might have become an imperiali�l spy for the United Stales. Amino Yoshihiko, Retta no rekishi o kataru (Talking about the H iSlOr} of the Archipelago), edited by Fujisawa, Amino san o Kakomu Kai (Tokyo: I-Ion no Mori, l 985), 101. Based on an interview in 1983.

16. Nakazawa Shin'ichi refers to Yoshimoto Takaaki's notion in order to explain Amino's ide.is (Ook11 no ojisan, Amino Yoshihiko (My Uncle Amino Yoshihiko] [Tokyo: Shficisha, 200•1], 62-6J, 1-11, 156). Amino, Cluisei saiko: Retto no chiiki to shakai, 3-19. Amino concedes that, ,1mong 11II We,1 European thinkers, Karl Marx is the one he respects the most (Amino, Rcklshi re, sh/tr 1111 s,•11x1• shigaku, 333).

Afterword 283

The concept of asylum solved a number of historical and historiographi cal problems for Amino.17 After intense involvement in the postwar Marxist movements and reading the historiography of the time, Amino felt uneasy about academic Marxism for various reasons. Especially after his study of sources on fishing villages at the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture, he felt critical of tl1e nearly exclusive focus academic writings gave to the agriculturaJ sector. For one thing, the heated debate over the pattern of feudal land rights and extraction ignored the question of the fundamental meaning of basic terms, such as nengu (dues or ''annual tribute") and kuji (tax or "public matter"), both of which embodied a direct link to the symbol ism of the emperor.18 He also was unsure how to analyze "the folk" and "cul ture" from a Marxist perspective. Amino felt that he could uphold the spirit of Marx by examining the conceptual space of asylum (ajiru), concretely ex pressed by kugai and raku, historical terms appearing in sources. These were communal spaces of liberty (jiyu) frequented by people detached from the dominant structure of the land.

By linking the nonagricultural people to the space of detachment, he also could consider the resilience of the imperial institution, one of the most significant and little understood historical issues. The remarkable aspect of Amino's afiru is that it existed in various places and forms, and hosted vari ous people who were deeply rooted in the transcendental power close to kami as far back as in ancient sources. Under the Ritsury6 system, Lhe populace with land allotments had the obligation to serve in the military as well as to pay other taxes and services, whereas the base people (senmi11, 11uhi) and artisans were exempt and "free" from taxes in return for service to the im perial court. When conscription was abandoned in the eighth century and the military came to be assumed by the warriors, the land-bound populace continued to pay taxes or their functional equivalent, estate dues (nengu) to various lords. However, in medieval times, artisans and merchants (shokunin) found spaces that were detached from such obligations. Analytically speak ing, these commoners who occupied the spaces external to taxation were dif ferent from the Marxian "masses'' who were entangled in power relations,

17. Amino broadly reformulated the notion of a)iru, or asylum, a concept HiraJzumi Kiyoshi focused on as early as in 1926 in his Chusei ni oker11 shaji to shakai to 110 kankei (The Relationship between Shrines, Temples, and Society in Medieval Times) (Tokyo: Shibund6, 1926). This link is mentioned by Nakazawa Shin'ichi (Boku no ojisan, Amino Yoshihiko, 68-70). It is noteworthy that, in other contexts as well, Amino frequently refers to prewar and wartime works, which typicaUy engaged with sources in a meticulous positivist manner.

18. Amino. C/11isei saiko: Retto no chiiki to shakai, 3-6, 8-9.

Afterword

whereby "power" was understood and defined from a modern perspective.

Those "masses" stood at one end of a conflict fought between the oppressor

and the subordinated. 19 In contrast, Amino's untaxed people or folk pos

sessed free will, which is the essence of a human desire, and these people

contributed to the creation of free, unattached spaces, found in locations of

ten considered sacred, mythical, or mysterious, such as temples, mountains,

forests, and markets. In Amino's language, these were not the "productive"

masses of Marx but instead nonagricultural people (hinogyomin) who were

mostly mobile. But their lifestyle validated Marx's original idea that a free

society can be built by people who have nothing to lose but iron chains.

In Muen, kugai, raku and other books, Amino insists on historicizing

contemporary terminology. This, to me, is the foundation of what is called

"the Amino-shigaku" (historical method), which he brought to the field,

bravely, at the risk of becoming a "drop out."20 Granted, this method is pre

sumed necessary for any historical inquiry. But for uncovering undiluted

and unfiltered meanings, the reality of the people who used the words, and

ultimately the history itself, Amino is passionate, honest, and humble. The

first section of the first chapter in his Rekishi o kangaeru hinto (Hints for

Considering History) is titled, "History and Words." It begins: "Words that

we use daily without thinking may contain meanings that may surprise us.

We may understand the meanings of those words incorrectly if we assume

we know them. In studying history, it is easy to encounter such occasions.

We attribute the meaning that we understand today to historical terms. This

should be corrected."21 This critical attitude, as fundamental as it may be

for any historian, guides Amino's works from the 1960s onward, leading to

a discovery of fresh meanings in commonly used terms such as hyakusho

and "Nihon," and eventually to broad arguments regarding the nature of the

"Japanese" history, the Japanese state, and the position of ten no. Needless to

19. One of the earlier terms used for the commoners in Japanese historiography was mi11s/11i. In 1960, the Association for the Study of Mi11s/ui was formed. The members numbered more than a hu11 dred as of 1975. '.[bey wrote on topics related to cultivators, people of the mountain, people 1:1 the sea, merchants, and artisans. They approached their subject with a concern to fit Lhe people� productivecapacily in Marxian terms. For example, see Chtisei Minshtishl Kenkytikai, ed., C/11ist'1 110 seijiteki shakai to mins/1iiz6 (Medieval Society and PoUtics and lhe Image of the People) (Tokyo San'ichi Shob6, 1976).

20. "Drop out" (ochikobore) is a term that Amino uses for himself often, especially 1n relation5hip to thl' change he experienced with the Marxist movement in 1953.

2l. Amlno Yoshihiko, Rekishi o kangaeru liinto (Hints for Considering History) (Toky<): Sh1ncho,Ju 200l), 11-12. Ke stales tbat he learned this altitude from a senior scholar, Sato Shrn'h.h1, wl,,, emphasized in 1958 the need to critically examine historicul vocabulary appeanng 111 ,ot11�1·, A111i110 gives an example ofs/1ihai (control), a favorite term In Marxist writing,, whi,h h, �1.11,•, had \I meaning in nwdlcval times different from the way we U$t it te1d,1).

Afterword 28:,

say, Amino was not the only scholar who approached sources in this man

ner. One of the fascinating collections published in that era is a collaborative

work, Kotoba no bunkashi: chusei 1 to 4 (A Cultural History of Words), com

piled by Amino Yoshihiko, Kasamatsu Hiroshi, Katsumata Shizuo, and Sato

Shin'ichi. It begins by asking: Have we not neglected the task to clarify the

historical usage of these sources?22

Despite or because of the huge popularity of Muen, kugai, raku, Amino

was soon faced with a storm of severe criticism. Ironically, while Amino won

global acclaim for his innovative scholarship, he also gained many academic

foes. Coming from every chronological segment of the Japanese historical

field, some challenged his interpretations that, to them, failed in the face of

hard evidence and logic. Some demanded precision in the meaning of terms

such as "liberty" (jiyu). Others asked what validity there was in dichotomiz

ing the people into agriculturalists and hi-nogyomin when most artisans or

the people of the sea also cultivated crops. Some criticized his assertion that

women's "sex" was liberated and "open" in the public space, for ignoring the

question of who possessed this "freedom" and what it would have meant for

women.23 Still others accused him of embracing the tenn6-sei, or the impe

rial system that the historical field had opposed for so long, in his discussion

of Nihon, emperors, and commoners. Generally, the new wave Amino rep

resented was considered a "chaos in which disorder and distortion without

logic mingle and mix with new possibilities."24 Instead of dismissing his crit

ics, Amino took them seriously and sought to defend his position by clarify

ing and substantiating his ideas through more exhaustive and meticulous

reading of sources. Consequently, in 1987, nine years after the first publi

cation of Muen, kugai, raku, Amino published an expanded edition with

thirty new supplementary notes and four additional essays.25 Whether or

not Amino was able to convert these critics, it is evident that he succeeded in

illuminating alternative ways to consider Japan's past, demonstrating imagi

native methods for reading evidence and suggesting a critical outlook for

assessing the present.

22. Amino Yoshihiko, Kasamatsu Hiroshi, Katsumata Shizuo and Sato Shin'ichi, comps., Koroba no bunkashi: c/1usei 1 to 4, (Cultural History of Words) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1989), 3.

23. He later modified this stance by suggesting the possible danger awaiting itinerant women. 24. Mentioned by Ryufoku Yoshitomo, review of Genjitsu no nalw t10 rekishigaku, by Kuroda Toshio,

Shigaku zasshi 87.7 (July 1978): 88. 25. Amino Yoshihiko, Amino Yoshil,;ko chosakushti, vol. 12: Muen, kugai, raku (Tokyo: lwanami sho

ten, 2007), 487, 267-70. An English-language translation of the supplementary notes by William Johnston fs available as "Medieval Japanese Constructions of Peace and Liberty: Mt1e11, k11gai, and mku, S11pplementary Notes," lntemational Journal of Asian Studies 4 (2007): 161-72.

286 Afterword

mid pros and cons, Amino occupied a premier position in medieval studi s. Throughout his intellectual journey, Amino remained self-reflexive and alleable, and expressed frequently his debt to people who had inspired and · uenced him, while remaining firm in his fundamental convictions. In a dition to single-author monographs, Amino produced collaboratiV\. titles based on research and seminars with scholars of various disciplines. A pa tial list includes: medieval historians, such as Katsumata Shizuo Ishii usumu, Sato Shin'ichi, Kasamatsu Hiroshi, lmatani Akira, Fuku<l.1 Toyo · o, Yokoi Kiyoshi, and Sakurai Eiji; ethnologists, such as Akasaka Nori , Miyata Noboru, and Kamino Yoshiharu; feminist anthropologist Ueno Chizuko; and archaeologitst Mori Koichi. Amino interviewed frc quen ly and held lectures for both the academic and interested public. In 1997, Amino began a series of lectures titled, "Words in History," hosted by a ublisher, and continued featuring these lectures and new articles in a jou nal called Nami (Waves). After twelve issues, in April, 2000, Amino founl th. at he had lung cancer, and he was forced to terminate the series The l ctures are collected in the book Rekishi o kangaeru hinto. The book begins ith a chapter titled, "'Nihon' to iu kokumei" (A Country Name Called "Nib n"). Perhaps it is significant that Amino chose "Nihon" as the first in his lecture series, "Words in History." His indictment that no other peopk on this globe know so little about the origin of their own country may not bl true, but, for Amino, explication about "Nihon" clearly demanded the aud i ence's and readers' attention.26Facing the totality of Amino's work, one gets a sense of awe and admira tion for its density and depth, not to speak of the output. The present trans lation of the two volumes, Rekishi o yominaosu, is a great beginning for the EngUsh-language readers to become familiar with Amino's scholarship. W1;, thank Alan Christy for this translation, a difficult task that is an act of inter pretation more than translation, and hope that this serves to enliven broad discussion of the people and history of the archipelago and the sea, as well as historical approaches and methods, in classrooms and research corridors

26. Amino, Rekishi o kangaeru hinto, 14. Amino's last publication is Nihon 110 c/11i�111 6· lil,ht 11• shokun6mi11 no katsi,do (Japan's Medieval World, vol. 6: Cities and Activities of A rt 1,ans) ( rokyu Chuo koronsha, 2003), co-authored with Yokoi K1yoshi.

INDEX

Page references lo ilJustrations are in bold.

abalone (noshiawabi), dried, 54 Abe Kin'ya, 168 Abe uji, 258 abortion, 225-26 absolutism, 117 accession (daijosai), ceremonies, 253-54,

253n.12, 257 account books, 136-37, 136n.18 Accounts of Miracles in Japan (Ni hon

ryoiki) (Kyokai), 235 Adachi Yasumori, 84-85 afterbirth, disposal, 182-83, 183n.19, 215,

215n.35 agrarian fundamentalism, xx, 26, 29, 50;

aristocracy, 25; clashes with mercantilism: political aspects, 83-86; religious aspects, 87-92, 100-102; critical oflppen, 88; as taught in textbooks, 3-6

Agricultural Encyclopedia. SeeN6gy6 zensho

agricultural lands (shosaku), 108 agricultural lands (tsukuda), 108 A111u culture, 42, SJ Aji11 teki sensei kokka (Asian style

dictatorial state structure), 280 11jm1 (n�ylum), 2R2 84

Al<.i Province, 113-14 Akita Castle, Dewa Province, 139 akuto (bandits), 81, 211, 211 n.30, 241 i

alternately lords oflhe mount.1in� (yama no ryos/111), 82

alternate attendance system (s1111!..i11 l..ot11i), 115

ama (nun), 240n.21 A materasu (sun goddess), 2'1711.'I amntsutsurni (crimes ag.ii115t heaven), 173 -ami (names attached 10), 240 Amida Buddha, 78, 87, 168, 18211.17, 240 Amino-shigaku, 278, 284-85 Amino Tetsuya, lOln.13 Amino Yoshihiko, 277; about, xxvij-xxxii,

277-86; "Amino-shigaku," 278, 284- 85; colJaborative scholars, 286; death, 277; drop out (ochikobore), 284n.20; home prefecture Yamanashi, 20; period of odd behavior, 282n.15; popularity, 277-78; response to criticism, 285; and vocabulary, 284- 85, 284n.21

Amino Yoshihiko, works: Cf1iisei shoen no yoso (Medieval Estates in Transformation), xxxn.5, 279; Japanese History as Viewed from the Sea (tape), xxxi; Kotoba no bunkas/ii

.2/17

.lM8 lndex

Amino Yoshibiko, works: (continued) (Cultural History of Words, A) (eL al.), 285; Muen, kugai, raku (Disconnectedness, Public Space, and Markets), xiii, xxx-xxxi, 152n.10, 284, 285; Nihon chusei no minshuzo (Portrait of the Medieval Japanese People, A), 21; Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu (Rethinking Japanese History), xivn.l; Rekishi o kangaeru hinto (Hints for Considering History), 284, 286; Rekishi to shite no sengo shigaku (Historicizing Postwar History Writing), xxviii, xx.xn.6; Zoku Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu (Rethinking Japanese History Again), xivn.l

Amino Yoshihiko chosakush-u (Works of Amino Yoshihiko, The) (Iwanami shoten, pub.), 277, 277n. l, 281 n.10

Ancient Japan as Revealed by Wooden Tablets (Tono Haruyuki), 138-39

Ando uji, 79, 86 animals: bear worship, 51; four-leggers

(yotsuashi), 214; opposing views of, 194, 214-15; slaughter of, 195-97, 196

Annale (journal), xxxiv annya (performers). See entertainers and

performers Anraku (monk), 190 Antiquity and Anachronism in Japanese

History (Jeffrey Mass), 259n.22 Aoba Takashi, 39 arahitogami (deity personified), 178-

79n.14, 253-54 Araki Moriaki, xxxvin.2, 107-8 artisan, definition, 16ln.18, 283-84 artisans, paper-making, 71 Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, 86, 117, 269-71 , 270;

as king of Japan, 93 Ashikaga Yoshinori, 117 asobime (courtesans), 176, 176n.13, 233,

234. See also entertainers and performers; women

Association for the Study of Minshu, 284n.19

asylum (ajiru), 282-84, 283n.17

atamafuri ( head shaking) class, 13, 16-17; asking for rice rations, 105-6; of coastal villages, ll 5; landless villagers (mizunomi), 14-16; landless villagers (moto), 19-20; Village Statistics for Fugeshi and Suzu, 16-17

Ategawa estate, Kii Province, 128 Atomi Women's College, 16 Attic Museum, xxixIL4 Australian National University, xxxiii azukarisho shiki (office of the manager),

260 Azuma-ebisu (Eastern Barbarians), 252,

264n.27

B ba. See marketplaces backside documents (shihai monjo), 27,

126n.6 bakuhan tax system, 24-25, 24n.17 Ban Dainagon ekotoba. See Pictures and

Poems of Ban Dainagon bandits (akuto), 81, 211, 2lln.30, 213, 241;

alternately lords of the mountains (yama 110 ryoshu), 82; women, 83

baptismal rites (kanjo rite), 262, 262n.24 base (iyashiki mono), 164 baseness ( goshiki no sen), five colors of,

158-60,173-75 base peoples, 283 bear worship, 51 beasts (chikusho), 214 beggars (depicted in The Picture Scroll of

the Holy Man lppen), 183, 184, 198n.29,201,203,204,206,20�213

beggars (senzu manzai), 98-99, 98n.l begging, 183 bell ringers, 98n.3 below (moto), 252 beneficent government, 83 Bibi remains and jade, 33 bichikusen (set aside coins), 150 bills of exchange (kawase tegata), 58, 73

74, 118, 149; control of circulation routes, 82; dispute resolution, 79, 81; transactions fees for, 73

bird-releasing ceremony, 162

birth pollution, 182-83, 183n.19, 215, 215n.35

Bishamon, 82 Bito Masahide, 3 blacksn1iths, 51-52, 56, 71, 162. See also

meta I casters Bloodletting Incident, 271-72 Board of Inquiry (vassal assembly), 116 Bacho judo chushuan (Report on the

Customs of the Boche Region, A), 97 B6ch6 Land Development Plan, 19 Boku no ojisan, Amino Yoshihiko (My

Uncle, Amino Yoshihiko) (Nakazawa Shin'cihi), 282n.l6, 283n.17

bonito, dried, 54 Bonotsu, Kyushu Island, 79 bow string, archer's, 181 boxes, round wooden (magemono), xxxviii,

157 brazier (gotoku), xxxv Broken Commandment, The (Shimazaki

T6son), 215 buccaneer (kaizokushii), 94 Buddhism: and the emperor, 261-62;

hospices for sick and orphaned, 175-77; Ji sect, 78, 87, 101,199,240; Kamakura sects, 78, 165-69, 213-14 (see also Ippeo (monk]); mercantilist sects, 101-2; Nara sects, 166n.l9; Nichiren sect, 101; Rinzai Zen sect, 147n.5; Ritsu sect, 89, 165-66, 166n.19; scripts used, 140; Shingon sect, 229n.13; True Pure Land Buddhist sect, 78, 87, 99-102, lOOn.9, 167-68; H6nen, 182, l82n.17 (see also Pictorial Biography of the Roly Man Honen, The); as world religion, 246; yoriudo, 156; Zen sect, 89, 167-68, 268

Buddhism, Three Jewels of, 130n.10 Buddhist sutras, 129-30 Bungo Straits, 112 burakumin (discriminated groups).

See discriminated groups (/1isabetsumin or burakumin)

Bureau of Divination, 258 nurcauCJfllorses, 110

Index 289

Bureau of Housekeeping (Kamonryo), 258, 259

Bureau of Medicine, 258 Bureau of Music, 176, 234 buried offering coins (mainosen), 150

Cambridge History of Japan, The (Kozo Yamamura, ed.), 16ln.18, 17ln.2

carpenters, 162 cash economy, 81 casters: metal, 56, 71, 157, 274 casting technology, 151 castle mountains (shiroyama), 95 castles (gusuku), 95 Catholic Church, Roman, 219n.3 cattle pollution, 188, 194, 196 ceremonies: accession (daijosai), 253-54,

253n.12, 257; baptismal rites (kanjo rite), 262; bird-releasing, 162; realm purifying, 184; regularized by Confucianism, 61; tea, 167; utagaki, 153, 221-23; water wells, 188. See also festivals

chakuda (leg irons), 189 charcoal, 193 chasen (discriminated group), 216 check (-kitte of kogitte), 118 checkpoints, 89; maritime, 94-95; possible

origins of toll spots, 95; tolls, 82 Chen Shou, 264n.27 chief imperial advisor (kanpnku), 258-59 chikusho (beasts), 214 child bearing, 233, 233n.15 childbirth: disposal of afterbirth, 182-83,

183n.l9, 215, 215n.35; shamans role, 163

children: accusations against, 195; children of the capital (kyowarawa), 210; cow-herding children (ushikai warawa), 192-94; eta warawa (greatly polluted) child, 192, 195-96, l95n.28, 213; with the gods until seven, 226; imbued with the powers of the deities, 195, l95n.27, 222; Yase children (yase doji), 193

children of the capital (kyowarawa), 210

.!'JI) Index

< h111n, xxii; artifacts from, 79; exclusionary policy, 103-4; imported goods and trade, 53, 56, 147; increased trade with in fifteenth century, 93

Chinese characters (kanji), xxvi, 123, 239 Chinese patriarchy, 237-38 Chinese-style ships (karabune), 89-90, 166,

l66n.21 Chita, Aichi Prefecture, xxxix Chitose airport, 33 cho: unit of measure, lOn.9 cha (crafts tax), 23, 49, 255 cho (taxes in kind), 145 clwri (outpost leaders), 181 Christianity, 101,168,225; Roman Catholic

Church, 219n.3 Christy, Alan, 278, 286 Chusei ni okeru shajl to shakai to 110 kankei

(Relationship between Shrines, Temples, and Society in Medieval Times, The) (Hiraizumi Kiyoshi), 283n.17

Chusei no ai to jujun: Emaki no aka no nikutai (Love and Subservience in the Middle Ages) (Rotate Michihisa), 231, 23ln.14

Chiisei no seijiteki shakai to minslnizo (Medieval Society and Politics and the Image of the People) (Chusei Minshushi Kenkyukai, ed.), 28411.19

Chusei slrnkai no kenkyu (Study of the Medieval World) (Matsumoto Shinpachiro), 280-8ln.9

Chflsei shoen no yos.o (Medieval Estates in Transformation) (Ami no Yoshihiko), xxxn.5, 279

Chuseiteki sekai no keisei (Formation of the Medieval Style World) (Ishimoda Sho), 28011.9

cities, 136 clerks (kumon), 72 closing (obike), 118 cloth face covering, 164, 165, 198 clothing: Jomon period, 33-34; men's

childlike, 210; monks, 160; nonhumans, 187; purveyor groups, 158, 160; women travelers, 223

clothing and hairstyles as status symbols, 129n.8

coastal people (kaimin), 4 coastal towns. See port towns coastal villages, ll5 coastline changes over time, 20, 48 coffin bearers, 193. See also funerals coin minting: not after the tenth century,

146; planned but failed by Emperor Go-Daigo, 151; premodern all from Chinese mainland, 151; by Tokugawa shogunate, 15ln.8

coin pestilence, the, 146 coins, bad, 104 coins, copper and silver (wado kaichin),

72, 77, 116, 145-49, I 50; buried offering coins (mainosen), 150; coin shortages (seni kekachi), 104-5; coin strings, 149; Kamakura shogunate, 148-50; loans of coins for interest, 160; magical significance, 145-46, 150; set aside coins (bichikusen), 150; silk and rice traded for, 146, 148; temple coins, 156; through archipelago except Hokkaido and Okinawa, 151; used as ballast, 146-47

coins, imperial twelve-sen, 145 Comments on the Analects. See Rongoslw Comments on the Records of the Histor/(111

See Shikisho commerce: commodities exchanged,

J 52-54; Kamakura perjod, 108-9, 168-69; obsidian, 34; tax revenue based upon, 116-19; terminology, 118-19; terms of the late medieval, 118-19; Tomb period, 46-47. Set• c1/�<1 marketplaces

commodities: evolution of exchange, J ';2 54; imported, 38; as payment ol � 1,1 I I tax, 54; storehouse, 55; submit tcd 11,1 taxes, 54, 55, 66, 72

commoners (minslni), 28,tn.19 common people ("one hundred n.1nw�"J,

22,159 Comparison of Jnpa11esc1 1111d F11mprrt11

Cultures, A (Prois), 217, 21�11 I

concentrated village. See shuson (concentrated village)

Confessions of Lady Nijo, The (Karen Brazell, trans.), 131, 225

Confucianism, 29, 50, 61. See also .Buddhism

conglomerates (zaibatsu), 21 constable (jito), 72, 228 construction work, 188 construction workers, 162 contamination. See pollution contract (keiyaku), 82 cormorant fishermen (ukai), 279 corvee labor (kaeki), 255, 268 corvee labor taxes (yo), 145, 255 courtesans: asobime, 234; giving birth to

emperor's children, 235; professional groups, 176-77,233-36;and prostitution, 176n.13; ukareme, 176n.13, 177; yujo, 160. See also entertainers and performers

court servants (uneme), 158 cow herders, 210 cow-herding children (ushikai-warawa),

192-94

cows, 38, 194 craftsmen (kogyonin), 161n.l8 crafts tax (cha), 23, 49, 54, 255 credit, 149. See also finance (suiko) system credit economy, beginning, 149 crimes against heaven (amatsutsumi), 173 crimes against the realm (kunitsutsumi),

173 crimes and punishment: punishments

carried out by homen, 181, 189-90; purifiers of, 181-82; resolution only at scene, 158, 224

criminals. See prisoners, released (homen)

..:rossroads kidnapping (tsuji-turi), 224 crowd gathering at the deathbed of lppen:

Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen, Tire (Tppen hljirie), 203

C:11lt11ml History of Words. See Kotoba no liu11kashi

l 1111cncy, 64; after the Northern and Soul hem Courts period, 92, 164;

Index 291

commodities, 66, 146, 148, 150; evil represented by those pursuing, 83; rice in Heian period, 148. See also coins, copper and silver (wado kaichin)

curse words, 214n.32 cypress, 89 cypress craftsmen (hinonashi), 56, 157

D Daigo, Emperor, 274 Daijokan. See Grand Council of State daljo tenno (retired sovereign), 270 Daikakuji line, 267 daitnyo (warlords), types, 24n.17, 114n.22 Dan (ocean going people of China), 103 dancers, female (shirabyoshi), 160, 235 danshi paper, 71 Date family, 114, 115 dead animals, work with, 188 dead people, work with, 177, 181, 193 debt cancellation edicts (tokuseirei), 161,

161n.17 debt cancellation uprisings (tokusei ikki),

161 debts, unresolved, 173-74 Deconstructing Japan (McCormack),

278n.2 deeds of transfer (yuzurijo), 132 deities, native: jinin (jinnin), 156; 111ainose11

(buried offering coins), 150; offerings to,46,48-49,54, 57,64,232,253; offerings to then loaned, 160,235 (See also suiko); related script, 127; suiko system, 155-57; voice of transcribed in dropped writings, 128

deity personified (arahitogami), 178- 7911.14, 253-54

demolition work, 181-82, 182 Detailed History of Japan, A. See Shosetsu

Nihonshi Dewa Shonai (Yamagata), 1411.12 diaries (nikki), 129 dice, director of, 163 disabled, severely (tokushitsu), 173 disabled (haishitsu), 173 Disconnectedness, Public Space, and

Markets (Muen, kugai, raku) (Amino

)I)} Index

Disconnectedness, Public Space, and Markets (continued) Yoshihlko), xiii, xxx-xxxi, 152n.I0, 284,285

disconnectedness (muen no ba), x.x-xxi, xx.xi, 283-84; free spaces and servitude, xx-xxi; of marketplaces, 153, 158, 221-23; mountains, harbors, market towns, roads, 224, 283; in temples and shrines, 220-24; travelers, 224

discriminated group (chasen), 216 discriminated groups (hisabetsumin or

burakumin), 160, 169,213, 274; indigo dyers, 190; numbers in eastern vs. western Japan, 213-14; outcast status under Tokugawa, 214-16; tradesmen, 164, 165, 198,216; whose bodies are polluted from killing and selling animals, 196-97. See also nonhumans (hinin); prisoners, released (homen); riverside dwellers (karwaramono)

discrimination, evolution, 212-13 discrimination and pollution purifiers,

179-87 discrimination and the sick and orphaned,

175-77 discrimination based on Ritsuryo five

colors of baseness, 173-75 discrimination based on status vs.

discrimination based on pollution, 171-75, 174n.8

discriminatory word, earliest appearance, 196-97

dispersed settlements. See sanson (dispersed settlements)

districts (counties) (gun), 22, 49 divine offerings (nie), 253-54 divine offerings (shlnsen), 54 divine speech, 127 divorce, xx, 218-20, 219n.3, 230-31 document from 1136, 57-58 documents, principle of (monjoshugi), 49,

138 document types: about, xv, xxvi-xxvii;

accidentally surviving, xxvi-xxvii, 126; backside (shihni monjo), 27,

126n.6; Engishiki (Daigo), 253, 253n.14; epistolary style (shosatsuyii monjo), 132-33;fusuma insulation documents (jusuma shitabari monjo), xxvii, 27-29; homogeneous language of written, 125-26; mokkan (wooden tablets), 26-27 (See also wooden tablets [mokkan]); monks' lectures, 130; old books, 123-24; periods recognized in textual style, 141; petition, 12; public vs. private, 132-33; senmyii, 248n.6; with speech transcribed, 127; temple books, 130; from Warring States period, 125

dog (inu), 181 dog shrine purveyors (inujinin).

See inujinin (dog shrine purveyors) doma (horse area of the house), 215,

215n.35 domains (ha11), 24n.17 domestics (kenin), 158, 173 donation gathering holy men, 166 donations, 183 dosii (moneylenders), 160-61, 160n.16, 169

See also financiers dreams, 127 drop out (ochikobore), 284n.20 dropped things, 127 dry field agriculture, 35, 40 Dynastic Succession, 268

eastern and western Japan, xxiii-xxiv, 39-40,41-42,214-16

Eastern Barbarians (Azwna-ebisu), 252, 26411.27

Eastern Country, 50, 61, 113 Eastern Inland Sea, 67 eboshi cap, 164, 165 Echigo Province, 113 economic development, 108-9 edict boards, 82n.3 Edo jidai to wa nanika: Niho11 shijo no

kinsei to kindai (What Was the F.tlo Period?) (Bito Masahide), 3

Edo period, 168; documcnt5 of, 136; famines, 104, 106; minimum htr1,1l),

107; transition from late medieval, 117; warlords, types, 114n.22

Edo period class structure: farmers and other occupations, 99; meaning of the term niimin, 15n.13, 97

Egami Namio, 4ln.3

Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1851-52, The (Marx), 282

Eiji Sakurai, 28211.13 Eison (monk), 166 elephant, transported, 93 elephant gift, 93 Emergence of Japanese Kingship, The

(Piggott), 42n.5 Emishi, 50 Emishi people, 52 emonfu (Inner Palace Guards), 177 emperor (tenno), 48, 178n.14; and

Buddhism, 261-62; deity

personified, 178-79, 178-79n.l4, 253-54; dual nature, 253-54; establishment of title, 250-51; female, 238; first, 247-48; funerals, 261; Heavenly Descent, 248-49; imperial history, 245-49, 279; slave of the Buddhas, 261

Emperor, Rice and Villages, The (Christy), xxxiJJ

emperor himself (tennii shinsei), 267 encompassing village. See soson

(encompassing village) engaccho (game), 281-82 Engishiki (Institutes of the Engi Period)

(Daigo), 253, 253n.l4 enkiri-dera (relationship-ending temple),

xx, 219, 219n.3 Enkyo (reign name), 130n.ll Enryakuji Shrine, 181 Enshii Sea, 46

entertainers and performers: artisan defined, 161n.18; da11cers, female (shirabyoshi), 160, 235; female, 160, 235 (see also courtesans [asobime]); lacking Ritsuryo support, 176-77; snrugaku, 171n.2; singers, 243n.24; �treet performers (hiika), 167. See also festivals

Index

entertainment: cost accounting of, 76; utagaki celebrations, 153, 221-23

epistolary style (shosatsttyii monjo), 132-33

Essays in Idleness (Yoshida Kenko), 150-51

estate manager-contract system, 93 estate managers (kumon), 228 estates (shii). See shiien estates

293

estate system of taxation (shoen-koryosei), 24

eta disembowelers, 196 eta (greatly polluted), 195-97, 195n.28 eta warawa (greatly polluted) child, 192,

195-96, 195n.28, 196, 213 Eternal Storehouse of Japan, The (Ihara

Saikaku), 20 Ethnographic History of Pollution, An.

See Kegare no minzokushi etoki (picture scroll preachers), 7 7, 98n.2 etori (procurers of food for animals),

196-97 evil, 83-86, 241; beliefs differ among

Buddhist sects, 101; represented by those pursuing money, 83; transformation at end of thirtecnt h century, 197

Evil Genta, 84 Evil Safu, 84 Evil Shichibei, 84 exchange rice (kaemni), 148 exclusionary policy, 103-4 Ezoana Tomb, 42-43, 43 Ezo disturbances, 85-86 Ezo peoples, 175

F family names, 273-74

family registries. See registered households (gii)

famines, 104-7; ninth century, 177 fan selling, 241 farmers (nomin). See niimin (farmers) farming (nii), 99 farm village (n6son), 72 Farris, William Wayne, 26n.J8, 4ln.3,

136n.20, 264n.27

Index

fclicitators (sens/Ju manzai), 77 festivals, I 53; Gion Festival, 184, 184n.20;

Kamo Festival, 190; New Years Day, 77; sex at, 221-23; street cleaning for emperor, 186

feudal society, 107-9; value of ocean transport, 113-16

field overseers (ladokoro), 72 fields (myo), 65 flJthy child (eta warawa), 192, 195-96,

195n.28, 213 finances: account book forerunners, 137;

account books, hidden, 137; account books, keeping, 136, 136n.18; credit, 149; disputes, 81; public vs. governmental. 155; ofRitsuryo state, 49, 255; of Tomb period, 47-48. See also finance (suiko) system

finance (suiko) system, 155-57, 160, 235, 255

financiaJ disputes, 81 financiers: doso moneylenders, 160-61,

160n.16; elevated social status until early medieval period, 157-60; evil, 83-88; Hie Otsu Shrine purveyors, 57-59; women, 231-33, 232

fmt harvest rice, 48-49, 155, 232; deposited in storehouses, 232; hatsuho in the medieval period, 155,253; jobun in the Ritsuryo state, 155; loans of secured by tax collection orders, 57-59; nie, 253-54; offerings at sacred spots, 95

fishing slave (gyonu), 29 five colors of baseness ( goshiki no sen),

158-60, 173-75 flyers (rakusho), anonymous, 127, 128 Folk Customs of the Anti-Folk. SeeHijomin

no minzoku bunka folk studies, 126n.5 Forgotten Japanese: Encounters with Rural

Life and Folklore, The (Wasurerareta Nihonjin) (Miyamoto Tsuneichi), xx.xv, 220n.4, 223, 244

Form and Gesture in Medieval History. See Suga ta ta shig11sa no ch1iseishi

Formation of the Medieval Style World. Sec Cl11iseitrki sekai 110 keisei

four-leggers (yotsuashi), 214 Frois, Luis: accuracy of, 225; reports on

abortion, 225-26; on women and divorce, 218, 220; on women and sex, 217-18

From Feudal Fishing Villagers to an Archipelago's Peoples (Johnston), 282n.14

fudai warlords, ll4n.22 Fugeshl and Suzu Counties Village

Statistics, 17 Fujiwara clan, 238-39n.19, 257 Fujiwara family: splits, 259n.22 Fujiwara Kusuko, 238-390.19 Fujiwara Nakanari, 238-39n.19 Fujiwara no Hidehira, 59 Fujiwara no Kamatari, 174, l74n.l0 Fujiwara no Michinaga, 152n.ll,

258-59 Fujiwara no Sumitomo, 54-55, 112, 262

63, 262n.25 Fujiwara-no-uji-no-nyo, 227-28 Fujiwara no Yasubira, 59 Fujiwara no Yorimichi, 61-62 Fujiwara regents, l JO Fujiwara uji, 25911.22 Fuji Yoshida, Kai Province, 104 Fukushima Castle, 80 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 118 funeraJs, 177; workers, 181; Yase children,

193 Fushimi, Emperor, 262, 267 fusuma shitabari monjo (jusuma insula111u1

documents), xxvii, 27-29

Gaki soshi (The Picture Book of I lungs\ Ghosts), 163, 163

gamblers, 82, 210, 213 gambling, 162-63 game (engaccho), 281-82 gangsters, 213 ganmon (request in prayer), 127 garden construction, 188 garden design, 167 garden designers, 98 gardener for the cmpcro1 (A.1111111,,1rdr11, r

gardener for the shogun (kubo oniwamono), 98

genealogies, Japanese, 250-51 genin, 28, 174 genjojo (to speak to a superior), 129 Genpei wars, 146n.2 geshi shiki {office of the lieutenant

governor), 260 Gion Festival, 184, 184n.20 Gion Shrine, Kyoto, 171, 181; riverside

dwellers and, 188; women shrine purveyors,235-36

go. See registered households (go) go (hamlet), 22, 65 Goble, Andrew, 156n.14 goblins (tengu), 195-96, 196 Go-Daigo, Emperor: establishment of

Kenmu government, 73-76, 86; levied taxes on entrepreneurs, 116; restoration of Kenmu government, 169n.25; ruled autocratically, 116-17; son Kaneyoshi, 269-71; succession disputes, 26611.29, 267, 267n.30, 268-69

Go-E11'yii, Emperor, 271-72 Go-Fukakusa, Emperor, 225n.10 Go-Horikawa, Emperor, 96 Gohoura shell jewelry, 46, 48 Go-Mizuno-o, Emperor, 272, 272n.34 good people, the (ryomin), 173 gorokunuri (lacquerware), 100-101 goshi (net attendants), 90, 91 gosu (net maslers), 90, 9 1 gotei (pullers), 55 Go-Toba, Emperor, 26611.29 gotoku (brazier), xx.xv Go-Uda, Emperor, 221 gourds,34 governing officer (tsukasa), 65 government slaves (kanko), 158 iovernor (slrngo), 227 Grand Council of State, 97,117,253,257,

258,266 gr.,vcs, legal principle of, 186 ( ;realer Law for Shipping, The (Kaisen

dC1il16), 96 < ,1<·,11 <,cncralbsimo of Hinomoto, 251-52 (,11•,11 ls.Jnshil F,1minc, 104

Index 295

Great King (okimi), 41, 246, 249, 250 grievances resolved within original space,

158,224 group (mure), 23 group of nonhumans walking toward

lppen: Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen, The (Ippen hijirie), 207, 209

gun (district). See districts (counties) (gun) gusuku (mountain castles), 95 gyonu (fishing slave), 29

Hachiman (deity of war), 263n.26 hairpin from Torihama remains, 34 hairstyles and clothing as status symbols,

!29n.8 hairstyles and clothing of homen, 190, 191 hairstyles of adult male commoners, 193 hairstyles of cow-herding children, 192 hairstyles of the stable purveyors, 194 haishitsu (disabled), 173 Hakari no honji (Principles of the Scales,

The), 96 hamlets (go), 22, 65 handicapped individuals, 172-73, 180, 183 han (domains), 24n.17 Hangaku-gozen,228 Hanihara Kazuro, 4ln.4 Hannyaji Temple, 166 Hansen's disease (leprosy), xxxv, 173, 183 Hanzono,267 Harube Village, Mihoma Gun, Ono

Province, 139 hatsuho (first harvest rice), 155, 253.

See also first harvest rice Hattori Shiso, 117, 118 hawks, I 94-95 Hayashiya Tatsusaburo, 281 Hayato, 44 Headquarters, The (honshuku), 180 Headquarters of the Western Command,

270 Heavenly Descent, 248-49 Heavenl y Mandate, 248, 257 heelless sandals (uranashl), 188 Heian period, 8n.8 Heijo Palace, 26n.18 Heizei, Emperor, 238

}•Ir, Index

I lc1ze1 Insurrection, 257 1 lcll 's Corner, 242 /,/ (non-) prefix, 184 hiden'in ( hospices), 175-77 Hie Shrine, 57, 157; dos<> moneylenders,

160-61; offerings, 155 Higashiyama Nyobo, 229 Hijikata family, 8n.7, 114-15, ll5 Hijomin no minzoku bunka: Seikatsu

minzoku to sabetsu mukashiba-nashi (Folk Customs of the Anti-Folk) (Akamatsu Keisuke), 220n.4

Hirniko of the Kingdom of Yamatai, 41 Hinomoto, Great Generalissimo of,

251-52 hinomoto (place where the sun rises), 251,

252 Hinomoto-to (Band of the East), 25ln.9 Hino Tomiko, 233 Hints for Considering History. See Rekis/ii o

kangaeru hinto hiragana script, x.xvi, 123, 130-37 Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, 283n.17 Hirose Kazuo, xxxvii hisabetsumin. See discriminated groups

(/1isabetsumin or burakumin) Historicizing Postwar History Writing.

See Rekishi to shite no sengo shigaku history, post-World War II: elementary

education script, 143; and historical research, xxvii-xxix, 280-81, 283n.17; period of early absolutism, 117

history and folk studies compared, 126n.5 History of Latter Ha11 Dynasty (Chen

Shou), 264n.27 History of the Sui (Yoshida Takashi), 249 History of the Wei Dynasty (Chen Shou),

264n.27 history vocabulary, 284-85, 284n.21 Hizen Province, 114 ho (neighborhoods), 65, 74-75 hoe (memorial service), 162 Hojo family, 89, ll4 Hojo Yoshitoki, 96 Hokkoku Shinbun (newspaper), 15 h6111e11 (released prisoners), 189-90;

hairstyles and clothing, 190, 191; as

pictured in Pictorial Biogmphy of the Holy Man H611en, The, 190, 191

Hon'a of Hoshotsu, 78 Honen, 182, 182n.17. See also Pictorial

Biography of the Holy Man Htmen, The

H6nen sh6ni11 den'e. See Pictorial Biography of the Holy Man H.onen, The

Honpukuji Temple Memoirs (Myozei), 94, 98-99

Honshu, 50-51, 106, 246, 263; geographical terms, 25211.11; Kumano rebellion, 85; western, 214n.33

honshuku (Headquarters, T he), 180 Hori River, 58 horse and cart transporters, 63, 110, 194 horse area of the house (doma), 215,

2J5n.35 horse cultrne origins, 42-43 horse meat, 215 horse-riding people, 41n.3 horses, 38, 41; Tohoku region, 52 horses of the retired emperors, 110, 113 horse stable purveyors, imperial (miumaya

yoriudo), 62-63, 194 Hoshoji Temple, 62 Hoshotsu, Etchu Province, 78 hospices (hiden'in), 175-77 Hotate Michihisa, 171,231 h6t6 (overseers), 74-75 Ho to kotoba no chiiseishi (Law and

Language in Medieval Japan) (Kasamatsu Hiroshi), 224n.9

house of beauties, 242n.23 house of the realm (kuge), 256, 256n.17 house woman, the (kajo), 231 hynkush6 (villagers), 711.6, 73; current use

in China and Korea, 22-23; cu mmt use of term discriminatory, lSn.D; current use of term in journalism, Is 16; current use of term in textbooks, 3-6; distinguished from purvey<m, 159; freedom of movement 1 n kud.1 I society, L07-9; ,1s glca,w<l from Tokikuni family do,uml'nt�. 7; included mcri:hanh, cr,1ftsmc11, ,rnd

others, 1511.13, 16-17, 19-22, 69-73, 99-100; letters ofRennyo, 99; literate, 136; not all farmers, xvii-xviii; 6mitakara one hundred names, 22, 159; status compared with nonhumans, 172; Village Statistics for Fugeshi and Suzu, 16-17

hyoefu (Middle Palace Guards), 177 Hyogo,83

I ichimegasa (sedge hats), 223 iemoto system (kinship style transmission

and licensing), 258, 258n.21 ietoji (master of the house), 231 !hara Saikaku, 20 Iki Island, 37 ikk6 ikki insurrections, 99-101 lkko movement, 101 Tkko sect, 102 illustrated catalog of tradesmen (shoku11i11

tsukushi), 162 lllustrated History of Kokawa Temple, The.

See Kokawadera engi ernaki Illustrations of the Three Jewels. See Sanb6

ekotoba Imagawa Ryoshun, 270 Imai, Yamoto Provi nee, 101 imoji (metal smiths), 279 imperial accession rite (daij6sai), 253-54,

253n.l2 imperial edict, direct (rinji), 133 imperial edict script style, 127, 133 imperial guidelines, 253n.14 imperial police (kebiishi), 186-87, 191 Imperial Police Agency, 186-87, 190,258 Imperial Police, The. See Kebiishi imperial purveyors (kugonin), 64, 158-60;

power outside of the state land system, 81; slaves of the gods (shinbutsu no nuhi), l56; social standing, 158-60

imperial stable purveyors (miumaya yori11do), 194

imperial stables, 62-63, 194 1111perial succession, 257 I mpcri:ll (/e11116) institution: history,

245 -19, 279

lndex 297

imperial territory (kokugary6), 227 Important Affairs of Renjaku. See Renjaku

no daiji Inaba Tokikuni, 228 Incan empire, 158, 254; male and female

slaves, 15811.J 5 indenture, terms of, 29 indentured servants (gen in), 10, 28, 174 iJ1digo dye, 190 infanticide, 225-26 inflation, 150 ink painting, 167 Inland Sea, 95, 109, 112 Inland Sea, Eastern, 67 inner ear pots, 52 Inner Palace Guards (emonfu), 177 Tnoike Mitsuo, 28n.19 Inoike Mitsuo family, 28 Lnoue Mitsusada, 254 Inoue Toshio, 100 lnryoken (garden), 18811.23 insei (Office of the Retired Emperor), 62,

260 Insei period, 62 inspection reports, 238-39 Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk

Culture, xx.ix, 6, 6n.5, 13, 13, 125, 278, 282n.15

Institutes of the Engi Period. See Engishiki

instructions of nobles (rnigyosho), 133 interest, 155-57 Lnterest money (rizeni), 161 /nu (dog), 181 inujinin (dog shrine purveyors), 160,

181-86. See also non humans (hinin) inujinin and a nonhuman standing next

to a fence: Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen, The (lppen hijirie), 207, 208

inujinin and beggars from the market at Tomono in Shinano Province, 211, 212

inujinin attempting to drown with two inujinin watching: Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen, The ([ppen hijirie), 198, 200, 201

29H Index

l1111Jini11 (three) and a group of nonhwnans and beggars: Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen, The (Ippen hijirie), 201, 203,204

inujinin (three) at the deathbed of lppen: Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ip pen, The (Jppen hijirie), 201, 202

inujinin (two) under the shrine gate and beggars: Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen, The (Ippen hijirie), 204, 206, 207

invoice (shikiri), 118 inzen (retired emperor), 133 Ippen (monk): salvation of women and

nonhumans a goal, 239-41; service at the temple of Jimokuji in Owari, 81- 82; teachings of, 87-88. See also Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen, The

lppen hijirie. See Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen, The

Irish, Jeffrey, xxxvn.l iron casters, 56, 157 iron casters shrine, 69, 71 iron (five ryo) for every tan of paddy field,

69 iron introduced during Tomb period, 41 1ronworking Agency and Bureau of Crafts,

56 lse Shrine, 109-10 Ishimoda Sho, 280n.9 lshiyamadera engi emaki. See Picl'orial

History of Tshiyama Temple, The Ito Hirobumi, 14111.25 lwai Rebellion, 45 lwaki Hoga, 252 lwashimizu Hachiman Shrine, 109-IO,

221 iyashiki mono (base), 164 Iyo Province, 112, 113 Izumi Masahiro, 16, 28 lzumisano, Osaka Prefecture, 20 Izu Peninsula, 46

Japru1: establishment, 48-50; history of name, xxii-xxiii, 48, 247, 247n.5, 250- 52; prewar and wartime imperial

centered history, 266-69; territory, 50-54

Japan, eastern: compared to western, xx iii xxiv, 39-42; land administrative units, 65

Japan, western, 214; compared to eastern xxiii-xxiv, 39-42; land administr,1t1v, units, 65

Japanese archipelago islands, 20, 32; coastline changes over time, 20, 48; exclusionary policy, 103-4; inhabHcJ in early Stone Age, 32; multiple stair, within, 262-66, unification, 101-2

Japanese ethnography, 124n.3, 125 Japanese genealogies, 250-51 Japanese History as Viewed from the St'II

(tape) (Amino Yoshihiko), xxxi Japanese language origins, 33 Japan Sea, xxiv, 59, 95, 109; pirates, 9'i;

Tomb trade routes, 45-46 jewelry, 46, 48 ji (land), 75 Ji Buddhist sect, 78, 87, 101, 240 Jimyoin line, 267 Jinmu, Emperor, 247n.4 Jin mu period, 247 Ji sect, 78, 87, 101, 199, 240 Ji sect monk: attempting to drown: 1'111111

Scroll of the Holy Man lppe11, J'/11 (lppen hijirie), 198, 199

Ji sect monks: performing 11e11butrn, HII Jisha seiryoku (The Power ofTempk, .111d

Shrines) (Kuroda Toshio), 17211 'i jishl (land interest), 75 Jishu monk proselytizing to t he

non humans: Picture Scroll of the //11/1 Man lppe11, The (lppe11 hijirit•), 70 I 205,207

Jito, Empress, 247,261 jit/5 (military steward), 72,228 jobun (first harvest rice), 155 S,·1· 11/w 111 t

harvest rice Joei Formulary, 224, 264 <,t;n 28 Joen, 229 Johnston, WilliJm, 278n.2. 21!.?11,l l,

282n.14, 28',11 25 Jokyu Di�lurb.1nu:, l'!Sn,5, 2M111 111,

267n.30

Jomon Jidai no gyogyo (The Jomon Period and Fishing) (Watanabe Makoto), 33

Jomon period, 31, 33-36, 172-73; clothing, 33-34, 35; dry field agriculture, 34- 36; geographical range of, 32-33; pillars, 36; roots of commerce, 33-34; Shell Mound culture, 52; tools of, 33; transformed to Satsumon culture, 51

Jamon Period and Fishing, The. See ]omon Jidai no gyogyo

kabu- (of kabushiki), 118 kaekl(corveelabor taxes),255,268,273 kaemai (exchange rice), 148 Kaga Province insurrections, 99-100 kaimin (coastal people), 4 kninu (sea slave), 29 Kaisen daiho (Greater Law for Shipping,

The), 96 kalsenjin (marine merchants), 5 Kaisen shikimoku ("Shipping Customs"),

96 knison (fishing village), 21 kaizokushu (buccaneer), 94 Kai�uka, Izumi Province, 101 kajo (house woman, the), 231 Kakyo no oshi (Lessons of Home, The)

(Miyamoto Tsuneichi), 220n.4 Knmagiri Island, 94 Kamakura, capital of Eastern Country, 61 Kamakura Buddhist sects: government

suppression of, 213-14; involvement with commerce and finance, 78, 165-69

l\/1111akura Documents (Takeuchi Rizo), 230

1',1111akura period: debt cancellation edicts (tokuseirei), 161 n.17; documents of, 136; Miura family, 114; monks and 1vriting, 140, 140n.24; shogunal rnnlrol, I0R-9; trnnsport by water route�. 113-16

t,;.1111,1kura shogunate, xxiv, 52n.10, 86,227, lM 6t;, 264n.28: currency, 148-49; I.ill. '.66 69; monarch of the east, ll0; 110111111t1111-1ofrnins, ISl;vassal ,1,,lmhl) fllo.11d (ll lnqu11y), 116

Index

Kameyama, Emperor, 267 Kamikaji family, 107

299

Kaminoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, 19-20, 22

Kami village, xxvi, 128 Kamo Festival, 190 Kamonryo. See Bureau of Housekeeping Kamo Sb.rine, 109 Kanagawa University, 6n.5 Kanayako Shrine, 69, 71 kandaka (value of proprietors' holdings),

116 kandori (rowers), 55 Kanenaga, 269-71 Kaneyosb.i, Prince. See Kanenaga Kangi famine, 104 k.anji (Chinese characters), xxvi, 123, 239 kanji-hiraga11a documents, 12311.l, l34 kanji-katakana documents, 123n.l,

126-27 kanji-majiri documents. See kanji-

katakana documents kanjin hijiri. See religious solicitors kanjin }611/n. See religious solicitors Kanjoji family, 259 knnja rites ( baptismal rites), 262, 262n.24 Kan mu, Emperor, 249,257 Kaunon-nyo, 230 kanpaku (chief imperial advisor). 258-59 Kanta Formulary. See Kanta onshikimoku,

224 Kanto onshikimoku (Kru1to Formulary),

224 Kanto Plain, 25ln.9, 252 Kanto's orders (kanto gejijo), 131-32 Kanzaki estate, ll4 karabune (Ch.i.nese-style sh.ips), 89-90, 166,

16611.2] Karakaneya family ofWaizumi, 20 Kasamatsu Hiroshi, 186,224,285 kashiage (lenders), 231 Kashima Shrine, 158, 175 Kasugai City, Aichi Prefecture, xxxix Kasuga Shrine, 180; vows to abstain from

sex in certain areas, 221 Katada, Omi Province, 94, 141 katni (leper), xn·v, 173, 183 katnkmw-liimga,,a documents, 12311. I

\()() Index

k11taka11a petition (of Kami village), xx:vi, 128-29

katakana script, xxvi, 123; script used for speech, 127, 137; used by monks in late Edo, 130

Katsumata Shizue, xi, 127, 152, 285 Katsuyama Fort, 95 kattai (leper), ,xxxv, 173, 183 Kawada Mitsue, 171 Kawai Juku, xxxi-xxxii kawase tegata (bills of exchange), 58, 73-

74, 118, 149; control of circulation routes, 82; dispute resolution, 79, 81; transactions fees for, 73

kebiishi (imperial police), 186-87, 190, 191 Kebiishi (Imperial PoHce, The) (Niunoya

Tetsuichi), 171 Kegare no minzokushi (An Ethnographic

History of Pollution) (Miyata Noboru), 172n.4

Kegare to oharae (Pollution and Purification) (Yamamoto Koji), 172n.4

Keiseiya (courtesan house), 242, 242n.23 Keitai, Emperor, 44-45 keiyaku (contract), 82 kenin (domestics), 158 kenkyilsho (researched works), 277n.l Kenmu (Goble), 156n.14 Kenmu government, 76 Ken mu Restoration, 73, 112, 169n.25 kidnapping (tsuji-turi), 224 Kii Peninsula, 60 kimonos, baggy (tsubo shozoku), 223 kimonos, kosode-style, 68n.2 Kinai region, 65, 257 kindnesses (shi), 168 Kinki (Osaka-Nara) region, 41 kinri gardeners, 98, 98n.S Kinsei Ni hon no jink6 (Population

Structure of Early Modern Japan, The) (Sekiyama Naotaro), 5

kinship style transmission and licensing (iemoto system), 258, 258n.21

kirifu (promissory note, official), 57 kirikudashibumi. See tax collection orders,

imperial (kirikudashibumi) kiru (to cut), l 18

kish6mon (vow to deity), 127 Kiso Yoshinaka, 113 Kitano Shrine, 189 Kitayama Quarters, 180 Kitazono High School, xxx, 279 Kitsukawa Toshitada, 28 -kitte of kogitte (check), 118 kiyome (purifiers at the Kitano Shrine), 188 Kiyomihara Codes, 247, 247n.3 Kiyomizu Temple, 180 Kiyosakin (small Y ugeshima villager), 68 k6 (realm), 255 Kobata Atshushi, 281 Kobayakawa family, 113-14 Kofukuji Temple, Kasuga Shrine, 180, 181 Koguryo dynasty, 42-43, 43 kogyonin (craftsmen), 16ln.18 Kokawadera engi emaki (illustrated

History of Kokawa Temple, T he) (Kokawadera, owner), 54

Koko, Emperor, 274 koku: unit of measure, 10n .11 kokubunji. See temple system, official

(kokubunji) kokudaka: predicted volume of rice

production, 24 kokuga (provincial office), 65 kokugary6 (state lands/imperial territory).

See shoen estate/government lands system

komin (people of the realm), 253 k6mo11 (vow to deity), 127 Komyo, Empress, 175n.ll Konjaku monogatari shu (Tales of Times

Now Past) (Ury, ed.), 189n.24 Konoe, Emperor, 274 Ko no Moronao, 269 Korean Peninsula, 32, 50, 53, 246;

exclusionary policy, 103-4; Shin'an wreck off shore, 147; Yayoi stonewart· found on, 37

Korean people: genetic similarities to western Japanese, 41-4 2

Korean society: Confucianism within and social class, 103

Koretaka, Prince, 274 Koryo dynasty, 56, 79, 103 Koshii (Yamanashi Prefecture), 20 21

kosode-style kimonos, 68n.2 k6son (manufacturing village), 72 Kotoba no bunkashi (A Cultural History of

Words) (Amino Yoshihiko, et. al.), 285

kub6 (shogun), 256 kub6 oniwamono (gardener for the

shogun), 98 Kubota Domain (Akita Prefecture): 1849

population figures by occupation (Sekiyama Naotaro), 5; 1849 population figures by occupation (Shosetsu Nihonshi), 4

kuge (house of the realm), 256 kugonin. See imperial purveyors kugutsu (puppeteers), 235 kuji (tax on vassals themselves), 149 Kujo family, 147n.5 Kumano Bikuni nuns, 243, 243n.24 Kumano rebel! ion, 85 Kumano Shrine: Kumano rebellion, 85;

nuns, 24311.24 (see also Kumano Bikuni nuns); offerings, 155-56

kumon (clerks), 72 kumon (estate managers), 228 kuni (province), 49 Kunimatsu-maru, 191 kunitsutsumi (crimes against the realm),

173 kunuhi (public slaves), 158, 173 Kuroda Hideo, 171,279 Kuroda Toshio, 172n.5 kur6do-dokoro toro kugonin (lamp

purveyors of the emperor's private office), 157

Kuroyu-maru, 190 Kusuko Incident, 238-39n.19 Kusunoki Masashige, 85n.5 Kyoto: construction influenced by river

trade, 56-57, 58; street cleaning for emperor, 186-87

Kyoto Furitsu Sogo Shiryokan, 128, 134, 135

Kyoto River, 177 ky6ivarawa (children of the capital), 210 K)1ushu, 53, 60, 214, 270-71; Iwai

disturbance, 45; land administrative units, 65-66; spoken language, 124

Index

labor tax (yo), 23, 49, 255 lacquer production, 71 lacquer trees, 71 lacquerware, 100-101 Lake Biwa, 62, 94, 95, 214n.33; home of

Honpukuji temple, 99; Katada, 100 Lake Hamana, Sllizuoka Prefecture, 46 Lake Jusan, Tsugaru Peninsula, 80 Lake Sanpogo, Wakasa, 34 lamp purveyors of the emperor's private

office (kur6do-dokoro t6ro kugonin), 56,157

land (ji), 75 land disputes (shomu sata), 81 land interest ( jishi), 75 landless villagers (mizunomi), 14 landless villagers (moto), 19-20 land ownership, 238-39; women, 230-31,

243 land registries, 22, 69 land sales, 147 land surveys, great, 252 l,aw and Language in Medieval Japan.

See Ho to kotoba no c/iilseishi lawsuits and litigation, 8ln.l, 131, L89 lead mining, )2 lecture transcriptions, 130 Left Bureau of Horses, 110, 113 leg irons (chakuda), 189 lenders (kashiage), 231. See also under

finances leper (kattai or katai), xxxv, 173, 183 leper (repura), xxx:v lepers forced to join Ritsu sect, 183 leprosy (raiby6), xxxv, 173, 183 Lessons of Home, The. See Knkyo 110 os/ri letters of divorce (mikudarihan), 219 Letters of Divorce. See M ikudarihan letters of separation (rienj6), 219 Letter to Vera Zasulich, 1851 (Marx),

282 literacy, 107, U3-26, 124,244 litigation and lawsuits, 8ln.l, 131, 189 Lotus Sutra movement, 101, 168n.24 Love and Subservience in the Middle Ages.

See Chusei no ai to jujun lower market, the (shimoichiba), xx xix

IOl Index

M macl,i (towns), xxxviii Machino River, 7, 8 Machino Shibakusaya family, 13 Maeda, Lord, 8n.7 Maeda family, 114-15 magatama in Chiba Prefecture, 39 rnagernono (boxes, round wooden), xxxviii,

157 mainosen (buried offering coins), 150 Manabe lsland, Bitchu Province, 243-44,

24311.24 manager-contract system, 93 man in boys' clothing speaking to Tppen

and Jishu monks: Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen, The (Ippen hijirie), 209,210

manorial system, 260 man sitting next to a two-story gate at

khinom iya of Mimasaka: Picture Scroll of the Holy Man lppen, The (Ippen hijirie), 206, 207

rnan'yogana, 132, 138 Man'yoshil (poetry collection), 132n.13,

222, 222n.7 Maraji family name, 176 marine merchants (kaisenjin), 5 marine trade: Enjir6's creditors, 14-15; by

Shibak:usaya, 13-14; by Tokikuni family, 10-12

marketplaces (ba), 118; free/unattached space, 152-54, 221-23; grievances resolved within thalspace only, 158, 224; on islands and sandbars, 72; licensed under the Ritsuryo state, 53; of Niimi estate, 72, 74, 75, 77-78; ofNuta estate, 112; ofYayoi culture, 38; where rainbows were seen, 152-53

market price (soba), 74, 118 marriage, 222n.8, 237; consanguineous,

237; divorce, 230-31; monks, 241; times when not binding, 153, 222

-maru (suffix), 194-95 Marx, Karl, 282 Marxist analysis, application of, xxix,

280-83 Mass, Jeffrey, 259n.22, 264-65n.28

master of the house (ietoji), 231 masters of the sea (Matsura band), 112,228 masters of the sea (umi no ryoshu), 82 Mato to ena: Chuseijin no sei to shi (Target

and Placenta: Medieval Life and Death) (Yokoi Kiyoshi), 17211.4, 279

matriarchy, 237 Matsuba Castle, 113 Matsumoto Shinpachir6, 280-8ln.9 Matsunobu Yasutaka, 146, 150 Matsunoo sHe, Kagoshima Prefecture, 46,

Matsura band (masters of the sea), 112, 228

Matsura region, 38 mawaki (at the side), 14 Mawaki remains, 36 McCormack, Gavan, 278o.2 Mechnikov, Ilya, 124, 124n.4 Medieval Estates in Transformation.

See Chusei shoen no yoso Medieval [apanese State, The. See Nihon no

chilsei kokka medieval land system. See shoen estate/

government lands system medieval period administrative

designations, 22 medieval society, 107-9 Medieval Society and Politics a.nd the Image

of the People. See Chusei no seijiteki shakai to minshuzo

Meiji, Emperor, 261,269 Meiji Constitution, 141n.25 Meiji Restoration, 118 Meiji state, 117 memorial service (hoe), 162 men: in childlike clothing, 210; equality

with women, 237-38; sexual practices, 220-26; tax responsibility, 53; use of hiragana, 131-32

menials (kanko), 158-60, 173 menials (shinsen), 54,158,175,254 Menoko-hime, 45 mercantilism, xx; development through

history, 116-19. See also commerce; marketplaces

merchants, 99; and artisans, 283-84; practices codified, 96; in l>crvicc of gods and emperor, 157 60; women,

235-36. See also commerce; marketplace.s

Meshino family of Osaka, 20 metal casters, 56, 71, 157, 274 metal smiths (irnoji), 279 metori (taking a woman), 224-25 Middle Palace Guards (hyoefu), 177 migyosho (instructions of nobles), 133 Mikawa: riots, 105 miko (walking shamans), 233 mikudarihan (letters of divorce), 219 Mikudarihan: Edo no ikon to joseitachi

(Letters ofDivorce: Women and Divorce in Edo Japan) (Takagi Tadashi), 219n.2

military governors (shugo daimyo), 164, 227

military steward (jito), 72, 113 millet, 35 Minamoto no Ason, 250 Minamoto no Sanetomo, 265 Minamoto no Yoritomo, 61,113,227 minshil (commoners), 284n.19 minzokugaku, 279 Mirror of Pastoral Life, A (Nomori no

kagami), 88 miscellaneous tax (zoyo), 49,255 mitsugi. See tribute miuchibito (private vassals), 84 rniumayn yoriudo. See imperial stable

purveyors Miura family, 114

Miwa, Ibaraki Prefecture, 46, 48 miyagomori (shamans, lower caste).

See shamans, lower caste Miyakawa Mushanojo, 227 Miyamoto Tsuneichi, xxxv, 10,220, 220n.4,

223,244 Miyata estate, Tanba Province, 77 Miyata Noboru, 172n.4 mizunomi (landless villagers), 14 rnizunomi (water drinkers), 14-17 modern era, early, 108 modernization, incomplete, xxviii modern past / premodern past, xvii Moga mi River, Dewa Province, 49 moH,111. Sec· wooden tablets mon,1rd1 c1f Kyoto, 110

Index

monarchy of the east, xxiv, LlO monarchy of the west, xxiv moneylenders (doso). See financiers money offerings ( jobun), 232 money worship, 151 Mongol invasion, 266

303

monjo shugi (principle of documents), 49, 138

mortks (soryo), 240; attire, 160; as estate managers, 76; full time status, 78; of Kamakura period, 165-69; as land managers, 76, 84; lecture documents, 130; as lenders and financiers, 78; and marriage, 241; social status of "slaves" and menials, 157-60; tax responsibility, 53; as traders and entrepreneurs, 89-92; women, 239- 41, 240n.21, 243

Monks Organization (Sojo), 261 Monogusa Taro, 224-5 moshitsugi (the service desk), 110 moto (below), 252 motodori (topknot), 193 moto (gate men), 14 moto (landless villagers), 19-20 mountain ascetics (yama.bushi), 76 mountain castles ( gusuku), 95 mountain dwellers (sanmin), 4 mountain floats (yamaboko), 184 mountain tolls (yamagoshi), 82, 82n.4 mountain village. See sanson mountain yeoman (yarnadachi), 95 Mount Fugi, 105 Mount Hiei, 82, l82n. l7, 227 muen (unconnected), 14. See also

nonconnectedness rnuen (world of non relations), xx Muen, kugai, raku (Discon11ected11ess,

Public Space, and Markets) (Amino Yoshihiko), xiii, xxx-xxxi, 152n.10, 284,285

muen no ba (site of disengagement), 152 rnuen no ba (unconnected spaces), xxxi muensho (nonrelated spaces), 167 rnuen temples, 167. See also temples of

disengagement mulberries, 38, 40 Munakata Shrine, 63,112,114

I() I Index

1/11/rrl, 21 1111iru (newly opened rice paddy), xxxvii murn (village), xx.xvii, 21. See also villages murders, 224 mure (gathering or group), 23 Muromachi period, xxxvi, 116, 242-43,

268-72; birlh pollution, 182-83, 183n.19 (see also afterbirth, disposal); debt cancel lat ion edicts (tokuseirei), 161 n.17; documents of, 136; dos6 money lenders, 160-61, 160n.16 (see also financiers); interest in ocean routes, 114; no minting of coins, 151; realm purifying ceremonies, 184; scripts from the Ryukyus, 130-31; village origin, xxxvii

Muromachi shogunate: and Kanenaga, 269-72

musical instruments, 194-95 Mutsuranotsu, 61 Mutsu region, 61 My Lifestyle. See Rekishi to shite no sen go

shigaku myo (fields), 65 myoden (named rice paddfos). See rice

paddies (myoden), named Myozei (priest), 98-99 My Uncle, Amino Yoshihiko. See Boku no

ojisan, Amino Yoshihiko

N Nagahara Keiji, 281 Nagano obsidian mine, 34 Nagaya, Prince, 23, 136 Nagoya University, xxx, 33, 278 Nakada Kaoru, xxix Nakahara-no-uji-nyo, 228 NakaJ1ara uji, 258 Nakamura Naokatsu, 151 Nakasone Yasuhiro, xxi Nakazawa Shin'ichi, 282, 28211.16, 28311.17 named rice paddies. See rice paddies

(myoden), named names: adults with children's, 192, 194-95;

-ami, ama (names attached to), 240; of discriminated groups (burakumin) different in different regions, 216;

elements of villagers, 273; ending in -maru, 194-95; family names, 250; of male and female monks, 240-41; of male villagers, 138; status associations, 22, 29, 192n.25; villagers with names ofBuddhist deities, 78

Namioka Castle, Aomori Province, 149 Nami (Waves) (periodical), 286 Nara Hill, Yamato Province, 180 Nara sects, 166n.19 natural disasters, 178-79n.14 nawashiro (rice seedling), xxxv neighborhoods (ho), 65, 74-75 nenbutsu dance, 87-88, 88, 182n.17, 205 nengu (yearly tribute). See yearly tribute net attendants (goshi), 90, 91 net masters (gosu), 90, 91 new emperor (shinn6), 263 New Kanto System, 264, 264n.28 New System for Noble Houses, 267 ni (particle of speech), 127 Nichiren, 89 Nichiren sect, 101 nie (divine offerings), 253-54 night-crawling practice, 220-21 Nihon: meanings, xxi-xxiii, 284,286;

naming, 247; territorial borders, 252 Ni hon chftsei no minshuzo (Portrait of the

Medieval Japanese People, A) (Amino Yoshihiko), 21

Nihon chusei nosonshi no kenkyu (Studies in Medieval Japanese Agriculture) (Oyama Kyohei), 172n.6

Nihon koki. (Record of the Latter Ages of Japan, A), 97

Nihon no chusei kokka (Medieval Japanese State, The) (Sato Shin'ichi), 258n.19

Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu (Rethinking Japanese History) (Amino Yoshihiko), xivn.l

nihon origin of the sun, xxii Niimi estate, Bitchii Province, 69-73, 70;

entertainment expenses, 76; 1401 record of daily expenses, 77; I 933 report of annual tribute, 73 76; scrip1 of surviving documents, 133; Tamagaki's document, 134, 135

nikki (diaries), 129 Ninnaji (Record of the Right, The), 235 Ninsho (monk), 166 Niu Dewanobo Ungen, 227 Niunoya Tetsuichi, 171, 187 no (farming), 99 N6gy6 zensho (Agricultural Encyclopedia),

123 n6min (farmers), xvii-xviii, 5, 97-99;

nonin, farmers in ancient times, 97- 98; not hyakusho, 15n.l3, 97 (see also hyakusho [villagers]); stigmatized, 15n.13, 98-99

non- (hi) prefix, 184 nonconnectedness (muen no ba), xx-xxi,

xxxi; engaccho chilren's game, 281-82; free spaces, xx-xxi, 283-84; of marketplaces, 153, 158, 221-23; mountains, harbors, market towns, roads, 224; in temples and shrines, 220-24; travelers, 224, 285

nonhumans (hi11in): about, 179-83; appearance and clothing, 187; chief of, 179-83; discriminated against, 171- 75; discriminated groups within, 160, 171, 183; emergence, 179-80; hospice dwellers assigned to deal with dead, 175-77; litigation proce edings, 189; pollution, 178-79; relationship with Ritsu sect, 166; relationship with True Pure Land sect, 101; in the service of the gods, 185-87; speciaJ powers, 183- 85; work of, 179-83; worthy men, 207, 209, 2JO. See also homen; riverside dwellers

nonin, farmers from ancient times, 97-98. See also nomin (farmers)

Northeast Asian Vikings, 51 Northern and Southern Court period,

xxxvi, 169, 188, 190, 269, 271; selling of women, 243; split, 249n.7; women's disconnectedness, 233

11oshiawabi (abalone, dried), 54 n6s011 (farm village), 72 Noto Peninsula, 7; coastline changes over

lime, 20; Enjir6 (villager), 14-15, 25; l'lijikata family, 114-15; importance in

Index

Japan Sea Trade, 19; lnoike Mitsuo family of, 28; Maeda family, 114-l5; Otabumi (land register), 22; Shibakusaya family of, 13-14; Tokikuni family of, 6-13; village statistics 1735, 17

nun (ama), 240n.21. See also monks nuns: prostitution, 243; women, 239-41 Nuta estate, 112

0 oarsman's rice, 72 Obama, Wakasa Province, 78 obike (closing), 118 obsidian, 33, 3 4 occupations. See trades, skilJed ocean transport: during fourteenth

century, 147; Pacific routes, 60; during Ritsuryo, 55, 59; value of to feudal lords, 113-16. See also transport, water routes

ochikobore (dIOp out), 28411.20 Oda Nobunaga, 101-2, 102, 168, 271-72 Office of Female Dancers and Musicians,

176 Office of Imperial Falcons, 188 Office of Storehouses, 56 office of the lieutenant governor (gesh i

shiki), 260 office of the manager (azukarisho shiki),

260 office of the owner (ryoke shlki), 260 Office of the Regent, 62 Office of the Retired Emperor (i11:wi), 62,

260 Office of Women's Quarters, 238n.19 official document script, 133 Ohkutsk cullure, 51 Okayama Prefecture, Bilchu Province:

night-crawling, 220-21 okimi (Great King), 41, 48, 246, 249, 250 Okinawa: discrimination, 216; influences

upon, 33, 60; mountain castles (gusuku), 95; trade exchanges, 52

Omi Codes, 24711.3 6mitakara (people of one hundred names),

22,159

Index

on11vamono (garden people), 98 0111w jito (women commanders), 228 Ono Susumu, 33 opening session (yoritsuki), 118 "Origin of the Japanese in Relation to

Other Ethnic Groups in East Asia, The" (Hanihara Kazuro), 4ln.4

Origins of the Deity of Suwa. See Suwa daimyojin engishi

orphans, 175-77,180, 183 orthography, xxvi Oshu Province, 252 Otabumi (medieval land register

document), 22 Otomo Tabibito, 233 Otsu Shrine (Otsu jinin) purveyors, 57 outpost leaders (chori), 181 outposts, nonhuman, 180-81 ownerlessness, 153-54 ownership deeds of transfer (yuzurijo), 132 oyake (realm), 255 Oyama estate, Tanba Province, 77 Oyama Kyohei, 172n.6 Ozaki's 1401 record of daily expenses

(Niimi estate), 77 Ozuki-no-uji-no-jo, 227 Ozuki uji, 258

p paddy land. See rice paddies (myoden),

named paper craftsmen, 71 particles of speech, 127 pasture/port lands (example), 62-63 patriarchy, 236-37, 239, 243-44 pawnshops, l60n.l6 people moving on a cart and a hut: Picture

Scroll of the Holy Man lppen, The (lppen hijlrie), 198

People of the Mountains, People of the Rivers. See Yama no tami, kawa no tami

people of the realm (komin), 253 performers and enter tainers, 56, 770.6, 157,

216; artisan defined, 16ln.18; dancers, 160, 235 (see also cour tesans [asobime]); lacking Ritsuryo support, 176-77; sarugaku, 171 n.2; singers,

243n.24; street performers (hoka), 167. See also dancers, female (shirabyoshi)

periodization, xx.xv-xxxvii Peru, lOln.13 Pictorial Biography of the Holy Man Honen,

The (Honen shonin den'e), 190, 213, 241; playgirls (asobime), 234; released prisoners (homen), 191

Pictorial Gleanings of Ancient Virtues (Shui kotoku den'e): Honen's grave, 182

Pictorial History of Ishiyama Te mple, The (Ishiyamadera engi emaki): men and women sleeping, 222; women in travel attire, 223

Picture Book of Goblins, The (Tengu soshi), 88, 197, 212-13, 241; eta child, 195-96, 196

picture preachers (etoki), 77, 98n.2 Pictures and Poems of Ban Dainagon (Ban

Dainagon ekotoba), 192 Picture Scroll of the Holy Man Ippen, The

(Ippen hijirie): about, 87, 197-204, 204-13,212-13;beggars, 183,184; crowd gathering at the deathbed of Ippen, 203; dance hut at Seki Temple depicting nenbutsu, 88; group of inujinin and beggars from the market at Tomono in Shinano Province, 211, 212; group of nonhumans walking toward Tppen, 207, 209; on the Hori River with log rafts, 58; horse and cart transporters, 63; inujinin and a nonhuman standing next to a fence, 207, 208; inujinin attempting to drown with two inujinin watching, 198, 200, 201 inujinin (three) and a group of nonbumans and beggars, 201,203, 204; inujinin (three) al lhe deathlwd 111 Ippen, 201,202; in11ji11in (two) unlkt the shrine gate and beggars, 20'1, 20t, 207; Ji Sect monk at tempting to drown, 198, 199; Jishu monk proselytizing to nonhuman�. 20 I. 205,207; man in boys' doth1ng speaking to lppen and Jbhll muuk�, 209,210; man sitling 111:xt 10 ,1 lwo story gate at h:h111t11111y,1 ul Mh11,1\,il I\

206, 207; market scene, 154; notes on wooden tablets (mokkan), 91; people moving on a cart and a hut, 198; rented ship from Kamakura period, 90

Picture Book of Hungry Ghosts, The. See Gaki soshi

Piggott, Joan R., 42n.5 pilgrimages (okagemairi), 223, 244 pillar culture, gigantic, 34, 36 Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, The (Ivan

Morris, trans.), 131 pirates (kaizoku), 55, 81, 82, 262 pirates (umi no ryoshu), 55n.13, 82 planes of existence, 152-54, 153n.12;

childbirth, 233n.l5; muen and yilen, xx, 283-84; sacred places, 95, 186. See also nonconnectedness

playgirls (asobime), 234. See also courtesans

pledges (rakusho kisho), anonymous, 127-29

poetry, waka, 130 poetry contest picture scroll, 97-98, 161-

62, 164 political systems, hard and soft, 246 pollution, purifiers, 179-88, 193. See also

nonhumans (hinin) pollution (kegare): associated with cattle,

187-88 (see also cow-herding children fushikai-warawa]); cause of discrimination, 172; condition of evil, 83; contamination, xxvii; fear of, 197; from killing and selling animals, 196- 97; through childbirth, 233n.15; and women, 239-42; worker's character negatively reflected in stigmatized occupations,98-99n.6, 173, 177-79

Pollution and Purification. See Kegare to oharne

Pop11latio11 Structure of Early Modern Japan, The. See Kinsei Nihon no jinko

/>or/ rn it of the Medieval Japanese People, A. See Nihon clnisei no mi11shuz6

port towns, 22, 62-63 pihl towns. 180-81 /'r1w1·1 af'fi:mples and Shrines, The.

Sl'l' Jlslw s,!l,yoku

Index 307

Principles of the Scales, The. See Hakari no honji

prisoners, released (homen), 189-90; differed but included in nonhuman category, 189; hairstyles and clolhing, 190, 191; as pictured in Pictorial Biography of the Holy Man Honen, The, 190, 191

Private Office (kurododokoro), of the emperor, 187

private slaves (shinuhi), 158, 173 private suiko (shisuiko), 155 private vassals (miuchibito), 84 promissory note, official (kirifu), 57 proprietors' holdings, taxable value

(kandaka), 116 prostitution, 213, 243, 243n.24 Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism

(Weber), 168 province (kuni), 49 provincial governor, 65 provincial office (kokuga), 65 public service (kilji) tax category, 24, 71,

255 public slaves (kunuhi), 158, 173 pullers (gotei), 55 puppeteers (kugutsu), 235 purifiers (kiyome), I 88. See also

nonhumans (hinin) purifying Honen's grave, 182

Q Quarters, The (shuk11), 180 Queen of Wa, The, 41

raibyo (leprosy), xxxv, 173, 183 rainbows, 152-53 raku (discriminated group), 216 Rakuchil rakugai ("Scenes in and out of

the Capitat»), 241 rape, 224-25 realm (ko), 255 realm (oyake), 255 Record of Moromori (diary), 240 Record of Myohoji, A, 104, 105 Record of the Latter .Ages of Japan, A.

See Nihon koki

1()8 Index

l<crord of the Right, T he. See Ninnaji lfrcords of the Travels of Sugae Masumi.

See Sugae Masumi yuranki regent (sesshi5), 258-59 registered households (go), 48-49, 139;

family names, 250; physically handicapped individuals identified, l 73; purpose, 176; registry example from Harube Village, 139; with religious names incorporated into, 78; women heads of household, 238-39

registry example, family, 139 Rekishi o kangaeru hinto (Hints for

Considering History) (Amino Yoshihiko), 284, 286

Rekis/1i to shite no sengo shigaku (Historicizing Postwar History Writing) (Amino Yoshihiko), xxviii, 280-8ln.9

Relationship between Shrines, Temples, and Society in Medieval Times, The. See Chusel ni okeru shaji to shakai to no kankei

relationship-ending temple (enkiri-dera), xx, 219, 219n.3

religion: monotheistic style, 168-69, l68n.24; suppression of, 140n.24, 169, 213-14; transformation in, 101. See also Buddhism; Christianity; Sh into (native religious practices)

religious solicitors, 89, 91, 147n.5, !66 religious solicitors (kanjin hijiri), 91, 147,

147n.5 religious solicitors (kanjin ji5nin), 166 religious solicitors (kanjin shi5nin), 89 remote areas, 73 Renjaku no daiji (Important Affairs of

Renjaku), 96 Rennyo (abbot), 99, 99n.7, l0ln.J0;

headquarters, 100 Report on the Customs of the Bi5cho Region,

A (Bi5chi5 Judo chushuan), 97 repura (leper), xxxv, 173, 183 researched works (kenkyusho), 277n.l Rethinking Japanese History. See Nihon no

rekishi o yominaosu Rethi11ki11g Japanese History Again.

See Zoku Niho11 110 rekishi o yomi11aosu

retired emperor (inzen), 133 retired sovereign (daiji5 tenni5), 270 Revised History of Japan, A. See Shintei

Nihonshi rice: as currency, 66; as interest, 155; as a

sacred grain, 46; tax rice, 155; as a universal equivalent, 71n.3

rice, exchange (kaemai), 148 rice cultivation, 40; beginning, 36; origins,

44 rice for salt (shiotenoyone), 67 rice paddies (myi5den), named, 19, 65, 253;

about, 8n.8; annual tribute levied upon, 66; lack of did not mean poverty, 105; medieval naming, 8, 8n.8; tax equivalent in iron, 69

rice-purchasing farmers (shokumai ki5nyu ni5min), 105

rice ritual of accession (daiji5sai)), 253-54, 257

rice seedling (nawashiro), xxxv rice scller and bean seller: Songs of Seventy-

one Tradesmen, 242 rice tax (so), 23, 49, 255 rienji5 (letters of separation), 219 rinji (imperial edicts, direct), 133 Rinzai Zen sect: Tofukuji Temple, 147n.5 Ritsu Buddhist sect, 89, 165-66, l66n.19,

183 Ritsuryo state, 48-50, 55, 247; Buddhism,

261-62; codes of, 247n.3, 257; documentist approach to governance, 49, 137-43; family registration system, 48-49, 176; financial system, 49, 57- 60; fiscal crisis, 176-77; iemoto system (hereditary positions), 257-60; imitation of Tang Chinese, 175; land administration system, 49; land based transportation system, 49-50, 52-53; principle of documents (monjoshugi), 49; rice paddy grants, 8n.8; tax contracts, 54-57; tax system, 23-24, 48-49, 54-57, 254-56; Lerritory borders, 50-54

riverside dwellers (karwaramono), 171, 187-89

rlzenl (interest money), 161 roads of the Ritsu ryo �tale, 49 50, 52-5,

robes: of nonhumans, 187; of purveyor groups, 158, 160

Rokurodan (Kitano Shrine riverside dweller), 189

Rokusboji Temple, 62 Roman Catholic Church, 219n.3 Rongosho (Comments on the Analects),

130 roof beam money, 89 rowers (kandori), 55 rural, xviii ryi5ke shiki (office of the owner), 260 ryi5ko (tomb guards), 174 ryomin. See good people, the (ryi5min) Ryukyuan kingdom, 93 Ryukyus, 130-31

sacred places: commercial activities at temples, 167-68; at death place of a nonhuman, 186; first harvest rice offerings at, 95

Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures (Farris), 26n.18, 4ln.3, l36n.20, 2640.27

Saga, Emperor, 238-3911.19, 257 Sagami Province, 113-14 sailors, 29, 91 Saionji family, 85, 109-13; estate lands of,

111; hereditary directors of retired emperors stables, 110; ship with coin as ballast, 146-47; water transportation, 111

Saionji Kintsune, 112 salt, estate of, 66-69 salt manufacture, 34, 68 samurai, villages without, xviii samurai-peasants-artisans-merchants (shi-

ni5-ki5-shi5), 99 Sanbo ekotoba (Jllustrations of the Three

Jewels) (Minamoto no Tamenori for Princess Sonshi), 130n.10

sanctuary. See asylum sankin ki5tai (alternate attendance system),

ll5

samn/11 (mountain dwellers), 4 Sannal Maruyama, Aomori City, 34, 36 Sano, Izumi, 22 '11111shu dr1Jrf1 (sermon), 252n.10

[ndex

sanson (dispersed set tlements), xxxvii sanson (mountain village), 21-22 sarugaku, 17ln.2 Sasaki Gin'ya, 281 Satake, 250 Sato Shin'ichi, 258n.19, 284n.21, 285 Satsuma, 118 Satsumon culture, 51 "Scenes in and out of the Capital."

See Rakuchu rakugai scholarly research: post-World War IT,

xxvii-xxix, 280-81 Scroll of Diseases, The (Yamai no soshi),

231,232

309

seashell rings: Gohoura shell jewelry, 46, 48

sea slave (kainu), 29 seaweed (konbu), 77-78 seaweed (11ori), 54 sedge hats (ic/1imegasa), 223 segregated communities, 216 Seika (pure and brilliant families), 259 Seikai road, 49 Sekigucbi Hiroo, 28 Seki Temple dance hut, 88 Sekiyama Naotaro, 5 Sekkan family, 61-62, 259 sekkyi5-bushi (sermons), 252n.10 sen, use of character, 158 Sen (village headwomen), 244 Sendai, 114-15 sengencho (town of one thousand

buildings), 136 seni kekachi (coin shortages), 104 seniority, 181 Senmaida (thousand-layered rice paddies),

17, 18 senmyi5 (class of documents), 248, 248n.6 senshu manzai (felicitators), 7 7 senzu manzai ( beggars), 98-99, 9811.l sermons (sekkyo-bushi), 252n.10 Servants of the Four Posts, 190 service desk, the (moshitsugi), 110 service orders (hosho), 133, l33n.15 sessho. See regent set aside coins (bichikusen), 150 settlements of the Ritsuryo state, xviii, 49 seven forms of written expression, 123n.1

310 Index

sex, issues, 213 sexual practices, 220-26 seyakuin (hospices), 175 shaku (0.02 liters), 7 1 shaman, director of, 163 shamaness and a board game: Picture Book

of Hungry Ghosts, The (Gaki siishi), 163

shamans (miko), 158,177, 233; lower caste (miyagomori), 17ln.2; women (walking miko), 233

Shell Mound culture, 52 Shibusawa £iichi, xxixn.4 Shibusawa Keizo, xxixn.4, 72 shidiisen (temple coins), 156 -shiki (o[ kabushiki), 118 Shikisho (Comments on the Records of the

Historian), 130 Shikoku, 214 Shima Province, 23 Shimazaki Toson, 215 Shimofurudate, Tochigi Prefecture,

xxxviii shimoichiba (lower market, the), xxxix Shimokita Peninsula, 51 Shimotsuki Incident of 1285, 84-85 Shin'an Sea, 147n.4 Shin'an shipwreck, 89, 90, 147, 148 shinbutsu no nuhi (slaves of the gods), 156 Shingon-Ritsu temple, 166n.20 Shingon sect, 229n.13 shinno (new emperor), 263 Shinoki estate, xxxix shi-nt3-ko-sho (samurai-peasants-artisans

merchants), 99 shinpan (collateral families of Tokugawa),

114n.22 Shinran, 87, 89, 182n.17, 197 shinsen (divine menials), 54, 158, 175,254 Shintei Nihonslti (A Revised History of

Japan) (textbook), 3 Shinto (native religious practices), .xv.

See also deities, native Shinto shrines, 261 Shintsu-maru (ship), 20 shiotenoyone (rice for salt), 67 shipper's law, 95-96 "Shipping Customs." See Ke1isen sltikimok11

ships crew, 91 shirabyoshi (dancers, female), 160, 235

Shirai Hideo, 124, 124n.3 Shirakawa Palace, 62 shiroyama (castle mountains), 95 Shiusawa Keiz6, xxixn.4 shoen estate/government lands system, 22,

65-78, 227, 259-60; government land division, 65-66; resolution of land disputes, 81; shifts to village contract system, 93

sltoen estates: accumulation of holdings, 109; owners also harbor owners, 62; paid taxes directly, 65

shoen-koryiisei (estate system of taxation), 24, 61-62

shiien managers, 76-78, 93, 133,228 Shoga famine, 104 shogun (kubii), 256 shogunate (bakufu) government, 2411.17 shogunate lands, 114n.22 shokumai kiinyu niimin (rice-purchasing

farmers), 105 shokunin (artisans and merchants), 283-84 shokunin tsukushi (illustrated catalog of

tradesmen), 162 shokuno (vocation), 233. See also trades,

skilled Shomu, Emperor, 176,261 shomu sata (land disputes), 81

Shorenji Temple, 193 shiisaku (agricultural lands), 108 Shiisetsu Nihonshi (A Detailed History of

Japan) (textbook), 3, 4 Shosoin Temple, Kyoto, 139 Shotoku Taishi, 247, 247n.5 Showa, Emperor, 1930.26, 261 shrine menials (shinsen). See menials snrine purveyors (jinin), 64, 156n.14, 158

60, 172, 185; power outside of the stall: land system, 81; social standing, I 58; yellow robes, 158, 160. See also inujinin (dog shrine purveyors)

shrines: claiming harbors, 62; large, 61; lending, 57-58; portable, 9811.I; :rnd sex within, 221-22, 222

slmgo dnimyo (military governors), 16<1, 227

Shui kotoku den'e. See Pictorial Gleanings of Ancient Virtues

shuku (Quarters, T he), 180 shuson (concentrated village), xxxvU

Silla (Korean) forces, 45, 49 singers, 243n.24 slave ( goon), fishing, 29 slave (kainu), sea, 29 slavelike groups in Ritsuryo state, 173-75 slave of the Buddhas, emperor (tennii), 261 slaves: types and service, 157-60; unfree

people, 173-75 slaves and menials social status, 157-60 slaves (kanko), government, 158 slaves (kunuhi), public, 158, 173 slaves of the deities (kami no nuhi), 254 slaves of the gods (shinbutsu 110 nuhi), 156;

imperial purveyors (kugonin), 156 slaves of the lncan empire, l58n.15, 254 slaves (shinuhi), private, 158, 173 soba (market price), 74, 118 social class, 160; atamafuri (head shaking),

13, 16-17; common people ("one hundred names"), 22, 159; Kaminoseki landless (miito), 19; landless vs. landed, 13-16, 19; mawaki (at the side), 14; mizunomi (water drinkers), 14; miito (gate men), 14; muen (unconnected), 14; names and associations, 29, 192n.25; seniority with class, l8J; slaves and menials, 157-59; zakke (various houses), 14

social status indicators, 1290.8 social transformation, xxxv-xxxvU, 164; at

end of thirteenth century, 213 Sojo (Monks Organization), 261 Sokokuji, Kyoto, 188n.23 Song Chinese copper coins, 104 -5n.14 Song dynasty, 56; trade with Taira uji, 63 Song Httigyong, 94 Songs of Seventy-one Tradesmen, The, 164,

241; eboshi cap, 164, 165; rice seller and bean seller, 242

Songs of Thirty-two Pairs, The, 164 Songs of Thirty-two Tradesmen, The, 97-98

Sonji 's 1933 report of annual tribute (Niimi estate), 73-76

Sml0k1 Dhlrid, N.ig.1�,1ki, xxxviii, xxxix

Index

so (rice tax), 23, 49, 255 soryo (monks), 240

Sosogi, 14-15, 28n.19, 105-6 siison (encompassing village), xxxviii

South America, 10111.J 3

311

Southern Court period. See Northern and Southern Court period

Sovereign's Private Office (Kuroudo Dokoro), 257-58

stable purveyors, imperial (miwnaya yoriudo), 62-63, 194

stables of the retired emperor, 110, 113 stables of the Taira uji, 62-63, 110 Stirrups, Sails and Plows (conference,

1993), xxxiii stocks (kabu of kabushiki), 118 storehouse, doso, 160-61, l60n.16 storehouse commodities, 55 storehouses, 55-56, 255-56 storerooms (nando or nurigome), 231 street cleaning, 186-87 street performers (hoka), 167, 16711.22 string sellers (tsururneso), 181 Studies in Medieval Japanese Agric11lt11rt'.

See Niho11 chiisei 110s011shi 110 kenky14

Study of the Medieval \Vo rid. Sec C/11isei slwkai no ke11ky1i

Sue pollery in Miwa, 46 Suetaka-myo rice paddic:., 811.8, 228 Sugae Masumi, 124n.3 Sugae Mas1.1111i yura11ki (Records of the

Travels ofSugae Masumi), 124n.3 Sugnta to shigusa no chuseishi: Ezu to

emnki no fukei kara (Form and Geslure in Medieval History) (Kuroda Hideo), 172n.3, 279

Sugawara no Michizane, 26311.26 sugoroku board, 163 Suiko, Empress, 247 suiko (shisuiko), private, 155 suiko system. See finance (suiko) system sundries (zoyo), 49, 255 sun rises, place where the, xxii, 251, 252 Suso Ezoana Tomb, 43 Suwa daimyojin engishi (Origins of the

Deity of Suwa), 251 n.9 Suwa Shrine, 7 6

312 Index

Suzu and Fugeshi Counties Village Statistics, 1735, 17

tadokoro (field overseers), 72 Taih6 code and council, 257 Taih6 Codes of 702, 247n.3 Taira no Kiyomori, 146, 195n.27 Taira no Masakado, 54, 262-63, 262n.25 Taira no Yoritsuna, 84-85 Taira Tokitada, 17 Taira uji: hereditary managers of stables of

retired emperor, 62-63, 110; strategic estates along the Inland Sea, 63; woman of, 231

Taisho, Emperor, 193 Takagi Tadashi, 219 Takagi Yutaka, 239 Takahashi River, 72, 74 Takamagahara (Heavenly Sphere), 248 Takamure Ttsue, 236-37 Takeuchi Rizo, 230, 281 taking a woman (metori), 224-25 Tale of the Ge11ji, The (Seidensticker,

trans.), 131 Tale of the Heike, The (McCullough,

trans.), 113, 130, 195n.27 Tales of Times Now Past. See Konjaku

monogatari shu Tamagaki of Niimi estate, 134, 135 tan, unit of measure, 16n.14 Tanaka Mahito Hiromushinome, 235-36 Tanaka Takeo, 281 Tanba uji, 258 Tang Dynasty, 48, 49, 175, 257 Tara-no-sh6 estate, xxx, 226-33 tax collection based on commercial and

financial endeavor, 116-19 tax collection orders, imperial

(kirikudashibumi), 57 tax collection orders, provincial (kokufu),

57 taxes: account books of villages, 136,

l3 6n.18, 137; appeals, 26; bakuhan system, 24-25, 24n.17; commodity items, 54, 54, 55, 66; levied on paddy land, 22-25; medieval estate system, 24; oarsman's rice, 72; pa id in rice and

salt, 12; proper tax, 155; Ritsury6 system, 23-24, 48-49, 54-57, 254-56, 260; tax contract system, 55-56; tax rice, 155; transported by road to capital by commoners, 52-53, 56, 255; transported by water to storehouses by commoners, 56; tribute taxes and public fees, 65; urban land tax, 75. See also tribute

taxes in kind (cho), 145 taxes (kaeki), 273 tax-exempt people, 53, 283-84 tax orders (kirifu or kirikudashibumi), 118 tea ceremonies, 167 tea houses, 17ln.2 Tei kin orai (Way of Household Instruction,

A), 97 temple books, 130 temple coins (shidosen), 156, 167 temple pu-rveyors (yoriudo), 64, 156n.14,

158-60, 172, 185 temples, 62; commercial activities, 167-68;

of the Hojo family, 92; repair money solicited, 89; and sex within, 221-22, 222

temples, coins on foundation, 145 temples of disengagement (muensho), 167 temple system, official (kokubunji), 176 Tendai monastery, 82, 182n.17 fengu (goblin), 195-96, 196 Tengu sos hi. See Picture Book of Goblins,

The Tengyo Disturbance, 262-63, 262n.25 Tenji, Emperor, 249 Tenji line, 257 Tenman Tenjin, 263n.26 Tenmu,Empero�247,250 Tenriky6, 244 tenry6 lands, ll4n.22 Ten Thousand Leaves, T he (Man'yoshli)

(Ian Levy, trans.), 222n.7 textbooks: elementary education script,

postwar, 143; and the rebellion of the Kumano pirates, 85n.5; use of term hyakush6, 3-6

theater, 17ln.2 things.dropped, 127 thousand-layered rice paddies. 18

three-day banquet (mikka kuriya), 76 Three Jewels of Buddhism, The, 130n.10 ticket (kirifu), 118 Toba Palace, 62,110 T6daji Temple, 261 n.23; temple

headquarters, 176 Tofukuji Temple: Rinzai Zen sect, l47n.5;

Shin'an ownership, 92 (see also Shin'an shipwreck)

Tohoku: early rice cultivation, 40 Tohoku foundry, 51-52 Tohoku-in Poetry Contest (scroll), 162 Tohoku region, 52, 61 T6ji Temple, 128, 22911.13; Niimi estate, 69;

Tamagaki's document, 135; Yugeshima estate, 68

Toji Temple estate: kanji-h-imgana document, 134

Tokikuni, primary residence, 7, 9, 115 Tokikuni documents: describing Enjir6,

14-15; 1681 document asking for rice rations, 105-6; fusuma insulation docun1ents (fusuma shitabari monjo), 27-29

Tokikuni family, 6-13, 125; division into lower and upper, 8n.7, 115; dual polity hyakusho family, ll5; harbor used by, 11; involvement with mining lead, 12; involvement with salt and charcoal shipping, 10-11, 12; more than large scale farmers, 10-12; residence in Ushitsu, 11, 16; ships of, 28

Tokikuni-mura Chozaemon House ( layout), 13

Tokikuni Research Group, 8n.7 Tokikuni T6zaemon, 12, ll5 Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture, x:xxix Tokoname pottery, 60 Tokugawa family, 8n.7, 114n.22 Tokugawa Ieyasu, 102, 114n.22 Tokugawa shogunate, xvii, 96, 272;

alternate attendance system, 115n.23; minting of coins, 15ln.8; outcaste status, 214; view of artisans and performers, 99

tokuji11 (virtuous men), 81 tokusl!i ikki (debt cancellation uprisings),

161

Index 313

tokuseirei (debt cancellation edicts), 161, 16ln.l7

tokushitsu (disabled, severely), 173 Tokus6 H6jo family, 84, 116-19; political

demise, 86 Tokyo University, lOln.13 tollbooth like checkpoints, 89 tolls: checkpoints, 82; mountain tolls

(yamagoshi), 82, 82n.4; possible origins, 95; taxes on lake routes, 94

tomb development, 42-43, 43 tomb guards (ryoko), 158-59, 174 Tomb period, 41-48; currency, 46-47;

finance (suiko), 47-48; horse culture, 42-43; iron technologies origin, 43- 44; migration, 41-42; trade routes, 46-47

Tomoe-gozen,228 Tomono, Shinano Province, 211, 212 Tomonosuke (sailor), 28 tonai (discriminated group), 216 T6no Haruyuki, 138-39 topknot (motodori), 193 Tori ha ma remains, hairpin, 34 Tosa Harbor, Tsugaru Peninsula, 59, 79, 80,

Tosaminato, Aomori Prefecture, 125 Toshi-to (Band of the Children of China),

25ln.9 T6sb6daiji, Nara Province, l66n.19 town of one thousand buildings.

See sengench6 townsfolk (ch6nin), 4 Toyoda Takeshi, 281 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 168, 252; received

name, 250 tozama warlords, 11411.22 trade routes: indicated by turnip genes,

39-40; of Pacific coast, 55; of the Tomb period, 44, 45-46; by water, 38-39

trades, skilled: mainstream compared to marginal, xix-xxi; nonagricultural, xix,5,64, 16ln.18,279; 1849 population figures by trade, 4; shi- 110-ko-sho (samurai-peasants artisans-me,chants), 99; status transformed in the thirteenth century

ll I Index

trodes, skilled: (continued) 16l-65 (see also transformations, social); unconnected spaces, xxxi

tradesmen poetry contests, 161-62, 16ln.18 transaction fees and bills of exchange, 73 transformations, social, xxiv-xxv, xxxv-

xx.xvii, xi, 164, 214; at end of thirteenth century, 197, 213; reflected in religion, 101

transport, land: roads of the Ritsuryo state, 49-50,52-53

transport, water routes: lnsei period imperial bases, 61-62; ofKamakura families, 113-16; and markets on islands and sandbars, 72; ocean transport, 55, 59, 60, 113-16, 147; of the Saionji family estates, 110, lll, 112; serving Niimi estate, 77-78; of the Taira uji, 62-63; taxes on, 94; for Yugeshima salt, 68

transportation network: cities springing up around, 61. See also transport, land; transport, water routes

transportation "tax," 89; on lake routes, 94. See also tolls

transporters, horse and cart, 63, 110, 194 trial records: script of, 127 tribute (rnitsugi), 49, 54, 255 True Pure Land Buddhist sect, 78, 87;

commercial activities on sacred grounds, 167-68; Hemen, 182, 182n.17 (see also Pictorial Biography o

the Holy Man ff{men, T he); lkk6 movement, 99-101; main base of supporters, 100; supportive of nonagrarian production, 99-102; Yamashina headquarters, l00n.9

Tsuda Sokichi, 237 Tsugaru Peninsula, 51, 59, 80 tsuji-turi (crossroads kidnapping), 224 Tsukamoto Manabu, 141 tsukuda (agricultural lands), 108 Tsurugaoka hoseikai utaawase (Tsurugaoka

Bird Release Poetry Contest) (scroll), 162

Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine, 162, 181, 214

Tsushima Island, 37, 50, 53

Tsushima Strait, 50 turnip genes, 39

uji: clans compared to familio-political groups, 237n.18, 245-46, 246n.l, 249; organization, 250

uji (clan), 48 ukai (cormorant fishermen), 279 ukareme (courtesans), l76n.13. See also

courtesans ukareme (wandering women), 233. See also

courtesans umi no ryoshu (masters of the sea), 82 unconnected spaces. See nonconnectedness uneme (court servants), 158 units of measure: cho, lOn.9; koku, lOn.11;

kokudaka, 24; shaku (0.02 liters), 71; tan, 16n.14

University of Chicago,xxxi Uno no Mikuriya, 112 ura chobo (hidden account books), 137 uranashi (heelless sandals), 188 urban, xviii urban land tax, 75 urban settlements, xviii-:xl, 74-75, 14ln.2;

town and village system, :xl. See also villages

Ury, Marian, 189 ushikai-warawa (cow-herding children).

See cow-herding children Ushitsu, Noto Peninsula, 22 utagaki (orgiastic celebrations), 153, 221-23 utaki (sacred ground), 95 Uwa District, Iyo Province, 112

vassals ( gokenin), 113, 227; annual tribute from, 149; kuji tax, 149; women, 227-28

vassals (miuchibito), private, 84 Vegetables (Yasai) (Aoba Takashi), 39 village-contract system (mura-uke sei), 93 villager-contracted fields (hyakus/,6-myo),

68 villagers. See hyakus/r6 (villagers) villages, 21-23, 49; coastal, 22, 115;

development of regional c1t1cs, 60 hi;

sanson (dispersed settlements), xxxvii; sanso11 (mountain village), 21-22; script of written records kept by, 137- 43; senge11ch6 (town of one thousand buildings), 136; shuson (concentrated village), x:xxvii; soson (encompassing village), x:xxviii; urban settlements, xviii, 74-75; vs. towns, 14ln.2; without samurai, xviii

Village Statistics for Fugeshi and Suzu Counties 1735, 17

virtuous men (tokujin), 81 virtuous people (yutokujin), 151 vocation (shokuno), 233. See also trades,

skilled vows (kishomon) to deity, 127 vows (komon) to deity, 127 vows to abstain from sex in certain areas of

Kasuga Shrine, 221

wa (particle of speech), 127 Wa, kingdom of, xxiii; name changed to

Nihon (Japan), 48; Queen of Wa, 41. See also Japan

wado kaichin (coins, copper and silver). See coins, copper and silver

wage fidds, 7ln.3 Wajima, Noto Peninsula, 16-17, 22 wajin, the, 37, 53 waka poetry, 130 Wakasa Province, 14n. I 2, 280 Wakatsuru-nyo, 230 Wake uji, 258 wako pirates, 101 walking shamans (miko), 233 wanderers (yushu fushoku no tomogara),

82 wandering women (ukareme), 233 warlords (daimyo), 24n.17; types, 114n.22 Warring States period, 93, 101, 113;

documents from, 125; new charncter to distinguish between post towns and nonhuman towns, 180-81; village tax accounting, l36n.18, 137

warriors, nonvassal, 134n.16 W11s11rerareta Nihonjin (Forgotten

Japanc�e: Encounters with Rural Life

Index 315

and Folklore, The) (Miyamoto Tsuneichi), xxxv, 220n.4, 223, 244

Watanabe Makoto, 32, 33 water drinkers (mizunomi), 14-17 waterways, remains and artifacts along,

38-39 water well ceremonies, 188 Waves. See Nami Way (do), 163 Way of Household Instruction, A.

See Teikin 6rai wealth, symbols of, 149-52 Weber, Max, 168 Wei zhi wei ren chuan (Chinese text), 37,

38 wells, water, 188 whaling practices, 95 What Was the Edo Period? See Edo jidai to

wa nanika: Nihon shij6 no kinsei to kindai

widows, 227 women, 130-37, 222n.8, 223,233; abortion

practices, 225-26; in bandit organizations, 83; child bearing, 233, 233n.15; divorce, xx, 218-20, 219n.3, 230-31; equality with men, 237-38; followers of lppen, 87; land ownership, 230-31, 243; literacy, 123-24, 130-37, 244; merchants, 235-36; monks, 239- 41, 240n.21, 243; and pollution, 239- 42; professional groups, 233-36; property managers, 226-33; rape, 224-25; selling of, 243; sexual practices, 213, 220-26; social activities, 229-33; social status, 164, 213, 242-43; tax responsibility, 53; travel, 244, 285; as vassaJs, 227-28

women commanders (onna jitii), 228 women's Literature, 239 women's professional groups: emergence,

233-36 Women's Quarters of the Palace, 234 wooden boxes (magemono), xxxviii, 157 wooden tablets (mokkan): of Aldta Castle,

139; of the Heijo Palace, 26-27, 26n.18, 136-37, 136n.20, 138-39; of the Kusado Sengencbo excavation, 136, 136n.19; related to nie offerings,

Index

�vooden tablets (mokkan): (continued) 253-54; of the Shin'an shipwreck, 90, 91,147

wood workers, 274 worldly corner, 242 worthy men, 207, 209, 210 writing practice, 107 written expression, ll8

yamaboko (mow1tain floats), l84 yamabushi (mountain ascetics), 76 yamadachi (mountain yeoman), 95 yamagoshi (mountain toUs), 82, 82n.4 Yamaguchi Keiji, 105 Yamai no sashi. See Scroll of Diseases, The Yamanashi Prefecture, 20-21, 215 yama no ryashu (lords of the mountains),

82 Yama no tami, kawa no tami (People of the

Mountains, People of the Rivers) (Heibonsha), l00n.8

Yamashina: headquarters of the True Pure Land sect, lO0n.9

Yamatai, 41, 264n.27 Yamato, 264n.27 Yamato Plain, 251 Yamato clans, 42 Yanagi no gosho Palace, Iwate Prefecture,

59-60 Yanagita (Noto PeninSllla), I00-101 Yanagita Kunio, xxxvii, xJ Yase children (yase-doji), 193 Yayoi culture, 31, 36-39; crops, 38;

differences between eastern and western archipelago, 39-40; products, 38; rice cultivation, 37; sources, 36-37; technologies, 36-37; wajin, 37-38

yearly tribute (nengu), 24, 256, 273; commodities of Niimi estate, 72;

commodities submitted, 66; failure to pay, 159; presumed exchange of goods, 66; 1333 report of for Niimi estate, 73-76

yellow robes, 158 ya (corvee labor taxes), 145, 255 yobai (night-crawling), 220-21, 220n.4 Yokoi Kiyoshi, 279 yoritsuki (opening session), 118 yoriudo (people who served the Buddhas),

156 Yoro Codes, 24711.3, 261 Yoshida Kenko, 150 Yoshida Takashi, 249 Yoshikane. See Kanenaga Yoshimasa, 233 Yoshimitsu, 271 Yoshimochi, 270 Yoshimoto Takaak.i, 28211.16 Yoshino area, 69 Yoshinogari, 37 Yoshitsugo, 270 yotsuashi (four-leggers), 214 yuen (world of relations, the), xx Yugeshima estate (estate of salt), 66-69 Yugeshima Island, 67, 68 yujo (courtesans), l60. See also courtesans yiltokujin (virtuous people), 151 yuzurij6 (deeds of transfer), 132

zaibatsu (conglomerates), 21 zakke (various houses), l4 Zen'ami (garden designer), 188 Zen Buddhist sect, 89, 167-68, 268 Zennichi-nyo, 229-30 Zoku Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu

(Rethinking Japanese History Again) (Amino Yoshihlko), xivn.1

zaya (miscelaneous tax), 49, 255

ALAN S. CHRISTY, the translator and author of the Translator's Introduction,

is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa

Cruz. He was a member of Amino Yoshihiko's Tokikuni Family Research

Project at the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture at Kanagawa

University from 1991 to 1995. He has written on Japanese ethnography,

Okinawa, and war memories and has translated Japanese scholarship on

the same.

HIT0MJ ToN0MVRA, author of the Preface and Afterword, is Professor of

History and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. Her areas of

study include war and violence, commerce and merchants, a _nd gender and

sexuality. Her next book will examine the gendered meanings associated

with warfare and the war-prone society of medieval Japan. Her publications

include Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan: So Villages of

Tokuchin-ho, and Women and Class in Japanese History, as well as numer

ous articles.

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