Japanese History Essay Collection 2

• Published: 12 May 2025 • • Last updated: 12 May 2025 • • Written: 12 December 2024 •

(This entry is part of an ongoing series of papers I've written for various assignments. It is not necessarily representative of my beliefs; only my effort.)

Contents

The Sankin-kotai During the Tokugawa Period

Japan Enters the World Stage

Art, Ideology, and Education in the Tokugawa Period

1: The Sankin-kotai During the Tokugawa Period

The sankin-kotai was a precedent started by the tozama (outside/unrelated) domain of Satsuma after the Battle of Sekigahara. Satsuma began a ritual pilgrimage to Edo as a show of loyalty to the Tokugawa and the shogun, which the Tokugaw aecided to impose upon all daimyo domains.

As the sankin-kotai was regularized and formalzied, its purpose as a mechanism of control was solidified, evolving into an annual or biannual trip to Edo by daimyo and half of their samurai, to maintain their secondary residencies in Edo, and visit their wives and children. However, the Tokugawa also knew that forcing the daimyo on the long journey would also serve the dual purposes of keeping them too poor to raise an army with which they could rebel, and forcing the daimyo to invest back into the bakufu by bringing money to Edo and to the economies of the domains through which they passed.

Indeed, this long, sustained travel created the beginings of a national economy in Japan. It brought money to more remote areas of the countryside, and also accelerated the transition from rice to coins to paper as a medium of taxation and monetary payment. When the daimyo embarked on sankin-kotai, they also enabled farming and other commoner families to open shops and small businesses, endowing an entrepreneurial spirit.

The consequecnes of sankin-kotai weren't relegated to the economic sphere. Intermingling between different regions of Japan, both on the road and within the walls of Edo contributed to the development of a national identity, where people increasingly began to identify as being "from Japan" as opposed to, say, just "from Satsuma."

The sankin-kotai also fuelled the shift of culture centers from Kyoto to Edo and Osaka, due to Edo being the place where much of the pilgrims' time and money was spent, and Osaka being an important merchant hub. It was in these cities that much art was amde and the national identity began to take form—with many of the heroes of the plays and novels being common people, a reflection of the increasing leverage of the commoner-dominated Osaka.

2: Japan Enters the World Stage

In the 1540s, Iberians (Spanish and Portuguese) were permitted to trade with Japan. The Portuguese, in fact, were the first Europeans to contact the island, and many words of Portuguese origin remain in modern Japanese vocabulary, such as "pan" for bread. However, the Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese frequently brought with them missionaries, which was not welcomed by the Japanese. They began to restrict trade, eventually leaving the Netherlands and Great Britain as the only European powers permitted to trade. While the British decided to turn their attention to the much larger and richer China instead, the Dutch continued on as Japan's trading partner.

By 1630, only four countries were allowed to trade with Japan—China, Korea, the Netherlands, and the Ryukyu Islands. The Chinese and Dutch, specifically, were designated to trade from Deshima Island. This policy reflected the beginnings of a new trade system in Japan, which would be dubbed the "closed country" system by the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry. Aside from the Tokugawa themselves, only two domains could conduct independent trade with foreigners: Satsuma, whose proximity to the Ryukyu Islands granted them permission by the Tokugawa to trade with them, and Tsushima, whose analogous position to Korea allowed a similar exception.

Since the Shimebara Rebellion, a rural uprising in western Japan due to starvation and poverty among peasants, some of them Christians, the Tokugawa decided to clamp down harder on Christianity and other influences which they deemed as foreign. However, by the early to mid 1700s under Tokugawa Yoshimune, the flow of western thought into Japan was cautiously accepted again, so long as it didn't contain proselytization of Christianity. The Dutch, who, unlike the Iberians, promised not to send missionaries, became a conduit to the western world, and rangaku, or Dutch learning (from "Oranda," Holland), which piqued the interest of Japanese interested in science, technology, and new methods of governance, flourished.

However, in spite of this seeming acceptance of outside ideas, not all in Japan were content with the changes. In the 19th century, Aizawa Seishisai wrote the Shinron, or "New Theses," where he postulated a stricter stance on the west, essentially urging Japan to keep the westerners out. This philosophy, though appealing to many, ultimately began to be seen as reckless and misguided, come the defeat of the larger and stronger China at the hands of the British in the 1840s, during the Opium War. Japan, albeit reluctantly, was once aain thrown into discourse about how to approach the west.

In 1853 (and again in 1854), American Commodore Matthew Perry landed in Japan, and it would be the consequences of the unequal treaties that he compelled Japan to sign that would lead to the downfall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. He forced the Tokugawa to open Japan's ports, allowing in cheaply-made goods from already-industrialized countries like the United States and Great Britain. Mass-dissatisfaction with the actions of the Tokugawa, particularly as a consequence of this newfound economic liberalization at the expense of local producers and vendors, unseated the shogunate by 1868.

3: Art, Ideology, and Education in the Tokugawa Period

In the first century of Tokugawa rule, Edo grew rapidly in size and population. Between 1770 and 1860, however, growth leveled out. But the stagnation in growth shouldn't be mistaken for stagnation in culture—since 1600, the center of cultural and ideological dissemination had been gradually moving from Kyoto to Edo and the merchant town of Osaka. The new growth of the artisan and merchant class that came to dominate Osaka meant that the culture that was born within the city—expressed in literature, art, and plays—centered around common people, and much less often elites, although some samurai characters were also present.

Taken from Buddhist thought, one emerging concept in art during this time was Ukiyo, or "the floating world," a perception of this world as transient and in flux. Artisans began to create Ukyio-e ("pictures of the floating world"), often though wood block prints made by stamping paper with wooden blocks, carved with scenes of nature and various mundane topics. The low cost of making these prints meant that they were accessible to all social classes, and their growing popularity had the unintended effect of granting claim to Japanese culture to everyone, not just elites and those who could afford it. This would be a crucial step in the process of modernization.

Another field in which a national identity was forming was in the field of literature. Three main types can be identified—prose (a famous example being Ihara Saikaku's "What the Seasons Brought to the Almanac Maker"), poetry (popularized by Matsuo Basho, who especially loved haiku and traveled throughout Japan to share his poems, in spite of his fear of travel), and playwriting (there were two kinds of plays—kabuki, with human actors, and bunraku, with puppets controlled by one or more human actors. Chikamatsu Monazemon specialzied in both kinds of playwriting). The reason that literature can be considered part of the formation of a national identity is because all three forms had audiences from all across Japan, and from all social strata. Peple were becoming increasingly literate and able to engage with sophisticated media—additionally, increased monetary flow and trade networks allowed markets for wood block prints and audiences for oration and potry to arise even in more poor or remote areas.

Literacy for many began in the home or village temple. Terakoya, or "temple schools" were run by both rural and urban priests, who saw it as their duty to educate the town's children. Educated women sometimes opened schools, also called terakoyas (albeit this is somehwat of a misnomer) in their homes. Usually, the temple schools covered until grade 3, and beyond that age, parents would need to find a new school.

One option available to families seeking more education were shijuku. These were private schools, available for enrollment by anyone who could afford to pay the tuition. The shijuku were not just for commoners—samurai attended as well, though many samurai families chose to send their children to daimyo-run and funded schools which were specialized in helping them become government officials.

Increased literacy and representation saw the merchant class grow richer. Into the public conscience came the idea that the samurai weren't necessarily destined to be the top of the pecking order—instead, every social class had its designated role and purpose within society. Thinkers like Ogyu Sorai pushed back against this belief, favoring a more traditional hierarchy, but he was met with resistance of his own. Confucian thinker Hayashi Razan translated the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven—that an emperor has the right to rule, so long as he does so justly, and Heaven can send signs that a ruler unjust, such as natural disaster and popular uprising—to Japan, which was liked by the Tokugawa for validating their rule, but also threw in the caveat that resistance from the people, if it arose, was justified.

As mentioned earlier, China wasn't the only foreign country whose own politics and ideas would go on to influence Japan's. Dutch learning, somewhat synonymous with western thought and science, was also taking foothold at this time. And another school, defiant of all of them, was emerging, too—kokugaku, or nationnal learning, was a broad belief that the Japanese must not forget Japan's indigenous ideas and tradition. Some followers of kokugaku were more moderate, and saw Japanese culture as compatible and open to syncretism with others, while others, like the more extreme and isolationist Aizawa Seishisai, believed in keeping foreign influences strictly out of Japan. Interestingly, the encroachmet of western powers in East Asia, such as the British victory in the Opium War against China, stoked the flames of both nationalism and kokugaku, and a desire to open up to the west and normalzie trade and relations.

Ultimately, both the carrots of improved relations and the sticks of Perry's unequal treaties compelled Japan to open up and eventually industrialize. But thanks to the improved education, literacy, and formation of the Japanese natinoal identity, Japan was not lost in the contemporary era—rather, it forged its own path, recognizably modern, and unqiuely Japanese.