The Political Stabilisation of Japan post 1600

DreamWeaver said:

Another question for those far more knowledgeable than I on early modern Japan.


Tokugawa Ieyasu wins at Sekigahara and Osaka and ultimately establishes his dominance over Japan. Yet the country had been divided and riven with civil war for over a century. While builing upon the work of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi before him, how exactly did he curb the independent nature and rebelious spirit of those that had opposed him, or had themselves been considerably affluent and indepenent prior to him?

Success at Sekigahara and Osaka, while determining his dominance, wouldnt have just created immediate submission to his rule, the various lords would not have just become reaceful overnight. How did he go about actually turning those military successes into a stable state of governance? Though his power may have been obvious, how long did it take for him to confirm it, how ong did fighting and such go on for afterwards? How did the transistion to peace take place?

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You need to look at the situation leading up to Sekigahara. By that point, the country had already been unified for nearly a decade (counting from the fall of the last major independent clan who had not submitted to Ieyasu, the Hojo in 1591). So he was working within an already established structure - the people he was subduring were no longer the independent rulers they had been twenty or thirty years before.

He had the sheer force of numbers on his side. As all of the formerly independent daimyo had already submitted to him, any uprising would need to involve multiple clans across a wide area to have any chance of success. A single clan simply didn't have the resources to seriously challenge him. The Tokugawa and their direct relatives held lands worth, IIRC, over 3 million koku. Then you have to factor in the lands and resources held by Tokugawa retainers (the Ii family, for example, one of the closest Tokugawa retainers, had a domain worth 180,000 koku).

Ieyasu simply demoted anyone whose loyalty was suspect. The Mori family, who held over a million koku (again, IIRC), were reduced to around 360,000. The Uesugi suffered a similar fate.

The victory at Osaka removed the last person who might have been able to form any kind of widespread alliance against Tokugawa rule, Toyotomi Hideyori. Once he was gone, there was simply no one with enough stature to incite a widespread rebellion.

There were still some limited rebellions after Osaka, but they were more like local disturbances and easily contained. The last major uprising the Shogunate had to contend with was the Shimabara rebellion, a collection of Christians, ronin and peasants who rose up in popular discontent.

Ieyasu himself died in 1616, a year or so after Osaka.

One other thing that the shogunate did was it mandated that every daimyo should spend alternate years stationed in Edo (Tokyo), as well as leave some family members in the city while they were away. This had several effects - first of all, the expense of travel and maintaining a household in Edo liquidated some of the income that the daimyo received. It also put them and their families in easy reach of the government, should they suspect rebellion.

Another thing to mention is that, in the aftermath of Sekigahara, the daimyo were classified into fudai, shinpan and tozama daimyo, respectively, people who had been Tokugawa retainers before Sekigahara, key Tokugawa relatives, and finally, everyone else. Most of the important governmental posts were awarded to fudai clans, and these clans were strategically placed to keep an eye on the tozama.

DreamWeaver said:

So how did it go for Hideyoshi in the later 16th Century then?

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Do you mean while he was still pacifying the country, or afterwards?

If the latter, one thing he did was pack them off to Korea to expend money, men and aggression, although he kept the ones with more suspect loyalty (i.e. Ieyasu) back in Japan where he could keep a close eye on them.

The person who ruined it all was, yet again, Takeda Katsuyori.

During the Otate no Ran, after Uesugi Kenshin's death, Katsuyori decided to back Uesugi Kagekatsu instead of Uesugi Kagetora, who was a son of Hojo Ujiyasu. Katsuyori was married to a Hojo, and was therefore expected to support Kagetora over Kagekatsu. But Kagekatsu was married to one of Katsuyori's sisters (confused yet?), and Katsuyori may have received an offer of lands from him.

Had Katsuyori backed Kagetora, there would potentially have been an Uesugi - Hojo - Takeda alliance which would have been strong enough to defeat the Oda-Tokugawa axis.

DreamWeaver said:

Im going to be difficult and say both?

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Sorry, I didn't answer this.

After Nobunaga's death, the strategic situation was roughly as follows - the former Oda domain which Hideyoshi now controlled had reached "critical mass". They were far larger than any other individual domain, and only a concerted effort by an alliance of the strongest clans could mount a serious challenge.

Only a few clans were in a position to do this - the Mori and the Shimazu in the west, and the Takeda, Uesugi and Hojo in the east. But the Shimazu were in Kyushu, too far away to contribute, and the Mori didn't have a leader who was capable enough (old Motonari had died in 1571 and his successor was the passive and weak-willed Terumoto). In the east, the Takeda, Uesugi and Hojo were busy fighting each other to take advantage of the post-Oda succession issues, and not to mention that Hideyoshi had Tokugawa Ieyasu to mind his eastern border.

The lack of men of prestige should not be underestimated. As I mentioned, Mori Motonari was dead, but so were Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin and Hojo Ujiyasu. Their successors, respectively Katsuyori, Kagekatsu and Ujimasa weren't anywhere near the men that their fathers were. Katsuyori was unpopular amongst his retainers and had managed to lose at Nagashino and Kagekatsu was busy fighting his own little civil war, which dragged both the Takeda and the Hojo in.

The role of the court shouldn't be overlooked either. Although the court had no real power, it acted as an instrument of legitimacy. Anyone who controlled the court could claim to be the "legitimate" ruler of the country. Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin had received court titles, as had Nobunaga (who had taken the title of Daijo Daijin rather than Shogun). Hideyoshi controlled Kyoto and the lands around it, giving him a political advantage.

Ultimately, Hideyoshi would use the court to establish his own legacy - he took on the title of kampaku (Regent) and later taiko (retired regent), titles that were normally held by the aristocratic Fujiwara family - rather ironically, since Hideyoshi was unable to claim the Shogun title due to his peasant background.

When clans would not submit to him, Hideyoshi simply crushed them through sheer numbers. That fate befell the Shimazu and the Hojo - Hideyoshi invaded Kyushu and the Kanto plain with hundreds of thousands of men, and the clans fell while putting up only a token resistance (although the Shimazu won while heavily outnumbered, it couldn't last - the final battle of the campaign saw 5000 Shimazu against 170,000 invading troops).

DreamWeaver said:

Did this sort of forced impoverishment, in some people's circumstances not cause great resentment?

Also how did this affect the relationship between merchants, who occupies a very low rung on the social scale, with those who in occupied the very top?

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Yes it did, but the domains didn't really have a choice. A failure to comply could have meant relocation to a smaller fief or worse. And as Edo had become the centre of culture of the period, it wasn't such a hardship in some respects. Edo was the place to be if you were anybody.

This wasn't the first time a situation like this had occurred though. During the Heian period, the noble (and theoretical) landowners spent more and more time in Kyoto, leaving the administration of their rural and remote holdings to stewards and their families. This led to the rise of hereditary steward clans, the shugo and jito, who would become the basis for the later daimyo of the Sengoku period. The Tokugawa prevented this by alternating the years in which daimyo spent in Edo, but also by stationing loyal clans in strategic locations where they would be in a position to intervene in any brewing trouble.

Merchants occupied an anomalous position, but not necessarily one unique to Japanese society. On the one hand, they were seen as parasites on society, but on the other, they had the cash. Samurai stipends were still paid in rice, and the fortunes of the domains could vary according to the harvest and the market price of rice. As the Edo period went on, the relative value of rice tended to fall, leaving the samurai poorer and poorer. A low level samurai might receive, say, 10 koku of rice as his stipend, but out of that, some was retained to eat, some to pay for his own retainers, and he had to finance his household from the remainder.

That, increasingly, led to merchants and even yakuza groups in the late Edo period gaining some hold over the samurai. A simple way for a merchant to advance his social class was to be adopted into a samurai family, in a mutually beneficial arrangement.