The ,
spanning from 1336 to 1392,
was a period that occurred during the formative years of the
Muromachi bakufu of Japan
's
history.
During this period, there existed a
Northern Imperial Court, established by
Ashikaga Takauji in
Kyoto, and a
Southern
Imperial Court, established by
Emperor Go-Daigo in
Yoshino.
Ideologically, the two courts fought for fifty years, with the
South giving up to the North in 1392. However, in reality the
Northern line was under the power of the Ashikaga shoguns and had
little real independence.
Since the 19th century the Emperors of the Southern Imperial Court
have been considered the legitimate
Emperors of Japan. Other contributing
factors were the Southern Court's control of the
Japanese imperial regalia, and
Kitabatake Chikafusa's work
Jinnō Shōtōki, which
legitimized the South's imperial court despite their defeat.
The consequences of events in this period continue to be
influential in modern Japan's conventional view of the
Tennō
Seika (Emperor system).
The destruction of the
Kamakura
shogunate of 1333 and the failure of the
Kemmu Restoration in 1336 opened up a
legitimacy crisis for the new shogunate. Furthermore, institutional
changes in the estate system (the
shōen) that formed the bedrock of the income
of nobles and warriors alike) decisively altered the status of the
various social groups. What emerged out of the exigencies of the
Nanboku-chō (Southern and Northern Court) War was the Muromachi
regime, which broadened the economic base of the warriors while
undercutting the noble proprietors, a trend that had started
already with the Kamakura
bakufu.
The fall of the Kamakura bakufu
The main conflicts that contributed to the outbreak of the civil
war were, in ascending order of importance, the growing conflict
between the
Hōjō family and other
warrior groups in the wake of the
Mongol invasions of Japan of 1274
and 1281 and the failure of the Kemmu Restoration, which triggered
the struggle between the supporters of the imperial loyalists and
supporters of the Ashikaga clan.
Disaffection towards the Hōjō-led Kamakura regime appeared among
the warriors towards the end of the thirteenth century. This
resentment was caused by the growing influence of the Hōjō over
other warrior families within the regime. The Mongol invasions were
the main cause behind this centralization of power that took place
during the regency of
Hōjō
Tokimune (AD 1268-1284). During the crisis, three things
occurred: Hōjō family appointments to the council of state
increased; the Hōjō private family council became the most
important decision making body; and direct vassals of the Hōjō were
increasingly promoted to
shugo posts. They
essentially narrowed down their constituents by including only Hōjō
family members and direct vassals, at the expense of a broader base
of support (Varley 1971:46-50; Hori 1974:198). When a coalition
against the Hōjō emerged in 1331, it took only two years to topple
the regime.
Wealth in agrarian societies is tied to land, and medieval Japan
was no different. In fact, land was the main reason for much of the
discontent among the warrior class. Since the rise of the warriors
under the
Minamoto, it was expected
that victory in battle would be rewarded by land grants given to
those who served on the victorious side. However, unlike any war
that had been fought until then, the Mongol invasions presented a
problem since this war, which was seen by most Japanese as a
patriotic duty, did not take place against another warrior family,
but against a foreign enemy. After the foreign enemy’s defeat there
were no lands to hand out to the victors. This was especially a
problem for those warriors who had fought valiantly and petitioned
the Hōjō regents for land. Even in the beginning of the fourteenth
century this discontent put a tremendous pressure on any regime
that emerged. They had to immediately satisfy this group in order
to succeed.
When Kamakura's rule was destroyed in 1333, Kyoto's court society
emerged again to confront the warriors. In the transition from the
Heian to the
Kamakura period, the warriors emerged
successfully from the domination of court patrimonialism as an
independent political force. With the demise of Kamakura, the
imperial court attempted once again to restore its
de
facto power as an alternative to warrior rule. The Kemmu
Restoration was the last desperate attempt on the part of the court
to restore their leadership, not just to preserve their
institutions. Not until the
Meiji
Restoration of the 19th century did this occur again.
The Kemmu Restoration: 1333-1336
In the Spring of 1333, the
Emperor
Go-Daigo and his supporters believed that the moment had
arrived to restore the glory of the imperial court. The Emperor
Daigo (AD 901-923), who lived at a time when the court had no
rivals and effective rule was exercised directly from the throne,
became Go-Daigo's adopted name and model . Of cardinal importance
was the ideology that emerged with the Kemmu Restoration: it was a
conscious movement to restore the imperial power vis-a-vis the
warriors. Two of the movement's greatest spokesmen were
Prince Morinaga and
Kitabatake Chikafusa. Prince Morinaga
was the son of emperor Go-Daigo and arch rival to
Ashikaga Takauji: he advocated the
militarization of the nobles as a necessary step towards effective
rule . Kitabatake Chikafusa epitomized what Prince Morinaga was
looking for: a Kyoto noble who became the greatest of the
imperialist generals, combining the ways of the warrior to his
noble upbringing. During the long siege in Hitachi (AD 1338-1343),
Chikafusa wrote the
Jinnō
Shōtōki, one of the most influential works on the legitimacy of
the Japanese imperial system ever written. This became one of the
ideological bases of the Meiji Restoration of the 19th century
.
However, the Kemmu Restoration was a failure. It failed for a
number of reasons, chief among these Emperor Go-Daigo's unrealistic
desire to return to what he perceived to have been a golden age.
Although there is no evidence he wanted to go back to Heian period
policies like Chikafusa, there is clear evidence he believed it
possible to restore not only imperial power, but also its culture.
He even wrote a treatise called
Kenmu Nenchū Gyōji for the
purpose of reviving court ceremonies that had fallen out of use. In
1336 Ashikaga Takauji rebelled against the imperial court and
proclaimed the beginning of a new warrior regime.
After his
proclamation, he was forced to retreat to Kyūshū
after the
imperialist forces of Kitabatake
Akiie attacked and defeated him near Kyoto. This
betrayal of the Kemmu Restoration by Takauji blackened his name in
later periods of Japanese history, and officially started the
Nanboku-chō War. Previous historical views tried to look at the
failure of the Restoration at the level of ineffectiveness in the
area of rewarding lands to the many petitions that flooded in from
samurai; however, it is now clear that, at the most important
level, the judicial organs that determined land dispute cases, the
Restoration was effective . This forces us to conclude that
Takauji's rebellion and desire to create a new warrior regime was a
prime determinant in the Restoration's failure. His rebellion
encouraged a large body of dissatisfied warriors (there were always
those whose petitions were not granted) who desired to see the
creation of another warrior regime modeled after Kamakura.
The Nanboku-chō War was an ideological struggle between loyalists
who wanted the Emperor back in power, and those who believed in
creating another warrior regime modeled after Kamakura. It was as
if the two previous periods in Japanese history, the Heian and the
Kamakura, were clashing on the ideological level. Noble warriors
like Kitabatake Chikafusa were pragmatic about the need for
warriors to participate in the Restoration on the instrumental
level, but on the ideological level a severe divergence between
Chikafusa and Takauji polarized the leaders for many years to come.
Hammered together during war time, the emergence of the Muromachi
regime followed on the heels of the Restoration's failure.
Vassalage ties and the rise of the Muromachi
bakufu
Serious fighting between the two sides raged on for nearly thirty
years before supporters of the new warrior regime gained the upper
hand. Ashikaga Takauji relied on three main policies to accomplish
the task of assembling power:
- The half tax (hanzei) policy of dividing
estate lands
- Vassalage ties to samurai housemen (gokenin);
- The use of shugo lords as bakufu governors
and vassals in the provinces (covered below in a separate
section).
Both the vassalage ties with the samurai and control over
shugo lords were established after the regime had
solidified in the 1350s. These two hierarchies were the most
important connections in determining the shogun's power. The
bureaucratic organs are the most difficult to assess, because the
early bureaucracy was altered after the
Kannō disturbance (see the section
below), and much of these eventually concerned just Kyoto and
Yamashiro province.
The estate (shōen) from Kamakura to Muromachi
The half tax policy was straight forward: it was a drastic policy
of recognizing the legality of samurai incursions on estate lands,
but at the same time guaranteed the survival of the estate
system.
To examine how the estate system changed we must first look at the
Kamakura period. The vassalage ties between the samurai stewards
(
jito) and the Kamakura regime (AD 1185-1333)
were intermediary, because they placed the samurai steward
(
Jitō) in a position where he was
answerable at the same time to both
Kamakura and Kyoto. By being chosen as a
samurai he was placed in a direct vassalage relationship to the
shogun as a member of his house in a fictive kinship tie. As a
steward, the samurai became a shogunal houseman (
gokenin)
and trusted vassal, and given the management of an estate that
legally belonged to a noble in Kyoto (Varley 1967:22-5). This is
where the intermediary nature of Kamakura vassalage ties lies. As a
vassal of the warrior regime in Kamakura he was answerable to the
shogun in the form of military service and dues, but as a manager
of an estate owned by a noble, he had to pay rent to the latter. We
will first examine the nature of the samurai steward as Kamakura
vassals, and then examine the vassalage ties that emerged under
Ashikaga Takauji.
The stability of the Kamakura system of rule rested upon the
regime's guarantee of stewardship rights (
jito shiki) to
the dominant warriors, and of rent and land ownership rights to the
noble proprietor. Through the vassalage ties to samurai stewards,
the new warrior regime was grafted onto the older estate system,
and in the process bridged the conflicting tendencies that were
latent between the upstart warriors and the nobles.
The samurai stewards who had direct vassalage ties to the shogun or
the Hōjō regents were also known as housemen (gokenin). The
tradition of the Kamakura houseman was a prestigious one, and set
the precedent for what followed in the Muromachi period. Yoritomo
and the Hōjō
Regents were only concerned
about controlling their own housemen, consciously limiting
themselves to hearing the land dispute cases of their own vassals
and rewarding stewardship rights to their followers, letting other
disputes from other groups be taken care of by the civil
administration . This precedent was followed by the Ashikaga
shoguns as they endeavored to protect the interests of their house
vassals against the incursions of the
shugo lords
throughout the Muromachi period.
Not only were
shugo given more power as lords of the
provinces, but the half tax policy (
hanzei) that Takauji
used to divide estate lands multiplied the number of fiefs owned
outright by samurai warriors. However, Takauji could have gone
further if he had followed the advice of his trusted generals, the
Kō brothers, who wanted to do away
with estates altogether. What emerged was a redrawing of the estate
system where warrior interests predominated, but noble interests
were still preserved. In helping to preserve the estate system, the
half tax measure was a policy that still managed to connect the
rights of the noble with those of the warrior.
The half tax policy began as an emergency tax designated for
military rations (hyororyosho) collected during war time: half the
income from particular temple, shrine and estate lands in the
provinces of
Mino,
Ōmi and
Owari would be taken to support armies of the
Muromachi regime. Increasingly, this was reinterpreted and changed
by Takauji as the permanent acquisition of half the land for the
purpose of enfoeffing vassals . This was a radical departure from
previous practice. As was indicated above, during the Kamakura
period, most of the lands, particularly in the central and western
provinces of Honshū, were owned by the nobles, but managed as
stewardships (
jito shiki) by Kamakura house vassals,
uniting both the interests of the nobles and the interests of the
warriors together in the estate institution. With the advent of the
half tax measure, Takauji was removing one half of the estate lands
from noble control and giving it in fief to his warriors.
Rise of local samurai (kokujin)
When the Nanboku-chō conflict broke out, vassalage ties became more
serious. The loyalty of vassals became a big issue. During the
relatively peaceful Kamakura period, military skills were not
placed at a premium, but after the outbreak of civil war this
criterion became the most important one (Mass 1989:113-4,117). A
new intermediary consideration emerged in the vassalage ties of the
post 1336 environment: the need for loyalty and a tighter tie
between lord and vassal. The tighter ties between the shogun and
his vassals emerged as a result of the need for military action
against rivals. Vassalage ties were either established by the
Ashikaga or there was a risk of losing a potential warrior to
another warrior hierarchy controlled, at best, by emerging
shugo lords loyal to the Ashikaga, and at worst by rival
imperialist generals. So, in a true sense, vassalage ties during
the civil war period were used to bridge potential conflict through
the recruitment of warriors.
At the same time that vassalage ties tightened between samurai and
shogun, the legitimacy of these ties were sorely tested. This
apparent paradox is logically explained by the existence of many
claims to samurai loyalty that were presented: towards rival
imperialist generals,
shugo lords, and even towards local
samurai alliances.
A few examples will illustrate the emergence of vassalage ties
between the shogun Ashikaga Takauji and his new housemen. The
Kobayakawa family became loyal
vassals when they were entrusted with defending Ashikaga interests
in the province of
Aki province after
Takauji had retreated to Kyūshū in 1336 (Arnesen 1985:108). Another
Aki samurai family, the
Mori clan, became
vassals of Takauji in 1336, and served under Kō Moroyasu until the
outbreak of the Kannō Incident. In the 1350s, the Mori sided with
the enemies of Takauji, Tadayoshi and his adopted son Tadafuyu, and
not until the 1360s were they back again as vassals of the shogun
(Arnesen 1985:114-5). Vassalage ties to the Kawashima clan and
other warrior families near Kyoto were established by Takauji in
the summer of 1336 in the latter's drive to retake the capital. The
Kawashima case is of considerable interest because of a document
pertaining to the terms of vassalage bearing Takauji's signature:
they would exchange military service for stewardship rights (jito
shiki) over half of Kawashima Estate, leaving the other half in
possession of the noble proprietor in the form of rent (Gay
1986:84,91-2).
The Kannō Incident and the resurgence of the Southern Court in
the 1350’s
The events
Takauji was nominally shogun but, having proved not to be up to the
task of ruling the country, for more than ten years Tadayoshi
governed in his stead. The relationship between the two brothers
was however destined to be destroyed by an extremely serious
episode called the Kannō Incident, an event which takes its name
from the
Kannō era (1350 - 1351) during
which it took place and which had very serious consequences for the
entire country. Trouble between the two started when Takauji made
Kō no Moronao his
shitsuji, or deputy. Tadayoshi didn't like Moronao
and, every other effort to get rid of him having failed, tried to
have him assassinated. His plot was discovered, so Tadayoshi in
1349 was forced by Moronao to leave the government, shave his head
and become a Buddhist monk under the name Keishin. In 1350 he
rebelled and joined his brother's enemies, the supporters of the
Southern court, whose Emperor
Go-Murakami appointed him general of all
his troops. In 1351 he defeated Takauji, occupied
Kyoto, and entered
Kamakura. During the same year he
captured and executed the
Kō
brothers at Mikage (
Settsu
province).. The following year his fortunes turned and he was
defeated by Takauji at Sattayama.. A reconciliation between the
brothers proved to be brief. Tadayoshi fled to Kamakura, but
Takauji pursued him there with an army. In March 1352, shortly
after an ostensible second reconciliation, Tadayoshi died suddenly,
according to the
Taiheiki by
poisoning.
Their background
The extremely divisive Kannō Incident that divided the Muromachi
regime put a temporary hold on integration. Since this incident
took place as the result of bureaucratic infighting, it will be
necessary to first take a look at the bureaucratic organs, then
examine where the conflict emerged.
The bureaucratic organs of the early regime were under the separate
jurisdiction of the Ashikaga brothers Takauji and Tadayoshi,
creating a bifurcated administration. Takauji was the leader of the
house vassals, and thus controlled the Board of Retainers (Samurai
Dokoro) and the Office of Rewards (Onshō-kata), while Tadayoshi was
the bureaucratic leader controlling the Board of Inquiry control
over the judicial functions of the regime (Sato 1977:48; Grossberg
1981:21-24).
The Board of Retainers was used as a disciplinary organ towards
house vassals: brigandage and other crimes were prosecuted
(Grossberg 1981:88,107). The Office of Rewards was used to hear the
claims of and to enfoeff deserving vassals. The Office of Rewards
was used to enroll new warriors who were potential adversaries of
the regime. The major judicial organ, the Board of Coadjutors,
decided on all land dispute cases and quarrels involving
inheritance (Grossberg 1981:88). All judicial functions are
par
excellence used to resolve conflicts and disputes legally,
within an institutional framework. Bureaucrats (
bugyōnin)
for the new regime were recruited from the ranks of those who
served the Hōjō regime before its fall (Grossberg 1981:90). They
were valuable because they knew how to read and write, a task
beyond the reach of most warriors.
In the 1350s, the Kannō Incident and its aftermath divided and
nearly destroyed the early regime (Sansom 1961:78-95). On the
surface the incident looks like a factional struggle pitting
Ashikaga Tadayoshi, Takauji's brother, against the Kō brothers,
Moronao and Moroyasu backed by Takauji (Wintersteen 1974:215;
Arnesen 1979:53-54). The conflict can be pinpointed to differences
in opinion regarding the estate system, and behind these differing
opinions, the different bureaucracies that were controlled by
Takauji and Tadayoshi. On the whole Takauji was the innovator while
Tadayoshi played the conservative, wanting to preserve the policies
of the past. In his capacity as a military leader of vassal bands,
Takauji did two things that conflicted with Tadayoshi: he appointed
vassals to
shugo posts as a reward for battlefield
heroics, and he divided the
shōen estates giving half of
it to his vassals in fief or as stewardships. Tadayoshi strenuously
contested these policies through the drafting of the Kemmu
Formulary that opposed the appointment of
shugo as a
reward for battlefield service. He also opposed any sort of
outright division of estate lands in his capacity as the leader of
the Board of Coadjutors (Grossberg 1981:23-4). There was a clear
division between the policies of Takauji and his brother
Tadayoshi.
Conflict broke out as a result of having two heads of state whose
policies contradicted each other. The events which followed the
incident testify to the extent to which the regime began to lose
its support. Deep divisions between members of the Ashikaga family
strengthened the opposition. Both of the pillars of the Muromachi
regime, Tadayoshi and Takauji, enacted token submissions to the
Southern Court to push their own agendas: Tadayoshi in his desire
to destroy the Kō brothers, and Takauji in his desire to defeat
Tadayoshi. Ironically, even though the Southern Court was the
enemy, it was used as the justification by regime members to attack
each other.
Effects
One of the main effects of the incident was to reinvigorate the war
effort of the Southern Court. To a large extent this renewed
offensive was made possible by turncoats from the Muromachi regime.
The imperialist offensive of 1352 directed against Takauji in
Kamakura was made possible by the vast numbers of former adherents
of Tadayoshi who became supporters of the imperialist leader
Nitta Yoshimune. The imperialist
offensive against Kyoto in 1353 was made possible through the
defection of the
shugo lord Yamana Tokiuji. Tadayoshi's
adopted son Ashikaga Tadafuyu was the outstanding example of
defection: he became the leader of the western armies of the
Southern Court during the imperialist offensives against Kyoto in
1353 and 1354.
Rise of the shugo lords
To understand the vicissitudes of this age we must now turn to the
example of the shogun-
shugo lord relationship. The
competing loyalties that characterized the Nanboku-chō era were
played out on many levels. At once we see the defection of local
samurai families like the Mori--not uncommon during the terribly
divisive Kannō Incident; and at a higher level,
shugo
lords continued to act in a dangerously independent manner until
the latter half of the fourteenth century.
The Ashikaga shogun Takauji appointed branch family members as
shugo lords in the different provinces of western and
central Japan. The
shugo acted as governors, and served
the function of mediating between the regime center and periphery.
As local governors, and lords in their own right, they represented
the authority of the regime in the provinces. They came to hold
much greater authority than the samurai houseman by virtue of
having a province-wide appointment, not limited to single estates.
Here we will look at their ties to the Ashikaga shogun during the
early Muromachi period.
The success of
shugo appointments lie not in the direction
of kinship ties, but with how well they were tied to the regime
through other factors. Warrior families since the Kamakura period
were characterized by the use of headship rights (soryo) where
leadership over branch families was accorded to the leader of the
main family. However, headship rights were extremely unstable
because branch families often asserted their own independence,
particularly as new generations emerged to dilute the ties of
kinship (Mass 1989:119).
The exigencies of the day called for the successful use of military
skills by those who were appointed to
shugo posts. As in
vassalage ties between the Ashikaga shoguns and the local samurai,
the tie between the shoguns and the
shugo lords was
intermediary in a similar sense: in the world of competing
loyalties, the Ashikaga shoguns by appointing warriors to
shugo posts endeavored to tie these men closer to
themselves. The successful generals, who were at the same time
branch family heads who had cast in their lot with Takauji's
rebellion, were the ones often rewarded with the post (Grossberg
1981:23). The cost of not tying them to the regime was to lose
their support, and to encourage their independence from the
regime.
Ashikaga branch families appointed to
shugo posts included
the
Hosokawa, Yamana, Imagawa,
Hatakeyama, Niki, Kira, Shiba,
Ishido, and the Isshiki families (Papinot 1972:27). In particular
provinces, the Ashikaga failed to displace the original
shugo families: the Sasaki, Togashi, Takeda and the
Ogasawara in the central provinces, and the Shimazu, Otomo and
Shoni in Kyūshū (Arnesen 1979:60). In the central and western
provinces roughly half were new appointees. During the Kannō
Incident, Ashikaga headship (soryo) ties to the new appointees did
not prevent these
shugo from outright rebellion towards
the regime at all. In fact, the coercive institutions of the regime
were woefully lacking in this time period vis-a-vis the
shugo lords.
What prevented the
shugo lords from simply doing whatever
they pleased was the tenuous link of appointment, particularly new
appointees who had emerged with Takauji-- they had a vested
interest in maintaining their links to the regime, insofar as they
had not yet built up their power in the provinces. Those provincial
families who had accumulated power throughout the Kamakura period,
like the Ouchi of Suo and Nagato provinces and the Shimazu of
Satsuma province, were lords in their own right, and were, thus,
less dependent on the regime and on their
shugo
titles.
After 1372,
shugo lords were given the responsibility to
collect taxes (tansen) for the Muromachi regime. These taxes hit
every category of landowner from the nobles to the samurai. As
middlemen, the
shugo profited by inflating the amount of
taxes required from each individual landowner (Grossberg 1981:75).
By this date, they had become unassailable as governors and hence
were given the added responsibility of overseeing a new regime
centered tax.
Shugo usurpation of civil functions and shugo
uke
What comes into focus is the gradual but steady usurpation of the
office of civil governor by the
shugo lord, and his use of
this position to effect feudal ties. The
shugo was able to
make his provincial power effective, not through his traditional
administrative capacity like the earlier governors, but through the
intermediary ties of vassalage with the samurai who had taken over
the estate lands during the Nanboku-chō War, and with the samurai
residing on public lands (kokugaryo). The
shugo lords were
both governors, having certain legitimate duties given to them by
the Muromachi regime, and feudal lords attempting to enfoeff
vassals.
The Nanboku-chō War was merciless to the nobles whose lands were
taken outright by previous samurai stewards and converted into
private holdings (chigyo) illegally. This revolutionary development
was the harbinger for the total liquidation of the estate system
that took place later. The
shugo lords also participated
in this wholescale land grab by accumulating former estates under
their control by enfoeffing samurai on them (Nagahara 1982:12).
Ironically, this lawless situation created by samurai encroachments
on land, at the height of the war, caused security problems for all
landed interests from petty samurai to the kokujin, and provided
further impetus among local samurai to seek intermediary ties to
the
shugo lords in the form of vassalage. By tying
themselves to the
shugo, they were able to ally themselves
to the one person in the province who could provide some form of
local security.
Vassalage ties between the
shugo lord and
kokujin
often took place on the estates in a three way intermediary tie
called the
shugo contract (
shugo-uke): a noble
proprietor would give the responsibility of managing his estate to
the
shugo in exchange for a guaranteed year end (nengu)
income delivered to the proprietor residing in the capital. The
shugo lord then enfoeffed vassal samurai (hikan) on those
estates as managers (Miyagawa 1977:92; Nagahara 1982:14).
Supposedly,
shugo contracts tied the interests of the
shugo lord, the samurai kokujin and the noble together,
but were not based on equality of interests. They were truly
instruments of
shugo encroachment on the estates. There is
no doubt as to the intermediary nature of the contract, because it
connected the interests of three groups of people, but it was most
favorable to the
shugo lord who used this instrument to
expand his ties of vassalage with the local samurai (kokujin), and
at the same time to expand his land base at the expense of the
nobles.
Shugo contracts (
shugo-uke) emerged in the 1340s
and gradually became widespread (Wintersteen 1974:211). By looking
at how this contract operated, it is apparent to what extent the
estate system (
shōen) was taken over by the warriors, and
had become a skeleton of its previous life.
Shugo lords
gave the management of the estate to samurai in exchange for
military service, but the noble stripped of all powers on the
estate, was reduced to waiting for his portion of year end (nengu)
income in Kyoto where he lived. The noble hired tax overseers
(nengu daikan) to guarantee his own portion of the income, but had
to pay an exorbitant amount to hire him. Noble income already
reduced by the kokujin and the
shugo lord, was further
reduced once the tax overseer took his half. This reduction in
noble income was the result of gradual non-payment on the part of
both
shugo and samurai; as a last measure, the nobles
hired moneylenders (doso) and bureaucrats (bugyōnin) as a way to
put pressure on the warriors. But even this remedy produced spotty
results since the hired hands had to negotiate with the warriors
(Nagahara 1982:16).
Shugo and public lands (kokugaryo)
A largely missing picture until recently, was the fate of public
lands (kokugaryo) during the Muromachi period, and the role of the
shugo lords in their encroachment on them. Public lands
(kokugaryo) during the Heian period were distinguished from private
lands of the estates (
shōen), because the latter were
immune from state taxation. Before the rise of private estates, the
only kind of lands were public lands maintained under the old civil
administration. With the rise of private estates called
shōen, during the Heian period, public lands by no means
disappeared: in details, the public lands differed very little from
private estates. Both were owned by absentee proprietors. They
differed only in terms of administration: private estates were
directly managed by noble officials, whereas, public lands were
managed by the civil governors (kokuga or kokushi) on behalf of the
former (Arnesen 1979:94).
By the Kamakura period, public lands were owned by different
landowners as private holdings (chigyo). These landowners included
noble houses, religious establishments and warriors. Whole areas of
the Kantō and the northeast were held by warriors not in the
capacity as estate managers, but as private holdings (Nagahara
1982:15): Kantō provinces were granted to the Kamakura regime as
private lands (chigyokoku). The Ashikaga regime inherited these
lands, and decided, fatefully, to place
shugo lords over
them (Arnesen 1979:94).
One of the main functions of the civil governor's office (kokushi)
was the oversight of criminal justice in the provinces, and the
maintenance of the private holdings within the public lands
(kokugaryo), but his function began to change with the advent of
the Kamakura regime (Hall 1966:202-03). With the appointment of
shugo constables by Kamakura, all criminal jurisdiction
within the provinces passed into his hands. But the civil governor
(kokushi) remained as the key officer in the civil administration
(ritsuryo), who made sure that rent from private holdings reached
the absentee nobles and religious establishments (jisha honjo) in
Kyoto and in Yamashiro province. His oversight did not include the
private holdings of warriors, most usually concentrated in the
Kantō and further north.
With the outbreak of the Nanboku-chō War, the civil administration
(ritsuryo) began to break down rapidly, and
shugo lords,
who had a minor role in provincial governance during the Kamakura
period, emerged to usurp the civil governor's functions. This did
not happen immediately in every province, but occurred without
interruption until the
shugo lords had become true
governors over public lands (kokugaryo). As they took over the
oversight of private holdings within public lands, they established
ties to many kinds of landowners: nobles, samurai of various kinds
(kokujin, jizamurai), and to religious establishments. They
enfoeffed their own followers on these lands, and reconfirmed the
lands of existing samurai in exchange for military service, and
established
shugo contracts with the nobles with
predictable results (Nagahara 1982:15). Along with vassalage ties
to local samurai (kokujin) on the estates, vassalage ties on public
lands became a key resource that augmented the power of the
shugo lords.
Furthermore, in 1346, ten years after the emergence of the
Muromachi regime, the shogun decentralized authority by giving the
shugo the right to judge cases of crop stealing on the
estates, and to make temporary assignments of land to deserving
vassals taken from the imperialist forces (Arnesen 1979:65). This
was significant, insofar as traditional areas of Kamakura
jurisdiction were "given up" by the Muromachi regime. Previously,
all cases of crop stealing or land assignments were strictly under
Kamakura administration. Also, about this time, the imperialist
forces were suffering their worst defeats, opening up enemy land
for confiscation and reassignment. By giving these new
jurisdictions to the
shugo lords, it further augmented
their position as governors over their assigned provinces.
Legitimation and limits to power
In this dual capacity, the
shugo lords had to compete with
other landed samurai in the provinces for land they administered as
governors, but did not personally own. Like the noble proprietors,
a single
shugo lord owned lands in widely dispersed areas
in several provinces. His power was not built upon personal
ownership of land like the territorial lords (daimyo) of the
sixteenth century, but upon the loyalties of the local samurai
through ties of vassalage (Miyagawa 1977:91-93). There was much
greater coercive potential exercised by the territorial lords of
the sixteenth century, because their ties of vassalage were based
on their ownership of the lands around them: as owners they could
dispense with the land as they saw fit, getting rid of recalcitrant
vassals without much ado. In the fourteenth century, the
shugo lords could not claim province wide ownership of
territory: first, the concept of personal provincial ownership was
as yet undeveloped; second, they never amassed large amounts of
personal property, relying rather on using the traditional
framework of estate lands and public lands to enfoeff their
vassals. This is the central enigma of the fourteenth century: the
fragmentation and dissolution of the estate system, and the
disappearance of the civil administration coincided with the
proliferation of private lands, but the external framework of the
estate system (
shōen) and the public lands system
(kokugaryo), though devoid of content, still remained (Kierstead
1985:311-14). Given the fragmentation, it was the intermediary ties
of
shugo vassalage, and the
shugo role as
provincial governor, that helped to integrate the disparate forces
to some degree.
It becomes a wonder how the estate system survived at all given the
depredations it suffered at the hands of the warriors. There were
two reasons why it survived in the attenuated form described above:
one, was the existence of the Muromachi regime that consistently
upheld the estate system in the face of warrior incursions
(Nagahara 1982:16). As described in section two, Ashikaga Takauji
tried to make sure that the limits set on the warriors by the half
tax measure was not exceeded, but he failed to circumvent
arrangements like the
shugo contract that really denuded
the noble of his estate and its income. The half tax measure itself
did not protect the noble from the outright takeover of the estate
at the hands of the samurai, even if the latter were required to
hand over a portion to fulfill the half tax law. In the end, it was
the Muromachi administration that made sure that the samurai paid
their portion of income to the nobles.
The other reason behind the survival of the estate system was
connected to the legitimacy of the noble class. The rise of the
warriors was not popular among the farmers living on the estates.
The more gentle hand of the nobles was also the hand the people
came to respect. To prevent outright disobedience and rebellion
among the populace was one reason why both
shugo lords and
kokujin came to respect the outward form of the estate structure.
To make their rulership legitimate in the eyes of the farmers, the
warriors worked within the framework of the estate structure, even
though this structure had been totally altered (Nagahara
1982:16-7). A case can be made that the estate system, outside of
Yamashiro province, had become eroded to such an extent that the
nobles had little if any influence left in the provinces.
Consolidation of Ashikaga power: 1360-1370
In 1358 after the death of Takauji, the shogunate passed into the
hands of his son Yoshiakira. Under his leadership, and that of the
kanrei Hosokawa Yoriyuki's, the
regime succeeded in integrating the
shugo lords in the
1360s and '70's:
shugo branch families of the Ashikaga
were employed within the government bureaucracy. I will cover the
following points: 1) the emergence of the
kanrei council
system, and the Board of Retainers as intermediary instruments that
tied
shugo lords more firmly to the regime; 2) the
emergence of a coercive instrument in the form of shogunal hegemony
that was used to discipline errant
shugo lords, and the
final defeat of Southern Court forces; 3) the use of the court
ranking system as an intermediary instrument that tied the regime
to the imperial court, and in connection to this the
hanzei half-tax decree of 1368 and its effect; and 4) the
limitations to Muromachi authority in the Kyūshū and Kantō
regions.
It was left to the shogun Yoshiakira to heal the wounds of the
Kannō Incident by reorganizing the regime. In 1362 he established
the most important intermediary institution that connected the
shugo lords to the regime: the
kanrei council
system. This system was made up of two components, the
kanrei office and the senior vassal council (
jushin
kaigi) over which the
kanrei presided. The
kanrei council system involved the most powerful
shugo families as participants in directly governing
central and western Japan. Along with the shogun, the
kanrei council emerged to form the heart of the Muromachi
regime to such an extent that historians have come to characterize
this regime as the
bakufu-
shugo system (Tanuma
1976:12; Harrington 1985:67).
The kanrei council and the reorganization of
institutions
The
kanrei council system was intermediary, because it
tied together the military side of the regime with the
bureaucratic. The very conflict that emerged with the Kannō
Incident had to do with the separation and clash between the
military vassal institutions controlled by Takauji and the
bureaucratic-judicial institutions controlled by Tadayoshi. With
the emergence of the
kanrei council system, the
shugo lords who represented the military side of the
administration were tied firmly to the bureaucracy, as important
players in the creation of policy.
The
kanrei office itself is a good example of mediation by
tying together the interests of the
shugo lords with those
of the shogun. The job of the
kanrei was to act as a
spokesman between the Senior Vassal Council (jushin kaigi) and the
shogun, mediating between the two (Kawai 1977:70). The
kanrei also had the responsibility of looking over the
bureaucratic elements of the regime on a daily basis, consulting
and transmitting shogunal orders to the council and to the
bureaucracy. The
kanrei was consistently selected from a
hereditary group of three
shugo families related to
Takauji within four generations (Papinot 1972:27): the Hosokawa,
the Hatakeyama and the Shiba. The three families took turns in
filling the post. They were the highest ranking
shugo
families in the regime, and the post of
kanrei helped to
tie their interests in support of it.
The other component of the kanrei council system was the Senior
Vassal Council (
jushin kaigi). The
kanrei presided over the meetings of the council, relayed
the decisions reached by the council to the shogun, and transmitted
orders from the shogun to the council. In this system, regime
policy was formulated in consultations between the council and the
shogun, though final decisions were made by the latter (Kawai
1977:70-71; Sato 1977:48). In the beginning, the council was
composed of the heads of the three
shugo families from
whom the
kanrei was regularly selected along with four
other heads of powerful
shugo families: the Yamana, the
Isshiki, the Akamatsu and the Kyogoku (Varley 1967:27-9). The
latter two families were unrelated to the Ashikaga family. This
trend of including unrelated
shugo families into the
council continued with the recruitment of the Ouchi, the Sasaki and
the Toki families in the next few decades. This trend indicates
that powerful
shugo families, irrespective of kinship,
were tied to the regime through the intermediary nature of the
Senior Vassal Council: conflict and potential conflict of interests
between
shugo lords and the shogun was institutionalized
by letting the
shugo lords voice their opinions in
discussions within the council.
The Board of Retainers (samuraidokoro) was also headed by a Senior
Vassal Council member selected in the fourteenth century from among
the Imagawa (who became a council member a little later), the
Hosokawa, the Hatakeyama, the Shiba, and the Toki. The Board of
Retainers had the responsibility over police functions and the
execution of criminal justice in the capital of Kyoto (Grossberg
1981:88,107). The office holder automatically became the
shugo over Yamashiro province, the wealthiest and most
densely populated in Japan, and had the responsibility of
protecting the regime headquarters and the city of Kyoto (Varley
1967:57). By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the head of
the Board of Retainers was chosen from among four
shugo
families: the Yamana, the Akamatsu, the Kyogoku, and the Isshiki.
The Board of Retainers did what the
kanrei council system
did: it connected the interests of the
shugo lords to that
of the regime, and thereby mediated potential conflicts between
them. It was intermediary insofar as the sources of potential
conflict to the regime, the
shugo lords, became
participants in an institution of the regime.
Shugo participation in the Senior Vassal Council and in
the Board of Retainers were two of the more prominent examples of
their participation within the remodeled regime. The importance of
this participation cannot be overestimated: it was through the use
of these intermediary instruments whereby the Ashikaga shoguns were
able to centralize the state under their direction.
As we shall see time and again, kinship in the form of headship
ties (soryo), looms large as a recruiting mechanism at all levels
of Muromachi society: here too, the
shugo lords of the
highest standing were mostly branch families of the Ashikaga.
However, these kinship ties did little in the way of mediating
between the semi-independent
shugo lords and the regime.
It was rather the effective participation of the
shugo
lords in governing through the
kanrei council system which
bound their interests more firmly than before to the regime.
Ashikaga and the use of shugo coalitions
In 1362, the two most powerful
shugo houses in the
country, the Ouchi and the Yamana, submitted themselves to the
Ashikaga regime on condition that the shogun would not interfere
with the internal affairs of their respective provinces (Grossberg
1981:25). Subsequently, the Yamana, who were related to the
Ashikaga, and the Ouchi, who were not related, began to play an
increasingly important role in government affairs. However, within
a few decades, both
shugo houses became powerful enough to
incur the wrath of the shogun.
In 1366, the first
kanrei office holder's father, Shiba
Takatsune who held real power over his thirteen year old son, and
who engineered the placement of Shiba family members in key
government offices was declared a traitor, because of his growing
power and arrogance (he felt demeaned by accepting the
kanrei post, so he had his son appointed instead). In the
first show of force against an important
shugo family,
Yoshiakira ordered the Yamana, Sasaki, Yoshimi and the Toki
shugo lords to attack the Shiba in the province of
Echizen. The Shiba were defeated, and their territory in Echizen
was redistributed (Grossberg 1981:92). In 1367, following the
ouster of the Shiba family, Hosokawa Yoriyuki was named as the
successor to the post of
kanrei: after the shogun
Yoshiakira's death, Yoriyuki managed during the minority of the
young shogun Yoshimitsu to place the regime on a firmer
foundation.
The use of
shugo lords to attack one of their own
colleagues in the 1366, points to the growing authority of the
shogun vis-a-vis the
shugo lords, and the emergence of an
effective instrument of coercion that would grow with age. Up till
now, we have seen the virtual non-existence of true disciplinary
mechanisms that the shogun could use against his
shugo
lords. In conjunction with the new intermediary instruments that
emerged between the shogun and the
shugo lords, the new
coercive instrument of pitting one
shugo lord against
another, through shogun-
shugo coalitions, strengthened the
shogun's hand.
In 1362, the last Southern Court offensive against Kyoto forced the
Ashikaga to withdraw from the capital, but like many previous
attempts, the imperialists had to eventually retreat in the face of
a large counterattack without having accomplished anything (Sansom
1961:108). The exuberance that existed during the 1350s among the
imperialist armies had faded. Resistance after this date became
sporadic and completely defensive. Finally, in 1369, a year after
the death of Emperor Go-Murakami, the stalwart imperialist general
Kusunoki Masanori submitted himself to the regime. His capitulation
ended the imperialist threat to the central provinces (Sansom
1961:108).
Seeking legitimation from the court
In 1370 Imagawa Sadayo (Ryoshun) was appointed by the
kanrei Yoriyuki and the Senior Vassal Council to bring
down the last bastion of Southern Court resistance in Kyūshū. After
a grueling twelve year campaign, imperialist resistance collapsed
with the defeat of the Kikuchi family in 1381; and with the death
of Shimazu Ujihisa in 1385, the last Kyūshū provincial domain
declared its allegiance to the regime (Sansom 1961:112). With the
fall of Kyūshū the whole of western Japan came under the rule and
influence of the Ashikaga regime. However, campaigns alone were
inadequate to legitimize Ashikaga rule over the nobles.
After 1367, during the minority of the shogun Yoshimitsu, the
kanrei Hosokawa Yoriyuki became active in trying to
legitimize the regime in the eyes of the nobles. He did this
through a series of extremely conservative measures, gaining
prestige among the nobles in Kyoto. He used an ancient court
ranking system by having the young shogun participate in it
(Grossberg 1981:26). He also associated the regime with the court
much more closely than had any other past warrior leader. By doing
this, he tied the regime closer to the imperial court, thereby
erasing the stigma of the ideology that fueled the Nanboku-chō
conflict: Ashikaga Takauji was seen as a traitor fighting against
the restoration of imperial power.
The court society survived such a long time because of its
popularity among the different classes in Japanese society. On the
estate level, farmers felt much closer to the nobles than towards
the warriors. The waning power of the nobles notwithstanding, their
influence went far beyond their actual power, because they
possessed a legitimacy of tradition and the charisma of culture
that the warriors did not possess. It is no wonder that Yoriyuki
had the young shogun participate in court ceremonies: this
participation was intermediary, involving the highest military
leader in a court ranking system that dated back several centuries,
and had as its premise the primacy of the imperial line over
everyone, including the warriors, who had to receive titles from
the emperor. By participating in this court ranking ritual, the
Ashikaga regime was sending a strong message to the entire society:
that the legitimacy conferred by the court was still valid and
still important (Grossberg 1981:20). This participation bridged the
tensions between the warrior regime and the court, and had the
unintended effect of disseminating court culture among the warrior
class, creating a fusion of taste that has forever marked this
period of Japanese culture as one of brilliant innovation.
In a way this participation was an anachronism that seemed removed
from the real world where power was directly exercised by warriors.
However, the question of legitimacy is not necessarily tied to the
direct exercise of power. Legitimacy is tied to ideology, and the
ideological basis for aristocratic noble rule had a better basis
than the rule of warriors. Force alone cannot make legitimacy, and
the cultural milieu that surrounded the court was still much more
persuasive, much more elegant than the samurai sword. The warriors
themselves were attracted to the culture of the nobles, and
enthusiastically emulated the latter's tastes until they were able
to produce a synthesis that went beyond what had existed earlier
such as the rise of rock gardens influenced by Zen among other art
forms that has had a lasting impact to this day. And for these
reasons alone, the connection effected between the shogun and the
imperial court during the last few decades of the fourteenth
century, had the effect of broadening the legitimacy of the
shogun's power.
The
kanrei Yoriyuki promulgated the last half-tax decree
(hanzei) in 1368. This decree was a comprehensive and decisive
intermediary instrument that was used to tie noble interests to the
regime: it outlawed the halving of lands owned by the imperial
family, those lands under the control of major temples, and those
that were owned by the imperial regents (the Fujiwara). Exceptions
also included noble lands that were given full title by the
previous shogun (perhaps Yoshiakira ?), and estates managed by the
samurai stewards (jito) (Wintersteen 1974:219-20). This decree was
applicable to all estates nationwide, and its real importance was
the strong language used to deter further samurai incursions onto
the estates, and to defend the interests of the nobles in the face
of the samurai incursions that had already taken place. Unlike the
earlier half-tax decrees, this one was conservative, and its aim
was to protect noble lands from division rather than to justify
it.
With the 1368 half-tax decree, the regime had come a long ways from
the 1352 decree, but the realities of samurai incursions that had
already taken place could not be reversed. Here, what was
ideologically stated openly departed from what was actually taking
place in the provinces. As we saw above, the incursions of the
samurai and the
shugo lords on the estates were severe
despite the 1368 decree. And with the fifteenth century, this trend
of land grabbing became ever more pronounced. I must conclude that
the 1368 decree was, on the whole, ineffective in stopping the
warriors from taking control over the estates and their income,
given the evidence of continued warrior takeovers. In a sense, the
1368 decree was an ideological document that attempted to
legitimize the Ashikaga regime in the eyes of the nobles, following
from the closer connections that were established between the
shogun and the imperial court. Furthermore, the Ashikaga shoguns
were not able, even if they had the desire, to stop the continued
incursions of warriors on the income of the estates. However
ineffective, the 1368 decree recognized noble interests were
defended ideologically by a warrior regime, and in the process tied
together the interests of both.
Finally, the direct rule of the Muromachi regime that emerged in
the 1360s was limited geographically to the western and central
provinces in contrast to the previous Kamakura regime based in the
Kantō. Outside
shugo lords (tozama) unrelated to the
Ashikaga like the Takeda, Chiba, Yuki, Satake, Oyama, Utsunomiya,
Shoni, Otomo, Aso, and the Shimazu families, all of whom were
concentrated in or near the Kantō and Kyūshū regions did not
participate in the
kanrei council system, and were
semi-independent of the regime (Varley 1967:29; Hall 1966:199).
They were tacitly recognized and given
shugo titles by the
Ashikaga, because of their predominant positions in areas that were
not easily controlled from Kyoto (Harrington 1985:67).
Kyūshū
After the Kyūshū campaign that began in 1370, the Kyūshū deputy
(
tandai) became the representative
of the Muromachi regime on that island. Imagawa Sadayo (Ryoshun)
effectively prosecuted the campaign against the Southern Court
forces, and continued to press his attack against the forces of
Shimazu Ujihisa, garnering support from local Kyūshū kokujin in the
process (Harrington 1985:85-6). Deputies like Sadayo were Muromachi
representatives in the areas they controlled, even when they
arrogated the full powers of vassalage to local samurai . For
example in 1377, a contract was signed between Sadayo and a samurai
alliance (ikki) consisting of sixty-one local samurai. The contract
stipulated that all disputes between alliance members would be
taken to the Kyūshū deputy, while disputes between alliance members
and the deputy himself would be taken to the Muromachi regime in
Kyoto (Harrington 1985:87). The Kyūshū deputy was an intermediary
figure who united the interests of the regime and the interests of
the local area under his jurisdiction together. It was a precarious
position because of the temptation to independence it presented.
But for whatever reason, the Muromachi regime did not extend their
direct control over the whole nation, and so came to rely on
appointees like the Kyūshū deputy to act as their representatives
to influence the
shugo lords and samurai of the region
through coercive and intermediary instruments.
The Kantō
In the late fourteenth century, the Kantō region was dominated by
powerful warrior families. Of these, the
Uesugi were the most powerful. They were able to
take advantage of the fighting that erupted between families in the
region to advance their own interests. In 1368, the Utsunomiya
family revolted against the Kamakura headquarters of the Muromachi
regime, because they had lost their
shugo posts to the
Uesugi. The Uesugi family was able to extend their influence by
amassing
shugo posts under their jurisdiction, and by
enfoeffing vassals in the Kantō region at the expense of other
families (Harrington 1985:82-3). One could advance a theory that
the Kantō region had become semi-independent from Kyoto, and that
the Kamakura headquarters of the Muromachi regime existed because
of Uesugi support. The Uesugi family was legally recognized by the
Muromachi regime by their appointment to the Kantō
kanrei
post because of their unassailable position.
The Kamakura headquarters of the Muromachi regime acted in much the
same way as the Kyūshū deputy (
tandai): it became the
regional intermediary office through which regime orders were
transmitted to the outlying Kantō region. In practice as seen
above, the Kantō was dominated by powerful families like the
Uesugi. Increasingly, the Kamakura headquarters became independent
from the Muromachi regime, and for all essential purposes took care
of regional disputes, regional taxation, and developed ties with
shugo lords in the Kantō with minimal reference to the
Muromachi government in Kyoto--even though the right to confirm
fiefs and the right to ratify
shugo appointments
technically remained in the hands of Kyoto (Harrington
1985:83-5).
Centralization of Ashikaga power and the end of the Nanboku-chō
War: 1379-1399
One area of resistance after another fell to the Muromachi regime
during the crucial decade of the 1360s: tellingly, powerful
shugo lords like the Ouchi and the Yamana submitted
themselves as semi-independent lords; Southern Court resistance
became more futile as time passed. Militarily the regime was able
to call upon the services of the
shugo lords to attack one
of their own colleagues in 1366, pointing to the increasing
subordination of the
shugo to shogunal control. Hand in
hand with the creation of the
kanrei council system and
the increasing participation of the powerful
shugo
families in the
bakufu bureaucracy, ties to the imperial
court broadened the legitimate base of the regime. These key
developments were used not only to increase shogunal control, but
to bind the interests of the
shugo lords and nobles more
closely to the regime.
However, geographically, the Muromachi regime
was limited in scope, delegating its jurisdiction of the Kantō and
Kyūshū areas to regional representatives, holding more or less
direct control over the central and western provinces of Honshū
.
For fifty years after
Yoshimitsu's assumption of authority in
1379, the Muromachi regime entered its most powerful phase as the
unrivaled government of the country. The connection between the
shogun and the
shugo lords tightened as shogunal control
increased. The main instruments and their effects that enabled the
shogun to exercise control over the
shugo lords, and to
broaden the base of the legitimacy of the regime involved: 1) a
continuation of close ties between the Muromachi regime and the
imperial court; 2) the compulsory residential policy aimed at the
shugo lords; 3) further development of the shogunal army
(gobanshu); 4) the rise of shogunal hegemony using the coalition of
several
shugo lords; and 5) the use of commercial and
agrarian revenue and taxes by the regime. All of these changes
exemplify the continuing trend of centripetal forces that augmented
the power of the regime.
The Ashikaga and the Imperial Court
Under
Yoshimitsu (active
1379-1408) who took the reins of power after the dismissal of
Yoriyuki as
kanrei, the effects of this particular
connection encouraged one of the most brilliant periods in Japanese
history, renowned for the maturation of architectural and cultural
forms that have since characterized Japanese culture. His close
association with the imperial court and its culture, and his
patronage of the new arts helped to disseminate this culture to the
military aristocracy, particularly through the
shugo lords
(Grossberg 1981:31-32; Kawai 1977:72). This connection between the
shogun and the imperial court brought added prestige to both
institutions, and gave the shogun an aura of civil legitimacy and
culture that the previous Kamakura regime had lacked.
By participating in court institutions, the shogun also adopted
much of the refined pastimes of court culture. Cultural pursuits
came as a result of a prior institutional connection. Culture has
more in common with ideological justifications: as we saw in the
previous section, much of court culture enjoyed a legitimacy denied
to the warriors.
Monopoly of force: compulsory residence
Moving to the shogun-
shugo relationship, in the 1380s the
kanrei council system was strengthened by Yoshimitsu when
he persuaded the western and central
shugo lords to take
up residence in Kyoto. He even went to visit Ouchi Yoshihiro in
1389, and persuaded him to live in Kyoto during one of his
so-called pilgrimage circuits. These circuits were used to display
his power through the provinces in which he traveled (Grossberg
1981:29-30). This compulsory residential policy that Yoshimitsu
instituted was the main coercive policy that aided the
kanrei council system, and enabled the shogun to tighten
his grip around the
shugo lords. Permission to leave the
capital city was rarely granted to the
shugo lord: it was
only granted after discussion in the Senior Vassal Council. Even
when permission was granted in the case of provincial rebellion or
Southern Court guerilla activity, suitable hostages were left
behind in Kyoto. If the
shugo lord left without
permission, it was seen as tantamount to treason (Kawai 1977:68-9;
Tanuma 1976:13).
The Kantō and Kyūshū
shugo were exempt from this order of
compulsory residence in Kyoto. However, the Kamakura headquarters
of the Muromachi regime instituted a similar policy in regards to
the Kantō
shugo lords, and made them establish mansions in
Kamakura just as the western and central
shugo lords made
mansions in Kyoto (Kawai 1977:68). Mansion building in Kyoto became
fashionable, and eventually included
shugo lords like the
Shimazu of Kyūshū, who decided to live in Kyoto even though he was
not required to do so.
The
shugo lords really had little choice in the matter.
They either resided in Kyoto or were branded as traitors of the
regime. Along with institutions like the
kanrei council
system, the compulsory residential policy had incalculable effects
both from a national standpoint, and from a provincial standpoint.
For starters, the power of the
shugo lords was severely
restricted by this policy: their freedom of movement was
circumvented. Second, as time passed into the second quarter of the
fifteenth century, real power in the provinces moved away from the
shugo lords and came to rest upon the deputy
shugo (
shugo-dai), and upon other independent
samurai (
kokujin) who resided in the provinces. Therefore,
from the standpoint of
shugo lords the compulsory
residential policy proved to be a long term disaster (Kawai
1977:73). The hiring of deputy
shugo was necessitated by
the compulsory residential policy if the
shugo lords were
to maintain their power in the provinces. In the short term, hiring
branch family members and samurai
kokujin as deputy
shugo, and using them as their own representatives in the
provinces worked well; but in the long term, power passed from the
hands of the
shugo lords into the hands of those they
hired.
The shogunal army
Yoshimitsu did not hesitate to use military force to reduce the
shugo lords to obedience on the pretext that they had
become too powerful. He assembled a new shogunal army
(
gobanshu) made up of five divisions totalling some three
thousand warriors dependent on him (Grossberg 1981:106-7). This
force was a formidable array, particularly when they were augmented
by contributions from other
shugo lords. The importance of
the shogunal army goes beyond quantity, but strikes more at what
this force represented: a separate force connecting the shogun
directly with his own vassals made up of kokujin samurai. The
shogunal army served as a check on
shugo forces. As we saw
in section two, the first Ashikaga shogun, Takauji, had created
ties with samurai stewards by enfoeffing them on estate lands.
Throughout the early Muromachi period, this separate vassal
hierarchy under the command of the shogun was an important check on
shugo power. We will see how this earlier army differed
from the shogunal army of Yoshimitsu.
The shogunal army had two components: the shogunal bodyguard
(shin'eigun) consisted of Ashikaga branch family members,
shugo relatives and
shugo branch family members,
other sons and brothers of regime officials, and most importantly,
powerful
kokujin. Numbering (at most) three hundred and
fifty men, this group was a cohesive and loyal body, ready to
defend the shogun's person at any cost (Arnesen 1985:102).
Surrounding this small band was a number of direct vassals of the
shogun tracing its origins back to 1336, when the shogun Takauji
enfoeffed many samurai as house vassals who were probably used as a
reserve army (Gay 1986:95-6); a larger number of indirect vassals
connected to the members of the shogunal bodyguard probably made up
the bulk of the shogunal army under Yoshimitsu. This last point is
well illustrated by Arnesen, who calculated that the number of
direct vassals in the shogunal bodyguard was sixty to seventy
percent the number of direct vassals enrolled under the
Late Hōjō clan of the sixteenth
century (1985:126). And if the Late Hōjō were able to field fifty
thousand troops in the Odawara campaign, the shogunal bodyguard of
three hundred and fifty could easily have mobilized their own
vassals to come up with the three thousand troops that Grossberg
claims took part in the Meitoku Rising of 1391 (1981:107). The
creation of the shogunal bodyguard, and the central position of
this group over other shogunal vassals is what differentiates the
shogunal army of Yoshimitsu from the shogunal vassals of Takauji. A
tighter organization and esprit de corps emerged with the new
shogunal army.
Use of shugo coalitions to defeat powerful
shugo
However, the shogunal army alone was not adequate to meet and
defeat
kanrei class
shugo lords on the field of
battle, but were perfectly suited to the kind of warfare Yoshimitsu
practiced: pitting one
shugo lord against a family member,
and against other
shugo lords. The new shogunal hegemony,
that emerged under the previous shogun, Yoshiakira, came to
dominate the politics of Yoshimitsu. Shogunal prestige informally
dictated that no single
shugo lord should exceed a certain
level of power without incurring the wrath of the shogun. It was in
the interest of the
shugo lords themselves, that none of
their own colleagues should become too powerful and dominant over
the rest (Varley 1967:63-64).
In pursuit of this policy in 1389 Yoshimitsu ordered Toki Yasuyuki,
the
shugo lord of the provinces of Mino, Ise and Owari to
give up the latter province to a relative. Yasuyuki refused, and
Yoshimitsu ordered the cousin of Yasuyuki, Yorimasu, to attack him.
After three years Yasuyuki was defeated, and gave up the province
of Mino to Toki Yorimasu in 1391 (Papinot 1972:659). To Yoshimitsu
it did not matter whether the province that was given up was Mino
or Owari as long as Toki Yasuyuki was shorn of some of his power in
the central provinces.
Before the Meitoku Rising (ran) in 1391, the Yamana family
possessed eleven provinces in western and central Japan which made
them the most powerful
shugo family in the country.
Yoshimitsu looked for an excuse to attack them; and when Yamana
Mitsuyuki (who was
shugo over the provinces of Izumo,
Tamba, Hoki, and Oki) took possession of some estates belonging to
the imperial family in Izumo, Yoshimitsu recalled the
ex-
kanrei Hosokawa Yoriyuki to plan a campaign against
Mitsuyuki (Papinot 1972:744). The Yamana
shugo lords
Mitsuyuki and Ujikiyo attacked Kyoto, but were severely defeated by
the shogunal army in concert with the forces of Ouchi Yoshihiro
(Grossberg 1981:30,107; Arnesen 1979:82). The other
shugo
contingents that made up the shogun's forces numbered no more than
three hundred horsemen each (Grossberg 1981:107). After the
campaign, the Yamana were assigned only two provinces, Tajima and
Hoki, and the leaders of the rebellion were killed, Ujikiyo in
battle and Mitsuyuki through assassination in 1395 (Papinot
1972:744).
This pitting of one
shugo lord against another reached a
head in 1399. Ironically, this time the target was Ouchi Yoshihiro,
who had served the regime well in the campaign against the Yamana.
Yoshihiro was ordered to attack the Shoni in 1397 which he did,
losing his brother in the process. He later learned of the
Byzantine duplicity of Yoshimitsu: Shoni was also ordered to attack
the Ouchi. Angered by this duplicity, and fearing for his life when
the shogun summoned him to Kyoto, he opted to disobey (Grossberg
1981:32). Not surprisingly, he was declared an enemy by the regime.
At the battle of Sakai, Yoshimitsu along with the forces of five
shugo lords, the Hosokawa, Akamatsu, Kyogoku, Shiba, and
the Hatakeyama, overwhelmed Yoshihiro's defensive works by setting
fire to the city (Grossberg 1981:33; Sansom 1961:149). The allied
force led by Yoshimitsu numbered 30,000 warriors against Ouchi's
5,000: Yoshihiro was simply overwhelmed in battle where he
committed suicide (Arnesen 1979:82,86).
As each of these previous examples illustrate, shogunal hegemony
became very effective. It was used to divide the
shugo
lords by making them attack and destroy fellow colleagues. Shogunal
hegemony would not have succeeded without the cooperation of the
shugo lords in uniting their forces with the shogunal
army. However, without finances to support the shogunal army and
other expenses of the regime, this coercive policy would have been
unthinkable.
Revenue
Kyoto in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a
brilliant center for economic activity. With the compulsory
residential policy that emerged under the shogun Yoshimitsu,
shugo lords with their vassals and servants added to the
distinguished population of the city that included nobles, the
imperial court and the Muromachi government. This translated into a
vast market for a variety of goods and services that spurred the
economic growth of the city. This growth was important to both the
shogun and
shugo lords who lived in the capital: they
tapped the wealth of the moneylenders (sakaya-doso) on a consistent
basis. The shogun even employed them as tax collectors in the city
(Kawai 1977:71; Grossberg 1981:37,78-80). What made the Muromachi
regime so different from the previous Kamakura regime was the basis
for its income. Much of its revenue came from commercial taxes in
addition to its landed base.
The Board of Administration (mandokoro) was used as a clearing
house for matters concerning the revenue of the Muromachi regime.
It was the chief bureaucratic organ that connected the regime to
various commercial groups in the city for purposes of taxation. In
1393, the regime legalized its right to tax the moneylenders
directly (Grossberg 1981:78,95-6). Commercial taxes assessed in
Kyoto became the foundation for the new urban based Muromachi
regime, and decisively changed the nature of the regime from one
solely based on landed estates to a regime partly based on
commerce.
Traditional agrarian based revenue came from three major sources:
from shogunal estates, from shogunal vassals, and from taxes
assessed against the
shugo lords. The landed base of the
Ashikaga shoguns was paltry compared to their successors, the
Tokugawa; however, there were approximately two-hundred shogunal
estates (goryosho) scattered between Kyoto and the Kantō region,
and revenue extracted from these estates were significant
(Grossberg 1981:70-3). Moreover, the connection between the
shogunal estates and the shogunal army was decisive: some of the
men who served in the army were also managers over the shogun's
personal estates (Grossberg 1981:112). Furthermore, many local
samurai paid land taxes directly to the regime (kyosai) as one of
the privileges they enjoyed as house vassals (gokenin), being
immunized from
shugo tax collectors in the process
(Grossberg 1981;109-10). In addition,
shugo lords were
taxed directly (
shugo shussen) according to how many
provinces they administered. This was assessed by the regime
whenever there were buildings to be built or fixed, and when the
shogun needed cash for various projects (Kawai 1977:71; Grossberg
1981:74).
The sources of revenue for the Muromachi regime were varied to a
much greater extent than it was under the Kamakura regime due to
the emerging market economy in Kyoto and Yamashiro province. It
came in novel form as commercial revenue extracted from the
moneylenders (sakaya doso): a tax was assessed once the power
structure of the Muromachi bureaucracy had effectively taken the
city of Kyoto.
Southern Court Emperors
Northern Court emperors
Notes
- see references, Weber, p.212-297. Throughout this article this
question becomes central for the Muromachi regime.
- (Hori 1974:193-5)
- Shugo (守護?) was a title, commonly translated as "Governor,"
given to certain officials in feudal Japan. They were each
appointed by the shogun to oversee one or more of the provinces of
Japan.
- Varley 1971:67
- Varley 1971:76-7
- Varley 1971:100-12
- George Sansom, A History of Japan, Vol. 2,
"1334-1615", page 22
- Mass 1989:113
- see references, Kahane, pp.1-7. Kahane speaks of intermediary
institutions.
- Mass 1974:154-5
- The verb "to enfoeff" is defined by the Random House Dictionary
of the English Language as follows:"1) to invest with a freehold
estate in land" and 2) "to give as a fief".
- Grossberg 1981:73; Varley 1967:38-39
- Encyclopedia Britannica Online accessed on
August 11, 2009
- Papinot (1972:29)
- The story of Tadayoshi's alleged plot to assassinate Moronao is
part of the Taiheiki.
- Elias, p.22. See references, develops the concept of absolutist
monopoly rule.
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