Author: Reading: Important points:

Brett L. Walker Medieval Japan and 1. The advent of the samurai government caused the influence of the government to become
the Warring States more decentralized and feudal in nature
period, 1336-1573
2. What is the bakafu system? The bakufu was the military government of Japan between
1192 and 1868, headed by the shogun. Prior to 1192, the bakufu—also known as shogonate
—was responsible only for warfare and policing and was firmly subordinate to the imperial
court. (But imperial family still remains)

3. As the political authority of the Ashikaga bakafu waned, alliances external to the state began
to form between powerful samurai families, well-armed Buddhist monasteries and even
Kyoto neighborhood associations.
- The Ashikaga bakufu weakened to such a point that eventually new alliances formed as
domain lords, known as daimryô consolidated their power at a local level.
- When the country was finally reunified at the end of the 16th century, many domains
retained much of their autonomy, even as the Edo bakaufu consolidated its power in the
new capital; in fact, the legacy of regionalism still survives till now as Japan still retains
a strong sense of local identity expressed through different local foods and traditions.

4. The Ashikaga Bakufu (Second shogunate system, Muromachi period 1333-1573)

- Ashikaga Takauji became shogun in 1338 and established the Ashikaga bakufu in Kyoto
- He developed the Deputy Shogun (kanrei) position to strengthen the bakufu bureaucracy
 power sharing because Ashikaga himself was not confident that he could run the
country himself
- After Yoshimitsu took over, he had to contend with three powerful blocs that were
fighting with him for power and influence: Religious institutions, loyalists to Go-
Daigo’s Southern Court and provincial governors (shugo).
- The weak spot of the Ashikaga bakufu system was in its system of bifurcated rule,
where the governors served as both Kyoto bureaucrats and governors of the provinces.
- Underneath the shogun, the most important position was the Deputy Shogun and was
usually occupied by one of three families: Shiba, Hatakeyama, or Hosokawa and became
the core of Ashikaga hegemony, as when they worked together they were able to yield
 effective power over the governors and keep them in control but when they were divided
the whole political system was divided and this was a huge threat to the country  It
was precisely conflict among these 3 families on who would be the shogun again that
led to the outbreak of the Ônin war from 1467-77 in which the whole of Kyoto was
burned down again.
- Governors also had to fight for control with provincial warlords. Over time, the
authority of these governors waned in the provinces esp. after the Ônin war that
destroyed the Ashikaga power and as the bakufu form of government withered,
‘provincial men’ who generated their legitimacy and loyalty from the local people
moved easily into the power vacuums and were able to rise to power.
- What made the Ashikaga fall from power?
 From 1457 and 1460, there was a series of natural disasters that rocked the
archipelago and Yoshimasa was seen to be at the height of his extravagant
behavior
 The tensions between the Hosokawa family and the competing Yamana family
both fighting for their heirs to be Shogun (Ashikaga Yoshimi VS Yoshihisa)
caused them to rally their massive armies to Kyoto to fight it out.
 This was the Ônin war that was to last for 11 years with neither side having a
decisive victory and this completely destroyed the legitimacy of the Bakufu
system of governance.

- After-effects of the Ônin war:

 Warring states lords drafted ‘household codes’ that aimed to preserve their
extended families and its domain territory and rendered earlier medieval laws
such as the Jôei codes issued by the Kamakura bakufu to become obsolete  led
to the slow erosion of private ethics such as samurai principles in favour of
public law
 Domain law forbade samurai from building alliances outside the lord’s sphere of
influence because such ‘leagues’ were the source of disorder  lured many
samurai into cohesive political spheres
5. The Buddhist Sectarians
- The armed Buddhist sectarians that emerged after the Ônin conflict posed a serious
challenge to the bakufu as they contended for their power and influence
- During the 12th and 13th centuries, Buddhist practices such as the Pure Land, True Pure
Land, and other Buddhist monasteries began re-sculpting Japan’s religious and cultural
landscape and altered the military and political landscape as well.
- The Hokke sectarians were so influential in Kyoto that the government of Kyoto became
totally under their control
- Militant religious sectarians had now become the judge and executioner in the imperial
capital. It is little wonder that, when powerful warlords unified the realm with force in
the latter half of the 16th century, they first trained their sights on organized Buddhist
sectarians.

6. Voluntary urban associations

- Due to the absence of the bakufu (the military government), voluntary urban
associations also arose to defend themselves against exploitation by the samurai, and
they appeared in the form of city blocks.
- Examples of city blocks include the Myôden temple block, the Northern Boat Bridge
block, the Fan Guild etc and these stable enclaves and communities of people forming
showed how new, lingterm forms of urban identity were solidifying in 16th century
Kyoto.

7. Weakness and messiness in society

- Due to endemic war and lawlessness brought by the destruction of the legitimacy of the
rule by the bakufu, whimsical authority replaced genuine political and social order, and
the capital struggled to control what few vestiges of social order it could
- By the 16th century, Japan appeared to be on the brink of careening into complete social
chaos.
8. War and medical science
- Through the international portal of Dazaifu, Buddhist monks and other travelers from
the continent also introduced Japanese to the intricacies of early East Asian medicine. In
the late 12th century, Myôan Eisai made two trips to China, where he studied Zen
Buddhism and brought the teaching back to Japan.
- Temples also started practicing charitable, community medicine, focusing on the health
conditions of outcaste groups like the ‘riverbank people’ and ‘non-persons’. In
Kamakura, the Gokurakuji temple became a public welfare centre for treating the
underfed, poorly clothed, socially shunned people.
- The most important Japanese medical text written before the 13th century is the Ishinpô
by Tanba Yasuyori, Sukehito’s Honzô Wamyô and Shitagau’s Wamyôrui Shûshô.

9. Japanese countryside
- Despite the endemic lawlessness that spilled over into the countryside, Japan’s
farmlands entered a period of agricultural intensification and many of the epidemic
diseases settled into endemic patterns, with mortality and morbidity largely confined to
children.
- There were also increasing agricultural surpluses due to the cultivation of more land and
better farming technologies  caused Japan’s medieval population to grow from 7
million people in 1200 to about 12 million in 1600 at the close of the medieval period.
- Villages came about and they cultivated new lands and rallied around local leaders to
create village clusters and protect themselves against bandits, or to build religious
communities.
- Japan’s expanding agriculture, monument and city construction and maintenance
endemic lawlessness and warfare and emergence of village clusters placed increasing
pressure on Japan’s woodlands.
- As a general rule, goods flowed throughout the country relatively easy because most
daimryô sought to benefit the most from robust commercial activity within their domain.

10. Ashikaga foreign relations

- The absence of a strong political centre confused Japanese relations with the continent
during the medieval period
 - The Chinese dynasty in the Ming court expected tribute from Japan
- The pirate problem also became so pronounced that the Ming Court referred to the king
of Japan as a pirate.
- Tensions between Japan and China also continued to exist because Japan refused to play
a subordinate role to the Chinese in geopolitical diplomacy.
- The economic rule of the Ming in the end allowed merchants to govern Skai with a
surprising degree of automacy and this is why it resembles such European cities like
Vienna.

11. Muromachi culture

- Characterized by delicate sensibilities, tea ceremonies, Nô drama, Zen Buddhist
austerity and a nearly manical adherence to aesthetic simplicity.
- Wooden architectural achievements such as the Kinakuji and the Ginkakuji were
products of the 14th and 15th centuries and they evoked strong Zen Buddhist sensibilities.

12. Conclusion
- The decline of the Ashikaga bakufu, the Warring States period witnessed a virtual
evaporation of central authority in Japan but it also witnessed the birth of many of the
political, social, intellectual, and environmental conditions that would thrust Japan into
the early modern period
- Daimyô also became the most powerful political figure in Japan
- Buddhist sectarians also became increasingly powerful during the 15th century and in so
doing attracted the ire of unifiers who targeted them as they tried to kill off competitors
that tried to usurp their power

Ebrey Walthall Edo Japan 1. Some distinct changes the Tokugawa shoguns made on society
Palais 1603-1800 - Demarcation of villages as corporate communities
- Separation of samurai from commoners
- Creation of bounded domains,
- Growth of and restrictions of commerce
- Economic developments through proto-industrialization, unprecedented urbanization,
and a flourishing of theater, fiction, poetry, and intellectual life
2. The Tokugawa settlement
- They brought an end to sibling rivalry by insisting on strict primogeniture for the
military ruling class and confiscating domains rived by succession disputes
- Samurai stood at the top of the official status order then followed by commoners in
order of their contributions to society (much more meritocratic system as it was no
longer based on birth)  SPAM System
- Status boundaries also more fluid
- In the 17th century, most villages had at least one dominant family who descended from
a warrior, and they would hence completely take over the position of headman.
- A council of elders comprising landholding cultivators known as honbyakushō would
act as a board for matters pertaining to village affairs.
- However, there was often political, social and economic inequality in the village life
because these families who claimed descent from warriors expected to be treated with
deference and often go the biggest and best fields and had the most say in village politics
- Bounded contiguous villages constituted the building blocks of domains ruled by
daimryo that were typically bounded and contiguous.
- The shogun would have the largest domain concentrated chiefly in eastern and central
Japan totaling an approximate ¼ of the total agricultural base.
- The mightiest would also control large domains that functioned almost as nations
- Daimryo class status very high and prestigious

3. Government
- The government pieced together by the Tokugawa shoguns developed an elaborate
bureaucratic structure
- The senior councilors who consisted about 4-5 men who rotated on a monthly basis
owned a vassal daimryo worth at least 30,000 koku each and they also took
responsibility for policy decisions, personnel matters and supervising the daimryo.
- The shogunal and domainal governments developed the most complex, sophisticated
and coherent administrative systems that Japan had ever seen
- Opportunities for promotion now depended on hereditary rank
- Although the daimryo ran their domains as they saw fit, the shogunate started to issue
decrees to regulate their behavior in 1615 e.g. limiting the number of guns allowed per
castle and restricted castle repairs
- All daimryo now had the responsibility to contribute men and money to the shogun’s
building projects and they could be relocated from one region to the next according to
what the shogunate wanted
- Most important, the shogunate issued increasingly stringent guidelines governing the
daimyo's attendance on the shogun. Known as Sankin Kotai and formalized in 1635, this
system stipulated that each daimyo spend half of his time in his domain and half in the
shogun's capital at Edo. Each daimyo's wife and heir had to reside in Eda as hostages 
Designed to keep the daimryo both loyal to the shogun and effective in local
administration + also prevented and balanced out any sort of rebellious tendencies that
had destroyed the Ashikaga and the Kamukura regime
- The Sankin Kotai also allowed for the stimulation of trade, encouraging travel and
spreading urban culture to the hinterland
- The Shogunate for its own profit and development would oversee the development of
coastal shipping routes, take over the mines for precious metals and minted copper,
silver and gold coins; they forbade Christianity and set up a nationwide system of temple
registration to ensure complicity to them; and they supervised trade with China
- Ainu people:
 Relations with the Ainu in Hokkaido evolved differently. There the shogunate
had the Matsumae family with longstanding ties to the region establish a domain
on the island's south ern tip. The Matsumae received the privilege of
monopolizing trade with the Ainu in exchange for a pledge of loyalty. In 1669,
conflict between Ainu tribes over access to game and fish escalated into a war to
rid Hokkaido of the Japanese. Between 1590 and 1800, the Ainu became
increasingly dependent on trade with the Japan ese for their subsistence, while
periodic epidemics brought by traders ravaged their population. Many ended up
working as contract laborers in fisheries that shipped food and fertilizer to Japan.

- The Tokugawa Shogunate was able to survive for over 250 years because the rulers had
recognized the importance of ideology in transforming power into authority.
  Example of Nobunaga: Claimed that he acted on behalf of the realm and not on
his private selfish interests
 Example of Hideyoshi: Actively promoted a cult to his own divinity and hence
people would obey him indefinitely
 Example of Ieyasu: He was known as Tosho Daigongen  The Buddhist
Incarnate as the sun god of the east; he claimed of how he protected the
shogunate from malignant spirits and worked for the good of the people
 The third shogun Iemitsu claimed that the shogunate manifested a just social
order that followed the way of heaven (ten ). This way is natural, unchanging,
eternal, and hierarchical. The ruler displays the benevolence of the Buddha, the
warrior preserves

4. Agricultural transformations and the commercial revolution

- Countless building projects took place during this period for the building of daimryo
mansions, shogunal palaces and servants quarters  but this seriously depleted the
forests and led to floods by the 17th century which threatened the existence of fields and
rice paddies.
- Accumulation of small innovations based on observations of soil types and climatic
conditions led to the development of rice varieties suited for specific local conditions
- Cultivators also grew cash crops and developed products based on Chinese technology
 shows the importation of goods and culture from China into Japan
- Increases in agricultural productivity spurred demand for nonagricultural goods
produced by rural households. The growth of cottage industries diversified income
sources and led to a virtuous cycle of interaction between agriculture and manufacturing.
Neither entrepreneurs nor domains tried to set up large-scale production units. Instead
they emphasized quality and variety, trying to beat the competition by producing
regional specialties found nowhere else.

5. Urban life and culture

- Eda's spatial layout mirrored the shogun's strategic concerns. Taking advantage of
technological advancements in fortifications, the shogun's castle was enclosed behind
 multiple stone walls surrounded by moats. The shogunate drained the swamp on which
the city was built through canals that provided transportation for goods and people.
- Vassal daimyo and the shogun's retainers lived in its immediate vicinity, providing
another ring of protection.
- Each daimyo maintained multiple compounds; the total number was over one thousand.
- The seventeenth century saw an unprecedented increase in urban growth, from little
more than 1 percent of Japan's population to almost 15 percent after 1700. In addition to
the castle towns were three metropolises: Kyoto became a manufacturing center of
luxury goods, Osaka served as Japan's chief market, and Eda's swollen population of
daimyo and bureaucrats made it a consumption center. Urbanization stimulated the
growth of commercial publishing that created and fed a reading public hungry for
knowledge and entertainment. It provided space for exhibitions om religious icons to
botanical specimens and for private salons where scholars, artists, and writers met
patrons. Urban residents paid for services-hairdressing, amusements that had once been
provided by servants.
- This transformation stimulated a consumption revolution-the increased demand for a
greater variety of goods  Also shows how one thing can lead to another
- The prosperity in this era also led to the Genroku era which was the heyday of
townsman culture justly celebrated in art and literature.
 Matsuo Basho raised the seventeen-syllable verse form known as haiku to a fine
art, in the process making poetry accessible to commoners in town and country.
 Chikamatsu Monzaemon wrote librettos for the puppet theater
 Two pleasure zones associated with this era: The brothel district and the theaters

6. Intellectual trends
- The edo period saw an explosion in intellectual life as some samurai turned to
scholarship to understand society
- Official interests in western studies only began in 1720 when Shogun Yoshimune lifted
the ban on western books so long as they did not promote Christianity.
- But doctors and scientists were more attracted to what was called ‘Dutch Studies’
 instead of western philosophy, and studied more practical matters such as human
anatomy, astronomy, geography and military science.

7. Popular culture
- By 1750 Edo's population had reached well over l million inhabitants, making it perhaps
the largest city in the world at the time
- Urban commoners enjoyed the benefits that the consumption revolution brought to
them; there were fish markets, shops selling goods of every kind, restaurants,
innkeepers, and the world’s first commodity futures market first opened in Osaka.
- The spread of commerce made education both possible and necessary. In thousands of
villages across Japan, priests, village officials, and rural entrepreneurs opened schools to
provide the rudiments of reading and mathematics.

8. Hard times and peasant uprisings

- The underside to prosperity, continuing inequities, and injustice gave rise to thousands
of incidents of rural protest
- The famine that occurred in 1787 exposed problems at all levels of society. The
shogunate had struggled for years with an inadequate tax base and the increasing
competition between daimyo, merchants, and cultivators for access to commercial
income.
- Many samurai could not afford the pleasure districts nor did their offices keep them
occupied. Rather than concentrate on the public performance of duty, they retreated to
the private world of intellectual stimulation and the pursuit of pleasure  shows how
this was also a condition for cultural flowering

Jansen Sekigahara 1. The Sengoku background

- Tokugawa rule was praised as a period of ‘great peace’
- Tokugawa rule was not Japan’s first experience of unity and order. In the seventh and
eighth centuries the introduction of institutions of central government modeled on those
of China had also been followed by several centuries of peace broken only by border
 conflict to the north and family politics.
- In the twelfth century a series of wars among these aristocratic warriors— few in
number, fiercely proud of their heritage, and splendidly accoutered and horsed—ended
with victory for the Minamoto clan, which installed itself in headquarters at Kamakura
on the Sagami Bay in eastern Japan. The office of shogun, theretofore a temporary
commission used in pacification campaigns against the Ainu to the north, now became a
permanent and hereditary title used to designate the head of warrior houses. Japan
entered a period of warrior rule from which it did not emerge until the fall of the
Tokugawa in 1868.
- The first line of Minamoto shoguns established a line of military authority that
supplemented and overshadowed that of the imperial court
 They forced from the court permission to appoint stewards to private estates
throughout the land and constables or military governors in the provinces to
serve as officials of the new system of justice that was established
 Attempts by a retired emperor to challenge Kamakura dominance was taken out
quickly and led to only more repressive measures by the Kamakura leaders
 But the Kamakura institution (1192-1333) was brought to an end due to Mongol
invasions in 1274 and 1281  which was financially draining on the country and
because the Kamakura leaders conquered no new lands to reward the samurai 
it led to them being discontented and by 1333 a discontented Emperor, Godai-jo,
was able to rally enough discontented warriors to bring the Kamakura shogunate
to its final crisis.
- The second shogunal line was the Ashikaga
 Established its headquarters in the imperial capital of Kyoto
 However, the shogun had increasing difficulty in asserting his primacy over the
provincial warrior administrators
 The power of the imperial house also continued to diminish
 Although the Ashikaga shogun’s writ did not run far beyond the heartland of
classical Japan, within it his pretensions grew until the shogun Ashikaga
Yoshimitsu styled himself “King of Japan” when he engaged in foreign policy
with the Ming emperors of China  wanting to act as a sort of symbol of unity
for his people and styling himself in this way could also command respect to him
  However, political order distintegrated due to shogun succession disputes within
the different powerful warrior families in 1467  led to the split of the warrior
leaders and the Ōnin war
 The Ōnin war ended the Ashikaga influence and rule and this era is also known
as ‘Sengoku’ which was the Age of Warring States, in which the influence of the
shogun was at its lowest
 Not one of the Ashikaga shoguns of the sixteenth century served out his
term without being driven from Kyoto at least once, and the only one to
die in his capital was murdered there
 Real power was beginning to lie with regional commanders, who were
consolidating their holdings and followers

2. The New Sengoku Daimryo

- This period is distinguishable due to the variety of patterns of control, landholding, and
taxation that prevailed.
- In some areas the shōen, estates granted to powerful families or temples by the Heian
(Kyoto) court as its power waned in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, survived, but
they had become steadily more free from outside interference.
- In areas more distant from the imperial capital local warrior families had substantially
taken over from the representatives of the center, and “men of the land” (kokujin)
became forces to be reckoned with.
- In the 1500s, however, order was now returning to major part so the country
 There were quiet but significant increases in cultural productivity which were
accompanied by greater commercial growth  seen through the explosion of
piracy that swept the coasts on China and Korea
 There were advances in military technology as well such as the introduction of
firearms and larger scale of control
 Hence ‘Sengoku daimryo’ was more stable and peaceful compared to the ‘shogu
daimryo’ of late medieval times
- The Sengoku daimryo also much more powerful than the shugo daimryo; this is because
 the shugo daimryo had been subject to constraints of shogunal power and aristocratic
and temple proprietors who were quick to complain about their excesses at the court, but
the Sengoku daimyo, their power established through military tactics and buttressed by
greater resources, were able to make greater demands of their vassals and hold their own
against complaints from outside their realm.
- Conditions that led to the rise of new local hegemons:
 The collapse of the landholding and tax exempt status that shōen proprietors had
enjoyed for centuries.
 There were now new systems of household registration and implementation of
land and other resources
 As daimyo struggled to increase their resources they charged their vassals with
new surveys that were more inclusive and systematic than those that had gone
before. In an age of intermittent struggle the daimyo was concerned with the
responsibilities of his vassals in warfare, and the result was a far more inclusive
registration  now more intrusion and control over the lives of the people; the
daimryo were consolidating their control
 Lords became more severe and specific in the instructions and warning they
issued to their vassals and they now required total subordination from their
vassals
- Japan was now moving toward a matured system of feudal rule
 Land under daimryo control was now given out to vassals responsible for
military support in the fighting that became endemic
 New patterns of administration and new technology of warfare = expansion of
armies and provincial overlords began to think of themselves as candidates for
national governance  Phrases like kōgi, “public business,” or tenka, “the
realm,” began to appear in codes of instructions that lords issued to their vassals.
 Most of the powerful daimyo of Sengoku times found it wise to make special
trips to Kyoto themselves or to send emissaries to pay respects to the shogun, the
emperor, and court nobles and present them with gifts. They shared a “Kyoto
orientation”; it was in part defensive, to strengthen their position with the
 peasants whose produce was their chief resource, in part competitive, to make
sure their peers could not blindside them, and in part aggressive, in the hope of
“graduating” to a role in governance at the Kyoto center  ultimately saw the
need not to overthrow the imperial institution or the shogun but to use means to
increase their influence till they could reach the center and even gain a political
position

3. The Unifier: Oda Nobunaga

- Established his skill and power through exploiting the new weapons of war that the
Europeans had brought to japan  bought 500 guns for his troops in 1549
- He defeated a massive army sent against him by Imagawa Yoshimoto in 1560
- The turning point in his military career was the battle of Nagashino in 1575 in which his
army of 40,000, 3,000 of them armed with muskets and fighting from well- prepared
defensive positions, routed a force of mounted warriors who tried to attack him.
- Nobunaga also struggled against Buddhist sectarians because they were thought to be
those who could rival him for influence
- He ruthlessly eliminated those who opposed him and he completely disregarded
conventional taboos about sacred places and communities.
- More startling still was his remorseless assault of 1571 on the Buddhist center of
Enryakuji on Hieizan, the mountain northeast of Kyoto sacred to the monks of Tendai.
- Nobunaga succeeded in his determination to break ties between the institution of the
shogunate, with its built-in subordination to the imperial court and leaders of the samurai
estate; he also demanded total subordination from the samurai.
- His building of the Nijo Castle in Kyoto, which was very formidable, also reflected the
fear that Nobunaga inspired to those around him.
- At the time of his death in 1582, he was still unable to completely unify the military but
had succeeded in unifying 1/3 of Japan.
- His rule, however, brought an end to religious monarchies that had prevailed since the
middle ages.
- Tangled skeins of control and authority that linked metropolitan temples and aristocrats
with provincial holdings were cut away.
- Local toll stations that operated to enrich petty rulers by levying taxes on goods in
 transit were abolished to speed and facilitate commerce.
- Was quite a follower of zen practices such as being a passionate devotee of the tea
ceremony
- Was also open to contact with missionaries esp. when he was convinced of the
corruptions of contemporary Buddhism and how it was trying to grab power from him.

4. Toyotomi Hideyoshi
- Hideyoshi had all Nobunaga’s ambition, but gained a reputation for magnanimity
through his preference for co-opting allies instead of intimidating them, and using his
opponents instead of exterminating them.
- He continued Nobunaga’s work of pacifying Buddhist sectarians in the province of Kii.
Two years later he took control of the island of Shikoku, and in 1587 he conquered
Kyushu by defeating the greatest of the island’s daimyo, the Shimazu.
- He was able to bring about the unification of Japan
- He was appointed imperial regent (kanpaku) in 1585 and became the grand minister of
state (daijō daijin)
- Regularized the practice of delegating rule over subject areas to his leading vassals and
extended this to defeated rivals who accepted him as overlord
- He relied a lot less on the reign of terror but instead began to adopt sons of rivals and
refrained from major purges
- Started to focus on thoughts of conquering Korea and China
 Historians argue that one purpose of the campaign was to occupy the daimyo
armies, since there was no further territory in Japan with which to reward them
 Others suggest that Hideyoshi desired to renew licensed trade with Ming China.
- Also claimed supernatural gifts of himself and accorded to himself a divine status
- The invasions of Korea:
 First invasion: In 1592 a host of more than 158,000 men crossed to Korea, with
China as their ultimate destination. In less than a month they had taken Seoul;
rival daimyo armies then raced north and soon had control of the main Korean
 cities and communication lines. The Japanese were veterans seasoned in the
fighting involved in the unification of Japan, and their muskets gave them
important advantages over the unprepared Koreans. Two months later, how-
ever, a Ming army crossed the Yalu and engaged the Japanese, who fell back to
Seoul. There followed a long period of almost four years of stalemate during
which Korean guerrillas harassed the Japanese. The commanders tried to
extricate themselves through negotiations, and tried to deceive Hideyoshi about
their details. Hideyoshi demanded that the Chinese court provide a consort for
the Japanese emperor, reopen licensed trade with Japan, and that four provinces
of Korea be ceded to Japan. The Chinese in turn assumed Japanese subservience
as the prerequisite for trade, and grandly invested Hideyoshi as “king of Japan”
with gifts of official garments and seals. When Hideyoshi found that his
negotiators had presented him with a hollow victory he once again flew into a
rage and ordered a second invasion of Korea.
 Second invasion began in early 1597: Another 140,000 troops dispatched to
Korea but ended in the following year; resistance from China and Korea grew
very strong, as seen through the ‘turtle ships’ of Korea.

- Hideyoshi also restructured the ‘samurai system’

 Instead of last time in which warriors could be part farmer and part soldier, they
now had to choose only one role  so as to prove loyalty and subservience to
the shogun and loyalty to the lords
- There was also a change from tax assessment in coin to productivity figures expressed in
koku of rice; and tax records, land survey appraisals and samurai income now came to
be expressed in terms converted into rice equivalents
- Together these edicts—land survey, sword hunt, separation of samurai and cultivators,
marshaling of daimyo in presumed obedience to the throne— established new bases for
legitimacy, new status regulations for military and nonmilitary, and new pacification of
 the countryside.

5. Azuchi-Momoyama culture
- The years of unification were also years of economic vigor and prosperity and included
a virtual explosion of cultural activity.
- The highly cultured court nobility and priestly aristocrats lived in some sense at the
mercy of the military despots but they, in turn, were hungry for the cultural legitimacy
the aristocracy of court and temples could confer, and their eagerness for self-promotion
made them unparalleled sponsors and patrons of visual arts of every sort.
- There was also liberation in this period that allowed foreign influences to come in
- Nobunaga’s Azuchi Castle, one he began to build in 1576, and Hideyoshi’s keep at
Momoyama thus gave their name to an era of cultural history remarkable for its
exuberance and opulence. But everywhere in Japan, particularly along the major routes
of communication, daimyo developed castles appropriate to their wealth and potential.
The 1590s were a remarkable decade in which the foundations of the castle, and the
castle town surrounding it with its standing army of samurai as consumers, began to
transform urban life in Japan.
- Hideyoshi’s zest for display extended to the tea ceremony; the standard ideal was one of
 restraint and sobriety, but he did not hesitate to construct for himself a tea house covered
with gold leaf. He also showed that side of his taste in his Grand Kitano Tea Ceremony
in 1587, when he invited the entire population of Kyoto to admire his finest tea
implements and personally served tea to some eight hundred people on the opening day.
- Nobunaga studied tea with Sakai masters and sometimes gave tea utensils to his vassals
as reward for particularly outstanding and valorous service.
- Openness to trade:
 The age was also open to the outside world to a remarkable degree. Japanese
traders and adventurers were to be found in many areas of Southeast Asia where
they operated along the network of ports developed by Chinese traders. The
materials they brought back, ranging from raw materials for munitions to fine
Chinese silk thread that was prized for embroidery, were eagerly sought by the
urban merchants who purveyed their wares to the military des- pots of the castle
towns and their ladies.
 Permits for such trade were issued by Hideyoshi and, after him, the Tokugawa;
great temples, wealthy merchants, and frequently military lords cooperated in
sponsoring such voyages.

6. Third Unifier: Tokugawa Ieyasu

- Established a shogunate that endured until 1868
- Became given the command of the largest consolidated plain, the Kantō, by Hideyoshi.
This plain was worth 2.3 million koku and the vassals there were totally subservient to
him as well as they had no local support there.
- Ieyasu’s administrative developments in Kanto ̄ proved the perfect preparation for his
exercise of national power after the battle of Sekigahara. He placed his most trustworthy
 vassals in locations of strategic importance. He set up a machinery of local
administration and taxation. As his headquarters he selected a small fortress town in the
middle of his new realm instead of rebuilding Odawara, from which the Ho ̄jo ̄ daimyo
had dominated the area. The place he chose became Edo, modern Tokyo. There he set in
progress a massive building plan that required fifteen and more years for its completion.
- In 1603 Ieyasu accepted appointment as shogun, but that did not resolve the problem of
Hideyori (Hideyoshi’s son) at Osaka. Ieyasu felt it necessary to spend a year and nine
months in Fushimi, near the capital, to keep his eye on both Kyoto and Osaka. In 1605
he passed the title of shogun on to his son Hidetada and re- turned farther east to Sunpu
in Shizuoka, but he continued to supervise the construction of the new order; o ̄gosho,
literally “the great palace,” actually refers to its occupant, a retired eminence, but since
Ieyasu’s day it has entered into colloquial Japanese to indicate a behind-the-scenes
mover and shaker of events. Daimyo were ordered to submit registers of their villages
and maps of their territories. In 1606 the court was told that future recommendations of
court rank and offices for military houses would come from Ieyasu.

7. Conclusion
- Each of the unifiers thus built on the work of his predecessor. Nobunaga destroyed the
old order and began the process of centralization; Hideyoshi regularized the daimyo
system, but relied upon the prestige of the imperial court instead of working out a
consistent hierarchy of vassals. Ieyasu, however, lived sixteen years after his greatest
victory and concentrated on steps that would enable his line to endure. He was able to
place his five sons in a ring of outer support and call on the practical experience of
disorder and distrust he had accumulated to work out a system of checks without
balance. The system that resulted stood until 1868.