Organizer and Chair: Harold Bolitho, Harvard University
Discussant: Neil McMullin, University of Toronto
Historians seem to be in general agreement about the part played by ikko ikki-a series of uprisings in late-fifteenth and sixteenth century Japan-in complicating a situation already tangled by the ambitions of competing warlords. The list of major pitched battles involving members of the Shin sect of Buddhism is certainly an impressive one. From the battle of Tayagawara in 1481, through the battle of Tagaojo, 1488, to encounters in 1506 at Kuzuryugawa and Hanyano, and on to later battles at Sendanno (1536), and Daishoji omote (1555), ikko activities kept a large portion of the Japan Sea coast-the provinces of Kaga, Etchu, Echizen and Echigo-in an uproar. The numbers of ikko insurgents were substantial, over a hundred thousand in some instances, enabling them to field armies of as many as 20,000 and more. Their achievements, despite defeats in 1506 and 1555 at the hands of the Asakura family, warlords of Echigo, were equally impressive. They gained control of the entire province of Kaga in 1488, and kept it for the best part of a century, and they were responsible for the deaths of two successive deputy governors of Echigo in 1506 and 1536.
Even more importantly, in central Japan, by the latter part of the sixteenth century, ikko activities can be seen obstructing and delaying the process of unification. The first intimation of this was the 1564 battle of Kamiwada. Despite the small numbers involved here (an ikko force of less than a thousand), it is nevertheless of significance because of the embarrassment it caused the young Tokugawa (then still Matsudaira) Ieyasu. The culmination came with a decade long campaign against the headquarters of Shin Buddhism, the Honganji temple at Ishiyama, at the hands of Oda Nobunaga and at a time (1570-80) when this major unifying figure would have preferred to be using his forces elsewhere.
Where historians have disagreed, however, is in the motivations of the ikko insurgents. Put simply, the issue is this: were they motivated by religious zeal and mobilized by sect leaders at Ishiyama, or were they more exercised by material concerns involving matters of local and regional autonomy? The three papers in this panel address various aspects of this problem: first, developments within late medieval village communities of a kind encouraging conflict with civil authority; second, the religious and social origins of Shin Buddhist militancy; third, the interplay of these two elements in the unfolding of particular uprisings. The discussant may raise a different, but related problem: how appropriate to late medieval Japan is an arbitrary division between the sacred and secular realms?
Kristina Kade Troost, Duke University
Sixteenth century Japanese villages faced dramatic changes in their political and economic circumstances. The expansion of warfare, consolidation of political power, commercial growth, rising yields, the introduction of new crops and rapid demographic growth all had an impact on village society. At the same time, villages had developed institutions and practices over the previous two centuries which influenced their response to these forces and the options available to the local military elite, as the latter attempted to increase their control over the rural population and their products.
This paper proposed to examine how three semi autonomous, self governing villages known as soson confronted these challenges to village authority. Imabori in Omi was located near the junction of several major trading routes, and its medieval inhabitants engaged in long distance trade. Suganoura, on the northern edge of Lake Biwa in Omi, had an economy based largely on fishing and shipping. Higashimura, in Kokawa no sho in Kii, was primarily a rice producing village. Each village faced challenges to its political autonomy from external military figures and to their ability to control their own inhabitants in the face of economic and social change.
Self governing villages are often cited as being the precursors of the semi autonomous village of the Tokugawa period. Questions concerning the continuity between medieval and early modern villages have to address the sixteenth century: what were the major forces for change at the village level; in what ways did villages change, economically, socially, politically; what were the important continuities or differences between the medieval and early modern village? A close examination of three sixteenth century villages will serve to illuminate the sixteenth century and the transition to the Tokugawa period.
Galen Amstutz, Florida State University
The ikko ikki were opportunistic manifestations of certain potentials in the longer history of Shin Buddhist socio religious ideology. The ideology originated with the teachings of Shinran (1173-1262), who recast Buddhist thought in a way that eliminated monasticism and laity, instead putting spiritual egalitarianism (dobo) at the theoretical center. Shinran's ideas had been consolidated into a systematic program by the Honganji institution beginning with Kakunyo (1270-1351); the program's features included local memberships organized around village meeting halls, the charismatic headship of Shinran's lineal successors, relative separation from normal thaumaturgical Buddhism, the separation of civil (ooboo) and religious (buppoo, i.e. Shin Buddhist) spheres, and a fundamental independence from the power structure of the traditional aristocratic and military regimes. Honganji's program appealed to middle elites in medieval society, including traders, merchants, and local armed cultivators, and the popularity of the tradition exploded under Rennyo (1425-1499), when Rennyo's shrewd religious leadership was combined with a rapid expansion of the sociopolitical opportunities available to those elites after the Onin War. Despite the principle of civil and religious separation which Rennyo had continued to espouse to protect the religion, during the temporary historical phase which followed (from the 1483 ikko defeats of Togashi rule in Kaga until the 1583 quashing of the last Saiga forts by Hideyoshi) the sengoku political disorder in Japan allowed Shin members not only to expand their independent religious network, but also to ignore the principle of separation and to encroach locally on the regime of land control and taxation which they regarded as oppressive. In areas such as Kaga, Mikawa and Settsu, regions of independent Shin self governance arose. Membership grew about five hundred percent between ca. 1400 and 1500 and the Honganji jinaicho (temple trade center) at the headquarters in Ishiyama (later Osaka) became the most vigorous economic site in Japan circa 1570. Despite passionate resistance, between 1570 and 1583 the ikko ikki were destroyed by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi in the process of bakufu consolidation. However, the pragmatic Shin members reverted almost instantly to the orthodox ooboo buppoo separation principle, and the basic religious institution and its ideological program were unchanged. Between ca. 1600 and 1720, under the stimulus of bakufu temple regulation policy, Honganji membership grew an additional sixteen hundred percent and became one of the main influences on Tokugawa culture.
Carol Richmond, Harvard University
Members of the ikko sect-the Honganji branch of Jodo Shinshu-joined in a variety of military adventures between the mid fifteenth- and late-sixteenth centuries, including but not limited to uprisings. These adventures, referred to collectively as the ikko ikki, culminated in perhaps the best-known of all ikko ikki, the Ishiyama War, a ten-year war of resistance against unifier Oda Nobunaga. Nearly as well-known as the Ishiyama War is the ikko ikki which defeated Togashi Masachika, the Kaga shugo, in 1488, and which is generally credited with ruling Kaga province for the next hundred years. The 1488 success prompted one courtier diarist to describe Kaga as a "province held by peasants," an often-quoted phrase which has been used to characterize the ikko ikki as a sort of popular movement.
This view has not gone unchallenged, however. Some historians argue that, to a Kyoto aristocrat, a very powerful local magnate would rate as no more than a domin-person of the earth-and so the "peasants" may easily have been powerful local warriors. Such scholars argue that the very lowliest of ikki participants were jizamurai, and should be classed not as peasants, but as warriors.
It can also be argued, however, that jizamurai, being only part time warriors, did not fully hold bushi status, and can be seen as village representatives. The debate, then, encompasses questions about the relationship of autonomous villages to the ikki, and more broadly, about the nature of rural society in the sengoku period. This paper focuses on the village/ikki relationship, with particular reference to ikki in the Kinai and Hokuriku in l506 and in Mikawa in 1563.
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