Organizer and Chair: Philip C. Brown, Ohio State University
Discussant: Harold Bolitho, Harvard University
Attempts to characterize the state, state authority, and their relationship to Tokugawa society have been the source of heated disputes in the post-war era. Early attempts labeled the Tokugawa political order as centralized feudal, a re-structured feudalism, the outcome of a feudal revolution, or absolutist. During the 1960s to 1970s, several scholars began to characterize the political order as a compound state, a federal state, or even as a confederation. At the same time that these debates on the institutional structure of the state and the degree of its control over daimyo have been contested, the relationship between domain lord (daimyo, hatamoto, or shogun) and commoners has also come under reconsideration. Current research has lead incrementally to the view that commoners, even rural agriculturalists, were increasingly able to negotiate successfully with authorities, even in areas like land taxation where the rulers' actions have been viewed as largely unrestrained early in the Tokugawa period.
The papers in this panel push the reconsideration of state authority in new directions. Two papers, Fukaya Katsumi's and Hori Shin's, represent part of a new, coordinated group effort to re-examine Okayama domain. Patricia Sippel's paper re-examines the relationship between villagers and Bakufu administration. John Morris examines the relationship between centralizing tendencies within the Tokugawa state and the patterns of samurai fief-holding.
Creating the 'Ideal Lord' (Meikun) and the 'Domain-Walled State'
Katsumi Fukaya, Waseda University, Tokyo
Data from Okayama domain are analyzed to examine the way in which the image of enlightened lordship (meikun) functioned to structure daimyo-shogunal relations in what he terms as a "state bounded by domain walls" (hanpei kokaa). This conceptualization of the early modern Japanese state draws its inspiration from a phrase found in a late eighteenth century history of the Ikeda house. The author sees in the image of enlightened lordship the embodiment of the unequal status relationship between the daimyo and shogun and views the domains as inferior states, subordinated through that ideal.
Bucking for a Promotion: Internal Motives and Formal Rationale in the Efforts to
Gain a Promotion for Ikeda Tsunemasa
Shin Hori, Waseda University, Tokyo
By the late 17th century, a movement within the Bakufu had developed to limit the promotions of daimyo military rank on the grounds that many such promotions had become empty in substantial degree. Within domains, however, the desire of leading officials to see their daimyo lords promoted remained strong. Using a rare set of documents from the Ikeda House collection, this paper examines the motives of domain leaders as expressed in internal correspondence and other documents and juxtaposes them, with the formal rationale that was put forward by these same leaders when they presented their case for promoting Ikeda Tsunemasa to the Shogunate. This set of documents is then used to reflect on the relationships between Okayama domain and the Shogunate.
Central Control or Parallel Evolution: Samurai Landholding in Tokugawa Japan
John F. Morris, Miyagi Gakuin Women's Junior College, Sendai, Japan
It has long been a central tenant of early modern Japanese history that samurai fiefs "effectively" became defunct during the 17th century. This typically is understood as reflecting a tightening of "central control" over diverse tendencies the Tokugawa polity and an important step in achieving political stability.
While it is undeniable that samurai fiefs underwent fundamental changes between the 16th and 17th centuries, it is an overstatement to say that they disappeared from the Tokugawa political structure. Fiefs granted as holdings in land are estimated to have existed in some 17% of all domains, accounting for exactly half of the "kokudaka" of the same.
Since the holders of the overwhelming majority of these fiefs did not hold full and independent rights of administration, jurisdiction and taxation, their existence is dismissed as "insignificant." This approach tells us a lot about what the fief holders did not do: it tells us nothing about what they did do. Trying to move beyond this negative approach is difficult because we know so little about landed-fiefs in general, and what we do know does not lend itself to quick generalization. This paper moves beyond studies of individual fief systems to develop a typology of fief systems, the points of convergence between the systems themselves, and the logic informing these systems. It will be argued that more than "centralizing tendencies" played an important part in determining the shape of fiefs for the smaller samurai in the Tokugawa polity.
Whose Village, Whose State?: Negotiating Taxes in the Tokugawa Domain in the Late
Eighteenth Century
Patricia G. Sippel, Temple University, Tokyo
During the third quarter of the eighteenth century, a number of villages in the northern Kanto region petitioned the Tokugawa Bakufu to reduce their regular agricultural taxes on the grounds that their output and their living standards were declining. In particular, local leaders asked that a portion of the fields in their communities be recognized as "abandoned" and, therefore, outside the basis of tax assessment. Bakufu officials saw abandoned fields (arechi) as a sign of bad social mores and lax administration, and as a dangerous threat to government financial health. Their initial response was simply to deny the validity of village claims, urging local officials to enforce existing tax policies more strictly. Beyond that, the Bakufu proposed to solve the problem of abandoned fields with interventionist policies that included moving new cultivators into depopulated villages. Its aims were clear: restoring agricultural productivity and the capacity to pay taxes. Village interests, however, pointed in other directions. In Shimotsuke Province, for example, local leaders secured recognition for a growing number of abandoned fields and accepted few immigrants.
In tracing the negotiations on abandoned fields, this paper argues that village communities and the Bakufu acted in an economic, political and cultural context that permitted or promoted certain options while rejecting others as impossible, unattractive, or immoral. Within that context, both sides competed to interpret the rules of tax assessment and legitimate government in their favor. Both engaged in an ongoing process of negotiation that continually shaped and reshaped the nature of state authority.