Organizer and Chair: Lee A. Butler, Brigham Young University
Discussant: Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, York University
Postwar historiography has not been kind to Japan's imperial court of the late medieval and early modern eras (1334-1868). Put bluntly, the court has been ignored, seen as irrelevant. This panel takes a first step-in the west-at rectifying that situation. Our papers will show that this lengthy period of history cannot be understood separately from the court, and that the court remained, or once again became, a force in politics, society, economics, and art.
While some scholars have been willing to acknowledge the symbolic role of emperor and court during this era, we hope to move beyond such abstractions. Historical sources exist that allow us to probe the workings of the court, and it is upon these that our papers are based. House documents and court diaries, as well as pioneering but long ignored works such as Okuno Takahiro's study of imperial family income, are the basis of Suzanne Gay's and Eiketsu Hirose's papers on the Muromachi court's institutional structure and economics.
Lee Butler's paper on ceremony likewise makes use of court diaries, in particular Oyudononoue no nikki, a record kept by women serving in the imperial palace. These are supplemented by Emperor Gomizunoo's fascinating treatise on "annual observances," written around 1650.
For Lee Bruschke-Johnson, the evidence is indeed in the writing. She analyzes plentiful examples of courtier calligraphy of the early seventeenth century to show that the court's revival of the time reached the artistic sphere as well as those of politics and economics.
The Economics of Imperial Authority in Muromachi Kyoto
Suzanne Gay, Oberlin College
The Japanese imperial court of the late medieval period has been generally dismissed in Western scholarship as of little real political consequence. I contend that although the Muromachi shogunate exercised police and judicial powers, the imperial institution remained vital, even central, to the medieval state. The medieval power structure was not a zero-sum game in which warriors rose at the expense of the imperial court; rather the court led by the emperor was the entity whose spiritual authority allowed a ruling order of competing, multiple elites to exist.
The imperial court's continuing influence and prestige in Kyoto can be discerned through its economic activities. Although the shogunate controlled parts of the imperial budget and the court is commonly thought to have declined to a threadbare state, imperial dependence on the shogunate was not complete. Forms of imperial income changed with the late medieval economy: imperially-controlled lands shrank drastically, but income came from other sources: commercial groups, toll stations, service from subordinate townspeople, and a percentage of aristocratic sinecures. With the decline of the shogunate and the departure of leading warriors from Kyoto during the Onin War, the emperor and aristocracy relied on their own sources of income. Ultimately, the office and prestige of the emperor endured beyond that of the Muromachi shogun because of the universal perception that the emperor's authority was indispensably sacred, overriding the force of arms; imperial economic activities also aided in his survival.
The Role of the Emperor and the Court within the Muromachi State
Eiketsu Henry Hirose, Harvard University
The Japanese imperial court loses much of its political power with the advent of the samurai shogunates. It has been largely assumed, until recently, that henceforth the imperial court lost much of its significance and that it existed solely as an anachronistic world unto its own. With the following paper, I will attempt to show that the imperial court, specifically of the Muromachi period, was a viable institution of the medieval Muromachi state. The various court ceremonies, traditions, and the existence of the emperor and the court itself, gave the Muromachi state the legitimacy that it needed to survive.
The emperor and the court gave legitimacy to the state structure in various ways. The emperor was the nominal head of the Ritsuryo system of government, dating back to the Nara period, which included all of the samurai class. There was also the practice of the granting of names by the emperor to the shogun. In addition, there was the moral authority of a sovereign whose life was dedicated to learning, the arts, and to cultivating virtue.
The significance of the court can be further seen in the degree of fusion it achieved with the samurai governmental structure. The Muromachi shogun simply managed to annex the court bureaucracy and made it part of the Muromachi state. The emperor was made a nominal figure above it all that gave the entire state structure, both the samurai side and the court-aristocracy side, its legitimacy. I propose to call this unique state structure of the Muromachi period the kobu gattai bakufu.
The Court's "Annual Observances": From Warring States to Reunification
Lee A. Butler, Brigham Young University
Few characteristics are so intricately associated with Japan's premodern emperors and court as the yearly round of ceremonies known as nenjû gyôji or "annual observances." Ceremony, we are told, was at the heart of the court, defining its role in society and government and symbolizing its importance. The purpose of my paper is to examine court ceremony from 1467 to 1650, a period, some have argued, in which the court itself, let alone its ceremony, had become superfluous.
Without question, court ceremony suffered during the warring states era. Many of the most elaborate ceremonies were postponed indefinitely. And yet court ceremony survived and was largely revived during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth, centuries. It is this process of decline and revival, and the underlying assumptions and attitudes toward court ceremony, that I will probe in my paper. The annual observances provide, I believe, a window on the court of the day, showing how and why it emerged from sengoku as a significant political and social force.
Among the questions I ask are these: Wherein lay the importance of ceremony to the court? How and why was ceremony revived following sengoku? For whom did the annual observances matter? (Who besides the emperors had a stake in their observance? From an economic viewpoint, the livelihood of court diviners and certain priests was tied to ceremony). What was the warriors' attitude toward ceremony?-after all, the Tokugawa shogunate established its own annual observances, modeled to a large degree on the court's.
The Court and Revival of Japanese-Style Calligraphy During the Early Seventeenth
Century
Lee Bruschke-Johnson, Leiden University
Aspects of the conscious effort to glorify the imperial court are evident in the arts of the cultural milieu surrounding the emperors Goyôzei (1571-1617) and Gomizunoo (1596-1680). In this paper I will reevaluate the contributions of aristocrats to Japanese-style (wayô) calligraphy and its connoisseurship, critical to understanding the artistic developments of this time and their relation to the art of Japan's classical past.
Having gone through a period of stagnation during medieval times, Japanese-style arts, including wayô calligraphy, underwent a renaissance during the later part of the sengoku era. Studies of 17th century Japanese art history -based primarily on painting and focusing on the continuation of Momoyama themes-have often neglected the innovative and influential calligraphic works of aristocrats, particularly Konoe Nobutada (1565-1615) and Karasumaru Mitsuhiro (1570-1638). Nobuta, for example, popularized calligraphy folding screens, creating large-scale works with calligraphy as the focal decorative element, magnifying and reinterpreting this most courtly art form.
Kyoto aristocrats also contributed to the vogue for displaying antique works of Japanese script, or kohitsu, during tea gatherings. Many works of calligraphy formerly utilized as copybooks were cut apart and mounted as hanging scrolls for this purpose or as part of connoisseurship albums (tekagamî). This enhanced the value of aristocratic art collections and courtiers' knowledge as connoisseurs of calligraphic history. While works were regrettably dismantled, the practice clearly indicates the new appreciation for-and emphasis on the visibility of-works of classical calligraphy from the pinnacle of aristocratic ascendancy.