Organizer: David D. Neilson, University of Oregon

Chair and Discussant: Suzanne Gay, Oberlin College

Outside of Japan, the Sengoku Period (1577-1600) is the least studied era in Japanese history. This is due to a number of factors, not the least of which is that because the era is characterized by a century of civil wars and the lack of an effective central government, many of the legal and political institutions whose records historians often use, simply did not exist. While no sense of nation existed for much of the Sengoku Period, a great deal of modern research has focused on the unification process as a mechanism for explaining the age as a whole. Recently the work of historians such as Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hitomi Tonomura, and Suzanne Gay has opened up new avenues of historical exploration by focusing on smaller scale histories of specific local communities as a rich source of historical information. This panel seeks to take that concept in new directions.

While a sense of community was taken for granted in religious communities, or the wards of Kyoto, people outside those areas were often left adrift. Each of the panelists looks at a place and/or a group of persons whose efforts were toward the creation of a community that lent a sense of stability and continuity to their lives in an uncertain age. These communities provided people with security and prosperity that may not have been possible otherwise. This, in turn, created a desire to broaden their scope. This broader trend in Japanese society toward forging peace on the local level was a critical component that allowed the broader designs of the unifiers to be implemented on a national scale.

Hiroshi Niki, Osaka City University

During the Sengoku Period (1477-1600), a period characterized by lawlessness, constant warfare, and the lack of an effective central government, powerful, regional military leaders known as Daimyo formed independent domains throughout Japan. Meanwhile, another domain was being formed in the Nishioka area in the western suburbs of Kyoto. Its leadership though, was quite different. Unlike the daimyo-ruled areas, this domain was not the product of the military efforts of a regional hegemon, but was formed through an alliance of dogo; village leaders who possessed landed wealth and exercised considerable local military and political influence. While daimyo were based out of castles, these dogo were centered on fortified mansions and Shinto shrines. Within their domain, they were self-governing in matters of religion, military affairs, and the administration of justice.

The style of coalition rule seen in Nishioka provides us with a considerable contrast to the much better known process of political, economic, and military consolidation that was typical for the much more thoroughly studied daimyo. It is also different from the patterns of independent rule developed by some of the Buddhist temples and the block associations that sprung up in Kyoto proper. Eventually, the Nishioka domain was broken up by Hosokawa Fujitaka, one of the vassals of Oda Nobunaga (1536-82) as part of the process of national unification that would be completed by 1590. While Nishioka was not destined to be a long lasting political entity, the break from better known patterns of governance provides us with valuable insight into the dynamics of the Sengoku age.

Andrew E. Goble, University of Oregon

The social turbulence of the Sengoku era was a stimulus to the emergence of new communities, designed to provide protection and belonging in a shared quest for survival. Sometimes these were existing communities renewed and strengthened, other times they were new communities of interest formed from residents of contiguous areas, and on some occasions they were entirely new communities formed by refugees from other areas.

This paper will examine one of the latter types, the Ishiyama Honganji at Naka no shima (Osaka) in the 1580s. The paper will look not at the belief system of this religious community, but at some of the dynamics that operated in the formation of community bonds.

The paper will use the example of the provision of medical services, and of medicines, by a new entrant, Yamashina Tokitsune. Tokitsune entered the community as a political refugee, and received significant protection, but his place in this community – where prior social status seems not to have transferred - required that he establish a reputation of being a contributing member of it. Broadly speaking, gift exchange was a basic component of that process. We will look at such factors as the types of medical needs he served, the dynamics of patient relationships, aspects of reciprocity, and exchanges of physical gifts, in order to obtain a sense of some of the ways in which goodwill (not necessarily altruistic) contributed both to acceptance into a community and to strengthening of that community.

Lee Butler, Brigham Young University

A brief consideration of Japanese culture during the mid-Tokugawa period suggests that extensive social and cultural integration (seen in a "common culture") had by that time taken place. Of course there remained differences in attitudes, language, and cultural practices between those of the highest classes or statuses and those of common birth. But more striking are the similarities, the areas in which high and low could by this time "speak" to each other. Consider for example arts such as chanoyu, calligraphy, and flower arranging,--each of which was pursued by individuals from virtually every rank of life.

If we move back 250 years this matter of social and cultural integration is less clear. My paper will examine this issue, focusing on the aristocratic Kujô estate of Hineno (Izumi province) in the early sixteenth century. The primary source for this exercise is Tabihikitsuke, a diary that Kujô Masamoto kept during four years he resided in Hineno, beginning in 1501. Masamoto’s reason for being in Hineno was to preserve it as Kujô land, and he spent his days working to that effect. This required considerable association and struggle with villagers, local warriors, Negorôji priests, and regional bakufu officials--and many of those associations are described in the diary. There we see that social and cultural integration had clearly begun by 1500--as seen in religious festivals, seasonal observances, language usage, performing arts, and gift-giving practices. Yet, as I will show, the situation was hardly unambiguous; in some areas the divide between high and low was still as distinct as it had been five centuries earlier.

David D. Neilson, University of Oregon

Select portions of this set of privately held documents have only been available for fifteen years. While much new information and an unprecedented degree of personal observation permeate the work, the silence regarding the documents in Japanese academic circles is perplexing. Using the documents is highly discouraged and would be an invitation to criticism. Some have gone so far as to declare the entire work to be a forgery. The documents are routinely avoided, if not blacklisted by professional historians. Conversely, the documents have received extraordinarily wide attention as a source for novelists, television dramas, and amateur historians.

Because the documents contain a great deal of information on notable figures such as Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, historians seem inclined to view the documents as a national history. As so much of the information in the Maeno/Yoshida documents is either new or does not agree with well known and long accepted works, suspicions have been raised.

It is my contention that looking at these documents as a flawed national history is a serious misinterpretation. The documents must properly contextualized and accepted for what they are; a record of a clan’s relationship with its own history and a living document that was copied and commented upon over successive generations. It is not a national history or a record of political unification under the Oda and Toyotomi regimes, but a valuable clan and local/regional history that just so happens to regularly intersect with events and persons of national importance.