Finally, the daimyo owed the shogun the service of attendance, which was officially described as “the duty of attendance upon the shogun by turns,” or “reporting for attendance alternately”—the institution of sankin-kotai, which obliged each daimyo to leave his province every other year and spend several months in Edo at the shogun’s court. When the daimyo returned to his fief, he was required to leave his wife and children in Edo as “guests of state”—actually as hostages. This practice was strictly enforced and minutely regulated, as was the restriction on the number of warriors the daimyo could take with him from his fief, since the natural tendency (often more for reasons of prestige and appearance than for fomenting a revolt) was to travel with as imposing a contingent of warriors as a daimyo’s wealth would permit. Frequent congestion in Edo and upon the highways was a common occurrence, as were the incidents caused by concern for precedence at crossings or barriers. In 1721, new regulations from Edo established that the rulers of fiefs yielding 200,000 koku of rice or more were not to travel with or station in Edo more than 20 cavalrymen (bajo), 130 foot soldiers (ashigaru), and 300 petty attendants (chugen, ninsoku). And yet, it was not uncommon for powerful daimyo to disregard these injunctions. As Tsukahira notes, the lord of Mori in Choshu kept over two thousand warriors in his mansion in Edo. It is not difficult to imagine the effect produced by this and other bands of mounted knights, warriors of high rank, foot soldiers, and assorted troops as a long procession, containing the palanquin of the lord and those of his most important vassals in the middle of the column, moved at a majestic pace through towns and along the roads of the nation, their standards floating high and their weapons glinting in the sun. These periodical journeys became one of the most salient events of the Tokugawa period and its most stirring form of military pageantry. Only time and the progressive impoverishment of the buke gradually reduced these processions in size and pomp. After 1747, “the average size of a daimyo’s procession ranged between 150 and 300 persons” (Tsukahira, 80).
The daimyo, as the highest representative of the military class after the shogun, had to adhere strictly to the Thirteen Laws of the Military Houses (Buke Sho-hatto) promulgated by Ieyasu. These laws imposed upon each daimyo, among other obligations, that of capturing and surrendering immediately to the shogun’s representatives any rebels who were to be found within the boundaries of his domain, since anyone acting against the state acted against the law and social order (Articles 3 and 4). It is interesting to note that the authorities recognized a distinction between that morality which was based upon reason and that which was accepted a priori as the basis of social law. In these articles, for example, it is actually specified that since the law is the essence of social order, reason could be violated in favor of the law, but the law must never be violated in favor of reason. Each daimyo had to prevent unauthorized outsiders from entering or remaining in his fief (Article 5). He could not even make any substantial repairs to his castle nor to those of his vassals without the shogun’s express authorization, and he was absolutely forbidden to build a new castle or fortifications of any kind (Article 6). He had to send a report to Edo concerning conspiracies being hatched in neighboring domains (Article 7), and he could not enter into any alliance by marriage without the shogun’s permission (Article 8)—such an unauthorized act being considered the “root of treason.” He could not surround himself with large numbers of retainers when traveling to Edo, unless such an escort was composed of the shogun’s own troops. If he were a daimyo of high rank, he might be permitted an escort of about twenty horsemen (Article 9). As an honorary consideration, all daimyo were entitled to wear special types and qualities of official attire (which insured that they would be readily identifiable) and ride in special palanquins (Article 11).
The Military Retainer: The Samurai
All these retainers in the service of the shogun, or stationed in the provinces under the command of the various daimyo, formed an “immense standing army” (Brinkley1, 116). From the humblest foot soldier entitled to wear the daisho to the highest among the warriors of the upper ranks who were permitted to ride horses, they all belonged to the same warrior class, the buke, and were known as men of war (bushi) or, more commonly, as retainers (mononofu, wasarau). After 1869, they were qualified as former military subjects (shizoku), but the world at large continued to refer to them by that Chinese name which has become famous in many languages and is generally translated as “vassal” (samurahi, samurai). In its ancient form, the title of “samurai” had once been assigned (according to Frederic) to the leaders of armed clans in the North and, in a slightly modified form (goshozamurai), to warriors of aristocratic clans attached to the imperial court during the Muromachi period. Contracted phonetically into “samurai,” the term was extended to denote all warriors who were permitted to wear the long and short swords (daisho) in the service of a lord, and was more specifically and correctly translated as “one who serves.”
Emerging from the mists of the eleventh century, these samurai had witnessed (and often helped to bring about) many portentous changes in the social climate and structure of their land. As we have noted in surveying the major wielders of power in ancient Japan and the instruments through which that power was effectively exercised, the warriors organized under the feudal lords were, by the time Ieyasu elevated them to a position of primary prestige, structured and positioned within categories and ranks whose number and importance varied according to their master’s position in the central or provincial hierarchy of the buke, the size and wealth of the clan to which they belonged, and the function they were called upon to perform within their clan. The complexity of their professional composition during the Tokugawa period reflected the enormous increase in their number and the enlarged range of their professional sophistication, which had spilled over from the guard-posts and the battlefields into the administrative precincts of the social and political life of Japan. That complexity bore only a faint resemblance to the original simplicity of those military clans which had once been so closely related to, and dependent upon, the productive land of the myo as to have been barely distinguishable from the clans of farmers. The prototypes of that early composition were, admittedly, still a factor in the social mix, although submerged beneath the accretions of rank divisions and subdivisions, prestige, wealth, and so forth.
Warriors had once appeared in small, armed groups composed primarily of a leader, a number of mounted horsemen, and additional warriors on foot (zusa). The latter, in particular, had been the vital substratum of the class and had become increasingly numerous as the political unrest of the 1500s and 1600s began to offer many farmers and—although to a lesser degree—townsmen, a chance to move up socially and economically (as did Europe’s soldiers of fortune) by gaining a position in a clearly ascending class, or by enriching themselves on the spoils of a troubled era. These warriors on foot became known as the fighters with “agile legs” (ashigaru), and this category of lower warriors, being directly exposed to the ethics of the upper warriors whom they faithfully obeyed in times of peace or whom they followed unhesitatingly into the thick of battle, gradually acquired the same attachment to and identification with the buke as their masters. From their ranks was to emerge Hideyoshi, one of Japan’s greatest feudal leaders, who preceded Ieyasu as supreme military dictator (kampaku) over the entire country.
The ashigaru were followed, in turn, by numerous “small assistants” (chugen, komono, arashiko) who performed all the menial and undignified tasks which the categories of warriors above them refused to perform—with increasing regularity.
These cohorts of warriors and their leaders could all look back, then, upon those ancient days gone by when the appellations of “barbarians” and “rebels” had been hurled at them by an increasingly effete and impotent aristocracy in Kyoto. They had all been