The Hojo‐dominated Shogunate had stopped the Mongol invasions, but it was a hollow victory for him because the long period of preparedness against the attacks was costly, and the victory offered no war booty and no land with which he could reward his samurai for their services. Samurai discontent spread, and the Hojo family lost control. Chaotic fighting broke out among the shogun’s family, the imperial family, the local lords, and bands of samurai.
Ashikaga Takauji (1305–1358) came out on top and founded the Ashikaga bakufu. But the reach of his government was limited, for the local lords and bands of samurai had retained their control at the local level, and engaged one another in endless warfare. This was the chaotic and violent Warring States or Sengoku period (1467–1600). It was a time of unending military conflict, chronic social disorder, and dark political intrigue. For a century and a half, the Japanese landscape would be a battlefield dominated by the elite class of armor‐wearing, sword‐wielding, and arrow‐shooting samurai warriors galloping on horseback.
A “Foot Soldier Revolution” that began in the fourteenth century soon changed the face of warfare. First, the heavy spear was introduced into combat. It could penetrate the armor of a charging samurai on horseback. Second, local lords began recruiting massive numbers of peasants, and training them quickly and easily into spear‐bearing foot soldiers. After the Europeans introduced firearms to Japan in the sixteenth century, these peasant foot soldiers were further armed with muskets. The massive formations of spear‐ and musket‐bearing foot soldiers became the bulk of a fighting force that could effectively contend with any band of samurai warriors. Warfare reached new heights in scale and brutality. The samurai kept losing ground until they reached the verge of extinction as a class of elite warriors; they would, however, survive as a class with a fundamentally different function.
Earlier, local lords had built moderately fortified castles that were sufficient to fend off attacks by mounted samurai with bows and arrows. But these castles would burn and collapse under attack by firearms. Rising to the challenge, local lords built larger and stronger castles to fend off attack by muskets and cannon. They also turned these new castles into the seat of their governments, from which they would gather their troops and administer their domains. These expanded castles soon grew into “castle towns” by attracting ordinary people and merchants.
A strong local lord would go to war with the vision of bringing all of Japan under his control. The successful unifier was Overlord Oda Nobunaga (1534–1584). He conquered the country with his massive peasant armies bearing spears and muskets. He then built strong castles at strategic locations to serve as military and administrative centers. He standardized currency, eliminated customs barriers, and opened up Nagasaki to foreign trade. When he was murdered, his general and successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598) continued the drive for unification. Hideyoshi undertook a national survey to compile registries of land, population, and towns and villages. It was of profound significance, for information in the registries became the basis for measures to collect land taxes, impose drafts, and tie peasants to the land. His creation of a powerful and centralized state would serve as a solid foundation for the great period of peace and prosperity and dramatic social change under the Tokugawa.
When Hideyoshi died, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616) became regent to his infant son, but he seized the reins of power and became shogun instead. He relocated his bakufu from Kamakura down the road to Edo (modern Tokyo), and further strengthened and centralized the government bureaucracy. His restructured government worked so well that he was able to complete Japan’s unification, end the slaughter and destruction of endless civil wars, and create two and a half centuries of peace, stability, and economic growth. His Tokugawa Shogunate was the last and greatest of the shogunates.
Map of Japan during and after Oda Nobunaga’s reign.
Source: From https://www.samurai‐archives.com/image/1583.gif. Reproduced with permission of C.E. West and F.W. Seal.
The Tokugawa shoguns adopted many measures to consolidate their power. One measure was the Alternate Residence System. The shoguns required the local lords to spend alternate years in residence in Edo, to leave their favorite wives and sons behind as hostages when they returned to their domains, and to spend lavishly on maintaining elaborate residences both in the capital and at home. This system gave the shogun the institutional apparatus to hit two birds with one stone: It enabled him to exercise physical control over the person of the local lords even as he emptied their coffers. The shoguns also frequently called on the local lords to “make loans” to the government to support such public projects as waterworks, and it was understood that these “loans” would never be paid back. The shoguns quickly built up their strength and filled up their coffers at the expense of the local lords. It wasn’t long before the local lords found themselves still in possession of their domains, but no longer enjoying autonomy. The Tokugawa shoguns had created a centralized feudal state.
Although Tokugawa Ieyasu came from peasant stock, he enforced a policy of freezing class lines and creating a system that was nearly a caste system. The royal family was set apart and above all other classes. The rest of society was divided into four classes: the samurai, the peasants, the artisans, and the merchants, in descending order. This Japanese social structure was a modification of the Chinese model, in which the Japanese samurai warrior class replaced the Chinese scholar‐official class.
The Tokugawa shoguns had little use for the military prowess of the samurai warriors in a unified country where peace reigned. But they did face a new demand for a large number of civil administrators to run their elaborate government bureaucracy. Under these new circumstances, the samurai class of sword‐wielding warriors morphed into a class of pen‐pushing bureaucrats. But to make the transition, they had to go through the crucible of studying the Confucian classics, for it would teach them the essential skills of a bureaucrat—reading and writing—and instill in them a strong sense of loyalty to the emperor (and, by extension, to the shogun).
The warrior‐turned‐bureaucrat samurai were given the privilege of being the only men permitted to staff the state bureaucracy as civil officials. But the privilege came at a price: They were required to reside in the castle‐towns and give up their right to own land in exchange for a fixed stipend. They were also banned from switching masters, which had been a common cause of social instability. Thus, the once‐proud class of warriors was turned into a class of salaried administrators sitting in government offices.
Peasants were confined to living on the land and cultivating crops in the countryside. They were banned from owning weapons. Merchants were officially relegated to the bottom of society as the fourth class. A near‐frozen caste‐like system was now in place.
The Tokugawa policies produced the unintended consequence of a commercial revolution. First, they created a stable and peaceful environment that was inductive to economic and population growth. Second, the local lords had to sell the harvests from their land in order to acquire cash to purchase goods and services they needed in the capital and their castle‐towns, and this created a sharp increase in the demand for trade and cash. Osaka became the commercial center of Japan, especially of its rice trade. The commercialization of Japan’s economy turned the country into a money society.
The lords and samurai were inept at managing money, and the lowly merchants were soon the money managers of their social superiors. When inflation hit, however, the samurai with their fixed stipends became impoverished, and were often reduced to being debtors to the merchants who were managing their money. The officially high