More About the Political Controls in the Bakuhan System
An evolution had taken place in the centuries from the time of the Kamakura bakufu, which existed in equilibrium with the imperial court, to the Tokugawa, when the bushi became the unchallenged rulers in what historian Edwin O. Reischauer called a "centralized feudal" form of government. Instrumental in the rise of the new bakufu was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the main beneficiary of the achievements of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. Already powerful, Ieyasu profited by his transfer to the rich Kanto area. He maintained 2.5 million koku of land, had a new headquarters at Edo, a strategically situated castle town (the future Tokyo), and had an additional 2 million koku of land and thirty-eight vassals under his control. After Hideyoshi's death, Ieyasu moved quickly to seize control from the Toyotomi family.
Ieyasu's victory over the western daimyo at the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) gave him virtual control of all Japan. He rapidly abolished numerous enemy daimyo houses, reduced others, such as that of the Toyotomi, and redistributed the spoils of war to his family and allies. Ieyasu still failed to achieve complete control of the western daimyo, but his assumption of the title of shogun helped consolidate the alliance system. After further strengthening his power base, Ieyasu was confident enough to install his son Hidetada (1579-1632) as shogun and himself as retired shogun in 1605. The Toyotomi were still a significant threat, and Ieyasu devoted the next decade to their eradication. In 1615 the Toyotomi stronghold at Osaka was destroyed by the Tokugawa army.
The Tokugawa (or Edo) period brought 200 years of stability to Japan. The political system evolved into what historians call bakuhan, a combination of the terms bakufu ("tent" or military, i,e, centralized monarchical government) and han (domains) to describe the government and society of the period. In the bakuhan, the shogun had national authority and the daimyo had regional authority, a new unity in the feudal structure, which had an increasingly large bureaucracy to administer the mixture of centralized and decentralized authorities. The Tokugawa became more powerful during their first century of rule: land redistribution gave them nearly 7 million koku, control of the most important cities, and a land assessment system reaping great revenues.
The feudal hierarchy was completed by the various classes of daimyo. Closest to the Tokugawa house were the shinpan, or "related houses." They were twenty-three daimyo on the borders of Tokugawa lands, daimyo all directly related to Ieyasu. The shinpan held mostly honorary titles and advisory posts in the bakufu. The second class of the hierarchy were the fudai, or "house daimyo," rewarded with lands close to the Tokugawa holdings for their faithful service. By the eighteenth century, 145 fudai controlled such smaller han, the greatest assessed at 250,000 koku. Members of the fudai class staffed most of the major bakufu offices. Ninety-seven han formed the third group, the tozama (outside vassals), former opponents or new allies. The tozama were located mostly on the peripheries of the archipelago and collectively controlled nearly 10 million koku of productive land. Because the tozama were least trusted of the daimyo, they were the most cautiously managed and generously treated, although they were excluded from central government positions.
The Tokugawa not only consolidated their control over a reunified Japan, they also had unprecedented power over the emperor, the court, all daimyo, and the religious orders. The emperor was held up as the ultimate source of political sanction for the shogun, who ostensibly was the vassal of the imperial family. The Tokugawa helped the imperial family recapture its old glory by rebuilding its palaces and granting it new lands. To ensure a close tie between the imperial clan and the Tokugawa family, Ieyasu's granddaughter was made an imperial consort in 1619.
A code of laws was established to regulate the daimyo houses. The code encompassed private conduct, marriage, dress, and types of weapons and numbers of troops allowed; required alternateyear residence at Edo; prohibited the construction of ocean-going ships; proscribed Christianity; and stipulated that bakufu regulations were the national law. Although the daimyo were not taxed per se, they were regularly levied for contributions for military and logistical support and for such public works projects as castles, roads, bridges, and palaces. The various regulations and levies not only strengthened the Tokugawa but also depleted the wealth of the daimyo, thus weakening their threat to the central administration. The han, once military-centered domains, became mere local administrative units. The daimyo did have full administrative control over their territory and their complex systems of retainers, bureaucrats, and commoners. Loyalty was exacted from religious foundations, already greatly weakened by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, through a variety of control mechanisms.
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The Nakasendo Way: The Tokugawa Political System
The Tokugawa political system was perhaps the most complex feudal system ever developed. It was similar to the European feudal system (pope, emperor or king, feudal barons, and retainers in Europe compared to emperor, the shogun, the daimyo, and samurai retainers in Japan), but it was also very bureaucratic, an attribute not associated with European feudalism.
[ The Tokugawa bureaucracy consisted of as many as 17,000 "staffers," but this number was only a fraction of the pool from which they were selected for office, so there was always a host of ambitious men and disappointed office seekers. There was a small group of "Senior Councillors (Rôjû)--uusally 4-5 men--who ran the bureacracy. Ocasionally a single leader was appointed above them as Tairo or Great Elder. There was also a Chamberlain, City Magistrates for Edo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nagasaki), Superintendents, Inspector Generals, a Kanto Plain Deputy as well as Junior Councillors and a Suprerme Court of Justice.
The Rôjû were the most important figures in government; they were responsbile for foreign relations, among many other things so they played a central role in the 19th century when foreigners came calling. One had to be a fudai daumyo with an income from 30,000-100,000 koku to be eligible for this position. In other words, the highest-ranking and most trusted fudai daimyo had a "lock" on these positions which would cause great resentment among less well-to-do fudai not to mention those outside fudai circles when it seemed that affairs of state were being bungled and "men of ability" or talent were needed to fill these positions. But they could not unless they met the eligibility requirements. Therefore, rank rather than merit determined status.
The Rôjû worked as a committee and reported to the Shogun. They werre expected to call upon the Shogun each day. ] from Marius Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, pp. 47-48.
This political system was called the bakuhan system. Baku comes from bakufu which was the government the Tokugawa leaders used to administer their private affairs inside their own fief. Han means domain and refers to the 250-plus domains that existed throughout the Edo period. Thus, bakuhan refers to the co-existence of the Tokugawa government with separate, independent governments in each of the fiefs. Since each daimyo was a retainer of the shogun, the bakufu or shogunate had some power across all of Japan. This was not a federal system or even a centralized hierarchy of political authorities; rather, it was a system in which two levels of government existed with a high degree of independence.
The Tokugawa shogunate was very much like any domainal government in that it was responsible first for the administration of a limited territory, the fief of the Tokugawa house. As such, it concerned itself with controlling the samurai class, collecting taxes (primarily on agriculture), maintaining civil order, defending the fief, controlling the cities, encouraging commerce and manufacturing which were required by the fief, limiting undesirable types of commerce and so on. In most domains, the scope of government was similar. In fact, as the Edo period wore on, most domains copied the system of the shogunate.
The Tokugawa shogunate also had responsibilities and concerns which went beyond those of ordinary domains; the Tokugawa shoguns were, after all, hegemons presiding over a whole country.
The Tokugawa government alone dealt with the imperial court, the imperial nobility and the emperor himself. The emperor was the source of legitimacy since the office of shogun was an imperial appointment. Furthermore, Confucianism which was the official ideology of the Tokugawa house during the Edo period focused attention on the emperor. Thus, the Tokugawa shogunate established a monopoly on access to the imperial court. As the period wore on, the monopoly was breached, but it is essentially true that the Tokugawa controlled and manipulated the court for its own purposes.
The shogunate held a near monopoly over foreign trade and foreign affairs. The trade monopoly was important because significant profits were available to the Tokugawa alone. Foreign trade was also permitted through Satsuma domain to the Ryukyu kingdom (Okinawa) and through Tsushima domain to Korea, but generally speaking diplomatic matters were closely controlled by the Tokugawa.
Foreign relations were crucial because control of them made a statement to the political public that the Tokugawa house was in control of all aspects of government; it was an additional source of legitimacy. In line with this, the Tokugawa shogunate restricted diplomatic contact by prohibiting any Europeans except the Dutch from coming to Japan after 1639; this was the policy of national seclusion (sakoku). But even seclusion was an exercise of power which impressed observers and encouraged submission.
Perhaps the most important role of the shogunate was control of the domains, the han. This was precisely what had been lacking in the Warring States period, the ability of central authority to enforce peace. During the forty years before the Edo period, the three unifiers, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, evolved a system which proved increasingly capable of ensuring the loyalty and obedience of vassals. The Tokugawa shogunate took this previous experience and honed it to perfection.
Elements of this system included a police and spy network which reported any suspicious activity by samurai or daimyo. Daimyo were required to report any proposed marriage alliances between domains to the shogunate for approval. Contact between domains was prohibited to reduce opportunities for plotting against the shogunate. The number of castles, their size and their strength were very strictly limited.
The shogunate could punish daimyo for transgressions in a variety of ways; a domain could be reduced in size, the daimyo could be shifted to an entirely different domain, or, the ultimate sanction, suicide could be demanded, perhaps with the additional punishment of his lineage being reduced in status to a non-daimyo level.
The most important aspect of the system of controlling the han was the sankin-kotai system, or the system of alternate residence in Edo. This grew out of the Warring States period practice of demanding high-ranking hostages from vassals or allies to guarantee good behavior. The founder of the shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu, was himself a hostage for nearly 13 years as a young boy.
The Tokugawa, however, formalized the keeping of hostages. They established rules which specified for each daimyo a period of time every year (or two or three) during which the daimyo must live in Edo. The daimyo's family would have to live in Edo when the daimyo returned to his domain, so that the one stood hostage for the other.
Not only did this provide hostages, but it also placed an economic burden on the daimyo which drained away resources that otherwise might have gone into military preparations against the shogunate. The daimyo had to maintain a large residence and support facilities in Edo as well as in their domain. They also had to travel to and from Edo along a route dictated by the shogunate. Most traveled on the Tokaido because the Nakasendo was used by the imperial court, but the overall burden was spread between the two roads. The whole system consumed about 25% of the income available to most daimyo.
The shogunate was only one part of the bakuhan system, however; the domains were the other. The domains were independent with regard to their internal arrangements as long as there was no conflict with the shogunate's interests. In practice, the domains voluntarily duplicated the shogunate's system of government to a large degree because the interests and problems of a daimyo at his level were similar to those of the shogunate: how to maintain stability and order. Furthermore, the powers which the shogunate exercised over the domains had the effect of forcing the domains to behave in much the same manner since they were facing the same requirements.
For example, all substantial domains maintained commercial operations in Osaka, the national market, in order to sell rice and other commodities so as to raise the cash required by the alternate attendance system. This standardization did much to reduce regional differences and potential antagonisms throughout the Edo period.
Like the shogunate, the daimyo had a high interest in pacifying and controlling their subjects and the samuraiin general. During the late 16th Century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi disarmed the peasants through a series of sword hunts with the intention of reducing their contribution to turmoil and to pin them to agricultural activity alone. In the years after 1588, samurai were progressively removed from their independent fiefs in the countryside and brought into the daimyos' castle towns to live. The samurai became separated from the peasantry both in social role and place of residence.