Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan (review)

This book is a major contribution to our understanding of early modern Japanese politics. Vaporis's study is a careful examination of the Tokugawa system of alternate attendance (sankin kōtai), wherein daimyō spent alternating years in Edo and their home domains. This is the first major study of sankin kōtai in English in over 50 years and, with rich detail from archival sources, it deepens our understanding of sankin kōtai as lived experience.

Vaporis examines many aspects of sankin kōtai, not only the embassies themselves, but how retainers were recruited to make the trip, the structure of residences in Edo, and daily life in the capital. Relying on the personal journals and ledgers of ordinary samurai who served in Edo, he offers a strikingly detailed view of daily life in the shogun's capital: what retainers ate, how they played, even how they discarded their trash. In this way, Vaporis's book is part of a growing literature on travel, scholarly networks, and material culture in early modern Japan, including books by Susan Hanley, Martha Chaiklin, Laura Nenzi, and Vaporis's own earlier work.¹ I found this book extremely valuable as a teacher and marked dozens of anecdotes for use in my lectures.

Vaporis gives a detailed and rich account of how individual samurai were chosen for sankin kōtai duty. The trips were an opportunity or a hardship, depending on the individual. Some samurai sought to avoid long separations from their families, while others were attracted by the cosmopolitan culture of Edo and the possibility of meeting people from other domains (p. 111). Time in Edo was an opportunity to pursue a range of activities, including nō dancing lessons, tea ceremony, and poetry circles, as well as less elevated diversions, such as live sex shows, all of which were restricted or unavailable in the provinces (p. 197). Supplemental pay for service in Edo gave many samurai extra income to enjoy these activities, although some lived frugally and used the income to pay off family debts. But it was difficult to be frugal in a place as exciting as Edo, and even the most tight-fisted retainers brought back souvenirs. In a wonderfully rich chapter, Vaporis details the booty taken home by various retainers, ranging from annotated scholarly books to soap, and he explores how this served to spread a shared culture across Japan (pp. 205–36).

Vaporis gives numerous examples of how the practice of sankin kōtai was often unrelated to the plans of its founder, Iemitsu. One case is Yamauchi Toyofusa's (1672–1706) first trip to Tosa as domain lord. Toyofusa had been adopted as heir to Toyomasa in 1689 and then spent several years resisting calls from Tosa advisers that he make an inaugural trip to Tosa. Vaporis offers a missive from the adviser Asahina Genba urging Toyofusa to return. Asahina argued that Toyofusa's actions were a dereliction of duty, but he was also deeply concerned about rumors and popular perceptions. Toyofusa's refusal to travel to Tosa might spark rumors that he lacked the ability to govern, or that he was ill, and "there could be nothing worse for a person of your status than if people from across the country begin to criticize you" (p. 19). Sankin kōtai was thus sustained as much by a concern with propriety and fear of social sanction as by Tokugawa sanction.

One problem with the volume is the lack of an overall thesis. The book is a collection of independent essays, and Vaporis's framing concepts do little to enhance the chapters or connect them into a coherent whole. In the subtitle, Vaporis describes sankin kōtai as "military service" and elsewhere he refers to it as a "peacetime draft." But, as Vaporis himself observes, "little was required of the men [in Edo] in terms of...