Emperor and Aristocracy in Japan, 1467-1680: Resilience and Renewal

In his recent book, In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History, Adam Bellow, son of Saul Bellow, defends a new trend in American society. Success in the competition for individual merit is still the highway to the plum jobs, but, increasingly, only those who are members of kin groups that already hold power can join the fray. In spite of the nondemocratic aspects of the new power distribution system, Adam Bellow sees benefits in it. Future elites will combine successful genes with optimal education and may provide better leadership than elites who hold only one of these advantages. To those who study Japan, this has a familiar ring. Such a system was, in effect, what the Taika reformers introduced and the Tokugawa refashioned; and it worked, on the whole, long and successfully.

The tennō held a special place within the Japanese birth-cum-merit system. Their contact persons to the outer world, namely the courtiers, the palace ladies-whether they bore the tennō's children or administered his dwellings and funds-the princes, princesses, and clerics of imperial or high aristocratic descent, all belonged to the birth-cum-merit system. So did ex-tennō, if they politicked.

The reigning tennō stood outside the birth-cum-merit system. Their right to hold the post was soon shrouded in religious myth, and though merit played a role, the highest courtiers, in the absence of a clear succession statute or the word of a powerful predecessor, might decide which prince or princess was most fit to be tennō. Once the succession ceremonies, including ritual transfer of charisma from tennō ancestors, had taken place, merit was not a base of the tennō's mandate. This ideology made it normal to remain on the throne even when those who wielded actual power in the name of the tennō changed; it also set Japan off from China, where emperors and entire dynasties fell when the efficiency of their rule, and so their merit or "Heavenly Mandate," ceased to operate.

How has the tennō system survived from the fifth century until our times? Hereditary monarchies are fragile. It is true that in crisis situations such a monarch can focus more unreflected loyalty than an elected head of state, some of whose subjects voted against him and think him a fool, and much more loyalty than a dictator, most of whose subjects, though cowed into silence, think he is a crook. But in normal times, the fawning, to which royals are victims from the day they are known to be successors to the throne, warps their characters. The solution, which first the Japanese, then the British, then the Dutch and the Nordic countries, invented by trial and error, is to have them "reign" only, whereas other people "rule" in their name. In Japan, monarchs who "reigned only"were normal from Heian times, and monarchs who tried to "rule," too, like Go-Toba and Go-Daigo, failed.

Monarchs who reign only, have, however, existential problems. Somebody else must provide the necessary muscle to levy taxes for their upkeep and guard their palaces; and if their own clan is divided by wars of succession, they may lose prestige among those holders of real power who provide their funds and their security. This was the situation of the tennō system between 1467, when the Ōnin War began, and 1680, when ex-tennō Go Mizunoo, the last tennō who tried to resist the Tokugawa bakufu usurpation schemes, died, and Tsunayoshi, a civilian who shared many Confucian, Buddhist, and culturalist ideas with the Kyoto court, ascended the shogunal seat. In this period, the court and the tennō institution survived a series of challenges: financial penury, living quarters torched during civil wars, cynical warlords such as Nobunaga, megalomaniac warlords such as Hideyoshi, warlords who outsmarted them such as Ieyasu, and wary martinets such as his shogunal successors, Hidetada and Iemitsu. How did they do it? That is the theme of the book.

The introduction summarizes the history of the court, in particular its finances and its relations to the warriors, up to 1467. Chapter one, "The Struggle to Survive," describes how the Ōnin War influenced the courtiers. Chapter two, "Normalcy and Its Pretenses," deals with the daily life of the courtiers under the conditions of war, destruction, and penury, and in particular with their leisure activities. Chapter three, "Court Society during Reunification," explains how enterprising courtiers avoided being caught up in the strife between the last incompetent Ashikaga leaders.

In chapter four, "Unifiers and Aristocrats," Butler documents in detail the "give and take" between court and unifiers. Chapter five, "The Crises of 1609-10," relates the conflict between Ieyasu and Go-Yōzei-tennō. The latter wanted all the palace ladies-who constituted his harem, there was no queen-who had cuckolded him, and their courtier lovers, executed; Ieyasu insisted on less bloodshed, and won. Chapter six, "Codifying the Court," deals with the rules Ieyasu laid down for the tennō institution, in particular the Kinchū narabini kuge shohatto of 1615. The 1615 rules prescribe the nature of the tennō's cultural activities and reading matter (Japanese poetry and political manuals from the T'ang and Heian periods), lays down disciplinary rules for the courtiers, puts the appointments of high ecclesiastics and the conveying of honorary court ranks to warriors under full bakufu control, gives rules for the tennō's choice of era names, and tries to solve some of the thorny preeminence problems between princes and princely clerics on the one hand and high courtiers on the other.

Chapter seven, "On Persons and Structures," tells the story of court versus bakufu under Ieyasu's successors, Hidetada and Iemitsu. Hidetada pressured Go-Yōzei to have Go-Yōzei's successor, Go-Mizunoo, marry a daughter of Hidetada; thus Go-Mizunoo's successor, the female Meishō-tennō, was Hidetada's grandchild. To protest Hidetada's policies against the court in the matter of ecclesiastical appointments, Go-Mizunoo abdicated in 1629. Hidetada's successor, Iemitsu, made peace with the court in 1634 but kept it under strict surveillance in order to prevent the tennō from influencing any matter outside the court.

Chapter eight, "The Culture of a New Aristocracy," points out that what the court lost in terms of real power under the Tokugawa, it regained as a cultural trendsetter for the combined elites of warrior leaders, high-ranking (and now, thanks to the bakufu, well-heeled) courtiers, and heads of major temples and shrines. Included in the conclusion is discussion of key terms of political discourse in fifteenth- through seventeenth-century Japan, such as kōgi and tentō, and how these terms were used by competing factions of court and camp.

The new findings of the book are, briefly: tennō and court played politically active and relevant roles 1467-1634 (the year Iemitsu made peace with the court); they often acted individually rather than corporatively; the tennō were forceful personalities and behaved accordingly; women officials efficiently ran court finances until Tokugawa times; and even after the Tokugawa had "tamed" the court, tennō and courtiers actively transmitted their ideals to the warrior elite.

I think Butler has proved his point-and his mining of 18 courtier diaries is in itself an impressive feat. He has also brought a great amount of new and revisionist Japanese research into the grasp of Western-language historians. The book is fluently written; notes, glossaries, bibliography, and index are well organized, and the erudition behind it all does not crowd the text, thus the book will also be useful in class. In a reprint, however, one might consider the following points. It is true (p. 288) that Shintō was not the factor that made powerful warlords uphold the tennō institution. But out of traditional Shintō grew intellectually more challenging beliefs-Watarai Shintō, Yuiitsu Shintō, the later doctrines of Hayashi Razan,¹ and those of Yamazaki Ansai-which all emphasized that what enhanced Japan vis-à-vis other nations was having a perennial dynasty directly connected with the gods. The penury of the treasury and the courtiers between the Ōnin War and national unification (pp. 29-38) was a consequence of centuries of bad policy rather than of civil wars. In particular, the Kyoto government had tolerated, or even abetted (since its own dignitaries stood to gain), the subjection of state farmland and its tillers and their tax potential to private and ecclesiastical owners.² It is true (pp. 209-11) that the contents of Ieyasu's laws on court matters until and including the Kinchū narabini kuge shohatto did not insult the tennō's dignity. But there are on record in the Tokugawa kinreikō³ 3 some rules by Ieyasu that did so.

Butler's translation (pp. 205-9) of the Kinchū narabini kuge shohatto is more precise than those by previous translators. But in Article 8, I think that Kanchō (as repository of auspicious nengō) possibly means "China" rather than the "Han period," since the term is contrasted with honchō later in the same article. In fact, I have found no Tokugawa-era reuses of Han-era nengō.The matter deserves a footnote. Article 12 on courtiers prosecuted for crimes says that meireiritsu shall apply. This is not only reference to the criminal codes and written laws of antiquity, but also implied favorable treatment of dignitaries: dismissal or fines instead of penal labor, exile instead of death, no judicial torture, and the higher the rank, the more privileges. The given name of the daughter of Hidetada who became Go Mizunoo's wife (p. 281) is normally read "Kazuko" rather than "Masako," and gige, hossō, and myōbō rather than gike, hōsō, and myōhō. In the Bibliography, otherwise very thorough, one misses certain works by David Magarey Earl, Asao Naohiro, Bitō Masahide, Donald H. Shively, the late John W. Hall, and Imatani Akira.⁴

Butler concentrates on the court's survival strategies and demonstrates these from primary sources. But there may have been other, less palpable reasons why the court survived its ordeals. For instance: courtiers did not fight, thus they probably lived longer than warriors, and could accumulate more experience; and warlords not only employed courtiers as advisers, they even sometimes built their home bases into small replicas of Kyoto5 and therefore had to keep the model going. This again was not possible without upholding the institutions that gave Kyoto its unique architectural and artistic note. The relationship between court and warriors may finally, at all times, have been complicated by religious or quasi-religious qualms on the warrior side, and by the knowledge on the courtier side that only armed power prevented the exploited peasants from rising against all kinds of landlords.

These are minor matters. Butler investigated the whole era when Japan changed from "late medieval" into "early modern" from a new angle and has mined Japanese primary and secondary sources hitherto disregarded outside Japan. His book necessitates the revision of a whole bundle of standard opinions on power relationships. It deserves wide reading.