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3 Politics of the Living Dead I was adopted by the Katsu family when I was seven years old. My age was officially given as seventeen, and the hair at the front of my head was accordingly cut off. As part of the adoption procedure, Ishikawa Ukon-no-shōgen, the commissioner of my unit in the construction reserve corps, and his assistant, Obi Daishichirō, came to the house. “How old are you and what is your name?” Ishikawa asked. “My name is Kokichi and I am seventeen.” Ishikawa pretended to be taken aback. “Well—for seventeen you certainly look old!” He burst out laughing. —katsu kokichi, Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai1 On the eleventh day of the third month of 1823 the daimyo Miyake Yasukazu of Tahara domain donated some gold to the memorial services of his greatgreat -great-grandfather.2 Taking care of memorial services for ancestors was a routine responsibility of a daimyo. The only oddity about the event was that Yasukazu himself had died more than a month earlier. His death had been kept from omote formal notice, and in the eyes of the Tokugawa government Yasukazu died on the sixteenth day of the fifth month, nearly a hundred days after his actual death. The reason for this long delay was that he had no heir at the time of his actual death, and according to Tokugawa law a daimyo must have an heir approved while still alive or else the household and realm were forfeit.3 Indeed, in the first half of the seventeenth century the Tokugawa confiscated the domains of many daimyo for lack of having prearranged a suitable heir before falling mortally ill. The Tokugawa Elders changed this law in 1651, 74 74 politics of the living dead 75 permitting deathbed adoptions and subsequently fewer and fewer daimyo were attaindered for this reason. Yet even the new inheritance law included many seemingly impossible obstacles to the long-term preservation of daimyo households. Indeed the obstacles made it likely that not a single daimyo clan in all Japan would have survived up to the Meiji Restoration. Nevertheless, most houses did survive. How this was achieved is the subject of this chapter, which explores the laws and phenomena of “deathbed adoptions” as a way of elucidating how the politics of omote and naishō worked to maintain daimyo feudal autonomy and the Tokugawa Great Peace. Inheritance was an act of central importance to feudal politics. Factional politics often coalesced around the selection of an heir, and politically ambitious samurai strove to be well situated in a pyramid of human connections having the incoming lord at its apex. It was one of the few issues during the Tokugawa period around which strategic violence and occasional large-scale organized disorder erupted among samurai. “House disturbances” over inheritance held such a fascination among commoners and samurai that the real events quickly became transformed by authors and playwrights into lurid and embellishedtalesandtheater.4 Sexandpersonalambitiontooktheforefrontin these versions, but the real mundane consequences for commoners and samurai alike were severe and of great importance. Homelessness and bankruptcy were the lot of many in the house and realm when an inheritance went awry. How this cauldron of ambition and turmoil came to be largely tamed in the seventeenth century in a way to best preserve in stable association the diverse interests of people who were dependent on daimyo households is the story of the first half of this chapter. The second half of the chapter examines wellrecorded cases of deathbed adoption from the latter half of the Tokugawa period so as to elucidate the process in terms of the politics of omote and naishō. Attainders for lack of heir, 1600–1650 In 1602 Tokugawa Ieyasu attaindered the large realm of tozama daimyo Kobayakawa Hideaki for lack of an heir when he died at age twenty-one.5 By the 1615 destruction of the Toyotomi clan the Tokugawa had fully solidified their authority to approve the choice of an heir for every single daimyo, without which the daimyo’s domain would be confiscated and his lineage terminated. Approval was guided by the following ideals and conditions: If the lord had his own sons, then the heir should normally be the eldest. Sons of concubines ranked after those of the wife. If no sons were present, then the heir could be adopted but should be a blood relative such as a nephew, a younger brother, [3.133.144.197] Project MUSE...

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