A History of the Japanese People Part 59

One of the chief contributions of the military era to the art of singing was a musical recitative performed by blind men using the four-stringed Chinese lute, the libretto being based on some episode of military history. The performers were known as biwa-bozu, the name "bozu" (Buddhist priest) being derived from the fact that they shaved their heads after the manner of bonzes. These musicians developed remarkable skill of elocution, and simulated pa.s.sion so that in succeeding ages they never lost their popularity. Sharing the vogue of the biwa-bozu, but differing from it in the nature of the story recited as well as in that of the instrument employed, was the joruri, which derived its name from the fact that it was originally founded on the tragedy of Yos.h.i.tsune's favourite mistress, Joruri. In this the performer was generally a woman, and the instrument on which she accompanied herself was the samisen. These two dances may be called pre-eminently the martial music of j.a.pan, both by reason of the subject and the nature of the musical movement.

The most aristocratic performance of all, however, was the yokyoku, which ultimately grew into the no. This was largely of dramatic character and it owed its gravity and softness of tone to priestly influence, for the monopoly of learning possessed in those ages by the Buddhist friars necessarily made them pre-eminent in all literary accomplishments. The no, which is held in just as high esteem to-day as it was in medieval times, was performed on a stage in the open air and its theme was largely historical. At the back of the stage was seated a row of musicians who served as chorus, accompanying the performance with various instruments, chiefly the flute and the drum, and from time to time intoning the words of the drama. An adjunct of the no was the kyogen. The no was solemn and stately; the kyogen comic and sprightly. In fact, the latter was designed to relieve the heaviness of the former, just as on modern stages the drama is often relieved by the farce. It is a fact of sober history that the shogun Yoshimasa officially invested the no dance with the character of a ceremonious accomplishment of military men and that Hideyoshi himself often joined the dancers on the stage.

ENGRAVING: FLOWER POTS AND DWARF TREE

ENGRAVING: SWORDS PRESERVED AT SHOSO-IN TEMPLE, AT NARA

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE EPOCH OF WARS (Sengoku Jidai)

LIST OF EMPERORS

Order of Succession Name Date

97th Sovereign Go-Murakami A.D. 1339-1368

98th Chokei 1368-1372

99th Go-Kameyama 1372-1392

100th Go-Komatsu 1392-1412

101st Shoko 1412-1428

102d Go-Hanazono 1428-1465

103d Go-Tsuchimikado 1465-1500

104th Go-Kashiwabara 1500-1526

105th Go-Nara 1526-1557

106th Okimachi 1557-1586

107th Go-Yozei 1586-1611

THE sovereigns of the Northern Court, not being recognized as legitimate by j.a.panese annalists, are excluded from the above list.

Go-Komatsu, however, is made an exception. He reigned from 1382 to 1392 as representing the Northern Court, and thereafter, the two Courts having ceased their rivalry, he reigned undisputed until 1412.

It has further to be noted that many histories make the number of sovereigns greater by two than the figures recorded in the lists of this volume. That is because the histories in question count as two the Empresses Kogyoku (642-645) and Saimei (655-661), although they represent the same sovereign under different names, and because they adopt a similar method of reckoning in the case of the Empresses Koken (749-758) and Shotoku (765-770), whereas in this volume the actual number of sovereigns is alone recorded.

THE COURT

The interval between the close of the fifteenth century and the end of the sixteenth is set apart by j.a.panese annalists as the most disturbed period of the country's history and is distinguished by the term Sengoku Jidai, or the Epoch of Wars. It would be more accurate to date the beginning of that evil time from the Onin year-period (1467-1469); for in the Onin era practical recognition was extended to the principle that the right of succession to a family estate justifies appeal to arms, and that such combats are beyond the purview of the central authority. There ensued disturbances constantly increasing in area and intensity, and not only involving finally the ruin of the Ashikaga shogunate but also subverting all law, order, and morality. Sons turned their hand against fathers, brothers against brothers, and va.s.sals against chiefs. Nevertheless, amid this subversion of ethics and supremacy of the sword, there remained always some who reverenced the Throne and supported the inst.i.tutions of the State; a noteworthy feature in the context of the fact that, except during brief intervals, the wielder of the sceptre in j.a.pan never possessed competence to enforce his mandates but was always dependent in that respect on the voluntary co-operation of influential subjects.

In the Sengoku period the fortunes of the Imperial Court fell to their lowest ebb. The Crown lands lay in the provinces of Noto, Kaga, Echizen, Tamba, Mino, and so forth, and when the wave of warfare spread over the country, these estates pa.s.sed into the hands of military magnates who absorbed the taxes into their own treasuries, and the collectors sent by the Court could not obtain more than a small percentage of the proper amount. The exchequer of the Muromachi Bakufu suffered from a similar cause, and was further depleted by extravagance, so that no aid could be obtained from that source. Even worse was the case with the provincial manors of the Court n.o.bles, who were ultimately driven to leave the capital and establish direct connexion with their properties. Thus, the Ichijo family went to Tosa; the Ane-no-koji to Hida, and when Ouchi Yoshioki retired to Suwo on resigning his office (kwanryo), many Court magnates who had benefitted by his generosity in Kyoto followed him southward.

So impoverished was the Imperial exchequer that, in the year 1500, when the Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado died, the corpse lay for forty days in a darkened room of the palace, funds to conduct the funeral rites not being available. Money was finally provided by Sasaki Takayori, and in recognition of his munificence he was authorized to use the Imperial crest (chrysanthemum and Paulownia); was granted the right of entree to the palace, and received an autographic volume from the pen of the Emperor Go-Kogon. If there was no money to bury Go-Tsuchimikado, neither were any funds available to perform the coronation of his successor, Go-Kashiwabara. Muromachi made a futile attempt to levy contributions from the daimyo, and the kwanryo, Hosokawa Masamoto, is recorded to have brusquely said, in effect, that the country could be administered without crowning any sovereign. Twenty years pa.s.sed before the ceremony could be performed, and means were ultimately (1520) furnished by the Buddhist priest Koken--son of the celebrated Rennyo Shonin, prelate of the Shin sect--who, out of the abundant gifts of his disciples, placed at the disposal of the Court a sum of ten thousand gold ryo,* being moved to that munificence by the urging of Fujiwara Sanetaka, a former nai-daijin. In recognition of this service, Koken was raised to high ecclesiastical rank.

*30,000--$145,000.

It will be remembered that, early in this sixteenth century, Yoshioki, deputy kwanryo and head of the great Ouchi house, had contributed large sums to the Muromachi treasury; had contrived the restoration of several of the Court n.o.bles' domains to their impoverished owners, and had a.s.sisted with open hand to relieve the penury of the throne. The task exhausted his resources, and when recalled to his province by local troubles in 1518, the temporary alleviation his generosity had brought was succeeded by hopeless penury. From time immemorial it had been the universal rule to rebuild the two great shrines at Ise every twentieth year, but nothing of the kind had been possible in the case of the Naigu (inner shrine) since 1462, and in the case of the Gegu (outer shrine) since 1434. Such neglect insulted the sanct.i.ty of the Throne; yet appeals to the Bakufu produced no result. In 1526, the Emperor Go-Kashiwabara died. It is on record that his ashes were carried from the crematorium in a box slung from the neck of a general officer, and that the funeral train consisted of only twenty-six officials. For the purposes of the coronation ceremony of this sovereign's successor, subscriptions had to be solicited from the provincial magnates, and it was not until 1536 that the repairs of the palace could be undertaken, so that the Emperor Go-Nara was able to write in his diary, "All that I desired to have done has been accomplished, and I am much gratified." On this occasion the Ouchi family again showed its generosity and its loyalty to the Throne.

The extremity of distress was reached during the Kyoroku era (1528-1531), when the struggle between the two branches of the Hosokawa family converted Kyoto once more into a battle-field and reduced a large part of the city to ashes. The Court n.o.bles, with their wives and children, had to seek shelter and refuge within the Imperial palace, the fences of which were broken down and the buildings sadly dilapidated.

A contemporary record tells with much detail the story of the decay of the capital and the pitiful plight of the Throne. The Emperor Go-Nara (1527-1557) was reduced to earning his own living. This he did by his skill as a calligrapher--at least one instance of something useful resulting from the penchant of the Court for the niceties of Chinese art and letters. Any one might leave at the palace a few coins for payment and order a fair copy of this or that excerpt from a famous cla.s.sic. The palace was overrun, the chronicler says. Its garden became a resort for tea-drinking among the lower cla.s.ses and children made it a play-ground. It was no longer walled in, but merely fenced with bamboo. The whole city was in a similar desolation, things having become worse and worse beginning with the Onin disturbance of 1467 and the general exodus of the samurai from the capital at that time. At this time the military n.o.bles came to the city only to fight, and the city's population melted away. All was disorder. The city was flooded and the dike which was built to check the flooded rivers came to be thought a fine residence place in comparison with lower parts of the town.

It was at this time that men might be observed begging for rice in the streets of the capital. They carried bags to receive contributions which were designated kwampaku-ryo (regent's money).

Some of the bags thus used are preserved by the n.o.ble family of Nijo to this day. Another record says that the stewardess of the Imperial household service during this reign (Go-Nara), on being asked how summer garments were to be supplied for the ladies-in-waiting, replied that winter robes with their wadded linings removed should be used. The annals go so far as to allege that deaths from cold and starvation occurred among the courtiers. An important fact is that one of the provincial magnates who contributed to the succour of the Court at this period was Oda n.o.buhide of Owari, father of the celebrated Oda n.o.bunaga.

ENGRAVING: SHINRAN SHONIN

BUDDHIST VIOLENCE

The decline of the Muromachi Bakufu's authority encouraged the monks as well as the samurai to become a law to themselves. Incidental references have already been made to this subject, but the religious commotions of the Sengoku period invite special attention. The Buddhists of the Shin sect, founded by Shinran Shonin (1184-1268), which had for headquarters the great temple Hongwan-ji in Kyoto, were from the outset hostile to the monks of Enryaku-ji. Religious doctrine was not so much concerned in this feud as rivalry. Shinran had been educated in the Tendai tenets at Enryaku-ji. Therefore, from the latter's point of view he was a renegade, and while vehemently attacking the creed of his youth, he had acquired power and influence that placed the Hongwan-ji almost on a level with the great Hiei-zan.

In the days of Kenju, popularly called Rennyo Shonin (1415-1479), seventh in descent from the founder, Shinran, the Ikko--by which name the Shin sect was known--developed conspicuous strength. Kenju possessed extraordinary eloquence. Extracts from his sermons were printed on an amulet and distributed among worshippers, who grew so numerous and so zealous that the wealth of the sect became enormous, and its leaders did not hesitate to provide themselves with an armed following. Finally the monks of Hiei-zan swept down on Hongwan-ji, applied the torch to the great temple, and compelled the abbot, Kenju, to fly for his life.

It is significant of the time that this outrage received no punishment. Kenju escaped through Omi to Echizen, where the high constable, an Asakura, combining with the high constable, a Togashi, of the neighbouring province of Kaga, erected a temple for the fugitive abbot, whose favour was well worth courting. The Ikko-shu, however, had its own internal dissensions. In the province of Kaga, a sub-sect, the Takata, endeavoured to oust the Hongwan disciples, and rising in their might, attacked (1488) the high constable; compelled him to flee; drove out their Takata rivals; invaded Etchu; raided Noto, routing the forces of the high constable, Hatakeyama Yoshizumi; seized the three provinces--Kaga, Noto, and Etchu--and attempted to take possession of Echizen. This wholesale campaign was spoken of as the Ikko-ikki (revolt of Ikko). A few years later, the Shin believers in Echizen joined these revolters, and marched through the province, looting and burning wherever they pa.s.sed. No measure of secular warfare had been more ruthless than were the ways of these monks. The high constable, Asakura Norikage, now took the field, and after fierce fighting, drove back the fanatics, destroyed their temples, and expelled their priests.

This was only one of several similar commotions. So turbulent did the monks show themselves under the influence of Shin-shu teachers that the Uesugi of Echigo, the Hojo of Izu, and other great daimyo interdicted the propagandism of that form of Buddhism altogether. The most presumptuous insurrection of all stands to the credit of the Osaka priests. A great temple had been erected there to replace the Hongwan-ji of Kyoto, and in, 1529, its lord-abbot, Kokyo, entered Kaga, calling himself the "son of heaven" (Emperor) and a.s.signing to his steward, Shimoma Yorihide, the t.i.tle of shogun. This was called the "great revolt" (dai-ikki), and the movement of opposition provoked by it was termed the "small revolt" (sho-ikki). Again recourse was had to the most cruel methods. Men's houses were robbed and burned simply because their inmates stood aloof from the insurrection. Just at that time the septs of Hosokawa and Miyoshi were engaged in a fierce struggle for supremacy. Kokyo threw in his lot with Hosokawa Harumoto, and, at the head of fifty thousand troops, attacked and killed Miyoshi Motonaga. Very soon, however, the Hosokawa chief fell out with his ca.s.socked allies. But he did not venture to take the field against them single handed. The priests of the twenty-one Nichiren temples in Kyoto, old enemies of the Ikko, were incited to attack the Hongwan-ji in Osaka. This is known in history as the Hokke-ikki, Hokke-shu being the name of the Nichiren sect. Hiei-zan was involved in the attack, but the warlike monks of Enryaku-ji replied by pouring down into the capital, burning the twenty-one temples of the Nichiren and butchering three thousand of their priests. Such were the ways of the Buddhists in the Sengoku period.

THE KWANTO

During the Sengoku period (1490-1600) the j.a.panese empire may be compared to a seething cauldron, the bubbles that unceasingly rose to the surface disappearing almost as soon as they emerged, or uniting into groups with more or less semblance of permanence. To follow in detail these superficial changes would be a task equally interminable and fruitless. They will therefore be traced here in the merest outline, except in cases where large results or national effects are concerned. The group of eight provinces called collectively Kwanto first claims attention as the region where all the great captains and statesmen of the age had their origin and found their chief sphere of action. It has been seen that the fifth Ashikaga kwanryo, Shigeuji, driven out of Kamakura, took refuge at Koga in Shimotsuke; that he was thenceforth known as Koga Kubo; that the Muromachi shogun, Yoshimasa, then sent his younger brother, Masatomo, to rule in the Kwanto; that he established his headquarters at Horigoe in Izu, and that he was officially termed Horigoe Gosho. His chief retainers were the two Uesugi families--distinguished as Ogigayatsu Uesugi and Yamanouchi Uesugi, after the names of the palaces where their mansions were situated--both of whom held the office of kwanryo hereditarily.

These Uesugi families soon engaged in hostile rivalry, and the Ogigayatsu branch, being allied with Ota Dokwan, the founder of Yedo Castle, gained the upper hand, until the a.s.sa.s.sination of Dokwan, when the Yamanouchi became powerful. It was at this time--close of the fifteenth century--that there occurred in the Horigoe house one of those succession quarrels so common since the Onin era. Ashikaga Masatomo, seeking to disinherit his eldest son, Chachamaru, in favour of his second son, Yoshimichi, was killed by the former, the latter taking refuge with the Imagawa family in Suruga, by whom he was escorted to the capital, where he became the Muromachi shogun under the name of Yoshizumi. Parricides and fratricides were too common in that disturbed age for Chachamaru's crime to cause any moral commotion. But it chanced that among the rear va.s.sals of the Imagawa there was one, Nagauji, who, during many years, had harboured designs of large ambition. Seizing the occasion offered by Chachamaru's crime, he const.i.tuted himself Masatomo's avenger, and marching into Izu, destroyed the Horigoe mansion, and killed Chachamaru. Then (1491) Nagauji quietly took possession of the province of Izu, building for himself a castle at Hojo. He had no legal authority of any kind for the act, neither command from the Throne nor commission from the shogun.

ENGRAVING: HOJO SOUN

It was an act of unqualified usurpation. Yet its perpetrator showed that he had carefully studied all the essentials of stable government--careful selection of official instruments; strict administration of justice; benevolent treatment of the people, and the practice of frugality. Being descended from the Taira of Ise and having occupied the domains long held by the Hojo, he adopted the uji name of "Hojo," and having extended his conquests to Sagami province, built a strong castle at Odawara. He is often spoken of as Soun, the name he adopted in taking the tonsure, which step did not in any degree interfere with his secular activities. A profoundly skilled tactician, he never met with a military reverse, and his fame attracted adherents from many provinces. His instructions to his son Ujitsuna were characteristic. Side by side with an injunction to hold himself in perpetual readiness for establishing the Hojo sway over the whole of the Kwanto, as soon as the growing debility of the Uesugi family offered favourable opportunity, stood a series of rules elementary almost to affectation: to believe in the Kami; to rise early in the morning; to go to bed while the night is still young, and other counsels of cognate simplicity formed the ethical thesaurus of a philosopher wise enough to formulate the astute maxim that a ruler, in choosing his instruments, must remember that they, too, choose him.

Ujitsuna proved himself a worthy son of Soun, but much had still to be accomplished before the Kwanto was fully won. Among the eight provinces, two, Awa and Kazusa, which looked across the sea to Odawara, were under the firm sway of the Satomi family--one of the "eight generals" of the Kwanto--and not until 1538 could the Hojo chief find an opportunity to crush this strong sept. The fruits of his victory had hardly been gathered when death overtook him, in 1543. His sword descended, however, to a still greater leader, his son Ujiyasu, who pushed westward into Suruga; stood opposed to Kai in the north, and threatened the Uesugi in the east. The two branches of the Uesugi had joined hands in the presence of the Hojo menace, and a powerful league including the Imagawa and the Ashikaga of Koga, had been formed to attack the Hojo. So long did they hesitate in view of the might of Odawara, that the expression "Odawara-hyogi" pa.s.sed into the language as a synonym for reluctance; and when at length they moved to the attack with eighty thousand men, Hojo Ujiyasu, at the head of a mere fraction of that number, inflicted a defeat which settled the supremacy of the Kwanto.

The name of Hojo Ujiyasu is enshrined in the hearts of j.a.panese bushi. He combined in an extraordinary degree gentleness and bravery, magnanimity and resolution, learning and martial spirit. It was commonly said that from the age of sixteen he had scarcely doffed his armour; had never once showed his back to a foe, and had received nine wounds all in front.* Before he died (1570) he had the satisfaction of establishing a double link between the Hojo and the house of the great warrior, Takeda Shingen, a son and a daughter from each family marrying a daughter and a son of the other.**

*Thus a frontal wound came to be designated by his name.

**The present Viscount Hojo is a descendant of Ujiyasu.

THE TAKEDA AND THE UESUGI

Descended (sixteenth generation) from Minamoto Yoshimitsu, Takeda Harun.o.bu (1521-1573) took the field against his father, who had planned to disinherit him in favour of his younger brother. Gaining the victory, Harun.o.bu came into control of the province of Kai, which had long been the seat of the Takeda family. This daimyo, commonly spoken of as Takeda Shingen, the latter being the name he took on receiving the tonsure, ranks among j.a.pan's six great captains of the sixteenth century, the roll reading thus:

Takeda Shingen (1521-1573)

Uesugi Kenshin (1530-1578)