An Introduction to the History of Japan Part 6

CHAPTER IX

END OF MEDIAEVAL j.a.pAN

In order to see a nation consolidated, it is necessary not only to have a nucleus serving as a centre, towards which the whole nation might converge, but to have at the same time the centralising power of that nucleus strengthened sufficiently to hold the nation solid and compact.

Moreover, the const.i.tuent parts of that nation ought to have the capacity to respond to the action emanating from that common centre or nucleus towards those parts, and facilitate the reciprocal relation between the centralising and the centralised. More than that. There must be formed strong links between those component parts themselves towards one another. For if each part be linked only to a common centre and estranged from other parts, then there is a great danger of the breaking asunder of the whole, however strong the centralising force of that nucleus might be, and in case of the debilitation of that sole centre, there might remain no other force alive to keep the const.i.tuent parts compactly together. To impart, however, the consolidating force to those component parts, they should be inst.i.tuted each as a separate organism.

In other words, unless those parts const.i.tute themselves each in an organic social and political body, provided with the power of acting within and without, they cannot form any close connection among themselves and with the central nucleus; and to be provided with such a power, or to become an organism, each part, too, must have in its turn its own nucleus, around which the rest of that part might converge. To speak summarily, for a strong centralisation there must be, besides one nucleus, or nucleus of the first order, a certain number of nuclei of the second or minor order, and sometimes there must be nuclei of the third and lower orders.

It might be deduced from what is said above that without a sufficient number of local centres, that is to say, without the existence of well-developed minor political organisms, the political centre, however powerful it might be, would not be able to hold a country together, lacking cohesion between those const.i.tuent parts. j.a.pan had long been in such a disorderly state which continued until the middle of the Ashikaga period, that is to say, the middle of the fifteenth century. The political influence of Kamakura, though independent of Kyoto, was of very short duration, and Kyoto had continued on the whole as the sole political and social centre. If there had been in the provinces a place worthy to be called a city, besides Kamakura, it could only be sought in Hakata on the northern coast of Kyushu. Other places were hardly to be termed cities, being but little more than sites of periodical fairs at the utmost. The growth of the cities of Sakai and Yamaguchi is of rather later origin, dating from the middle of the Ashikaga age. The Emperor, the Shogun, and one metropolitan city had dominated the whole of the country for a long time, so that, superficially observed, j.a.pan could be said to have been superbly centralised, and therefore excellently unified. In reality, however, the prestige of the Emperor declined, as well as the military power of the Shogunate, and Kyoto, the site of the imperial court and of the military government, lost the political influence it once had possessed. After all, nothing was found influential enough in the earlier Ashikaga age to serve by itself as a means of solidifying the nation, while there had not yet been formed those minor provincial centres around which communities of lesser magnitude might crystallise. Manors, which were the remnants of the former ages, were of course a kind of agricultural communities, and could be considered as social and economical units, but they were politically dependent on their proprietors living in Kyoto or somewhere else outside of those manors, and in cultural respects most of the manors counted almost for nothing. All j.a.pan was thus thrown into a state of chaos, when the military power of the Ashikaga Shogunate was reduced to impotence.

This chaotic period of j.a.panese history has been generally considered as the retrogressive age of our civilisation, quite in the same sense in which the medieval age in European history has come to be designated as the Dark Ages. It is a great mistake, however, to stigmatise the Ashikaga period as having witnessed no progress in any cultural factor, just as it has been a fatal misconception of early European historians to think that medieval Europe was indeed dark in every cultural respect.

Though the cla.s.sicism of the former ages might seem a civilisation of a far higher stage when compared with the vulgarised culture of the later, or so-called Dark Age, yet the vulgarisation should not be necessarily branded as a backward movement of civilisation. The vulgarisation at least accompanies a wider propagation, a deeper permeation, and the better adaptation to the real social condition of the time, and should not be looked down upon as an absolutely decadent process. In the seemingly anarchical period of the early Ashikaga, j.a.pan had been undergoing, in sooth, an important change in social and cultural respects. Nay, even politically a change of mighty consequence was in course of evolution. Having reached an extreme state of disorder, a germ of fresh order was gradually forming itself out of necessity. That the _shugo_ of this period held sway over a district far more extensive than the land held by any of the _shugo_ of the Kamakura period, is in a sense a remarkable political progress. Yamana, one of the most powerful of the Ashikaga _shugo_, is said to have possessed about one-sixth of the whole of j.a.pan, and on that account was called Lord One-sixth. Such great feudatories were never possible in the Kamakura period. Most of these grand lords, though living mainly in Kyoto, as was stated in the previous chapter, had their provincial residences, which, too, were not so unpretentious as those of the _djito_ of the Kamakura. Each lord maintained princely state, and around his court, a thriving social life must have grown up, making the beginning of the modern j.a.panese provincial towns. The governmental sites of the _daimyo_ or feudatories of the Tokugawa period generally find the origin of their urban development in these residences of the _shugo_ of the Ashikaga period.

The trade with China was another cause of the growth of modern j.a.panese cities, especially of those which are situated by the sea, such as Sakai, Osaka, Nagasaki, and this development of the maritime commercial cities led naturally to the general advancement of the humanistic culture of our country. Our intercourse with China, the fountain-head of the culture of the East, though it had been suspended between the governments since the end of the ninth century, had never been abandoned entirely, and merchant ships had continued to ply between the two countries almost without interruption. During the Kamakura Shogunate too, we have reason to suppose that this steady intercourse livened into considerable activity and bustling profitable to both sides, China, at that epoch of our history, being governed by the Sung and the Yuan dynasties successively. Sanetomo, the second son of Yoritomo and the third Shogun in Kamakura, was said to have built a ship in order to cross over to that country. The port then trading with China was Hakata, and the privileged ships, which were limited in number, must have been under the care and protection of the Shogunate. Those ships carried on board not only commodities of exchange, but pa.s.sengers also, who were mostly priests. Some of the ships even appear to have been sent solely for trade in behalf of certain Buddhist temples. In this we see again the singular coincidence between the histories of Europe and of j.a.pan.

The Levantine trade of the Italian cities in the age of the Crusades counted among its partic.i.p.ators many churches and priests also. It is needless to say that those j.a.panese priests, who went abroad accompanying adventurous merchants and came back loaded with profound religious knowledge, did at the same time conspicuous service in promoting the general culture of our country. What was most remarkable, however, was that there were not a few Chinese Buddhists, who came over to this country and settled here. Their main purpose was of course to propagate the doctrine of the Zen sect, which had got the upper hand in China at that time. They were cordially welcomed by the Shogunate, and later by the Imperial Court too, and were installed in the noted temples of Kamakura and Kyoto as chief priests, and besides their religious activities, these learned men contributed much toward the introduction of contemporary Chinese civilisation in general, in no less degree than did the j.a.panese priests. Among the various departments of knowledge which these priests imparted to the warriors and courtiers, one of the most important was instruction in the pure Chinese cla.s.sics and in secular literature. There are still extant in our country not a small number of rare books printed in the Sung and the Yuan dynasty and imported hither at that time, and these manifest how rich in variety were the books then introduced to j.a.pan. The founding of the famous library at Kanazawa near Kamakura, by a learned member of the Hojo family in a time not far distant from that of the Mongolian invasion, may perhaps be attributed to the influence of some of these priests.

Without doubt the invasion of the Mongolian host put a momentary stop to this mutual intercourse. It seems, however, that the trade with China was revived soon after the war, and continued down to the time of the Ashikaga, without being interrupted materially even by the long civil war. Far from cessation or interruption, the official intercourse between the two states which had been broken off for some years was during this civil war restored to its former amicable condition. It was while the internecine strife was raging over the whole of the island Empire, that a change of dynasty took place in China. The Mongols were driven away to their original abode in the desert, and in their place reigned in China the new dynasty of the Ming, founded by a general of Chinese blood. This founder of the Ming sent an emba.s.sy to j.a.pan to announce the inauguration of his line and to secure the coast of his empire from inroads and pillage by j.a.panese pirates, who, since several centuries, had been ravaging the Korean and then the Chinese coast, and became especially rampant during the civil war, being let loose by the unexampled lawless state of our country. The amba.s.sador of the Chinese emperor, however, could not at once reach Kyoto, which was his destination. For at that time in Kyushu ruled an imperial prince who was a scion of the branch antagonistic to that which reigned in the metropolis supported by the Ashikaga, and the prince-governor, as he was then the master of the historic trading port of Hakata, intercepted the Chinese amba.s.sador on his way, received him, and sent him back. This happened in the year 1369. Seven years afterwards this very prince sent an envoy to the Chinese government, perhaps with the object of obtaining some material a.s.sistance from beyond the sea, in order to make himself strong enough to overpower his enemy in j.a.pan, the Ashikaga party. As the sender was a prince of the blood imperial, the envoy sent by him seems to have been regarded as if he were the representative of the real government of j.a.pan, and the intercourse between the two countries thus began to take official form again. When the civil war ended in the ultimate victory of the Ashikaga party and the annihilation of all its opponents, this international relation initiated by the prince of Kyushu was taken up by Yoshimitsu, the third Shogun of the Ashikaga, who sent an emba.s.sy to the Chinese government of the Ming in the year 1401. After this we see successive exchanges of emba.s.sies between the Chinese government and our Ashikaga Shogunate, the latter vouchsafing the orderliness of our trading people on the Chinese coast and promising to bridle the piratical activities of our adventurers, and the former giving in return munificent presents to the Shogunate. At that time what our forefathers suffered most from was the scarcity of coins, for although the beginning of the coinage in our country is so old that it has been lost in the remotest past, yet for a long period not enough care was exercised to provide the country with sufficient money in coins of different denominations to cover the necessities of the growing industries. No wonder that the presents of copper coins by the emperors of the Ming were gladly received by the Shogunate, and this Chinese money, together with that obtained by sale of our commodities, was in wide circulation throughout j.a.pan, many of them having remained to this day, and served as auxiliary coins. Among other things of Chinese provenance earnestly coveted by us, perhaps the most desired were books.

Besides these two articles, copper coins and books, many rarities and useful commodities must have been imported by these ships, which carried the envoys on board, and rendered a not insignificant service in altering for the better the general ways of living of the people of our country.

The chief emporium of the trade with China in the early Ashikaga period was of course Hakata in Kyushu as before. As the family of the ouchi, however, held the strait of Shimonoseki, the gateway of the Inland Sea, and as Hakata itself came afterwards under the rule of the same family, the Chinese trade had been for a long time controlled or rather monopolised by this lord of the province of Nagato. The prosperity of the inland city of Yamaguchi, the residential seat of the ouchi family, is to be ascribed also to the same circ.u.mstance. Moreover, the growth of the port of Sakai in the easternmost recess of the Inland Sea owes its origin to the fact that the city was once under the lordship of the same ouchi, and a close historical connection was thereby created between it and the port of Shimonoseki. It was by the co-operation of many other political causes, however, that the centre of the foreign trade was shifted from Hakata to Sakai, and when intercourse with western nations was opened, it was the latter and not the former, which became the staple market of import and export.

The growth of the j.a.panese cities, actuated by the political and commercial conditions of the country as stated above, is a phenomenon which had much to do with the progress of our civilization in general.

Notwithstanding the manifold drawbacks necessarily accompanying urban life, cities have been, since very ancient times, one of the most potent agents in the history of the East as well as of the West, in raising the general standard of culture to a high level. Rural life, whatever sonorous praise be chanted for it, would not have been able by itself to elevate the standard of manners and behaviour much above a blunt rustic navete. In this respect we can observe a remarkable difference between the Ashikaga and the preceding ages, a difference quite similar in nature to that which existed between the eleventh and the twelfth centuries in the history of Europe. The sudden increase, in j.a.pan, of printed books in number and variety shows it more than clearly.

The history of printing in j.a.pan goes back to the middle of the eighth century, but at the beginning the matter printed was limited to detached leaflets. What was printed the earliest in the form of a book and is still extant, bears the date of 1088. After that, however, very few books had been printed for a long time. Moreover, those few were exclusively religious. It was in the year 1247 that one of the commentaries on the _Lun-yu_, the famous work of the teachings of Confucius, was put into a reprint, after the model of a contemporary Chinese edition, that is to say, of the Sung age. That this non-religious or non-Buddhist work was first edited in j.a.pan in the middle of the Kamakura period, proves the enlargement of the circle of readers in Chinese cla.s.sics by the partic.i.p.ation of the warrior-cla.s.s.

Such editing of secular Chinese works, however, was discontinued for three-quarters of a century, and was not resumed until 1322, only ten years before the outbreak of the long civil war. The book printed at the latter date was after one of the Chinese editions of the _Shu-king_, another piece of Confucian literature. This was followed by the reprinting of many other non-religious Chinese works. The civil war too astonishes us not only in that it did not hinder the continuance of the reprints of useful Chinese originals, but also in that the number of books reprinted has suddenly increased in general since this period.

Among the books issued during the war, a commentary on the _Lun-yu_, of a text different from that above mentioned, and said to have been made at Sakai, was the most remarkable. The edition was dated 1364, and reprinted again and again in several places. In this case the place where the printing was first undertaken demands also our attention.

Hitherto almost all the books had been published in Kyoto, except some tomes of Buddhist literature, which occasionally had been edited in the convents at Nara or Koya. But now printing began to be undertaken not only in these historical and sacred places, but in purely commercial cities of quite recent growth, as Sakai. It is said that about this time several kinds of books of Chinese literature were edited in the city of Hakata, and that it was a naturalised Chinese who had started the undertaking there. Another tradition tells us that two Chinese block-engravers came and settled at Hakata, and engaged in their professional business, which contributed much to the increase of reprinted books. Shortly after the civil war, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, books were printed in other places more remotely situated in the provinces, such as Yamaguchi and Ashikaga. The last-named was the cradle of the Shogunate House of the Ashikaga, and there just at this time a college was founded, or according to some, restored, by Norizane Uyesugi, one of the most influential retainers of the Shogunate in eastern j.a.pan. Thus, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, the reprinting of Chinese cla.s.sics became a fashion throughout the empire. In addition to the ever-increasing number of books reprinted at Kyoto and Sakai, we find now those printed at places as far remote as Kagoshima in the west. In the east there seems to have lived in the neighborhood of Odawara, a new political centre, at least one engraver, engaged in block-cutting for books. Summing up what has been stated above, the increase of the number of book-editing localities meant the increase of minor cultural centres in the provinces, that is to say, the wider diffusion of civilisation in the empire.

Another important fact to be specially noticed is that the varieties of books reprinted became gradually multifarious. Though those books printed in the Ashikaga age were mostly reproductions of Chinese works, and very few purely j.a.panese books were edited until the end of the age, yet those Chinese works themselves, which were reprinted, became more and more diversified in kind. Not only Buddhist and Confucian cla.s.sics, and works of purely literary character, especially poetical works and books on versification, but several medical works also were reprinted and issued in the later Ashikaga age. The study of medicine had been revived since the civil war by the intercourse with China, and soon after the war, some j.a.panese students went abroad to learn the science there. The reprinting of medical books, therefore, was to be considered as a token of the growing necessity for medical students ever increasing in our country, and the beginning of the revival of scientific education.

As to the works of j.a.panese authors which were put into print, the first publication seems to have been that of religious treatise in Chinese by the priest Honen, printed at the beginning of the Kamakura period, and the work was many times reprinted afterwards. Another work by the same priest, which was written in j.a.panese, was issued at the end of the same period. During the civil war numerous works, mostly in Chinese, by the j.a.panese Zen priests were published, among which the history of Buddhism in j.a.pan, ent.i.tled the _Genko-shakusho_, was the most noteworthy, and was therefore reprinted over and over again. A chronological table of the history of j.a.pan, and two editions of the Joyei Laws were subsequently printed. A text-book for children, to train them in the use of Chinese ideographs, was first printed at the close of the Ashikaga period, and the demand for the appearance of such a book proves that the education of children began to arouse the general attention.

From what is said above, we can safely conclude that during the course of the Ashikaga period, the level of civilisation of our country had been raised in a marked degree, and that at the same time there arose one after another numerous cultural centres in the provinces, which were in their main features nothing but Kyoto on a small scale, but nevertheless contributed not the least to the betterment of national civilisation in general owing to their common rivalry. One would perhaps entertain some doubt as to the veracity of the a.s.sertion, that in an age such as of the Ashikaga, when political anarchy was in full play, so remarkable an advancement had been steadily achieved by our forefathers.

If he would, however, look at the history of the Italian renaissance, then he would not be at a loss to see that political disorder does not necessarily thwart the progress of civilisation, but on the contrary often stimulates it.

The territories owned by great feudatories or _daimyo_ in the Ashikaga age were by no means compact ent.i.ties definitely bounded. Their frontiers constantly shifted to and fro according to frequently recurring waxings and wanings in strength of this or that _daimyo_, and these fluctuations depended, in their turn, on the results sometimes of petty skirmishes and sometimes of political intrigues, so that an unwavering steadiness was the least thing to be expected at that time.

This politically unsettled condition of j.a.pan, however, was in a certain sense a boon to our country, for it took away all the hindrances which lay in the way of internal communication, and paved the path to the ultimate political unity of the empire. I do not say of course that travelling at that time was quite safe from any kind of molestation, but the main obstacles to communication were rather of a social than of a political nature. In other words, they were of kinds which could not be got rid of in a like stage of civilisation, even if j.a.pan had been politically not dismembered, and adventurous merchants did not shrink from facing such difficulties. No need to speak of those piratical traders, who went out from the western islands and the coastal regions of the Inland Sea on their devastating errands to the Korean and the Chinese coasts. The less warlike merchants ventured to trade with the Ainu, who had retired into the island of Hokkaido, and had not been heard of since the beginning of the Ashikaga period.

Among the itinerants travelling a long distance may be counted the professional literati also, the experts in the art of composing the _renga_, the short j.a.panese poems. They went about throughout the provinces, visiting feudal lords in their castles, teaching them the literary pastimes, thus imparting their first lesson in aesthetic education to those who had never tasted it. Courtiers, too, weakminded as they were, travelled great distances, to call on some rich bourgeois or powerful _daimyo_, who were thinking of becoming their munificent patrons, and taught them, besides the afore-said art of composing j.a.panese poems, the sport of kicking leather b.a.l.l.s and other leisurely pastimes which had been the favourites among the courtiers in Kyoto, and received in return a generous hospitality and fees for the lessons which they gave. Buddhist priests were the third set of busy travellers of the time. Missionary activities had not much relaxed since the Kamakura period, though no influential sect had been started in this age. Every nook and corner of the island empire had received the footprints of these religious itinerants, and some of the more enterprising priests even crossed the sea to the island of what is now Hokkaido in order to preach to the Ainu dwelling there. Pilgrims to the shrines of Ise, where the ancestress of the Imperial line was enshrined, may also be counted among the busy interprovincial travellers.

All these wanderers served not only to transmit to distant provincial towns the culture engendered and nourished in the metropolis, but also to make the intercourse between the minor cultural centres more intimate than before, so as to spread a civilisation of a uniform standard and nature throughout the whole of the empire. j.a.pan was thus for the first time unified in her civilisation in order to prepare herself for a solid political unification.

Let me repeat that j.a.pan of the Ashikaga age had within herself no constant political boundaries nor any other artificial barriers to impede the people of one province nor of the territory of one _daimyo_ from going to another province or the territory of another _daimyo_, and this, in a great measure, facilitated communications between the inhabitants of different provinces. The fact that the college at Ashikaga in eastern j.a.pan was, notwithstanding its insufficient accommodation, thronged with pupils from various parts of the country, even from a province so far off from Kyoto as Satsuma, proves that bad roads and poor means of conveyance did not obstruct the j.a.panese of that time from traversing great distances in order to get a liberal education, and such activity and lively traffic would naturally tend to the formation of big emporiums here and there within the empire.

Unfortunately the geographical features of our country did not allow it to see a great number of such large commercial cities formed within it, as the Hanseatic towns had been formed in medieval Germany, although we find very close resemblances between Germany of the twelfth and of the thirteenth century and j.a.pan under the Ashikaga regime as regards their political conditions. The only one of the j.a.panese cities which had ever attained such a height of prosperity as to be fairly matched with the free cities of the Hansa was Sakai in the province of Idzumi.

The city of Sakai, as its name, which means in the j.a.panese tongue "the Boundary," denotes, was situated just on the boundary line of the two adjoining provinces Settsu and Idzumi, and at the quondam estuary of the river Yamato. The frontier-line, however, and the course of the river, were afterwards changed, so that the city is now entirely included within the province of Idzumi, and there is no river running near the city. The fact that it was once a border town shows that it could never have been the seat of the provincial government. Neither had it ever been the residence of any powerful feudal lord during the whole military regime. Moreover, nature has bestowed no special favour on the city. The bay of Sakai is very widely open, affording no protection against the west wind. In addition to that, it has been very shallow since old times. Even in an undeveloped stage of ship-building, the port was unfit for the mooring of vessels of a size as large as the junks trading with China were at that time, so that they had to be equipped somewhere else in a neighbouring harbour, and then brought and anch.o.r.ed far off from the sh.o.r.e in the bay of Sakai. The only geographical advantage of the port lay in the fact that the shortest sea-route to the island of Shikoku started thence. The first impulse to the development of the city seems to have been given during the civil war, for it was the nearest access to the sea for one of the parties which had its stronghold in the mountainous region of the province of Yamato, adjacent to Idzumi. At the end of the war, the port came, as before stated, under the rule of the family of ouchi, and from ouchi it pa.s.sed into the hands of the family of Hosokawa, also one of the chief va.s.sals of the Ashikaga Shogunate, holding the north-eastern part of the island of Shikoku, and Sakai serving the family always as the landing-place of its followers, when they were on their way to Kyoto, to pay their respects to the Shogun or to fight there for their own interests. On account of this usefulness the harbour-city of Sakai had been granted privileges by the hereditary chief of the Hosokawa, as a recompense for the a.s.sistance given by the merchants of the city, and those same privileges, in extent, amounted to almost as much as the munic.i.p.al freedom enjoyed by the free cities of Europe. The administration of the city was in the hands of a few wealthy merchants, and was rarely interfered with by its feudal lord. Among the merchants there were ten, at first, who monopolised the munic.i.p.al government, each of them being very rich as the proprietors of certain storehouses on the beach, the rents of which paid them a good income. In the later Ashikaga age, however, we hear the names of the thirty-six munic.i.p.al councillors of Sakai. This increase in the number might perhaps have been the result of the growth in opulence of the citizens.

In short, though the city had been under the oligarchical rule of the wealthy merchants of the city, like Venice and Florence in medieval Italy, yet it was none the less autonomous, which is quite an exceptional case in the whole course of the history of our country.

The golden age of the city of Sakai dates from the year 1476 or thereabouts, when a squadron trading with China first sailed out from the harbour. Until that time all the vessels plying between this country and China used to set out from Hakata or from Hyogo, which is nearly the same thing as Kobe. Although the adventurous merchants of Sakai carried their trade before this time as far as the islands of Loo-choo, and often partic.i.p.ated in the Chinese trade also, yet no vessel had ever started from there for China till then. That Sakai became at this date a chief trading port dealing with China might presumably have been owing to the intercession of its hereditary lord Hosokawa, but the determining cause of this a.s.sumption of such an honourable position among the commercial cities of j.a.pan must have been the indisputable superiority of the material strength of the city. Many of the higher va.s.sals of the Shogunate borrowed money from the merchants of Sakai in order to equip their soldiers. Nay, even the Shogunate itself had often to mortgage its landed estates to the merchants of the city in order to save its treasury from running short. The wealth of the citizens enabled them to fortify their city very strongly, by surrounding it with a deep moat, and to enlist into their service a great number of knights-errant, who abounded in j.a.pan at that time. These, together with the consciousness of indispensable a.s.sistance rendered to the Shogunate, to various great feudatories and condottieri, emboldened the citizens to defy the otherwise formidable military powers, and those warriors, on the other hand, who owed much to the pecuniary aid of the Sakai merchants, could but treat the latter with great consideration, which was unwonted at that time. Although the citizens of Sakai were not entirely free from the sufferings of the war, for they had often to quarter soldiers in their houses, yet no battle was allowed to be fought within the city, notwithstanding that a most sanguinary war was raging all around in the empire.

It was natural, therefore, that, after the civil war of the Ohnin era, Sakai should be considered safer to live in than Kyoto. Sakai became the asylum for the civilisation of j.a.pan, to save it from utter destruction.

Poets, painters, musicians, and singers, who had found living in the turbulent metropolis intolerably hard, sought shelter in Sakai, and there occupied themselves quietly with their own professions. Various handicrafts, such as lacquering, porcelain-making, and weaving were all started there with enormous success. Especially as to the weaving, it is said that this industry, which had once flourished and been afterwards abandoned in Kyoto on account of the political disturbances there, was not only continued at Sakai, but also improved by the Chinese weavers, who repaired to the city and taught the natives the art of making various costly textiles of Chinese invention. In some respects the textiles of the Nishijin, now one of the specialties of Kyoto, may be said to be the continuation of the Sakai looms.

Another kind of industry, which developed in the city in the later Ashikaga period, was the manufacture of fire-arms. Immediately after the introduction of fire-arms by a Portuguese in the year 1541, a merchant of Sakai happened to learn the art of making guns somewhere or other in Kyushu, and after his return to the city he began to practise there the business he had learnt. Sakai thus became the origin of the propagation, in central and eastern j.a.pan, of the use of the new arm.

From what has been described above, the reader would easily understand that the intellectual level of the citizens of Sakai stood much higher than that of the average j.a.panese of that time. Wit and pleasantry were the accomplishments highly prized there, so that the city produced out of its inhabitants a large number of versatile diplomatists, story-tellers, and buffoons. As their economic conditions were very easy, the social life of the city was polished, enlightened, and even luxurious. The manufacture of sake, the j.a.panese favourite drink made from rice, was highly developed in the city, and the fame of the Sakai-tub was renowned the country round. To protect the brewers, the Shogunate issued an order forbidding the importation of sake into the city. The tea-ceremony and the flower-tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, two fashionable pastimes already in vogue at that time, were eagerly practised here by wealthy merchants. Many famous experts in this sort of amus.e.m.e.nt were found among the inhabitants of the city, and they were generally connoisseurs highly skilled in the fine arts, as Sen-no-Rikyu, for example. Various curios, native and foreign, were bought and sold there at exorbitant high prices.

The prosperous condition of the city induced many Buddhists, especially the priests of the Jodo-shinshu, the most active sect of j.a.panese Buddhism at that time, to try their propaganda in the city. They had numerous temples built, and by lending to the merchants their influence at the Shogun's court obtained from it the privilege of trading with China, thus making common cause with the citizens of that port. The earlier Christian missionaries, too, endeavoured to make this city the centre of their movement. It was indeed at the end of the year 1550, that Francis Xavier, who was not only the greatest missionary whom j.a.pan has ever received from the West, but also one of the greatest men in the world too, arrived at the city from Yamaguchi on his way to Kyoto.

Though he could achieve nothing noteworthy during his short stay here, on account of illness, yet by him the first seed of Christianity was sown in the central regions of the empire, and ten years later the first Christian hymn was sung in the church founded in the city.

The civilisation of the city of Sakai represented that of the whole empire in the later Ashikaga age, manifested in its most glaring colours. The essential character of the civilisation was not aristocratic, but bourgeois. The lower strata of the people still had nothing to do with it. It is true that we can recognise already at this period the beginning of the proletariat movement. The frequent disturbances raised by apaches in the streets of Kyoto and the insurrections of agricultural workers in the provinces, remind us of the Peasants' War in the time of the Reformation in Europe. Their demands as well as their connection with the religious agitation of the time closely resembled those of the followers of Goetz von Berlichingen.

They could not, however, secure any permanent result by their insurrections, so that the character of the civilisation remained essentially bourgeois, not having suffered any marked change from those disturbances.

The civilisation of the bourgeois cannot but be individualistic, and its main difference from that of the aristocracy lies also herein. It has been so in Europe, and it could not have been otherwise in our country.

The fact that individualism got the upper hand in the Ashikaga age may be proved by a phenomenon in the history of j.a.panese art.

Portrait-painting had made some progress already in the Kamakura period, as was stated in the foregoing chapter. The artistic development in this branch of painting made it independent of religious pictures. The portrait-paintings of the age, however, even those executed by such eminent masters as Takan.o.bu and n.o.buzane, are only images of the typical courtier or warrior, not to mention the stiffness of the style. Very little of the individuality of the persons represented was manifested in them. The scroll-paintings, to which the attention of most of the artists of the age was directed, contained pictures of many persons, but to depict scenes was the chief aim of scroll-paintings, so that no serious pains were taken in the delineation of individuals. That portrait-painting remained thus long in an undeveloped stage cannot be explained away simply by the tardiness of the progress of arts in general. The chief cause must be attributed to the fact that the contemporary civilisation was lacking in individualistic elements.

Unless there is a rise of the individualistic spirit in a certain measure, no real progress in portraiture can be expected.

In the Ashikaga period, a large number of scroll-paintings had been produced as before, but they were mostly inferior in quality to those of the preceding age. On the other hand, we notice a vast improvement in the portrait-painting of this period. It may be due to some extent to the influence of the Zen sect, the sect which prevailed among the upper cla.s.s of that time, for its creed is said to be strongly individualistic. Mainly, however, it must have come from the general spirit of the age, which, though it could not be said to have been free from the influence of the same sect, was induced to become individualistic more by social and economical reasons than by religious ones. By painters of the schools of Tosa and Kano were painted numerous portraits of eminent personages, such as the Shogun, courtiers, great feudatories, priests, especially of the Zen sect, literati, artists, experts in tea-ceremony, and so forth. Their pictures were generally made after death by order of the near relatives, friends, va.s.sals or disciples of the deceased, to be a memorial of the person whom they adored or revered. Not a small number of those paintings are extant to this day, showing vividly the characteristics of those ill.u.s.trious figures in j.a.panese history.

The political anarchy combined with the individualistic tendency of the age could not fail to lead to the moral dissolution of the people. To the same effect, too, the literature of the time, which was a revival of that of the Fujiwara period, contributed. The cla.s.sical authors of j.a.panese literature at the height of the Fujiwara period were now perused, commented upon, and elucidated with devouring eagerness, the most adored among them being Murasaki-Shikibu, whose famous novel, _Genji-monogatari_, was regarded mystically and held to be almost divine. The nature of this literature was for the most part realistic, or rather sentimental, verging sometimes on sensuality. It was, however, clad in the exquisitely refined costume of beautiful diction and choice turns of phrase, borrowed or metamorphosed from the inexhaustible stores of Chinese literature. As to the revived form of literature in the Ashikaga period, the difference between it and that of the old time was so remarkable, that it could not be overlooked. Vulgarisation usurping the place of refinement, and coa.r.s.e sensuality reigning rampant was the outcome of the cultivation of the cla.s.sical literature. The moral tone of the stories and novels produced in this decadent age unmistakably reflects how low was the ebb of the sense of decency of that period, fostered by the naturalistic tendency manifested in the Fujiwara cla.s.sics.

These depict the dark side of the age, but in order not to be one-sided in my judgment, let me tell also about its bright side. The culture of the Ashikaga had from the beginning a trend to grow more and more humanistic as it approached the end of the period. One more aspect in the history of j.a.panese painting proves it to the full. Landscapes and still-life pictures, which had been formerly painted only as the accessories of religious images or as the background in the scroll paintings, before which the main subjects, that is to say, the personages in stories were made to play, began now to form by themselves each a special independent group of subjects for painting. This shows that the people of the time had already entered a cultural stage able to enjoy the arts for art's sake. Many pictures of such a kind by the brush of noted Chinese masters were imported into our country, and several clever j.a.panese artists also painted after them. Some of our artists, like Sesshu, went over to China to study the art of painting there. The differentiation of the school of Kano from the older Tosa was another result of this development. Most of these pictures were executed in the form of _kakemono_, or hanging pictures, so called from their being hung in a special niche of a drawing room or a study. Screens, or _byobu_, mounted with pictures, became also a fashion. In general, the furnishing of a house was now a matter of a certain educated taste, and various systems were devised and formulated by accomplished experts.

The delicacy of the aesthetic sense in indoor-life was moreover enhanced by the laborious etiquette of fashionable tea-parties held by aristocrats and bourgeois alike. The tea-plant itself is said to have been introduced from China into our country in the reign of the Emperor Saga, that is to say, at the beginning of the ninth century. Its use, however, as the daily beverage was of a far later date. Yosai, the founder of the Zen sect in j.a.pan, wrote in the early Kamakura period a commendation on tea as the healthiest drink of all. Still, for a long while after him, tea seems to have been used exclusively by Buddhists as a tonic. It was in the Ashikaga age that tea came first into general use among the well-to-do cla.s.ses of the people. As the production of it was, however, not so abundant as now, it was not used daily as at present, but occasionally, with an etiquette conducted with exquisitely refined taste, both hosts and guests rivalling one another in displaying their artistic acquirements by delivering extempore speeches in criticism of the various articles of art exhibited, or in amusing themselves with mystic dialogues of the Zen creed, or the lively exchange of witty repartees.

After all, the tendency of the culture of the later Ashikaga period was in the main humanistic. There was no political authority so firmly const.i.tuted, nor were conventional morals of the time so rigorous, as to be able to put an effective check on any liberal thinker, nor to intervene in the daily life of the people. Thought and action in j.a.pan has never been more free than in that age. That Christianity could find innumerable converts from one end of the empire to the other within half a century after its introduction, may be accounted for by supposing that the ground for it had been prepared long before by this exceedingly humanistic culture. In this respect we see the dawn of modern j.a.pan already in the later Ashikaga age. What a striking similarity to the Italian renaissance! j.a.pan was now in the throes of travail--the time for a new birth was fast approaching. Conditions on the whole were favourable. All that was wanted for this were the moral regeneration of the people and the political reconstruction of the Empire.

CHAPTER X

THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN j.a.pAN

Anarchy engendered peace at least. At the end of the Ashikaga Shogunate the minor territorial lords, who had sprung up out of the impotency of the Shogun, were swallowed up one after another by the more powerful ones. The rights of manorial holders, that is to say, of court-n.o.bles, shrines, and temples, over estates legally their own, though long since fallen into a condition of semi-desuetude, were active, sensitive, yet powerful enough in the middle of the period to withstand the attempted encroachments of those territorial lords, who were _de jure_ only managers of the estates entrusted to their care; but those rights began in course of time to lose their enforcing power, and were finally set at naught by the all-powerful military magnates. The link between the estates and their proprietors was thus virtually cut off, and each territory, which was in truth an agglomeration of several estates, came to stand as one body under the rule of a military lord, without any reservation to his right. In other words, each territory became a domain of a lord pure and simple, and it may be best explained by imagining a quasi-sovereign state in Europe formed by joining together a certain number of ecclesiastical domains, the lands of which were contiguous. It is true that the size of such territories varied, ranging from one so big as to contain several provinces down to petty ones comprising only a few villages; their boundaries, too, shifted from time to time.

Notwithstanding this diversity in size and the inconstancy of the frontier-lines, these territories were similar to one another in their main nature, no more complicated by intricate manorial systems. If, therefore, there appeared at once some irresistible necessity for national unification or some great historical figure, whose ability was equal to the task of achieving the work, j.a.pan could now be made a solid national state far more easily than at any earlier period.

Besides this facilitation of the political unity, what most contributed to the settling of the general order was the resuscitation of the moral sense of the nation. The highly advanced Chinese civilisation introduced into our country at a time when it was comparatively nave, had an effect which could not be termed exactly in all respects wholesome. The morals of the people, whose mode of life was simplicity itself, not having yet tasted the sumptuousness of civilised life, excelled those of higher civilised nations in veracity, soberness, and courage. Lacking, however, in the firm consciousness which must accompany any virtue of a standard worthy of sincere admiration, these attributes of the ancient j.a.panese, though laudable in themselves, could have no high intrinsic value, and were inadequate to stem the enervating influence of the elegantly developed alien civilisation introduced later on into the country. The ethical ties, which are indispensable at any time for maintaining the social order in a healthy condition, were gradually reduced to a state of utter dissolution in the later or over-refined stage of the Fujiwara period, especially among the upper cla.s.ses. With the attainment of political power by the warrior cla.s.s in the formation of the Kamakura Shogunate, there shimmered once some hope of the reawakening of the moral spirit, for fidelity and grat.i.tude, which were the cardinal virtues of the Kamakura warriors, were efficient factors in refreshing and invigorating a society which had once fallen into a despicable languor and demoralisation. The ascendency of these bracing forces, however, was but transitory. This disappointment came not only from the shortness of the duration of the genuine military regime at Kamakura, but also from another reason not less probable. The admirable virtues of the warriors were the natural outcome of the peculiar private circ.u.mstances created in the fighting bodies of the time, and were on that account essentially domestic in their nature. As long as these warriors remained, therefore, mere professional fighters and tools in the hands of court n.o.bles, the moral ties binding leaders and followers as well as the _esprit de corps_ among these followers themselves had very slight chance of coming into contact with politics. In short, the majority of these warriors were not acquainted with public life at all, so that they were at a loss how to behave themselves as public men when, as the real masters of the country, they found themselves obliged to deal with political affairs. Public affairs are generally p.r.o.ne to induce men even of high probity to put undue importance upon the attainment of end, rather than to make them scrupulous about the means of arriving at that end; and if the moral sense of the people is not developed enough to guard against this injurious infection of private life from the meddling with public affairs, then their inborn and yet untried virtues may often fail to a.s.sert themselves against the influence of the depravity which can find its way more easily into public than into private life. Such was the case with the warriors of the Kamakura age. Through their ascendency the martial spirit of the nation, which had languished somewhat under the rule of the Fujiwara n.o.bles, was once more revived, but their descendants at the end of that Shogunate could not be so brave and simple-hearted as their forefathers were. The extinction of the Minamoto family, too, relieved these warriors of their duty as hereditary liegemen of the Shogun, for henceforth both the Shogun, who was now of a different family from that of the Minamoto, and the Hojo, the real master of the Shogunate, were to them superiors only in official relations. This disappearance of the object on which the fidelity of the warriors used to concentrate, made fidelity itself an empty virtue. At least among the circle of warriors in the age in which fidelity was everything and all other virtues were but ancillary to it, this loss must have been a great drawback to the improvement of the morality of the nation. The demoralisation of the influential cla.s.s had thus set in since the latter part of the Kamakura age. No wonder that during the civil war which ensued many of the prominent warriors changed sides very frequently, almost without any hesitation, obeying only the dictates and suggestions of their private interests. That this civil war, which ended without any decisive battle being fought, could drag on for nearly a century, may be best understood by taking this recklessness of the partic.i.p.ants into consideration. The inconsistency in their att.i.tude or the want of fidelity towards those to whom they ought to be faithful was not restricted to their transactions in public affairs only, but extended also to the recesses of their family life. Parents could no more confide in their own children, nor husband in his wife, and masters had always to be on guard against betrayal by their servants. After the civil war there were many periods of intermittent peace in the first half of the Ashikaga regime, but that was not a result of the firm and strong government of the Shogun.

They were rather lulls after storms, brought about by the weariness felt after a long anarchy.

The culmination of this deplorable condition of national demoralisation falls to the epoch of the next civil war, that is to say, of the Ohnin era. It is in this period that we witness a great development of the spy system and of the usage of taking hostages as a security against breach of faith. Even such means, however, proved often inefficient to guard against the unexpected treachery of supposed intimate friends, or a sudden attack from the rear by trusted neighbours. Desertion, though not recommended as a laudable action, was nevertheless not considered a detestable infamy, especially when it was carried out anterior to the pitching of the camps against the enemy, and deserters or betrayers were generally welcomed and loaded with munificent rewards by their new masters. Was it possible that such a ruthless state could continue for long without any counteraction? If any one had once betrayed his first master for the sake of selfish interests, could he claim after that to be a sort of person able to enjoy the implicit confidence of his second master? Examples of repeated breaches of faith abound in the history of the time. It was from the general unreliableness caused by such habitual acts of treachery, that the practice of giving quarter to deserters and facile surrenderers began gradually to diminish. And the result was that the danger of being killed after having surrendered or capitulated became a cause to induce those warriors, who would otherwise have easily given up their master's cause, to remain true to him to the end. This is one of the reasons why, after so long a domination of this miserable demoralisation, we begin frequently to come upon those beautiful episodes which showed the solidarity of clans admirably maintained and the utter loyalty of va.s.sals to their lord, fighting to the death under his banner. The process, however, of ameliorating the morals of the nation should not begin from the relation of master and servant, but slowly start from within families. One could not refrain from feeling the imperative necessity of trustworthy mutual dependence among members connected by ties of blood, amidst the dreary environs in which no hearty confidence could be put in any one with safety. That the _Hsiao-king_, a Chinese moral book treating of the merits of filial piety, was widely read in educated circles of the time, and that several editions of the same book have been published since the middle of the Ashikaga period, show how great a stress was put on the encouragement of domestic duties. With the family, made a compact body, as the starting point, the reorganisation of social and national morals was thus set on foot. The growth of the tendency of liegemen to share the same fate as their lord is to be looked upon as a kind of extension of this family solidarity, as it came not from the consideration of the mere relation between a master and his servants, but rather from that of the hereditary transmittal of such a relation on both sides, just as it was at the beginning of the Kamakura Shogunate. There was no doubt therefore that the smaller the size of the territory of a lord, the easier the consummation of the process of its compact consolidation, which was necessarily cemented by a close mutual attachment between the lord of that territory and his dependents within and without his family. Not only that. If that territory was small and weak, and in constant danger of being destroyed or annexed by powerful neighbours, then the same process of consolidation was effected very swiftly. The territory in the province of Mikawa, which was owned by the family of the Tokugawa, was one of many such instances. This territory was so small in size, that it did not cover more than a half of the province, and moreover it was surrounded by the domains belonging to the two powerful families of Oda and Imagawa on the west and east, so that the small estate of the Tokugawa family was constantly hara.s.sed by them, and maintained as a protectorate now by the one and then by the other of the two. On that account nowhere else was there a stronger demand for a close affinity between a territorial lord and his men, than in this domain of the Tokugawa's. Consequently we see there not only an early progress in territorial consolidation, but along with it the resuscitation of an acute moral sense, especially in the direction necessary and compatible to the maintenance and development of a military state.

The reawakening of the high moral sense in the nation and the formation of compact self-const.i.tuted territories, virtually independent but amply liable to the influence of unifying forces, were the phenomena in the latter half of the Ashikaga period. That the country was slow in becoming nationalised and unified must be attributed to the insufficiency of that reawakening and the insolidity of those quasi-independent territories. The general culture of the time, which was humanistic in nature, was powerless for the moment to facilitate this movement which was national and moral at the same time. Humanistic as it was, it was able to pervade the provinces, and gave to j.a.pan a uniform colour of culture. That was already, indeed, a stride forward on the way to national unification. Nay, it may be said that the impulse to that very unification was given by that very culture. Generally, however, the humanistic culture of any form has no particular state of things as its practical goal, and therefore cannot necessarily lead to an improvement in the morals of any particular nation, nor does it always stimulate the desire for the national unification of a certain country. On the contrary, it often counteracts these movements, and seemingly contributes toward accelerating the demoralisation and dismemberment of a nation, for individualism and selfishness get often the upper hand when such a culture becomes ascendant. The fruit which the Renaissance of the Quattrocento bore to Italians was just of this sort, and the direct influence which the humanistic culture of the later Ashikaga produced on j.a.pan was not very much different from that. The culture, which had spread widely all over j.a.pan, rather tended to loosen moral ties, and at least diminished the social stability. Persons, of a character morally most depraved, such as traitors, murderers, and so forth, were not infrequently men of high culture. Most of the rebellious servants of the Ashikaga Shogun were said to have been highly-accomplished literati. Some of them were addicted to the perusal of the sensational novels produced in the golden age of cla.s.sical literature in j.a.pan, such as the _Ise-_ and the _Genji-monogatari_, and others were composers of short poems fashionable in those days, rejoicing at their own display of flighty wit, while not a few of them were liberal patronisers of the contemporary art, especially of painting. What a striking parallelism to those Popes and their nephews, in the time of the Renaissance, whose patronising of arts is as renowned as their atrocious vices!

If the culture inborn or borrowed from China was unable to save the country from a moral and political crisis, what was the fruit borne by the seeds of the new exotic culture, that is to say, of Christianity, sown just at this juncture? I will not dilate here on the relation between religion and morality in general. Suffice it to say that religious people are not always virtuous. Bigots are generally men of perverse character, and mostly vicious. This is a truism. It has been so with Buddhism and many other religions. Why should it be otherwise only in the case of Christianity? As regards the general culture of our country, the introduction of Christianity is a very important historical fact, the influence of which can by no means be overlooked. Though the secular culture which was introduced into j.a.pan as the accessory of the Christian propaganda was of a very limited nature, and though the free acceptance of it was cut short soon after its circulation, yet this new element of civilisation brought over by the missionaries was much more than a drop in the ocean. However difficult it be to perceive the traces of the Western culture in the spirit of the age which was to follow, it cannot be denied that it left, after all, some indelible mark on our national history. That it had spread within a few decades all over the contemporary j.a.pan, from the extreme south to the furthest north, should also not be left out of sight. Thenceforth the Fables of aesop have not ceased to be told in the lamplit hours in the nurseries of j.a.pan. We see j.a.pan, after the first introduction of Christianity, painted in a somewhat different colour, though the difference of tincture may be said to be extremely slight. The knowledge at least that there were outside of China, many people in the far West, civilised enough to teach us in several branches of science and art, opened the eyes of the island nation to a wider field of vision, and began to alter the views which we had entertained about things Chinese. Previously, for anything to become authoritative, it had been enough if the Chinese origin of that thing could be a.s.sured. The overshadowing influence which China had wielded over j.a.pan at the time of the Fujiwara regime was revived in different form in the middle Ashikaga period, the former being China of the T'ang, while the latter that of the Sung, Yuan, and Ming. In short, China had long continued as a too brilliant guiding star to the j.a.panese mind, Korea, by the way, having been regarded only as one of the intermediaries between the "flowery" Empire and our country. It would be, of course, a hasty judgment to conclude that the introduction of Christianity instantly let the scales fall from the eyes of the j.a.panese as regards China, and aroused thereby a fervent national enthusiasm of the people, but at least it was a strong impetus to the awakening of the national consciousness, and led indirectly to the political unification of the country. In this respect the introduction of the new religion had a salutary effect on our history.