Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey by Mikiso Hane & Louis G. Perez

Author:Mikiso Hane & Louis G. Perez [Hane, Mikiso]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813349701
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 2014-11-11T08:00:00+00:00

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Prior to the Age of the Warring States, it was common for the samurai to farm in time of peace and go off to the battlefield in time of war, but during the era of the Warring States, the samurai began to congregate in the castle towns. Thus, a division of labor between the samurai and the farmers began to develop. Hideyoshi’s sword hunt and freezing of occupation resulted in a four-class division of samurai, peasants, artisans, and merchants. The Tokugawa Bakufu adopted a policy of perpetuating this situation and maintained a rigid division of these four main classes. Birth determined every individual’s social status. A samurai’s child belonged to the samurai class, and the peasant’s child remained a peasant. The establishment of this hierarchic social structure fixed the character of Tokugawa society and, to a large extent, of modern Japan. Class status and group relationship governed all social relations, and individualism was thoroughly repressed.

The ruling class justified this class structure in terms of neo-Confucian concepts. Knowing one’s proper place in society was one of the points emphasized by the Confucian scholars, particularly the Zhu Xi12 school, which eventually became the official philosophy of the regime. An early Tokugawa Zhu Xi philosopher, Hayashi Razan (1583–1657), wrote, “Heaven is august, Earth is ignoble. Heaven is high, Earth is low. Just as there is a distinction of high and low between Heaven and Earth, in the society of men, a prince is noble while the subject is common.”13 The Bakufu’s laws governing the military household stated that lord and vassal should observe what was proper to their stations in life. People were expected to be totally submissive and obedient to their superiors and would never dare, of course, to criticize them.

The object of the Bakufu was to fix the social order and preserve the status quo. All innovations were rejected. An official decree stated, “Generally speaking in all things the ancient laws must be followed. New practices must be prohibited.” An eighteenth-century neo-Confucian scholar wrote, “It seems that in state affairs, if the laws and practices of those who founded the state are followed exactly and are not changed, the state will endure forever. If the descendants turn against the laws of their ancestors and devise new ones the state will fall into chaos and will surely perish.”14

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