THE TOKUGAWA PERIOD AND JAPANESE FEUDALISM

JOSEPH R. STRAYER

Most students of the European Middle Ages would now, I think, admit that feudalism existed in Japan. They would also admit that it was "real" feudalism, and not just a set of institutions that looked like feudalism on the surface but actually worked in a very different way. Japanese feudalism belongs to the same genus as European feudalism; it is not like the marsupial wolf which resembles a European wolf but in reality is a kind of ferocious opossum.

No matter what definition of feudalism is used, Japan can he brought under its terms. I happen to prefer a rather narrow political definition, on the grounds that feudalism simply ceases to have any specific meaning when it is used to describe economic and social conditions. Great estates cultivated by poorly paid, almost landless laborers can exist without feudalism (for example, collective farms), just as factories and an urban proletariat can exist without capitalism. It is true, of course, that the political structure necessarily affects the economic and social structure: the dominant group in any organized community will control and divert production to suit its own purposes and will impose its standards and values on society. But the methods and forms of economic control and the social values which are inculcated vary with the political system and not vice versa.

In political terms, feudalism is marked by a fragmentation of political authority, private possession of public rights, and a ruling class composed (at least originally) of military leaders and their followers. It is not necessary to demonstrate that these conditions existed in Japan, perhaps even more noticeably than in medieval western Europe. Indeed, while extensive areas in western Europe were never feudalized, none of Japan remained untouched by feudalism.

It is also clear that the early and middle stages of Japanese feudalism were not unlike the corresponding stages in Europe. At first, public authority and public officials continued to exist alongside of increasingly powerful feudal lords. The central government retained power in some areas while losing it in others, and only gradually faded away to a shadow. The peak of fragmentation of authority and of private control of rights of government came several centuries after the process of feudalization had begun. All this seems familiar and reasonable to a western medievalist.

It is the final stage — the reversal of the process of fragmentation — which is strange and puzzling. It is strange because devices which proved dangerous or ephemeral in Europe-such as the existence of large principalities-were used effectively in Japan by the shogun to increase his authority. It is puzzling because the final stage lasted so long, because the changes which took place in the Tokugawa period were so slow that at times they were almost imperceptible. I judge that my colleagues whose views are represented in this book are also somewhat puzzled by political developments between 1600 and 1850. It is a period in which the forms of feudalism were carefully preserved while much of the substance vanished. But if the substance was vanishing, why were the forms necessary? Conversely, if some of the substance remained (as I think it did), why was it not disruptive, why could it be safely tolerated by the shogunate?

Let me elaborate a little on these points. There are two periods in western European feudalism which bear some resemblance to Tokugawa Japan. The first comes at the very beginning, in the ninth and tenth centuries, when the last Carolingians tried to hold their realm together by establishing great commands — the duchy of Burgundy, the duchy of Gothia, the duchy of Francia, and so on. The men who held these commands were at first not unlike Tokugawa daimyos: they were officials of the king; they or their heirs could be moved from one district to another; they could be forced to surrender or exchange some of the counties they administered. But very soon the holders of the great commands became hereditary rulers practically independent of the king, and soon after that the great commands broke up into smaller units. Burgundy might be compared to Tosa: each province was about equally distant from central authority; each had aspirations to control neighboring areas. But Burgundy paid less and less attention to royal orders, and in turn the subordinate counts of Burgundy paid less and less attention to the orders of the duke. Tosa, on the contrary, remained united and obedient. In short, Japanese feudalism seems to be marching backwards; it ends in the pattern with which western feudalism began.

The other period in western history which has some parallel to Tokugawa Japan cannot be dated so precisely; it begins with the emergence of large feudal principalities in France and Germany in the eleventh or twelfth centuries and lasts until the principalities were either absorbed into a larger political unit or became independent states. But the difference is that in Europe the period of feudal principalities was a period of...