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History of Japan By Christian Uhl

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Inhoudsopgave General information / Philosophical Orientation............................................................................................ 3 Objectivity and the “Fiction of the Facts” – Boot and Totman in Comparison..................................................3 A Certain Indeterminacy of the Past...............................................................................................................3 Boot and Totman.............................................................................................................................................4 The Question of Periodization..............................................................................................................................5 And Yet…..............................................................................................................................................................6 From the Pre-Historical Times to the Reforms of the 7th century....................................................................8 From ~ 250 BC to ~ AD 200..................................................................................................................................8 The uji, and queen Himiko...............................................................................................................................8 The Third and Fourth Centuries AD....................................................................................................................10 The first “emperor”.......................................................................................................................................10 “The One with the Divine Function to Keep the Realm Together”...............................................................11 Crime and punishment..................................................................................................................................11 The Mimana Controversy (addendum)..............................................................................................................12 The Fifth Century to 603 AD...............................................................................................................................12 Uji, kabane, and imperial control..................................................................................................................12 The Role of the Emperor and the Rise of the Soga.......................................................................................13 The Government of Prince Shōtoku / the 17-Articles-Constitution..............................................................14 The Taika Reforms and the Emergence of the Ritsuryō-Style of Government 603............................................15 – 710..................................................................................................................................................................15 The Taika Reforms..........................................................................................................................................15 Rule by the Crown Prince (kōtaishi) / the Jinshin disturbance......................................................................16 The Establishment and the Decline of the Ritsuryō-System...........................................................................17 The Ritsuryō Style Administration (701-967 AD)...............................................................................................17 Introduction: About the Ritsuryō Codes in general.......................................................................................17 The “Ritsu” of the Ritsuryō Codes.................................................................................................................18 The “Ryō” of the ritsuryō Codes....................................................................................................................19 The Decline of The Ritsuryō System in the Heian Period (967–1185)................................................................23 The Decline of the Dajōkan...........................................................................................................................23 The Increase of Large-scale Land Ownership................................................................................................25 From Shōen-Based Feudalism to Mura-Based Feudalism..............................................................................28 The Shōen-based Feudalism of the Kamakura Period (1185-1333)...................................................................28 The Structure of Shōen-Based Feudalism.....................................................................................................28 The Shōen as the Base of Kamakura Period Feudalism.................................................................................30 The Onkyū-System.........................................................................................................................................31 Leader and Retainer......................................................................................................................................31 From Shōen-Based Feudalism to Village-Based Feudalism (1333 - 1598).........................................................32 The Disintegration of Shōen-Feudalism and the End of Centralized Government.......................................32 The Decentralized Feudalism of the Sengoku Period (1467 – 1587)............................................................34 Decentralized Feudalism under Central Control (1568 – 1598)....................................................................36 The Consolidation, Decline and Collapse of the Tokugawa Rule....................................................................38

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The Consolidation and Decay of Village-Based Feudalism (1600 - 1868)..........................................................38 Village-Based Feudalism................................................................................................................................38 The Decay of Village-Based Feudalism..........................................................................................................40 The Arrival of Globalizing Capitalism, and the Collapse of the Feudal Order...............................................43 The Establishment and Decay of Constitutional Monarchy............................................................................45 The Renewal of Japan as a Constitutional Monarchy: From the Meiji ishin to the Meiji Constitution (1890). .45 The collapse of the Tokugawa bakufu 1858 to 1868.....................................................................................45

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General information / Philosophical Orientation Lecture 0: philosophical orientation Question: what is history? -> not relevant for exam

Objectivity and the “Fiction of the Facts” – Boot and Totman in Comparison A Certain Indeterminacy of the Past Writing a history book is an activity very much like writing a novel -> not about facts, more about fiction: prominently put forward by Hayden White in Metahistory  Modern historiographers and philosophers of history: always chosen 1 set of narrative archetypes (romance, comedy, tragedy or satire)  This has become necessary bc modern historiography claims to be scientific discipline that provides objective knowledge about past  These choices correspond with set of basic ideological leanings: anarchist, conservative, radical or liberal  These leanings: can be recognized by spirit or tone of the final acts of dramas which historians tell  The comic and tragic structure can have conservative implications: human being is regarded as subject to inescapable fate, she participates in history which is thought of as being governed by strict inherent laws  Implications of tragic plot can be radical as well: if the human being is granted enough freedom to resist his fate or to influence it by her actions  => result is then a tragic vision of history, suffused with militant and heroic spirit (for ex: Marx)  General point White: a history book is never just record of the past (like video tape). It must make sense out of the past by telling a story about what happened and why.  Such storytelling: not undermining objectivity but the only way to speak objectively about the past  => when excepting this proposition: we necessarily complicate our notion of the past Suggestion Ian Hacking (analysing what happens on Freuds couch):  Redescriptions may be perfectly true of the past: that they are truths we now assert about the past  Yet they may not have been true in the past: not truth about intentional actions that made sense when these actions were performed  => the past is revised retroactively  As we change our understanding and sensibility, the past becomes filled with intentional actions that were not there when they were performed => is this not in fact already inherent in the logic of cause and effect?  When the event occurred, it wasn’t yet a cause of anything

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Hackings notion of retroactive redescription may help us to understand what happens when historian tells stories of immanent causation: when retold, past events and actions become invested with meanings that they did not have when they occurred Bc the past is indeterminate: 2 historians stories about one and the same subject can both be absolutely true of the past and yet be very different (for ex: Boot and Totman)

Boot and Totman That the past is indeterminate means: it can retroactively take on meaning and significance according to the different stories that can be told about it => such differences depend on the choices storytellers make => we always have to read books about the past with constant awareness of presence of the storyteller Boot In the beginning: gives answer on the question “why should we engage ourselves with the history of Japan?”  Japan = important country because it has an outstanding culture  Japan can only have this outstanding culture because its long history  We have to know Japans history if we want to understand how Japan has become the important country that it is today  Nice example of modern historical consciousness: we understand what a thing is by explaining to ourselves how it became what it is, we tell a story/history  He asserts that Japans history is important because its kind of exceptional  Country was always rather isolated: didn’t experience invasions etc  => universal processes such as nation building, feudalism, urbanization, growth of population etc can be studied in Japanese history “in vitro”: like in a lab under hygienic conditions  Japan = exceptional bc here a people has developed in its purity  It is precisely the Japanesess of Japan and its history that should help us to understand universal processes Totman Begins like Boot:  Japan has a long history  He agrees that Japan and its history are unique Yet from the start a fundamental difference between Boot and Totman comes to the fore:  Boot: The Japanese state is unique  Totman: And this history like that of any other society, community or individual has been unique  Boot stressing the uniqueness of Japan, Totman is relativizing it  According to Boot, it’s the uniqueness of Japan which counts  Boot wants to illuminate the general by means of the particular  Totman wants to illuminate the particular by situating it in the broader, general context  This is a complete shift of perspectives: in comparing Boot and Totman we can see a clash of 2 fundamentally opposed paradigms of how to acquire knowledge: 5

o by going from the particular to the universal (Boot) o from the universal to the particular (Totman) But the rift between Boot and Totman goes deeper => we can hear between them also a clash of political attitudes or leanings Totman:  Material production, the business of the ecosystem and of humans as participants in that system  Our inquiry seeks to note what is produced, how much and how this activity relates to the environmental context  Second facet: distribution o The arrangements of society (as expressed in social, political and economic process and organization) that determines how goods, services, power, and privilege are allocated  Third facet: representation, the business of higher culture, meaning arts and letters and the ideas that are formulated to represent, explain, justify and assess reality as it is perceived  Three continuities that keep his story together: production – distribution – representation  If material production comes first: activities of those who produce are the motor of historical change  Activity of those on top of the social heap are as representation of rather secondary import  Totman has leftist leanings, he complains about elitist approaches to history: o As most histories that of Japan has been told mainly as a story of the favoured few, their politics, thought and culture o Massas consigned to oblivion and the broader ecological context ignored o This reflects human hubris, the desire of the tale teller and hearer to associate with people of weight, the winners in life, as though those who carried the water were of no consequence Boot:  Classical theme, his continuities: who had power, when and where  First comes what’s Totmans second facet: power and privilege  The absence opf Totmans third facet: represention, elite culture, is excused by the narrow space of Boots history of Japan  Totmans first facet (material prod) is not even mentioned  This is very conservative

The Question of Periodization First thing a historian has to do to make sense out of the past: put it in chronological order = periodization => Japanese word for this: jidai kubun  Kubun = division, section, demarcation  Jidai = epoch, age, period o This concept (introduced and popularized in late 19th century by first generation of modern Japanese historians) has particular connotation o Connotation becomes apparent in naming of the different eras/periods into which these historians divided the past of Japan 6

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o 2 sets of terms were utilized to identify the different jidai:  Either the names of the successive locations of the centers of dominant political power (chronological order: Yamato, Nara, Heian/Kyoto, Kamakura, Muromachi, Azuchi/Momoyama and Edo/Tokyo) or names of families who held for a period of time the de facto political power, such as the Fujiwara, Ashikaga, Oda, Toyotomi or Tokugawa  Modern period: jidai refers to regnal name of the emperor in charge o In Japanese history writing: periodization of Japanese past based on the concept of jidai has become the most commonly used one o Common schemes of periodization could be made fit into concepts of periodization emerging out of the study of European history, most commonly the devision into prehistoric (senshi), protohistoric (genshi), medieval (chusei), early modern (kinsei), modern (kindai), and contemporary (gendai) o Today this system of periodization = almost universally accepted This meets Boots “interests”: who had power (when/where) o That’s why he leaves common periodization unchallenged o Totman shows that the commonly accepted system can be questioned  From ecological perspective: Japans history can most broadly be divided into the three familiar segments (periods) of forager, agricultural and industrial society  Totman shows his progressive attitude in the way he writes years (yBP instead of BC)

Any storyteller has to make decisions about how and when his story begins and ends  Biblical history begins with the genesis (4000 years BC)  Totmans ecological history of Japan: begins 12 billion years ago o He can say something about the geological and geographical circumstances under which the human environment relationships unfolded  Boots story begins at the time when we have some evidence for an archaic society of some level of social organization o His history ends 1868 CE o Because his approach is exceptionalist: Boot is interested in the Japaneseness of Japan, his history stops at the point the modern period of Japans history begins: the age of Japans Westernization o Boot looses interest here  For Totman: 1868 has no particular significance o More important for him: 1890 o Industrialization and effects kick in: signifying a fundamental change in the relationship between human beings and their environment o He calls this the age of the human being as an exploiter of the dead

And Yet… Boot and Totman have 1 thing in common: they’re both modern historians, linking past events to meaningful chains of immanent causality => their disagreement is another ramification of the contradictoriness of the modern, capitalist condition humaine 7

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From the Pre-Historical Times to the Reforms of the 7th century Focus on the evolution of the political institutions in Japan and emphasizes aspects of Japanese history which are not necessarily emphasized by Boot or Totman and only touch upon other aspects they do emphasize => Backbone: A History of Political Institutions in Japan by Ishii Ryosuke  Fill the niche between Boot and Totman  Book is dated This lecture: begin to deal with Japanese history proper, more precisely with Jōmon and Yayoi periods

From ~ 250 BC to ~ AD 200 The uji, and queen Himiko Yayoi culture emerged as a result of the importation of Bronze age culture from the Asian continent (wet rice cultivation, Yayoi pottery etc)  People left higher regions and settled on the moister alluvial planes (deposits of fertile clay, silt and sand left by floodwater in a river valley or delta = alluvium)  Settlers formed blood-related kinships groups called uji o The carachter, also read shi, is used today as a suffix to family names meaning mister or misses  The territory under the rule of one uji or a smaller related group of ujiwas called kuni o Today the word means country We have very little information about the proto-historical period  Besides archeological discoveries there are 2 contemporary Chinese accounts: o Geographical treatise of the Han history (Han-shu dilizhi) o Account of the Japanese in the History of the State of Wei (Wei-zhi Woren chuan)  There’s the Account of the Japanese in the History of the Later Han Dynasty (Hou Hanshu Woren chuan) compiled later (5th Century AD)  The first historical accountscompile in Japan in the 7th and 8th century (Nihon shoki and Kojiki) can also be sources but should be handled with care We can distinguish 2 religio-cultural spheres on basis of archeological finds  Chinese sources tell us that these 2 spheres constantly fought against each other o Indicates that they were organized as units of at least some political significance  This fight terminated when the groups of both spheres submitted to the rule of queen Himiko (Pimeko) of Yamatai around the end of the 2nd or beginning of 3rd Century AD o It’s recorded that 28 kuni pledged loyalty to Yamatai o Kuni were located east of the Kinai region (today: Kyoto-Osaka-Nara region) remained independent

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Himoko’s state of Wa (Chinese Wo, = Yamatai) seems to have been fusion of kuni/uji of Northern Kyūshū and the Kinnai region We have almost no reliable information about how an uji was organized o Probably led by a chieftain who was responsible for supervising the clan, settle disputes amongst uji members, dealing with outsiders and worshipping uji’s tutelary god o His authority rested upon his knowledge of the will of this god and his ability to transmit this will to the uji members The authority of queen Himiko has been interpreted in light of Northern East-Asian Shamanism o Seems she was a kind of supreme uji-chieftain In the Account of the Japanese in the History of the State of Wei: o She had no man/lover o She had younger brother to help her govern the realm o Few people saw her o 1000s of help maidens served her, but only 1 man who brought her food, water and transmitted her wo...