War and State Building in Medieval Japan - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804763712 ISBN 13: 9780804763714

Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

The nation state as we know it is a mere four or five hundred years old. Remarkably, a central government with vast territorial control emerged in Japan at around the same time as it did in Europe, through the process of mobilizing fiscal resources and manpower for bloody wars between the 16th and 17th centuries. This book, which brings Japan's case into conversation with the history of state building in Europe, points to similar factors that were present in both places: population growth eroded clientelistic relationships between farmers and estate holders, creating conditions for intense competition over territory; and in the ensuing instability and violence, farmers were driven to make Hobbesian bargains of taxes in exchange for physical security.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

John A. Ferejohn is a political economist and democratic theorist. He is Professor of Law and Political Science at New York University. Frances McCall Rosenbluth is a political economist with a special interest in Japan. She is the Damon Wells Professor of International Politics at Yale University.

John A. Ferejohn is a political economist and democratic theorist. He is Professor of Law and Political Science at New York University.Frances McCall Rosenbluth is a political economist with a special interest in Japan. She is the Damon Wells Professor of International Politics at Yale University.

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War and State Building in Medieval Japan

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2010 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-6371-4

Contents

Contributors.....................................................................................................................................................ix1 War and State Building in Medieval Japan John A. Ferejohn and Frances McCall Rosenbluth......................................................................12 They Were Soldiers Once: The Early Samurai and the Imperial Court Karl Friday.................................................................................213 Competence over Loyalty: Lords and Retainers in Medieval Japan Susumu Ike....................................................................................534 Community Vitality in Medieval Japan Tsuguharu Inaba.........................................................................................................715 "Advance and Be Reborn in Paradise ...": Religious Opposition to Political Consolidation in Sixteenth-Century Japan Carol Richmond Tsang.....................916 Autonomy and War in the Sixteenth-Century Iga Region and the Birth of the Ninja Phenomenon Pierre Souyri......................................................1107 Instruments of Change: Organizational Technology and the Consolidation of Regional Power in Japan, 1333-1600 Thomas Conlan....................................124Postscript John A. Ferejohn and Frances McCall Rosenbluth......................................................................................................159Glossary.........................................................................................................................................................169Index............................................................................................................................................................175

Chapter One

War and State Building in Medieval Japan John A. Ferejohn and Frances McCall Rosenbluth

Introduction

The Ninja-the lightly armed warrior who operates by stealth and amazing physical prowess to attack powerfully equipped enemies-is a familiar comic book image and heroic action figure. It is generally known that the ninja existed sometime in the mists of Japanese history. Less well understood is that the ninja was but one manifestation of fierce and extensive resistance to encroaching armies in the dying years of medieval Japan. Local farming communities, particularly those in mountain valleys, armed themselves with simple weapons and guerrilla techniques to forestall the trend toward territorial consolidation and centralized taxation. The transformation of "ninja" (the "forbearing ones" or shinobi mono) into warriors with virtually supernatural powers is a recent invention that glorifies the struggle of humble mountain villages for local autonomy in the late sixteenth century.

The world is more familiar with similar events in Europe. The legend of William Tell is of a simple mountain man who inspired Swiss alpine farmers in 1307 to resist domination by the Habsburg Empire. Tell, it is said, was forced to shoot an apple on his son's head in exchange for freedom after he failed to bow to the Austrian governor's hat placed in the village square. In the Battle of Morgarten in 1315, Swiss farmers armed with rocks, logs, and pikes are said to have crushed the magnificent cavalry of Duke Leopold I of Austria in an ambush at Morgarten Pass, pushing countless horses and their riders off a steep mountainside, spearing other unfortunates through with pikes, and causing the rest to flee in terror.

Swiss pikers from mountain villages managed to protect their land from foreign invaders, thereby assuring Swiss autonomy. Feared and admired the world over for their ferocity in battle, Swiss fighters were recruited into mercenary armies throughout Europe. The Roman Catholic pope chose them for his own guards, a role they continue to serve, at least symbolically, to this day.

Unlike the Renaissance Italians or the seventeenth-century English, the Swiss did not elaborate an indigenous theory of limited government, though their practices of cantonal government with local referenda have endured. The Swiss mountain warriors were uneducated farmers and woodsmen scrabbling out a living in alpine valleys and were unfamiliar with the classical Greek and Roman texts that inspired Italian and English antimonarchical theorizing. What distinguishes the Swiss in the forest cantons from farmers elsewhere-as well as from Swiss farmers in the rolling hills in the north-was not so much a belief in the right to their land, but the formidable terrain that made it possible for them to think they had a chance to preserve their independence. There is little wonder that the great plains of Europe, which sometimes doubled as highways for marauding armies, were populated with seemingly weak-kneed farmers who chose instead to exchange their labor for military protection. Japanese mountain dwellers and Swiss alpine farmers took naturally to fighting for their freedom, not because they were braver than their lowland counterparts, but because their craggy fortresses gave them the possibility of resisting domination.

Three other groups in Japan successfully resisted political incorporation for centuries. For seafaring pirates (wako), water provided the functional equivalent of mountain defense. Their ships navigated deftly through the coastal waters, which they knew better than those who commanded the commercial ships on which they preyed or the government's ships that pursued them. As Japan's earliest historical records testify, pirates plagued coastal commerce around the Japanese archipelago from time immemorial.

The political arm of Buddhism constituted a second group in medieval Japanese society that managed for centuries to repel the government's encroaching territorial and jurisdictional authority. Buddhist temples, monasteries, and farming communities, often heavily armed but also often allied with members of the imperial family, avoided government taxation and regulation until Oda Nobunag, one of the unifiers of Japan, finally brought them to heel in the 1580s. Priests protected the tax-free status of temple lands by promising blessings to their patrons, but they would resort to armed defense when necessary. In the case of the spectacularly expansive Ishiyama Honganji branch of Jodo shinshu (Pure Land) Buddhism (discussed in detail in Carol Tsang's chapter in this book), thousands of believers were members of a vast Buddhist movement in the province of Kaga. They enjoyed de facto autonomy from Kyoto or local warlords until they were vanquished in 1584.

Less romantic but more successful was the opposition to centralized rule by the territorial domains in the far-flung islands of Kyushu and Shikoku or the outer reaches of eastern Honshu, which had consolidated locally around a powerful warlord (daimyo). It was not until the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 that these great outlying domains were vanquished. This battle occurred some 15 years after the defeat of mountain villages and religious communities, and only when one of the lords switched sides in the end game to gain spoils from the others. The secret to the local domains' longevity was their attainment of considerable economies of territorial scale through the exchange of security for taxation with which to fund large armies. This early set of successful Hobbesian bargains at the local level would influence Japan's...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804763712
• ISBN 13: 9780804763714
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 180
• Herausgeber: Ferejohn John A., Rosenbluth Frances
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland