Secrets of the Samurai - Oscar Ratti

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to maintain mansions in Edo, where they were required to remain in residence in alternate years and where the members of their immediate families (wives, sons, etc.) had to remain whenever the governors visited their fiefs. These mansions (yashiki) were generally built in accordance with the ancient military design of the encampment—with the general’s tent in the middle, surrounded by those of his officers and, at the outer limits, those of the warriors. The provincial castles of feudal Japan also followed this basic blueprint, with the stronghold in the middle and the warriors’ barracks surrounding it placed near the outer walls.

      In Edo, the private mansions consisted of a modified version of that design, with a long, uninterrupted building (nagaya) so constructed as to enclose the garden and the central palace of the feudal lord. That building, with strong walls on the side facing the street and rows of fortified windows, contained the retainers’ barracks and their armories. Facing the main street was the central gate (o-mon, omote-mon), whose huge, armored portals opened wide only on great occasions. Normal traffic was handled through smaller side-doors (the front gate [tsuyo-mon], the back gate [ura-mon], and the smaller posterns called hijo-mon, yojinguchi and kuguri), all of which opened into a yard lined with guard-rooms, which were

      ornamented with bows and arrows, lances, firearms, and staves with iron-heads studded with spikes, serving as grappling irons wherewith to seize and disarm any unwelcome intruder. Whenever a retainer passed out, he hung up in the guard-room the wooden ticket, inscribed with his name, which he always carried at his girdle; on his return to the yaskiki this ticket was restored to him. By this means the porters could tell at a glance how many retainers were absent on leave at any time. (Mc-Clatchie1, 171)

      The nagaya surrounded the inner barracks (naka-nagaya) which sheltered other troops and included storehouses, as well as buildings assigned to those higher officials who managed the clan’s affairs for their lord. These inner-houses, both in Edo and in the provinces, contained the

      residences for the councillors (karo), the commercial agent (yonin), the representative of the lord during his absence (rusui), the financial officer (kanjo bugiyo), the building officer (sakuji bugiyo), and the doctor (isha). In the great clans, the number of these officers was considerable, but in the yashiki of the lower daimyo and of the hatamoto there were frequently fewer officers. (McClatchie 1, 172)

      A paved way led from the main gate to the entrance of the main building, the residence (go-den) of the lord, which selected retainers kept under strict surveillance day and night. These retainers “were the only vassals (with the exception of a few pages to attend on the lord) who were permitted to pass the night in the go-den. All others, including even the cooks and the scullions, had quarters allotted to them in the nagaya, and came over early in the morning to resume their duties” (McClatchie1, 173).

      At the beginning of the Tokugawa period, a site for a single mansion in Edo was granted to each daimyo, in addition to the one he had in the provinces. With the passing of time, however, as ostentatious display and parasitic inactivity began to erode the stern military virtues of the past, many lords began to acquire three or more “chief mansions” (kami-yashiki), in addition to their urban and suburban middle (nakayashiki) and lower (shimo-yashiki) mansions, and a variety of summer residences both large (besso) and small (kakae-yashiki).

      Until 1868, according to Brinkley, so many of these “ominous” yashiki, with their extensive nagaya, lined the streets of Edo and

      such a multitude of their inmates were to be met striding along, a pair of razor-edged swords in their girdles and the pride of arms in their mien, that for all the pretty parks and dainty mansions of the nobles, for all the disguise of soft sward and tender-sprayed pines that overlay the grimness of the central castle’s battlements, Edo could never be mistaken for [other than] what it was, the citadel of a military system embracing all the warlike resources of a battle-loving nation. (Brinkley1, 13)

      The basic problem confronting the Tokugawa rulers of feudal Japan was that of controlling the whole in order to control its parts, and vice-versa. As early as 1636, Japanese subjects were expressly forbidden by law to leave the country or, once having left, ever to return to its shores—the penalty being death in either case. Having thus effectively sealed off Japan from the international community, its rulers enforced a system of rigid separation of each province from all the others, insisting that even within the individual provinces the movement of various subjects in and around their villages and towns be severely limited or, if necessary and authorized, strictly controlled. The main land routes, known as the “Five Roads” (gokaido), and the roads linking the provinces were kept under constant surveillance. Garrisons with special inspectors were placed at barriers (sekisho) strategically located along these routes. At each barrier, every traveler was required to present a pass (sekisho-fuda), issued by his or her territorial superiors, before being allowed to continue his or her journey. This pass was known as the sekisho-tegata for men and the onna-tegata for women. At these barriers, women were subject to particular scrutiny, as Statler points out in his Japanese Inn. Their value to the shogun as hostages was incalculable, and each woman’s onna-tegata minutely specified her position in society (widow, wife, prostitute, etc.) and her physical appearance so as to prevent misrepresentation through disguise, of which the Japanese of the period were masters. Each woman was given a physical examination by officials of her own sex, and the results were closely compared to the description inscribed on her onna-tegata. If any discrepancy was noted, she might be detained for days until the case could be decided in Edo.

      The history of Japan contains descriptions of several famous incidents that took place at the Hakone barrier on the Eastern Sea Route (Tokaido) between Kyoto and Edo, as well as at the Fukushima barrier on the Middle Route (Nakasendo). The essential objective of this system was obviously to control the daimyo, their women, and their weapons, since both “outgoing women and incoming guns” (de-onna ni iri-deppo), as we read in Tsukahira, “were seen as the necessary first steps in any attack upon the shogunate” (51). The daimyo were, in fact, subject to the most stringent system of control imaginable. It was, moreover, so effective a system that the decentralizing and separatistic tendencies of certain daimyo (especially those ruling clans positioned far from Edo) were repressed for over two hundred years and had to wait for a fortuitous convergence of favorable circumstances—the “coming of the barbarians” in 1853 and the weakening of the Tokugawa government from within—before they could reassert themselves.

      The methods devised to achieve full control over these important upper echelons of the buke are illustrated in the following section. The shogun exercised the full power of a military dictator over the masses inhabiting the provinces under his direct supervision and also, through the daimyo, over the masses in the other provinces of the country. Farmers were registered in their villages and forbidden to leave their assigned places. Merchants and artisans in the towns and large provincial centers had to be duly registered with appropriate guilds or corporations (za), whose officials had the duty and the responsibility of maintaining tight control over their members and keeping the higher authorities informed concerning any developments of an “uncommon” nature among their membership. The warriors themselves were tightly supervised through a chain of direct superiors linked to one another vertically by the legal institution of vassalage established through an oath of allegiance and loyalty to a clan, house, or individual, and duly registered by the official keepers of records. As in Edo, control over the movement of commoners in metropolitan centers all over Japan was maintained through the installation of special gates across the intersections of every two streets. These gates were supervised by special officers of the daimyo who checked the passes of anyone trying to move from one ward to another at night when the gates were closed, or during the day, for that matter, if the individual in question was not known to the ward officials.

      The penalties for unauthorized movement and other crimes were exceptionally harsh and (much to the surprise of Western observers, but quite in keeping with the principle of collective responsibility typical of the clan culture) involved not only the guilty party but his entire family.

      Penalties were of two types: the heavier penalties ranged from public admonition to confinement, public flogging, expatriation, and execution; the lighter

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