Global Journal of Human Social Science, D: History, Archaeology and Anthroplogy, Volume 23 Issue 3

Volume XXIII Issue III Version I 26 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 D © 2023 Global Journals “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword”: Popular Ethics in Edo Period Japan concord with that new political reality. 2 This centralization of government curtailed the “expansive spirit of the preceding era…as the shogunate adopted strict measures t o control all aspects of people’s lives and institutions.” 3 The Tokugawa military government appears, in many ways, to have adopted as their social philosophy the four-fold social stratification in the Neo- Confucian tradition as it was es po used by Zhu Xi (also spelled Chu Hsi; 1130–1200 CE) 4 a nd then as adapted by Hayashi Razan (1583–1657). 5 So as better to understand the Tokugawa inspired fusion of politics and religions in the first century of the Edo period, it is perhaps helpful to set the sociological context within which this religio-political shift took place. Two primary benefits ensued from the shogunate’s alignment with an ancient philosophical tradition, particularly Neo-Confucianism. First, it formalized, and thus re-affirmed, a four-class system that maintained in perpetuity the elevation of the samurai class to power and prestige. Second, a religious justification for political power more effectively gained the loyalty of masses, and thus created checks and balances for societal expressions that differed from the “party line,” so to speak. At least four areas of change The Neo-Confucian four class system was, in descending hierarchical order, the samurai class, the peasants/agriculturalists, the artisans, and the merchants. 2 Herman Ooms writes that “Military power, the naked instrument of domination, was transubstantiated through association with the sacred into political authority of a religious character” ( Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570–1680 [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985], 61.) 3 Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology , 78. The new Tokugawa socio-political reality, the bakuhan , (a term that combines bakufu with han ) spread its control over the previous feudal states by, among other things: (1) a new code of law which prescribed issues related to private conduct, marriage, types of weapons, size of armies; (2) limited contact with foreigners through tight trade restrictions; (3) the proscription of Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism; and (4) maintained power over the imperial household, the daimyo, and religious authorities. 4 “As a term Neo-Confucianism has a variety of nuances but most scholars who use the term do so in reference to forms of Confucian philosophizing that emerged in the wake of Buddhism…As Buddhist estimations of reality gained a greater hearing, Confucians formulated a metaphysics affirming the reality of the world of experience, explaining the substantial nature of the world by way of the notion of ki …In positing this metaphysics of ki along with various other ideas related to ethics, politics, spirituality, and humanity, Confucian scholars expanded upon the basics of early Confucian thinking so much so that many modern interpreters have referred to them as ‘Neo- Confucians.’” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-confucian/ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy); accessed Sept. 30, 2022. 5 Robert Morrell clarifies that it was “Hayashi Razan’s [1583–1657] version of Chu Hsi’s Neo-Confucianism…that the Tokugawa military government officially supported as its social philosophy” (“Literature and Scripture” in Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions [Paul L. Swanson and Clark Chilson, eds.; Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006], 257–73, esp. 266]. Yusa ( Japanese Religious Traditions, 84) states that Razan’s support of Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism was mainly politically motivated as a way to counter his political adversaries who were of a Buddhist persuasion (i.e., the Buddhist priest, Tenkai [1536–1643] and Suden [1569–1633]), who were Ieyasu’s close advisors. were managed more effectively than in neighbouring countries through the Tokugawan fusion of religion and politics: population growth, social unrest, cultur al diversity, and economic prosperity. Unlike in China, one of the hallmarks of Tokugawan ingenuity was the way i n which their population growth was managed in sustainable ways. 6 Strong centralized government appears to have contributed to this success. Documentary evidence from annual Bu dd hist temple registers 7 shows that “population growth was consciously curtailed using a wide variety of methods: late marriages, restrictions on length of childbearing of w o men, abortion, infanticide, and the like.” 8 Although, not unlike Europe, social unrest was also characteristic of the Edo period (at least 6889 disturbances were recorded 9 ), somehow the Tokugawa shogunate managed to avoid wide-scale insurrection that would have toppled either rural administration or the central government. Hall comments, albeit anachr on istically, that a “Marxist-style” model is foreign to the Japanese experience since “the Japanese narrative is concerned with the formation of class identity within an acknowledged national historical frame.” 10 In other words, Japanese peasants we re not generally interested in an uprising that would topple government, but rather were more interested in raising their socio-economic status through cooperative engagement with the existing government. 11 This approach to identity formation was facilitated through the political appropriation of historical and religious traditio ns that affirmed the centralized political regime as socially legitimate (through Neo-Confucian moral philosophy) and even divinely sanctioned (Ieyasu’s deification as a living kami , an avatar of the Yakushi Buddha 12 6 John Whitney Hall comments that “it is thought that both the population and size of the land base probably doubled within the first century of Tokugawa rule. The remarkable fact is that the overall population appears to have remained at roughly the same man–land ratio throughout the Edo period” (“Introduction” in The Cambridge History of Japan , vol. 4 [J. W. Hall, ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 1–39, esp. 24. 7 Buddhist temple registers were initially created for the purpose of screening out Christian believers after the Tokugawan proscription of Christianity in 1640. 8 Hall, “Introduction,” 24. But Hall also notes another factor that came into play: “There are also those who believe that the failure of the population to grow was due primarily to the ill effects of the feudal system” (Ibid., 24). 9 Hall, “Introduction,” 25. 10 Hall, “Introduction,” 25. 11 This is not to say that there were not large-scale peasant uprisings, that even required the intervention of government soldiers, but Hall suggests that many are thought simply to have been expressions of “union collective bargaining” (Hall, “Introduction,” 25). ). 12 Ieyasu died in 1616. The shogunate had him deified and worshiped as a living kami just as his great rival, Hideyoshi, had been. A Tendai priest, Tenkai, who had been one of Ieyasu’s advisor’s on religious and political matters insisted on giving Ieyasu the posthumous title of