Mifune took a minute to lift his eyes from
the list he had been compiling under the dim candlelight for only the Gods knew how many
hours. The task of calculating the taxes each settlement
had to pay was one he had joyously accepted, but that huge amount of work had begun to
break his spirit by now. His mind raced back to the tumultuous years
of the Civil War. It was a dangerous time, yes, but only in
battle did he ever feel alive. Now, only tatami-made target dummies tasted
his sword’s edge. While reminiscing about the past, an idea
popped into his mind. Why not just use last year’s data, left
over by the previous administration? Who cares if a bunch of peasants pay a koku
more or less? So he thought and went to look for the old
books. As the Sengoku Jidai, the age of civil war,
was coming to an end, the strong social forces that were shaping Japanese society and the
decisions of powerful men like Tokugawa Ieyasu would give rise to a new social order. Join us today as we take a look at Edo Japan’s
social order and the bakuhan system. Did historic Japan have more to eat than just
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our code KINGS. The social pyramid
Strictly speaking, the stratified and feudal society of the Edo period was not an entirely
new thing. Social castes had existed as early as a millennia
earlier when the Taika reforms of Emperor Kotoku in 645 brought about the ritsuryo system
in an effort to imitate Tang China’s administration. Through the long feudalization process, the
passage of time, and the influence of new philosophical movements like Neo-Confucianism,
those classes eventually evolved to the rigid four-class order of the Edo era, the shi-nō-kō-shō,
that is, the warriors, the farmers, the artisans and the merchants. However, this system did not include all of
the population, for example, Buddhist monks and Shinto priests existed outside of this
hierarchy. Thus, before we talk about the four classes,
we will look at three groups that didn’t belong in this social structure. The other classes
Nominally, at the top of the pyramid of Japanese society stands the Emperor and the Imperial
family. Just below him are the other aristocratic
families, the kuge, whose lineage could be traced to the early centuries of the Yamato
state. These two groups, while being the most prestigious,
had long been reduced to mere figureheads with little to almost no political influence. True power belonged to the samurai class and
the leader of the military estate, the Shogun. This would not change until the last days
of the Tokugawa bakufu, when power was reinstated to the Emperor. While the Imperial Court and the Shogun’s
family existed above the caste system, the third group existed far, far beneath it. These were the eta, the untouchables, the
pariahs of society that technically existed outside social hierarchy and were often regarded
as sub-human. Their position, below even the bottom of the
societal pyramid, came from their professions, which by Buddhist standards were considered
unclean. Eta dealt with the corpses of either animals
or people. Butchers, tanners, undertakers, prison guards
and others were included in the undesirables who were forced to live outside the villages
or, at best, at the very edges. Eta could not participate in the governing
of the community, and were often batched with beggars and sometimes even criminals. Despite their essential work, their lives
were harsh, and they had little to no rights. They could not enter the homes of non-Etas
or wear headwear or any footwear besides straw sandals, among other restrictions. Most depressing is that criminal acts against
them were not considered crimes for the law did not view them as humans. Their status hardly improved when the Meiji
government abolished the shogunate’s class system in 1871. The social stigma of centuries could not just
be wiped off overnight, and the Japanese society treated them with hostility and contempt. Discrimination against them persisted well
into the 20th century. Peasants
Having now covered the people who existed outside standard social hierarchy, let us
now jump into the four main castes, starting with the peasants. What might surprise many of our viewers is
that peasants sat at the top of the commoner classes due to the Confucian influences Japan
had received from China. According to Confucian doctrine, peasants
were held in high regard since they produced the most valuable goods, such as food. This made them more valuable than merchants
who produced nothing but merely exchanged goods produced by others and were thus placed
at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Peasants during the Edo period lived most
of their lives in their villages. Seldom did they travel outside, and when they
did, it was done mostly for pilgrimages, and even then, only when special permission was
granted. Peasant lived their lives and cultivated their
own land in the family-owned style. For most farmers, it wasn’t much, but it
was an honest job. Of course, families with more plots of land
were wealthier and could exert more influence over village politics, but they were still
confined to their social class, as the rigid social system did not allow movement between
classes. If landed, the peasants were, of course, subject
to a land tax, called nengu, as well as corvee labour. Under the so-called murauke system, taxes
were not paid individually but instead collectively as a village. Taxes were paid not in coin, but in rice,
and the tax that every village paid was decided through annual land surveys that determined
how much rice a village could grow. Later, this system was adjusted to a fixed
rate of the land’s estimated produce. If you think the peasants could circumnavigate
this by not farming rice, the bakufu had another system for lands where rice could not grow,
where rice would be bought with money earned by selling other crops. However, as land surveys became increasingly
rare and the tax rate became fixed, villages began finding ways to make profits not subject
to taxation, such as through land reclamation. The person responsible for the collection
of tax money was usually the village elder, who was elected among the peasants. Because the nengu was a collective tax, that
meant that richer households shouldered the burden of those less fortunate. Those who could not make ends meet solely
by cultivating land would take on some side jobs to compensate. It was not uncommon for peasants to undertake
jobs that traditionally would fall under artisanal categories, such as smiths, sawyers, basket
weavers, or even take to moving goods between settlements like merchants. Craftsmen and Merchants
Despite these side hustles, peasants could not, of course, be classified as artisans,
merchants and entertainers who lived in towns like the samurai, albeit in their respective
quarters. Outcast districts and pleasure quarters tended
to be on the outskirts of the town, while the best land was reserved for the houses
of the warriors. Thus, the merchants and artisans were the
lower classes of the shi-nō-kō-shō, but what they lacked in prestige and status, they
made up with wealth. Naturally, it’s wrong to assume that every
single merchant was well-off, but because the bakufu had little interest in their activities,
many traders were able to accumulate vast fortunes that rivalled even the wealthiest
samurai. The only problem was that, strictly speaking,
they were not allowed to show off their economic affluence. But exceptions did exist. The richest among the merchant class, and
some peasants, for that matter, held such economic power that they were treated as samurai. Some of them were even allowed to wear the
daisho, the two swords that served as the mark of the warrior class, or adopt a last
name in the Samurai fashion. Such was the success of the merchants that
during the shogunate’s later years, when the bakufu’s economic power declined, many
samurai and even daimyo found themselves indebted to merchants and loan sharks, and measures
were taken by the Shoguns to curb their riches. Bushi
Forming around 7 to 10% of the total population, the samurai were the privileged class of Feudal
Japan. Unlike their Sengoku predecessors, the samurai
of the Edo era no longer lived in the villages with the peasants they were supposed to rule
over and protect. Much thanks to Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s policies,
which were continued by the Tokugawa Shogunate, the samurai were forced to relocate to the
castle towns and, in the process, lost their ancestral fiefs, though exceptions did exist. This migration, which aimed at better controlling
the warrior caste, affected early modern Japanese society deeply. For one, the chasm between the samurai and
the peasants deepened. Status differences existed in the past, of
course, but because they lived in close proximity, the two classes were bonded together. The samurai helped with the cultivation of
land and protected the village, they shared the troubles and the joys of the village. Now, their position was completely separated
from that of the peasants. In essence, the peasantry lost an ally that,
at times, had stood between them and tyrannical lords. However, the relationship between the two
classes was not the only one that changed. So did the relationship between the samurai
and his master, the daimyo. In the past, due to their economic independence
and the spirit of the civil war era, most samurai saw eye to eye with their masters,
and there was a relationship of mutual respect between them. However, the loss of land deprived the samurai
of their own source of income, and they were now paid stipends by their lords. Therefore, they were completely dependent
upon the daimyo they served, and his death or, more likely, the loss of his status as
lord threatened to leave them in an impoverished state without even a home to return to. This constant sword of Damocles hanging over
the Samurai was made worse by the unbendable social order of the Edo era. The law that froze the classes in their place
was actually instituted by Toyotomi Hideyoshi towards the end of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. He himself had risen from humble peasant footsoldier
to nobility and was pulling the ladder up to prevent anyone from following him. But the same law that prohibited the rise
of the lower classes also kept the warriors in place, meaning a destitute samurai couldn’t
legally just become a peasant or merchant to get out of his debt. Granted, this fate was not predetermined,
and some ronin did involve themselves with crafting, trading or farming activities while
others turned to arts or teaching swordsmanship. But it wasn’t only the masterless samurai
that saw their professional lives turning upside down. The Edo period was characteristically peaceful,
so the warrior class of Japan had to pick up the pen more often than the sword. In lieu of having wars to fight, many samurai
took up administrative positions like tax collectors and clerks, neglecting their training
as soldiers. This system covered most of Japan at that
time, with a few notable exceptions such as the Tosa domain on the island of Shikoku or
the southernmost lands of Kyushu, which belonged to the ancient Shimazu clan, who were given
free rein in their lands, as an appeasement attempt from the Edo bakufu. In hindsight, that was probably a grave mistake
as the Shimazu became incredibly powerful, and both clans would actually play a prominent
role in the restoration of Imperial authority in the mid-19th century. The Bakuhan system
It was also the Shimazu accepting Tokugawa’s hegemony in 1602 that allowed Ieyasu to be
recognized by the Emperor as Shogun. His hold over the land would not solidify
until the Osaka summer campaign, when Hideyoshi’s son and successor, Hideyori, was defeated
and forced to commit seppuku. Ieyasu, who had already passed the mantle
of the Shogun to his son Hidetada, died the following year. But during his reign as both Shogun and Ogosho,
retired Shogun, he set up the foundations of a strong regime for his descendants to
inherit. Ieyasu and his immediate successors, Hidetada
and Iemitsu, designed an administrative system that emphasized central control and stability. As we have seen, the samurai in their majority
were stripped of their lands, and consequently, so were the daimyo of various provinces. Those who were lucky were moved to wealthier
estates, while those who had failed or offended the bakufu in various ways, such as by making
unauthorized marriage alliances or failing to produce an heir, were either reallocated
to provinces with lower income or lost their title and status altogether. Such was the new world order after the unification
of Japan. The Shogun giveth and Shogun taketh away. Fundamental for the Shogunate to remain in
power was the distinction between the fudai and the tozama daimyo. Originally, the fudai, or “house” daimyo,
consisted of those who had aligned themselves with the Tokugawa clan before the battle of
Sekigahara. They were famous clans in their own right
that had served Ieyasu for decades, like Honda, Ii, Sakai and the Sakakibara. On the other hand, the tozama, or outside
daimyo, consisted of clans who had stayed neutral or had opposed the Tokugawa. In Ieyasu’s time, there were only 13 fudai
daimyos and 28 tozama, though these numbers would change during each Shogun’s reign
due to confiscations or promotions. Because they were more trustworthy, the fudai
daimyos were usually given fiefs in strategic positions across the land to help maintain
order and quell any insurrections. They were also given the highest-ranking positions
in the shogunate’s administration. In contrast the tozama daimyo were mostly
excluded from government positions, but some of them also ruled over the largest and wealthiest
domains, albeit ones far away from the central province of Kanto and any important roads. They, too, came from great clans like the
Mori, Date, Shimazu and the Maeda, but they and their descendants were never fully trusted
by the Shoguns. Besides these two categories of Daimyo, there
was a third one, the shinpan, spin-off houses of the Tokugawa that were related to the main
branch by blood. Three of these lines were even allowed to
use the Tokugawa last name and would provide a Shogun should the main line fail to produce
an heir. But even those relatives that styled themselves
as Matsudaira wielded considerable unofficial power and were granted fertile fiefs. Of course, the lion’s share of the land
belonged to the Shogun. His direct holdings, mainly located in the
Kanto and Tokai areas, accounted for a sixth of the farmable land. If we add to that the lands of his bannermen,
then it surpassed a quarter of arable land. Whether they were fudai or tozama, the bakufu
would not leave the daimyo to their own devices. We have already mentioned that marriages had
to be government-approved to avoid the creation of large power blocs. In addition, daimyo were restricted to one
castle per province, and even then, they had to acquire permission to repair or expand
it. They were also limited as to the number of
men they were required to upkeep, a number that was determined by the koku of the domain. However, the most effective way by which the
shogunate controlled the daimyo and squashed any thought of revolt was the sankin-kotai,
the alternative attendance requirement. By law, the various daimyo were required to
have a residence in Edo, where their wives, children and a number of retainers and servants
lived. The daimyo would spend one or, in some cases,
half a year in Edo, then move to his home province to take care of business there. While away, his wife and children remained
in Edo, effectively as hostages of the Shogunate. With this practice, the Shogun was always
able to keep a close eye on the daimyo, but this system of alternate attendance also had
the probably unintended side effect of draining considerable amounts of the daimyo’s treasury. Maintaining a second residence, which had
to live up to a standard of luxury since it belonged to a lord, was rather expensive. For those who lived far from Edo, there were
also the added costs of travelling. Such were the expenditures the daimyo had
to go through to support this lifestyle, which caused many of them to fall deeply into debt. But while the Shogunate used various tools
to ensure the daimyo's discipline and loyalty, it also granted them several freedoms in how
they could administer their own regions. Outro
The Shogunate’s bureaucratic system went, of course, way deeper than the daimyo-Shogun
relationship we have described, both on the highest levels of the Shogun’s closest advisors
and on the lower local level administrations that included magistrates, inspectors, pages
and numerous other officials. And like every other complicated bureaucratic
system, the passage of time corroded it as routine settled and officials performed their
duties less efficiently, leading naturally to its collapse. But this is a story for another time and another
video. More videos on the administration and economic
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