Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 2/Chapter 1
JAPAN
ITS HISTORY ARTS AND LITERATURE
Chapter I
HISTORY OF THE MILITARY EPOCH
HAD the conditions existing in the Heian epoch prevailed throughout the whole country, Japan would doubtless have paid the penalty never escaped by a demoralised nation. But in proportion as the Court, the principal officials, and the noblemen in the capital, abandoned themselves to pleasure and neglected the functions of government, the provincial families acquired strength. The members of these families differed essentially from the aristocrats of Kyōtō. They had no sympathy with the enervating luxury of city life, and if they chanced to visit the capital, they could not fail to detect the effeminacy and incompetence of the Court nobles. These latter, on the other hand, sought to win the friendship of the rustic captains in order to gain their protection against the priests, who defied the authority of the central government; against the autochthons, whom the provincial soldiers had been specially organised in the eighth century to resist, and against insurrections which occasionally occurred among sections of the military men themselves. The nation was, in effect, divided into three factions,—the Court nobles (Kuge), the military families (Buke), and the priests.
The military men had at the outset no literary attainments: they knew nothing about the Chinese classics or the art of turning a couplet. Arms and armour were their sole study, and the only law they acknowledged was that of might. The central government, altogether powerless to control them, found itself steadily weakened not only by their frank indifference to its mandates, but also by the shrinkage of revenue that gradually took place as the estates of the local captains ceased to pay taxes to Kyōtō. Had the Fujiwara family continued to produce men of genius and ambition, the capital would probably have struggled desperately against the growth of provincial autonomy. But the Fujiwara had fallen victims to their own greatness. By rendering their tenure of power independent of all qualifications to exercise it, they had ultimately ceased to possess any qualification whatever. The close of the Heian epoch found them as incapable of defending their usurped privileges as had been the patriarchal families upon whose ruins they originally climbed to supremacy. And, just as the decadence of the patriarchal families and the usurpation of the Fujiwara were divided by a temporary restoration of authority to the Throne, so the decadence of the Fujiwara and the usurpation of the military clans were separated by a similar rehabilitation of imperialism.
Shirakawa (1073–1086) was the sovereign who took advantage of the Fujiwara's weakness to resume the administration of State affairs.
Yet Shirakawa himself inaugurated a new form of the very abuse he had abolished: he instituted a system of camera Emperors. Though he actually occupied the Throne for fourteen years only, he ruled the Empire forty-three years after his abdication, under the title of Hōwō (pontiff). In short, though great enough to conceive and consummate the kingly project of recovering the reality of imperial power from the Fujiwara nobles who had usurped it, he afterwards, by reducing the nominal sovereign to the status of a mere puppet vis-à-vis, the retired monarch deliberately placed himself in the position that the Fujiwara had occupied vis-à-vis the Throne. Neither could he escape the taint of his time, for though undoubtedly a man of high ability and forceful character, he was neither economical nor upright. He built several magnificent palaces standing in spacious and beautiful parks; he devised new and costly kinds of entertainment; he lavished vast sums on the construction of Buddhist temples and the celebration of grand religious services, and he made a parade of his belief in Buddhism by forbidding the slaughter of birds, beasts, fish or insects in any part of the Empire, and never allowing either fish or flesh to be served at the Palace feasts. Yet he did not hesitate to sell official posts, thus deliberately perpetuating what he knew to be one of the worst evils of the era, hereditary office-holding. So far was this abuse carried that the post of provincial governor became hereditary in thirty cases during Shirakawa's tenure of power; three or four persons sometimes held the same office simultaneously by purchase, and in one instance a boy of ten was governor of a province. Such incidents were not calculated to consolidate the power of the Throne, and the imperial authority was still further discredited by the spectacle of a sovereign nominally ruling but in reality ruled by an ex-Emperor, who, while professing to have abandoned the world and devoted himself to a life of religion, had a duly organised Court with ministers and an independent military force of his own, and issued edicts above the head of the reigning Emperor. Shirakawa and his immediate successors who followed this system of dual imperialism, if for a moment they enjoyed the sweets of administrative authority, must be said to have invited the vicissitudes that afterwards befell the Throne. In truth, to whatever trait of national character the fact may be ascribable, history seems to show that unlimited monarchy is an impossible polity in Japan.
By the beginning of the twelfth century, the military power, as distinguished from that of the Court and the priests, had fallen, in tolerably equal proportions, into the hands of two families, the Taira and the Minamoto.[1] Both were descended from Emperors, and both were divided into a number of clans established in different parts of the Empire. The Taira had their headquarters in Kyōtō, and their clans were paramount in the provinces near the capital. The Minamoto's sphere of influence was in the north and east. It was inevitable that these two should come into collision. The events that immediately preluded the shock may be briefly dismissed by saying that they sprang out of a dispute about the succession to the Throne. The Taira triumphed, and their leader, Kiyōmori, became the autocrat of the hour.
Kiyōmori was a man of splendid courage and audacity, but originality and political insight were not among his gifts. Nothing shrewder suggested itself to him than to follow the example of the Fujiwara by placing minors upon the Throne. He caused one Emperor to retire at the age of five, and he put the sceptre into the hands of another at the age of eight. He filled all the high offices with his own people; made himself Prime Minister; his eldest son, Minister of the Interior, and his second son, Junior Minister of State. He organised a band of three hundred lads who went about the city in disguise to report any one that spoke ill of the Taira, and the results of such reports were so terrible that people learned to say "not to be a Taira is to be reckoned a beast." He brought his mailed hand down with relentless force on the Buddhist priests when they took up arms against the Taira at the instigation of an ex-Emperor, and he did not hesitate to seize the person of the ex-Emperor himself and place him in confinement. He showed equally scant consideration for the Fujiwara nobles, whom the prestige of long association with the Throne had rendered sacred in the eyes of the nation: some he deprived of their posts; others of their lands, and others he put to death. He set the torch to temples and levied taxes on the estates of Shintō shrines. Nothing deterred him; nothing was suffered to thwart his plans, and the Taira chiefs in the provinces followed his arbitrary example.
Such a government was not likely to last long. Twenty-two years measured its life. Then the Minamoto rose in arms and triumphed completely under the leadership of Yoritomo, who had fought as a boy of thirteen in the battle that established the supremacy of his father's foes, the Taira. The fall of the latter happened in the last quarter of the twelfth century. It is remarkable as the complete establishment of military feudalism in Japan.
That the administrative power should be wrested from the Throne, was nothing strange, being in truth a normal incident of Japanese politics. But hitherto the administrators had officiated in the shadow of the Throne. It is true that Kiyōmori, the Taira chief, established his head-quarters at the modern Hyōgo, and thus, in a measure, removed the seat of authority from Kyōtō. He did not attempt, however, to organise any new system, being content to fill the old offices with members of his own family. Yoritomo, on the contrary, inaugurated an entire change of polity. He established a military government at Kamakura, hundreds of miles distant from Kyōtō, and there exercised the administrative functions, leaving to the Imperial Court nothing except the power of investing officials and conducting ceremonials.
Yoritomo is the most remarkable figure during the first eighteen centuries of Japanese history. Profound craft and singular luminosity of political judgment were the prominent features of his character. A cold, calculating man, ready to sacrifice everything to ambition, he shocks at one time by inhumanity, and dazzles at another by unerring interpretations of the object lessons of history. Detecting clearly the errors that his predecessors had committed, he spared no pains to conciliate the Buddhist priests; won the nobility by restoring to them their offices and estates, and propitiated the Court by leaving its organisation undisturbed and making all high officials its nominal appointees. After he had crushed his rivals, the Taira, he found in the provinces civil governors (Kokushi), who were practically irresponsible autocrats. He found also nobles who held hereditary possession of wide estates and had full power over the persons and properties of their tenants as well as over the minor land-holders in their district. To administer the country's affairs in fact as well as in name, these governors and manorial nobles must be removed. He therefore petitioned the Court, and obtained permission to appoint in each province a Constable (Shugo), or military governor, and a chief of lands (Jito), both responsible for preserving order and collecting and transmitting the taxes. These officials were all appointed from Kamakura, which thus became the real centre of administrative power. For himself, Yoritomo obtained the title of Lord High Constable (Sō-tsui-hōshi), which was afterwards supplemented by that of Tai-i-Shōgun (barbarian-subduing generalissimo). He was not a great general. In military ability he could not compare with either his brother, the brilliant and ill-fated Yoshitsune, or his cousin, the "morning-sun " captain Yoshinaka. Moreover, if his legislative and political talents command profound admiration, it is impossible to be certain how much of the credit belongs to him, how much to his able adviser, Oye-no-Hiromoto, who is said to have suggested all the reforms and drafted all the laws that emanated from the Kamakura government. Not the least astute of Oye's perceptions was that the supreme power could not long be held by a family residing in Kyōtō; first, because the Imperial city lay far from the military centres whence help could be obtained in time of need; secondly, because the Court nobles assembled there could not be ignored without provoking hostile intrigues, or recognised without incurring heavy expenditure; and thirdly, because the atmosphere of the capital was fatal to military robustness. It was for these reasons that Kamakura became the metropolis of military feudalism. There Yoritomo had, in effect, his Minister of the Right and his Minister of the Left, his Minister of War, his Minister of Justice, and his Councillors; but he took care not to give them titles suggesting any usurpation of imperial power, nor to abolish any of the time-honoured posts in Kyōtō.
These changes were radical. They signified a complete shifting of the centre of power. During eighteen hundred years from the time of the invasion of Jimmu, the country had been ruled from the south; now the north became supreme. The long and fierce struggle with the autochthons had produced the Bando soldiery, and these not only gave the country its new rulers but also constituted their support.
Yoritomo's success may further be regarded as the triumph of military democracy over imperial aristocracy. Many of his followers were descended from men who, originally serfs of Kyōtō nobles, had been sent to the provinces to till the soil and procure sustenance for their lords. The rise of the Kamakura government was thus a revolution in a double sense, being not only the substitution of a military democracy for an imperial aristocracy, but also the rehabilitation of a large section of the nation who had once been serfs.
It is easy to see that the Fujiwara themselves were directly responsible for the development of provincial autonomy. Their attitude towards everything outside the capital had been one of studied inactivity. When a military disturbance arose in one district and was quelled by the efforts of another, the ministers in Kyōtō refused to recognise the services of the latter, on the plea that local interests alone had been concerned. Even when foreign invaders (the Tartars) were repulsed, the Fujiwara Regent, not having himself raised a finger in defence of the country, nevertheless hesitated to reward the men that had averted the peril. Such a policy, if continued, must have annihilated all national spirit. Happily it worked its own overthrow by teaching the provincials their independence.
Yoritomo made the mistake of estimating his own personality more highly than the interests of the great clan he represented. He killed all the Minamoto leaders that seemed capable of disputing his sway, and he thus left the clan fatally weakened at the time of his death. Kamakura was then divided between two parties, the literary and the military. With the former were associated Masa, Yoritomo's widow, and her family, the Hōjō. A struggle ensued. Masa intrigued to preserve the succession for her own son in preference to her step-son, who had the right of primogeniture. Both of the aspirants were ultimately done to death, and the final result was that a baby nephew of Yoritomo was brought from Kyōtō to fill the office of Shogun, the head of the Hōjō family becoming Vicegerent (Shikken).
Thus, within a few years after Yoritomo's death, there was instituted at Kamakura a system of government precisely analogous to that which had existed for centuries under the Fujiwara in Kyōtō. A child, who on State occasions was carried to the council chamber in the lady Masa's arms, served as the nominal repository of supreme power, the functions of administration being really performed by the representatives of a paramount family.
These were a great pair, the lady Masa and her brother, Hōjō Yoshitoki, the Vicegerent. By inflexibly just judgments, by a policy of uniform impartiality, by frugal lives, by a wise system of taxes imposed chiefly on luxuries, and by the stern repression of bribery, they won a high place in the esteem and love of the people. There is nothing to suggest that they would have voluntarily sought to encroach further on the prerogatives of the Court in Kyōtō.
But the Court itself provoked their enmity by an ill-judged attempt to break the power of the Shogunate. It issued a call to arms which was responded to by some thousands of cenobites and as many soldiers of Taira extraction. Kamakura, however, sent out an army which annihilated the Imperial partisans, and from that time all the great offices in Kyōtō were occupied by nominees of the Hōjō, even the succession to the Throne requiring their mandate.
It fared with the Hōjō as it had fared with all the great families that preceded them: their own misrule ultimately wrought their ruin. Their first eight representatives were talented and upright administrators. They took justice, simplicity, and truth for guiding principles; they despised luxury and pomp; they never aspired to a higher official rank than the fourth; they were content with two provinces for estates; they did not seek the office of Shōgun for themselves, but always allowed it to be held by a member of the Imperial family, and they sternly repelled the effeminate, depraved customs of Kyōtō. But in the days of the ninth representative, Takatoki, a new atmosphere permeated Kamakura. Instead of visiting the archery-ground, the fencing-school, and the manage, men began to waste day and night in the company of dancing-girls, professional musicians, and jesters. The plain, simple diet of former days was exchanged for Chinese dishes. Takatoki himself affected the pomp and extravagance of a sovereign. He kept thirty-seven concubines, maintained a band of two thousand actors, and had a pack of five thousand fighting dogs.[2] Moreover, the prestige of the northern soldiers suffered a severe shock.
A wave of Mongol invasion, striking the shores of Kiushiu, involved battles on sea and on shore, and in the marine contests the southern soldiers showed themselves much better fighters than the northern. Now it was on the reputation of the northern soldiers, the Bando Bushi, that Kamakura's military prestige rested, and with the decline of that prestige the supremacy of the feudal capital began to be questioned. Yet another factor inimical to the interests of the Hōjō was a recrudescence of the military power of the monks. By Court and people alike the destruction of the Mongol armada was attributed, not to the bravery and skill of the troops, but to the intervention of heaven, and instead of rewarding the generals and soldiers that had fought so stoutly, the Court lavished vast sums on priests that had prayed and on temples where portents had been observed. Oppressed by the heavy taxes imposed for these purposes, the people lost confidence in the Hōjō, who had hitherto protected them against such abuses, and the monks, in obedience to their Imperial benefactor, were ready to take up their halberds once more against Kamakura.
The sceptre was held at that moment by Godaigo (1319–1339). An accomplished scholar, he had acquired intimate knowledge of politics during many years of life as Prince Imperial, and it is beyond question that, long before his accession, he had conceived plans for restoring the reality of administrative power to the Throne. A woman, however,—that constant factor of disturbance in mediæval Japan—was the proximate cause of his rupture with Kamakura. His concubine, Renshi, bore a son for whom he sought to obtain nomination as Prince Imperial, in defiance of an arrangement made by the Hōjō, some years previously, according to which the succession was secured alternately to the senior and junior branches of the Imperial family. The Kamakura government refused to entertain Go-daigo's project, and from that hour Renshi never ceased to urge upon her sovereign and lover the necessity of overthrowing the Hōjō.
As for the entourage of the Throne at the time, it was a counterpart of former eras. The Fujiwara, indeed, wielded nothing of their ancient influence. They had been divided by the Hōjō into five branches, each endowed with an equal right to the office of Regent, and their strength was thus entirely dissipated in struggling among themselves for the possession of the prize. But what the Fujiwara had done in their days of greatness, what the Taira had done during their brief tenure of power, the Saionji were now doing, namely, aspiring to furnish Prime Ministers and Empresses solely from their own family. They had already given five consorts to five Emperors in succession, and zealous rivals were watching keenly to attack this clan which threatened to usurp the place long held by the most illustrious family in the land.
An incident paltry in itself disturbed this exceedingly tender equilibrium. Two provincial chiefs became involved in a dispute about a boundary. Each bribed the Kamakura Vice-gerent to decide in his favour, and each failing to obtain a decision, they finally appealed to arms. Soon the country was in an uproar. A number of nobles and fraternities of monks formed an alliance in Kyōtō for the overthrow of the Hōjō. The conspirators adopted a peculiar device to disarm suspicion: they abandoned themselves to debauchery of the most flagrant nature. But one of them took his wife into his confidence, and she carried the news to her father, an officer in the Hōjō garrison of Kyōtō. The conspiracy was crushed immediately. The Emperor, however, managed adroitly to disavow his own connection with it. He thus saved himself, but forfeited the sympathy of many of the nobles and retained the allegiance of the priests only. At this juncture the heir apparent of the junior Imperial line died, and the Emperor sought once more to obtain the succession for his favourite mistress's son. But the Hōjō ruled that the spirit of the law of alternate succession would be violated unless the representative of each line actually occupied the Throne in turn. A new conspiracy resulted from this failure, and a strong force was sent from Kamakura to destroy the plotters and dethrone the Emperor. Then commenced the most sanguinary era in Japanese history. The Emperor, disguised as a woman, eluded his enemies for a time, but was soon captured and sent into exile in the little island of Oki. Nevertheless, the Imperial cause still found many supporters, and although the Hōjō were able to put a large and splendidly equipped force into the field, it lacked a leader. One man only among the Hōjō generals possessed all the necessary qualities, Takauji, the representative of the Ashikaga clan. But he had inherited a sacred legacy, handed down from generation to generation in his family, the task of avenging his ancestor, Yoritomo's son,[3] and restoring the rule of the Minamoto. When, therefore, he found himself at the head of a large section of the Hōjō's forces, he immediately opened communications with the Emperor, received an Imperial mandate to destroy the enemies of the Throne, and stormed the Hōjō stronghold in Kyōtō, while Nitta Yoshisada, another of the most renowned 
SAMURAI IN ARMOUR.
The weapon with a long handle is a glaive.
But the Emperor Godaigo, however brave in adversity, was not wise in prosperity. At the very moment of his escape from the control of the Hōjō, he ignored the lessons of history, and laid the foundation of a new usurpation by conferring immense rewards and high office on Ashikaga Takauji. At the same time he estranged the other captains by neglecting their claims. Prince Moriyoshi, whose succession to the Throne had been the proximate cause of all these troubles, constituted himself the representative of the discontented southern soldiers, for he, like them, had hoped to see the administrative power restored to the sovereign, not handed over to the Ashikaga. The Court nobles, on the other hand, imagining that the hour had come to shake off military supremacy, treated the soldier class with contempt and supported the Emperor's resolve not to reward them. Godaigo removed the military men from the provincial posts; replaced them by representatives of the Kyōtō aristocracy; bestowed estates on a multitude of courtiers, from princes to actors and dancing-girls; levied a tax of five per cent on the property of the provincial officials, and began to issue paper money. Very soon, however, discovering the danger to which he exposed himself by exalting Takauji, he tried to avert it by encouraging the latter's rivals. Thus the situation became again pregnant with elements of disquiet: the Court nobles against the military; the southern generals, represented by the renowned Kusunoki Masashige and Nitta Yoshisada, against the northern, represented by Ashikaga Takauji; the partisans of the Hōjō watching for an opportunity to restore the fallen fortunes of the clan, and Prince Morinaga, though distrusted by the sovereign holding command of the Imperial forces. The Hōjō commenced the campaign. Saionji Kunimune, whose family no longer supplied Imperial consorts and Prime Ministers, as it had done in the Hōjō days, planned to poison the Emperor at a banquet. The plot was discovered, and in the confusion that ensued, Prince Morinaga thought that he saw an opportunity to overthrow the Ashikaga. But the Emperor willingly denounced his son, and handed him over to Takauji, who imprisoned him in Kamakura, where he perished miserably. Shortly afterwards, the Hōjō partisans attacked Kamakura and recovered possession of it. Takauji was in Kyōtō at the time. Disregarding the Emperor's reluctance to commission him, he moved against the Hōjō and re-captured Kamakura. Undoubtedly in taking that step he had resolved to free himself from Court control. Thus, when the Emperor summoned him to return to Kyōtō, he paid no attention to the mandate.
Japanese historians have been harsh in their judgment of Takauji. His attitude towards the Throne has been severely censured. But it does not appear that he contemplated more than others had previously compassed, namely, the establishment of a military dictatorship. The difference between his case and Yoritomo's was that the latter received Imperial recognition, the former dispensed with it. For the rest, each was a soldier before everything, and neither aimed at the Throne. Takauji is the central figure of the greatest political disturbance Japan ever knew, but the feature that chiefly differentiates him from the ambitious nobles who in earlier eras aspired to precisely the same authority, is that whereas they climbed to power by espousing the sovereign's cause, in appearance at all events, he established his sway independently of Imperial recognition. That, however, is a distinction rather than a difference. It is true that the Fujiwara when they overthrew the usurping Soga, the Taira when they displaced the despotic Fujiwara, and the Minamoto when they broke the strength of the arbitrary Taira, all seemed to come to the rescue of the Throne. But each in turn took as little subsequent account of the Throne's authority as though they had ignored it from the outset, and the Hōjō, whom Takauji now crushed, had established themselves at Kamakura in open despite of the Court's denunciation. It cannot be said, therefore, that Takauji violated precedent when he refused to come to Kyōtō for a commission and organised a military government at Kamakura on his own authority.
The empire immediately became divided into two camps. The adherents of the Court flocked to Kyōtō; those of the Ashikaga to Kamakura. The Emperor appointed Nitta Yoshisada to command the Imperial army. It moved in two bodies towards Kamakura,—one by the sea-coast, the other by the inland route. A third force marched to the attack of the place from the north. In this supreme struggle the two foremost figures are those of Yoshisada and Takauji. They were not well matched. Takauji was in all respects one of the greatest men Japan had ever produced. Yoshisada, though a splendid soldier so far as bravery and daring were concerned, stood on a much lower plane than Takauji as a strategist and politician. Besides, public opinion inclined to the Ashikaga leader. The partiality of the Court had produced an evil impression on the nation. Men remembered with regret the wise and beneficent rule of the Hōjō's best days, and hoped that Takauji might prove the founder of a similar race of good governors. Takauji's reputation already justified these hopes. He had shown himself not only sagacious and daring, but also free from the narrow jealousies and cold reserve that disfigured Yoritomo's character. Open-handed and frank, he won love everywhere without forfeiting respect. The smallest merit did not escape his observation, or go unrewarded. Ambition, however, overmastered him; want of organising capacity impaired his success, and when he found himself confronted by perils of overwhelming magnitude, he stooped to crimes correspondingly great.
At first victory rested with Yoshisada. But when Takauji himself took the field, the aspect of things changed at once. He not only shattered Yoshisada, but pushed on and took Kyōtō. Unable to hold the city, however, he was soon compelled to retire southward, and the Court, believing his power completely broken, abandoned all further precautions.
Kusunoki Masashige alone remained vigilant. A noble type of soldierly loyalty, this man, whose memory remains as fresh in the hearts of his countrymen to-day as it was five centuries ago, had never wavered in his allegiance to the Imperial cause, and by sheer force of stubborn courage had survived situations that appeared overwhelming. Knowing Takauji too well to credit the permanence of his defeat, he vainly endeavoured to procure from the Emperor pardon for the Ashikaga leader. Very soon Takauji justified these apprehensions. He collected a great force, naval and military, and established his base at Hyōgo. The Emperor ordered Masashige and Yoshisada to march against him. But Masashige, appreciating the helplessness of a direct conflict, would have resorted to stratagem: he proposed to strike at Takauji's line of communications. This wise counsel being derided as cowardice by the Court nobles, who knew nothing of warfare, Masashige gathered seven hundred of his stanchest followers and struck full at the huge phalanx of the enemy. Six hundred and fifty of the brave band fell fighting, and Masashige with the remaining fifty committed suicide on the banks of the Minato River. Thereafter Yoshisada's army was easily routed, and Takauji re-entered Kyōtō.
The Emperor now fled to a monastery and Takauji nominated his successor. There was no arbitrary exercise of king-making power: Takauji merely set up the junior Imperial line in lieu of the senior. Democratic as was the spirit of the northern captains, they did not venture to openly flout the national traditions of the sovereign's divine right. In the desultory struggle that ensued there is only one phase worthy of special attention. It is the conduct of the Emperor Godaigo. Invited by Takauji to return to Kyōtō on the slender plea that the Ashikaga had fought against the Imperial followers, not against the Imperial person, Godaigo left his son and his faithful general, Nitta Yoshisada, disregarded his promises to them, and abandoned himself to a life of safety under the shadow of the Ashikaga. Yoshisada, with a little band of seven hundred followers, fled northward, taking with him the young prince. Attacked among the snows of Echizen by a greatly superior force, he barely escaped to Kanasaki castle, whither Takauji sent a powerful army to attack him by land and by sea. The nation looked to see Yoshisada surrender at discretion. But such a thought does not seem to have occurred to him. He resisted all assaults successfully until a chance arrow killed him. His end was less glorious though not less honourable than that of his comrade and peer, the grandly loyal soldier, Kusunoki Masashige.
Meanwhile in Kyōtō the Emperor's attempt to recover a semblance of power by submission to the Ashikaga, failed. Takauji trusted neither him nor his followers, but treated them as prisoners, until the Emperor, taking heart from some symptoms of provincial support, fled to the monastery of Yoshino. This took place in 1337, and from that time, during a space of fifty-five years, two sovereigns reigned simultaneously, Yoshino being called the Court of the Southern Dynasty, Kyōtō that of the Northern. Those fifty-five years were an epoch of almost incessant fighting. The Emperor Godaigo died at Yoshino with his sword grasped in his hand. His people class him with Tenchi and Kwammu as one of Japan's greatest sovereigns. Yet it is doubtful whether the same credit would be accorded to him had he occupied a less exalted station. Solid success could never have been achieved by a leader in whose nature the sensuous element preponderated so largely. Circumstances, too, were hopelessly against him. Fate condemned him to be crushed between the two great forces which convulsed his kingdom. That he chose the weaker side was perhaps an error of judgment, but to have chosen the stronger would have involved the sacrifice of his imperial aspirations.
The Ashikaga differed from the Hōjō chiefly in this, that whereas the Hōjō eschewed all the excesses and extravagances which had weakened their predecessors, the Ashikaga practised them. The Hōjō did not seek high rank or great estates, but chose rather to use titles and riches as means of rewarding proved friends or placating potential foes. The Ashikaga, on the contrary, grasped and enjoyed all the rewards of victory. Their only bid for popularity was to reduce the taxes levied on the provincial officials from five per cent of their incomes to two per cent. Takauji himself became Shōgun, caused members of his family and prominent men among his followers to be nominated to various high offices, and enriched himself and them with estates or sinecures wherever such a course was possible. Probably his greatest error was that he restored the seat of government to Kyōtō. The beauty and grace of the noble ladies of the capital completely intoxicated the northern warriors, and alliance after alliance was formed between these rough soldiers and the families of the effeminate aristocrats whom they had hitherto despised. Those that could not by fair means obtain wives among these dainty dames, often had recourse to foul expedients. A passion for gambling was soon added to the excitements of the capital. Swords and armour were staked on a throw of the dice, and men learned to dread war, since it called them away from the delights of the Imperial city. Even the principle of loyalty, the first article of the bushi's creed, began to be weakened, for the turmoil of the time brought such sharp and incalculable changes of fortune that no certain advantage seemed to accrue from adhering to one leader, however secure his position might appear. It became every man's first business to look out for himself. There is no blacker period of Japan's history. Fealty and honesty disappeared from the ethics of the time. Even before Takauji died, the powers that he had hoped to bequeath to his descendants had been largely usurped by his lieutenants. Treachery and intrigue were in the air. Men that espoused the cause of the Northern Dynasty yesterday were found fighting for the Southern to-day. The great barons in the provinces paid little heed to the Ashikaga rule. Each fought for his own hand. If an official of high aims attempted to stem the current of corruption and abuses, it closed over his head, for integrity immediately provoked slander.
To Yoshimitsu, third of the Ashikaga Shōguns, belongs the credit of reconciling the two Courts and putting an end to the dual monarchy. This achievement won for him in history a greater name than he deserved, for if he possessed some of the virtues of his class, he was also a slave to the vices of his era.
With the unification of the monarchy (1392) commenced what is called the "Muromachi Epoch," because Yoshimitsu established his headquarters at Muromachi, a district in Kyoto. Similarly, as has been seen, the interval between the eighth century and the close of the fourteenth was divided into the Nara Epoch, the Heian Epoch, and the Kamakura Epoch, each of those places having been, in succession, the seat of administrative power. The Muromachi era commenced not simply with the reconciliation of the two Courts, but also with the establishment of some semblance of order in the affairs of the Ashikaga. A material increase of the power of the provincial nobles renders the era still further remarkable. The Fujiwara, the Taira, the Minamoto, the Hōjō, and the early Ashikaga leaders had all placed before themselves the complete centralisation of authority in their own hands. Yoshimitsu was content with a smaller result. The office of Shogun remained in his possession, but a large measure of local autonomy was granted to certain great military chiefs, on condition of their loyal services in preserving order. Further, an administrative post (kwanryō), second in importance to that of Shōgun only, was declared to be hereditary in three powerful families, and its holders had virtually uncontrolled discretion of affairs at Kamakura. These changes seem to have been dictated by a policy of opportunism rather than by calm judgment.
Yoshimitsu was swayed at one moment by high impulses, at another by sensuous inactivity. Incapable of persistence in great efforts, he had no sooner accomplished his immediate purpose than he reverted to a condition of luxurious ease and dilettanteism. Just as his study of Buddhism, though profound while it lasted, brought in the end only an access of epicureanism, so the lessons of history taught him to purchase a brief respite from warfare by concessions which could not fail to aggravate the difficulties of his successors. Two years after the unification of the monarchy, he took the tonsure and retired from official life. But he continued to exercise administrative authority, just as the ex-Emperors had done at the close of the Heian epoch. In fact he aped the fashions of Imperialism, whereas the Minamoto and the Hōjō had carefully preserved their status of subjects. Whenever he went abroad, his escort resembled that of a sovereign, and the magnificence of his mansion at Muromachi as well as the beauty of the grounds surrounding it, won for it the name of the "palace of flowers." He built for himself in his nominal retirement a three-storeyed edifice, the Kinkaku-ji, or " golden pavilion," which is still one of the sights of Kyoto. The great territorial nobles had to contribute materials for its construction; the whole interior was a blaze of gold, and sumptuous banquets were given there with accompaniment of music and dancing.
From the days of Yoshimitsu the Ashikaga ceased to exercise administrative power. That was done by the Wardens (Kwanryō) at Kamakura whom they had themselves created. In Kyōtō the Regents had held the reins of government, in Kamakura the Vicegerents, and now the same procedure was followed by the Wardens, while the Shōguns themselves lived a life of ease and indolence in Kyoto. But neither among the Wardens nor the Shōguns was there found a genius capable of controlling the elements of disturbance that grew out of the system of local autonomy established by Yoshimitsu. The country was gradually converted into an arena where every one fought for his own hand. Any man that deemed himself strong enough to win a prize in the shape of estates and power, stepped into the lists and turned his lance against the weakest adversary he could discern. Finally, a dispute about the succession to the Shōgunate furnished a line of general division, and there ensued a contest known in history as the "eleven years' war."
At the close of this long struggle Kyōtō lay almost in ruins. Temples, palaces, and dwellings had been razed to the ground, and the people were so demoralised that robbery and gambling became their chief occupations. Yet this was only the prelude to a wider contest of still more promiscuous nature. The incidents of the time recall the scenes of tumult and confusion produced upon a theatrical stage when "excursions and alarums" are prescribed by the playwright to create an impression of universal and bewildering unrest. The details cannot be reduced to any easily intelligible shape. They are nothing more than the vicissitudes that befell lord after lord, family after family, in an universal assault of arms. Nobody took any thought about the Imperial Court. Resources to bury an Emperor or to crown him had to be begged or borrowed, and even the necessaries of daily life could scarcely be procured by the sovereign's household. The Shōgun himself was an object of almost equal neglect. If splendid examples of fealty and heroism illumine the miserable story, its gloom is deepened by as many instances of treachery and self-seeking. Retainers did not hesitate to murder their lords; lieutenants to mutiny against their captains. The probable reward of treason become the commonest measure of fidelity. Short intervals of peace and rest varied the long battle, and once, under the rule of a Nagato chieftain, Ouchi Yoshitoki, Kyōtō recovered some semblance of prosperity. But shortly after his departure from the city, noblemen of Imperial lineage might be seen endeavouring to earn a few cash by delivering lectures in the streets, or begging for "Regent's pence" to support the Court, and the Emperor himself was driven by dire necessity to sell his autographs for daily bread.
Meanwhile, despite the promiscuous character of the fighting throughout the country, the south and the north were still the nuclei of the contest, and as each succeeding phase of the struggle brought with it the ruin of some of the great clans that had constituted the strength of Kamakura or of Kyōtō, the provinces that stood comparatively aloof from this devastating warfare, or lay beyond the range of the tide of bloodshed, developed eminent strength. Such were the provinces included in the district called "Tōkaidō," or the "Eastern-sea circuit," a naturally rich and densely populated part of the Empire.
Among the Tōkaidō chieftains who now began to act leading roles upon the stage, were Takeda Shingen of Kai, Uyesugi Kenshin of Yechigo, Oda Nobunaga of Owari, Hashiba Hideyoshi, afterwards known as the Taikō, a follower of Nobunaga, and Tokugawa Iyeyasu of Mikawa. This quintette saved Japan. Without them she must have become divided into a number of principalities, as her neighbour, Korea, had been, and like Korea she might have lost many of the qualities that make for national greatness.
Takeda Shingen seems to have been devoid of every feeling that could interfere with the prosecution of his purposes. His nature lacked an emotional side; his will was adamant; his ideas presented themselves with lightning rapidity and in perfect order. He neglected no resources of training and erudition, and he made the welfare of the people an object as important as the discipline of his soldiers.
Oda Nobunaga, on the contrary, was the very type of a jovial, careless warrior. An able leader, an intrepid and daring captain, with all the qualities necessary to secure obedience and attract devotion, his fault was that he relied chiefly on the force of arms, and trusted more to the strength and swiftness of a blow than to the subtlety of its delivery. These two men already towered high above all their contemporaries when the long record of war and confusion reached its last chapter.
Militant Buddhism had now again become a great power in the State. At the darkest hour of the Muromachi epoch, even the priests in Kyōtō succumbed to the general demoralisation, and were found among the gamesters and marauders. One sect only, the Ikko, possessed large influence, owing to the virtue and eloquence of its great preacher, Renjo. But this sect believed in the sword as a weapon of propagandism, and did not hesitate to enlist the most lawless and unscrupulous elements of the population among its adherents. The religious fanatics were strong enough to defy the governors of the northern provinces, where their principal centre of power lay. They destroyed family after family of their opponents, and even the illustrious Hosokawa Harumoto, one of the most powerful nobles of the time, had to appeal to the Nichiren sect for aid against them. Thus the religious bodies wielded a power which no one, though he were the Shōgun himself, could afford to disregard. Even the Shintô priests of Ise had a military organisation numbering thousands of halberdiers.
Under such circumstances Christianity made its advent in Japan. It was brought to Kiushiu by the Portuguese, and with it came fire-arms, as well as many evidences of a new and dazzling civilisation. A large number of people adopted it, less, perhaps, because its doctrines convinced them, than because several of the prominent nobles, attracted by the material novelties that came in the train of the new creed, and by the prospects of the commerce it foreran, set the example of welcoming the Christian propagandists. A fresh element of disturbance was thus introduced. Christianity did not disarm opposition by displays of gentleness or forbearance. It relied on the stalwart methods which in mediæval Europe bound the unbeliever on the rack and the recusant to the stake. The Buddhist and Shintô priests combined against the foreign faith, and its chief patron, the great Ouchi clan, was overthrown.
Oda Nobunaga had now asserted his superiority to nearly all rivals in arms. He was ably assisted by Hashiba Hideyoshi, one of the great men of the world, not of Japan only. Nobunaga's career was a series of brilliant victories, but to describe it in any detail would require an array of names and an analysis of clan relations intolerably confusing to a foreign reader. Among the enemies he had to encounter were the monks of Hiyei-zan and Hongwan-ji, and while, on the one hand, he destroyed these great monasteries and put many of their inmates to the sword, on the other, he assumed towards Christianity an attitude of political friendship rather than of conscientious approval. His protection of the alien creed has been variously interpreted, but there cannot be much doubt that though he allowed his son to embrace the Roman Catholic doctrine, and though Christianity, under the ægis of his favour, obtained some twenty thousand converts in Kyōtō alone, he cared little for it at heart, and saw in it mainly a weapon for diminishing the dangerous and turbulent strength which the Buddhist priests had long possessed. Nobunaga has been compared to Cromwell, but his disposition was permeated by a vein of general bonhomie foreign to the character of the great Puritan. His method of reform was as thorough as his military discipline. Order and peace were soon restored in Kyōtō under his sway, and when the Shōgun attempted to resort to the wonted device of levying forced contributions on the citizens for his own luxurious purposes, Nobunaga presented to him a sternly worded document of arraignment, in which seventeen charges of misconduct were categorically set forth. Only one general could make head against Nobunaga in the field. This was Takeda Shingen, and fortunately for the peace of the realm he died before his rivalry could effectually change the current of events, then at length setting towards administrative unity. Takeda's exploits need not be considered here further than to say that they contributed materially to regenerate the era and to restore the nation's ideal of soldierly qualities.
Oda Nobunaga met a fate not uncommon in that age: he fell a victim to the treachery of a lieutenant. But swift and signal vengeance was wreaked upon the traitor by Hashiba Hideyoshi, who after Oda's death became the most prominent figure in the realm.
Hideyoshi's career was in one sense typical of the ere; in another, strangely inconsistent with it. Had not the time-honoured lines of social distinction and hereditary prestige been entirely obscured, such a man could never have risen to the highest place attainable by a subject. Born in the family of a poor soldier, the best future anticipated for him by his father was service in the lowest ranks of some nobleman's retinue. As a boy he gave no indications of great capacity, his physical imperfections—a stunted stature, an exceptionally dark complexion, and a strikingly ill-favoured countenance—not being compensated by any show of diligence in study or aptitude in acquiring knowledge. Wayward, mischievous, unendowed with any attractive or seemingly promising qualities, he received no help from any friendly hand on the way to fortune. Yet in a sense his humble origin may be said to have aided him, for had he belonged to any of the great families whose struggle for supremacy was deluging the country with blood, the mere fact of his lineage must have arrayed against him a host of hostile rivals. Solely by force of military genius he conquered wherever he fought; by an innate perception of the value of justice and the uses of clemency he made content and tranquillity the successors of turbulence and disaffection; by an extraordinary insight into the motives of men's actions, he was able to detect and utilise opportunities that would have been invisible to ordinary eyes; by signal magnanimity he disarmed his enemies,[4] and by subtle appeals to the emotional side of human nature he won the homage of men who, until the moment of contact with him, had believed themselves his superiors. Himself swayed by strong emotions, he flashed readily into anger, but the errors to which passion might have goaded him were generally averted by noble yielding to impulses of generosity and fair play.[5] Capable of profound and lasting attachments, he inspired in his followers sentiments of love and devotion, and while he shrank from no means to attain an end, it was his delight to repair ultimately with generous hand any temporary injuries he inflicted on others in his pursuit of fortune.[6] Born in an epoch where the idea of nation or empire had little significance in the ears of military chiefs each fighting for his own hand, he set the welfare of the country and the dignity of the Empire above all other considerations, and thought rather of the greatness of Japan than of the aggrandisement of a fief. It has been truly said that the Muromachi era was in many respects the darkest period of Japanese history, yet it produced Oda Nobunaga, Hashiba Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Iyeyasu, and many others who, though less illustrious, deserved in many respects almost equal honour.
Hideyoshi's campaigns need not occupy attention. It is enough to say that he brought the whole Empire within one circle of administrative sway, of which he himself was the centre. The office of regent he caused to be conferred on himself, though it had never previously been held by any man lacking the qualification of imperial descent, and he would fain have been Shōgun also, partly because he had a parvenu's love of rank, partly because he deemed such distinctions essential to the efficient exercise of governing power. But the social canon which restricted the Shōgunate to a prince of the blood or a descendant of the Minamoto family, could not be set aside even in favour of a Hideyoshi.[7] Thus his career, beginning in hopeless obscurity and culminating in practical headship of the Empire, implies a complete overthrow of the old barriers of caste and precedent, yet it also indicates the existence of a limit beyond which no ambition might soar. There were, in fact, two thrones in Japan, the throne occupied by the "Child of Heaven" (Tenshi) and the throne occupied by the feudal sovereign, the Shōgun, and the occupancy of the former was not more strictly confined to the lineal descendants of Jimmu than was the occupancy of the latter to a scion of the Minamoto.
Not suffering from the defect that disqualified Hideyoshi for the Shōgunate, and succeeding to the fruits of Hideyoshi's genius, Iyeyasu, the Tokugawa chief, was able to organise a feudal government that lasted for two and a half centuries, whereas the Taikō's sway may be said to have died with himself. Iyeyasu and his achievements, however, must be spoken of independently.
Upon the story of the military epoch one trait of Japanese character is indelibly impressed, a tendency to trespass upon direct authority and to submit to it when delegated. During the first five centuries of the historical period, this trait is illustrated by the anomaly of a nation's obedience to titles derived from imperialism by aristocrats that flouted the imperial prerogatives. During the next five centuries the same picture is seen in more varied forms,—the Emperor Shirakawa and his successors ruling under the shadow of the throne they had abdicated; the Hōjō Vicegerents governing for the Minamoto through the authority of a puppet Shōgun; the Wardens of later days administering affairs under commissions from the fainéant Ashikaga. It appears to have been a political necessity that the source of power should be abstracted from the agents of its exercise.
- ↑ See Appendix, Note 1.
Note 1.—These families are often spoken of as the Hei-ke and the Gen-ji, and the long struggle between them as the Gempei war.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 2.
Note 2.—Some of these animals are said to have weighed as much as an ox. Twelve great fights took place every month, and when the champion dog was led through the streets, people doffed their head-gear and even knelt down in reverence.
- ↑ See Appendix, Note 3.
Note 3.—Yoritomo's eldest son, Yoriiye, was deposed from power and imprisoned for life by the Hōjō, who thus became supreme in Kamakura.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 4.
Note 4.—Thus, in his old age, riding alone by night among possible foes, he gave his sword to be carried the companion who had most reason to desire his death.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 5.
Note 5.—In a moment of fury he ordered a man who had insulted him to be crucified, but before the sentence could be executed, he recognised that the offender's motive had been good, and not only pardoned but promoted him.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 6.
Note 6.—To equip himself for his first appearance as a soldier, he robbed his employer of a small sum, and reimbursed him, years afterwards, by a gift of a large fortune.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 7.
Note 7.—The title of Taikō (great house), by which Hideyoshi is generally known, was taken by him after he had surrendered that of regent to his heir apparent.