Page 14 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

Daimyo and daimyo culture

MARTIN COLLCUTT

D AIMYO WERE FEUDAL LORDS OR BAR-

leaders
as
who,
_
ons
powerful
prov-
controlled
warrior bands,
f
of the
inces of Japan for much of the medi-
-«^•^^___^^^ eval (chùsei), and early modern ages
(kinsei), from 1185 to 1868. The term daimyo combines the two characters
dai ("great") and myd ("name;" from myôden, "name fields," referring to
privately owned land). In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the term
was used to refer to absentee landholders such as nobles and temples
who held rights in privatized provincial estates within the public land
system administered by the central court government in the city of
Heian (Kyoto). By the fourteenth century the word daimyo was being
used to describe warrior leaders who had built up extensive military
power and landed wealth in the provinces. The daimyo thus emerged
from among warriors, known as samurai or bushi, who had come to
exercise increasing political and economic as well as military power with
the decline of the centralized imperial court government in the tenth
and eleventh centuries.
During the seventh and eighth centuries Japan saw the establish-
ment of a centralized imperial government modeled on those of Sui and
Tang China. For several centuries the imperial court, headed by emper-
ors (tennô), claiming direct descent from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu,
held unchallenged sway. By the tenth century, however, the imperial
court was beginning to lose control over the provinces. Private estates
(shden) held by temples and nobles living as absentee proprietors in the
capital proliferated, and local warrior bands sprang up as central military
influence waned. By the eleventh century the court was becoming reli-

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