Page 38 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

ever political settlement they achieved. In this sense, the process of
national unification in the sixteenth century ultimately remained incom-
plete. Two and a half centuries later, in the upheaval of the Meiji trans-
formation, the daimyo were more harshly treated. They, too, were swept
aside along with the shogunate they had sustained.
During the sixteenth century, while many older daimyo families
were crushed, other daimyo were successful in building large and power-
ful domains as the scale of warfare and the opportunities for receipt of
huge spoils and generous patronage increased. Responding to military
necessity and the examples of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, they consoli-
dated their domains by centralizing their military organizations, control-
ling satellite castles, converting their samurai from landed vassals living
on their own small fiefs to stipended officials attached to the lord's
garrison, surveying land, disarming of the peasantry, and maximizing tax
yield. Many daimyo maintained grandiose castles and mobilized thou-
sands of samurai.
At the same time the independence of the daimyo was being
steadily circumscribed as decentralized political authority was recentra-
lized under three increasingly powerful hegemons. While daimyo were
asserting their authority over their own domains they now had to seek
their legitimacy from higher authority. They could only feel secure if
they had been confirmed in their territories by Nobunaga or Hideyoshi.
Moreover, heirs in their turn had to secure confirmation to the headship
of the domain. Nobunaga and Hideyoshi exerted increasingly tighter
control over daimyo, crushing some, and by such shows of power intimi-
dating others into vassalage or alliances. After 1590 all the daimyo of
Japan acknowledged Hideyoshi as their overlord. Vassal daimyo who re-
sisted stood to lose all or part of their domains. The hegemons sought to
regulate adoptions, marriage ties, and other alliances among daimyo.
Item [i]: In marriage relationships, the daimyo should obtain the approval of the
ruler [Hideyoshi] before settling the matter
Item [2]: Greater and lesser lords [daimyo and shdmyo] are strictly prohibited from
entering deliberately into contracts [with each other] and from signing oaths and the
like
(Berry 1982,144).
The hegemons moved daimyo from one domain to another, either as
punishment or to prevent the formation of local daimyo alliances and the
tendency for lands held in grant to become hereditary property. And
they constantly drew on them for military service, castle building, guard
duty, and for gifts, hostages, concubines, wives, and entertainment.

Daimyo During the wars of the late fifteenth and early six-
culture in the teenth centuries, as we have seen, men of culture had
sixteenth abandoned the devastated capital region for refuge in
century: the the provinces and the focus of daimyo culture had
residences of those provincial daimyo whose
castle in war been the enthusiasm made them hospitable to such
cultural
and peace refugees. From the mid-sixteenth century, as No-
bunaga and Hideyoshi secured control over the coun-
try, the Kyoto region (Kyoto, Sakai, and Osaka) again became the center
of cultural leadership. This epoch is frequently known as the Azuchi-
Momoyama era after Nobunaga's great castle at Azuchi and Hideyoshi's
citadel at Momoyama. These towering castles were symbols of the power
and ambition not only of the unifiers but of the daimyo who followed
them in warfare and cultural style. Daimyo took their cue from No-
bunaga and Hideyoshi who reveled in ostentatious self-glorification to
exalt and legitimize their newly won political and military supremacy.

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