Page 45 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

For officials to staff their huge bureaucracy the Tokugawa sho-
guns relied on a group of trusted hereditary vassal daimyo known as
fudai. These were generally relatively small in scale, ranging from 10,000
koku to 150,000 koku. Informally they were ranked according to the
length of their service to the Tokugawa family. At leyasu's death there
were go fudai daimyo. There were some 130 by the end of the Tokugawa
period. The core of the fudai were families like the Sakai, Okubo, and
Honda who had served the Tokugawa from its early days in Mikawa
Province in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Other fudai,
including the Ogasawara and li, had sworn allegiance to the Tokugawa
during leyasu's lifetime. Fudai daimyo and the non-daimyo retainers of
the bakufu known as bannermen ran the bakufu on a day-to-day basis.
The senior fudai were appointed to the bakufu s senior council of elders
(roju) while lesser fudai served on the junior council that concerned itself
with matters affecting the Tokugawa house. Throughout Japan fudai
domains were interspersed among those of the less trusted tozama dai-
myo with the duty of reporting to the bakufu anything untoward in the
actions of the tozama daimyo. The larger fudai were placed on the perim-
eters of the Tokugawa domains while smaller fudai were generally lo-
cated closer to Edo.
One very prominent fudai family represented in this exhibition
was the li family of Hikone. Through their history we can see something
of the rise of a fudai daimyo. They traced their ancestry to a branch of
the Fujiwara noble family that was paramount during the late Heian
period. Through the medieval period they were local magnates in the
village of linoya, from which they took the name li, in Tôtômi near the
Pacific coast. They were vassals of the Imagawa in the sixteenth century.
With the defeat of the Imagawa, li Naomasa gave his allegiance to Toku-
gawa leyasu in 1575. When leyasu entered the Kanto (eastern Japan) in
1590 Naomasa was rewarded with the largest fief, 120,000 koku, in the
Kanto. After Sekigahara, where li Naomasa was a leader of the Tokugawa
forces, the li were appointed castellans of Sawayama Castle (180,000
koku). li Naotaka served in the siege of Osaka Castle. For their services
they were raised to 300,000 koku and appointed to a new castle at Hi-
kone, which was built by forced contributions on a site selected by
Tokugawa leyasu overlooking Lake Biwa and close to the imperial court
in Kyoto. The li were placed to serve as a bulwark of bakufu influence in
western and central Japan. Throughout the Edo period the family was
always active in bakufu councils; five li daimyo served the bakufu in the
office of Great Councillor. The last of them, li Naosuke, was assassinated
in 1860 by antiforeign daimyo for trying to reach an accommodation with
the encroaching western powers. During the Meiji Restoration the li fief
was reduced to 100,000 koku before the abolition of the feudal domains
in 1871.
The daimyo with the weakest ties to the Tokugawa shoguns were
known as outside daimyo, or tozama daimyo. The tozama had not been
vassals of the Tokugawa prior to Sekigahara. They were independent
lords, large and small, who had sometimes allied with the Tokugawa, and
sometimes opposed them. Some fought with leyasu at Sekigahara, oth-
ers remained aloof or fought against him. Many were loyal to the Toyo-
tomi until that cause was crushed. While those tozama, like the Hoso-
kawa, that joined leyasu at Sekigahara or gave their allegiance were well
rewarded in the Tokugawa political scheme, others like the Shimazu and
Mori who had fought against the Tokugawa were regarded with suspi-
cion. They were treated with deference, but excluded from political
decision-making and assigned reduced domains on the periphery of the
country. Nevertheless, the more than one hundred tozama domains in-
cluded some of the largest and most populous fiefs in Japan. Those like

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