Page 48 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

centrality of Edo in the Tokugawa political and cultural world. With more
than 250 daimyo retinues coming and going and with hundreds of dai-
myo yashiki carefully arranged around the shogun's castle, Edo became a
hub of economic and cultural as well as political life. The vast castle-city
demanded a huge service population to meet its needs: temples and
shrines were built, and the finest artists and craftsmen throughout the
land were commissioned to work in Edo Castle or the residences of the
daimyo. The city drew hungrily on the whole Kanto region for produce
to feed its population and depended on the two great cities of Osaka and
Kyoto to keep it supplied with rice, and other commodities and financial
services. And whereas the most vital cultural centers in the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries were Kyoto and Osaka, by the mid-
eighteenth century Edo, with its Kabuki theaters, print shops, booksel-
lers, and entertainment quarters, was setting the cultural pace. While
sankin kôtai and the focus on Edo contributed to centralization, the
continued existence of the han, which numbered some 290 at the begin-
ning of the Edo period and gradually sank to 240 or so, meant a continu-
ance of local diversity. This contributed to cultural vitality. But the han
were closely linked with Edo by the daimyo and his retinue constantly
coming and going. Local culture was carried along the highways to Edo,
while metropolitan culture was diffused throughout the domains.
As the sankin kôtai system took hold, daimyo heirs were born
and brought up with their mothers in Edo. In some cases they might not
visit the domain until they were young men and had inherited the title of
daimyo. They thus grew up sharing the common experience and cultural
values of the daimyo residences and the shogunal court in Edo. The
domain, which in any case could be rescinded by the Tokugawa, ceased
to be home for them and became instead a place of periodic administra-
tive responsibility. Daimyo quickly began to vie culturally in the decora-
tion of their Edo yashiki, in bringing local products and craftsmen to
Edo, and in employing artists and craftsmen from Kyoto or Edo in their
home castles. The frugality and toughness that had been the mark of
warrior leaders in the sixteenth century soon began to give way to refine-
ment and ostentation. They also came to share certain Confucian intel-
lectual and cultural values, long maintained by the nobility and Buddhist
priesthood but newly relevant to a nation at peace and requiring princi-
ples of social conduct and civil administration. The hereditary descen-
dants of the warrior leaders who had fought on the battlefields of
Nagashino, Nagashima, Korea, and Sekigahara were thus transformed
into an urbanized feudal aristocracy who ruled not by force of arms or
demonstrated personal ability but at the pleasure of the shoguns and by
an institutionalized, inherited authority. Domains tended to undergo a
process of pacification and bureaucratization. Daimyo, as well as their
samurai, were transformed from warlords into rulers and administrators,
men of culture and local patrons of the arts. Local domain loyalty was
shown less to the daimyo for his unique personal qualities of military
leadership than to the institutionalized office of daimyo as head of the
fief (hanshu).
As long as they pleased the bakufu, daimyo were entrusted to rule
the territories assigned to them. With the approval of the bakufu, their
heirs might inherit and, after the first fifty years or so, daimyo status
tended to become hereditary. In their domains, they maintained govern-
ments that were smaller versions of the Tokugawa bakufu. The daimyo,
as head of the domain (hanshu), used his senior samurai officials to
govern the domain from a central castle town. Daimyo governance was
directed at maintaining peace and drawing tax (nengu) from the farmers.
Daimyo generally left villages and urban wards to govern themselves
under the periodic supervision of samurai retainers. Historians generally

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