Page 50 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

in many ways fitting symbols for the Edo-period daimyo, ferried between
Edo and his domain, whose twin raisons d'être were attendance upon the
shogun and management of his Edo yashiki, and administering his local
domain. Many daimyo gradually became detached from the social and
political realities about them, from the problems of their poorer samurai
living on meager stipends, as well as from the hardships faced by the
peasantry of their domains. With daimyo periodically in attendance in
Edo, actual administration was left in many domains to samurai officials.
In a society based on hereditary privilege, daimyo and higher-ranking
samurai in the domains were worlds apart from lesser samurai and fre-
quently lorded it over them. They had more in common with shoguns
and courtiers and their fellow daimyo than with the mass of samurai or
commoners in their domains. A feudal elite, they intermarried with other
daimyo families or branches of the shogunal family, whose cultural val-
ues they shared, rather than with merchants or lower samurai.
Daimyo culture in the Edo period naturally reflected the political
position of the daimyo themselves under the umbrella of Tokugawa
power. The manifestations of culture were frequently resplendent and
powerful, refined and cultivated. They were also conservative in charac-
ter, traditional and somehow wanting in the energy and creativity that
had been so evident in the Muromachi and Momoyama periods. Al-
though powerfully expressive of the Edo age, daimyo culture was not the
most vibrant aspect of Edo-period culture. That accolade belongs to the
popular culture of the merchants, craftsmen, entertainers, and ordinary
townspeople of the great cities. Daimyo were certainly aware of the
vitality of popular culture around them and drawn to the world of the
Kabuki theatre, popular literature, and woodblock prints. They were not
active contributors to the popular realm, however. Their principal cul-
tural role was that of inheritors and patrons of a traditional and classical
Chinese and Japanese aesthetic.
We might suggest that just as the imperial court clung to the
cultural style of its halcyon days in the Heian period, so the daimyo
tended to idealize aesthetic modes of the Muromachi era. The cultural
tone for Edo-period daimyo was set by the Tokugawa shoguns in their
edicts and directions to the warrior order. We can distinguish a creative
tension. One vital requirement was to preserve that military tradition on
which the whole edifice of Tokugawa power rested, to reiterate con-
stantly the samurai traditions of valor, honor, loyalty, and military pre-
paredness. Another requirement was to modulate the military tradition,
to tame it, to turn the daimyo and their samurai from the ways of war to
those of peace. The path of bu was never relinquished in the Tokugawa
period but under the Pax Tokugawa the inclination to promote the ways
of bun tended to gain the upper hand.

Preservation The Buke shohatto (Regulations for military houses),
of the martial the basic Tokugawa bakufu code for the warrior order,
tradition opens by urging daimyo to cultivate both the ways of
bun and bu. But it clearly gives primacy to the martial
arts, even in an age of peace:

The arts of peace and war, including archery and horsemanship, should be pursued
singlemindedly. From of old the rule has been to practice the 'arts of peace on the left
hand and the arts of war on the right'; both must be mastered. Archery and horseman-
ship are indispensable to military men. Though arms are called instruments of evil, there
are times when they must be resorted to. In peacetime we should not be oblivious to the
danger of war. Should we not then prepare ourselves for it? (Tsunoda, de Bary, and
Keene 1964, vol. i, 326)
The ideal standard for members of the samurai class was to excel
in both the literary and military arts, and the shogun and daimyo strove

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