Page 52 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

Although largely untested for two centuries, the samurai martial
tradition survived and resurfaced in the mid-nineteenth century when
young samurai from tozama fiefs, angered at the bakufu's inability to
expel the Western intruders, took up their swords and turned them
against their enemies, whether supporters of the bakufu, foreign resi-
dents in Japan, or punitive expeditions sent by the Western powers.

Promotion of While the Tokugawa were stressing the martial ideal
the arts of for the whole samurai class, they clearly needed to
p eace tame the daimyo and their samurai, and to wean them
from attitudes and behavior appropriate to a state of
war toward a more controlled and institutionalized
exercise of power and loyalty. To this end, the number of castles was
controlled and the military forces that any daimyo could maintain were
strictly limited in proportion to the scale of his domain. Moreover, the
building or repair of castles, the making of marriage alliances, and the
adoption of heirs were all closely supervised.
Even loyalty to feudal lords, which was officially emphasized on
the one hand as the greatest samurai virtue, was increasingly circum-
scribed. During the early seventeenth century many samurai committed
ritual disembowelment (seppuku) on the death of their lords, to follow
them in death (junshi). Many of these acts of junshi were sincere expres-
sions of devoted loyalty. Some, however, may well have been performed
under considerable peer pressure. Whatever the motivation, the bakufu
frowned on such expressions of extreme personal loyalty to daimyo and
put an end to the practice by threatening to punish the families of any
samurai who resorted to junshi. The bakufu was also troubled by another
expression of intense feudal loyalty—the vendetta. The most famous
vendetta, as the undiluted expression of the samurai ideal, was the re-
venge of the forty-seven rônin, rendered masterless by the suicide of
their lord, who stormed the residence of the man who had engineered
that suicide and killed him. Bakufu officials were faced with a dilemma.
The rônin had behaved as exemplary samurai in killing the man who had
wronged their lord, but the vendetta was a rejection of bakufu authority
and a threat to public order. The matter was settled by sentencing the
rônin to death, but permitting them an honorable death according to the
code of Bushidô by seppuku. This incident found dramatic expression in
the Kabuki play Chùshingura.
In the interests of stability and order, the Tokugawa encouraged
daimyo to devote themselves to the efficient administration of their
domains and to arts of peace (bun). Tokugawa leyasu set the example.
Like some of his warrior predecessors, he realized that successful govern-
ment required equal attention to civilian as well as military arts. He also
saw that daimyo absorption in civilian affairs reduced the risk of war and
consequent threats to Tokugawa hegemony. According to the Tokugawa
jikki (Records of the Tokugawa shoguns), leyasu was brought up sur-
rounded by battle:

And he naturally had no time to read and study. He took the empire on horseback,
but his natural brilliance and his superhuman character were such that he early
recognized that the empire could not be ruled on horseback. He always had great
respect for the Way of the Sages and knew that it alone could teach how to rule the
kingdom and fulfill the highest duties of man. Consequently, from the beginning of
his reign he gave great encouragement to learning (Dore 1965,16).

leyasu seems to have realized that if his regime was to endure,
the martial spirit had to be controlled though not extinguished, and the
arts of peace, especially scholarship, government, and administration,

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