Page 56 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

daimyo contribution to the elaboration of the cultural vocabulary of the
Edo period.
Chanoyu was a major stimulus for the development of daimyo-
sponsored kilns as well as for interior design and the codification of
flower arrangements for tearooms and for formal arrangements on cer-
emonial occasions. While Chinese- and Korean-inspired high-fired,
glazed porcelain and stoneware remained highly prized throughout the
Edo period, the tastes of Sen no Rikyü and other tea masters ran to
rougher, humbler Japanese or Korean ware. Rikyü patronized the potter
Chôjirô, who made hand-formed, thick-walled bowls. Many daimyo took
pride in the kilns and potters within their domains and, in an effort to
develop local products, introduced their work to Edo and Osaka. The
Ikeda family of Okayama, for instance, took an active interest in the
Bizen kilns within their domain. Among the daimyo of western Japan the
Shimazu, Kuroda, Nabeshima, Goto, Matsuura, and Mori all controlled
kilns headed by Korean potters brought back forcibly during Hideyoshi's
invasions of Korea. The Nabeshima family of Hizen province in Kyushu,
for instance, was engaged in foreign trade, with their own licensed ships
plying between Japan and southeast Asia. Nabeshima Naoshige (1538-
1618) and his son Katsushige (1580-1657) both participated in the Korean
invasions and brought back Korean artisans. Establishing their kilns
around Arita, they produced blue and white underglaze and brilliantly
colored overglaze wares that won fame throughout Japan and were car-
ried to Europe by Dutch traders. The technological skills of these groups
of Korean potters contributed to the great variety and fine aesthetic
quality of Edo-period ceramics.
The tradition of flower arrangement was an ancient one in Japan
and China but it was given new impetus under Rikyü's instruction that
"flowers should be as they are in nature." In the early seventeenth cen-
tury, Ikenobó Senkô revived the fortunes of the Ikenobô school and
other schools quickly developed as the Way of flowers appealed to towns-
people, samurai, and daimyo alike. Many of the schools and family tradi-
tions in the contemporary arts of tea, flowers, music, and traditional
dance owe much to daimyo patronage in the Edo period.
Throughout the exhibition are reminders that a daimyo's life had
its private, family side as well as its public and ceremonial aspects. The
wives and children of samurai and daimyo did not have easy lives in a
feudal society. In the medieval centuries, a samurai woman learned not
only to keep house but to use a halberd and exercise a horse. A woman
would also be taught how to take her life, if necessary, by stabbing herself
in the jugular vein. Women were subject to all the hazards of an unstable
age of war. Married in childhood to a youth she might never have met
before her betrothal, a wife became the charge of her husband's family
and was expected to produce strong sons to carry on the house. In the
best of circumstances she might be a partner to her husband in the face
of shared dangers. More commonly she would be abused, widowed early,
cast adrift, or treated with scant respect by her in-laws. The property
rights and political influence enjoyed by noblewomen and the women of
influential warrior families in the Heian and Kamakura periods were
whittled away under the pressures of war and the spreading of feudal
values.
The Pax Tokugawa did not bring substantial improvements to the
status of women. If anything, their situation worsened. Like the samurai
bound more tightly in a Confucianized ethic of single-minded loyalty to
a lord, women of all classes were bound by Confucian admonitions of
threefold submission: to her husband's parents, to her husband, and to
her adult male offspring. This ideal of a Bushidd for women found its
most vigorous assertion in the Onna daigaku (Great learning for women)

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