Page 58 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

society, as in Japanese society at large, gift-giving was always an impor-
tant cultural and political ritual. Daimyo were expected to shower lavish
gifts on the shoguns and were rewarded with precious items in return.
Elaborate gifts were given at marriage and on accession to power. For
these gifts daimyo frequently exploited the special skills and products of
artisans in their domains.

The abolition Probing by Western vessels and the arrival of Commo-
of the feudal dore Perry's squadron off the coast of Japan in 1853
order and the presented a major challenge to the Tokugawa bakufu
legacy of and the whole Tokugawa power structure, including
daimyo the daimyo. The bakufu's inability to fulfill its mission
a volatile politi-
and
created
expel the
foreign menace
culture
cal situation in which younger samurai activists from
some of the southwestern tozama domains challenged
the Tokugawa bakufu and eventually overthrew it in the name of a
restoration of imperial rule. Within a few years the new leadership, most
of whom were samurai, had embarked on a process of rapid nation
building that was to involve a total dismantling of the old feudal order,
including the daimyo domains. In the race to modernize and strengthen
Japan by introducing institutions, ideas, and technology from the West,
the daimyo and the welter of domains they had headed were seen as part
of a backward, divisive, and repressive ancien régime, too closely associ-
ated with the discredited Tokugawa shogunate. It was suggested that the
daimyo might be incorporated in a great council of state, but in the first
flush of Meiji enthusiasm with calls for rationalization, centralization,
the promotion of talent, and "civilization and enlightenment" from the
West ringing in the air, the daimyo seemed out of place. They were not
subjected to violence and were not eliminated overnight. Some daimyo
were called upon to advise the Tokugawa bakufu, the court, and the new
Restoration government. Gradually, however, between 1868 and 1871
their domains were reduced and their powers shifted to the new govern-
ment. Distinctions between the various categories of han were first re-
duced, together with the many subdivisions in rank within samurai
society. In 1869 the daimyo of those domains that had led the
Restoration—Satsuma, Choshu, Saga, and Tosa—set an example to
other daimyo by petitioning to be permitted to return their domain
registers to the imperial court. This began the process of preempting
daimyo and samurai claims to a land settlement in the Restoration. The
new government would buy them out and coopt them politically, but
with bonds or cash, not with land. No longer daimyo, they were named
"Governors" of their territories and granted one-tenth of the former
domain income for their own use.
Within a few years all court nobles and former daimyo would be
ordered to live in Tokyo. So that they should not be demoted to com-
moner status overnight the government created a new peerage in which
the old court nobility and the former Tokugawa family and daimyo were
given the rank of peer (kazoku), that is to say, they were incorporated into
a new Meiji elite around the emperor, made up of former court nobles,
daimyo, and new peers drawn from the oligarchs who had carried
through the Meiji Restoration. This creation of a new aristocracy in
modernizing Meiji Japan was clearly intended to conform to European
example, but perhaps even more important, to fortify the position of the
imperial house and serve as a bulwark against excessive political change
or undue radicalism. With the abolition of domains and creation of pre-
fectures in 1871 all daimyo were pensioned off with government bonds
scaled as fractions of their former kokudaka income. The bonds were

45