In the early 1800s foreign relations, which national seclusion policies had been designed to avoid, became a pressing problem for the bakufu, and the situation in Ezo became especially worrisome. In 1804 another Russian envoy, N.P. Rezanov, visited Japan--this time at Nagasaki, where the Dutch by law were allowed to call--to request commercial relations. The bakufu refused Rezanov's request, and during the next three years Russians attacked Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Earlier in 1804, the bakufu had taken eastern Ezo away from the jurisdiction of the Matsumae domain in northern Honshu and placed it under its direct control, and in 1807 the bakufu also took direct control of both eastern and western Ezo for defensive purposes.
In 1808 the English warship Phaeton made an incursion on Nagasaki, and three years later the Russian naval lieutenant V.M. Golovnin landed on Kunashiri Island, where he was arrested by bakufu authorities. When these various incidents were resolved, peace continued for a time in the northern regions; the bakufu relaxed its precautions, returning all Ezo to the control of the Matsumae domain in 1821.
In the south, English ships often appeared in Japanese waters after the Phaeton incident, and the bakufu failed to adopt a consistent policy. In 1825, responding to a proposal by Takahashi Kageyasu, Edo authorities promulgated the Order to Drive Away Foreign Ships (Ikokusen uchiharairei), which also enjoined coastal authorities to arrest or kill any foreigners who came ashore. This was also known as the ninen nashi or "no second thought" law. It was never fully carried out because of opposition by a number of officials, including Matsudaira Sadanobu. In 1842, upon hearing the news of China's defeat in the Opium War, the bakufu responded to foreign demands for the right to refuel in Japan by canceling that order and adopting the Order for the Provision of Firewood and Water (Shinsui kyuyorei). While attempting to preserve the iron law of seclusion to the bitter end, bakufu policy was thus inconsistent, driving foreign ships away at one point and treating them with leniency at others. And it proved to be utterly powerless when it was faced with the full weight of foreign pressure later in the 1840s.
New learning and thought
Underlying this weakening of the bakuhan political system was an ideological crisis, the result of many new movements that took place in scholarship and culture. The mid-Tokugawa period, roughly the 18th century, as discussed above, was a time of considerable unrest. Samurai leaders of bakufu and han alike sought to grapple with the disturbing fact that the great peace envisioned as resulting from policies of rigid class separation, national isolation, and agricultural self-sufficiency was being undermined by unintended economic changes released by those policies themselves. In the area of thought, the ideological foundations of Edo rule--orthodox Chu Hsi philosophy--came into question. Ironically, the ideal of "the investigation of things" inherent in Chu Hsi philosophy encouraged speculation that inevitably led to questioning Chu Hsi orthodoxy itself. And many of those who were led into such speculation were not samurai but commoners.
Already in the second half of the 17th century the scholars of the kogaku ("study of antiquity") school criticized Chu Hsi studies and advocated a return to the original ideals of Confucianism. Two of the most important thinkers articulating this view were Ito Jinsai and Ogyu Sorai. Sorai, acknowledged to be the seminal thinker of Edo times, was especially concerned with the contradictions between social theory and reality.
Critical of the rise of merchants and farmers at the expense of the samurai, he tried to find a way to revive the deteriorating conditions of warriors. In his work Seidan, for example, Sorai insisted that the main reason for the financial distress of the warrior class in both the bakufu and the domains was that warriors had moved to the cities, where they were at the mercy of a monetary economy. If they would return to the villages, they could be self-sufficient once again, and other orders of society--especially the peasants--would respect them. The proper relations between the classes could thus be restored. Kogaku critics of orthodoxy were hardly alone.
Various other schools of Confucianism arose, such as setchugaku ("eclectic school") and koshogaku ("positivistic school"). Conflict between the various schools became fierce, and the authority of Chu Hsi studies grew weak, which explains Sadanobu's prohibition of heterodox studies during the Kansei reforms. The bakufu attempted to reinvigorate Chu Hsi orthodoxy by prohibiting all other schools of Confucianism in the college of the bakufu, but the attempt was destined to failure. Confucianism, both Chu Hsi orthodoxy and other types, now spread widely throughout the provinces, especially with the establishment of domain schools (hanko) for the education of the domain samurai. Beginning in the 18th century, but continuing until the end of the Edo period, domains one after another opened such schools to train their warrior-administrators in both civil and military skills. Thus, learning and culture arose in the domains, accompanied by a growth of scholarship with local colouring. Among such schools, the Kaitoku-do in Osaka became famous as the "townspeople's university." This school was founded cooperatively by Confucian scholars and wealthy merchants in 1724, and samurai and merchants sat together to hear lectures. Perhaps the best-known and most unique thinker to come out of the school was Yamagata Banto.
The intellectual vitality of the 18th century was not limited to Confucianism. New currents also appeared in Shinto, which, often mixed with Confucianism and Buddhism, served as the ideology of popular education. The Confucian scholar Yamazaki Ansai, who had urged samurai to cultivate themselves thoroughly so as to better lead the people, also formulated a Shinto ideology with a distinctly Confucian bent, called the Suika form of Shinto. Anzai was only somewhat atypical of Edo thinkers: born in Kyoto, he became a Zen monk but later returned to lay life and embraced Confucianism. After years of teaching Confucianism, he studied several forms of Shinto--notably Watarai and Yoshida--before formulating his own syncretic Shinto ideals.
In the later Tokugawa period popular interest in Shinto grew progressively stronger, centred especially on faith in the shrine at Ise, which became the focus of mass pilgrimages. This popularity was spurred by public lectures that explained Shinto in terms easily understood by the common people; furthermore, Watarai Nobuyoshi, Anzai, and others decoupled Shinto from its previous amalgamation with medieval Buddhism, explaining it from a Confucian perspective.
Ishida Baigan developed a religious tradition called Shingaku ("Heart Learning"), which articulated a "way" for townsmen and farmers. An amalgamation of ideas from the three teachings of Confucianism, Shinto, and Buddhism, Shingaku held forth a code of self-cultivation that valued performance of one's tasks; in so stressing a prudent and disciplined lifestyle grounded in the value of work, Ishida's ideas have sometimes been regarded as a Japanese version of the "Protestant ethic."
Kokugaku ("national learning") also arose from a similar social background. Kamo Mabuchi focused on a study of Japan's most ancient poetry anthology, the Man'yoshu, and other ancient writings, urging a return to ancient ways before Japan had been "defiled" by foreign ideas, such as Confucianism and Buddhism. By studying the ancient language of Japan's oldest classic, the Kojiki ("Records of Ancient Matters"), Mabuchi's pupil Motoori Norinaga tried to explicate Japan's ancient system of morality, called kannagara no michi ("way of the gods"). Another important figure in the kokugaku stream was Hirata Atsutane. Atsutane accepted Norinaga's explanation of Fukko ("Restoration," or "Revival") Shinto and regarded Japan as the centre of the world; as an adherent of the belief in Japan as a divine country (shinkoku), he strongly advocated reverence for the imperial house. Hirata's thought, along with the Confucian-inspired loyalism of the Mito school, provided the ideological underpinnings of the "Sonno joi" ("Revere the Emperor! Expel the Barbarians!") movement of the last years of the Tokugawa period.
The study of modern European science, termed yogaku ("Western learning") or rangaku ("Dutch learning"), also attracted the attention of curious scholars, especially as the regime began to lose its efficacy. A great stimulus to the concrete development of Western studies was provided by the publication, in 1774, of the Kaitai shinsho ("New Book of Anatomy"), a translation by Sugita Gempaku and others of an anatomical book imported from the Netherlands. Thereafter, Western studies became increasingly dynamic, focusing primarily on medicine. But as the systemic crisis grew more severe, many scholars of Western studies began to criticize the seclusion policy, arousing the ire of the bakufu.
For example, several rangaku scholars criticized the bakufu plan to attack an American merchant ship. The resulting persecution of Watanabe Kazan, Takano Choei, and other scholars by bakufu officials in the so-called bansha no goku incident dealt a serious blow to Western studies in Japan. Thereafter, as consciousness of the foreign threat grew stronger, adherents of Western studies placed heavy emphasis on the study of military technology.
Other philosophers also appeared who repudiated feudal society. Ando Shoeki rejected the stratified society established by rulers as no more than a fabrication, preaching in its place a "natural society" in which all were equal. In his Shizen shin'eido (c. 1753), Shoeki portrayed an ideal society in which all people equally engaged in farming, without social distinctions or exploitation. While Shoeki may be considered exceptional in the degree of his criticism of the society, others developed critical antifeudal worldviews that were directly or indirectly influenced by empirical science and Western studies. Miura Baien of Kyushu called his learning jorigaku ("rational studies"); it contained a dialectical method of thought that, rejecting the fixed "way" of orthodox Neo-Confucianism, saw the world as being constantly in flux.
The naturalist Hiraga Gennai, from the Takamatsu domain in Shikoku, rejected the restricted life of the warrior; he became a ronin and moved to Edo, where he thought and acted freely. As an advocate of the idea that Japan prevent the outflow of gold and silver by promoting domestic production and exchanging these products for foreign goods, Hiraga agreed substantially with Tanuma Okitsugu's desire to promote the production of various goods. Hiraga was employed by Tanuma and sent to Nagasaki.
While experimenting with such things as dynamos and thermometers, Gennai gave full play to his genius by cultivating sugarcane and carrots, producing Dutch-style pottery, and surveying and developing mines in various provinces of the country. He also produced a number of significant works as a dramatist.
Two other noteworthy scholars of the late 18th and early 19th century were Shiba Kokan and Yamagata Banto. An artist who began within the Kano school tradition and then studied ukiyo-e with Harunobu, Kokan was widely influenced by Dutch studies and Western rationalism in general. He is known as the pioneer of etching in Japan; but in his writings, Kokan also criticized the Tokugawa status system on the ground that the emperor and the beggar were similar human beings, thus insisting on human equality. Banto was chief manager for a wealthy Osaka merchant and a noted student of the Kaitokudo, discussed above. In his work Yume no shiro ("Instead of Dreams"), he reconstructed Japanese history in the age of gods on the basis of natural science.
Growth of popular knowledge
The common people of the Tokugawa period, both urban and rural dwellers, by the very fact of their integration into a nationwide economic system of some technological sophistication, were increasingly reared in a world of empirical knowledge; and their self-awareness as human beings rose accordingly. At the outset of the period only a handful of upper-class farmers, such as the shoya or nanushi, or urban merchants were literate; by the end of this period, with the exception of the very lowest class, farmers were all at least partly literate.
This spread of literacy was to some extent facilitated by the diffusion of temple schools (terakoya), the educational organs of the common people. In any case, there was a marked growth in popular knowledge over the two and half centuries of Tokugawa rule. As an example, "village conflicts" (murakata sodo) became more fierce in the later part of this period, as the farmers sought to censure the improper acts of village officials and to make the village more democratic. Leadership in these conflicts was often taken by middle- and lower-class farmers, demonstrating how far peasant self-consciousness and sociopolitical sophistication had progressed.
Despite official hostility toward systems of thought and belief other than Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism nonetheless retained a strong influence over the lives of the common people. For example, the medieval sects of Jodo, Jodo Shin, Zen, and Nichiren made striking advances during the Edo period, if only because their temples were guaranteed privileged status by the implementation of the terauke ("temple certificate") system of the bakufu.
Besides their previous roles conducting funeral rites and other more strictly "religious" functions, they now were charged with the official state functions of registering citizens and conducting the census.
As they were thus exceedingly closely connected to the daily lives of the people, the continued existence of Buddhist temples was guaranteed. Though hardly a new phenomenon, more people in Edo times tended to engage in what was termed genze riyaku--i.e., they prayed for happiness during their lifetime, such as for commercial prosperity or restoration of health--rather than wait for happiness after their death, as had been more common in medieval Buddhism. In response to these practical desires and needs, temples conducted various ceremonies and concocted other means to increase their income.
Two of the most important such ceremonies were kaicho ("displaying temple treasures") and tomitsuki. Kaicho consisted of allowing the people to worship a Buddhist image that was normally kept concealed and not generally displayed. Gradually this ceremony came to be performed by transporting the image to other cities and villages for display. Tomitsuki was an officially authorized lottery, and in Edo the raffles at such temples as Yanaka Tenno, Yushima Tenjin, and the Meguro Fudo (better known as the Ryusen Temple) were famous. Many Buddhist priests profited from these activities, and some led rather profligate private lives, providing orthodox Confucian scholars reasons for demanding that Buddhism be stamped out. Yet, despite official disapproval, it remained important in the lives of the people.
Various sorts of popular faiths flourished also in the cities and villages of Edo times. Shugendo, for example, was an ancient form of ascetic practice preached by itinerant monks (yamabushi), who offered prayers to cure illness or bring happiness. While its teachings centred on traditional Tendai and Shingon Buddhism, it also contained beliefs drawn from Shinto, religious Taoism, and elsewhere to meet the religious feelings of the people. A new faith in healing spirits arose, sparked by the view that human suffering could be cured only by those who had suffered similar hardships themselves; and in the late Tokugawa period there developed a belief in living gods (ikigami) who could respond to the various needs and desires of the common people and who became revered as founders (kyoso) of new religious sects. Among such sects were Kurozumikyo, founded by Kurozumi Munetada, Konkokyo of Kawate Bunjiro, and Tenrikyo of Nakayama Miki, all of which remain active in present-day Japan. People like Nakayama Miki, for example, reflected the confused social conditions of the late Tokugawa period.
A peasant girl who suffered great hardship in her personal life, Nakayama became a shaman and a faith healer and attracted a widespread following. Many such people founded new religions, espousing utopian causes and leading millenarian movements; their advocacy of yo-naoshi, or relief of the world by social reform, had clear political overtones. In a similar manner, others were influenced by the growth of the cult of Shinto shrines, and periodic pilgrimages to Ise, called okage-mairi or nuke-mairi, became popular. Not only Ise but other shrines as well became the focus of popular pilgrimages; such major deities as Inari, Hachiman, and Tenjin became associated with local gods (ujigami) and developed into objects of local worship. Pilgrimages could consist of groups of several hundreds of thousands of commoners. Among these masses of Shinto pilgrims were many harbouring the same social and political hopes for yo-naoshi expressed in the faiths of the founders of new sects.
In the early 19th century the urban culture that had arisen in the 17th century reached full maturity. Supported originally by wealthy townspeople and warriors, this Edo urban culture spread widely among the urban dwellers of Japan's major cities and castle towns. In the 17th century literary and artistic production had centered in the Kyoto-Osaka area, but late Tokugawa culture was primarily produced in Edo. Literary styles took various forms; representative authors are Santo Kyoden in the sharebon (genre novel), Jippensha Ikku in the kokkeibon (comic novel), and Takizawa Bakin in the yomihon (regular novel). They examined in detail such things as the townspeople's way of life, customs, conceptions of beauty, and ways of thinking. Ikku is best known for his Tokai dochu hizakurige (1802-22; Shank's Mare), a humorous and bawdy tale of adventures on the Tokaido. In contrast, Bakin's lengthy Nanso Satomi hakkenden (1814-42; "Satomi and the Eight Dogs") is a didactic tale about the attempt to restore the fortunes of a warrior house.
In the world of art, ukiyo-e reached maturity in both form and content and was unquestionably the most popular art form. Early wood-block printing had been simply in black and white, but artists had experimented with colour. Nishiki-e, literally "brocade pictures" (wood-block printing in many colours), was invented by Suzuki Harunobu in 1765 and entered its golden age with the prints of kabuki actors by Tshusai Sharaku and of courtesans by Kitagawa Utamaro.
In the last years of the Edo period, the masters of wood-block landscape prints, Ando Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai, extended the boundaries of wood-block prints far beyond the world of the pleasure quarters. While their prints show how Japanese artists had absorbed some techniques from Western art, the popularity of their works outside Japan and influence on foreign art is a measure of the sophistication Japanese culture reached in Edo times. As a result of the development of complex transportation links and market networks between city and countryside, scholarship, literature, and art not only spread to but even was produced in regional towns and villages, where crafts and products with distinctive local colouring were supported by landlords and merchants. A national culture emerged and became the foundation of a modern Japanese culture that developed after 1868.
Yet the spread of literacy and a nationwide culture could not mask contradictions in the political sphere. There were signs of stagnation and corruption in some aspects of Edo culture--a reflection of the crisis in the bakuhan system. The crisis had reached new levels by the 1830s. A great famine then, the result of abnormal weather conditions and resultant crop failures, lasted several years and dealt a savage blow to the impoverished villages. Both peasant uprisings and city riots over food shortages and intolerable living conditions reached unprecedented peaks.
In 1836, to cite one extreme example, an uprising in Gunnai district of Kai province (Yamanashi prefecture), then under direct bakufu control, eventually attracted more than 50,000 participants and for a time reduced the centre of Kai to anarchy. The depth of the bakufu's shock can be gauged from the fact that they sentenced 562 persons to crucifixion for their part in the uprising. Just a year later in the bakufu-controlled city of Osaka, Oshio Heihachiro, a former city official, led a revolt aimed at overthrowing city officials and wealthy merchants and relieving the plight of the poor. Although the uprising was speedily suppressed, the bakufu was again shocked, incredulous that a former faithful official would lead a revolt.
At the same time that the bakufu was facing these serious domestic disturbances, the European powers also began to press more heavily upon Japan. The Opium War (1839-42) broke out between Ch'ing dynasty China and Britain, and foreign encroachments on Chinese territory following the British victory filled bakufu authorities with a sense of crisis. Tokugawa Nariaki, lord of Mito han, a Tokugawa collateral domain, urged the bakufu to institute drastic political reforms: he called the outbreak of rural and urban violence "domestic anxiety" and the pressure of the foreign powers "foreign anxiety."
The Tempo reforms
He also aimed to restore the farming villages devastated by the great famine. Stricter than earlier reformers, Tadakuni planned to force temporary residents in Edo to return to their home villages and to restrict the commercial-goods production of the farmers to make them concentrate on rice farming. He tried to lower the prices of commodities in the cities through detailed regulations on the lives of townspeople.
Tadakuni further ordered the dissolution of kabu nakama, the merchant and artisan guilds, since he regarded them as the cause of rising commodity prices. Concerned as well with the foreign threat, he planned to reclaim the Imba Swamp (in modern Chiba prefecture) so that food supplies could easily be conveyed to nearby Edo if Edo Bay were blockaded by foreign ships. Plans for the defense of the bay also were formulated.
Tadakuni also promulgated a land-requisition (agechi) order to bring daimyo and hatamoto domains surrounding Edo and Osaka under direct bakufu control: the stated object of this was the defense of Edo, but it also was designed to supplement the finances of the bakufu. The agechi order was finally withdrawn, however, in the face of fierce opposition from the daimyo, hatamoto, and people of the domains affected; and, as a direct result of this failure, Tadakuni was driven from power in 1845.
Tadakuni predicted that, thanks to his reforms, the Tokugawa regime would survive for another 30 years. It was, in fact, almost 30 years after his reforms (1867) that the bakufu was toppled by the combined forces of several tozama lords. During the Tempo period, administrative reforms were carried out in many of the domains, often with far more success than those of the bakufu.
The reforms of the powerful domains in southwestern Japan--Choshu, Satsuma, and Hizen in particular--were especially noteworthy, where middle- and lower-class samurai, motivated by a sense of loyalty to the han and frustrated at having been denied participation in domain administration, came forward as reformers. Replacing the previous conservative officials, these young reformers, often with a more realistic knowledge of the outside world gained through study in Edo, Nagasaki, and Kyoto, set about to strengthen their domains and expressed opinions on the national situation as well.
Adopting the slogan "Fukoku kyohei" ("Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Military"), these new officials were able to institute policies that improved domain finances and modernized their military capabilities. The way was thus gradually being prepared for the emergence of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration (1868) and of modern Japan.
In 1845, when Abe Masahiro replaced Mizuno Tadakuni as head of the roju, there were various reactions against the Tempo reforms. Reaction against domestic reform was comparatively calm, however, and the major stumbling block facing the bakufu was the foreign problem. The Netherlands, the only European power trading with Japan, realized that, if Britain succeeded in forcing Japan to open the country, it would lose its monopoly; so the Dutch now planned to seize the initiative in opening Japan and thus to turn the situation to their own advantage. In 1844 the Dutch sent a diplomatic mission urging the bakufu to open the country, but Abe and the bakufu rulers refused this suggestion.
Yet visits by foreign ships proliferated. In 1844, 1845, and 1846, British and French warships visited the Ryukyu Islands and Nagasaki to request commercial relations. In response, the bakufu in 1845 established a new office for coastal defense and various diplomatic posts. The defense system of Edo Bay also was revived, the number of domains on guard duty was increased, and new gun emplacements were built. In 1848 the bakufu decided not to revive the Order to Drive Away Foreign Ships, which had been rescinded during the Tempo reforms, but decided instead to continue extensive military preparations against potential attack.
Rumours had long circulated among the various Western powers that the U.S. government would send an expeditionary fleet to Japan. In 1846 Commander James Biddle of the American East Indian fleet appeared with two warships in Uraga Harbour (near Yokohama) and held consultations with bakufu representatives on the question of opening commercial relations.
When refused by the bakufu, Biddle returned empty-handed. The United States, however, eagerly desired ports for fuel and provisions for its Pacific merchant and whaling ships and was not willing to give up attempts to open Japan. But the bakufu had for two centuries retained its political dominance through strict adherence to the policy of seclusion, and it could not muster up the resolution necessary to open the country. Opinion among the daimyo and samurai was split between seclusion and opening the country. The opening of Japan was thus postponed until the last possible moment and had to be effected unilaterally by foreign pressure, backed by massive naval strength. This pressure was initiated by the squadron of U.S. warships commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry that entered Uraga Bay in July 1853.
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