Kinsei Nihon Seiji-shi to Chotei (Japan’s Early Modern Political History and the Imperial Court)

This book clarifies the reality and functions of the “Chrysanthemum throne” with its political or social involvement in early modern Japan. The position of emperor was established in ancient Japan and has continued to exist down to the present day. This book consists of twelve previously published articles (with some supplementary remarks and notes), two newly written articles, introductory and concluding chapters, details on when the articles first appeared or were written, an afterword, and an index.
 
It has long been customary for the researchers of humanities such as Japanese history to write their own articles individually and bring them together in the form of collections of essays or single-authored books, although there are some academic fields in which scholarship is continually making rapid strides with the latest findings written up by several researchers and immediately published on-line. This book focuses on early modern Japan, from around the 1580s to the 1860s. The articles have been selected from among those written from my twenties through to recent years and were finally published when I was in my mid-fifties.
 
The designation “Nihon” for Japan and the title tennō for “emperor” were established in the ancient period (see Yoshida Takashi, The Birth of Japan [Iwanami Shoten, 1997]; id., The Emperor in Japanese History [Iwanami Shoten, 2006]), and the emperor system based on the ritsuryō system lasted for more than one thousand years until the Meiji Restoration in the mid-nineteenth century (see Ueyama Shunpei, “The Ritsuryō System and the Emperor,” Nihon Shisō Taikei Geppō 56 [Iwanami Shoten, 1976]).
 
There has been much discourse on the emperor (including news stories, articles, books, and verbal statements), but historical research based on primary sources has been limited. Constrained by restrictions on academic freedom, publicly accessible sources, and research trends, evidence-based research on the emperor and imperial court under the Edo shogunate rule was still lagging behind those of the ancient, medieval, and modern periods even thirty years after World War II (see Yamaguchi Kazuo, “The Trajectory of Research on the Early Modern Emperor and Imperial Court and Current Issues,” in Murai Shōsuke et al., eds, Lecture Series on the Emperor in Premodern Times, vol. 5 [Aoki Shoten, 1995]).
 
From the Ōnin and Bunmei eras (1467–87) onwards, the imperial court went into decline along with the Muromachi shogunate. The institutions of abdication, government by cloistered emperors, and the palace for retired emperors came to an end. During the Sengoku period, the imperial family even lacked funds to pay for funerals, enthronement ceremonies, and repairs to the imperial palace. It was Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s régime, which aimed to unify the proprietary lords and gain control over the entire country that rebuilt the destitute imperial court. The Edo shogunate continued this process.
 
This book discusses how the unified government had been established, how the emperor and court nobles had been involved, and the court’s modernization (part 1);  the formation and development of early modern court (part 2); changes in the emperor’s and court’s relations with the society, a precondition for the restoration of imperial rule in 1867, to identify the reasons behind the dissolution of the early modern court. (part 3)
 
While drawing on the findings of prior research (e.g., Miyachi Masato, A Study of the Emperor System from the Perspective of Political History [Azekura Shobō, 1981]; Takano Toshihiko, State Power and Religion in Early Modern Japan [Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1989]), I added depth to discussion of the following points.
 
A diachronic overview of the relationship between the court and the government from the time of the establishment of the Toyotomi régime to the period immediately before the restoration of imperial rule; elucidating the internal structure of and temporal changes in the court as a social group composed of the imperial family (emperor, retired emperor, etc.) in which abdication was the norm, the families of court nobles, and the families of common courtiers, officials, and maidservants; inquiring into the organizations and structures that were dismantled and disappeared as a result of the restoration of imperial rule and the Meiji Restoration; and clarifying the political duties and government of cloistered emperors, and the realities of close associates of emperors and retired emperors and the cyclic structure of direct rule by the emperor and by the cloistered emperor. I also strove to open up historical sources for analysis and to carefully examine and decipher such sources (written chiefly in cursive style by people belonging to different strata in early modern Japanese society).
 
This book includes my first article (part 3, chap. 3), based on my graduation thesis (submitted on 20 Dec. 1985), and articles (part 1, chap. 1; part 3, chap. 1) based on my M.A. thesis (submitted on 10 Jan. 1989).
 
Chapter 4 in part 2 (first published in Ōtsu Tōru, ed., Historical Society of Japan Symposia Series: Thinking about Regal Power [Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2006]) is primarily a study of an undated prayer written by the cloistered emperor Reigen (1653–1732), the last retired emperor to take Buddhist vows, in the second month of Kyōhō 17 (1732), a lean year, at the age of seventy-nine, addressed to the deity enshrined at Shimogoryō Shrine in Teramachi, Kyoto, which was read out on his behalf by the shrine priest, then returned to the palace, and after his death presented to the shrine by a former maidservant. (A former national treasure, it is now a national important cultural property and has been deposited with Kyoto National Museum.) In a seminar on paleography that I attended in my third undergraduate year I had an encounter with this written prayer that made me decide to specialize in early modern history (Society of Japanese History, ed., Seminar on Selected Old Documents: Early Modern Period, Contd., pl. 37 [Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1980]), and although I gave an oral report on it in the classroom and submitted a written report at the end of the academic year, at the time I was unable to determine the date or background to this written prayer.
 
Later, I gained employment at the Historiographical Institute at the University of Tokyo. As I wandered through the stack rooms, I came into contact with copies of historical sources (either hand-copied or photographed) that predecessors had investigated and collected during a period of more than 150 years. –­The Historiographical Institute has long been open to public with improving on-line search functions for its databases and public accessibility of digital images. ­I had read through hand-copies of records related to Shimogoryō Shrine and several dozen albums of photographs of the head priests’ diaries till 2005, when I was finally able to solve questions pertaining to the date of the prayer, its contents, and its transmission and circulation. The gist of my findings is as follows.
 
In his final year, the cloistered emperor Reigen wrote a prayer in his own hand to the deity of Shimogoryō Shrine for “peace throughout the year” “protection for the fulfilment of his wishes”, “placing his trust in the might of divine will “and “ Shogun” (Tokugawa Yoshimune), he also prayed for “ the restoration of the imperial court”. This prayer demonstrated that the court was depending on shogunal power and its finances in the early modern Japan, which was under the Shinto-Buddhist syncretism. It had been generally accepted by scholars that Reigen continued to hold feelings of antagonism and antipathy towards the shogunate. However, I overturned this view and used this prayer as a basis for structural understanding of the solid system which was underpinned by inseparable relationship between the early modern court and the Edo shogunate.
 
Being blessed with an encounter with an outstanding editor, this book it took shape thanks to the publisher, the printer, the bindery, and the designer. Finally it reached readers through bookstores and libraries (published in November 2017). Even though it was written chiefly on a laptop at my home dining table for Japanese readers, it has also crossed the ocean and is held by public libraries in Shanghai, Beijing, Berlin, etc., and in university libraries in British Columbia, California, and Kansas (CiNii Books, WorldCat). Having gained readers in Japan and abroad, I hope that understanding of methods for establishing basic facts and of accounts of partial pictures of history on the basis of sources for Japanese history will deepen and that this book will serve as an aid to the advancement of research in various areas.
 
Research based on written sources is impossible without the understanding of the individuals and institutions holding the sources. I am immensely indebted to the research, compilation, and publishing projects carried out at the Historiographical Institute over the years and its research environment, the pioneer and present-day researchers. This book has been reviewed in two academic journals and has received an award from the Tokugawa Memorial Foundation. I also received a doctorate from my former university, which I left before completing the doctoral course. I wish to express my gratitude to the people who have supported me, and I hope to make further progress in my research.
 
Lastly, although my regular work is compiling and publishing collections of historical sources, which involves proofreading, there are some typographical errors in this book. I would like to attach a list of corrections for readers’ convenience.

 

(Written by YAMAGUCHI Kazuo, Professor, Historiographical Institute / 2021)