Season 11, Episode 4: A State of Emergency

Before the Shimabara Rebellion, Japan had arguably been leaning toward isolationist policies for some time. You may recall that while Oda Nobunaga eagerly welcomed European trade and influence in Japan, his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi reversed the pre-existing policy of religious tolerance and arranged the first state-sponsored persecution of Christianity. Historians generally agree that part of what motivated Hideyoshi’s reaction was that he had been made aware of the size and strength of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires and worried that Japan might suffer the same fate as the Philippines, Macau, and other such conquests in the far east.

Tokugawa Ieyasu had, to a degree, let slide the previous attempts to suppress Christianity for some time, but even he earnestly persecuted the foreign religion in 1614, shortly after the Okamoto Daihachi Incident. Thus the Tokugawa Shogunate of the late 1630s possessed a certain level of precedent in their pursuit of geopolitical isolation. Although their more direct pursuit of that isolation began in 1635, the Shimabara Rebellion was used to justify not only further persecutions of Christianity, but also to eliminate the threat of foreign influence to the Bakufu’s power.

It’s worth noting, before we briefly discuss the isolation laws, that this particular trajectory was not inevitable. Tokugawa Ieyasu, before he soured on foreign influence, oversaw a practical trade renaissance which buoyed Japan’s economy and helped solidify the shogunate’s power. He tried to ignite trade between Japan and New Spain, being especially covetous of the silver being mined in the Americas. However, his latter-day rejection of Christianity and foreign trade was taken as his final word on the matter, and thus two generations after his death, Japan was becoming a closed country.

The Shimabara Rebellion was blamed on two primary sources: Japanese Christians and Portuguese traders. Since Hideyoshi’s day, Japanese Christians had been eyed with great suspicion by those who occupied the highest echelons of political power as potential fifth-columnists -- a vanguard for an invading army of barbaric foreigners. Because a great number who rebelled in Shimabara were Christian believers, it was taken as a given that this was not merely some isolated uprising of discontented peasants and good-for-nothing ronin. The Bakufu convinced themselves that it must have been intended as a spearhead for an unwelcome foreign colonial adventure.

It was under the purview of Tokugawa Ieyasu himself that the Portuguese lost their monopoly on Japanese trade, and they had not been shy about their disappointment in the shogunate’s warm relations with the Dutch, the English, and other Protestant rivals. Surely, the Bakufu reasoned internally, the Portuguese discontent had transformed into a desire for vengeance and conquest. Surely Shimabara would soon be a pleasant memory if harsher measures against foreign influence were not adopted.

In spite of the self-assuredness of the Bakufu, there was no evidence that the Portuguese were involved, either directly or otherwise. There was also the simple fact that the repression and predatory taxation of the Matsukura Clan was the primary source of discontented subjects in Shimabara. The fact that many were Christian was purely circumstantial.

The truth about the Shimabara Rebellion was that it made the shogunate appear weak and incompetent. What would have been resolved within a few weeks during Ieyasu’s time instead lasted several months -- nearly half a year! The fact that 20,000 rebels were able to hold at bay an army five times their own number using a makeshift rebuilt fortress for so many months and exact over twenty thousand casualties from their opponents was not a testament to the rebels’ ingenuity or martial prowess, but a sign that practical military skill was already beginning to decline among the samurai at large.

In the pursuit of eradicating Christianity from the nation, the Bakufu joined with an extremely eager ally: the Buddhist clergy. The local religious authorities greatly disliked the spread of Christianity for obvious reasons and were only too happy to join with the central government in surveilling potential secret Christians within their parishes. The Bakufu created a bureau called the Shumon-Aratame, or “Examination of Sects,” which devised a number of tests by which secret Christians could be discovered. Chief among these was inducing people to walk upon a cross or icon of Jesus Christ, something which was forbidden in Roman Catholicism and accounted as apostasy.

Eliminating Christianity from the national landscape appears to have become the primary objective of the sakoku policies after Shimabara. The island of Dejima off the coast of Nagasaki, a port city on the far western edge of northern Kyushu, had already been designated as the only area of Japan where foreigners were permitted to reside. Nagasaki itself was under the Bakufu’s direct supervision and thus allowed them to keep closer control over the comings and goings of European traders seeking their fortune in the far east. The Spanish and Portuguese were forbidden from trading, along with any other nation that required Japan to accept missionaries as a prerequisite to international mercantile pursuits. The Dutch were essentially left as the only European power to continue trading in this way, and while the English likewise would have been welcome, their last trade delegation left in 1623 and their trade organizations had since shifted their focus to other markets.

Shortly after the final sakoku edicts had been issued, the leaders of Portuguese Macao decided to put the shogunate to the test. A diplomatic mission was cobbled together and in 1640 a Portuguese ship arrived with the express mission of reopening trade relations with Japan. This vessel was burned and its crew taken into custody and subjected to summary execution by the shogunate’s orders. In 1647, several Portuguese warships converged on Nagasaki, hoping to force their way into the port, but the Bakufu organized a massive blockade of around 900 Japanese ships, which was enough to dissuade the foreign convoy.

Although these two incidents were the most immediate attempts to violate the isolation policies of Tokugawa Iemitsu, they would not be the last. Before Commodore Perry so famously forced open the port of Edo using the threat of artillery bombardment in 1853, there would be several other attempts to initiate trade with Japan outside of the accepted means. None would result in reopening Japan.

Private Chinese traders were also welcomed to Nagasaki, as their nation had experienced a change in leadership by the 1640s and the Ming Dynasty, who was generally hostile to the Japanese, were out. The Qing Dynasty who supplanted them were less interested in establishing an official suzerainty over their neighbors and more interested in stimulating commerce. We will discuss the new rulers of China a few episodes from now.

The island of Tsushima, being so close to the Korean Peninsula, continued to be a hub of trade between Japan and the kingdom of Joseon. The So Clan who governed Tsushima contracted directly with the Korean merchant vessels. In a similar arrangement, the Shimazu Clan of Satsuma domain, which occupied much of southern Kyushu, traded heavily with the people of the Ryukyu Islands. And on the very southern tip of the large northern island known as Ezo, which today is named Hokkaido, the Matsumae Clan had established a trade colony which exchanged goods with the indigenous Ainu people.

Back in 1590, Toyotomi Hideyoshi had granted the Kakizaki Clan of Mutsu Province in the Tohoku region a fief in southern Hokkaido. They were charged with defending the rest of the nation from an imaginary future invasion by the allegedly barbaric Ainu or Manchurian Tatars. The domain was named Matsumae, and the Kakizaki Clan took that name for themselves. The newly-rebranded Matsumae Clan established diplomatic relationships with the various Ainu clans of Hokkaido and was granted exclusive trade rights with their northern neighbors. However, some of the Ainu disliked having a Yamato colony on their southern coast, which led to a few dust-ups between the native inhabitants and the transplanted samurai. We will cover one of these conflicts in greater detail in a few moments.

The reign of Tokugawa Iemitsu held many other important developments and I will admit that we are somewhat skimming his rule in this episode. The next episode will dive into his reign in greater detail, especially the practical effects of his policies, but for now we will focus on the narrative and give Iemitsu and the Bakufu he created the attention they both deserve next time.

In 1651, Tokugawa Iemitsu died, leaving the shogunal throne to his son, Tokugawa Ietsuna. This succession is especially unusual for a few reasons: Iemitsu never retired to become the Ogosho, and his son Ietsuna, the newly-appointed shogun, was only ten years old. A regency council was formed, partly at Iemitsu’s discretion, and five roju were selected to assist the young shogun in his coming reign. If you’re a longtime listener, you should be feeling a profound dread for the new shogun right about… now.

Child rulers in Japanese History, and in the national histories of many other nations as well, were often a point of failure in the usual tapestry of political stability. Hopefully you’ll recall how the Fujiwara clan manipulated child emperors to exert power over the daijo-daikan, how the earlier Hojo Clan used their position as regents to control the reins of the Kamakura Bakufu, and how frequently child shoguns were used by Hosokawa, Hatakeyama, and Miyoshi Clan strongmen as a fig leaf for seizing power. Tokugawa Ieyasu had arguably achieved supreme national power by claiming to act on behalf of the child of Hideyoshi.

While organizing a council around Iemitsu’s successor helped to disperse the ambitions of the different regents, it still created difficulties for the shogunate in the latter half of the 1600s. It did not help that the Ronin problems were only gradually getting worse and about to come to yet another head.

The conspiracy that emerged was spearheaded by two ronin named Yui Shosetsu and Marubashi Chuya. Shosetsu was from Sunpu domain in former Hojo Clan territory and made his living as an instructor for a martial arts school. Such schools were a common feature of the Edo Period, and ronin especially were drawn to them, often in hopes of finding a way to set themselves apart and gain employment with a daimyo. The particularly famous schools attracted students from prominent samurai families, including children of daimyo, but most student bodies were composed of both established, employed samurai and ronin. Although military instruction was part of the curriculum, they also engaged in philosophical matters which sometimes led to political discussions, especially during times of crisis or perceived crisis.

As early as 1645, Yui Shosetsu and Marubashi Chuya began planning a coup against certain leaders within the Edo shogunate. They did not want to overthrow the Bakufu entirely, only to force it to restore the confiscated fiefs of many ronin nationwide. The plan was simple, as the best of such plans often are, and if it had remained secret, I believe it had a decent chance of succeeding, at least in its military objectives. First, arsonists would use large barrels of gunpowder to create a massive fire in Edo. Amid the effort to snuff the flames, contingents of ronin would storm Edo castle and assassinate the particular officials whom they believed were preventing the restoration of their fiefs. Yui Shosetsu himself planned to lead another such contingent to seize control of Sunpu Castle and similar coordinated surprise seizures were planned for Osaka and Kyoto.

The galvanizing event meant to signal the beginning of the coup was the death of Iemitsu in 1651. However, the plan was discovered by a rather unexpected route. Near the time of the shogun’s death, Marubashi Chuya became very ill with a high fever and his caretakers overheard him talking through fitful sleep, telling details of the upcoming coup and speaking the names of his co-conspirators. Those caretakers reported this to the shogunate, who arrested Chuya and most of the members of the conspiracy. Yui Shosetsu avoided arrest by barricading himself in his residence and committing seppuku when the metsuke arrived. Unable to further punish a dead man, the shogunate unleashed its anger against Shosetsu’s family, crucifying his parents and other close relatives in retaliation.

The conspiracy itself is remembered as the Keian Uprising, named for the imperial Keian era in which it took place. The Bakufu dealt very harshly with the surviving conspirators as well. Marubashi Chuya was tortured extensively and then crucified, his family beheaded. The other plotters were likewise tortured and crucified, but after the affair had been put to bed, the question of what to do with the Ronin still loomed large. The regency council itself soon split into two factions on the issue: one side desiring to implement harsh anti-ronin measures and the other urging some job retraining.

Those who proposed harsh anti-ronin measures were especially interested in expelling the masterless samurai from Edo itself. However, as the discussion progressed, an elder named Abe Tadaaki emerged as the leading voice of reason for the other side. He proposed to assist ronin in finding employment, and often set to work himself trying to find new jobs for the rogue warriors. In particular, he pointed out the obvious political side effect of expelling ronin from Edo, which would be further discontentment of ronin with the new status quo. For the moment, his voice carried the day, and the Bakufu adopted his proposals in hopes of quelling future ronin-led uprisings. Next time, after all, they might not be so lucky.

The shogunate also ended a practice known as escheatment, in which they were regularly confiscating the fiefs of samurai who died without leaving a direct heir, even if they named a nephew, brother, or other close relative as their heir. This practice created many new ronin, and was one of the chief complaints of the Keian Uprising leaders.

There was another high-profile ronin-related event the year after the Keian Uprising. On the island of Sado, which lies north of Chubu and west of Tohoku, ronin had organized a rebellion which killed many members of the ruling clan. Order was gradually restored and those responsible put to death, but the shadow of masterless samurai remained long.

In 1657, a great fire raged through Edo but this appears to have been part of a natural occurrence and not the prelude to a coup. One of shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna’s wives was killed in the fire, however, and rebuilding would take several years. The blaze, known as the Meireki Fire, began shortly after new year celebrations and lasted three days, being fed by dry wooden houses and a fierce northwester. The daimyo residences were burned to the ground, along with the market district and much of Edo Castle itself, though the main keep was saved from total destruction. It took two years to rebuild the city, and it is notable that the market district was the first to be reconstructed. Still, the scale of this disaster is hard to overstate, as it is estimated that over a hundred thousand people died amid the flames.

Of the many missteps that took place during Ietsuna’s regency, one that stands out began in 1660. At the heart of this incident was one Sakai Tadakiyo, a Roju, or chief advisor, who took an interest in the affairs of the Date Clan. Many high-ranking members of the Date family were growing increasingly frustrated with Date Tsunamune, who had been appointed as daimyo in 1658. According to the account of his uncle, Date Munekatsu, Tsunamune wasted his time with sake, women, and debauchery and was unfit to govern the Date domain. In 1660, Tsunamune was overseeing a labor crew which was refurbishing one of Edo’s canals. He was arrested on charges of public drunkenness, charges which most historians agree were probably valid. However, the speed with which his rivals in the Date Clan appeared before the shogunate to request that he be replaced leads some to believe that Sakai Tadakiyo may have been bribed to arrange the whole incident, which amounted to a soft coup of the Date Clan. Tsunamune was officially removed as daimyo and his son Tsunamura, then only one year old, was named as the new daimyo.

The boy’s great-uncle Munekatsu governed on his behalf, which led to great discontent among those who were counted among his enemies within the clan. A regional civil war ensued over the next decade throughout the Date domain in Tohoku, and it would not be officially resolved until 1671. We will return to it momentarily, but in the meantime, many other crises had developed.

In 1663, the regency officially ended and Tokugawa Ietsuna, now 22, was ready to take his place at the head of the Tokugawa Bakufu. However, in the twelve years of regency, power had shifted away from the shogun himself and drifted toward the persons of the regents. Ietsuna began issuing edicts relevant to the time, likely trying to exert his influence and encourage the Bakufu to get in line. Of particular note, he banned the practice of Junshi, in which a daimyo’s retainers were expected to commit seppuku after the natural death of their liege lord. However, it was clear that challenging the inflated powers of the former regents could potentially split the Bakufu and even the nation into a civil war, and thus Ietsuna decided to try and wait the elders out, absorbing their political powers and responsibilities after their deaths.

In 1669, however, a new challenge would emerge when the Ainu people of Hokkaido rose in arms against the Matsumae clan and threatened to expel the Yamato from their island. The conflict began as a spat between two Ainu tribes but evolved into a larger conflict thanks to the intervention of Shakushain, a charismatic eighty-year-old Ainu chieftain who convinced most of his fellow tribes to resist the Japanese presence.

Although he would later be venerated as an Ainu freedom fighter, Shakushain’s revolt in 1669 was not terribly effective. Firearms were unknown among the Ainu, while the Japanese used them liberally. The Matsumae forces on the island recorded only one casualty in the conflict, and Shakushain was suing for peace by the end of 1669. After the peace treaty was signed, the Ainu leaders were feted by the Matsumae Clansmen and plied heavily with sake as they celebrated the newly-won peace. This celebration ended abruptly when Shakushain and his fellow Ainu leaders were summarily assassinated.

This would not be the final attempt by the Ainu to re-establish their sovereignty over Hokkaido, but the next large-scale attempt would not coalesce until more than a hundred years later. While the presence of the Matsumae Clan on the southern tip of their island was an annoyance, it was largely a trading outpost and for most of the Ainu it was easy enough to ignore it if it bothered them.

In 1671, the matter of the Date Civil War became a pressing issue for the Bakufu when one Aki Muneshige, an influential relative of the Date family, brought official complaints against Date Munekatsu and his fellow clan leaders. When an official regional Metsuke of the shogunate attempted to investigate and even mediate the conflict, he appeared unable to determine the facts behind the complaint or the various grievances against the leadership of the Date Clan. Thus Aki Muneshige was summoned to Edo to bring his case directly to the Bakufu.

After taking his testimony, the Tairo, or council of elders, likewise summoned Munekatsu and his associates to answer Muneshige’s accusations. After several days of questioning, the investigators were leaning toward believing Aki Muneshige’s accusations, as the testimonies from Munekatsu’s subordinates were often contradictory and illogical. One particular subordinate, Harada Munesuke, was reportedly very bad at giving convincing testimony and likely began to worry that his future employment was on the line. On the final day of questioning, Munesuke confronted Aki Muneshige directly, shouting threats, insults, and accusations at him.

Though the course of events is not clear, we know that both Munesuke and Muneshige drew their swords and fought. The guards in the room where the confrontation happened tried to separate them but when the dust settled, both men were dead. The Bakufu investigated the incident and ruled that Harada Munesuke had drawn his weapon first, which made him the guilty party. The Harada family was severely punished because of Munesuke’s rash actions - his sons and grandsons were executed. Although the shogunate reaffirmed Date Tsunamura’s position as daimyo of the clan, they removed his uncles from their advisory positions.

Meanwhile, the former daimyo Date Tsunamune spent his days in a rather luxurious house arrest. Although confined to Edo, he pursued nearly every manner of artistic pursuit and even learned to make swords. Some of the pieces which he completed can be seen at the Miyagi Museum of Art in modern-day Sendai. As far as I was able to discover, he never attempted to be restored to the chieftainship of the Date Clan but instead enjoyed a lengthy and comfortable retirement in Edo.

The schism within the Date Clan was part of a phenomenon called “O-ie Sodo” or “House Troubles.” While none dared to attempt to overthrow the Bakufu or stage destructive large-scale conflicts with their neighbors, the potential for intra-clan strife was high with so much at stake. The shogunate drained the treasuries of the powerful houses through various measures, especially ordering the funding of their many construction projects nationwide. What had formerly been primarily paramilitary organizations needed to evolve into effective civil governments if they hoped to maintain their clan’s solvency and reassure the powerful Bakufu that they were loyal, taxpaying subjects. Thus disagreements over how to manage clan domains sometimes exploded into minor conflicts and, in the case of the Date Clan, outright civil war. The Date Sodo, as the ten-year civil conflict was later remembered, stood out as the worst of the O-ie Sodo during the Edo Period. The fact that it took place while Tokugawa Ietsuna was still clawing shogunal power back from his various regents is hardly a coincidence.

However, after the Date Sodo concluded in 1671, the rest of Ietsuna’s reign was relatively peaceful, though there were a few daimyo who flaunted the occasional shogunal edict without consequence. During the final years of his reign, the elder Sakai Tadakiyo became more and more active in governance. Tadakiyo is often blamed for prolonging the Date Sodo, and is accused of having taken bribes from Date Munekatsu to prevent the matter from being brought more fully to the shogun’s attention.

One particularly vociferous critic was none other than Abe Tadaaki, the elder who urged the Bakufu to find employment for the ronin in the wake of the Keian Uprising. Tadaaki himself accused Sakai Tadakiyo of corruption and bribery, and frequently scolded him for his casual approach to governance. However, in 1671, Tadaaki died and thus Tadakiyo was free to continue without interference.

In 1679, shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna became very ill and serious discussions began to take place among the leading members of the Bakufu regarding who would succeed him. In a move which many future historians would claim revealed his boundless ambition, Sakai Tadakiyo made a rather unusual proposal for the next shogun. Instead of a member of the Tokugawa family, he championed nominating one of Emperor Go-Sai’s sons. If having a member of the imperial family serve as a shogun sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it is a maneuver which did have some precedent.

During the Kamakura Shogunate, two sons of emperors had served as shoguns. In such a situation, true power was wielded not by the imperial shoguns, but by the Hojo regents who served as caretakers for the young figureheads. Future historians believed, with decent evidence, that Sakai Tadakiyo desired to make himself as powerful as the Hojo regents through this little succession maneuver.

However, as Tokugawa Ietsuna’s death gradually approached, it became clear that Tadakiyo did not have the support of the other Bakufu elders in his unconventional selection. Hotta Masatoshi, who had been appointed as a Roju just the year before and who had served as shogun Ietsuna’s secretary, loudly opposed involving the imperial house in the shogunate and excoriated Sakai Tadakiyo for his absurd suggestion. Masatoshi humiliated Tadakiyo so thoroughly that Tadakiyo resigned from the Tairo shortly after the shogun’s half brother Tokugawa Tsunayoshi was selected as the heir.

Tokugawa Ietsuna died in early 1680 and Tokugawa Tsunayoshi was made shogun that same year. Although the regents of Ietsuna’s day were dead and gone by now, the road ahead would not be smooth and Tsunayoshi would need to rise to various challenges. However, he had one large advantage over his half brother: Tsunayoshi was thirty-four years old when he ascended the shogunal throne. The shogunate’s power had diminished during Ietsuna’s tenure, and Tsunayoshi was determined to show the daimyo nationwide that the Bakufu was far from toothless and that it was, in fact, still a powerful governing body whom they should fear. Next time, we will take a broader look at the bureaucratic machinery that emerged during the initial decades of the Tokugawa Bakufu and discuss how its warrior government managed to succeed where its two predecessors had failed.