Japan Militarized

1. Japan Militarized • Nov. 6, 2012

2. Review • What was the impact of the Mongol empire on trade in Eurasia? • What was the relationship between China and the Mongol empire? • What was the relationship between Tibet and Korea, on the one hand, and the Yuan dynasty, on the other hand? • What was the longest-lasting Buddhist kingdom in East Asia? • Was Korea under military rule during any part of the long Koryŏ dynasty?

3. Japan, China, and Korea • Before the 9th century, Japan was involved in important ideas and techniques (writing, state-building, etc) from the mainland of East Asia. Korea was the main sources of those new ideas and techniques but some came directly from China as well. • After the 9th century, Japan retreated somewhat from East Asia and, though it continued to use ideas and techniques it had adopted from East Asia earlier, developed its own distinctive form of government and civilization.

4. The economic basis of decentralization • Shōen--land controlled by aristocrats and free from central government taxation and administrative powers. • Four levels of rights to shōen land: • The protector, the proprietor, the manager, and the cultivator • Decentralized authority led to the privatization of policing powers. This eventually led to the rise of the samurai.

5. The Rise of the Samurai • The Kamakura shogunate 1185-1333 • Established by Minamoto Yoritomo • He had a tragic falling out with his brother Yoshitsune. • What is a shogunate? Rule by a shogun, theoretically the emperor’s leading military official • The Kamakura shogunate left the emperor on the throne back in Kyoto. The emperor reigned, the shogun ruled.

6. The Tale of the Heike • The sound of the Gion Shoja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind. • -- Chapter 1.1, Helen Craig McCullough's translation

7. Shoguns and Feudalism • The shogun left ritual responsibility to the emperor while governing Japan through a hierarchical network of loyal warriors. (decentralized government looks like a pyramid) • Feudalism is“a condition of society in which there is at all levels a fusion of the civil, military, and judicial elements of government into a single authority.” • Exists in a land-based economy with strict social rankings, with the military on top. Held together by chains of loyalty to the person one rank above.

8. Women in Samurai Japan • Some women, like Hōjō Masako, were very powerful. She helped her family control the Kamakura shogunate as regents. • Women no longer stayed with their natal families after marriage. However, they were in charge of the home when their warrior-husbands were away. • The claim daughters once had to part of their father’s estate was loss with the rise of unigeniture. • Women could divorce (though it wasn’t easy), and remarry.

9. Mongols and Japanese politics • The unsuccessful Mongol invasions weakened the Kamakura shogunate. It fell and was replaced by a much weaker Kyoto-based military government, the Ashikaga shogunate. • The Kamakura samurai were able to defeat the Mongols and their Chinese and Korean allies because winds destroyed the Mongol ships. • However, the shogunate did not gain any more land to distribute to victorious warriors after the victories of 1274 and 1281. That cost them support among the samurai class.

10. Religious change • New denominations of Buddhism appear: • Pure Land Buddhism (salvation through faith in Amida) Japan gets married Buddhist clergy • Esoteric (Shingon) Buddhism. (focus on art and ritual) • Zen Buddhism (focus on meditation) • Nichiren Buddhism (salvation through the Lotus Sutra)