Tokugawa

Tokugawa Period, Edo Japan, 1802

Oh man, so. A few days ago I won a trip to a randomly chosen country in a randomly chosen time by this space and travel company and I got sent to the year 1802 in Tokugawa period Japan. Man is it cool! Like. The other day this dude comes up to me and was like, talking and wow. I’ll try and calm down and actually write what happened.

So, I arrived in the capital, Edo, and wow is it huge. It’s got some pretty lavishly decorated places! I bumped into a dude just outside one of them and he gave me the deal, like what was up with them and why it seemed like everyone was running in and out.

It seems like the lord of this place, the daimyo, just arrived from his other house in his province. I was shocked, I mean, two places! That must be crazy expensive. He continued to talk about how they just went through this process called Sankin Kōtai, where they travel from the province the daimyo rules over to Edo. They do this in a large and flashy manner, bringing hundreds of people with them. It tiresome and expensive work he says, but their daimyo has to keep up his reputation and the like.

He excused himself after that, saying that he had to pick up a book and a few new calligraphy brushes. Weird. It’s like. He’s a warrior, but it doing art things rather than war things.

Downtown Edo is brilliant and busy and the smells of all the various food is overwhelming. There is this place though, that I’ve seen several nervous looking guys slip into. I wonder why.

Upon further investigation I have discovered the Red Light District of Edo. Where all the hanky panky teahouses and so on. Plays, music, entertainment! Pleasure in its finest! A dude, there are some fine looking ladies.

It’s so funny. There are all these guys in large brim hats, covering their faces, but it’s totally obvious that they are part of the samurai class because they haven’t taken off their swords. I asked a guy why, considering it was so obvious, and he looked sort of scandalized but replied that the sword is the soul of the samurai and to be caught without the sword would be worse to be caught in the pleasure quarters. Deep, man. He went on about how important it is to the samurai and their training. How the sword embodied them, how it was a representation of them. He kept prattling on and a silently slipped away.

I went to one of the government buildings in Edo, just to see what it was like, and all these samurai were running back and forth, delivering messages from higher ups to other higher ups. It was all very bureaucratic. One guy was talking to another, saying how he was lucky to have this job, meager as it may be, considering his master had just died and his holdings passed to someone else because he died in an illegal act of violence. I thought these guys were apparently all about violence! Apparently not. Guess he wanted to follow his master into death, but that isn’t permitted, so here he is. Nothing exciting seemed to be happening, so I continued to walk on.

It’s really strange, you know. Like, all those tv shows and cartoons showed the samurai to be vicious warriors, bent on war and violence… but here it’s different. They’re more focused on government running, and the arts, and pleasure and improving themselves through writing and literature. In fact, man, there are laws against violence!

I can’t wait to shove this in my friend’s face. He’s sooo into the rough and tumble image of the samurai. Their nobility and such.

But they are totally bullies! I mean, I was passing by this one shop and this samurai guy nearly drew his sword when it seemed a merchant wasn’t going to loan him the money he wanted. They are so indulgent with pleasure that most of the samurai I’ve bumped into are completely broke! Even though they’re at the top of the social hierarchy! Weird huh? The merchants, the lowest of low on the social ladder, are usually richer than the samurai. Hah. There was this other samurai guy who totally just beat the heck out of another guy too. Man. I mean, personal vendettas might be outlawed but that dude is totally getting away with it cause it’s just a merchant.

Anyways, this is basically what happened during my trip. Man, it was AWESOME.

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The Tokugawa period in Japan was a time of peace, but also the time period where the samurai truly became the undisputed top dogs of the social hierarchy. After the wars of the Sengoku period, the Tokugawa shogunate focused on controlling warfare and promoting peace. They obtained this through various law codes such as the buke shohatto code of 1615, where the daimyo’s were heavily restricted to what they could do (repairs on castles, ship building was not allowed, and marriages were monitored closely).

Religion was also heavily controlled, as Christianity was banned, Buddhism had lost its power and its temples were regulated to conform to bakufu standards, and Shinto slowly crept back into the playing field more as a more prominent religion.

As seen above in this entry, the traveler talks about how the samurai were broke, but continued to take out loans and do things that were pleasurable to them – for example teahouses and bathhouses (brothels), and entertainment (such as kabuki, noh, and bunraku plays) were common things for samurai to spend their money on, money which they didn’t have. Samurai were paid in stipends of rice, and as agriculture boomed, rice became less valuable. It is here that the merchant class, the lowest class, came in. They provided loans to the samurai, allowing them to continue this decadent lifestyle. This frozen social order caused many more problems for both samurai and commoners alike.