Edo Period
If we can identify one characteristic of the Edo/Tokugawa/early modern period that helps us account for the ideas, trends, fashions, types of literature, etc. that we’ll encounter in this course, it’s the fact that the period from about 1600 to 1850 was an era of relative peace and stability. The Edo period follows on the heels of several centuries of near-constant war, and it’s the sense of stability (and a desire to continue it) that motivates a number of the trends, institutions, and ideas that we observe during this 250-year period.
For instance: soon after the Tokugawa family establishes power at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the ruler (known in Japanese as a shōgun) institutes a clever policy to keep his followers in a relatively weakened state. In Japanese, this policy is known as sankin kōtai (alternate attendance system), and it required Japan’s military governors to spend their time alternating residences between their home domains and Edo, where they waited in attendance on the shōgun. Governors were required to maintain expensive second residences in Edo, leave their families in Edo as effective hostages, and spend staggering sums of money transporting themselves and their retinues between Edo and their home domains. This enormous outlay of effort and capital left them too exhausted (physically and financially) to consider rebellion.
More importantly, for the purposes of our course, this system led indirectly to a flourishing infrastructure and culture of the road. This system of alternate attendance required good roads and amenities like inns, restaurants, and travel stops.
In this class, we’ll see very little evidence of the military governors who traveled back and forth from Edo, but keep in mind that the roads and amenities used by the monks, poets, pilgrims, lovers, and fugitives we do encounter emerged as a result of this system.
Political institutions like the sankin kōtai system are mirrored by new moral and epistemological institutions as well. As a way of preventing the kind of social chaos observable during the Warring States period, the Tokugawa regime passes a series of strict laws and regulations designed to establish a rigid hierarchy consisting of the military (samurai) on top, followed by farmers, artisans, and craftspeople, and at the bottom, merchants. Despite this hierarchy, however, you’ll notice that many of the finest works of literature from the Edo period focus on the lives of this mercantile class: people like soy sauce vendors, debt collectors, calendar sellers, etc. In official political theory, the merchant class is presented as rapacious and petty, but in reality, some of the most moving and truly popular literature of the era deals with the trials, tribulations, and everyday life of this group. Very often, this literature focuses on tensions between discourses of duty, righteousness, and honor on the one hand, and individual emotions and feelings on the other. For our readings next session, we’ll examine some examples of this literature.
