- Kato Hidetoshi's Data Base -
Cultural Significance of Seclusion Policy
Publication Date:199203
Book title: MEDIA, CULTURE, AND EDUCATION IN JAPAN [A COLLECTION OF PAPERS]
Publisher : National Institute of Multimedia Education
During the academic year 1963-64, I was lecturing at an American University. My principal teaching assignment was a course in general sociological theory, but because I myself happen to be a Japanese, I also undertook to deliver special lectures in the area of Japanese sociology.
Helping people who have been educated in one culture to understand the problems of another independent society, and to comprehend the issues of the configuration of culture in that other society, is a difficult task, especially in the case of a culture like Japan's. Indeed, one begins to enter upon the impossible when one tries to help students understand a country like Japan, which has an extremely dense population. Describing Japan while one is actually in Japan is easy enough. But such descriptions lack the conviction that they have to enjoy currency in the outside world.
As I prepared my lectures, I was forced to consider what might be the most effective way to help foreigners-particularly to help such unsophisticated, native people as the Americans-to understand Japan. I decided that indeed there was a method available for going about this: the method of what might be called comparative sociology, or perhaps comparative cultural anthropology. This method was one that did not consist in trying to explain Japanese culture or Japanese society by isolating these issues and trying to treat them independently. Instead, I would first identify elements in non-Japanese societies that were analogous to the Japanese, and then use these as a kind of intermediary, or catalyst, to explain Japan.
Let us take, for example, the problem of Shint_. In order to explain Shint_, I would first make reference in my lectures to Druidism, one of the indigenous religious beliefs of northern europe. Of course, Shint_ and Druidism are different but they nevertheless resemble one another in many ways-as for example, in the way both beliefs understand the life of the spirit or soul after death. To explain the course of development of Buddhist-Shinto syncretism, I would start with examples of the syncretism between Christianity and the indigenous religious beliefs of transalpine Europe, such as the development of the celebration of Christmas. The two have a great deal in common. I would compare T'ang China with ancient Rome, and in the process throw light upon how the two great religions concerned-Buddhism and Christianity-were spread.
I would have my American students read the Germania of Tacitus, and The Golden Bough by J.G Frazer; only after that would I have them read Sir George Sansom's Japan, A Short Cultural History, and Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Since my students had learned something about pre-Christian Europe by reading Frazer, it would be easier for them to understand Japan by presenting it in terms that they could comprehend, rather than by presenting it as something "mysterious." The technique might be called interposing a "cushion" between them and their goal, to borrow an expression from the game of billiards. Japan soon became something that my American students could comprehend in perfectly ordinary terms.
I must emphasize that my goal was not to present Japan in the terms of the West. Instead, I tried to treat Japan and the West in analogous terms and to study them on a basis of equality, without paying much attention to which element in the comparison was Western or which was Japanese. When we try to help Occidentals understand Japan, the more we emphasize the "uniqueness" of Japan, the more we end up burdening these same Westerners with a growing sense that a gulf has been introduced between them and Japan. If we persist in stressing what is unique, we will only end up with every country in the world somehow being unique. Finally we will reach the point where students of Japan can do little more than reply, "It is really?!" Explaining Japanese things in terms of how unique they are may appear to lead others to understanding them but in my opinion, such an approach interferes with, or even rejects, understanding.
In approaching this problem through comparative sociology, I make a conscious effort never to emphasize that anything is "unique." Rather, I use examples of analogous points that relate to two or more societies, and I then attempt to generalize, even though this sometimes means treating the data a little roughly. There is always plenty of time left later for taking about what is unique. I hope that I may be forgiven for expressing myself this bluntly, but in my experience, human societies are organized essentially in the same way everywhere on earth, and people think and act pretty much alike. Because none of these things is much different from any other, our attention is distracted to an inordinate degree by minor difference. It is this way that we soon conclude that this, that, and everything is "unique."
As I started to put my lecture notes in order and began to elaborate my comparative sociological approach along the lines described above, I found that I needed to study a number of historical issues afresh. Japanese society, the subject of my comparative sociological approach, is actually a high density society. To be successful in advancing a convincing discussion of any aspect of Japanese sociology, contemporary social structure, cultural patterns, or whatever, one must incorporate historical background into the approach and construct a three-dimensional logic. In principle, academic sociology is an operation conducted on a simple, objective plane. History may in general terms be perceived as a projection onto that plane. It is in this confrontation that the method I am concerned with is to be identified.
In attempting the full-scale comparison of two or more societies, I soon discovered that it was not sufficient merely to consider history as some sort of auxiliary material aiding sociology. Approaching history as if it were a plane of projection was not a satisfactory approach. It seemed to me that only if we took up history properly, in its own terms, would we be successful in introducing it into the framework of comparative sociology.
Although I am no historian, I am surely entitled to construct my own hypotheses using the data that historians have brought to light. To be sure, an amateur is an amateur, first, last, and always. But in the case of historical studies, this also means that an amateur is sometimes able to approach the subject in a new light-to restudy history with a kind of lighthearted approach that would be impossible for a professional historian. As I began this restudy of history with the reckless temerity of the amateur, I found that some preliminary groundwork had been done by a group in anthropological evolutionary studies headed by Professor Imanishi Kinji.
Please keep in mind that my goal remained sociological comparativism. This meant that my own study of history would be largely comparative. For my own personal approach to the problem, I tentatively coined the term "comparative social history." This comparative social history of mine I originally put together for my American students to answer the practical demands of the moment, which meant that the comparisons were limited to Japan and Europe. I was concerned with identifying points of analogy between the history of Japan and the history of the West and establishing an analogy of social history from those points. But then this method, devised as a practical expedient, gradually came to interest me more for its own snake. I began to be more and more fascinated with this variety of comparative social history, quite apart from the utility it had in connection with my university lectures in America.
In my amateur approach, I was particularly impressed by the almost starting way Japanese history resembles Western history. These two histories have both been progressing along course so similar that one might very well suspect that the details had been worked out between the two by some sort of previous common consent. I had thought Japan was "unique" but now I realized that Japan and Europe are quite alike. They are so alike that there is no particular reason why they should not simply ignore each others' "unique" circumstances.
Two sources provided me with important in developing this approach: Umesao Tadao's book on An Ecological-Historical View of Civillization and Karl A. Wittfogel's theory of hydraulic civilization1. I was able to elaborate the concepts of my own particular thesis of social history largely thanks to the theoretical groundwork already laid down by these two scholars.
For an example of how I have gone about this, let me refer again to my comparison of T'ang China and ancient Rome. There are many elements in which the two differ, but we also find that they are startlingly alike when we consider imperial expansion, and the cultural contact and cultural diffusion that accompanied expansion. Another example, somewhat more recent in time, is the way the culture of Muromachi Japan closely corresponds to that of Renaissance Europe. The emergence of the Pure Land sects of Japanese Buddhism corresponds to the Reformation. The Momoyama period is to be compared with Elizabethan England; even in such fields as decorative design, the two are surprisingly alike. In effect, I brought together a large number of individual cases and in the process of doing so, I gradually came to understand more and more about the West, while also beginning to understand more and more about Japan.
Throughout my study of this kind of piecemeal social history, the Tokugawa period in Japan continued to be of the greatest interest to me, particularly in the context of the period of "national seclusion" (sakoku). It now appears to me that the key for understanding the "unique" circumstances of Japan that have existed since the early seventeenth century is to be found in the study of this period of "national seclusion." Here I will attempt to elaborate upon this theme in terms of comparative social history, and then try and demonstrate what significance this subject may have for our understanding of contemporary Japan.
In his book on national seclusion2, Watsuji Tetsuro took as his point of departure what he called the "course of development of a global viewpoint," beginning in the thirteenth century. Following Watsuji's model, I believe it necessary to go back in time and to initiate our discussion by positioning both Japan and Europe in a time-context that is considerably earlier than the period of Japan's sakoku.
A good way to begin is to open any historical atlas to the fifteenth century. Then, if you can, reproduce on tracing paper the outlines of the two preceding maps in the atlas-one for the thirteenth and one for the fourteenth centuries-and place these two outlines over the map of the world for the fifteenth century. New look carefully at the result. What does it have to teach us?
Put in the simplest terms possible, this exercise will at once demonstrate how the "world" between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries spread from tip to tip of the Eurasian landmass. The Old World expanded with tremendous force during this period. Earlier than this, there had been occasions when the world had seen expansion intermittently, like a geyser. The Persian Empire, the empires of Rome and Byzantium, the Sui dynasty in China, the Saracens, and the T'ang dynasty of China each represented the explosive manifestation of an enormous social organization.
But if we place these empires within the context of the totality of the old Eurasian continent, they become extremely localized empires. The "Roman Empire" was actually never anything more than a regional social organization centered around the Mediterranean Sea. View from the perspective of the totality of the Eurasian continent, The Roman Empire was a mustard seed. The ancient Persian Empire was also regional, extending only from the Near and Middle East across to the Indian peninsula.
One of these intermittent, geyser-like expansions of empire was to prove be truly enormous. In the very middle of the old Eurasian continent, the tremendous explosion of the Mongol Empire took place. This empire would eventually extend from Siberia in the northeast to what is now Vietnam in the southeast, to the Polish borders in the northwest, and to Turkey in the southwest. If you draw a quadrilateral connecting these four points of reference, you will produce a map of the Mongol Empire at its park. The Mongols managed to put under their control over half of the territory of Eurasia suitable for human habitation.
Only two parts of Eurasia-its easternmost and westernmost extremities-narrowly escaped Mongol control. Mongol-Yuan forces attempted to invade the Japanese island, and leaders of the Mongol Empire such as Guyug qayan and Mongke qayan demanded the capitulation of the Roman Pontiff and KIng Louis IX of France. Western Europe and Japan were both fortunate beyond description to have been spared the Mongols, yet both owed their extraordinary good fortune to their location at the most remote extremities of the continent. The central regions of Eurasia, on the other hand, were crushed and totally smashed out of recognition.
We might compare the Mongol Empire to a house painter, and Western Europe and Japan to tiny portions of the exterior of the building that the painter happens to miss. The painter overlooks a few parts and they really make no difference in his effort to "paint the house." In this way the Mongols "overlooked" Western Europe and Japan. Both were remote corners of the Old World and sustained only a few secondary tremors of the Mongol explosion.
A period of rest finally came even to this most terrible and devastating explosion. By the fourteenth century the Mongol Empire had begun to fall apart, and disintegration soon set in. It was as if a deluge had subsided. At just the same moment, Japan and Western Europe, having been in their own respective corners of Eurasia, entered a stage of "counter attack." Each redirected itself and its activities toward the Eurasian continent.
Let us first consider what happened in Europe.J.H.Parry, in his book The Establishment of European Hegemony3, describes the three technological conditions that made this "roll-back" possible: modern navigation techniques, including the making of navigational charts; ship-building; and firearms, especially cannot that could be used abroad ship. All the measures decisive in facilitating this "roll-back" had to do with naval development.
The navigational charts and geographic knowledge of Europe in the Middle Ages were by and large spurious. Geography was simply the product of the medieval imagination. The year 1410 saw the publication of the Imago Mundi, an encyclopedic work that brought together both these imaginary elements and a certain amount of actual, descriptive information. Columbus' voyage of exploration result from taking literally, as articles of faith, the equivocal and dubious information found in the Imago Mundi. The same year that Columbus set out, the Geography of Ptolemy, which dated from the second century, once became the object of serious attention in Europe.
A new variety of seamen's chart called portolan had begun to be used on the Mediterranean. These charts were almost entirely based upon actual experience of the places concerned and were totally independent from the classical, metaphysical approach to geographical "science." They were partially based on Arabic knowledge of astronomy, and represented a tradition quite separate from Greek and Roman learning. They were also quite accurate. Jews living in Portugal and Italy introduced these Arabic techniques of making such charts to Europe; and we may point to the year 1478 as the precise point at which these new techniques formally became a part of European knowledge.
This was the year when Abraham Zacut, a professor of astronomy at the University of Salamanca, fled from Spain to Portugal as a result of the Spanish expulsion of the Jews. In Portugal Zacut became tutor in astronomy to the royal household. King John II of Portugal ordered two translations of an atlas that Zacut had originally written in Hebrew, the first into Latin, the second into Portuguese. In 1485, the Portuguese dispatched an expedition to Guinea in order to test the accuracy of Zacut's charts; they proved to have only a 4 per cent error in latitude. Not until the eighteenth century were fully satisfactory methods for the computation of longitude devised. Meanwhile, the Portuguese had now demonstrated that it was possible to rely on Zacut's calculations of latitude. It was possible to set out upon the seas, relying upon scientific fact rather than on religious or transcendental beliefs. By the end of the fifteenth century, the modern navigational revolution had begun to unfold.
A new type of ship was soon developed in order to put these new navigational techniques into practical employment. This new kind of vessel had three or more masts and represented a technological compromise between the European type of sailing vessel that had been in common use down to the fourteenth century, and the Arabic type with its characteristically large, triangular sail. This new type of ship was distinguished by a hull large enough for long voyages, and it was capable of being freely maneuvered. Not only were the navigational charts ready, so were the ships that would put them to use.
The military capability of these new ships was even more important than their commercial potential. Equipping seagoing vessels with firearms appears to have been a Venetian innovation, though the details are not clear. At first the cannot were simply mounted on the hull of the ship and fired from the deck. But this tended to make the ships top-heavy. In the fifteenth century the problem was solved by building portholes in the side of the ships and mounting the cannon there. But firing cannon mounted from this position tended to upset the lateral stability of the ship. A stocky thickset type of ship design was worked out in which the width of the upper decks was cut back, while that of the lower decks was increased.
Portuguese ships at one period had upper decks that were only half as wide as the lower decks; the result, we are told, was the even when two such vessels hove alongside one another, it was not possible for the crews to board one from the other. This is the way the basic design for the kind of vessel that we typify as a "Western pirate ship" was evolved. By the end of the fifteenth century, Europeans had found it possible to build large-scale seagoing vessels with full combat capability.
At the same time, Japan was undergoing an identical navigational revolution. Japan's navigational skills were an accumulation of what had been learned since the first voyages transporting official missions to Sui China. In many of these voyages to China the Japanese found themselves at the mercy of the winds and seas. In each voyage undertaken to transport official Japanese missions to T'ang China during the seventh and eight centuries, one ship or more almost always came to grief. The fate of Abe no Nakamaro, whose ship washed ashore in Annam while returning from China to Japan, is only too well known. Abe was eventually to die Annam, without ever seeing his own country again.
By the Muromachi period, modern navigational charts also began to be used in Japan. A remarkable navigational chart still exists from that period, the so-called "Parchment Chart used by Shichirobei Sumiya," which includes latitude and longitude markings throughout. It covers the entire Western Pacific, including the southern shore of the Chinese mainland, Annam, Luzon, ThAiland, Cochin China, Borneo, and Makassar. Pinpricks may still be detected in the parchment of the chart, reaching directly from Kyushu to Annam, providing evidence for the way this chart was used in plotting voyages.
Several other similar early navigational charts are also preserved in Japan, including one attributed to Magozaemon Sueyoshi and a chart in the collection of the Ikeda family, former lords of the Okayama han. These charts were not drawn up by means of traditional Japanese map-making methods, but by a technique brought to Japan from Portugal about the same time fire-arms were introduced. In a sense, Japan's shipbuilding technology was more advanced than Europe's. Just as both European shipbuilding and European navigation were indebted to Arabic knowledge, so did the Japanese study these Arabic advances. The Japanese knowledge of shipbuilding was through contacts with Arabs, not indirectly through Europe. In the same way that John II of Portugal had made use of Zacut as an advisor, so also Yoshimitsu Ashikaga-who might be thought of as the John II of Japan!-employed an Arab as his adviser on shipbuilding and the science of navigation. (The Arab in question is known in the historical sources under his assumed Japanese name of "Kusuha Seinin.") This is the way the Ashikagas built the enormous vessels that they used in their foreign trade with Ming China-mighty ships that are said to have carried as much as 2,500 koku.
Japanese shipbuilding had made further notable progress by the latter half of the sixteenth century. Shipyards constructed the shuinsen, or "vermilion seal ships" (so called because they carried papers-of-charter signed with a vermilion seal, rather than with the usual signature; the first such charter was issued by Hideyoshi in 1592) , as well as the seven hundred boats that participated in the two military invasions that Hideyoshi launched against the Korean peninsula in 1592 and 1597. All these ship were somewhat smaller in size and scale than the Portuguese and English vessels, but the shipbuilding skills that they demonstrated were on a level with the best of European standards. Japanese sailors in this period made effective use of seamens' charts, astronomical instruments, and the magnetic compass.
Each of the seven warships that Yoshitaka Kuki built on orders from Nobunaga in 1581, in order to engage the Murakami naval forces, was mounted with three cannon. When these seven warships put into the port of Sakai, a Portuguese missionary who saw them there reported home in surprise that they were identical with Portuguese vessels. These seven warships built for Nobunaga were actually superior to Portuguese vessels of the same period, since, unlike the Portuguese warships, they carried metal armor plate on their hulls as protection against enemy bombardment. Armor plate of this variety was installed on a number of new vessels constructed in Japanese yards between 1592 and 1615. Armor plate was not employed on European warships until 1855, in the midst of the Crimean War. This means that as far as the history of shipbuilding technology is concerned, Nobunaga and Yoshitaka might very well have been entitled to file a claim for patent rights on the entire idea.
Japanese shipbuilding in the fifteenth century developed another epoch-making idea in the form of the screw propeller. This was an important new advance in naval propulsion, different from both the use of oars and the use of sails for motive power. Unfortunately the original Japanese model of the screw propeller was hand operated and never got beyond the drawing board; nevertheless, it represented a world-first in the technology of shipbuilding.
My major point here is that Eurasia expanded in the thirteenth century and after the contraction of the fourteenth century, the two out-of-the-way corners of Eurasia suddenly entered into a period of "roll-back" because of advances in shipbuilding. Both Europe and Japan became intensely interested a variety of maritime activities. J.H.Parry was correct enough when he called the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries "the period of the establishment of European hegemony," as long as we restrict ourselves to the history of Europe. In the context of world history, it might be better to refer to "the period of the establishment of European and Japanese hegemony." It is this idea that I mean to stress when I use the expression "navigational revolution."
Europe and Japan are indeed the two topological "extremities" of Eurasia when we approach the question from the standpoint of geography alone. But when we consider it from the political point of view, then we must instead think of them as being the cultural "periphery." When the Roman Pontiff replied to the Mongol letters by ordering the Mongols to convert to Christianity, we know that what he was doing was as pointless as trying to sweep up the ocean with a broom. Even Japan might well have suffered considerably from the Mongols had it not been for the divine assistance extended to it in the form of the kamikaze.
This powerless "periphery" suddenly emerged from the wings to take its place front stage and tried to take the initiative in history. The "periphery" emerged by bringing force to bear upon Eurasia from the outside using armed naval vessels and a naval strategy of surrounding Eurasia rather than approaching overland or attempting to control the center of the landmass. Naval operations are far more efficient than land-based operations, and far more functional. On land, one must move "lines" on maps back and forth, but in a naval operation, one free to establish "points" on a chart, first in this location, then in that. The eastern and western extremities of Eurasia set out to capture such "points," using the advances in shipbuilding and navigation discussed above.
In Europe, the westernmost extremity of Eurasia, first Portugal, then Spain, Holland, and England each embarked upon a policy of maritime activity. In 1588, the English fleet secured naval supremacy in the Atlantic Ocean by smashing the "Invincible Armada" of Spain. England's supremacy proceeded from the Atlantic into the Indian Ocean by way of the Cape of Good Hope and directly west across the Atlantic to the New World. Each of the small maritime nations of Europe also embarked upon naval operations of tremendous scale. Sometimes these operations were undertaken by properly armed naval vessels, sometimes by fleets of merchantmen, and sometimes by squadrons of pirates. No matter hoe it was carried out, each operation combined functional elements represented by each of these three types of vessels-the warship, the merchantman, and the pirate. The European "counter attack" that followed thereafter-the acquisition, the exploitation, and the domination over their colonies-may be read about in any account of Western history; we hardly need recount these events here.
We are more interested in what happened in Japan, the easternmost extremity of Eurasia. At precisely the same point in history at which the Anglo-Saxon pirates were prospering in the Atlantic, Japanese pirates were active in the China Sea. These were the so-called wak_ ( "Japanese raiders" ), also known as the babansen ( from the Ming-period Chinese pronunciation of the characters for Hachiman, the name of the Japanese god of battles, that they displayed on their mainsail). Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the wak_ laid waste the entire East China coast. The Korean state of Koryo was totally wiped out by these Japanese raiders, and during the time that they were active, not a single vessel could venture out into the China Sea without being in constant terror of an attack by the dreaded babansen. Sometimes these Japanese railers sailed in mighty flotillas of five hundred vessels, thus virtually constituting a privately-sponsored navy. Groups of warriors who had found themselves squeezed out in the continual domestic struggles over acquiring and holding a territorial "beat," often took to the sea and became pirates. The design of the screw propeller, noted above, was an invention of these Japanese pirates.
Let us turn to more regularized Japanese overseas advances. In his study Shuinsen b_ekka no seikaku ( The Character of the "Vermilion Seal Ship" Foreign Traders), Professor Seiichi Iwao has shown that between 1607 and 1635, a total of 341 of these vessels plied the China Sea, going back and forth between Japanese ports and Thailand and Luzon. The year 1605 saw the most activity, with a total of twenty-seven round-trip voyages being undertaken. The Japanese vessels used in this foreign trade were constructed on an extremely large scale. An ex voto plaque dedicated to the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto is still in existence, from which we learn that one of the Sueyoshi ships was 37 meters in length, and one of the Suminokura ships 40 meters; both were three masted, with double keels, and carried crews of 80, in addition to 320 passengers-enormous vessels, built on a lavish scale!
Will Adams ( 1564-1620 ), who served as an adviser to Ieyasu, had been a captain in the English navy when it smashed the "Invincible Spanish Armada." The scale and scope of Japanese seagoing operations soon were able to rival those of England, particularly since they were now in the hands of such powerful bourgeois figures as Ryoi Suminokura ( 1554-1614 ) and Shirojiro Chaya and enjoying the technological advice of such men as Will Adams. Judging from what I know of the matter, I believe that it would be a mistake to minimize the military might of Japan in terms of world history at the beginning of the seventeenth century. For example, in a letter sent from Japan to the King of Spain in 1610, Don Rodrigo wrote as follows:
In this fashion, then, one hardly need use many words to demonstrate the profit that would accrue to Your Majesty in the course of advancing into this most extensive, and prosperously great kingdom [i.e., Japan ]. But pondering deeply what the methods might be for making this possible, I ... have decided that any approach through military force is ruled out. This is because, even were not Spain as far distant as it is, nevertheless there is still to be found here a large population, with stout fortresses and defenses, so that it is quite impossible to invade this country4.
Perhaps to write of the military might of Japan at this is an oversimplification of expression. It would probably be more accurate to speak instead of the "social energy" that filled Japan to overflowing. Foreign trade and colonization were both actively pursued. An autonomous area populated by several hundred household of Japanese was established in Cochin China. For over a decade, beginning in 1615, Nagamasa Yamada ( ?-1630 ) dominated political matters in Thailand, where the king is said have counted eight hundred Japanese soldiers among his personal bodyguard. In 1620 the population of a "Japantown" on the outskirts of Manila reached 3,000. And in that same year, one-tenth of the employees of the East India Company in Batavia were Japanese.
England and Holland set out from the west, and reached toward Africa and India. Japan reached out toward Southeast Asia. The extremities of Eurasia established one stronghold after another along the southern coast of the continent. A magnificient and astonishing spectacle was taking place in world history. What had been the "periphery" suddenly began to enlarge the mental map of the world, thanks to the new techniques of naval warfare. Formerly it had only been possible for the central sectors of Eurasia to use the painfully slow, and painfully difficult, method of expansion by advancing "lines." Now, in striking contrast, the civilizations of the two extremities of Eurasia had begun to challenge the entire world, by the facile method of holding down "points." This expansion was undertaken with an efficiency and swiftness that found its expression in Elizabethan England and in the culture of Momoyama Japan.
I find myself in disagreement with several of the points made by Watsuji in his study of the period of Japan's national seclusion. I am unable to agree with his interpretation of the expansionist movement as it involved mutual East-West interaction. Watsuji writes as follows:
Both parties [i.e., what I have been referring to as the easternmost and westernmost extremities of Eurasia ] resembled each other in that their actions were undertaken out of commercial considerations. At the core of the Portuguese movement was the spirit of Prince Henry the Navigator. Within him were united the sprit of unlimited quest, and the spirit of public enterprice. In Japan however, the movement was shot through with the spirit of outlaws and ruffians; it quite lacked any concern for unlimited exploration, or any consideration of public interest.... The force that came pressing in from the west, to reach as far as Malacca, were characterized by being the vanguard of movements that extended the sphere of vision of modern Europe. But the forces that came bearing in from the east, and also reached as far as Malacca, have not only disappeared without leaving even a trace on the communal memory of the Japanese people, they also have gone their way without making any contribution to the exploratory urge of the Japanese.
I believe that both Japanese and European movements of expansion were essentially the same. It was all rather a kind of East-West war game, with the victory going to the first on the scene.
At any rate, once the armed flotillas of East and West had set out on their voyages of expansion and exploration, they were bound to confront one another somewhere. It was not as if both parties had previously managed to set down some clear line of demarcation to separate their own territorial "beats." Naval encounters between Japan and England or Japan and Holland could theoretically have broken out in the South China Sea or the India Ocean. If such battles had taken place, they would have radically altered world history. Although they did not take place, a preliminary skirmish seemed almost to be in the offing when Hideyoshi adopted a provocatively challenging attitude in his approach to the Spanish authorities on Luzon. For a moment, it seemed as if Japan was about to become involved in a Philippine War. Then, as quickly as it flared up, the trouble subsided. Why? Because Japan had itself suddenly entered upon its policy of "national seclusion." From the very moment that this policy was embarked upon the paths of Europe and Japan, which had until then evolved in precisely parallel courses, parted company.
Why did Japan embark on its policy of national seclusion? This question has already been treated in a large number of independent studies by such eminent historical specialists as Koya Nakamura, Izuru Shimmura, Zennosuke Tsuji, Mototsugu Kurita, Arimichi Ebisawa, Seiichi Iwao, and Motoi Hayashi. I am familiar with these studies, and would like to leave the question of why the policy was undertaken to these historians. My interest focuses on the fact of sakoku itself and its significance, particularly sakoku as seen from the vantage point of comparative social history, with consideration of European activities of the same period. I am most concerned with what the Japanese sakoku experience means in terms of world history.
The enormous outpouring of Japanese social energy that took place from the end of the sixteenth century well into the seventeenth was of a level that might have made a military confrontation with England or Holland possible. Sylvia L.Thrupp's study of the merchant class of medieval London5 is rich in interesting accounts of London merchants from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. If we simply substitute the name of the town of Sakai for "London" in passages of her book, it reads just as well. Clearly, it will not do to underestimate Japan of the period, nor will it do to overevaluate Europe. It is difficult to speculate about who would have emerged victorious if one of the theoretically possible naval battles between England and Japan had actually taken place. But one might well imagine that if such an engagement had been joined, Japan would most likely have won.
These two powerful forces of East and West, of Europe and Japan, who had for so long been evolving in a parallel fashion, suddenly parted company at the beginning of the seventeenth century. From the year 1639 on, they were to in diametrically opposed directions. The Europeans not only continued their expansionist movement, but with increasingly impressive power and strength. But the Japanese summarily retreated from East Asia, where until 1639 they had undertaken a great amount of development. Had these two expansionist movements continued, one from the East, the other from the West, it would have been impossible for them not to have collided in East ASia. However, moments before the collision that might have been expected, one of the two retreated from the scene. The European force quickly inundated the regions left vacant by this retreat.
The contrast between East and West fell out along the following lines: the social energy of the westernmost extremity of Eurasia directed itself toward unending expansion, while the easternmost extremity suddenly turned itself toward contraction, but maintaining an unlimited possibility for expansion. In my opinion, the essential point of departure between modern Europe and Japan is to be identified in the way each elected to go down opposite paths-one toward expansion, the other toward contraction.
One hardly needs to elaborate here upon what variety of social morphology was adopted by the expansionist principle; nor does it matter whether we call it colonialism or imperialism. The enormous social energy of Europe maintained its base in the western extremity of Eurasia and expanded in every possible direction, establishing "points" everywhere and penetrating every inch of the globe to secure the regions that backed up these "points." The Boer War and the Opium War were direct results of this European expansion.
The theoretical basis of European expansion is extremely simple and no more difficult to understand than blowing up a balloon. The principles of contraction, as exemplified by the Japanese policy of national seclusion, are rather more difficult to elucidate. The Japanese "contraction" was not a simple process, such as might happen when one punctures an inflated balloon, it wan more like reducing the volume of the balloon, while maintaining its possibility for future inflation. Rather than contraction, we should probably refer to its as intensification or concentration. The energies that until then had been allowed to dissipate toward the outside were redirected internally where they now had to be coped with. Looking back at this period in Japanese history from the present, we can understand just how great a social experiment all this was-an experiment without parallel on world history.
There are numerous concrete examples that show what the necessity of coping with Japan's social energy implied internally, but let us limit ourselves to one. The heads of the well-known Suminokura family of Kyoto were enormously wealthy merchants in two successive generations. Ryoi Suminokura and his son Yoichi, who had played a central role in the lucrative foreign trade undertaken by the "vermillion seal ships." After the policy of national seclusion was instituted, the energy and capital accumulation of the Suminokura family was redirected toward undertaking large-scale civil engineering projects in many different parts of Japan, with particular emphasis on the development of inland waterways for the transport of agricultural products and other goods. With the coming of sakoku, no other avenues existed whereby the Suminokura family might possibly have "coped with" their social energy.
The resources that had been dissipated in overseas expansion were now suddenly redirected toward Japan's domestic development. In the political realm, this phenomenon completed the establishment of control by the Tokugawa bakufu, which included its meticulous bureaucracy and its system of han organization. In the economic sphere, there was growing development in local production. Had all of this social energy continued to be directed overseas, it would surely have dissipated itself to no particular purpose. But now that it was concentrated, it made possible the firm establishment of an elaborately detailed society and culture.
I would especially like to direct the reader's attention toward the way the surplus social energy of Japan was focused on the tertiary sector of production during this period of national seclusion. Further localizing this phenomenon, I would also like to call attention to the improvement in the standards and level of education that transpired during the two hundred fifty years of the Tokugawa regime.
Generally speaking, Tokugawa society was distinguished by a high level of intelligentsia. Ieyasu, fond of literatus-officials, determined the appointments of the Buddhist clergy according to their scholarly accomplishments and even went so far as to bestow specific temple lands according to the intellectual achievements of the clergy involved. Ieyasu did not permit himself to be swayed by cliques and factions but was deeply concerned about the academic merit achieved by each individual he dealt with. I believe that Zennosuke Tsuji was quite correct in his categorization of the Tokugawa period as one distinguished by a literatus "administration." This is particularly true when we recall that from the Ken'ei period ( 1624-1644 ) on, Tokugawa society was completely at peace, with no occasion to resort to the mobilization of its military forces.
Ukichi Taguchi has described the situation in the following lapidary passage ( his dates are those of the "Imperial Calendar" of the 1940s, which began its chronology with the accession of the Emperor Jinmu in 660 B.C.)
O tempora, o mores! If one were to compare the phenomenon of a society of the great peace such as obtained in the 2,400s and 2,500s [i.e., the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries] with that of the warravaged society of the 2,300s, how great the differences between these two extremes! For while both were, it is true, feudal systems of government, and while in both liege lords were enfeoffed throughout the land, the one saw the people engaged in slaughtering each other, while the other instead saw them living together in pleasant harmony.
It would clearly be supererogatory for me to detail the cultural advances achieved from the Genroku period ( 1688-1704 ) on. Every reader is already quite well aware of the remarkable lowering of the illiteracy rate, advances in the arts, the development of the transportation network, and the way this development led to a "culture of travel" that allowed participation by the great masses of the population.
It is important to note here something everyone is not already well aware of, that it is precisely this course of cultural development that constitutes the "unique" character of Japan. European culture of the same period, caught up in expansionism, was not culture on the "literatus administration" model. Instead, it took what must be described as a resolutely thorough and highly developed militaristic course. The structure of European production was determined by the stimuli between production and this militaristic course.
Consequently, in Europe factors such as the level of general education were sacrificed to other concerns. According to Thrupp's book, cite above, sixteenth-century London had an illiteracy rate of between 60 and 70 per cent. At the same time, military affairs in Japan had become quite formalized, or even merely matters of etiquette. The martial "arts" had been transformed into a military "code," and the warrior class began to function, not actually as military men, but as civil administrative officials on the literatus model.
In each of the two societies, we find different cultural patterns evolving-in the anthropological sense of that term-as each society decided upon one of the two contrasting courses available to it, the expansion of social energy, or its concentration. In my view, these two societies also evolved differences in their systems of values at this time. In our consideration of Japan as an example of the course of "concentration," it is important to keep in mind a point that has been emphasized by many scholars since it was first made by Ginzo Uchida-namely, that the "elaboration" of Japanese culture went ahead during a period when the culture itself was in a state of stability. Professor Uchida first stressed this point in the following terms:
Surveying the grand, overall circumstances of the development of the spiritual culture of Japan, we realize that the more than two hundred years of the Edo period was a time when the national culture of Japan truly entered upon its season of full fruition. During that period, we brought together the finest flowering of the other civilizations of the Orient, blended them skillfully when one another, seasoned the whole, and finally topped off the resulting blend by the application of a Japanese-style "uniqueness."
The greater portion of what we Japanese possess today as "Japanese tradition" was generated during the period of national seclusion. In every single instance, we are able to trace the wellsprings of those "traditional values" that determine the form of our practical actions and control and restrain those actions directly back to the period of Japan's sakoku.
This, in my opinion, provides some indication of how thorough and far-reaching Japanese culture of that period was. The question is not whether it was "good" or "bad"; that is quite another issue. What I wish to establish here is that we Japanese today are really the heirs of the culture of the period of national seclusion. If we try taking a cross-section of the political ideologies-or what pass for political ideologies-that ruffled the surface of society in passing, one can identify this or that rather insipid debate that distinguished the "hundred years of Meiji," or "the twenty postwar years," or other similarly demarcated periods of time. But when we consider the questions as a problem in culture in the sense that the term "culture" is employed in anthropology, I believe the three hundred years of the Tokugawa can be seen as an identifiable segment of time that stands as a unit by itself.
Earlier in this paper, I compared the Mongol Empire to the work of a house painter. From the thirteenth and we into the fourteenth century, this particular house painter daubed about all over the Eurasian continent with a rather rough brush. To continue the same metaphor, one would have to say that from the fifteenth until the seventeenth century, the world would have a new coat of paint applied by two new house painters. And this time around, the two new house painters, East and West, would differ greatly in their techniques. The western, European-style of house painter would go about his work in a completely slapdash manner, smearing a brushful of paint on this or that point of land in Asia or Africa; he would never work over a large expanse of geography, to be sure, but his "painting" would remain at the slapdash level.
The paint job in Japan was done very differently. Throughout the sixteenth century, Japan also went about "painting house" in a slapdash fashion. But with the institution of the policy of national seclusion, suddenly there was nowhere left on the outside for the painter to paint. At this point, the housepainter began to paint and repaint, over and over again, Japan itself, the house painter's own house, using plenty of paint and doing a really thorough job. Japan became enveloped in a thick layer of paint, a protective membrane that did not easily chip or peel. This is the way the fine, delicate texture of Japanese culture was brought into being.
I hope that I may be forgiven for introducing metaphor after metaphor; but the kind of "house painting" I have been writing about-in other words, the development of a high-density society-might also effectively be compared to the process involved in the liquification of gas. Everyone knows how a gas can be liquified if placed under pressure in a stout metal cylinder. Japan's society in the period of national seclusion might well be compared to the metal cylinders that are used to contain propane gas in its liquified state. If the valve sealing such a cylinder is opened even the slightest degree, the liquified propane will once mode turn into a gas and rush out of the container with explosive force.
To me, it seems that the three-quarters of a century extending from the time of the "opening of Japan" at the end of the Tokugawa period down to the Pacific War might well be thought of as a period when Japan resembled a propane-gas cylinder with its valve wide open. The concentrated, pent-up social energy that had remained in confinement for two hundred and fifty years suddenly burst out into the open; like liquid propane it reverted to the gaseous state. Or, depending upon one's approach to the matter, one might say instead that Japan, from the end of the nineteenth century and continuing into the first half of the twentieth, was now belatedly carrying out the same slapdash "house-painting" operation that Europe had executed three centuries earlier. The naval war between Japan and England, which ought to have been fought in the seventeenth century but was not, ended up being fought just three centuries too late, and when this war finally did take place, it was fought in a fairly muddleheaded, inane fashion.
I must make it clear at this point that I am not by any means attempting to justify Japanese imperialism. If one were to engage in any value judgment on this matter, one might feel that a chronological miscalculation was involved in the timing of when to open the valve that let loose Japan's pent-up energy; one might also venture the judgment that when that valve was opened, the heat generated by the sudden gasification that resulted was all too terrible. But these are other concerns, different from the point I wish to make here, namely that Japan's Tokugawa period represented a startling storing-up of dormant energy.
Proceeding along these lines, I find that I am once more compelled to issue with Watsuji's thesis concerning the nature of Japan's period of national seclusion. I have learned a great many things from my study of Watsuji's work; nevertheless, I must confess that it appears to me that somehow the conceptual world map I have in my mind and that of Watsuji do not coincide with one another. Watsuji's thesis of the sakoku phenomenon revolves about the West, particularly about the Catholic civilization of the West. His mental map was oriented on the Mediterranean world; arrows were drawn on this map leading away from the center to the east or to the west, indicating the directions taken by the "limitless pursuit" by the West. For him, Japan was simply one of the targets toward which these arrows were directed, and Japan's period of national seclusion meant only that one of these arrows on his mental map of the world had been cut off en route. For Watsuji, the tragedy of sakoku, as well as the tragedy of Japan, was that Japan did not come under the influence of the Catholic civilization of the West.
My own mental map of world history is rather different. It is centered on the region around the city of Qara-qorum, where the general staff and operational headquarters of the Mongol Empire were located. Furthermore, there are two sets of arrows on my map. One set point away from the Western European peninsula toward the southeast, but the other set points away from Japan, in the direction of the southwest.
For reasons that I make clear elsewhere, I do not really consider that sakoku was at all "the tragedy of Japan." But even if we admit, for the sake of argument, that the period of national seclusion sis have its tragic elements, then I believe that its true tragedy consisted only in the sudden elimination of these arrows that had pointed out from Japan toward the rest of the world. I believe the important issue in any consideration of the period of Japan's national seclusion is not the problem of the termination of Japan's "receptivity," in the sense of Japan having been isolated from Western civilization. To me the issue is rather the interruption of Japan's "advance," in the sense that all possibility for the social energy of Japan to continue to make it inroads into the world outside was suddenly cut off. Consequently, if one were asked to decide which of the two major proscriptions of the policy of national seclusion was effectively intrinsic to the nature of sakoku-that of 1635, which prohibited the Japanese from leaving Japan, or that of 1639, which prohibited foreigners from entering Japan-I would certainly be of the view that the proscription of 1635 was the more important of the two, at least when the entire question is viewed from the approach of comparative social history.
So much for my views on this problem; I only fear that they may strike the reader as being somewhat self-indulgent and idiosyncratic. I have already warned the reader that I am writing only as an amateur of comparative social history, and I am particularly concerned that I may well have incorporated egregious errors of historical data into some of my statements. still, having been allowed to indulge myself this far, perhaps I may be forgiven if I add a little more along the same general lines.
I ventured to compare sakoku Japan with a cylinder containing liquified gas under high pressure, particularly with respect to the way in which Japan during the period of national seclusion represented a kind of concentrated social energy. I invite the reader to look at a map of the world today, keeping this metaphor of social theory in mind. It seems to me that when do this, we cannot but notice how today, in our own time, an identical process of "concentration" has begun again in certain regions of the world.
"Certain regions of the world" is what I have written; what I actually mean by this is that small region of the Eurasian continent known as Western Europe. The European expansionist movement that began in the fifteenth century continued unabated down into our own day. Eventually most of the southern hemisphere was to feel its impact and to be turned into European colonies, or at least into quasi-colonial areas.
But this movement of colonial expansionism has now finally come to an end. We have seen one European power after another being forced to let go its colonial possessions-England in India, France in Algeria and Vietnam, Holland in Indonesia. European forces, at least as a matter of form, have also been forced to retreat from the southern hemisphere. But in the southern hemisphere, what have been the causes and consequences of that retreat? For one answer, we can only point to the rise of nationalism ( minzoku shugi ) and to the proclamations of national independence everywhere throughout the southern hemisphere. To answer the question of the significance and the role these movements, we have only to glance at any newspaper published in the past ten years.
For another answer concerning the consequence of these developments, we may point to the way in which Europe has actually begun to contract back into its own "native land." Europe itself now finds it necessary to concentrate within its own relatively small territory, out there on the western extremity of the Eurasian continent, all that enormous social energy with which it once reached out to take so much into its hands. This same energy must now somehow be accommodated internally. I do not here wish to propose that what is happening to Europe is necessarily identical with what happened in sakoku Japan; but at the same time I do wonder if we do not have here yet another instance of "gaseous liquification" that resembles quite closely Japan during the period of national seclusion, particularly when we view the entire question from the approach of social morphology. One hears and reads much about the "collapse of the British Empire." But what this most often means is rather that it is the principle of the diffusion of "Empire" itself that has collapsed, and that this principle has now in turn been driven into the direction of "internal concentration." "High-density society," a term I used earlier, corresponds to an "internally concentrated society" in the sense of the present discussion6.
And what of Japan? Japan too has entered upon a process of "internal concentration." "For three-quarters of a century, Japan's high-pressure cylinder valve was left wide open, but now the social energy that once was allowed to diffuse throughout northern and eastern Asia once has more had to be redirected, to be "concentrated" within the confines of the Japanese archipelago. We Japanese are once more living in a high-density, a society that might be compared with the condition of liquified gas. I have written briefly elsewhere [in this volume] about the question of cultural continuity between the Tokugawa period and modern Japan; in a word, Japan during the period of national seclusion and Japan at the present moment are quite similar, particularly as far as their sociological morphology is concerned.
As we continue to think along these lines, one even begins to conclude that this country of Japan has actually been endowed with rather more advantageous conditions than one might otherwise have suspected. How difficult it appears to be for European society to make a smooth transition from its diffusionist principles of the past five centuries to this new "principle of internal concentration." The "glory that was Europe" is hardly something that can easily be forgotten. Indeed, it seems to me that a profound sense of loss, which at times approaches frustration, has become the dominant factor in a Europe bereft of its colonies. Europe is still suffused with a lingering attachment for its colonies, and with a reluctance to give them up. For Japan, all this is quite different. We Japanese, when our colonies were lost, were able to face up to it with a calculated unconcern; if we had to lose them, well, then, we had to lose them, and that was all there was to it.
Nor do I believe that Japan's different approach to this issue was entirely the result of our defeat in the war, or that it came about solely as a result of our second thoughts entertained at the time of the surrender with regard to the morality of our earlier colonialism. Japan already had earlier experience with the process of "liquification" to return to our earlier metaphor. This meant that it would not be all that difficult for Japan to repeat the same pattern of experience one more time.
And so it seems to me quite likely that the period of national seclusion, which in the conventional wisdom is generally considered to have been the formative element in Japan's "backward" tendencies, was instead the factor that actually provided for the formation of Japan's "forward" characteristics as far as the world of today is concerned. Some three centuries ago, Japan had already experienced the situation that Europe is today experiencing for the first time. We might say that Europe is three centuries kate in coming to this, or that Japan is three centuries in advance of Europe in this respect. Whichever construction we wish to place upon the issue, I believe that so long as we do not actively study both sides of the question, it will be impossible to arrive at historical interpretation that is fair to both.
It is perhaps needless to add that the entire question is far from being a simple one. For example, we all know about the way in which history from the fifteenth century down to the present is one of the growing evolution of agricultural societies into industrial societies. We are also daily confronted with examples of the slippage that has arisen in the degree of this evolution in different parts of the world, as exemplified for example in the problems of the so-called "Third World" countries. And we are also faced with the tiresome demands levelled by ideologies. I do not think that it is possible to comprehend the world today, and especially Japan, without taking full cognizance of all these variables. But it would be necessary to write yet another paper, if one were to undertake to discuss all the ways in which these different elements have become mutually entwined with one another. All that I have aimed at doing in the present contribution is to offer an extremely rough sketch, from the approach of comparative social history, with its focus directed toward Japan of the late sixteenth century and thereafter.
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