Is there a "debate" here with two sides? As the "Nina" referred to here, I
wasn't aware of that. I'll hold up my white flag.
Nina
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From: samuraihistory@yahoogroups.com [mailto:samuraihistory@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Thomas Davidson
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 10:21 AM
To: samuraihistory@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [samuraihistory] Samurai status - fixed or floating?
If the title of this post is not copyright by the way, I claim
intellectual rights to it now!
I wanted to join the discussion about class promotion/demotion without
necessarily siding with Nina or Nate in the debate, although I think I
come dowen on Nate's side of the fence, but I wanted to put another
aspect, especially with reference to the Sengoku.
Two sayings sum up the ethos of the era:
gekokuji - "the low overthrow the high,"
jakuniku kyshoku-"the weak become meat; the strong eat."
In the wake of the Onin Wars, everything was up for grabs.
But the instability of gekokuj could not have continued indefinitely.
Daimyo
A samurai's strength depended essentially upon:
1 - his ability to sustain himself;
2 - his ability to defend himself.
Thus a samurai was traditionally dependent upon the land, but a
samurai with land is independent, and the emergence of each shogunate
saw an attempt to sever this tie and create a vertical dependency upon
a hierarchic structure, so that a samurai's principle 'strength' lay
in and was dependent on the 'grace and favour' of his superiors.
Sword hunts, land reforms, etc., were all attempts to control and
limit local autonomy. Hideyoshi's edicts, for example, were an attempt
to prevent the occurance of another Hideyoshi.
Some samurai formed alliances with farmers and merchants, offering
mutual protection and support. Thus farmers provided for the samurai
who in turn protected them, and issues were discussed 'in the round.'
As the larger daimyates engulfed the smaller, this proto-democratic
process was stamped out vigorously. The Big Names were having none of
that! Democracy? Pah!
On the flip side, the Mikawa bushi (for example) were so reduced that
they were obliged to work alongisde their farmers if they were going
to eat. Time and again we can read of samurai living on or over the
edge of poverty, so that any distinction between 'peasant' and
'samurai' was largely theoretical. In reality, everyone was starving.
Within all this
by
In the wake of the chaos of the Onin wars, point 1 was rendered void
as a number of the great samurai houses, domiciled in Kyoto but
dependent upon income from distant estates, were so reduced as to
become powerless. Local estate managers either usurped the rights of
the absentee owners, weakened in the Onin Wars, or simply by filling
the void left by their demise. The Oda were one, and probably the
Matsudaira (later Tokugawa) were another.
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