Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
2
The Samurai
The population of Japan is estimated at having been slightly under 30 million for most of
the Tokugawa period, remaining remarkably static for this length of time. There were prob-
ablyfewerthantwomillionwhowere
samurai
,thehighestofthefourclassesintowhichthe
people of Japan were divided. The word
samurai
implies “servant” and is strictly applicable
onlytoretainers, butthe custom arose ofapplying it tothe whole warrior class, whowere in
any case all liegemen, direct or indirect, of the Shogun himself, the apex of the pyramid.
Membership of the class was hereditary, and included many whose ancestors in earlier
times had been farmers, ready to take up arms to fight in local armies. Others had belonged
to clans with great estates in the regions distant from the capital, themselves descendants or
supplanters of still earlier landholders under the Emperor when he really ruled Japan. Some
samurai
familieshadoriginallybeencloselyconnectedwiththeEmperor,who,embarrassed
by the financial burden of too numerous descendants, had reduced several groups of his de-
pendants to the rank of ordinary noble in the tenth century, giving them land and so freeing
himselffromfurtherresponsibility.OneofthesegroupshadbeentheMinamotoclan,which
increaseditsland-holdingsbypredatorymeans,andwhichrosetobecomerulersofJapanin
thethirteenthcentury:theTokugawafamily,whichhadlongheldasmalldomaininMikawa
province, east of Nagoya, before moving to Edo, itself claimed descent from these earlier
Shoguns.
During the early sixteenth century there had been considerable mobility between the
classes, especially between farmers and warriors, but Hideyoshi endeavored to stabilize so-
ciety,anddecreedin1586that
samurai
couldnotbecometownsmen,andthatafarmercould
not leave his land. The rigidity of the class system so characteristic of the ensuing centuries
really dates from this time, and in the next year farmers had to give up their weapons, in an
operation knownas“Hideyoshi'ssword-hunt”; henceforward
samurai
alone hadtherightto
carry a sword. A sword in this context is a long sword; a shorter sword was also worn, and
the first recognition point for distinguishing a
samurai
, either in illustrations, or probably
even at the time in the flesh, is the sight of two sword-handles protruding from the girdle on
the left-hand side, where the right hand could come across and draw either (
10
). Townsfolk
were allowed to carry a short sword for protection. Farmers had to content themselves with
their agricultural implements, as peasants have always had to the world over. Occasionally
