Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
inferioronesreceivedastipendmeasuredin
koku,
withoutland.Lower-rankingpersonsre-
ceived rice or rice equivalent incomes.
Incomes expressed in
koku
referred to the productivity of the land, and the lord had to
see to it that he obtained the rice from the farmers, or, to be more precise, that his officials
got it from the village headman, who got it from the farmer. The farmer was allowed to
keep a proportion of the crop, sometimes six-tenths, but often less; in practice, the recip-
ient took what he was entitled to, leaving the farmer the rest, which would depend upon
his harvest. Sometimes the lord, especially if he had only a small allocation, ran out of re-
sourcesbeforetheharvestwasin,andhadtosqueezehisfarmerstopayearly,leavingthem
to make what shifts they could to meet his demands.
It has to be realized that incomes were not normally linked to the job that the recipient
was doing, except in the sense that the income fitted a man for his position rather than the
otherwayround.Toserveasanofficialtoalordwaspartoffeudalobligation,andavassal
shouldnotexpecttobepaidespeciallyforsomethingthatitwashisdutytodo.Intheeight-
eenth century there was a slight modification to this, which allowed the Shogun to give a
temporaryallowancetoapersonwhoserateofincomedidnotinfactqualifyhimforacer-
tain position, but whose ability fitted him for it.
Thesortofresidence thata
samurai
occupieddependeduponhisstatusasmeasuredby
his income. The Shogun had his castle in Edo (where the Emperor now resides), and most
daimyō
also had a castle (
I
), round which grew a town. Castles came into being in Japan
much as they did in Europe, as strongholds for barons fearing attack from their neighbors.
The majority still in existence in Japan date from the sixteenth century, for there was little
buildingundertheTokugawasexceptinEdo,sincefortificationwasstrictlycontrolled,the
Shogun being anxious above all that no lord should become strong enough to challenge his
power. Until the sixteenth century warriors had tended to live on their farms, and only go
to the castle when summoned, but when the warrior and farmer classes were separated, the
former went to live in the towns that had begun to form round the castles to accommod-
ate the people concerned with its supply of goods and services. When the
samurai
moved
in, the
jōkamachi,
“under-castle towns” increased in size and importance, becoming the
most usual form of urban development in Japan. All activities in such towns were directed
towards the castle and were controlled by it, and the atmosphere in it was quite different
from that in Kyoto, where the Imperial court was dominant, and even more so from that of
Osaka, a fundamentally mercantile town, in which, it is true, Hideyoshi had built a castle,
later the headquarters of the Shogun's Deputy, but which nevertheless managed to retain
considerable independence.
The castle usually included the town in its outer defenses of ditches. In Edo, for ex-
ample, existing water-courses were adapted to form a series of more or less rectangular
shapes, the innermost containing the castle, the intermediate ones having officials' resid-
