The Craftsmen - Everyday Life in Traditional Japan - page 81

4
The Craftsmen
The third and fourth of the four classes of Tokugawa society are the craftsmen and the mer-
chants. In the larger towns, at least, they became closely intermingled, and often it would be
difficult to say of any one person to which class he belonged. In this and the next chapter
will be found an account of their professional life; the last chapter of this topic will deal in
general with life in the great towns, how the inhabitants spent their leisure, and what other
members of the family would be doing while the head of the family was earning its living.
When the craftsmen were put into third place below farmers but above merchants,
Hideyoshi or his advisers were probably thinking of them as suppliers of articles to the war-
riorsinthecastle-towns—either necessaryequipmentorthingswithanartisticordecorative
function. It would have been of no interest to them that the same craftsmen might provide
similar articles to rich commoners and certainly any such work would have to be put aside
if an order came in from the castle. Figures are available for the town of Tsuyama, the scat
of a daimyō who was an outside lord of Mimasaka province, a medium-sized domain, in
the mountains inland from Okayama. In 1665 there were in this town nearly 1,000 houses
occupied by warriors of all ranks, including foot soldiers, with about 4,000 other houses in
which lived townsfolk of all sorts. There is a list of the craftsmen in the town: they include
three blacksmiths, eight sword-sharpeners, four silversmiths, three scabbard-workers, two
lacquerers, two shaft-makers, and one worker in cypress wood. All these were specialists in
the manufacture of equipment for the warriors, but there were other craftsmen more gener-
ally employed. There was only one dyer, but no less than 98 sake -brewers, as well as 222
carpenters, 37sawyers, six plasterers ( 46 ) , andanunspecified number ofcoopers, shinglers,
thatchers, paperers, tobacco-cutters, tilers, and mat makers ( 47 ) .
The blacksmiths were almost certainly sword-makers ( 48 ) . Their craft was a highly
skilled one, conducted in a semi-religious atmosphere, with the workshop surrounded by a
boundary-rope as if it were a shintō shrine. Sword-sharpeners did the general servicing of
sword-blades (which needed considerable attention, being very prone to rust), and put on
them the razor-sharp edge which made them so formidable. The shaft-makers were con-
cerned with the handles of spears and halberds.