- > In a way, the Tokugawa system was a success. Japan experienced near-total peace between 1600 and the late nineteenth century, a remarkable achievement for a premodern society and a dramatic contrast to Europe or China, where tens of millions of people died in wars.
> Tokugawa Edo stands as a monument to the power of rent-seekers, producing little and demanding immense resources as a condition of civil peace.
The two dominant political axes. Which of is more repellent to you: a rigid stable social system based around millions of rent seeking parasitic landlords, or frequent social upheaval and conflict and open warfare
- You can have Russia, a rigid stable social system based around millions of rent seeking parasitic landlords and frequent social upheaval and conflict and open warfare.
- Ah, don't we love trolley problems. Because there are absolutely no other options...
- I guess if I am one of the landlords, or if rents are very reasonable and competitive I prefer the former. However, if it becomes the case that I am having all of my productivity extracted by rent seekers and I no longer have agency over my own life then the benefits of stability get downgraded and I'm much more willing to roll the dice.
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- Perhaps Golden Ages are the rare and illusive times when a third way is possible.
- Warfare, or more plainly the deaths of many, seems like a pretty decisive tiebreaker: whatever the flip side of the option that involves the death of thousands is, I will choose that. Of course, without this example, most people would say something like the downside isn't that bad; this case study is instructive because it shows that yes, it is.
It's not a perspective we usually see: the nobility, not as a noble or morally elite class, but as a problem that a successful government can manage and minimize, without violence.
- One thing that I find interesting about this is that "samurai lived in dignified but extreme poverty" but never really did anything to threaten the state and take its riches for themselves for hundreds of years, despite all of them being crammed together with lots of opportunity to organize an enormous rebellion right in the city where the king lived.
Perhaps they didn't think of it as poverty. Anyway, great read.
- I suspect that, in reality, it is the indignity of poverty which motivates people to take up arms against each other. So long as dignity is retained, poverty may be emotionally bearable (perhaps to the point of actual starvation, when dignity becomes unsustainable).
- That's pretty wise. I never considered that. During the very late part of the edo period China had the Taiping Rebellion, the deadliest religious civil war in human history by some meansures.
I've read that it was caused by a very complicated mix of things, one of which was resentment of the northern Manchu ethnic group which ruled China, combined with terrible floods and famine. Perhaps that's a case where lack of dignity helped cause war. People were starving, but in addition they felt disgruntled. I have a 1000 page book on that which I've been meaning to read for a year, so I'm sure I'll look back on this analysis and cringe when I finally get around to it.
- Don't leave us hanging! Please mention the book's name and author so others like myself can mean to read it too.
I'm just half joking, I suffer from a large historical blindspot for that part of the world and I'm trying to collect a list of books to read over the next two years to address this perceived (by myself only) issue.
- Its by Augustus F. Lindley and called Ti-ping tien-kwoh; the history of the Ti-ping revolution Volume I and II. And its actually 955 pages. Its an account written by one of the generals fighting for the goverment, who was also a British guy. Its part history part memoir. Kind of a weird book.
I suspect those other books people mentioned are probably better if you want a good understanding of the war that's not one sided and written in 1866. But its one of the very few contemporally written first-person works available.
Edit: you can find it on Project Gutenburg for free if you want to take a look at it. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/39180/39180-h/39180-h.htm
- These are not 1000 page books (but combined they can be):
- God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (more about the Taiping and their leader)
- Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (more about the west's actions)
I just saw this book on Amazon and haven't read so might be a good read to round out the history: Struggle for Empire: The Battles of General Zuo Zongtang (Qing statesman and army officer, General Tso's chicken was named after him!)
Overall, I would say good English material on this conflict is a bit thin. I would recommend reading more about the Qing dynasty, Opium wars, first Sino Japanese war, Boxer Rebellion, Xinhai Revolution. /r/askhistorians always have good books recommendation.
- It makes sense. Otherwise people would never become monks in certain sects, because there’s an innate indignity to poverty but subsuming yourself to a higher purpose negates the indignity.
- Pain without suffering vs suffering without pain. Now everyone have smartphones but dignity feels like it's getting lower.
- They very much understood their situation. That was the means of control. Their incomes were directly defined by agricultural productivity, and their expenses largely controlled by the shogun. Daimyo couldn't meaningfully communicate with each other, easily intermarry, or form alliances. They were forced to maintain huge retinues and lavish estates, and the shogun could bankrupt them or kill their family at any point.
The shogunate needed to do some balancing along the way (including the introduction of metallic currency), but the government had enough levers to keep the samurai in line, right up until they couldn't.
- To add on to this, the wives and heirs of daimyo had to live semi-permanently in the capital, which gave the shogun a powerful leverage over his subordinates. Any murmuring of an uprising would result in his family (and heirs) being killed. Nor was there freedom of movement across domains; this had to be granted by the shogun, preventing daimyo from easily communicating and organising.
Approximately 50-75% of a daimyo's budget went towards maintenance and boarding costs for when they were in attendance at the shogun's court. "Commerce" was considered a lowly profession not befitting a proud samurai. Most of their wealth was obtained through their right to collect agricultural taxes, which was granted to them by the daimyo.
While the samurai were a caste descended from warriors, after hundreds of years of peace they had largely become "sword-wearing bureaucrats". They weren't all that competent or experienced in warfare. They carried swords and practiced martial arts, but this was just as much a LARP (to use a modern phrase): a means of connecting to their martial heritage.
- Looking at rebellions and revolutions in Europe (just because I know european history better than asian history), they tend to start when someone (not necessarily the poor) feel than the upper class/the king is not doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's not a cash grab, and in a lot of revolt what the rich have and don't deserve is not taken and distributed, but rather destroyed to show that it's about punishing traitors of the social contract, not robbing them.
- "and in a lot of revolt what the rich have and don't deserve is not taken and distributed, but rather destroyed to show that it's about punishing traitors of the social contract, not robbing them"
Or that those who revolt often lack coordination and a plan and can carry only so much with their hands and then rather destroy what they cannot carry to harm "the enemy"?
- My interpretation of the revolutions is that they happen only when the government as such becomes weak and is unable to perform the constant suppression. They do not happen just because the conditions are bad.
Bad condition themselves are not enough, revolution requires people to think at least some of them can actually gain something.
- That could be. I'm thinking of the Chu–Han Contention and the Warlord Era in China as times that it was probably the case - In both cases goverment control collapsed and there was not just one rebellion but a whole bunch that all sprang up at once and then proceeded to fight eachother! Arguably some of that happened during the Russian Revolution too.
- The theme of this article is seen directly as a major plot point in the series Shogun.
Its quite a good show!
- Shogun describes the period just before the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. This article describes the system that developed after that, under the Shoguns.
- And an even better book, which is a part of an excellent series spanning centuries and Singapore, Hong Kong, Iran, and many other places.
- Yes, if you enjoyed the show, I cannot recommend the book enough
- Loved that show. There is a fairly recent "Last Samurai Standing" fictional series that portrays the desperation of the Samurai after the end of the Edo era. It's a bit Squid Game-ish, but I enjoyed it immensely.
- Loved it. This is some necessary background that helps me contextualize a few other oddities of the time period that I have had floating in my short term memory
- Miyamoto Musashi (d. 1645)
- Tsujigiri, random slashing of bystanders
- the Great wave off Kanagawa, painted towards the end of the Edo period
- Shinobi evolving from mercenaries into secret police
- the great wave is a woodblock print.
I wonder: how historically accurate is the animated feature film "Miss Hokusai"
it gives a great glimpse at the time and life of the artist.
- from wiki:
>Tsujigiri (辻斬り or 辻斬, literally "crossroads killing") is a Japanese term for a practice when a samurai, after receiving a new katana or developing a new fighting style or weapon, tests its effectiveness by attacking a human opponent, usually a random defenseless passer-by, in many cases during night time.
I know it's tragic but this sounds so absurd it just made me laugh. They were on some good shit.
- This is fascinating after learning about and rading Peter Turchin's concept of Eelite overproduction [1]. The theory is that much of society's conflicts are actually fights between the elite and that this happens when the elite start fighting for the same resources.
From that point of view they seemed to have created a system that stopped the elites from starting wars with each other by imprisoning their families. And although they levered high taxes they did force many elites to accept a small amount of resources per elite to the point that some in elite status were effectively poor. Instead of money they got status and a title.
- An average tax rate of 40% for the lower class?
- There were real geographic and social tradeoffs to having status and power.
- Fascinating. Currently imagining a futuristic version of that and mixing it with some cyberpunk happening under the shadow of the big brother.
- After Bioshock Infinite came out, I imagined how cool it would be to have a shogunate-era Japanese version of it called "Floating World Edo", rendered in the style of ukiyo-e prints (which term means "pictures of the floating world"). Perhaps an alternate-universe Tokugawa family would use their floating capital to keep their daimyō in line, not by forcing them to live in Edo for half the year, but by bringing Edo directly to them. Yes, I know that's basically Laputa. (Fun fact: The bits in Gulliver's Travels concerning Laputa and Balnibarbi contain descriptions of not just an LLM, but a fairly typical organizational "AI transformation" replete with a skeptical holdout at risk of being punished by upper management for not embracing the new hotness!)
- Require all the cyberpunk billionaires to live together under the shadow of the surveillance shogunate.
- I thought this would be about a city building game like SimShogun -- that would be fun!
- so interesting to read about the weird gate system for tracking the citizens. insane diagram.
- A nice article! It really does a great job of describing the hostage nature of keeping the various daimyo in check.
One thing that I think is commonly misstated though, is that this period was one of "peace".
When viewed from the elite perspective, the power struggles between daimyo in the Warring States Era had subsided, but for the common people, the Edo Period was anything but peaceful.
The samurai class could chop up any commoner at any time, for any reason, or no reason. Sometimes just to "test" a new sword, or because their "honor" had been challenged (maybe the person didn't get out of the way and bow fast enough).
- > The samurai class could chop up any commoner at any time, for any reason, or no reason.
This is a pop history misconception. It was always a rare criminal act, and to the extent it did happen, it was specifically more common in the Sengoku era. Article 71 of the Tokugawa Shogunate's 1742 penal code explicitly specifies public execution as the designated penalty for this crime.
- I wished the article was better written honestly
- Banker in rural Japan here. I lend to small family businesses, so I read this from an odd angle.
The piece frames Edo as a gilded prison that produced little. True for the samurai half. But the merchant class it created in the Low City didn't just give us ukiyo-e and kabuki. It gave us companies that are still open.
Part of my job is assessing old family firms for credit, and a number of them trace their founding to this period. Soy sauce brewers, inns, sake makers, metalworking shops, the kind of suppliers who fed and equipped that captive elite. The forced consumption the author calls parasitic was, from the shop's side, three centuries of stable demand. You don't need to bet on a boom when the daimyo is legally required to come back every year and spend.
What strikes me now, screening these businesses, is that the survivors optimized for the opposite of what we usually praise. Not growth. Continuity. A shop that has kept the same name and the same customers for 200 years is doing something the prison framing misses. The prison was also a hothouse.
I don't know how much this generalizes. But the parasite and the thing that outlived the host turned out to be the same city.
- This gives me Zelda TOTK vibes :) Do you write about your life/business elsewhere?
- Japanese here lol. "broke and hostage so they'd stay quiet" — honestly that one line taught me more about my own country than school ever did.
We get Edo as "250 years of peace" and sankin-kotai as some term to memorize for a test. Nobody ever just said the quiet part: the shogun kept his samurai poor and on a leash so they couldn't start anything. Kinda dark, kinda hilarious how well it holds up.
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- The part that stuck with me is the chō: 1,500+ walled blocks with gated alleys, the control built right into the streets. A commoner born there would never have known a city that wasn't a grid of gates, so to them it wouldn't feel like a cage at all, just normal. Makes me wonder how much of our own daily background, the zoning, the cameras, the commutes, is just an old answer to some political problem nobody remembers was ever a question.
- Great article.. NGL, in about the first paragraph and visual intro, I already was hoping and wanting a real Samurai city MMO/RPG with a true vibrant city and interresting characters to explore..
Me (char) climbing the ranks and politics while hiding my secret ninja origin from the nobles trying to get closer to the shogun.. Sometimes doing side-quest in my Samurai outfit-and-skillset... and sometimes doing missions in my ninja-outfit-and-skillset..
But good article :) It's Friday and I'm feeling creative
