“Not everyone is to rule” (Totman), so was the theoretical Confucian frame of mind on social class movements outlawing the change-over from a ruled to ruler social status. Eventually this social view led the first half of the Tokugawa period privileging the samurai access to knowledge. The Bushi concept was the best example as to keep the samurai class above commoner; it involved keeping political and other ideological texts away from commoners that would allegedly misuse them potentially causing uprisings. The samurai would have been regarded as a model for society especially in term of “duty”. Duty, an essential object by “the Great learning” (Confucian book), was seen as the root of regulation which would lead to “peace in the world” in due course. The North Korean Juche does see military as a force a well as an example to society moral value as its education repose on military image as a blueprint for morals . True, in Europe, schooling was reserved for the elite but the prospect of “upgrading one’s social status” to acquire knowledge was not unfeasible as long as one excelled in a skill; Michael Angelo, moreover rising to a knight’s status i.e.: Joan of Arc. One can not refer as the early Tokugawa government being socialist but it is evident it generated numerable familiarities with Juche ideology. Fukuyama, 1786 (6); Resulting from crop failure, peasants were to get taxed further on crops in order to maintain the local daimyo and his samurai’s lifestyle elevated. The repercussions were that starvation and death among the peasant class was opulent; a case very familiar to the DPRK.
To maintain social order, the Japanese commoners and the elite “enjoyed” the help of Confucian morals manuals, having for purpose to lay down rules on how one should behave according to their social status. Created by Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714), those etiquettes manuals were split in titles such as Precepts for Children and Greater Learning for Women. One could look at these manual as fragmented ersatz to the role of the bible in Europe or to some extent to Mao Zedong little red book. No sources I have encountered illustrate their effectiveness nor their popularity, it is therefore assumable there were a form of propaganda to set up the system.
The economist Kaiho Seiryo (1755-1817), believed that non-productive classes of people, such as literature professors, priests and merchants, should be strictly regulated, for an overpopulation of economically useless people would lead to disaster. However the strong intellectual regulations strengthening the Confucian model of governance resulting in The Kansei Edict (1790), a law forbidding the teaching or propagation of "heterodox" studies, that is, anything in disagreement with the teachings of Neo-Confucianism and the like, didn’t stop the merchant class to rise gradually in power and financial terms. The latter half of the period witness merchants enriching themselves and the samurai class overspending. As the daimyo had to pay his samurais in cash, he had to acquire its funds from an average of 50% tax on peasant’s crops that he would indirectly sell off to the commoners via middlemen: the Merchants.
Merchants were gradually acquiring wealth by setting crop prices and later obtaining security as they acted as money-lenders to the Daimyos. Socially, it resulted in a power vacuum since ethical issues arose as the samurai’s society’s example image was dependant on merchants’ funding.
On the whole we see the Tokugawa political scene slowly decaying after about 1700’s and a merchant uprising defying the ideological structure of the society. The Bakufu intellectuals found grounds on which changing or transforming the system were deemed acceptable; Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) recommended major policy changes and argued that Daimyo who failed to govern could properly be stripped of their titles and privileges.(11)
Despite remnants of the initial Neo-Confucian ideologies introduced in the early period such as The School of Prosperous Peace, leader in the teaching of Confucian thoughts until the Meiji restoration, Japan’s intellectual diversification intensified from various Chinese, Japanese and western platform of thoughts to accommodate errors from the past century such as the emergence of floating world quarters.
Edo’s floating males.
Understanding a culture’s sexual patterns is, I believe, understanding its social openness.
Unlike in Pre-Modern European Christian countries where the awareness of sexual dimorphism is seen to mark a deterioration in the human condition (resulting in expulsion from Eden, Bible), Edo Japan has seen its sexual arena flourish.
Homosexuality was omnipresent in Japanese Buddhism. The Shingon school of Japanese Buddhism founded by Kūkai (774 -835) developed its own form of Tantra, Tachikawa Ryu, ‘the main sex cult of Japan’ which taught that the loss of self in the sex act could lead to an awakening of the spirit. The male-only Buddhist monasteries eventually developed widespread homoerotic activities with their acolytes, young page boys, as Leupp points out:
Item: I will remain secluded at Kasaki Temple until reaching age forty-one.
Item: Having already had sex ninety-five males, I will not behave wantonly with more than one hundred.
Item: I will not keep and cherish any boys except Ryuo-Maru.
Item: I will not keep older boys in my own bedroom.
Item: Among the older and middle boys, I will not keep and cherish any as their nenja.
(Monk’s vow. Todaiji temple, Nara. 1237)
The European clergy had a long alternated history with homoerotic acts amongst monks, but, publicly it viewed homosexuality with paranoia, characterizing sodomy as the worst of sexual sins, often leading to prison and sometimes death [13]. Unlike their distant European neighbors, Japanese Buddhists “only” condemned homosexuality to the third "Buddhist hell" shared with rice merchants who dilute their product with water. (Genshin, 985). As religion mixed education in the Tokugawa period, sons of the samurais were often sent to Buddhist monasteries to acquire moral concepts and knowledge. Eventually they were exposed to male-male homoerotic relations, resulting to a high military society flooded with homosexual tendencies. On the other hand, one can not find explicit evidence of wide spread homosexuality amongst European’s military in history. It could be thought that those strong Japanese male-male relationships samurais had been further endorsed by the duty and respect one must have to an elder under the Confucian ideology.
Contrarily to Europe, where homosexuality was practiced but not approved, Japan published ‘positive’ manuscripts about male-male love relationships in titles such as Ihara Saikaku’s Nanshoku ookagami prescribing solutions and morals similarly to sex guides readily available nowadays.
Sexuality is hard to define in Edo Japan. In Europe, history has categorized Hetero and Homosexual separately as black and white. We have the notion of bi-sexuality but it is only understood under Hetero and Homosexuality spheres. Our conception of sexuality leads us to believe that Edo Japan seemed to have had a strong history of pedophilia that is, in occurrence, still present through pornographic mediums on any konbini’s shelves. Yet the nanshoku / danshoku notion of ‘older male - young male’ relationship can not very well be interpreted as homosexual pedophilia. Pre-mature boys (up until 15-17) were dressed as elegantly as females in order to create androgynous looks, accentuating their “beauty”. ‘Elders’, samurais or priests, would have had been profoundly attracted to their physical aesthetics, to the extent that some feel in love with. Although no references suggest reasons as to why this attraction occurred, it is possible to find roots to this practice in Japan’s celebration of Spring, as it is often related to youth, beauty and sex, in many Japanese arts and literature; Ise Anthology: (Timon Screech: p146)
Thinking to meet again
The one I saw,
Not one passes
When I do not come to where
The plum blossom bloomed
Although adolescent male prostitution was erected in Kabukis centered in Edo, female prostitution had their pleasure quarters, the Yoshiwara, relocated outside Edo by the Bakufu under moral obligations. This paints a strong contrast on how the moral acceptance of male prostitution within Edo’s ground was against female prostitution. It is wise to acknowledge that Buddhism viewed women as dirty and sinful, hence not “technically” able to find enlightenment, a factor that might have been wedged into society as a whole. The physical expulsion of the Yoshiwara or floating world from the heart of Edo, helped, according to Timon Screech, the concept that one could psychologically flee the real, bureaucratic, regulated world constrained with torments fuelled by bad harvests, corrupted government and youth violence (p51). In terms of social interaction, the most fascinating perspective the Yoshiwara represented was generating a near utopian harmony between samurai and merchant and other social classes inside the compound as all came with same purpose. It is to be noted that Edo expulsed the Yoshiwara but did not outlaw it, proving that Confucian totalitarian thought started to fade away.
Despite the existence of legal pleasure quarters in protestant areas in the 14th century, prostitution eventually became criminalized in the 1700’s under Christian morals.
The Japanese courtesans were glamorized by artists via shunga and bijinga’s widespread distribution thanks to advances in printing technology. Unlike their marginal sisters in Europe who were associated with sins, Edo’s courtesans enjoyed fame and sometimes the privilege of choosing their customers. From those facts, it is then clear that the meaning and purposes of accessing the pleasure quarters were escapism and physical relief in Japan and Europe respectively. Courtesans’ skills to pleasure were elevated to an art form as depicted in throughout Sex and the floating world book as make up, dressing and design were all part of the art of sex to subdue, attract and entertain various customers.
We see the tenth century governed by the female literary boom but the ascendancy of Confucian ideal on women’s social position led to a male dominance among Edo authors unable us to reconstruct a solid female sexual history from the material I researched.
Conclusion
Theoretically speaking, Tokugawa Ieyasu’s choice of reform to redress a land scarred by civil war was probably the most effective on the short run. The reforms stressed social closure by widening the boundaries between samurais and the populace to restore and maintain order. In contrast with nowadays morals, the Tokugawa’s regime seemed totalitarian, similar to Hitler’s or Kim Jong Il’s regime; all applying strict rules to achieve set goals. The advance into a so-called capitalism bouleversement, led towards the building up of a flexible society, yet growing over the original Confucian platform. Eventually successful merchants often enjoyed power status similar to samurais by establishing themselves as money spinners from lending to the Daimyos. This turn in history can very well be seen as a democratic jump far longer than any of the so called advanced countries in Europe at that time had achieved.
One can not be directly criticized Edo Japan’s conceptual sexuality as was probably more complex than Europe’s. Today’s common views on sexuality in Europe can only portrait the Tokugawa period as sexual liberalism when assessing the Yoshiwara’s history and, to a certain degree, perversion when reviewing the boy-love situation. On the other hand, one can be certain that Tokugawa’s sexual window was clearly more open than Renaissance Europe and closer with today’s Holland, a heaven of wide spread acceptance of diverse sexual trends with little or no discrimination.
To resume, the Tokugawa period underwent a transition that affected its original ideologies, bearing open social concepts of economy and social interaction, similar to bursts of liberty under a theoretically closed social infrastructure.
Bibliography
- Syracuse University,Florence. A History of Sexuality in Europe (1400-1800)
HIS/WSP 400.7 By Dr. Sara F. MATTHEWS GRIECO http://www.syr.fi.it/new/Academics/syllabi/Syllabicopy/Matthews/HistSexuality.htm
- Penn State University. Online Japanese history Book, US (Chapter Seven)
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/g/j/gjs4/172/intro.htm
-
Brundage, James A., Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987.
-
Washington State University, World civilization website, Japanese Resources. Richard Hooker
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/
- Homosexuality and Buddhism in Ancient Japan, Nathaniel Wandering
http://www.nathanielwandering.net/Japan.htm
-
Ikegami, Eiko, The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1995.
- Queen University, Prostitution and the Church, Monica Sandor. http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~sandorm/Page1.htm
-
Stanford University History Dept. Roots of Modern East Asia
http://www.stanford.edu/class/history92a/
- Japanese History For Gay Men
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Berkeley/3508/japanesehistory.html
-
French History. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/roger.castelain/
-
LaFleur, William, R., Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1992
-
Totman, Japan before Perry. Articulation of an ideology of rule. Aspect of Japanese Culture 2: course pack 2003
-
DPRK Korean Government related site. http://www.korea-dpr.com/
1-2 Roots of Modern East Asia, Stanford University History Dept.
3 DPRK Korean Government
Washington State University, World civilization website, Japanese Resources
Roots of Modern East Asia, Stanford University History Dept.
Washington State University, World civilization website, Japanese Resources
Homosexuality and Buddhism in Ancient Japan, Nathaniel Wandering
Screech, Pornographic Denial, from page 31
Sandor, Prostitution and the Church, Queen University
Washington State University, World civilization website, Japanese Resources