Part 37 (1/2)

THE EPOCH OF THE GEN (MINAMOTO) AND THE HEI (TAIRA)

SUPREMACY OF THE MILITARY CLa.s.s

DESCRIBED superficially, the salient distinction between the epochs of the Fujiwara and the Gen-pei was that during the former the administrative power lay in the hands of the Court n.o.bles in Kyoto, whereas, during the latter, it lay in the hands of the military magnates in the provinces. The processes by which this change was evolved have already been explained in part and will be further elucidated as we advance. Here, however, it is advisable to note that this transfer of authority was, in one sense, a subst.i.tution of native civilization for foreign, and, in another, a reversion to the conditions that had existed at the time of the Yamato conquest. It was a subst.i.tution of native civilization for foreign, because the exotic culture imported from China and Korea had found its chief field of growth in the capital and had never extended largely to the provinces; and it was a reversion to the conditions existing at the time of the Yamato conquest, because at that time the sword and the sceptre had been one.

The Monon.o.be and the Otomo families const.i.tuted the pillars of the State under the early Emperors. Their respective ancestors were Umas.h.i.+made no Mikoto and Michi no Omi no Mikoto. The j.a.panese term mon.o.be (or mononofu) was expressed by Chinese ideographs having the sound, bus.h.i.+. Thus, though it is not possible to fix the exact date when the expression, bus.h.i.+, came into general use, it is possible to be sure that the thing itself existed from time immemorial. When the Yamato sovereign undertook his eastward expedition, Umas.h.i.+made with his mon.o.be subdued the central districts, and Michi no Omi with his otomo and Ok.u.me-be consolidated these conquests. Thereafter the mon.o.be were organized into the konoe-fu (palace guards) and the otomo into the emon-fu (gate guards). Not military matters alone, but also criminal jurisdiction, belonged to the functions of these two.

THE BUs.h.i.+

The earliest type of the Yamato race having thus been military, it becomes important to inquire what tenets const.i.tuted the soldier's code in old j.a.pan. Our first guide is the celebrated anthology, Manyo-shu, compiled in the ninth century and containing some poems that date from the sixth. From this we learn that the Yamato monono-fu believed himself to have inherited the duty of dying for his sovereign if occasion required. In that cause he must be prepared at all times to find a grave, whether upon the desolate moor or in the stormy sea. The dictates of filial piety ranked next in the ethical scale. The soldier was required to remember that his body had been given to him by his parents, and that he must never bring disgrace upon his family name or ever disregard the dictates of honour. Loyalty to the Throne, however, took precedence among moral obligations. Parent, wife, and child must all be abandoned at the call of patriotism. Such, as revealed in the pages of the Myriad Leaves, were the simple ethics of the early j.a.panese soldier. And it was largely from the Monon.o.be and Otomo families that high officials and responsible administrators were chosen at the outset.

When Buddhism arrived in the sixth century, we have seen that it encountered resolute opposition at the hands of Moriya, the o-muraji of the Monon.o.be family. That was natural. The elevation of an alien deity to a pedestal above the head of the ancestral Kami seemed specially shocking to the soldier cla.s.s. But the tendency of the time was against conservatism. The Monon.o.be and the Otomo forfeited their position, and the Soga stepped into their place, only to be succeeded in turn by the Fujiwara. These last, earnest disciples of Chinese civilization, looked down on the soldier, and delegated to him alone the use of brute force and control of the criminal cla.s.ses, reserving for themselves the management of civil government and the pursuit of literature, and even leaving politics and law in the hands of the schoolmen.

In these circ.u.mstances the military families of Minamoto (Gen) and Taira (Hei), performing the duties of guards and of police, gradually acquired influence; were trusted by the Court on all occasions demanding an appeal to force, and spared no pains to develop the qualities that distinguished them--the qualities of the bus.h.i.+. Thus, as we turn the pages of history, we find the ethics of the soldier developing into a recognized code. His sword becomes an object of profound veneration from the days of Minamoto Mitsunaka, who summons a skilled swordsmith to the capital and entrusts to him the task of forging two blades, which, after seven days of fasting and prayer and sixty days of tempering, emerge so trenchant that they are thereafter handed down from generation to generation of the Minamoto as treasured heirlooms.*

*The swords were named ”Knee-cutter” and ”Beard-cutter,” because when tested for decapitating criminals, they severed not only the necks but also the beard and the knees.

That the bus.h.i.+'s word must be sacred and irrevocable is established by the conduct of Minamoto Yorin.o.bu who, having promised to save the life of a bandit if the latter restore a child taken as a hostage, refuses subsequently to inflict any punishment whatever on the robber. That a bus.h.i.+ must prefer death to surrender is a principle observed in thousands of cases, and that his family name must be carefully guarded against every shadow of reproach is proved by his habit of prefacing a duel on the battle-field with a recitation of the t.i.tles and deeds of his ancestors. To hold to his purpose in spite of evil report; to rise superior to poverty and hards.h.i.+p; not to rest until vengeance is exacted for wrong done to a benefactor or a relation; never to draw his sword except in deadly earnest--these are all familiar features of the bus.h.i.+'s practice, though the order and times of their evolution cannot be precisely traced.

Even more characteristic is the quality called fudos.h.i.+n, or immobility of heart. That this existed in practice from an early era cannot be doubted, but its cultivation by a recognized system of training dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the introspective tenet (kwans.h.i.+n-ho) of the Zen sect of Buddhism taught believers to divest themselves wholly of pa.s.sion and emotion and to educate a mind unmoved by its environment, so that, in the storm and stress of battle, the bus.h.i.+ remains as calm and as self-possessed as in the quietude of the council chamber or the sacred stillness of the cloister. The crown of all his qualities was self-respect. He rated himself too high to descend to petty quarrels, or to make the acquisition of rank his purpose, or to have any regard for money.

THE MILITARY ART

As for tactics, individual prowess was the beginning and the end of all contests, and strategy consisted mainly of deceptions, surprises, and ambushes. There were, indeed, certain recognized principles derived from treatises compiled by Sung and 'Ng,* two Chinese generals of the third century A.D. These laid down that troops for offensive operations in the field must be twice as numerous as the enemy; those for investing a fortress should be to the garrison as ten to one, and those for escalade as five to one. Outflanking methods were always to be pursued against an adversary holding high ground, and the aim should be to sever the communications of an army having a mountain or a river on its rear. When the enemy selected a position involving victory or death, he was to be held, not attacked, and when it was possible to surround a foe, one avenue of escape should always be left to him, since desperate men fight fiercely. In crossing a river, much s.p.a.ce should separate the van from the rear of the crossing army, and an enemy crossing was not to be attacked until his forces had become well engaged in the operation. Birds soaring in alarm should suggest an ambush, and beasts breaking cover, an approaching attack. There was much spying. A soldier who could win the trust of the enemy, sojourn in his midst, and create dissensions in his camp, was called a hero.

*See Captain Calthrop's The Book of War.

Judged by this code of precepts, the old-time soldier of the East has been denounced by some critics as representing the lowest type of military ethics. But such a criticism is romantic. The secret-intelligence department of a twentieth-century army employs and creates opportunities just as zealously as did the disciples of Sung and 'Ng. It is not here that the defects in the bus.h.i.+'s ethics must be sought. The most prominent of those defects was indifference to the rights of the individual. Bus.h.i.+do taught a va.s.sal to sacrifice his own interest and his own life on the altar of loyalty, but it did not teach a ruler to recognize and respect the rights of the ruled.

It taught a wife to efface herself for her husband's sake, but it did not teach a husband any corresponding obligation towards a wife. In a word, it expounded the relation of the whole to its parts, but left unexpounded the relation of the parts to one another.

A correlated fault was excessive reverence for rank and rigid exclusiveness of cla.s.s. There was practically no ladder for the commoner,--the farmer, the artisan, and the merchant--to ascend into the circle of the samurai. It resulted that, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, gifted men of the despised grades sought in the cloister an arena for the exercise of their talents, and thus, while the bus.h.i.+ received no recruits, the commoners lost their better elements, and Buddhism became a stage for secular ambition. It can not be doubted that by closing the door of rank in the face of merit, bus.h.i.+do checked the development of the nation. Another defect in the bus.h.i.+do was indifference to intellectual investigation. The schoolmen of Kyoto, who alone received honour for their moral attainments, were not investigators but imitators, not scientists but cla.s.sicists. Had not Chinese conservatism been imported into j.a.pan and had it not received the homage of the bus.h.i.+, independent development of original j.a.panese thought and of intellectual investigation might have distinguished the Yamato race. By a learned j.a.panese philosopher (Dr.

Inouye Tetsujiro) the ethics of the bus.h.i.+ are charged with inculcating the principles of private morality only and ignoring those of public morality.

MILITARY FAMILES AND THEIR RETAINERS

It has been noticed that the disposition of the Central Government was to leave the provincial n.o.bles severely alone, treating their feuds and conflicts as wholly private affairs. Thus, these n.o.bles being cast upon their own resources for the protection of their lives and properties, retained the services of bus.h.i.+, arming them well and drilling them a.s.siduously, to serve as guards in time of peace and as soldiers in war. One result of this demand for military material was that the helots of former days were relieved from the badge of slavery and became hereditary retainers of provincial n.o.bles, nothing of their old bondage remaining except that their lives were at the mercy of their masters.

FIEFS AND TERRITORIAL NAMES

As the provincial families grew in numbers and influence they naturally extended their estates, so that the landed property of a great sept sometimes stretched over parts, or even the whole, of several provinces. In these circ.u.mstances it became convenient to distinguish branches of a sept by the names of their respective localities and thus, in addition to the sept name (uji or sei), there came into existence a territorial name (myoji or s.h.i.+). For example, when the descendants of Minamoto no Yos.h.i.+ye acquired great properties at Nitta and As.h.i.+kaga in the provinces of Kotsuke and s.h.i.+motsuke, they took the territorial names of Nitta and As.h.i.+kaga, remaining always Minamoto; and when the descendants of Yos.h.i.+mitsu, younger brother of Yos.h.i.+ye, acquired estates in the province of Kai, they began to call themselves Takeda.

It is unnecessary to pursue the subject further than to note that, while the names of the great septs (uji) were few, the territorial cognomens were very numerous; and that while the use of myoji (or s.h.i.+) was common in the case of the Fujiwara, the Taira, and the Minamoto septs, the uji alone was employed by the Abe, the Ono, the Takahas.h.i.+, the Kusakabe, the Ban, the Hata, and certain others. It will readily be conceived that although the territorial sections of the same sept sometimes quarrelled among themselves, the general practice was that all claiming common descent supported each other in war. The Minamoto (Gen) bus.h.i.+ recognized as the princ.i.p.al family line that of Tsunemoto from whom were descended the following ill.u.s.trious chiefs:

Minamoto (Gen) no Tsunemoto, commander-in-chief of local Governments | Mitsunaka | +---------+--------+ | | Yorimitsu Yorin.o.bu | Yoriyos.h.i.+ | Yos.h.i.+ye | +----------+------------+-----+-----+-----------+-----------+ | | | | | | Yos.h.i.+mune Yos.h.i.+chika Yos.h.i.+kuni Yos.h.i.+tada Yos.h.i.+toki Yos.h.i.+taka | Tameyos.h.i.+ | +----------+------------+-----------+ | | | | Yos.h.i.+tomo Yos.h.i.+kata Tametomo Twenty others | | | Yos.h.i.+naka | (of Kiso) | +----------+---------+-----------+------------+ | | | | Yoritomo Noriyori Yos.h.i.+tsune Six others

A similar table for the Taira (Hei) runs thus:

Taira (Hei) no Sadamori (quelled the Masakado revolt).

| Korehira (of Ise province) | ------- | ------- | Masamori (governed Ise, Inaba, Sanuki, etc.; | quelled the rebellion of Minamoto +----------+ Yos.h.i.+chika).

| | Tadamasa Tadamori (served the Emperors s.h.i.+rakawa, | Horikawa, and Toba;* subdued the | pirates of Sanyo-do and Nankai-do) | Kiyomori (crushed the Minamoto and temporarily | established the supremacy of the Taira).