Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan

D. Colin Jaundrill

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781501706646
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Japanische Geschichte

In Samurai to Soldier, D. Colin Jaundrill rewrites the military history of nineteenth-century Japan. In fifty years spanning the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the rise of the Meiji nation-state, conscripts supplanted warriors as Japan's principal arms-bearers. The most common version of this story suggests that the Meiji institution of compulsory military service was the foundation of Japan's efforts to save itself from the imperial ambitions of the West and set the country on the path to great power status. Jaundrill argues, to the contrary, that the conscript army of the Meiji period was the culmination—and not the beginning—of a long process of experimentation with military organization and technology.

Jaundrill traces the radical changes to Japanese military institutions, as well as the on-field consequences of military reforms in his accounts of the Boshin War (1868–1869) and the Satsuma Rebellions of 1877. He shows how pre-1868 developments laid the foundations for the army that would secure Japan's Asian empire.

1

THE RISE OF “WESTERN” MUSKETRY, 1841–1860

In the final three decades of the Tokugawa period (1603 – 1868), the world of Japan’s warriors began to change rapidly and irreparably. For over two hundred years, hereditary warriors (bushi)—known popularly, if imprecisely, as samurai—had served as the military arm of the shogunate and the nearly three hundred domains over which it maintained administrative and military hegemony. But beginning in the early nineteenth century, Tokugawa military institutions faced new pressure in the form of encroachment by Western powers. Military readiness became a critical issue for the first time in generations. In their efforts to cope with this new set of challenges, both national and regional authorities turned to those who claimed to possess authoritative knowledge of how the West fought. The Takashima school of musketry and gunnery (Takashima-ryū hōjutsu) was one such group. Before long, what began as an attempt to adapt the weapons technologies then in use by Western powers soon changed the ways men were trained to fight, their relationships to the institutions that employed them, and the meaning of military service.

Takashima-ryū musketry emerged in the late 1830s as the creation of Takashima Shūhan, a shogunal official assigned to the port city of Nagasaki. Shūhan marketed his school to the shogunate and domains by claiming authoritative knowledge of what he termed “Western” techniques. And unlike his contemporaries in the world of Tokugawa martial arts, Shūhan claimed that only his style of musketry and gunnery had any military applicability. As Takashima-ryū’s network of patrons grew, its instructors found themselves playing a central—and often contentious—role in the attempts to restructure the Tokugawa military order.

Instead of evaluating whether military reform efforts were effective or not, it is more productive to examine how new military technologies were adopted, how social and cultural contexts mediated their introduction, and what the effects were of their implementation. The role of technology in war was a central topic of analysis for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.¹ Until recently, military historians were concerned with how particular technologies—for example, rifles or railroads—affected the outcome of battles and wars. But as the military historian Jeremy Black has argued: “There is the question of how weaponry impacted on organization, an issue that brings together technological capability and the factors that affect institutional culture, not least social context and political goals.”² Technology here is not limited to new weapons, but also includes the tactical and organizational systems created to employ these devices on the battlefield.

The process of technological change—in this case, the adoption of Takashimaryū musketry—was more than a straightforward, top-down borrowing of Western military models. In a clear demonstration of the reciprocal relationship between governing authority and military power, the sociopolitical order of the Tokugawa period played a determining role in the transmission of new military knowledge, as well as the pace and path of military reform efforts. More often than not, the prospect of upsetting notions of warrior status led would-be reformers to exercise caution. Takashima-ryū circulated through the same patronage network as other martial arts schools, first on a local level, then on a domainal level, and finally on a national level. Although Western drill manuals provided much of the basis for Takashima-ryū, instruction was constantly modified to suit the needs of instructors and patrons. Those who patronized the new school also had to deal with its social and cultural consequences. Takashima-ryū had the potential to change everything that defined the warrior’s world: clothing and language, rank, and the place of traditional martial arts. The shogunate and domains thus had to find ways to mitigate the school’s ties to the West, redefine the role of traditional martial arts, and still train warriors in the new techniques. The complexity of the situation ensured that this first step toward the redefinition of military service—although a necessary precondition—was a tentative one.

The World of the Tokugawa Warrior

For much of the Tokugawa period, warriors exercised exclusive control over military and administrative concerns on both the central and regional levels. Socially, the warrior status group enjoyed a relatively privileged position vis-à-vis the various categories of commoners and “base people” (senmin). As a general rule, only warriors carried weapons—a long sword and short sword for full-fledged warriors, and a short sword for warrior menials (buke hōkōnin)—in public, though exceptions to this policy did exist. Over the course of nearly two centuries, the social dimensions of warrior status subsumed its military aspects. Warrior identity became largely separated from experience or prowess in combat.

The changed role of Japanese warriors was a product of the formation of the Tokugawa state.³ Over the first half of the seventeenth century, the shogunate sought to preserve its hegemony by claiming and enforcing exclusive rights to the legitimate use of force. Its relationship to the over two hundred regional lords (daimyo) who acknowledged Tokugawa supremacy was articulated in terms of military obligations. It also severely restricted the military prerogatives of daimyo, prohibiting them from conducting military campaigns or substantially augmenting their forces without shogunal sanction.⁴ As decades of war gave way to a Pax Tokugawa, the shogunate and domains retained an outwardly military character despite a transition to administrative and constabulary roles. Fighting wars was no longer the primary role of militaries.

This development had two major consequences. First, military service assumed a broader set of meanings than it had in the past. Although all warriors were arms bearers who occupied some niche in the military edifice of shogunal or domain government, many of their occupational roles had little connection to fighting. Even warriors assigned to the explicitly military roles spent most of their time performing constabulary functions like guard and escort duty. A second consequence of the new role of militaries was a shift in the emphasis of martial arts instruction. As the likelihood that warriors would engage in combat diminished, technical mastery replaced practical fighting ability as a measure of achievement. In an environment in which the potential for violent encounters was limited, simply being a warrior became more important than being able to fight like one.

Military Service for Peacetime Warriors

The armies fielded by military hegemons like Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616) represented a major departure from the small, cavalry-dominated forces of Japan’s early medieval era.⁵ For one, armies became much larger. Hideyoshi mustered over 150,000 men for his 1592 invasion of Korea.⁶ Moreover, commanders made far more extensive use of infantry, particularly men armed with projectile weapons like bows and matchlock muskets. In many cases, these foot soldiers (ashigaru) were not recruited as part of feudal military obligations. Rather, they operated as units under the direct control of the daimyo, to whom they owed their loyalty.⁷ Some scholars have argued that these developments resemble the so-called Military Revolution that took place in early modern Europe, which was also characterized by a shift to large infantry forces under centralized control.⁸ Other scholars have argued against this perspective, observing that mounted warriors and their retinues were still considered the dominant combat arm on the battlefield.⁹ In either case, it seems safe to say that no medieval commander had as much operational control over his forces as did the leaders of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

The shogunate and domains put this authority to use after large-scale conflict came to an end. Instead of transitioning to purely peacetime duties, military apparatuses (headed by the shogun and daimyo) retained authority over both civilian administration and defense. In an era presided over by military government, the ability to marshal the country’s resources for defense served as both a criterion of political legitimacy and an organizing principle for society.

The shogunate’s claim to supreme political authority rested on its ability to protect the country and preserve the peace at home. Its approach to controlling the two-hundred-odd domains that comprised two-thirds of Japan’s landmass reflected these claims. Daimyo held their lands on the basis of their ability to provide military aid the shogunate. Their military obligations (gun’yaku) included clearly defense-related tasks like maintaining armed forces, protecting the coastline, and performing guard duty, but even more ceremonial policies like alternate attendance (sankin kōtai) were viewed as—and executed as—military tasks.¹⁰ In other words, military obligation formed the basis of the so-called bakuhan (shogunate and domain) system.

Both the shogunate and daimyo needed to mobilize a variety of groups in order to fulfill these objectives. As the dividing lines between peasants, artisans, merchants, outcastes, and others became institutionalized, the status system of the Tokugawa era began to take shape.¹¹ Warriors—at least notionally—occupied a privileged place within this system. Only they were permitted the right to use a surname legally and carry two swords (myōji taitō), as well as hold government office.¹² But this ascendance came at a cost.

After the end of large-scale warfare and the consolidation of Tokugawa power in the early seventeenth century, the social and administrative responsibilities of warriors eclipsed the need for their martial abilities. One of the consequences of this new reality was a contraction in the size of the warrior status group. As the need for massive armies faded, many erstwhile warriors found themselves on the wrong side the line that divided arms bearers from the population at large. Some masterless warriors (rōnin) and unemployed warrior menials became known as “crooked people” (kabuki mono) for acting out violently in reaction to their marginalization from the warrior world.¹³ Even those who retained warrior status did so under conditions vastly different from those of their ancestors. Despite the feudal tinge that continued to color relationships between lords and their vassals, most warriors lived in particular sections of castle towns and received their income in the form of disbursements from their lord. This was true for both stipended warriors (kirimai tori) and fief holders (chigyō tori), some of whom had to secure official permission to visit lands that putatively belonged to them.¹⁴ Although the distinction between landed vassals and their lower-ranking counterparts had little bearing on their material well-being, it served as a key criterion of high social status.

It is fair to say that status differences—both horizontal and vertical—among warriors were at least as important as the dividing line between warriors and the rest of society. Warriors’ status consisted of three elements: rank, income, and position. Rank was largely hereditary and connected to both income and employment opportunities.¹⁵ According to Negishi Shigeo, the top and bottom ranks of the warrior status group were generally consistent for the shogunate and most domains. The highest-ranking warriors were those whose families could claim status as field commanders (karō and bangashira) or senior administrators (bugyō). Next in line were the mounted warriors attached to the lord’s retinue. Although similar ranks existed in every domain, these men went by a variety of names; fief holder (kyūnin), horse guard (umamawari), and common warrior (heishi/hirazamurai) were among the more customary designations for this group. In addition to their right to surname, sword, and stipends, most of these men enjoyed the right to a direct audience with their lord (omemie). Pages (koshō/naka koshō), who also functioned as bodyguards in some cases and sometimes had the right of audience, occupied a narrow middle ground in between the higher ranks and the foot soldiers (kachi and ashigaru), who did not enjoy the same privilege. Below these men were the various categories of warrior menials who usually performed domestic functions for the lord’s household.¹⁶

Rank also influenced the positions warriors were eligible to hold. Retainer bands (kashindan) generally consisted of three main parts: the military apparatus (bankata), the retainers assigned to manage the lord’s household (sobakata), and the officials responsible for the day-to-day administration of the lord’s holdings (yakukata). Despite the popular perception of Tokugawa-period warriors serving as bureaucrats, the number of vassals assigned to military roles remained high. In the case of the shogunate, more than half of the retainer band served in the bankata. Explicitly military appointments also came with increased prestige. The majority of high-ranking warriors served in the bankata, whereas administrative posts—with the exception of the most senior positions—were dominated by lower-ranking warriors.¹⁷ This arrangement had two consequences. First, as administrative matters assumed greater importance than military readiness, low-ranking warriors gained increased influence. Second, because Tokugawa militaries consisted largely of high-ranking warriors, the military reform efforts of the nineteenth century would have the unenviable task of reorganizing the warriors most invested in the Tokugawa system.

As the peace of the Tokugawa period continued, warriors grew increasingly estranged from the martial aspects of their status. From the time of the early eighteenth-century Kyōhō Reform onward, the shogunate repeatedly exhorted warriors to keep up their military training....

Table of contents

• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Rise of “Western” Musketry, 1841–1860
• 2. Rising Tensions and Renewed Reform, 1860–1866
• 3. The Drives to Build a Federal Army, 1866–1872
• 4. Instituting Universal Military Service, 1873–1876
• 5. Dress Rehearsal: The Satsuma Rebellion, 1877
• 6. Organizational Reform and the Creation of the Serviceman, 1878–1894
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index