A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (29 page)

Hideyoshi’s practice of keeping the families of potentially troublesome
daimy
hostage was extended by the Tokugawa into a system known as
sankin k
tai
(alternate attendance). With just a few exceptions, this obliged each
daimy
alternately to spend a year in Edo and a year in his domain, while his family remained permanently in Edo. The great expense involved in maintaining a residence in Edo as well as in their domain, and in proceeding to and from Edo on a regular basis with the requisite number of retainers, also helped prevent the
daimy
from accumulating too much financial power. In fact, it consumed around half their income or more.
⁸
They were also obliged to travel not only on specific dates but also along specific routes, which were always guarded by sh
gunate troops.

Other measures taken by the Tokugawa sh
gunate to restrict mobility and limit potential instability amongst the general population included:

•
checks on land travel, with officially approved travel documents having to be obtained and shown at the barriers between domains;

•
a curfew system that prevented people moving around at night without proper authority, especially outside their own town wards;

•
the destruction of most bridges, thereby channelling movement and making it more manageable;

•
the effective banning of wheeled transport;

•
the use of secret police to report on any suspicious movements or happenings.

Punishment for offenders was usually severe, particularly for those in the major towns in territory controlled directly by the Tokugawa. Execution was common for petty theft or even for negligence in letting your own house catch fire – fires being a particular danger to communities of mostly wooden houses. Whole families, and even neighbours, were sometimes
executed along with the miscreant, for Hideyoshi’s principle of collective responsibility was applied with vigour. In particular, heads of families and neighbourhood associations were held responsible for the misdeeds of their members.

Punishments in Europe at the time were also severe by modern standards, but the severity of those in Japan was enough to shock many European visitors of the day. The Frenchman François Caron, who spent many years in Japan in the first half of the seventeenth century, wrote that ‘their punishments are rosting, burning, crucifying both waies, drawing with four Bulls and boyling in Oyl and Water’.
⁹
An Italian visitor, Francesco Carletti, remarked:
¹⁰

… many suffered crucifixion on the slightest pretext, such as the theft of a radish … Sometimes also they crucify women, with babies at the breast, and leave them both to die in agony together. Their punishments are indeed extremely cruel, barbarous, and inhuman …

They both omit beheading, which was not uncommon, but was by no means the final use of the blade on executed commoners. In a practice known as
tameshigiri
(‘trial cut’), samurai tested the efficiency of their swords on the corpses of executed criminals until, as Carletti observed, ‘the wretched body is chopped into mincemeat, being left there as food for the dogs and the birds’.
¹¹
A good blade could cut through three corpses in one blow, with seven the record – and testing was not confined to corpses.
¹²

Condemned samurai and nobles sometimes suffered a similar fate, but in most cases were allowed the ‘privilege’ of committing suicide by ritual disembowelment, known as
seppuku
or
harakiri
(‘stomach cutting’). This was a practice that had arisen in the Heian period and was meant to show the purity of the victim’s soul, which was felt to reside in the stomach. It was by this stage often ritualised or even tokenised, with the victim’s head being cut off by an honoured friend immediately after the incision.

The severity of the punishments makes an interesting contrast to the relative leniency of the
ritsury
system almost a thousand years earlier, and suggests one difference between court rule and martial rule. At the same time, however, punishment continued to be based on disobedience and disruptiveness, rather than moral judgement.

The principle of collective punishment made people very cautious about welcoming any strangers into their midst. Strangers were suspicious enough anyway in an age of controlled movement, but when a community could be punished or even executed for the misdeeds of a stranger then it made sense not to accept them at all.
¹³
This has considerable bearing on the continuing general Japanese reluctance to become involved with strangers.
¹⁴

Collective and severe punishments also applied in theory and sometimes in practice in the countryside of the
daimy
domains, but life there was often easier. This was because many
daimy
were generally happy not to interfere in the affairs of any village in their domain provided its collective taxes were paid, and provided there was no blatant law-breaking or defiance. Discipline in the villages was, except for serious cases, generally left to the headman or village council, and punishments were usually in the form of a fine or imposition of a duty, with ostracism being one of the worst punishments.
¹⁵