Japanese History

1) Buddhism started on the Northern edge of India and spread around to China. Japan then got China's version of Buddhism

a) Central them of reincarnation

i) The bodily desires are what drag us into the next body. Ridding yourself of these desires = Nirvana.

ii) Buddha ins't supernatural. Cyclical time not linear.

iii) Theravada Hinayana ~ original Buddha

iv) Mahayana ~ Japanese version of Buddhism (from China)

(1) Prayer to those who have reached Nirvana

v) Shinto and Buddhists were able to get along

b) Shinto preoccupied with spiritual purity

i) Death is a very large spiritual impurity

(1) Emperor's death considered the ultimate and so they moved Capitals after every death

ii) In 794 the government moves to Heian (Kyoto) and stayed there for over 1000 years

2) Often times they had puppet bosses with the real Emperor running things from behind the scenes

a) Regents from the Fujiwara family effectively ran the government with child emperors

b) When one of the retired emperors tries to regain power they call in the Samurai.

3) Minamoto Yoritomo won the Samurai Wars and named himself Shogun

a) Government then run by Shogun and called the Bakafu

i) Had the real power until the Hojo family

b) Bakafu was threatened by the Mongolian invasions

i) Were able to defeat the Mongols but were severely weakened in the process

c) No one effective ruler and so daimyo controlled their territory with taxes (rice)

d) First European contact (Portuguese) during this time~ around 1492

e) First Jesuit missionaries in 1549

i) Worked from top down. Converted some daimyo and Samurai

ii) Wanted to learn gun technology

f) Around this time some daimyo were able to concentrate power enough to unify large pieces of Japan

i) Oda Nobunaga got half of Japan

ii) Hideyoshi comes from a peasant family~ becomes a servant to Nobunaga and works his way up. Eventually becomes his advisor and takes over Nobunaga's empire after his death

(1) Hideyoshi conquers the other half of Japan

(2) Hideyoshi then makes it so that no one could change classes anymore.

(3) Hideyoshi tries to conquer Korea

(4) He was friendly with Christian missionaries at first but then persecuted them savagely until his death

iii) Civil War afterwards

iv) Tokugawa Ieyasu wins

v) Tokugawa Bakafu created

(1) Created a puppet government in Kyoto (Emperor) to rule from 1603-1888

4) Tokugawa Bakafu (Dynasty?)

a) Samurai- Ruling class

b) Peasants- farmers (were expected to be subservient / obedient)

(1) Peasant life centered on the household and village

ii) Wet rice farming took a lot of coordination because of the village wide irrigation systems

iii) Taxes collected from the village as a whole. Villages had to work out individual contributions

iv) Mobility actively discouraged

v) At family level individuality comes out

vi) Quite often upon marriage the couple lives with the husbands family

vii) Also arranged marriages can put extra stress on the wife

(1) Samurai more likely to be an arranged marriage as compared to peasants

viii) After the Tokugawa Bakafu it makes it so that Samurai often times don't have to give their lives in service to their daimyo anymore.

5) Tokugawa Ieyasu creates the Bakafu in 1603

a) Most of Japan ruled by daimyo

i) Central Government (Bakafu) would not interfere in their Han (territory)

ii) Every daimyo had a large army of Samurai

iii) Edo=Yedo (modern day Tokyo)

iv) Forced daimyo to either spend time their selves or keep their family in Edo

v) Could only bring a small force of Samurai with them into Edo

(1) This system drained off money from the daimyo

vi) The Bakafu rearranged the map and assigned the most suspicious daimyo very far away from Edo

(1) Han of Choshu and Han of Satsuma end up overthrowing the Bakafu and were indeed the furthest

vii) In a lot of ways it is a feudal system

(1) Eventually after long periods of no fighting Samurai class become more administrative

viii) Daimyo reside in Fortified castles

(1) Towns grew around them

(a) Luxuries available in the han were available here

(2) Some han don't pay the low level Samurai well and thus they are forced to basically live like peasants

ix) Japan is extremely status conscious during this time

6) Edo becomes the massive city under the Tokugawa Dynasty instead of Kyoto

7) Putting-out system Ð'- all work done by hand so houses specialized in specific tasks and then passed along to another house. Central businessman coordinates it all.

8) Main rice trade centers were in Edo and Osaka ( the two major cities)