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4 - Medieval Japan and the Warring States Period, 1336–1573

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Brett L. Walker
Affiliation:
Montana State University
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Summary

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, political authority migrated outward into the provinces and away from the centre. If the Kyoto court, prior to the twelfth century, managed to consolidate authority in the ritsuryô bureaucracy, then with the advent of samurai governance influence became more decentralized and more feudal in nature. As the political authority and military might of the Ashikaga bakufu (1336–1578) waned, alliances external to the state began to take shape, between powerful samurai families, well-armed Buddhist monasteries, and even Kyoto neighbourhood associations. Under pressure from such groups, the Ashikaga bakufu eventually weakened to the point where it became ineffective and Japan descended to a socio-political condition best captured by the expression gekokujô, or the ‘low rising against the high’. In the political vacuum left by the weakened bakufu, new alliances formed as domain lords, known as daimyô, consolidated their power at the local level. The legacy of the domains and their daimyô is an important and lasting one. When the country was finally reunified at the end of the sixteenth century, many domains retained much of their autonomy, even as the Edo bakufu (1603–1868) consolidated its power in the new capital. In fact the legacy of regionalism survives to this day: even though Japan is a relatively small country, it retains a strong sense of local identity, today expressed benignly through local foods, literary traditions, and gifts. In the medieval period, regionalism proved far more malignant, often taking the form of predatory warfare.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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