State of War the Violent Order of Fourteenth-Century Japan

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The Society for Japanese Studies

State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth-Century Japan by Thomas Donald ConlanReview by: Harold BolithoJournal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 470-473Published by: The Society for Japanese StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064591.

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2/5

470

Journal

of Japanese

Studies

31:2(2005)

State

of

War:

The

Violent Order

of Fourteenth-Century Japan.

By

Thomas

Donald Conlan. Center for

Japanese

Studies,

University

of

Michigan,

Ann Arbor, 2003. xviii, 281 pages. $65.00, cloth; $24.00, paper.

Reviewed

by

Harold Bolitho

Harvard

University

English-language

scholarship,

as

if

by unspoken

agreement,

has tradition

ally kept

much of the

history

of

Japan's

complicated

fourteenth

century

at

arm's length.True, Andrew Goble's studyofGo-Daigo's abortive attempt to

revive

imperial authority

in his

Kenmu:

Go-Daigo

's

Revolution dealt with

one

crucial

segment

of

it,

the

years

from

1321

to

1335. But the

long

after

math,

the

50-odd

years

during

which

two

imperial

courts

butted

heads

in

the

pursuit

of

legitimacy,

has been almost

totally

untouched. Not since

1971,

when Paul

Varley

devoted

a

chapter

to

the

Nanbokuch?

in

his

Imperial

Res

toration in

edieval

Japan,

has

anyone

dared

set

foot

in

that

particular

briar

patch.

Instead,

over

the

intervening

years,

survey

histories

have done little

more thangive itan oblique and apprehensive glance before racing on,with

evident

relief,

to

the

more

manageable

chaos of the

Muromachi

bakufu.

To

cite

just

one

example,

the index

to

Medieval

Japan,

the thirdvolume

of The

Cambridge

History of Japan,

directs the reader

to

just

three

Nanbokuch?

references,

each

one

of them

cursory.

This

observation is

not meant to

be taken

as

criticism.

One

can

readily

understand

why

historians,

hoping

that readers will

not

notice the

omission,

have

tiptoed unobtrusively

around the

fringes

of

such

a

muddle. Civil

wars,

even when fought by two well-defined parties with sharply contrasting

aims,

still resist comfortable

explanation,

especially

when,

on

the

ground,

opportunities

to

settle

private

scores

sometimes blur

more

lofty

motives.

Imagine

then the

difficulties

of

tracking

events

in

Japan

over

the

years

be

tween

1336 and

1392,

as

Thomas Conlan has done in

thebook under

review.

In theNanbokuch?

period,

instead of

two

well-defined

parties

espousing

radically

different

ims,

there

was

a

myriad

of

actors,

sometimes

forming

al

liances of

convenience,

at

others

breaking

them

just

as

easily.

Despite

the

rhetoric,all of thedisorderwas dictated by one principle, and one

principle

only?and

that the

most

basic: down and

dirty pragmatism.

The

pattern

was

set

by

one

of the chief

instigators

of the

turmoil,

Ashikaga

Takauji,

who,

on

the

evidence,

seems

to

have deserved Kitabatake

Chikafusa's condemnation

as

a thief without

merit

or

virtue.

This,

after

all,

was a

warrior

who,

after

pledging loyalty

to

the

H?j?

early

in

1333,

within

just

a

few months had

changed

sides

to

support

Go-Daigo, only

to turn

against

him

toward the end

of 1335.

Then,

later,

n

1351,

still

exclusively preoccupied

with

his

own am

bitions,

Takauji

suddenly

began

tomake overtures to that same Southern

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/5

Review

Section

471

Court

he had

spent

years

pursuing through

the

Yoshino

mountains.

If

a

lead

ing

actor

could behave like

this,

then

we

have

no

right

to

expect

themulti

tude of bit players toconduct themselves otherwise. To be sure, the element

of

self-interest

can

be detected

through

earlier

periods

of

Japan's history,

where warriors

seem

to

have been

sporadically

at

war

with

each other for

immediate

benefits,

but

never

to

such

an

extent

as

in the

years

of

theNorth

ern

and

Southern

Courts.

It

was

not

that there

were no

well-defined

principles

to

choose between

in this

long,

drawn-out

struggle.

There

were

two,

one

supporting

the

legiti

macy

of theNorthern

Court,

the

Jimy?in

branch of

the

imperial

line,

and the

other, theDaikakuji branch, represented by theSouthern Court. Itwould be

difficult

to

imagine

any

issue

quite

so

clear

cut.

The trouble

was

that

none

of

those involved in

the

fighting

seemed

to

care

very

much for

either

side,

rather

cherishing agendas

of their

own,

and

switching

sides from

time

to

time,

back and

forth,

s

those

agendas

dictated.

Exceptions

are

very

thin

on

the

ground,

with

perhaps

the

most

notable

being

Kitabatake

Chikafusa,

the

courtier

who

gave

his

life,

and

that

of

his eldest

son,

barely

20

years

old,

in

the

service of what

proved

to

be

a

lost

cause.

It is grounds for satisfaction, then, to pick up Thomas Conlan's study

of this

dizzyingly

convoluted

period,

for

it is

by

far

the

most

thorough

and

detailed

analysis

of the

warfare

of

the

Nanbokuch?

era

available

in

Eng

lish.

Conlan

moves us

well

beyond

the

standard

sources?the

Taiheiki,

Baish?ron, Meitokuki,

and

Entairyaku?to

take

advantage

of

the

explosion

of

local

histories

and document

collections

that

were

among

the

many

wel

come

by-products

of

Japan's

late

twentieth-century

prosperity.

There

was

much

more

to

the

years

1336-92

than

what

transpired

in

the

Kinai,

and

these records allow him to give a sense of the anarchy into which the entire

archipelago

had been

plunged.

Then,

too,

while warfare

may

have been

at

its

most

intense

during

the

1330s and the

early

1350s,

as

the

author

ac

knowledges,

the

skirmishing

that

went

on

and

on

and

on

was

in

its

own

way

just

as

significant.

Equally,

there

were

many

more

figures

involved

than

Takauji,

the

initiator,

t

one

end

and

Yoshimitsu,

the

conciliator,

at

the

other,

and

we are

introduced

to

some

of them

here,

beginning

with

Nomoto To

moyuki

and his

son

Tsuruj?maru,

minor

characters

in

service

of

the

Kuma

gai house, whose existence would otherwise have passed unnoticed. The re

sult is

a

far

deeper,

richer,

and

more

complex

picture

of

Japan

during

the

period

of theNorthern and

Southern

Courts.

In

a

series of

illuminating

chapters,

Conlan

sets

out to

see

what

changes?military,

economic, social,

religious,

and

legal?grew

out

of the

Nanbokuch?

experience.

He

discerns

a

movement

toward

regional

forces

under the command of

shugo,

whose

power grew

once

the

hanzei

system

of

1352 allowed them

to

spend

more

funds

on

their

armies.

In the

process,

hereditaryprivilege came tobe

trumped by ability

andwealth, with success



4/5

472

Journal

of Japanese

Studies

31:2(2005)

accruing

to

those who could

promise

their

followers

greater

rewards.

Even

religion

seems

to

have been

transformed,

moving

from

a

personal

relation

shipwith gods and buddhas to somethingmediated throughan Ashikaga

prince

with

Erastian

(that

is,

state

control

of

religious

affairs)

pretensions.

Most

significant, though,

and

casting

a

very

long

shadow,

was

the destruc

tion of the

concept

of law and order

buttressed

by

a

strong

central

govern

ment

and

a

consequent

legitimation

of

private

violence.

Along

with the de

velopment

of

these main

themes,

Conlan offers

a

wealth

of

fascinating

incidental

material?dealing

with

wounds

and demands for

compensation,

with

the

nature

of

casualties,

with the

crucial

importance

of

rewards for

ser

vice, with the franklymercurial nature of loyalty,with the franticpolythe

ism

of

thebattlefield. This is

not

thebehavior

associated with the samurai of

our

children's

fantasies,

but it sounds

exactly

right.

Overall,

it

may

be that

the

general

message

of

Conlan's

book,

despite

its

welcome

profusion

of

detail,

will

surprise nobody.

Earlier

historians,

gazing

from

a

respectful

distance,

and

certainly

without

recourse

to

the detailed

analysis presented

in

this

work,

nevertheless

seem

to

have

been able

to

un

derstand what

was

going

on.

The

self-serving

behavior of

the

participants

Conlan indicates

(deemed

crassly opportunistic

more than40

years ago

in

John

K.

Fairbank,

Edwin

O.

Reischauer,

and

Albert

Craig's

East Asia:

The

Great

Tradition)

was

obvious

to,

among

others,

Conrad

Schirokauer,

who

described

men

fighting

with no

common

program

or

interests and

pointed

to

warriors who made

sure

that whatever the

outcome,

their

families would

be

on

the

winning

side

by having

branches

fight

on

both

sides of the

con

flict.

l

On the

matter

of the

changes brought

about

by

50-odd

years

of

war

fare,

JohnHall had

no

difficulty

in

recognizing

what

Conlan

substantiates,

the

emergence

of a new balance of

political

power,

inclining

ever more to

ward localism and feudal

authority. 2

Of

course,

despite

the

great

contribution the author has made

to

our

knowledge

of the fourteenth

century,

one

always

wants to

know

more.

One

might,

for

example,

have wished for

a

little

more

information

to

help

iden

tify

many

of the

figures

who

come

and

go

in

these

pages,

most

of them

men

tioned

only

once,

but then

on

the other hand these

passing

references

give

a

sense?as

the

earlier

tradition,

which

concentrated

on

Takauji,

Kusunoki

Masashige

et

al.,

did not?of an entire

country

entangled

inhalf a

century

of turmoil.

Ultimately,

too,

outside the information offered in

some

appen

dices

to

Conlan's

chapter

two,

which deal with battles

in

1336 and

1354,

it

is

not

easy

to

work

out

who

was

fighting

whom, where,

and when. But

con

sider the

problem.

A

definitive

account,

listing

not

just major

battles,

but

1. Conrad

Schirokauer,

A

Brief

History

of

Japanese

Civilization

(New

York:

Harcourt,

Brace,

Jovanovich,

1993), p.

98.

2. JohnWhitney Hall, Japan from Prehistory toModern Times (New York: Delacorte

Press,

1970),

p.

105.



5/5

Review Section 473

also

skirmishes,

and

identifying

the

participants

on

both

sides,

not

forget

ting

their former

and

current

alliances

and their

present

objectives,

would,

even if such a thingwere feasible, only serve at best to confuse the reader

and

at worst

nudge

him into boredom. It is

to

Conlan's credit that he has

emerged

from the ruck

with

as

much

solid

information

as

he

has,

distilling

for

us more

than

enough meaning

from the

period

to

chew

over.

If in the

end,

when

we

thinkof thewarfare

of the

Nanbokuch?

period,

we are

inclined

to

fall

back

on

the

elegant,

if

inscrutable,

summary

offered,

in

rather

lordly

fashion,

by

Sir

George

Sansom? the

winds of

fortune

blew

to

and

fro,

the

tide

of

conflict

ebbed and

flowed 3-it

is

not

Conlan's fault.He has restored

tous a significant segmentof theJapanese historical experience, and forthat

he deserves

our

thanks.

Pre-industrial Korea

and

Japan

in

Environmental

Perspective.

By

Conrad

Totman.

Brill, Leiden,

2004.

xxi,

226

pages.

63.00.

Reviewed by

Alexis Dudden

Connecticut

College

Conrad Totman's

recent

book,

Pre-industrial

Korea and

Japan

inEnviron

mental

Perspective,

examines Korean

and

Japanese history leading

up

to

1800

in

the

context

of the countries'

similar

natural

surroundings. Building

on

his

demonstrated

interest n the

relationship

between

Japanese

social de

velopment and itsecological environs (GreenArchipelago [1989] andEarly

Modern

Japan

[1993]),

Totman breaks

new

ground

here

by considering

Ko

rean

and

Japanese experiences

on a

shared

plane.

In

many

respects,

it is

a

wonderful book. Totman

tells the

familiar,

long

chronological

dur?e

from

preagricultural society

to

the

verge

of industrial

ization with

numerous

fascinating

twists and unfamiliar

and

suggestive

in

sights.

He focuses

particularly

on

the

interplay

between the

region's

natural

world?atmospheric, geologic,

biologic?and

the

human

quest

to

control

its forces for survival and political and economic gain. At the same time,

Totman

is also concerned with

placing

Korean and

Japanese

history

in

the

larger, global developmental

context,

which is

particularly

useful

given

the

lack of attention these countries receive

in

most

so-called

world

or

big

histories.

The

firstchart

in

the

book,

Demographic

Trends

(p.

4),

illustratively

3.

George

Sansom,

A

Brief

History

of

Japan,

1334-1615

(London:

Cresset

Press,

1961),

p.

60.


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