The earliest written histories of Japan date to the early eighth century and are a mixture of fact, myth and legend. In these histories, the emperor is said to be descended from the sun goddess. A grandson of the goddess, Ninigi, settled in northern Kyushu and held three sacred objects:
a mirror, a symbol of the sun
a sword, discovered in the belly of an eight-headed serpent
a jewel.
These objects became symbols of the monarchy.
In AD 794, the emperor Kammu moved the capital from Nara to Heian (modern-day Kyoto), which was to remain the capital for over 1000 years. The emperors and their court lived in a luxury not seen in western European courts until the eighteenth century. The splendours of this life were described in the world's earliest novel, The Tale of Genji, written in about 1004 by a lady of the court named Murasaki Shikibu (AD 978 to c.1016).
To maintain his rule, the emperor needed support from nobles who were sent out to manage the provinces. The nobles were allowed to keep their own armed guards for protection, and these men came to be known as bushi(warriors) or samurai (retainers). Over time the nobles became rich from crops grown on their private estates and taxes they collected and loyalty developed between the nobleman and his samurai.
During the twelfth century, there were struggles between members of the imperial family, and nobles in the provinces took the opportunity to try to seize power. The second half of the twelfth century was marked by fighting throughout Japan, as well as natural disasters such as floods, typhoons and earthquakes. The final victor in 1185 was Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147–1199).
After his victory, Yoritomo made a decision that was to influence Japan's history to the present day. Instead of making himself emperor, he asked the imperial court to recognise his power with the title seii tai-shogun (barbarian-subduing-great-general), but at the same time the emperor was to keep his symbolic position.
Both gained by this. The shogun was given legitimacy in his position rather than being recognised only for his military power, while the emperor was allowed to retain some of his prestige and given a degree of protection. It also meant that there was a line of divine authority from the emperor through the shogun to the nobles beneath him.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, much of Europe and Asia was dominated by the Mongols. The Mongol emperor Kublai Khan (1215–1294) was the grandson of the great Genghis Khan and ruled Korea and northern China. From here, he turned his attention to Japan.
Kublai Khan launched his first raid from Korea in 1274, attacking the coast of the southern island of Kyushu, which was the area closest to Korea. However, this attack failed.
In 1281, Kublai Khan sent a much larger force of about 140 000 men and thousands of ships, this time from both Korea and China. The Japanese had spent the time preparing for a new attack by:
building a stone wall around Hakata Bay
amassing a large number of troops
training these troops in the technique of group fighting used by the Mongols (traditional Japanese fighting was a one-on-one encounter).
The battle lasted for seven weeks but was brought to an end by a great storm. About half of the invaders perished. The Japanese believed this typhoon was sent by the gods and they named it kamikaze, which meant ‘divine wind’. The same name was used in World War II to describe the Japanese pilots who deliberately flew their bomb-laden planes into enemy ships.
The defeat of the Mongol invasion did not bring peace to Japan. There was a brief period when the emperor managed to reassert his power over the shogun, but during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Japan was plunged into a long period of civil war. This was also a period in which Europeans attempted to gain access to Japan: the Portuguese were first, followed by the Dutch. The muskets (guns) of the Europeans, which were more advanced than those of the Mongols, particularly impressed some of the warriors. In 1527, the warlord Odo Nobungaga won a battle in which he used 300 musketeers.
Final victory in the civil wars went to another warlord, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616). In 1603, Ieyasu revived the title of shogun, receiving the title from the emperor. The role of shogun was to remain with the Tokugawa family until 1868, giving the period its name — the Tokugawa Shogunate.
Ieyasu soon took steps to strengthen his position. The system he developed had some similarities with the feudalsystem in medieval Europe. First, Ieyasu made it clear to the emperor that the position of emperor was only a symbolic one and as shogun he had the right to approve all court appointments.
The shogun controlled about 25 per cent of the land, while the remaining 75 per cent was divided up into domainsruled by about 275 daimyo (lords). A rich daimyo with his samurai could be a threat to the ruling shogun, so Ieyasu placed many restrictions on the daimyo. For example:
they could not marry without the shogun's approval
they could not build new castles, and the shogun had to approve any repairs to existing castles
there was a limit to the number of samurai they could have
most bridges were destroyed, allowing travel only along certain pathways so that the movements of daimyo could be controlled.
-From Retroactive 1 Textbook (9.2 Early modern Japan, Emperors and Shoguns)
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