Table Of ContentLessons from History
Lessons from History
The Tokushi Yoron
by Arai Hakuseki
Translation & Commentary
by Joyce Ackroyd
University of Queensland Press
St Lucia • London • New York
o University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland 1982
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study,
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This book has been accepted in the Japanese Series of the Translations Collection of
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publûation data
Arai, Hakuseki, 1657-1725.
[Tokushi y or on. English].
Lessons from history.
For tertiary students.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 07022 1485 x.
1. Japan — History — To 1600. I. Ackroyd, J.I.
(Joyce Irene). II. Title.
952\01
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Arai, Hakuseki, 1657-1725.
Tokushi yoron.
Translation of: Tokushi yoron.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Japan - History - To 1600. I. Ackroyd, J.I.
(Joyce Irene).
DS850.A713 952 81-11707
ISBN 0-7022-1485-X AACR2
To my husband
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Professor Furukawa Tesshi, formerly of the University of
Tokyo, who kindly read the manuscript and discussed a number of problems
with me. Thanks are also due to my colleagues Mrs M. Bulmer and Miss
Yamada Akiko for their devoted assistance in finding material, and to Dr
Ernst Wolff, formerly of the University of Illinois, who not only recommended
Kemper’s monograph to my notice but saved me all effort by supplying a
translation from the German. I remember the spirited debates on Japanese
history I enjoyed at the Australian National University with Miss Oyama
Atsuko. Even more memorable was a two and a half hour discussion with
Professor Miyazaki Michio at the Kokugakuin University in Tokyo. It gives
me pleasure to record the encouragement of my husband, from whose
refreshing approach to clear English I derived no litde benefit. I take full
responsibility for my judgements, which were in all cases my own.
Contents
Acknowledgements vz
Introduction ix
Note on Translation /v
Lessons from History 1
General Discussion of How in Japan the Ruling Power
Changed Nine Times and Then Came into the Hands
of the Military Houses and of How the Military
Government, too, Changed Five Times up to the
Present Day 3
BOOK 1 7
First Change: The Beginnings of the Period of Child Rulers
and Sesshô and The Institution by the Fujiwara of a
Family Academy 9
Second Change: The Origin of the Office of Kampaku and
of the Deposition of the Emperor 12
The Administration of the Three Emperors Uda, Daigo,
and Murakami without a Sesshô or Kampaku, with The
Incident of Kanjôshô 14
Third Change: The Arbitrary Rule of the Members of the
Sesshö’s House for a Space of Eight Generations from
Reizei on, with the Beginning of Calling Emperors
after their Palaces 20
Fourth Change: The Emperor Go-Sanjö Restrains the
Power of the Sesshô 32
Fifth Change: The Administration of Retired
Emperors 38
Sixth Change: Control of the Empire by the Minamoto
Shoguns 73
viii Contents
Seventh Change: The Höjö as Sub-Vassals Control the
Government for Nine Generations, with The Division
of the Imperial Line and the Establishment of the Five
Branches of the Sesshö House 84
Eighth Change: The Restoration of Imperial Rule under
Go-Daigo 104
Ninth Change: The Division of the Southern and Northern
Courts 105
BOOK 2 109
How in Ancient Times the Emperor Had Charge of
Military Operations 111
How, from the Middle Ages on, the Office of Commander-
General Became Hereditary 116
The Three Ages of Minamoto Yoritomo and His
Sons 128
The Hereditary Control of the Empire of by the
Höjö 161
The Administration under the Restoration of
Go-Daigo 179
BOOK 3 197
The Establishment of the Emperor of the Northern Court
by Ashikaga Takauji and the Shogunate of the
Successive Generations of the Muromachi House 199
The Administration of Oda Nobunaga 290
The Supremacy of Toyotomi Hideyoshi 299
Appendix 1 Manuscripts 302
Appendix 2 Inscriptions on Manuscripts and Excerpt
from Letter to Sakuma Dögan 306
Appendix 3 Sources 309
Appendix 4 Author’s Bibliography 313
Appendix 5 Historical Survey 320
Appendix 6 Antiquities 333
Notes 347
Bibliography 391
Tables 395
Maps and Plans 402
Index 411
Introduction
Tokushi Yororty for which I suggest the English title “Lessons from History”, was
set down in preliminary form in 1712 by the celebrated Japanese Confucianist
Arai Hakuseki and is regarded as the highest development of historical writing
in pre-modem Japan. It has not previously been translated into a foreign
language.!
The Author
Arai Hakuseki was bom in 1657 in roughly thrown up quarters in Yanagihara
(Kanda) about three weeks after the Great Meireki Fire had destroyed half of
Edo and taken a hundred thousand lives.2 He was nicknamed “Son-of-Fire”.
His father, Masanari, was a petty official in the employ of Tsuchiya
Toshinao, a daimyo of twenty-one thousand kokuZ at Kururi in Kazusa. He
was a metsuke, or surveillance officer, but seems to have wielded greater power
than normally belonged to that office. During his lord’s annual visits to his fief,
Masanari virtually controlled his household in Edo in concert with his
stewards, and while Toshinao was a warden of Sumpu Castle in 1645, took
charge of the administration in Kazusa. To this responsible position he had
risen rather late in life and from the lowest rank, for not till he was thirty-one
had he obtained employment in Toshinao’s service, and then only as a humble
foot-soldier. Before that he had been a rohm, or unemployed samurai, and he
had prospered in the clan entirely through his own merit and assiduity.
He was the model samurai, a type already obsolescent at this time. A
capable fighting-man, he cherished his sword as the supreme expression of his
personality. He had grown up in the immediate post-war period, and he loved
to tell his son stories of the chivalrous old days, inculcating that sense of the
samurai’s self-esteem that he himself possessed in full measure.
He adhered to a spartan discipline in his daily round, exhibiting at all times
an almost superhuman self-control. He served his lord devotedly, regardless of
personal cost, meticulously observing the samurai code. By his regard for
other men’s honour, he obliged them, too, to live up to it.
Introduction
X
Hakuseki’s mother—well educated, devout, and dutiful—was her husband’s ¥
female counterpart. She was forty-two and his father fifty-seven when he was
bom—a formidable pair—and judging from the admiring portraits Hakuseki
gives of them in his memoirs, their strong characters made a profound
impression on him: he tells us how he strove to put his father’s precepts into
practice, particularly those enjoining perseverance.
Hakuseki was an infant prodigy and received a full measure of adult
adulation, but he did suffer from certain handicaps. Until he was twenty or so,
apart from training in calligraphy, he had little formal education, and in this
he was a victim of the generation gap.
It was an age of increasingly setded peace under the fourth Tokugawa
shogun, Ietsuna, when the transformation of the samurai into a bureaucrat was
well under way. The revival of learning—specifically Confucian and historical
studies—had elevated scholarship above martial arts in the curriculum for the
gifted and ambitious. At the same time, the economic status of the samurai,
now a pure consumer when the living standard was rising and commerce and
agriculture developing, was already deteriorating by comparison with classes
inferior in social status. Additionally, frequent confiscation and transfer of
fiefs and reductions of daimyos’ incomes by a wary and jealous government
meant unemployment was never an unlikely threat: the rônin had become a
permanent feature of feudal society., All this sharpened the struggle for
survival.
Hakuseki, brilliant and keen to distinguish himself, thirsted after
knowledge, while at the same time showing promising aptitude for soldierly
pursuits. He seized every opportunity to learn from anyone who had even a
litde scholarship and took an interest in him—sitting in on readings from the
Taiheiki, learning Chinese poems by heart, copying out the temple elementary
primer Teikin Orai, worrying out the meaning of the Hsiao-hsüeh, borrowing
the Okina Mondö, and practising the composition of poetry and prose.4
But his father and the conservative friends with whom he took counsel gave
a gloomy estimate of his chances of becoming a scholar, because of the family’s
restricted financial circumstances. For this, and the selfish reason that
Toshinao liked to have him by his side, Hakuseki was not entered upon any
regular course of study. However, his enthusiasm for Confucian learning
thoroughly whetted, he continued his studies in secret, confiding only in his
mother because of the difficulty of obtaining books, most of which were either
borrowed or copied out with his own hand.
It is plain that however well Hakuseki had prospered in the Tsuchiya
House, in such a restricted sphere he would never have amounted to much,
for Toshinao was but a minor daimyo who because of poor health lived much
retired. The clan itself was doomed, for Toshinao’s son, Yorinao, was a
profligate and on bad terms with his father. Hakuseki, Toshinao’s favourite, in
particular had no future to look forward to after the death of his kind patron
and, aware of this, had long intended to try his fortunes in the service of some
other lord. Dissension between those for and against Yorinao had threatened
to erupt in bloodshed as early as 1674; after Toshinao’s death in 1675 it finally
led to an abortive move to depose his successor. Among the consequences,
