Home Life in Tokyo

by Jukichi Inouye

TOKYO is the youngest of the great capitals of the world, for it was only in 1868 that the present Emperor of Japan left the old city where his ancestors had for centuries lived in seclusion and made the Shogun’s stronghold his new home and seat of government. It was a politic move; because though the Shogun had already resigned his office and surrendered the absolute authority he had exercised in the government of the country, there were still many among his followers who were unwilling to give up their hereditary offices. Had the Emperor then remained in Kyoto and there established his government, it would have been comparatively easy for these discontented partisans of the Shogun to foment an insurrection in the largest city of the Empire, which might assume serious proportions before it could be quelled, especially in those days when the means of communication and transportation were yet very primitive. Hence, it was decided to remove the central government to the possible hot-bed of disaffection and, by the strong arm of the newly-constituted administration, to nip in the bud all signs of rebellion. And so the Emperor and his Court forsook the city which had been the nominal capital for a thousand years and took up their abode in the great military centre which was known as Yedo; but when the Emperor arrived at the old castle of the Shogun, he gave it the name of Tokyo, or the Eastern Capital, to distinguish it from the late capital, Kyoto, which is on that account also spoken of by the people as Saikyo, or the Western Capital.

But Yedo itself was not very old. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a renowned warrior, Ota Dokan by name, built a little castle in the village of Yedo. Not long after his death, his family became extinct and others succeeded to the lordship of the little castle. A century later, Tokugawa Iyeyasu, one of the most powerful daimyo, or territorial lords, at the time, became master of the Eight Provinces east of the Hakone Mountains and was on the point of establishing his government at Kamakura, the capital of the first line of Shogun, when he was persuaded by his suzerain, the Taiko Hideyoshi, who is best known to history for his invasion of Korea, to set up his headquarters at Dokan’s castle-town which possessed great strategic advantages over Kamakura. Accordingly, in 1590, Iyeyasu came to the village of Yedo and saw that the castle could be developed into a formidable fortress. At once he set to work rebuilding it on a gigantic scale. Bounded on the north and west by a low line of hills, on the south by the Bay of Yedo, and on the east by marshes, it was in those days of bows and arrows and hand-to-hand fights almost impregnable. Behind the hills lay the wide plain of Musashino, across which no enemy could approach unobserved, while it was equally difficult to make a sudden attack upon the castle from the sea or over the marshes. The castle covered upwards of five hundred acres within its inner walls. The swamp was reclaimed, and merchants, artisans, priests, and men of other crafts and professions were induced by liberal offers to settle in the new city. The reclaimed land soon became the principal merchant quarter.

In 1603, Iyeyasu became Shogun, or military suzerain of the country. The Shogun was appointed by the Emperor, who delegated to him the civil and military government of the land. The Emperor made the appointment nominally of his own will; but in reality he was compelled to confer the title on the most powerful of his subjects. It was to Iyeyasu but a confirmation of the influence he already wielded as the most formidable of all the territorial barons. And thus fortified by the Imperial nomination, he began at once to take measures for the general pacification of the country which had for years been plunged in a terrible civil war. His first step was to consolidate his power; and it was done with such success that the Shogunate remained in his family for two hundred and sixty-five years. This predominance of his family was in a great measure due to his skill in providing against those evils which had wrecked former lines of Shogun. All these dynasties had fallen through coalitions of powerful daimyo in different parts of the country and the consequent inability to cope with insurrections which broke out simultaneously in various quarters. To prevent such coalitions Iyeyasu created small fiefs around the territories of great daimyo and gave them to his own adherents, who acted as spies upon these daimyo and frustrated any attempts they might make at conspiracy. The territories along the great highway between Yedo and Kyoto he also apportioned among his followers, so that he had always a ready access to the Emperor’s city and could without difficulty control every movement of the Imperial Court. Another plan he formed towards the same end, though it was not actually carried out until the time of his grandson. This was the compulsory residence of the daimyo in Yedo for a certain term every other year; the time for reaching and leaving the city was fixed for each daimyo by the Shogun’s government. Their wives, with rare exceptions, remained permanently in Yedo and were practically hostages at the Shogun’s court.

The effect of this last measure was the increased prosperity of Yedo. All the daimyo were compelled to keep a house in the city. They built most of their palaces around the castle, and in the same enclosures were erected numerous houses for their retainers. Many daimyo had one or more mansions in the suburbs, not a few of which were noted for their size and their beautiful grounds. The most celebrated of these mansions is now the Imperial Arsenal, the garden of which is one of the sights of Tokyo; and another forms a part of the Palace of the Crown Prince and is also the place where the Imperial chrysanthemum party is given every autumn. The building of the daimyo’s mansions, the number of these lords being at the time about two hundred and fifty, naturally attracted merchants, artisans, and other classes of people from all parts of the country. And Yedo rose before long to be the most flourishing city in Japan. It set the example to all the other cities of the Empire, for the daimyo copied in their own castle-towns all that they found to their taste during their forced sojourn in Yedo. This leading position which the Shogun’s city held in the feudal days has been retained even in an increased measure by the capital of New Japan.

Some idea of the prosperity of Yedo may be formed from the fabulous accounts of its wealth current among the country-people, who believed that in the main streets of the city land was worth its weight in gold. But a more definite proof is to be found in the computations which were made from time to time with respect to its population. Estimates based upon official records in the early years of the Shogunate are very incomplete. Thus, we are told that there were in 1634, 35,419 citizen householders and twenty-three years later, as many as 68,051, which would give a citizen population, at the rate of 4.2 persons per household, of 148,719 and 285,814 respectively, an increase which is obviously too great for so short an interval. The first trustworthy computation is probably that for the year 1721, when the citizens and their families were said to aggregate about half a million and the military class, with their servants, were put at a little over a quarter of a million. Priests, street-vendors, and beggars with whom the city swarmed did not most likely fall much below fifty thousand, so that we may without any great error take the total population at eight hundred thousand. More than a century later, in 1843, that is, a few years before the outbreak of the dissensions which finally broke up the feudal government, the total population was calculated from similar sources at 1,300,000, of which 300,000 or nearly one quarter, belonged to the military class. Old European travellers put the population of Yedo at various figures ranging from a million and a half to three millions, but the above computation is probably as near the truth as we can hope to get; and in view of the fact that Yedo was a dozen years later torn by factions and was practically in a state of civil war, we may safely conclude that its population never exceeded that calculated for the year 1843.

In the above-mentioned estimate the military population of Yedo is put at 300,000. It was computed in the following manner:—There were in the country two hundred and sixty-seven daimyo, every one of whom had two or more mansions in Yedo. The total number of their retainers and servants, with their families, in fact, of all who depended for their subsistence upon these barons, was calculated at over 137,000. The immediate feudatories of the Shogun who all lived in Yedo, numbered 22,000; and they, with their families and servants, made up 160,000. From these figures the great influence wielded by the samurai in Yedo may be readily inferred.

Though Yedo thus prospered and the Shogun’s rule there seemed firmly established while thousands of samurai were ready to lay down their lives for his welfare, contentment was far from universal in the country. Some of the great daimyo whose ancestors had submitted to Iyeyasu only because of his overwhelming power, would have gladly raised the standard against his descendants if they had seen any chance of success; they knew that two centuries and a half of peace had enervated the Shogun’s court and luxurious habits corrupted his government and that it would not be a difficult task to crush him if they could form a coalition against him. But as yet they did not know whom to trust among their fellow-daimyo, and discontent smouldered ready to burst out at the first opportunity.

And that opportunity came in good time. The arrival of Commodore Perry’s squadron and the subsequent conclusion of treaties by the Shogun with the foreign powers are matters of history. Centuries of isolation had lured the nation into the belief that it could for ever remain free from all contact with the outside world; the treaties, therefore, came upon it as a rude awakening from its long-cherished dream, and the possible consequences of the opening of the country to foreign trade and intercourse naturally aroused all its fears. A strong agitation arose in denunciation of the Shogun’s act to which the Emperor’s sanction had not yet been given, and when orders came from Kyoto to abrogate the new treaties, the enemies of the Yedo government saw their opportunity; they turned to the sovereign who lived hidden from public gaze in his palace and knew that the salvation of their country could be brought only by the Emperor coming to his own again and assuming the direct government of his people. Leaders among these loyalists were the clans of Satsuma and Choshu, two of the most powerful in Japan, which were later joined by those of Hizen and Tosa, and many others. The Shogun did his utmost to suppress these risings; but being at length convinced, by his utter failure, of his own powerlessness, he resigned his office in 1867 and restored the reins of government into the hands of his sovereign.

The Emperor thereupon made Yedo his capital and to it flocked the men who had helped to overthrow the Shogun’s government. The small bands of the latter’s adherents who still offered resistance were soon overcome. The national government was reorganised by men from the loyal clans. Though the Shogun had been denounced for his friendly attitude towards foreigners, the new government was even more cordially disposed towards them. The truth is that though the Shogun’s enemies were at first all for the expulsion of foreigners out of the country, wiser heads among them soon came to understand that it would not be possible to get rid of these unwelcome visitors and return to the old state of isolation. This conviction was especially brought home to the great clans of Satsuma and Choshu when Kagoshima, the chief town of the former, and Shimonoseki, the seaport of the latter, were bombarded for outrages upon Europeans, one by a British fleet in 1863 and the other by combined squadrons of Great Britain, France, Holland, and the United States in the following year; and they saw that the only way for their country to preserve her independence and secure a footing in the comity of nations was to be as strong as those powers and advance in that path of civilisation which had given them such a commanding position in the world. But so long as the Shogunate stood, they let the anti-foreign agitation take its course; when, however, it fell and the way was cleared for a reorganised government, they set to remodelling it on western lines. Then commenced that process of national renovation which has astonished the world.