The expedition of Yoshihisa was an epoch-making event in the history of our country. To support by military power the courtiers, whose cup had already begun to run over and whose interests could not be always consistent with the welfare of the Shogunate, was evidently a quixotic attempt. Still it cannot be disputed that Yoshihisa fought at least for an ideal, however unrealisable it might have been. He reminds us of the scions of the Hohenstaufen who fought in Italy for the imperial ideal traditional in their family. The failure of the expedition into Ohmi meant the utter impossibility of the restoration of the courtiers' prestige and the approach of the total disappearance of the manorial system from the islands of Japan. This is a mighty economical change for the empire, the importance of which could not be overvalued. The old régime initiated by the reform of the Taikwa was going down to its grave, and new Japan was beginning to dawn side by side with the momentous political disintegration of the country. We see, indeed, simultaneous with this political and economical change, the transformation of various factors of civilisation, preparing themselves for the coming age. The first turning of the wheel of history, however, depended on the political regeneration of the country by a master-hand.
CHAPTER IX
END OF MEDIAEVAL JAPAN
In order to see a nation consolidated, it is necessary not only to have a nucleus serving as a centre, towards which the whole nation might converge, but to have at the same time the centralising power of that nucleus strengthened sufficiently to hold the nation solid and compact. Moreover, the constituent parts of that nation ought to have the capacity to respond to the action emanating from that common centre or nucleus towards those parts, and facilitate the reciprocal relation between the centralising and the centralised. More than that. There must be formed strong links between those component parts themselves towards one another. For if each part be linked only to a common centre and estranged from other parts, then there is a great danger of the breaking asunder of the whole, however strong the centralising force of that nucleus might be, and in case of the debilitation of that sole centre, there might remain no other force alive to keep the constituent parts compactly together. To impart, however, the consolidating force to those component parts, they should be instituted each as a separate organism. In other words, unless those parts constitute themselves each in an organic social and political body, provided with the power of acting within and without, they cannot form any close connection among themselves and with the central nucleus; and to be provided with such a power, or to become an organism, each part, too, must have in its turn its own nucleus, around which the rest of that part might converge. To speak summarily, for a strong centralisation there must be, besides one nucleus, or nucleus of the first order, a certain number of nuclei of the second or minor order, and sometimes there must be nuclei of the third and lower orders.
It might be deduced from what is said above that without a sufficient number of local centres, that is to say, without the existence of well-developed minor political organisms, the political centre, however powerful it might be, would not be able to hold a country together, lacking cohesion between those constituent parts. Japan had long been in such a disorderly state which continued until the middle of the Ashikaga period, that is to say, the middle of the fifteenth century. The political influence of Kamakura, though independent of Kyoto, was of very short duration, and Kyoto had continued on the whole as the sole political and social centre. If there had been in the provinces a place worthy to be called a city, besides Kamakura, it could only be sought in Hakata on the northern coast of Kyushu. Other places were hardly to be termed cities, being but little more than sites of periodical fairs at the utmost. The growth of the cities of Sakai and Yamaguchi is of rather later origin, dating from the middle of the Ashikaga age. The Emperor, the Shogun, and one metropolitan city had dominated the whole of the country for a long time, so that, superficially observed, Japan could be said to have been superbly centralised, and therefore excellently unified. In reality, however, the prestige of the Emperor declined, as well as the military power of the Shogunate, and Kyoto, the site of the imperial court and of the military government, lost the political influence it once had possessed. After all, nothing was found influential enough in the earlier Ashikaga age to serve by itself as a means of solidifying the nation, while there had not yet been formed those minor provincial centres around which communities of lesser magnitude might crystallise. Manors, which were the remnants of the former ages, were of course a kind of agricultural communities, and could be considered as social and economical units, but they were politically dependent on their proprietors living in Kyoto or somewhere else outside of those manors, and in cultural respects most of the manors counted almost for nothing. All Japan was thus thrown into a state of chaos, when the military power of the Ashikaga Shogunate was reduced to impotence.
This chaotic period of Japanese history has been generally considered as the retrogressive age of our civilisation, quite in the same sense in which the medieval age in European history has come to be designated as the Dark Ages. It is a great mistake, however, to stigmatise the Ashikaga period as having witnessed no progress in any cultural factor, just as it has been a fatal misconception of early European historians to think that medieval Europe was indeed dark in every cultural respect. Though the classicism of the former ages might seem a civilisation of a far higher stage when compared with the vulgarised culture of the later, or so-called Dark Age, yet the vulgarisation should not be necessarily branded as a backward movement of civilisation. The vulgarisation at least accompanies a wider propagation, a deeper permeation, and the better adaptation to the real social condition of the time, and should not be looked down upon as an absolutely decadent process. In the seemingly anarchical period of the early Ashikaga, Japan had been undergoing, in sooth, an important change in social and cultural respects. Nay, even politically a change of mighty consequence was in course of evolution. Having reached an extreme state of disorder, a germ of fresh order was gradually forming itself out of necessity. That the shugo of this period held sway over a district far more extensive than the land held by any of the shugo of the Kamakura period, is in a sense a remarkable political progress. Yamana, one of the most powerful of the Ashikaga shugo, is said to have possessed about one-sixth of the whole of Japan, and on that account was called Lord One-sixth. Such great feudatories were never possible in the Kamakura period. Most of these grand lords, though living mainly in Kyoto, as was stated in the previous chapter, had their provincial residences, which, too, were not so unpretentious as those of the djito of the Kamakura. Each lord maintained princely state, and around his court, a thriving social life must have grown up, making the beginning of the modern Japanese provincial towns. The governmental sites of the daimyo or feudatories of the Tokugawa period generally find the origin of their urban development in these residences of the shugo of the Ashikaga period.
The trade with China was another cause of the growth of modern Japanese cities, especially of those which are situated by the sea, such as Sakai, Osaka, Nagasaki, and this development of the maritime commercial cities led naturally to the general advancement of the humanistic culture of our country. Our intercourse with China, the fountain-head of the culture of the East, though it had been suspended between the governments since the end of the ninth century, had never been abandoned entirely, and merchant ships had continued to ply between the two countries almost without interruption. During the Kamakura Shogunate too, we have reason to suppose that this steady intercourse livened into considerable activity and bustling profitable to both sides, China, at that epoch of our history, being governed by the Sung and the Yuan dynasties successively. Sanetomo, the second son of Yoritomo and the third Shogun in Kamakura, was said to have built a ship in order to cross over to that country. The port then trading with China was Hakata, and the privileged ships, which were limited in number, must have been under the care and protection of the Shogunate. Those ships carried on board not only commodities of exchange, but passengers also, who were mostly priests. Some of the ships even appear to have been sent solely for trade in behalf of certain Buddhist temples. In this we see again the singular coincidence between the histories of Europe and of Japan. The Levantine trade of the Italian cities in the age of the Crusades counted among its participators many churches and priests also. It is needless to say that those Japanese priests, who went abroad accompanying adventurous merchants and came back loaded with profound religious knowledge, did at the same time conspicuous service in promoting the general culture of our country. What was most remarkable, however, was that there were not a few Chinese Buddhists, who came over to this country and settled here. Their main purpose was of course to propagate the doctrine of the Zen sect, which had got the upper hand in China at that time. They were cordially welcomed by the Shogunate, and later by the Imperial Court too, and were installed in the noted temples of Kamakura and Kyoto as chief priests, and besides their religious activities, these learned men contributed much toward the introduction of contemporary Chinese civilisation in general, in no less degree than did the Japanese priests. Among the various departments of knowledge which these priests imparted to the warriors and courtiers, one of the most important was instruction in the pure Chinese classics and in secular literature. There are still extant in our country not a small number of rare books printed in the Sung and the Yuan dynasty and imported hither at that time, and these manifest how rich in variety were the books then introduced to Japan. The founding of the famous library at Kanazawa near Kamakura, by a learned member of the Hôjô family in a time not far distant from that of the Mongolian invasion, may perhaps be attributed to the influence of some of these priests.
Without doubt the invasion of the Mongolian host put a momentary stop to this mutual intercourse. It seems, however, that the trade with China was revived soon after the war, and continued down to the time of the Ashikaga, without being interrupted materially even by the long civil war. Far from cessation or interruption, the official intercourse between the two states which had been broken off for some years was during this civil war restored to its former amicable condition. It was while the internecine strife was raging over the whole of the island Empire, that a change of dynasty took place in China. The Mongols were driven away to their original abode in the desert, and in their place reigned in China the new dynasty of the Ming, founded by a general of Chinese blood. This founder of the Ming sent an embassy to Japan to announce the inauguration of his line and to secure the coast of his empire from inroads and pillage by Japanese pirates, who, since several centuries, had been ravaging the Korean and then the Chinese coast, and became especially rampant during the civil war, being let loose by the unexampled lawless state of our country. The ambassador of the Chinese emperor, however, could not at once reach Kyoto, which was his destination. For at that time in Kyushu ruled an imperial prince who was a scion of the branch antagonistic to that which reigned in the metropolis supported by the Ashikaga, and the prince-governor, as he was then the master of the historic trading port of Hakata, intercepted the Chinese ambassador on his way, received him, and sent him back. This happened in the year 1369. Seven years afterwards this very prince sent an envoy to the Chinese government, perhaps with the object of obtaining some material assistance from beyond the sea, in order to make himself strong enough to overpower his enemy in Japan, the Ashikaga party. As the sender was a prince of the blood imperial, the envoy sent by him seems to have been regarded as if he were the representative of the real government of Japan, and the intercourse between the two countries thus began to take official form again. When the civil war ended in the ultimate victory of the Ashikaga party and the annihilation of all its opponents, this international relation initiated by the prince of Kyushu was taken up by Yoshimitsu, the third Shogun of the Ashikaga, who sent an embassy to the Chinese government of the Ming in the year 1401. After this we see successive exchanges of embassies between the Chinese government and our Ashikaga Shogunate, the latter vouchsafing the orderliness of our trading people on the Chinese coast and promising to bridle the piratical activities of our adventurers, and the former giving in return munificent presents to the Shogunate. At that time what our forefathers suffered most from was the scarcity of coins, for although the beginning of the coinage in our country is so old that it has been lost in the remotest past, yet for a long period not enough care was exercised to provide the country with sufficient money in coins of different denominations to cover the necessities of the growing industries. No wonder that the presents of copper coins by the emperors of the Ming were gladly received by the Shogunate, and this Chinese money, together with that obtained by sale of our commodities, was in wide circulation throughout Japan, many of them having remained to this day, and served as auxiliary coins. Among other things of Chinese provenance earnestly coveted by us, perhaps the most desired were books. Besides these two articles, copper coins and books, many rarities and useful commodities must have been imported by these ships, which carried the envoys on board, and rendered a not insignificant service in altering for the better the general ways of living of the people of our country.