So far I have given a rough sketch of the gradations in the military régime in the territory of a daimyo. It should be here noticed that, besides the classes above stated, there were many other minor groups below the regular samurai, and that there were also diverse heterogeneities of system in the territories of different daimyo. Needless to say that the gradations and kinds of hatamoto, who were samurai serving directly under the Shogun, were far more multifarious and complex than those of the samurai under a daimyo. There is no doubt, however, that the apex of the whole military régime was the Shogun himself, while at its foundation were the sundry samurai who numbered perhaps nearly half a million families in all.
All the lands of Japan were not allotted exhaustively to the daimyo by the Shogunate. On the contrary, immense territories in various parts of the empire, amounting to four millions of koku, were reserved to the Shogun himself. Important sea-ports, such as Nagasaki, Sakai, and Niigata, rich mines like those in the province of Iwami and in the island of Sado, the vast forest of Kiso in the province of Shinano, and so forth, were kept in the hands of the Shogunate, out of economical as well as political reasons. With the income from all these agricultural and industrial resources, the Shogunate defrayed all the governmental charges and the expenses of national defence, as well as the enormous civil list of the Shogun himself, who maintained a very luxurious court. The stipend for the lower class of hatamoto, who had no land allotted to them, was paid also with the rice raised in the Shogun's domain or bought with his money and stored in Yedo. As to the fiscal system and the direct domain of a daimyo in his territory, it is needless to say that everywhere the imitation of that of the Shogun prevailed, conducted only on a smaller scale.
The relation of the Shogunate to the Emperor at Kyoto was on the whole but a continuation of the same status as in the time of Hideyoshi. Since the Fujiwara period state affairs had ceased to be conducted personally by the Emperor himself. The regent, who was at first, and ought to have been ever after, appointed during the minority or the illness of an Emperor, became identical with the highest ministerial post, and lost its extra-ordinary character. It is true that some of the able emperors, dissatisfied with such a state of things, tried to take the reins of government into their own hands again, and some succeeded for a while in the recovery of their political power, so far as their relations with the Fujiwara family were concerned. What they could recover, however, was not all of the prestige which had slipped out of the hands of their predecessors. For on account of the lassitude of the Fujiwara court-nobles, the power which they had once arrogated to themselves passed into the possession of the newly arisen warrior class, and what those emperors could recover was only a part of what still remained in the hands of the Fujiwara. The Emperor Go-Daigo was the last who tried desperately to resume the imperial prerogative once wrested from the Kamakura Shogunate, and he succeeded in his endeavour. He could not, however, prevent the advent to power of the new Shogunate of the Ashikaga. After that, through the most turbulent age in the history of Japan, which continued to the time of Hideyoshi, the imperial household could sustain itself only meagrely on the scanty income from a few estates. But however lacking in power and material resource the Emperor might have been, he still continued to be the source and fountain of honour as ever, and everybody clearly knew that he was, being held divine, indisputably higher than the Shogun, who was obliged to obey if the Emperor chose to command. What was to be regretted was that no Emperor had been strong enough to command. The saying "le roi régne, mais il ne gouverne pas" has never been accepted in our country as the constitutional principle. That the imperial prestige was never totally lost even in the depths of the turmoil of war may be proved by the fact that the Emperor often interceded in struggles between various daimyo, who waged weary and acrimonious wars against one another. The political situation of the Emperor, however, had been unsettled for a long while, only because the situation had remained for long not urgent enough to require to be made instantly clear. If it had had to be solved at once, without doubt it must have been solved in favour of the Emperor. Especially after the civil war of the Ohnin era, to restore the nominal power, of which the Shogun of the Ashikaga family was in possession, would have added nothing substantial to the real power of the then Emperor, for the Shogunate of that time was but a scapegoat in the hands of impudent and adventurous warriors. Even the prestige of the Emperor and the Shogun combined would not have sufficed to achieve anything momentous at that period, when the country had been so torn asunder as not to be easily united and pacified. What was most needed in Japan of that time was a fresh, strong, energetic military dictator.
Nobunaga, who came soon after the Ashikaga, was endued, at the height of his power, with a civil title belonging to the régime of court-nobles, and had not, until his untimely death, been invested by the Emperor with the Shogunate. Having sprung from a warrior family which had been originally subservient to one of the retainers of the Shogunate, he would perhaps have been loth himself to be looked on as an usurper even after he had ceased to assist the Shogun, who survived him. Moreover, during his whole life, it was impossible for him to become the virtual master of the whole of Japan. It was Hideyoshi, his vassal and successor, who succeeded at last in the unification of long-disturbed Japan by dint of arms. He, however, was also not invested with the Shogunate. It is said that he would have liked, indeed, to become one, but was dissuaded from it, having been reminded that he did not belong to either the Minamoto or the Taira, the two renowned warrior-families which were historically thought to be the only ones qualified to provide the generalissimo, the Shogun. After his death and the subsequent defeat of the partisans of his family in the decisive battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Iyeyasu Tokugawa, who gave himself out as the descendant of Minamoto-no-Yoshiiye, succeeded to the power as Shogun in 1603. With this political change the Emperor had really very little to do, except to give recognition to the fait accompli. The selection of Yedo by Iyeyasu as the site of the new Shogunate created a political situation like that of Kamakura by Yoritomo. It is even said that Iyeyasu himself in organising the new military régime made the system of the Kamakura Shogunate his model.
By the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, no marked change occurred in the Emperor's position as supreme sovereign of the country as ever, but the Shogunate conducted the state business as the regent entrusted with the whole care of the island Empire, so that the government at Yedo had no occasion to refer to the court at Kyoto to obtain the imperial sanction. In this respect the Shogunate of Yedo was decidedly more independent of the Imperial Court than had been the Kamakura Shogunate. Kyoto, however, continued as before to be the fountainhead of all honour. All the honours and titles of the daimyo were conferred in the name of the reigning Emperor, though through the intermediary of the Shogunate. The appellations of these distinctions were also the same as those given to court-nobles, only being comparatively low in the case of the former, if we take the real influence of the daimyo into consideration. For the emoluments of court-nobles in the time of the Tokugawa were generally very small, and the highest of them could only match materially with the middle class of the hatamoto or the high class vassals of some powerful daimyo. All the manorial estates which the court-nobles had retained until the middle of the Ashikaga period had since been occupied by warriors paramount in the respective regions, and they changed their master several times during the anarchical disorders at the end of the period, so that restitution became utterly impossible. The total amount which the Shogunate at Yedo had to pay to the court-nobles as annual honoraria was about eighty thousand koku.
The Imperial Household had a civil list amounting at first to one hundred thousand koku, which was more than three times what it had been at the time of the Ashikaga. A little later it was increased to three hundred thousand koku, and the sum remained stationary at that figure for more than half a century. Then an annual subsidy in cash between thirty and forty thousand ryô was added. The Empress had to be provided for separately. When there was an ex-Emperor or Crown Prince, then he also was entitled to a separate allowance from Yedo. If we include, therefore, the emolument paid to the court-nobles, and estimate them all together by the number of koku, the Shogunate had to pay to Kyoto an annual sum of between four and five hundred thousand. Extraordinary expenditures, such as the rebuilding of the imperial palace, were also part of the burden of the Shogunate. On the whole, the financial condition of the court at Kyoto was somewhat more straitened than that of the most powerful daimyo.
With his income as stated the Emperor maintained his court, and performed historical ceremonies, each prescribed for a certain day of a certain season. He did not need to trouble himself about state affairs, for all such matters had been delegated de facto to the Shogunate, or rather the Shogun behaved himself as if he were the sole agent of the Emperor. To have direct communication with the Emperor had been forbidden to all daimyo. The Shogun, on his part, entrusted everything concerning local affairs to the daimyo. As to the judicial procedure, that of the Shogunate was taken as the model by all daimyo. There still prevailed a great many peculiarities in each particular territory in the ways of legislation and its enforcement, so that Japan of that time presented a most motley aspect as regards legal matters, like France under the ancient régime. The power of the daimyo to impose taxes and raise contributions was restricted by no explicit law, and therefore had been exercised rather arbitrarily. When in financial stress, he could freely make applications, approaching to commands, to some of his well-to-do subjects, whatever the cause of his pecuniary embarrassment might be. Besides he could coin money, if its use were limited to his own territory. No need to say that notes were also abundantly issued by his treasurer for circulation within his territory as substitutes for the legal tender. In time of peace the samurai under a daimyo served their lord in his territorial government as civil officials. They, however, being warriors by nature, had to be constantly trained in military arts, with various weapons, among which swords and spears were preferred as the most practical. Archery had not been abandoned entirely, and the bow and arrow was still held to be the emblem of the noble calling of warriors, but this sort of weapon had never been used on battle-fields since the beginning of the Tokugawa period, so that the art had become on the whole ceremonial. The use of fire-arms introduced at the end of the Ashikaga epoch became rapidly general all over the country. Gunners were employed, as archers formerly had been, in opening a battle, and then made way for the attack of the infantry. Shooting was considered in the Tokugawa period to be more practical than archery, but as there was little space for showing personal bravery In the practice of this art, it was not highly encouraged among the samurai. Though fighting on horseback had not been prevalent on the battle-field since the middle Ashikaga, commanders at least continued to ride, so that horsemanship was a requisite art of the samurai in the Tokugawa age, especially among its higher grades. It should be here well noticed the jûjutsu, which is now very celebrated all over the world as a military art originated and cultivated by the Japanese, did not much attract the attention of the orthodox Tokugawa warriors, for it was thought to be an art useful in arresting culprits, and therefore good only for lower samurai or those below them in rank, who were generally in charge of the police business in all territories.
With such military accomplishments, the samurai of the period were to serve their territorial master in time of war as leaders and fighters, for it was still the age in which all warriors were expected to display a personal bravery, parallel to their ability to lead and command troops, as in medieval Europe. As there had been neither external nor civil war, however, for more than two centuries since the semi-religious insurrection at Shimabara in Kyushu was subdued in the year 1638, war was prepared for only as an imaginary possibility, and not as a probable emergency. The samurai of all territories, therefore, though said to be on a constant war footing, were not trained as they should have been. We see indeed the division of them into fighting groups and the appointment of a leader for each group in times of peace. But there was no manœuvring nor any training of a like kind in tactical movements. The only military exercise approaching it was the hunting of wild game or the sham hunting which ended in cruelly sacrificing dogs, and even these sports were not practised frequently. That those pieces of Japanese armour, which foreigners can now see in many museums in Europe and America, had been long found to be a sort of thing rather inconvenient to wear in this country, yet had nevertheless continued to be a furniture indispensable to every household of samurai and to be embellished with an exquisite workmanship, proves how academically war had been regarded in those far-off days. It can be easily gathered from the above statement that the samurai of the time were more civil functionaries than fighting men. Their real status, however, being warriors and not civilians, they were constantly subjected to martial law. They had to serve their master always with all their might, holding themselves responsible with their lives, as if they were on the battlefield facing the enemy. Many examples may be cited from the history of the age of samurai suicides, committed on account of some misdemeanour or the mismanagement of the civil administration confided to him. In effect, an armed peace reigned throughout the Empire.