Shogun - what is it? Shogun rule in Japan

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:40

Japanese civilization is considered quite young. Despite the fact that the Japanese islands began to be settled more than one millennium ago, the unification of people in a conglomeration of tribes there occurred only in the second century BC. A semblance of statehood appeared here only in the third century AD, when the union of the Yamato tribes was able to subjugate the rest of the nationalities and become the largest. Gradually, the power of the Yamato clan became like that of a king, and their rulers began to call themselves emperors (“tenno”). Another term, "shogun" (rather, it is the ruler - the supreme commander), came into use centuries later.

The ancient origin of the samurai

In Japan in the 6th-7th centuries, the bulk of the population was represented by peasants, there were also slaves and inferior citizens of Japanese society, often consisting of Chinese and Koreans. The peasants were subjected to rather impressive taxes in the form of food and cash rent, were sent to work and in factwere attached to the ground. To combat peasant protests, the feudal lords created detachments of specially trained warriors - samurai, and the administrative power in the country belonged to the nobility, which mainly belonged to the same family as the supreme ruler.

The first shogunate in Japanese history

Japanese shoguns officially appeared in the 11th century AD. On the territory of the Land of the Rising Sun, groups of military feudal lords began to form, among which Taira and Minamoto stood out. They unleashed a civil war of 1180-1185, during which battles took place throughout the island of Honshu. On both sides of the front, hundreds of thousands of military groups acted here, civilians died, monasteries were ruined. The winner was the Minamoto clan, whose representative, Yoritomo, appropriated the title of "sei tai shogun" in 1192 - this meant "commander-in-chief, conquering the barbarians." This is how the shogunate appeared in the history of Japan.

It is noteworthy that the civil war in Japan of that period was actually won not by Yoritomo, but by his brother, Yoshitsune, who was expelled from the palace due to the suspicion of the ruler. According to some legends, Yoshitsune fled from Japan to the mainland, where he took the name "Genghis Khan", according to others, he committed suicide. Also interesting is the legend that Yoritomo's death after falling from a horse occurred due to the fact that the horse reared up when he saw the ghost of Yoshitsune.

The term came from China

If the Japanese are asked: "Explain the terms "shogun", "taishogun", etc., then the answers may be enoughvaried. The fact is that the very concept came to Japan from China, where it was spread in the form of “taiki shogun”, which can be translated as “commander of a big tree”. According to legend, the prominent Chinese commander Hyo-I was so modest that when his victories were spoken about publicly, he ran away under a big tree so as not to listen to praise addressed to him.

In Japanese chronicles, the word "shogun" with various prefixes is mentioned in the 7th-8th centuries AD, including:

• fukusegun - "deputy commander";
• taishogun - “great commander” (two prefixes divided the holders of positions into higher and lower in rank);
• tinteki shogun is a commander who conquered the barbarians of the West;
• just a shogun - the winner of the barbarians of the East;
• tinju shogun - peacemaker commander.

The title was first subject to return

In those days, the bearer of such a title was simply a high-ranking official who led the army or part of it, or a messenger. The title was given for the duration of the military campaign, and then returned to the emperor. The ancient ceremony of "initiation" involved the announcement of a normative act on this occasion (an edict) and the presentation of a ceremonial sword in the imperial palace. Later, the procedure was somewhat modified. For example, for elderly representatives it was allowed not to come to the palace in Kyoto for an audience, and in the 14-19 centuries the edict was brought to the shogun “at home”. In response, he filled the box from the edict with golden sand, returned it to the imperial ambassador and promised to follow the "brightexample" of Lord Yoritomo Minamoto.

A two-year-old child could become Shogun

The rule of the shoguns in Japan lasted from 1192 until the Meiji revolution. During this period, the supreme commander passed on his power by inheritance and combined the highest state posts, while the power of the emperor was rather ceremonial-nominal. From the deceased Yoritomo Minamoto, power passed to the regents of his son, the Hojo clan.

After the cessation of the Minamoto line in the male line, the Japanese shoguns, perhaps for the only time in history, included in their number a child from the Fujiwara clan, who was appointed to the highest public office of that time at the age of two.

The Kamakura shogunate brought the national flag to Japan

The first shogunate in Japan had the city of Kamakura as its capital, hence the name of the Kamakura shogunate. This historical period was characterized by internecine strife and the dominance of representatives of the samurai - "service people", who made up the military-feudal class of petty nobles who guarded and served their "daimyo". Then, due to the intervention of natural forces, Japan managed to repel two invasions of the Mongols (1281 and 1274) and acquire a national flag, which, according to legend, was transferred to the shogunate by the Buddhist Patriarch Nichiren.

Feudal divisions

Minamoto Yoritomo, the shogun (the photo of the painting depicting him is presented above), after the end of the war, appointed military governors to each province, which over timetime they accumulated significant military forces and concentrated land plots in their hands. At the same time, Japan established profitable trade relations with China and Korea, which led to the enrichment of the feudal lords in the southeast.

The feudal lords at the Kamakura headquarters did not like such processes, which led to conflicts and the transfer of power to the Ashikaga clan. Representatives of the latter moved from the ruined Kamakura to Kyoto, closer to the imperial palace, where they spent too much money to compete with the pomp of the court nobility. State affairs were in a state of neglect, which led to the activation of military governors in other parts of the country and a new stage of the civil war.

The rule of the shoguns in Japan in 1478-1577 was again accompanied by military conflicts between almost all provinces, which brought the empire to the brink of complete collapse in the middle of the 16th century. However, there was a "daimyo" - a representative of the elite among the samurai (Nobunaga), who subjugated the center of the country with the capital Kyoto, defeated large feudal lords and nurtured a talented general in his ranks - Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Shogun could become a peasant

This uneducated, but enterprising and sensible native of a peasant family, after the death of representatives of the Nobunaga clan, completed the unification of Japan (in 1588). Thus, a representative of the non-aristocratic class actually received the title of "shogun". At first glance, this blurred the boundaries between the classes, but Hideyoshi himself confirmed by edict all the privileges of the samurai and even led a campaign to confiscate weapons.(swords) from the peasantry.

Subsequent Japanese shoguns, but from the Tokugawa clan, ruled Japan for almost a quarter of a millennium. The fact is that Hideyoshi transferred power to his son, who was a minor and subject to guardianship. It was from among the guardians that Tokugawa Ieyasu stood out, who by force eliminated the legitimate heir and began to rule, choosing modern Tokyo as the capital.

In the beginning, the samurai were the elite

During the reign of the Tokugawa house, the system of government was streamlined - the emperor was deprived of power, city councils of elders were introduced, society was divided into estates. The dominant position here was occupied by warriors - samurai. In addition, there were peasants, artisans, merchants, itinerant artists, pariahs and beggars, who were also singled out as a separate class. During the reign of Tokugawa himself, the samurai were the elite of society, which made up a tenth of the population and enjoyed great privileges. However, then such a number of military men turned out to be unnecessary, and some of the samurai became ninja, ronin (hired killers), while others moved into the trading class or began to teach military art and the philosophy of Bushido - the code of the samurai. The rebelling ronin had to be suppressed by government troops.

Reasons for the liquidation of the Shogunate regime

Why did the shogunal regime decline? Reviews of historians indicate that in connection with the growth of trade relations, a class of petty bourgeoisie appeared in the country, which was strongly suppressed by officials from the shogunate, and thisprovoked protests. Representatives of the intelligentsia arose in the urban layer, which they also sought to crush, in particular, because of their desire for Shintoism, which proclaimed the kinship of all Japanese, regardless of class, etc.

The government banned other religions (Christianity), limited contact with other countries, which led to protests and, in the end, to the transfer of state power back to the emperor by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1867. Today, "shogun" in Japan is a historical term, since such a position was abolished during the Meiji Revolution, which took place in 1868-1889.