Trades and Crafts of Old Japan. Eric A. Kaemmerer
INTRODUCTION
At the dawn of every civilization, we find that each household has its master, each community its head. Invariably, it would seem, with progressive development there follow workmen's, traders', and manufacturers' guilds. Such have likewise been the first steps of communal life in Japan, and as early as the year 400 b.c., apart from administrative organizations, we already find a unit called be or tomo, which may be translated as guild or corporation. These be had special functions, and their members were weavers, toolmakers, weaponmakers, and so forth, or even ritualists. The membership was hereditary, passing from father to son.
Japanese society in ancient days was divided into two general classes: the ryomin (literally "good people") or free citizens with family names—gentry in our terms—and the semmin ("base people"), who had no family names and included members of the agricultural and industrial guilds, as well as the yakko bondsmen, the latter group being made up of prisoners of war, debtors, and the like.
With the progress of time, every branch of occupation formed a regional guild like the guild of fishermen, farmers, lacquerers, workers in brocade, scribes, interpreters, storytellers, and many others. The standing and influence of each guild varied in accordance with its pursuit.
The long and widespread wars in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while disrupting many ancient customs and rites, slowly developed the more advanced and effective organizations known as za, which literally means "seat" and perhaps originally indicated the place in a shrine or a temple where members were allowed to sell their product. The za were always connected with, or under the patronage of, the ruling daimyo (feudal lord) or the church. Many za constituted quite monopolistic groups like the Kyoto cotton dealers belonging to the Gion Shrine, the sakè brewers attached to the Kitano Shrine, the warehouse keepers protected by the powerful Tendai monastery on Mt. Hiei, or the oil merchants under the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine. Associations supported by powerful aristocratic families included, for example, the gold-leaf makers dependent on the Konoe and the paper merchants under the Bojo. Even the precursors of the geisha had a guild attached to the noble house of Kuga.
The guild system was a necessary development in times of disorder and warfare: manufacturing and trade could flourish only when protected. Of course there were many abuses, which increased with the years. Prices were kept high, and admission of new members to the guilds was restricted and subjected to heavy contributions, while on the other hand the patrons asked for constantly increasing tribute. A further obstacle to trade appeared in the customs barriers erected by the different lords and monasteries. These seriously hampered the flow of goods from one district to another.
During the early years of the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), the individual members of the guilds were principally manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. This was the beginning of the era of commercial capitalism. A clear distinction among these groups had not yet been made, but already the tonya (wholesalers) were buying the products of farmers for trading goods and even lending farmers money in advance on goods to be produced. Concurrently, and for the first time, workmen began to be hired by the day. This marked the beginning of the wage-earning period in Japan.
The later Tokugawa shogunate sanctioned, enlarged, and confirmed the rights and responsibilities of the kumiai, as the associations were henceforth called, and the perfected system remained in force until the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Though in theory anybody could join a kumiai, this was not in the interests of the members, and in order to prevent the admission of newcomers they paid to the shogunate a tax in exchange for which the authorities limited the number of individual members in each guild.
The guilds also fixed the number of apprentices that each member was allowed to have. The apprentice lived in the house of the master, was given a short vacation about twice a year to visit parents and relatives, was usually not paid, and had a seven- to ten-year period of service. He was at the mercy of his master and was more or less his slave.
The unification of Japan under one rule, begun by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was finally completed and consolidated by Ieyasu, the first shogun of the house of Tokugawa. Nobunaga had already revived the arts and given a new impulse to the creative mind, which in the ensuing centuries of peace and contentment flourished in all branches of the arts and crafts. His new castle on the shore of Lake Biwa was lavishly decorated. It was the first castle built under European influence: a stout fortification in contrast to the old strongholds that had consisted mainly of palisades, ditches, and earthworks. The interior was wonderfully embellished with black and red lacquer and colorful ceilings, while screens and panels by famous artists enhanced the apartments. Somewhat later, at Osaka, Hideyoshi built the greatest of all castles and surrounded it with immense stone ramparts and deep moats. This castle, too, was artistically decorated with wonderful carvings, folding screens, and objects of unimaginable splendor. Not only were there exquisite kettles of pure gold and boxes, medicine chests, bowls, and stands of the finest gold lacquer, but even locks, hinges, and bolts were of the most expensive materials. Pottery-making also received a new impulse when Hideyoshi's expeditionary army returned from Korea bringing with it Korean artisans who set up kilns in Japan.
Master painters of the Kano school, like Eitoku and Sanraku, won eternal fame. It was at this time also that Iwasa Matabei (1578-1650) first started with Tosa Mitsunori to develop his own new style, the genre or ukiyo-e painting. Matabei is generally regarded as the father of the ukiyo-e.
To return to the time which the paintings in this volume describe (approximately the Kan'ei era of 1624-43), after nearly five centuries of warfare and internal strife, the great clan of Tokugawa had emerged in 1603 as masters of Japan who would give the country peace for some two and a half centuries. Art, commerce, and industry began to thrive, and unrivaled pieces of lacquer ware, porcelain, and woven stuff, as well as superb paintings, date from this epoch.
For many centuries the Japanese had gone abroad to trade, mostly to southern China, Formosa, Malaya, and Siam but also to a number of other places. Japan had become quite international-minded, and the period preceding the Tokugawa era is now remembered as the kaikoku jidai, the "period of the open country." Concurrently, during the sixteenth century and after, Europeans settled all over the Far East and founded colonies there. For political reasons the third shogun, Iemitsu, decided on an exclusion policy which was rigidly enforced in 1636—in the very era portrayed by the pictures that this book reproduces. During this time of sakoku jidai, the "period of seclusion," which ended only with the arrival of Commodore Perry, the country was almost hermetically closed to all foreign influence. Nagasaki was the only port left open to foreign contact, and even there trade was restricted to the Chinese and the Dutch, while all intercourse with foreigners was subjected to severe control. As long as the Tokugawa rule lasted, these foreign merchants could buy and sell only through appointed agents whom, probably with good reason, the Dutch called "the ring of usurers"—cold and heartless traders interested in nothing but their personal gain. (Not that the Dutch, however, were much better.) Japanese ships were strictly forbidden to sail abroad, and those Japanese who happened through storm or shipwreck to land on foreign shores were prohibited from returning.
In these and other ways, the Tokugawa regime commenced, and expanded as time went on, a legislation restricting human conduct and thereby hampering progress, and this ultimately contributed to its downfall, since, whatever the artificial barriers, European culture and technique profoundly influenced Japan even in those days. Firearms changed the art of war; Western ideas of shipbuilding and castle construction were adopted; and new materials and designs in woven apparel came from the Occident. Thus, in spite of all the seclusion laws, Japan received through the tiny door in Nagasaki—during the 250 years of Tokugawa rule—new ideas from outside which came like fresh winds into the thin and refined, yet actually stale, air of the shogunate. It was again proved that any rigid form is open to decay and that nothing in the world can escape change.
Though the system of guilds was officially abolished in 1867-68, this type of organization never entirely vanished from Japanese commercial practice. The modernized kumiai (associations) that flourished up to the beginning of the great war in 1941 had similar objectives, and at present a distinct resurgence of the practice has been noted.
The pictures presented in this book are contained in an album dating from early Tokugawa