In the early seventeenth century Japan transitioned from a period of prolonged and nationwide internecine civil war (the Warring States period, 1467-1600) to an era of extended peace during the early modern, or Tokugawa, period.
After the last pitched battle at Osaka in 1614-15, and the armed suppression of a rebellion at Shimabara in southernJapan in 1637, there were no battles to fight until the closing year of the period.
By the end of the seventeenth century the country under the stewardship of the Tokugawa government, or shogunate, was heralded by Japanese contemporaries as the ‘realm at peace' (tenka taihei).While this remarkable period in world history lasted more than two centuries, its peaceful state was imposed and maintained by a large-scale military aristocracy, the samurai, who took measures to disarm the other social groups below them in the social hierarchy. In pacifying the land, the samurai ‘effectively demilitarized the non-samurai population by depriving them of the right of private conflict resolution' and thereby acquired a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.1 This created a type of ‘garrison state', visible in the fully armed samurai population and biennial processions of more than 250 daimyo rulers, who marched back and forth from their domains' castle towns to the Tokugawa capital at Edo to wait on the shogun.[380] [381]
Pacification also resulted in two currents of tension related to samurai identity. The first current consisted of the dynamic tension between the civil arts, or the arts of peace (bun), and the military arts (bu). While written codes for the samurai historically had included statements about the importance of both elements, it was only in the Tokugawa period, when samurai had to fulfil bureaucratic functions, that so much emphasis was placed on the civil arts. The emphasis on literacy, education and culture in samurai life thus created a new definition of masculinity. The second tension arose from the lack of opportunity for samurai to demonstrate their martial skills and valour on the battlefield, resulting in a hypersensitivity in defending their honour.
Out of this tension there developed in male samurai culture an ideology of honour violence, one that entailed a constant readiness to employ lethal force. This ideology consisted of a variety of forms of interpersonal violence largely enacted by men against men: samurai against samurai and samurai against commoners. While the state acted in some ways to encourage the samurai to maintain their skills as warriors, even upholding the culture of honour violence, it had to balance these demands with a more general concern for maintaining civil order. Male samurai culture also involved a form of selfinflicted violence known as seppuku (a more formal word for harakiri), or ritual suicide. This chapter explores how the culture of honour violence developed among male samurai during the centuries of the Tokugawa peace, and considers its importance in the construction of samurai masculinity.
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