Dr. Hiroshi Kurushima, Professor, National Museum of Japanese History, Chiba Prefecture, Japan
Interpreting Early Modern Japanese Society as eThe Age of Paradesf Yields a New Image of Early Modern Society
Parades are a cultural phenomenon known across societies in all times and places around the globe, so we must be careful not to give the impression that we believe that Japan in the early modern era was somehow the only gage of paradesh in human history. Yet even acknowledging that, if we restrict our consideration for the moment to Japan, it is incontrovertible that society and culture were in large measure structured around parades: Not only did the galternate attendanceh (sankin kotai) parades of hundreds of daimyos headed to and from the national nucleus of Edo Castle crisscross the archipelago on a regular schedule, but also diplomatic missions from Korea and the kingdom of Ryukyu, as well as the annual visits of the chief (opperhoofd) of the Dutch trading post in Nagasaki (Oranda shokancho) traveled from Kyushu to Edo and back in grand parades numbering in the hundreds-even in the thousands. And, though smaller in scale, whenever bakufu officials headed out to postings in the provinces they proceeded with a retinue of subordinates, guards, and lesser officials who likewise marched in parade formation. Indeed, one might say that a meshed fabric of parades great and small knitted the archipelago together in the early modern age.
Even in the Sengoku era, of course, groups of armed men marched across the landscape, producing gparadesh to suit particular occasions: Oda Nobunaga mounted his ecavalry paradef (umazoroi) as a demonstration of the martial might of his samurai, while Toyotomi Hideyoshi put on a great parade to escort Emperor Ogimachi to his newly completed Jurakudai castle in the heart of the capital. Likewise, since ancient times, when members of the court nobility traveled with their escorts, or when the parishioners (ujiko) of a particular Shinto shrine escorted the shrine deity during a festival, they produced a formal or informal gparadeh that could be enjoyed by spectators of all social stations, high and low. Moreover, depictions of parades can sometimes be found in medieval paintings.
Yet when we compare the parades of medieval Japan to those of the early modern era, we notice two important distinctions: first, parades were a far less frequent or common phenomenon in medieval than in early modern times; and second, parades were produced almost exclusively within the confines of the imperial capital of Kyoto.
The proliferation of parades across the entire national landscape is, by contrast, a feature that distinguishes early modern Japanese society from all that preceded it. Moreover, while it is true that shogunal progresses to Kyoto (shogun juraku) and to the Nikko Toshogu shrines, as well as those of daimyos between their domains and Edo (daimyo gyoretsu) continued to be produced in the outward form of a military on the march, they no longer called up the image of actual warfare. That is a reflection of the fact that the the gPax Tokugawa,h the disappearance of warfare, both domestic and overseas, after the 1630s, transformed the nature of the samurai and, inevitably, the meaning of parades themselves.
I will examine the entire spectrum of parade performances that characterized early modern Japanese society and culture, from the highly political parades of the shogun, daimyos and other samurai, and the diplomatic parades of foreign embassies to Japan, to festival (matsuri) processions in Edo, provincial castle towns and local villages. At the same time, we also focus on the masquerades (performances) that were an integral part of many festival parades: costumed commoners performing the parades of daimyos or foreign diplomats were incorporated into many festival parades around the country. In addition, we will focus attention on the ways in which the fabric of early modern society and culture are revealed through the structure and composition of parades as a performative medium, as well as on the interaction between those who produce the display - the performers of a parade - and those for whom the display was produced - the spectators who lined the route.