The Tokugawa Period: An Overview of the Western Concept

My view of historical scholarship is that of an attempt to write about the events of the past and as such, it is dependant upon documents from the period(s) being studied. I have also pointed out that many historians, particularly in the West tend to “cherry-pick” their documents, selecting records that tend to match their preconceived notions of history. The result is that such written history fails, sometimes miserably, to provide clarity and truth.

I do not exempt Japanese historians from blame in this matter of imbalanced or distorted history, particularly in the portrayal of the Tokugawa Shōgunate and the period of Japanese history that it encompasses, 1603 to 1868; as a period marked by military dictatorship and oppression. In viewing the Mieji Restoration and the years that followed, one can come to understand how such distortions were possible. Meiji historians took on the attitude and viewpoint of the era, an obsession with Westernization. The entire country was lost in all things Western: Western culture, Western technology, Western politics, even Western scholarship. What was past, what was “Tokugawa” was cast away as unenlightened and thus, of no value to the “New Japan” and the age of Enlightened Rule.

With the end of World War II, during the Showa Era, historians both in the West and in Japan, looked for reasons for the war. Ultimately, their collective fingers pointed at the Tokugawa Period, not only as the Japanese dark ages, but as the root cause of the wars that followed the conclusion of that era. Japanese feudalism was equated with authoritarianism rather than the Confucian concept of a decentralized political system as evidenced in the Zhou Dynasty, a concept idealized by the Tokugawa. Certainly Japanese feudalism (hōken) was not compatible with liberal Western post-war views, often tainted by not so hidden traces of Marxism, political correctness and the European 18^th century “enlightened” view of Europe’s feudalism as their own dark ages. These historians thus superimposed their viewpoint over Japanese history, tainting what lay beneath.

Western history, particularly that of Europe is viewed as having three major eras: a classical era, a feudal era, and a modern era. Japanese history is far more complex, with a myriad of twists and turns, hundreds if not thousands of threads interwoven much the same as a fine tapestry. To overlay Japanese history with the restricted views of Western scholarship simply does not work: it is to ignore the depth and character of Japanese history and culture.

In conclusion, one should be more inclined to view the Tokugawa Period as a forerunner of modern Japanese social and political concepts rather than as the dark depths of tyranny. The Tokugawa brought unity to Japan, for the first time, an actual feeling of nation and country, unique in the Asia and the world, which continues to live in contemporary Japanese values.