The Ecological Crisis in 17th-Century Tokugawa Japan and Its Soft Landing: State Governance and Mentality
I’ve been thinking a bit about the title.
It seems to me there was a balance between two aspects: the political-institutional and the psychological.
The political-institutional aspect relates to the fact that the Tokugawa shogunate emerged as a counterexample to the power of Oda and Toyotomi. I believe the lesson Ieyasu learned from Hideyoshi was that linking the archipelago to the outside world would destabilize the regime. Although the Tokugawa shogunate knew from the early days—through the trade with the Red Seal ships—that foreign trade was a source of immense wealth, by the third generation of the Tokugawa, they had established a controlled trade system (the Tokugawa clan’s monopoly on trade profits, known as the “maritime ban”). This was likely because they judged that, given the archipelago’s open and accessible nature—surrounded by the sea—the Tokugawa clan’s rule could not be maintained under “free trade.” While the Christian issue was also serious, from the perspective of constitutional history, I believe the accumulation of wealth through overseas trade was seen as conflicting with the peace of the archipelago—that is, the rule of the single Tokugawa clan.
From "A History of the Mind" perspective, the Christian issue posed a potential rival to the secular authority of the Tokugawa shogunate; conversely, the goal was to prevent any doubts about the legitimacy of this-worldly rule arising from the “other world.” Furthermore, as long as the state chose to sever ties with early modern globalization, overseas expansion could not be a policy option. As evidenced by the fact that the Tokugawa shogunate issued the “Shokoku Shinsen Okite” (Laws on Mountains and Rivers in the Provinces) twice in the late 17th century regarding the Tokugawa era’s rapid growth (population expansion, new land development = unregulated development) in the 17th century—as evidenced by the shogunate’s issuance of the “Ordinances on Mountains and Rivers in the Provinces” twice in the latter half of the century—it was impossible to sustain a growing economy within the archipelago, a sort of “miniature garden.” Consequently, both the shogunate’s stance and the mindset of its subjects were inevitably “inward-looking”; or, to put it more harshly, they were compelled to adopt a mindset aimed at “internal growth” rather than “extensive growth.” It is believed that this led to the “stationary state” of the Tokugawa 18th century. Furthermore, as has long been discussed on this blog, the fact that the bearers of culture were the people—specifically the lower middle class—is thought to have ultimately resulted in Elective Affinities (Wahlverwandtschaften) between the state system and the mindset.
While there are still many details of this mechanism that remain to be elucidated, the soft landing of the environmental crisis in 18th-century Tokugawa Japan may, in a broad sense, have been a fortunate coincidence—one that emerged precisely because of the elective affinities between the state system (macro) and the mindset (micro) that developed throughout history.
I cannot rule out the possibility that if the Tokugawa shogunate had aimed for capital accumulation through free-trade imperialism, the early modern history of this archipelago might have taken a completely different turn. However, as Liah Greenfeld argues, the fact that modern Western Europe aimed for capital accumulation through free-trade imperialism was, in the end, strongly driven by the rivalry among sovereign states brought about by nationalism. From the geopolitical perspective of the Japanese archipelago, it can be said that there was virtually no pressure from that angle.
It is clear that modern Western Europe and modern Tokugawa Japan historically possessed significantly different orientations, and I too wish to elucidate this. However, if this is merely the butterfly effect of a minute fluctuation in the fabric of history, I find myself somewhat troubled as to what kind of lesson its elucidation might offer for the future.
◆The soft landing of 18th-century Tokugawa Japan and the history of mentalities
The most significant factors were that Buddhism, which had effectively become the state religion in Tokugawa Japan, was a religion rooted in a certain “rejection of the world,” furthermore, that the “worldly orientation” of Neo-Confucianism (the School of Zhu Xi and its various branches)—which was accepted not merely as a political creed but as an ethos—also fostered a selective affinity within the minds of the Tokugawa Japanese; and that, for the Tokugawa Japanese, “the world” was the nature of the archipelago—a mild climate in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, with distinct seasons and a rich variety of flora and fauna. I believe these factors constituted the Tokugawa Japanese mindset.
Ultimately, we humans (including myself as an individual) will inevitably face “death.” This simple fact is inescapable for Japanese living on the archipelago, Chinese living on the mainland, people in Great Britain and on the Continent, and people on the African continent alike. How should we positively confront the finite nature of the body, which is a fact even for Homo sapiens? I believe it lies not in “avoiding death,” but in “embracing and enjoying our finite lives.” Birth, aging, sickness, and death. Humans can die easily from the slightest thing. We devise ways to live so that we need not fear this. We take pleasure in our own efforts and in the ingenuity of others. I believe this was the average mentality of the Tokugawa-era Japanese, and it is time for each individual to reclaim this ordinary sensibility. I feel that what is required of modern humans (myself included), who are frantically striving to avoid “death” in the face of an uncertain future, is precisely this “transit of mentality.”
The value of history lies in its ability to forcefully present the facts and existence of a different past to us—who have no choice but to live our present lives with all our might. On this blog, I hope to enjoy that process of alienation myself and to articulate it in a way that conveys that joy to others.
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