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- Convenor:
-
Rebekah Clements
(ICREA Autonomous University of Barcelona)
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- Section:
- History
- Sessions:
- Thursday 26 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the movement, exchange, and use of human cultural capital by high ranking Japanese warriors, from Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Shimazu daimyo of the Satsuma domain in the late sixteenth to mid seventeenth centuries, to Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu in the eighteenth.
Long Abstract:
This panel explores the movement, exchange, and use of human cultural capital by high ranking Japanese warriors from the late sixteenth to the mid eighteenth centuries. As Mary Elizabeth Berry and others have noted, the exchange of people in the form of hostages and marriage alliances was central to the "matrix of attachment" that underpinned power relations between the Three Unifiers, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu, and their daimyo. Recently, Morgan Pitelka has delineated the practice of "spectacular accumulation" in which elite warriors demonstrated power through the collection and display of objects including tea vessels and severed heads. Our approach combines both these aspects of warrior society and considers three case studies wherein people who possessed particular forms of cultural capital were "accumulated" and displayed by elite warriors as a sign of their power . Our case studies include aristocratic female scholars in the employment of Hideyoshi (presentation 1) and Yoshiyasu (presentation 3). These women were valued not only for their embodied knowledge of the norms of court society, but also for specific skills in literary scholarship. Our other case study concerns a community of Korean potters acquired by the Shimazu family during Hideyoshi's Invasions of Korea (presentation 2). They not only represented ties to a foreign state but also a concrete set of artistic skills that became essential to the Satsuma economy. Such examples complicate traditional understandings of Bourdieusian cultural capital because the treatment of the people in question crosses the border between artefacts as cultural capital and embodied cultural capital: as our presenters will show, the individuals concerned were in some sense "collected," and on occasion even displayed. This is not to deny their essential humanity nor to claim they were identical with objects; but rather to suggest that the role of individuals could be analogous to the collection and display of objects. Mindful of criticisms of Bourdieu's theories, we also consider the agency of these individuals. Aristocratic women were able to use their positions in daimyo households to benefit their families; Korean potters learned to play the ritual games required of them in order to benefit their community.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 26 August, 2021, -Gaye Rowley (Waseda University)
Paper short abstract:
In my paper I shall discuss several of the women "collected" by Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, the fifth Tokugawa Shogun Tsunayoshi's long-serving chief adjutant, with the aim of showing how the cultural capital they embodied was an essential aspect of their value to him.
Paper long abstract:
Some years ago, Anna Beerens argued that in premodern Japan we are most likely to find literate women "in the shadow of men." Numerous examples bear out this observation, from the literate women found in the shadow of the medieval courtier Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455-1537) to those who in one way or another served Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98).
The daimyo Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu (1658-1714), whose career was spent serving the fifth Tokugawa Shogun Tsunayoshi (1646-1709; r. 1680-1709), is famous for his collection and support of a number of Confucian scholars, the best known of whom are Ogyū Sorai (1666-1728), Hosoi Kōtaku (1658-1736), and Hattori Nankaku (1683-1759); Yoshiyasu also employed Kashiwagi Takemoto (style Soryō; d. 1716), who had been a disciple of Matsuo Bashō (1644-94). Less well known are the several extraordinarily literate women who served Yoshiyasu. Among them were two of his concubines: the first, Iizuka Somé (1667-1705), who left a number of religious writings, including her commentary on the collection of Zen koan Mumonkan (1228); and the second, the noblewoman Ōgimachi Machiko (1679?-1724), author of the biographical memoir Matsukage nikki (In the Shelter of the Pine, ca. 1710-12). The sinologue Uchida Saki (style Tōsen; 1681-1720), whose collection of Chinese-style poetry was published in 1692, also served for a time in the Yanagisawa mansion.
Yoshiyasu obviously valued the cultural capital embodied by all of these women, since he encouraged their learning and showed them off on a variety of social occasions, from his annual full moon poetry party to formal visits by the shogun. A close look at the writing these women produced while serving Yoshiyasu reveals some of the ways he supported his women's literary and scholarly endeavours. Yoshiyasu's pursuit of Zen Buddhism is not unusual for a member of the Tokugawa warrior estate, but the reasons for his attraction to court culture in particular still require explanation; and in my paper I hope to be able to account for this interest.
Akihiko Niimi (Waseda University)
Paper short abstract:
Toyotomi Hideyoshi's carefully cultivated relationship with the regental Konoe house also extended to connections with Kaoku Gyokuei, author of two commentaries on The Tale of Genji, and her niece Chaa. My presentation examines these relationships and the literary products they gave rise to.
Paper long abstract:
Kaoku Gyokuei is best known as the compiler of Kaokushō (Kaoku's Gleanings, 1594) and Gyokueishū (Gyokuei's Collection, 1602), two commentaries on The Tale of Genji that make her a significant figure in the history of the reception of the tale in the late sixteenth century.
Gyokuei embodied cultural capital because she was not only related to but also in close touch with those at the pinnacle of power in this era. She is described as "the daughter of Konoe Taneie" (1503-66) in the biographical compilation Kendenmeimeiroku (1652), and thus we may assume that she was born to the regental Konoe house. According to the postscript attached to a copy of Genji monogatari no okori (The Origins of The Tale of Genji) in the collection of Senshū University that has traditionally been attributed to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Kaoku Gyokuei sent the text to her niece Chaa who was in Hideyoshi's service; Hideyoshi made a copy; and this copy was then sent back to Gyokuei, who noted Hideyoshi's interest in this epitome of court culture in a postscript. Hideyoshi, we recall, had had himself ennobled when he was adopted by Konoe Sakihisa (1536-1612) in order to assume the offices of Chancellor (kanpaku) and eventually Grand Minister of State (daijō daijin).
Nonetheless, despite Gyokuei's noble birth, powerful connections, and compilation of several commentaries on Genji, the manuscripts of even her best-known works, Kaokushō and Gyokueishū, remain under-researched and there is no reliable printed edition of either. Nor is there any consensus on who she was, the nature of her relationship with Hideyoshi, or the importance of her achievements.
In my presentation, I shall set out what we know about Gyokuei and examine the key features of her commentaries in order to arrive at a clearer understanding of her place in the commentarial tradition and the cultural value she held for Hideyoshi.
Rebekah Clements (ICREA Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses potters taken to Satsuma during the invasions of Chosŏn, 1592-1598. I examine ceremonial displays that took place during visits made to the potters' village by the Satsuma daimyo and discuss the relationship between these holders of cultural capital and their captors.
Paper long abstract:
After ordering the invasion of Chosŏn Korea in 1592, in 1593 Toyotomi Hideyoshi sent a message to his generals, requesting that they present to him any "craftspeople, embroiderers, or skilled women" who were among their captives. It is generally understood that "craftspeople" (細工仕者) referred to the ceramic artisans for whom Chosŏn was famous. Although there are indeed records of a captured seamstress being sent to Hideyoshi, as far as we know he did not receive any potters. However, several of his generals acquired highly skilled ceramic artisans whom they brought back to their domains in southern Japan, where they founded ceramic traditions, many of which are among the most famous in Japan today. Of particular note is the community of potters still active in Higashiichiki-chō Miyama in Kagoshima prefecture, a village formerly known as Naeshirogawa. Although Naeshirogawa pottery is not particularly well known in Japan today, the history of the village is a fascinating case study in the complex and mutually beneficial relationship between holders of cultural capital and their patrons/captors.
On the orders of the Shimazu, daimyo of Satsuma domain, the Naeshirogawa community preserved Korean language, dress, music, and dance throughout the Tokugawa period. There were regular displays of Chosŏn culture during visits by the Shimazu daimyo en route to Edo under the sankin kōtai system; and some Koreans from Naeshirogawa were taken to Edo as pages in the Shimazu retinue, which also included representatives from the Ryukyu Kingdom. Pottery from Naeshirogawa for domestic use revitalized the Satsuma economy, and the official domain kiln, which was founded and staffed by Chosŏn potters, produced "White Satsuma" prestige wares which were used on important occasions and given as gifts by the Shimazu to other high-ranking warriors.
By focusing on regular visits made to the potters' village by the daimyo on their way to Edo and the ceremonial displays that took place on such occasions, I look at the ways in which the foreign potters were displayed as acquisitions of the Satsuma domain, and the ways in which the potter community benefited from Shimazu patronage.