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Paper short abstract

Okayama domain suffered in the 1650s by extreme weather. Its Confucian daimyō Ikeda Mitsumasa understood the events as signs, that heaven disapproved of the way he ruled. I will argue that Mitsumasa’s ensuing reforms aimed to introduce Confucianism as guiding ideology in his domain.

Paper long abstract

Weather and natural processes influenced by it were decisive factors of historical causality in Confucian understanding. According to Confucian thinking, rule was legitimized by the mandate of heaven. Weather phenomena that influenced agricultural production, and thus the lives of the people, were seen as a way by which heaven commented on the quality of a sovereign’s rule.

Okayama domain was hit by droughts and floods in 1653 and 1654. Okayama’s daimyō Ikeda Mitsumasa (1609–1682), a student of Confucianism, interpreted these disasters as signs that heaven deemed his way of rule inadequate. Consequently, he introduced economic and religious reforms that profoundly affected the populace of his domain. Mitsumasa’s economic reforms improved the living conditions of Okayama’s peasants. His retainers, however, lost their economic independence due to these reforms. Among them discontent with his rule began to grow. When Mitsumasa attempted to substitute Buddhism by Confucianism and Shintō throughout his domain, he finally alienated his retainers as well as Okayama’s populace.

Mitsumasa’s economic and religious reforms are generally understood as two separate phenomena. I will argue that these reforms were merely different aspects of a process by which Mitsumasa attempted to establish Confucianism as guiding ideology in Okayama. His economic reforms were meant to improve agricultural production and living conditions of the populace following the disasters. Simultaneously, he began to introduce Confucian rites for his family, and, about a decade later, for the general populace. Mitsumasa’s reforms were rooted in his belief, that Okayama had been struck by disaster because, as ruler, he personally had not adhered to Confucianism in the correct way and had also neglected his duty to admonish his subjects to do so.

Thus seen, weather phenomena formed part of Mitsumasa’s Confucian worldview. They caused him to question his way of rule and to initiate a comprehensive reform process based on his Confucian notions.