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Abstract
This paper examines the way the outcaste head Danzaemon, or more precisely several individuals who successively bore that title, negotiated their place in the eighteenth-century Edo status order through official genealogical pronouncements. Eta and hinin groups became closely linked together in the political imaginary in Edo from around the beginning of the eighteenth century in an extraordinary legal battle that emerged between the leaders of these groups. The head of the former group, Danzaemon Chikamura, achieved a qualified victory in this struggle through genealogical posturing, positioning himself at the apex of an increasingly well-defined Edo outcaste order. By the second half of the eighteenth century, the privileged place within the order held by the next Danzaemon came under renewed pressure from a new generation of hinin. As a result, Danzaemon Chikasono made an attempt to rearticulate the grounds for his status through a different kind of genealogical statement. This article, using the official correspondence between Danzaemon and the Edo City Magistrate, examines the distinctive features of the genealogical imaginations of these two outcaste leaders in order to reveal the ways they negotiated their place within the Edo outcaste order.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor David Howell and Dr Maren Ehlers, as well as the participants of the 4th Japanese History Workshop Australia, for their generous comments on an earlier version of this paper. My participation in the workshop was generously sponsored by The Japan Foundation, The Japanese Studies Association of Australia, Monash University and Murdoch University, and Australia-Japan Society of WA.
Notes
1 1Tsukada, Kinsei Nihon mibunsei no kenkyū; Tsukada, Kinsei mibunsei to shūen shakai; Tsukada, Mibunsei shakai to shimin shakai; Tsukada et al., Mibunteki shūen; Tsukada, Toshi no shūen ni ikiru; Kurushima et al., Shirīzu kinsei no mibunteki shūen; Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice; Howell, Geographies of Identity; Botsman, Punishment and Power; Ehlers, ‘Poor Relief’; Amos, Embodying Difference.
2 2Tsukada, Kinsei mibun shakai no toraekata, 32–36; Tsukada, Kinsei Osaka no hinin, 268–318.
3 3For more information on the history of these groups, see Chapter 2 of my Embodying Difference, particularly p. 42: ‘Although there are numerous regional differences, the eta were generally obliged to undertake the duties of flaying, tanning, leatherwork, and sandal-making. The hinin engaged in begging, disposal of animal carcasses, and the burial of vagrants’.
4 4Price, ‘A History of the Outcaste’, 29; Neary, Political Protest, 19; Vaporis, Voices of Early Modern Japan, 153.
5 5Marius B. Jansen explained it through the metaphor of galaxies and constellations; David Howell has written of status as one of several overlapping ‘geographies’; and Daniel Botsman has written of ‘status groups’ existing in ‘layers’ and ‘pockets’ throughout early modern Japanese society. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, 38; Howell, Geographies of Identity, 3, 20–44; Botsman, Punishment and Power, 69, 71, 84.
6 6Shimahara, Burakumin: A Japanese Minority and Education, 17.
7 7Tsukada, Kinsei mibunsei to shūen shakai.
8 8Tsukada, Kinsei Nihon mibunsei no kenkyū, 7; Yoshida, ‘Shoyū to mibunteki shūen’, 108–114. Tsukada calls status ‘the premodern mode of human existence’. Yoshida writes of the concrete existential forms of ownership that he equates with a division of labour in relation to status – something he argues is the ‘mode of existence’ (sonzai yōshiki) for human beings during feudalism. These forms of ownership are: land ownership; ownership of the means of production; ownership of capital and property; and the ownership of labour.
9 9Howell, ‘Territoriality and Collective Identity in Tokugawa Japan’, 118.
10 10Tsukada, Kinsei mibun shakai no toraekata, 32–36.
11 11Groemer, ‘The Creation of the Edo Outcaste Order’.
12 12For more on this history see Minegishi, Kinsei hisabetsuminshi no kenkyū, 24–28.
13 13Amos, ‘Outcastes and Medical Practices in Tokugawa Japan’, 10–11.
14 14Tsukada, Kinsei mibunsei to shūen shakai, 214–227. The title-name combination of Danzaemon Chikahisa is quoted in texts such as Uramoto, Edo Tokyo no hisabetsu buraku no rekishi, 21.
15 15Minegishi, Kinsei hisabetsuminshi no kenkyū, 53, 56, 212.
16 16For more on this incident, see Groemer, ‘The Creation of the Edo Outcaste Order’, 277–278.
17 17All of these incidents are discussed in Saitama Dōwa Kyōiku Kyōgikai, Suzuki-ke monjo, vol. 1, 187–195.
18 18Ibid., 190.
19 19Ibid., 195; Harada, Hennen sabetsushi shiryō shūsei, vol. 8, 373–380; Groemer, ‘The Creation of the Edo Outcaste Order’, 282.
20 20Nakao, Danzaemon kankei shiryōshū, vol. 1, 11–12.
21 21Saitama Dōwa Kyōiku Kyōgikai, Suzuki-ke monjo, vol. 1, 3.
22 22These documents are found in Nakao, Danzaemon kankei shiryōshū, vol. 1, 24–32.
23 23Ibid., 24–26.
24 24Ibid., 30–32. The genealogical statement contains four articles and begins with the statement ‘Regarding your recent inquiry into my genealogy’ (30); the memorandum detailing official duties is entitled Onyakumoku ai tsutome soro oboe [Memorandum of Official Duties Performed] and is comprised of eleven articles (30–31); and the fabricated supporting historical document is found at the end of the document and dated 1523 (31–32).
25 25Ibid., 30–31.
26 26For an excellent discussion of the importance of the idea of precedent in ruler-peasant relations see Walthall, Social Protest and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Japan, 72–95.
27 27Nakao, Danzaemon kankei shiryōshū, vol. 1, 31.
28 28Ibid., 32–40.
29 29Howell usefully describes ‘hinin servants’ within the context of downward status mobility: ‘Membership in an outcaste group was generally determined by birth, but commoners were sometimes absorbed into the ranks of the hinin, either as a consequence of their taking up begging or as a punishment (hinin teka) imposed occasionally on those for whom execution was inappropriate (most famously survivors of love-suicide attempts)’. Howell, Geographies of Identity, 29. Although Howell does not offer an English translation of the intriguing term hinin teka, Botsman provides us with its literal meaning: ‘under the hand of the hinin’. Botsman, Punishment and Power, 77–78. Because the term carries a strong connotation of someone who through impoverishment or criminal conviction has been made a subordinate of officially designated hinin, I translate it here as ‘hinin servant’.
30 30Nakao, Danzaemon kankei shiryōshū, vol. 1, 32, 34; Harada, Hennen sabetsushi shiryō shūsei, vol. 9, 257.
31 31Groemer, ‘The Creation of the Edo Outcaste Order’, 283.
32 32Harada, Hennen sabetsushi shiryō shūsei, vol. 9, 515–516; Nakao, Edo shakai to Danzaemon, 259–263.
33 33The Kenshōbo is found in Harada et al., Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryō shūsei, 251–278.
34 34Ibid., 258–260.
35 35Ibid., 259.
36 36Saitama-ken, Shinpen Saitama-kenshi shiryōhen, vol. 14, 225–226.
37 37Ibid., 226.
38 38Ibid.
39 39Groemer, ‘The Creation of the Edo Outcaste Order’, 278–279.
40 40Ibid., 287; Nakao, Edo shakai to Danzaemon, 304–305, 351.
41 41The idea of mytho-history is borrowed from Koschmann, The Mito Ideology, 9.
42 42Amos, Embodying Difference, 100–206.
43 43Howell, Geographies of Identity, 209.
44 44Beerens, ‘Interview with a Bakumatsu Official’, 195–196.
45 45Ibid., 196.