Ashigaru (Foot Soldiers): Aspects of Their Lifestyle
In the Edo period (1603–1867), Japanese society was broadly divided into four classes: samurai, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. All people, including samurai, were bound by strict social rules relating to their class. However, as these details from the lives of ashigaru (foot soldiers) show, flexibility within the system and opportunities for social mobility did exist.
Good News from the Formal Entrance
There was a particular custom among the ashigaru communities in Kanazawa: whenever a superior wished to contact an ashigaru, he would send an envoy to the ashigaru’s residence a day ahead of time. How the envoy then delivered the message was dependent on the nature of the message. If the news was good, the envoy would enter by the formal entrance (genkan) and announce his message from there. Bad news, on the other hand, would be conveyed from the kitchen or side entrance. In this way, an ashigaru family would know from the envoy’s approach whether he carried good tidings or bad.
Advantages of Retinue Service and Staying in Edo
During the Edo period, the Tokugawa military government (shogunate) implemented a system called “alternate attendance” (sankin-kotai). Its purpose was to ensure the continued ascendancy of the Tokugawa by weakening the independence of feudal domains and depleting the resources of the other domain lords (daimyo). This system required daimyo to divide their time between their own domains and the Tokugawa capital, Edo (now Tokyo), where they were forced to maintain one or more official residences, in which the official wives and male heirs were expected to live. Details varied, but in the case of the Kaga domain (feudal-era Ishikawa centered on Kanazawa), the daimyo were expected to spend every other year in Edo, alternating between living there and in their own domain. For all the daimyo, traveling to Edo was a costly and time-consuming exercise. They did not travel alone, but were accompanied by a huge retinue of samurai retainers, servants, and various attendants. It is said that the daimyo of the Kaga domain—lord of one of the richest and largest domains of the day—traveled with no fewer than 2,000 and sometimes as many as 4,000 people in his retinue.
Ironically enough, despite the ordeals of sankin-kotai, ashigaru who accompanied their daimyo to Edo generally found their duties there less burdensome. Whereas at home they were frequently required to perform military duties and to act as servants to their superiors in the administration of the domain, work in Edo was simple. More often than not, their duties in Edo involved no more than standing guard at the gate of the daimyo’s residence (hantei). Work in Edo was also well-paid. Many ashigaru, therefore, were eager to accompany their daimyo to Edo.
Buying Ashigaru Status
In principle, the rank of ashigaru was not a hereditary status passed from parent to child. However, for the most part, children followed in the footsteps of their parents. The number of ashigaru permitted in the Kaga domain was fixed, so a person could join their number only on one of two occasions: either at the retirement or the death of another ashigaru. At such a time, a child hoping to become an ashigaru required a recommendation for the position.
In circumstances when ashigaru did not have children to succeed them, they could “sell” their status to a successor. This created an informal system of adoption whereby, for a price, a merchant or farming family could buy their child ashigaru status and have the child adopted into an ashigaru family.
As a general rule, there was no social mobility in the Edo period, as the classes were hereditary and fixed. However, for those hoping to become ashigaru, this small loophole allowed for a certain degree of fluidity.
The “Peach Division”
In one corner of an ashigaru district in the Kaga domain, there was an area full of blooming peach trees. As was the custom in Kaga, all the houses in this area were freestanding individual buildings, and they were generally referred to as the “Peach Division.”
As a general rule, ashigaru in other domains were not permitted to live in freestanding houses with gardens. They were therefore unable to plant fruit trees like peaches. This anecdote about the “Peach Division” demonstrates that ashigaru in Kanazawa enjoyed a better way of life than those in other areas.