Episodes

"In Service of the Shogun," 1743

The date is 1743/11, the place Kami-Hosoya village in Yokomi-gun of Musashino province (Saitama prefecture).^[18] A few weeks before, a local criminal had been sent to Edo to be executed. Now his head was being returned for a three-day public exposure. To manage the event, the headman called upon the chief of the kawata hamlet attached to Shimo-Wana village.

In many ways the kawata were not under the rule of the regular village headman. Hence, instead of contacting his colleague in Shimo-Wana, Kami-Hosoya's headman communicated directly with the head (etagashira ) of the kawata/hinin community associated with Shimo-Wana village. Moreover, the headman had no authority over the head

[16] Wakita Osamu, Kawaramakimono no sekai (Tokyo Daigaku shuppankai, 1991), 5. Hatanaka Toshiyuki reports that in Kinai the eta called themselves kawata ("'Kawata' mibun to wa nani ka," MK, 307). In Hozu village, discussed in chapter 4, the kawata, referred to officially as ego^[*] , literally, "polluted district (the e of eta plus go^[*] )," referred to themselves with a homonym, substituting the e of Edo ("inlet," "bay"), perhaps because their community was the "capital" of the five kawata communities in south Tanba (see Igeta, "Mikaiho^[*] buraku," 110; and idem, "Kuchi-Tanba," 95, 111).

[17] One notable exception is Frank Upham, who shows an acute awareness of the various political aspects concerning the kawata as they have been dealt with by Japanese scholars (Law and Social Change , 79-80). Most of the studies of the burakumin deal with the modern liberation movements. De Vos and Wagatsuma (Japan's Invisible Race ) provide no more than a general background for the Tokugawa period.

[18] Tsukada Takashi, "Kinsei no keibatsu," 119-23.

of the kawata and could not give him direct orders; rather the Kami-Hosoya headman invited him to take charge of the situation.

Why Shimo-Wana and not some other kawata community? The headman had no choice in the matter. Kami-Hosoya was part of a specific geographical area that included a number of kawata hamlets operating under their own leadership in Shimo-Wana. These territorial divisions went by various names, the most common being kusaba or dannaba . The kawata performed prescribed duties for the area: skinning and disposing of dead cattle and horses and reworking the hides into leather goods (footgear, drum skins, armor, bow strings, etc.), catching fugitives and lawbreakers, guarding prisoners and executing criminals, patrolling the villages, and policing festivals and markets. Such duties or rights were divided among the kawata/hinin as shares (dannaba kabu ). The Shimo-Wana dannaba comprised twenty-five villages and was one of five such dannaba in Yokomi district.^[19]

After the job was done, the two kawata heads in charge handed the implements used (gokogisama^[*]godogu^[*] , "the honorable tools of the honorable public authority [the shogun]") back to the headman, who drafted a receipt properly addressed to "Mister (dono ) Jin'emon and Mister Genzaemon from Shimo-Wana village." During their three days on duty, all twelve kawata and two hinin were served meals in a room at the headman's, as were a number of kawata heads from other hamlets who had come to take in the scene.

This was a rare occasion for the kawata/hinin to function with pride and authority at an extraordinary event as full-fledged officials. Four of the higher-ranked kawata wore long swords, the eight others short ones. Swords, a professional attitude, polite addresses, and being entertained at the home of the village headman, apparently without much concern about "pollution," were all marks of public respect. Their authority was manifested in other ways as well.

At noon on 11/15 an intendant's representative arrived to prepare for the display of the head he had brought from Edo. That evening he conferred with Jin'emon and two other kawata leaders about, among

[19] Tsukada Takashi, Kinsei Nihon mibunsei no kenkyu^[*] (Kobe^[*] : Hyogo^[*] buraku mondai kenkyujo^[*] , 1987), 18-20. In the Kanto area, shares were time allotments of certain days to certain households; in the Kinai, the shares were territorial segments that were given to households for their operations (Igeta, "Kuchi-Tanba," 102).

other things, how much to charge onlookers for viewing the spectacle, since it was "the custom in the countryside to charge eight mon for a crucifixion and nine for a beheading." According to the kawata's reconstruction of the event, Jin'emon replied, "We do not take money as executioners; besides, if you charge fees in the countryside, people will not come near but crowd the roads and look from afar and this would be of no service to the shogun." As it turned out, a fee was charged, and forty-six people came from eleven villages and had a jolly, drunken time.

In Edo at least, executions were not grand public spectacles, but took place in the prison courtyard. Perhaps the authorities were aware of the dysfunctional crowd behavior executions provoked, as described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish . However, other aspects of penal practice, such as parading the criminal or exposing the corpse or head, were meant to have a salutary effect. The kawata understood this deterrent effect, for they wanted people to "come near" and see. More people would show up if no fee were charged; they protested that if executions were staged and money paid to view them, dignity and honor would be lost—the shogun's as well as their own.

In their meeting with the intendant's emissary the kawata leaders also argued about protocol. The official announced that it was a "national law" that ten guards be used on an occasion like this. The kawata heads countered that in Edo twelve kawata and a great number of hinin were used for an ambulatory exposure, but if there were to be no ambulation, then two hinin in addition to twelve kawata would suffice; in other words, a total of fourteen guards, and not ten, were needed. Moreover, they said, they had no orders from Danzaemon in Edo to lower the numbers. The official nevertheless ordered them to limit the number of guards to ten. The kawata leaders agreed, with the proviso that they would check with Danzaemon on what to do on such occasions in the future.

Satisfied that all preparations had been made, the official left the next day at noon, having handed over the display item. The three-day event began the following morning with fourteen rather than ten guards on active duty. The official did not get the last word after all. Clearly, the kawata had followed their own professional judgment and the procedures as proscribed by their (semi-)national leader Danzaemon, who received a written report from them a week later.

Almost a hundred years after this event, a crucifixion took place in

the same village. Again local kawata were mobilized to stand guard for the three days the corpse was to be exposed. The crucifixion proper, however, was performed by a team of two of Danzaemon's underlings, whom he had dispatched with fifteen helpers from Edo.

Shimo-Wana's dannaba was located within the territory of one bakufu intendant. This was not always the case, for in practice, if not in principle, dannaba often cut across a number of jurisdictions and even domains. Therefore, the kawata's social and political topography was different from that of the peasants. They lived in their own hamlets under a separate local and regional jurisdiction in fairly close contact with their leader Danzaemon in Edo. They were often required to, or simply did, cross into social and geographical areas generally forbidden to them while performing their duties. This was especially true during the late Tokugawa period, as the following example illustrates.

Catching Thieves, Arresting Vagrants, 1848

In 1848/3 three prisoners escaped from the bakufu intendant's rural office (jinya ) in Mikage-shinden (in the center of the Kita-Saku plain, Shinano).^[20] They headed south but were caught some fourteen kilometers away, at the village of Kutsusawa, just as they were about to disappear into the mountains. They were escorted back to prison by a team of kawata and a lower official from the Mikage-shinden office. The official had difficulties enforcing his authority over the kawata.

First of all, the kawata disobeyed his orders concerning the size of the escort. Because many men from different hamlets had joined the party, their number was well beyond that prescribed for such an occasion. Moreover, when the noisy troupe arrived at the Nakasendo^[*] way station of Shionada at midday, they protested the official's decision to feed them the same riceballs (nigirimeshi ) the prisoners were being fed: while performing official business, they said, they deserved a full meal served on a platter. The group became angry, forced their way into two inns, and proceeded to eat and drink their fill.

Afterwards an investigation was launched by the kawata head of Mikage-shinden. Twelve kawata were summoned, but none of them had been part of the escort from Kutsusawa; they had joined later. All in all, seventeen kawata from nine villages (representing a bakufu fief

[20] Saito^[*] Yoichi^[*] , Gorobe-shinden , 251-60.

and three domains—Tanoguchi, Iwamurata, and Komoro—within a radius of some fifteen kilometers) were said to have feasted at the inns. Ultimately, the headmen from the parent villages of the hamlets of the kawata in question wrote a joint request for pardon. One kawata from Gorobe-shinden was finally jailed.

Strictly speaking, the Mikage-shinden kawata head's jurisdiction was limited to kawata in that bakufu territory. However, in an area like Kita-Saku, where the fertile plateau had been carved up by half a dozen overlords, he often found it necessary to coordinate activities, such as the catching of thieves, in regions beyond his jurisdiction. The foregoing investigation concerned two issues: a false initial report of the identity of all participants in the event; and the forced entry into the inns under the rubric of official business. Almost everywhere in eighteenth-century Japan laws were issued forbidding kawata from entering the homes of ordinary commoners "even if it rains." In Kita-Saku such laws suddenly appeared in the domains of Komoro, Iwamurata, Okudono, and Tanoguchi, all in 1738.^[21] The second issue thus involved the breaking of laws ordering segregation between kawata and commoners.

In 1855 four vagrants (mushuku) wearing long swords were reported at an inn at Kodai. Dispatched from Mikage-shinden to apprehend them were two kawata armed with sticks—which was unusual, since they customarily wore one sword when on official business, although some regulations seem to have prohibited swords for kawata (see art. 3 of the regulations for outcastes in Okudono domain, Kita-Saku, in appendix 5). The vagrants resisted arrest, assaulted the two kawata, and escaped, leaving each kawata with deep cuts (some eighteen centimeters long) across the face and forearm. When peasant uprisings escalated to armed confrontations, kawata were mobilized along with samurai retainers to quell the peasants. Such incidents involving kawata police have been documented for Fukuyama domain (1787), Shinano's districts of Aida (1869) and Kita-Saku (1782), and a number of other places.^[22]

[21] Ozaki Yukiya, Shinshu^[*]hisabetsu buraku no shiteki kenkyu^[*] (Kashiwa shobo^[*] , 1982), 17.

[22] On Fukuyama and Aida, see Bix, Peasant Protest , 124 and 202; on Kita-Saku, Banba Masatomo, "Mibunsei no teppai e: Shinshu^[*] ni okeru burakushi sobyo^[*] (4)," Shinano 16, no. 12 (1964): 36. For another example from 1755, see Teraki, Kinsei buraku , 63. John B. Cornell mentions kawata being called upon in 1871 to defend the castle of Takasaki (Gunma prefecture) and the mobilization of more than five hundred kawata to garrison a fortress during an uprising of some seventy thousand peasants in northern Kii ("From Caste Patron to Entrepreneur and Political Ideologue: Transformation in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Outcaste Leadership Elites," in Modern Japanese Leadership: Transition and Change , ed. Bernard Silberman and H. Harootunian [Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1966], 63).

When kawata were used against rioting peasants, they were not looked upon as officials to whom respect was due. For example, when three kawata hamlets were mobilized in the Fukuyama riot of 1787, the peasants apparently voiced their anger and indignation by shouting things like "If you dare insult us by turning the likes of abominable eta on us, we'll kill them and feed them to the dogs!"^[23]

At other times kawata joined in rebellions, apparently without objections from the other peasants.^[24] Such was the case with Oshio^[*] Heihachiro's^[*] uprising in Osaka in 1836. It sometimes happened that kawata communities were split between those who were mobilized to suppress the unrest and those who actively participated in it. In 1823 four kawata were among the twenty-six people punished as ringleaders of a large rebellion in northern Kii.^[25]

When peasants rioted, kawata were mobilized to suppress them, but when kawata rioted, a rare occurrence, peasants, not other kawata, were mobilized to bring them under control. The authorities deployed commoners against commoners to keep the peace, playing off the emotionally loaded status antagonisms between them. The next incident involves villagers who mobilized such hostile sentiments when they discredited a fellow peasant by defaming his pedigree as polluted by low-status elements.

[23] Teraki, Kinsei buraku , 64.

[24] Hatanaka ("'Kawata' mibun," 327) lists seven riots between 1748 and 1866 in which kawata participated.

[25] Teraki, Kinsei buraku , 64. Some historians have raised the question whether kawata were actually ringleaders in all instances where they were punished as such. They may have been the victims of lower officials' eagerness to demonstrate results of their mopping-up operations (see Kobayashi Shigeru's remarks in Kobayashi Shigeru et al., "Zadankai: Kinsei hisabetsu buraku ni kansuru horei^[*] o megutte," in Kinsei hisabetsu buraku kankei horeishu^[*] : Tenryo^[*]o chushin^[*]to shite , ed. Kobayashi Shigeru [Akashi shoten, 1981], 498). In the Chihara riot of 1782, described and analyzed by Anne Walthall (Social Protest , 21-23, 151-55, esp. 154), the kawata community of Minami-Oji^[*] was singled out for special punishment (see Hatanaka, "'Kawata' mibun," 321-24).

The Bonboku Incident, 1777-1780

In Kita-Saku in 1777/3 a certain Yojiro^[*] was excluded from a young men's dance at the village festival in Ozawa^[*] .^[26] The village officials had concurred with this expulsion, because Yojiro^[*] was someone "with a bad pedigree." This claim did not go unchallenged by Yojiro^[*] and his father Chuemon^[*] , and led to a lawsuit two years later. At issue was whether the officials had slurred Chuemon's^[*] ancestry, and if so, on what grounds.

The intendant in charge tried to take an easy way out. Avoiding the central issue, he cited Chuemon's^[*] violent behavior during the present quarrel and sentenced him to be handcuffed for a time. This triggered a number of personal appeals, not to the intendant, but directly to the domain's investigators in Edo. In 1779/9 one of Chuemon's^[*] relatives went to Edo. Chuemon^[*] himself was joined in an appeal to Edo by two of his sons in the third and sixth months of 1780. Domain authorities were thus forced to address the substance of the dispute and come forth with a decision regarding Chuemon's^[*] status, which is why we know the arguments on both sides.

Chuemon's^[*] rebuttal consisted of several points. First, one of his ancestors had been entered as a titled peasant on the land survey of 1629, one hundred and fifty years earlier. Second, another ancestor had served as a local guide to land surveyors in the 1650s and 1660s. And third, he had commended land to the village shrine. This, in his eyes, entitled him to treatment as a regular community member.

Of these three points, the village officials accepted as valid only the first one, even though they acknowledged Chuemon^[*] as a tribute-paying peasant. Yet ancestry and tax status notwithstanding, the village officials believed that their discriminatory stance was justified. Their reasons were also threefold: Chuemon's^[*] family had not married local people; he acted as if he were on equal terms with the blind; and he did not relate to kawata the way the other peasants did. Through circumstantial evidence and innuendo it was argued that the social behavior of this otherwise legally certified peasant justified discriminatory treatment. The absence of local marriage alliances suggested that Chuemon^[*] had family ties with "others." The blind associates referred to here were

[26] Ozaki, Shinshu^[*]hisabetsu buraku , 101-2, 259-60.

zato^[*] , not just people with impaired vision (mojin^[*] ) but members of an official organization for storytellers, musicians (biwahoshi^[*] ), masseurs, and so on, all of whom were blind individuals who earned an independent living in their occupations.^[27] As such, zato^[*] were a subcategory of senmin, lower people, just as the kawata were. Thus the statement that Chuemon^[*] was on a level with them suggested that he too was of a lower status.

The same suggestion was made with regard to Chuemon's^[*] association with the kawata. He was even accused of not paying the "sheaf" (ichiwa ), which every peasant household was required to pay the kawata for the services they performed for the village. Moreover, it was claimed that one of Chuemon's^[*] ancestors, a certain Saemon, had made his living as a bonboku , a local name for entertainers who performed the lion dance (shishimai ).

Entertainers were yet another category of senmin; they were eventually put under the jurisdiction of the kawata chief Danzaemon in Edo during the eighteenth century. Like other holders of low occupations, they were usually housed in separate quarters. For example, in the land register of Azumi district in Shinano circa 1650, yamabushi yashiki (compounds for mountain ascetics), doshin^[*]yashiki (Buddhist priests without temples), and a yashiki for shishimai performers are listed. In 1687, in a village of the same district, officials had to intervene in a dispute between kawata, Ebisu (Ainu), and shishimai dancers regarding group rank, a dispute that was settled in favor of the kawata.^[28] Throughout the seventeenth century the authorities had often settled disputes among various classes or occupations of "lower people," sometimes by consigning them, as they did the hinin and entertainers, to the jurisdiction of the kawata.^[29]

In the case of Chuemon^[*] the local temple mediated a conciliation. The domain meted out punishments to both parties, differentially but graded according to status, for having caused so much trouble. Chuemon^[*] was

[27] The penal code distinguishes between mojin^[*] and biwahoshi^[*] (see TKKk, 4:234). Internally, the zato^[*] were organized hierarchically into dozens of ranks at a national level under the jurisdiction of Kengyo^[*] in Kyoto (see KDJ 6:406, s.v. "Kengyo^[*] ").

[28] Banba Masatomo, "'Buraku' no seiritsu ni tsuite: Shinshu^[*] ni okeru burakushi sobyo^[*] (2)," Shinano 12, no. 9 (1960): 49, 59.

[29] See Tsukada Takashi, "Kasomin^[*] no sekai: 'Mibunteki shuen^[*] ' no shiten kara," in MK, 225-67.

sentenced to domiciliary confinement (oshikome ) for ten days and was manacled for between fifteen and thirty days. The village officials received a lighter sentence: domiciliary confinement (enryo ) for between ten and thirty days.^[30] The authorities did not settle the question of Chuemon's^[*] status.

As a very peculiar genealogical reckoning, genealogy was invoked as the ultimate proof of Chuemon's^[*] low status. One entertainer ancestor erased his long and venerable peasant lineage. "Genealogical descent," like occupation, language, or skin color (here as in other times and places), becomes the arbitrary, socially defined basis for a particular form of discrimination—one of Tokugawa Japan's unique ("early modern") contributions to Japanese cultural and social practice that is not yet part of the past even today. It did not exist as such in the early Tokugawa period, nor was it a legacy from the Middle Ages; rather, it was a product of eighteenth-century Tokugawa society and culture. Another important point is that the verdict could have been different. Aside from local public opinion, manipulating "genealogy" and association, official legal "world-making" had also to do with whether one was a kawata or not.