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).