2 results
3 - Learning and Literacy among Ikkō Ikki Adherents
-
- By Ohto Yasuhiro translated by Richard Rubinger
- Edited by Richard Rubinger
-
- Book:
- A Social History of Literacy in Japan
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 31 March 2021, pp 37-54
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
The goals of this essay are several: to contribute to this volume by providing data on literacy in medieval Japan (roughly the late twelfth century to the midsixteen century), to show that literacy was more prevalent and at a higher level among certain groups than previously thought and to emphasize the religious and military motivations for literacy and learning by these groups. In addition, the argument is made that once basic literacy was attained it could, and often did, lead to the mastery of written texts and higher learning that aided in the development of spiritual values and personal morality needed in a time of chaos and violence.
Military uprisings by followers of the True Pure Land (Jōdo Shin) sect of Buddhism, also referred to as Ikkō ikki, began in the 1470s, when the abbot, Rennyo, fleeing religious persecution, established his base in the Hokuriku region (Toyama, Ishikawa, Fukui prefectures). By 1488 the Ikkō ikki had killed the military governor (shugo) of Kaga Province (now part of Ishikawa Prefecture) and taken control of the province, which they retained for nearly a century. It was not until their defeat in 1580 by the national hegemon, Oda Nobunaga (1534– 1582) that the military power of the Ikkō ikki was crushed. During this time the Kaga Ikkō ikki grew from merely demanding benevolent government and reduction of taxes to outright rejection of the tax burden and eventually, by the Tenshō era (1573– 92), had both the political and military power to threaten Sengoku daimyo (territorial warlords from the mid-fifteenth to the late sixteenth century). The fierce battles they fought against the political powers of Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537– 1598) dominated the late sixteenth century.
The farmers who formed the base of Ikkō ikki support and whose lives could be said to symbolize the harsh social changes of the late Sengoku period (roughly sixteenth century) did not rise in revolt merely to seek economic benefits such as reductions in their tax burdens. The source of the power that enabled them to compete with the military forces of the Sengoku daimyo came from spiritual values that originated in their daily learning activities as followers of the Ikkō sect.
8 - Literacy in Ōzenji Village in the Early Nineteenth Century
-
- By Ohto Yasuhiro translated by Gregory Johnson
- Edited by Richard Rubinger
-
- Book:
- A Social History of Literacy in Japan
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 31 March 2021, pp 147-164
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
This is an examination of the state of literacy in Ōzenji Village on Zōjōji Temple territory in Musashi Province in the suburbs of Edo (renamed Tokyo in 1868) at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, rebellions of peasants against village leaders were continually breaking out. Considerable tension between the parties can be seen in documents concerning land taxes and property ownership that led to concessions from village heads, and provide evidence for the existence and spread of literacy among ordinary farmers because they often signed or put a personal mark these documents.
Up until now the nature of commoner literacy in Japan has consisted mainly of research on popular writing schools (tenaraisho or terakoya). Ishikawa Ken's quantitative research on these schools was so influential that it even influenced foreign researchers like Herbert Passin and Ronald Dore and became a model for subsequent research. In these works popular literacy in Japan has been seen as the result of the quantitative increase in numbers of writing schools and enrollments at them. Probably the culmination of this sort of research was the work of Kagotani Jirō. Kagotani was strongly influenced by earlier work on the history of writing schools such as Ototake Iwazō, Passin, Dore, Hirooka Ryōzō and Tone Keizaburo. He used Ototake's estimate of over 86 percent enrollment rate at writing schools in Edo and suggested that, “Almost all children of small merchants and master artisans studied at writing schools.” Using Hirooka's inference that the enrollment rate for boys in the Kyoto mountain villages of Kita Kuwada Province never dropped below 70 percent during the late Tokugawa to early Meiji period (roughly 1850s– 1870s), Kagotani went on to analyze enrollments of 37 Kita Kawachi villages in the late Tokugawa period and concluded that almost all boys and over 60 percent of girls had enrolled in writing schools.
The very high level of school enrollments reflected in the above works is generally based on school enrollment data in the Ministry of Education's charts in Volume 9 of Nihon kyōiku shi shiryō. In addition, school enrollment estimates were increased using data on the increase in published works, the spread of popular text materials known as oraimono, and some correspondence found in farming villages.