According to Dazai Shundai, systems of bureaucratic offices will inevitably change over time and must be suited to the circumstances of the present, but in establishing these, it is important to look back to the models of the ancient Chinese sage kings. In earlier times, Japan emulated these systems of bureaucratic offices from China, but even then Japan departed from the Chinese model by making offices hereditary. Since the advent of military rule in Japan, the situation has only worsened, with simplified military regulations taking the place of a proper system of offices.

According to Dazai Shundai, regulations governing people’s dress and their ceremonial guards and retinues are a way to visibly display distinctions in status, but appropriate systems for these are lacking in Tokugawa Japan. The military is a necessary complement to the civil in governing, but the samurai of Tokugawa Japan, who have lived in cities for several generations while receiving hereditary stipends, have lost the qualities of true warriors and would be of little use in an actual battle. To remedy this, samurai should be required to train in the martial arts.

According to Dazai Shundai, the most effective way for feudal domains to amass wealth and resolve their fiscal difficulties is to promote the production of crops and other products for which the domain’s soil and geography provide a particular advantage. Domain governments should then manage trade in these products with other regions in order to maximize profits for the domain, rather than allowing private merchants to dominate this trade. From the perspective of traditional Confucian teachings it is not ideal for rulers to pursue profit through commerce, but this is an acceptable emergency measure to deal with a time of crisis.

According to Dazai Shundai, establishing institutions to handle various affairs is the foremost task of government. These should be fixed in place for a long period of time and be strictly upheld. In earlier times, Japan had proper institutions based on models learned from China, but with the advent of government by warriors, such institutions fell into disuse and have been replaced by provisional measures. Tokugawa Japan lacks proper institutions for a wide range of matters, a key example of which is the absence of institutions to regulate kinship relations.

According to Dazai Shundai, techniques of political economy must be based on the models of the ancient Chinese sage kings. In order to apply these models to present-day Japan, it is important to draw proper analogies between ancient Chinese and later Japanese phenomena and to use appropriate terminology in describing Japanese phenomena.

From a scattering of fishing villages on the Kanto plain far from the bustling capital of Kyoto and the centers of samurai power, medieval Edo transformed first into a castle town and military headquarters for the ambitious warrior Tokugawa Ieyasu and then into the early modern capital of the Tokugawa shogunate. In the early 1600s, driven by the logics of military defense and the societal supremacy of samurai, the warrior government built mechanisms and symbols of its power into the city. Edo Castle rose at its center and the rest of the city spun outward in a spiral pattern that shaped where people lived and how neighborhoods developed. As its physical footprint, economic pull, and political importance grew, early modern Edo catapulted over Kyoto and Osaka to become the largest city of the realm in mere decades.

This chapter examines the structure of regional authority in early modern Japan. Its aim is to clarify the nature of the early modern Japanese state. The shogunate delegated authority to autonomous daimyo domains, and both shogunate and domains delegated authority to village heads, who managed their communities with little direct oversight. The system worked well enough to keep the realm generally peaceful and prosperous for 265 years. The chapter begins with a top-down taxonomy of the daimyo domains and other, lesser jurisdictions under the authority of the Tokugawa shogunate. It then moves onto a discussion of village rule, framed in terms of governmentality – that is, the structures through which villagers participated in their own subjecthood to the shogunate and domains. The chapter concludes with a discussion of shared-revenue villages (aikyū mura), which were divided among multiple overlords while retaining a character as singular communities.

This chapter traces the rise of the Asakura clan from mid-ranking warriors to warlords of the province of Echizen, and the emergence of Ichijōdani as the thriving capital of the region for a century. It considers the construction of a palatial residence near a fortified castle, and the resulting growth of a city around this pairing, as one of many forms of elite warrior politics in late medieval Japan