''Kashindan'' (家臣団) was an institution of the

retainers Retainer may refer to: * Retainer (orthodontics), devices for teeth * RFA ''Retainer'' (A329), a ship * Retainers in early China, a social group in early China Employment * Retainer agreement, a contract in which an employer pays in advance for ...

(''kashin'') of the

shogun , officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakur ...

or a

daimyo were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominally ...

in Japan that became a class of

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

. It was divided into the military commanders (''bankata'') and the civil officers (''yakukata''). In the Nanboku-chō and Muromachi periods, the ''kashindan'' began to include members of the clan that it served. In the

Sengoku period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

, in response to the need for a strong military organization with a centralized power structure, the daimyo organized their own ''kashindan'' as a

standing army A standing army is a permanent, often professional, army. It is composed of full-time soldiers who may be either career soldiers or conscripts. It differs from army reserves, who are enrolled for the long term, but activated only during wars or n ...

. By the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, they had become a discrete class of samurai, and each family was paid an annual stipend according to its rank. The ''kashindan'' was abolished in 1871 as part of the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

History

Medieval period

In and before the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

, the clan head and its members, who were related to the clan head, had one type of a cooperative relationship comparable to that of a

kin community Kin is a digital media and entertainment company. History Kin Community was created by DECA in 2011 as part of YouTube's $100 million investment in their YouTube Original Channel Initiative. Kin Community failed to receive follow-on funding f ...

. However, during the Nanboku-chō and Muromachi periods, the clan heads began to place their own clan members among the retainers of the clan, and ranked them as their ''kashin''. This gave birth to the distinctive ''kashidan'' of the post-Nanboku-chō period samurai institution. During this period, the collective body made up from the lord and the ''kashindan'' was called ''kachū''. In the

, the daimyo organized their own ''kashindan'' as a standing army in response to the need for a strong military organization with a centralized power structure. In particular,

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period. He is regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. Nobunaga was head of the very powerful Oda clan, and launched a war against other ''daimyō'' to unify ...

, one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period, organized a professional army by creating a class of full-time samurai soldiers made up of ''

jizamurai The were lords of smaller rural domains in feudal Japan.Harold Britho, 'The Han', in John Whitney Hall, ed., ''The Cambridge History of Japan, volume 4: Early Modern Period'' (Cambridge UP, 1988), 183–234, They often used their relatively sma ...

'' and

mercenaries A mercenary, sometimes also known as a soldier of fortune or hired gun, is a private individual, particularly a soldier, that joins a military conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any o ...

, who were removed from their peacetime agriculture. After the 1588

sword hunt Several times in Japanese history, the new ruler sought to ensure his position by calling a . Armies would scour the entire country, confiscating the weapons of all potential enemies of the new regime. In this manner, the new ruler sought to ensure ...

ordered by

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Cour ...

, and the following '' heinōbunri'' policy, a clear distinction between the peasants and the samurai was made, which paved way to a more organized ''kashindan'' of the daimyo. This resulted in vast gaps in status between the members of the ''kashindan'', the samurai who had chosen to fight; and the hereditary ''nanushi'' (village heads), the samurai who had chosen to farm during the ''heinōbunri''.

Edo period

During the

, the ''kashindan'' became a fixed samurai class, and defined the political world of the samurai for centuries. The ''kashindan'' held significant power in relation to the ruler; they made him swear to rule justly, to promote them in accordance to actual merit and to not assassinate them based on the suspicion of treason without telling them beforehand. Each samurai family that was in the ''kashindan'' of a daimyo, or the shogun, was paid an annual land stipend (''chigyō'') or rice stipend (''fuchimai'') according the rank of the family. In exchange to this, the daimyo imposed severe criminal laws with the aim of deterrence, and held the right to make judgements on criminals. The ''kashindan'' lived in the vicinity of the daimyo's castle, and as they were affiliated with a single daimyo, they were segregated from the samurai outside their own domain.

Shinichi Kitaoka is a Japanese political scientist. He has held many roles such as the president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), president of the International University of Japan, professor at Japan's GRIPS-Tokyo School of Security and I ...

describes the ''kashindan'' of the Edo period as " patrimonial bureaucratic vassal bands". The patrimonial aspect of the Edo period ''kashindan'' made them more dependent on the daimyo than their Kamakura period counterparts, creating a unique institution that differentiated the ''kashindan'' from the feudal

retinue A retinue is a body of persons "retained" in the service of a noble, royal personage, or dignitary; a ''suite'' (French "what follows") of retainers. Etymology The word, recorded in English since circa 1375, stems from Old French ''retenue'', it ...

of medieval Europe. The

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

leaned towards a patrimonial system similar to many ancient empires while still containing some elements of feudalism. According to Kitaoka, for this reason, the concept of feudalism is not applicable to the Edo period ''kashindan''. Unlike the Kamakura period ''kashindan'' that had deteriorated economically, the ''kashindan'' of the Edo period daimyo were economically stable. This was the result of a set of strict laws and social rules on land trade,

mortgage A mortgage loan or simply mortgage (), in civil law jurisdicions known also as a hypothec loan, is a loan used either by purchasers of real property to raise funds to buy real estate, or by existing property owners to raise funds for any pu ...

and inheritance. It was forbidden to sell land to a fief, and to mortgage it was restricted and only allowed temporarily. Although there were generally no laws regulating inheritance, social rules discouraged the division of heritage, and the obedience from the children and wives to the judgement of the parent was paramount. Generally, the eldest son born of the official wife was presumed to be the heir, and the younger sons had practically no chance at becoming high-ranking samurai like ''

hatamoto A was a high ranking samurai in the direct service of the Tokugawa shogunate of feudal Japan. While all three of the shogunates in Japanese history had official retainers, in the two preceding ones, they were referred to as ''gokenin.'' However ...

''. Because of this, the size of the ''kashindan'' was almost completely fixed, and the stability in numbers was presupposed. The members of the

Tokugawa clan The is a Japanese dynasty that was formerly a powerful ''daimyō'' family. They nominally descended from Emperor Seiwa (850–880) and were a branch of the Minamoto clan (Seiwa Genji) through the Matsudaira clan. The early history of this clan r ...

and '' fudai daimyo'' were appointed to posts at the top of the ruling structure, such as ''

karō were top-ranking samurai officials and advisors in service to the ''daimyōs'' of feudal Japan. Overview In the Edo period, the policy of ''sankin-kōtai'' (alternate attendance) required each ''daimyō'' to place a ''karō'' in Edo and anoth ...

'' and ''

bugyō was a title assigned to ''samurai'' officials during the feudal period of Japan. ''Bugyō'' is often translated as commissioner, magistrate, or governor, and other terms would be added to the title to describe more specifically a given official' ...

''. On the other hand, former retainers (''kashin'') of the local lord class (''zaichi ryōshu-sō''), who had served under Tokugawa clan, were appointed as '' tozama daimyo'' and ''kunimochi daimyo''. Furthermore, the military units were all organized into separate ''kumi'', and the lower-ranked samurai, including the ''rōtō'', ''chūgen'', and ''komono'', were commanded by a ''kumigashira'' ("group head").

Abolition and legacy

At the end of the Edo period, during the

Bakumatsu was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government ...

, the ''kashidan'' served as the only official forum for political action in response to the political and social crisis when the

ended. The ''kashidan'' was officially abolished in 1871 as part of the

. Its abolition led to a financial crisis among the low and middle-ranking samurai, who no longer had access to their traditional income and privilege. The former ''kashindan'' failed to establish an organized class-based resistance against this, and the resistance was limited to the Tōbaku Movement and local associations which had no chance against the centralized

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji o ...

. The ''kashindan'', who were required to live near their lord's castle, affected the development of cities under the modern municipal system, and most cities established in the

Meiji era The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...

were former castle towns.

Terminology

While the term ''kashindan'' refers to the institution of retainers in the samurai society, the term ''kashin'' ("house retainer"), meaning a retainer in the service of a family, is synonymous with ''kerai'' and '' kenin'',{{Cite book , title=Nihon kokugo daijiten , publisher=Shōgakkan , others=Shōgakkan Kokugo Jiten Henshūbu , year=2006 , isbn=4-09-521021-4 , at=家臣 , oclc=70216445 and can also refer to retainers in the service of ''

kuge The was a Japanese aristocratic class that dominated the Japanese Imperial Court in Kyoto. The ''kuge'' were important from the establishment of Kyoto as the capital during the Heian period in the late 8th century until the rise of the Kamakur ...

'' (court aristocracy), ''nanushi'' and landowners.

References