Civil Order

And once again, the tack I'll take here is one of a student of such things, curious about the general subject, and interested in (a) some generalizations that help us grasp the essences of East Asian societies, and (b) some interesting specific examples.

Yesterday I made a log entry, from which I'll depart in what follows, and located a couple of especially useful resources:

Symposium on Peasant Rebellions: Some Introductory Comments Joseph W Esherick Modern China, Vol. 9, No. 3, Symposium: Peasant Rebellions in China, Jul., 1983, pp. 275-284

Rebellion and Revolution: The Study of Popular Movements in Chinese History Frederick Wakeman, Jr. Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2. (Feb., 1977), pp. 201-237.

I also did a troll through Annie and made a visit to LL4... returning with a pile of 14 books that have bits of what I want to know in them.

I also have materials from former years on the Taiping Rebellion and several exemplary texts (K'ang Yu-wei 1898, Lu Hsun, Mao Zedong 1927) that express Chinese views of the contemporary scene, and a Weblet on Falun Gong, much in need of updating.

...and we need to consider the case of Aum Shin Rikyo as a case of rebellion...

So how shall we proceed? We might begin with Japan, and with some thoughts about the evidence for 'civil order' in Chushingura, and the question is, what do we see?

what of the 'peasantry'?
what keeps samurai in line?
in what ways do the actions of the Asano clan retainers challenge civil order?
...and just what was/is the nature of 'corruption' in 1960s/present-day Japan?

from Magagna Communities of Grain (1991):

In 1653, Sakura Sogoro, an elder of Narita village, was executed by order of Hotta Masanobu, daimyo of the Sakura feudal domain. Sakura's crime had been the offense of directly presenting a petition of grievances to the domain's lord (the daimyo), and this sort of dirrect and forceful demonstration had long been regarded as a threat to the deeply aristocratic and feudal social order that had characterized Japan since the sixteenth century. As the Tokugawa, the supreme feudal overlords of Japan, reminded their vassals, "though your request is righteous, if you do not follow correct procedures, or if you be rude and unseemly in conduct, you will be severely punished." In the case of Sakura Sogoro this meant ritual crucifixion, a punishment that emphasized the grave seriousness with which the feudal elite viewed any assertion of political autonomy on the part of rural commoners. (220)

Between 1600 and 1868, rural Japan was repeatedly shaken by a complex series of protests and disturances that challenged the power of the samurai... some 260 years of Tokugawa rule saw 2,809 rural revolts and 1,000 cases of riot... (221)

The whole edifice of Tokugawa Japan rested on the ability of ordinary cultivators to produce a surplus large enough to support both the samurai elite and the large population of urban merchants, artisans, and laborers... by the end of the 16th century the samurai had... become a closed, hereditary caste, and samurai no longer lived in the countryside but were confined instead to castle towns and cities... the agricultural population of a single domain dealt with the domain lord and his vassals as a group through the mediation of a land tax (nengu), typically paid in kind on an annual basis... (225)

The land tax was the symbol and substance of the political subjection of the countryside to an urbanized aristocracy of warrior administrators... The need to convert tax rice into the full range of goods and services required by a high-status elite of urban samurai encouraged the growth of a money economy and the rise of an urban service population. In addition, tax rice had to be transported to both the domain's castle town and Edo, where all lords were required to spend half of each year in attendance on the shogun, and thus stimulated the development of long-distance trade and credit. (226-227)

From Elison and Smith 1987 Warlords, Artists, and Commoners:

In the early Middle Ages, the samurai yeomen lived within the agricultural communities which they held in fief, exercising both fiscal (that is to say, tax-collecting) and judicial control over the cultivators... Gradually, village communities won free rights over such aspects of their life as police action, access to water and communal land, and the right to sell property. Villages acting as autonomous units agreed to deliver to the daimyo set quotas of taxes on a contract basis, thus avoiding the interference of samurai tax collectors... Such village autonomy tended to be won by villagers at the expense of the local gentry samurai, usually by negotiation with superior daimyo authority. Hence the growth in village autonomy placed the rural samurai in an increasingly precarious position. (13)

By reaching down directly to the village level, the daimyo forced the local samurai to relinquish their close ties with the land and the peasantry and to move instead to the daimyo's castle headquarters, where they would reside as members of the daimyo's house band and garrison troops... For [the samurai] the choice was to give up the sword and become peasants, or abandon the land and become hereditary soldiers of the daimyo. Faced with this unhappy choice, a substantial number... left the countryside and became castle-town stipendiaries. By the Tokugawa period, the samurai class therefore constituted a remarkably high 7 percent of the population, all living in towns or cities. (14)

[Shogun] Hideyoshi's 1588 edict ...read: "The farmers of all provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of weapons. If unnecessary implements of war are kept, the collection of annual taxes becomes difficult and uprisings are encouraged..." (14)

By the early Tokugawa period, samurai (except in a few scattered and exceptional instances) had been deprived of their direct private rights over the land and its cultivation as a result of the forced move to the daimyo's castle... The withdrawal of the entire land-owning aristocracy from the land and its conversion into a military-administrative officer corps attached to national and regional centers of government was perhaps the most fundamental change of the 16th century... Samurai could not acquire private landed wealth. Their income could be increased only by the acquision of merit increases of stipend in the service of daimyo or shogun... (19)

from Najita and Koschmann 1982 Conflict in Modern Japanese History:

Peasant rebellions, insurrections, assassinations, suicide, urban riots, strikes, student uprisings, coups, and so on punctuate the historical landscape... We have been accustomed to viewing human time as a consensual flow or movement, regulated by certain stylized relationships such as loyalty to the group or superiors in Japan, and moving along in a mainstream or on a central track... (ix)

Hashimoto Mitsuru in Najita and Koschmann 1982 ("The social background of peasant uprisings in Tokugawa Japan")
...the "broken world" (yo no midare) of Japan in the late Tokugawa period. What [the peasants] saw was a world of merciless rulers and avaricious village elites who would not give them the aid they needed. In response, the peasants envisioned the "world of Maitreya" (miroku no yo) where they would live in peace and abundance. They organized rebellions for "world renewal" (yonaoshi) and joined new religious sects. Chaotic and orgiastic movements represented an opportunity for newly constituting the broken community... (145-146)

When the [village] headman was both a good guardian and a good representative of the peasants' will, they regarded him as humane, reliable, and benevolent. If bad crops and famine brought the village to crisis, a good headman would offer rice and grain from his own warehouse and plead his village's case before higher officials. Thus, at the lowest administrative level, it was the headman who was in charge of strengthening the moral bond between peasant and ruler, and he was expected by peasants to exhibit the particular morality appropriate to his position as their nearest source of benevolent aid. Actually, of course, no headman could alone sustain his villagers' needs. Demands for tax reduction and exemption could only be granted by higher authority, specifically the daimyo or the overlord... (156)

Aid was expected of the benevolent ruler, and if he failed to maintain the peasant community ...villagers would argue that their ruler lacked benevolence and morality... Wealth without benevolence, particularly when it was far away and out of the control of the community, became the target of peasant indignation. Peasants responded by attacking the avaricious rich who had broken the moral bond by engaging in single-minded economic exploitation... (156-157)

The proliferation of new religious movements was but one indicator that peasants sensed something drastically wrong with their world and were trying to radically restructure their lives... Anticipation of a new world erupted in the form of millenial mass movements... (160)

From Roger Bowen Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan (1980):

opens with a poem (in fact virtually a 'death poem') by one Ohashi Genzaburo, a peasant participant in the "Kabasan Incident" of 1884:

An alliance for freedom,
taken with the idea of freedom:
it all becomes clear
in the small mirror of sincerity.
Yet while we lament, asking
why our insignificant selves
were oppressed,
the rain still falls
heavily on the people.

Rebellion signifies much more than simple violence or "peasant discontent"; rebellion represents a perhaps fatal questioning of the legitimacy of the established order; it means that the rebels are claiming that something is wrong with conditions as they presently exist; it means (though not always) that the traditional grounds of obedience upon which the state rests are being challenged... (5)

quotes Jefferson to Madison, 30 Jan 1787:

I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. (8)

In the experience of most nations, it seems that some regions are more inclined to rebellion than others. In China, for instance, the south more than other regions has been 'the hearth of rebellion...'... the reasons for some regions and not others to manifest rebelliousness are both complex and varied: peripheral location vis-a-vis the center of State control; close proximity to urban centers of commerce; linguistic or ethinic differences separating a region from the majority of the population; differences with regard to patterns of agriculture, economy, or kinship; and perhaps even the existence of a folk "custom of rebellion" that relies upon the collective memory of a region's inhabitants. (71)

During the last 100 years of the Tokugawa, peasant uprisings continued to record changing socioeconomic conditions. Most of the large-scale disturbances of this time reflect the increasing numbers of farmers who were turning to specialized commercial production of crops but were finding the consequences of this hard to bear... [among them] the steady concentration of landholdings in the hands of a few... the rising merchant guilds that manipulated the market; time-consuming and costly government projects for improved transportation systems that depended on the farmer's corvée labor... (86)

At times of economic crisis, the small agricultural producer sometimes yielded to the temptation to invoke the ideas of the old moral economy because the economic security they argued for seemed preferable to a market system which, besides promoting surplus production, also encouraged profiteering, usury, and monopoly. (121)

Chinese history offers all sorts of instances of peasant uprisings, rebellions, popular movements, and nascent revolutionary movements. Getting a handle on all of that is a challenge of colorful names (Yellow Turban Revolt, Red Turban Revolt, Boxer [Harmonious Fist] Rebellion, White Lotus Rebellion, Red Spears, etc...) and multifarious causes, and I can't claim to have this under control just yet. Some bits:

from Perry's Challenging the Mandate of Heaven (2002):

China's impressive record of rebellion and revolution is due not simply to the country's extraordinary size and longevity, but also to the fact that central elements in China's political culture have directly encouraged such protests. The Confucian (or Mencian, to be precise) concept of a "Mandate of Heaven" (tianming) bestowed instant legitimacy upon successful rebel leaders... In imperial China, one who managed to wrest the throne by force thereby gained Confucian sanction for his rule: as the proverb but it bluntly, "He who succeeds is a king or marquis; he who fails is an outlaw." (ix)

Challenging the Mandate of Heaven was never an easy accomplishment, but it did periodically occur --in both ancient and modern times. History suggests that a key to the success of such undertakings lay in bridging the (often state-imposed) categories that set various groups of people against one another. Such divisions, although responsible for much of the unrest that has colored the Chinese past, also posed serious obstacles to concerted popular imagination and action against the state. To overcome these hurdles required the intervention of farsighted individuals, who often issued from the lower rungs of the intelligentsia or local elite... (xi-xii)

As the historical record teaches us, the vast majority of Chinese sectarian groups were inclined to political quiescence. The trigger for protest, more often than not, lay with the state. Government repression was a common precipitant of overt rebellion. Thus if the current effort to eliminate Falun Gong does not succeed, the authorities are likely to have turned a once tranquil friend into an implacable and formidable foe. Like the anti-sectarian efforts of the Qianlong emperor in the 18th century, or for that matter of the Guomindang earlier in the 20th century, their heavy-handed initiatives against "heterodoxy" and "feudal superstition" may well prove counterproductive in the long run. (xx)

from Esherick's "Introductory Comments" for a Symposium on Peasant Rebellions, Modern China 1983:

...several different types of popular rebellion: those in response to natural disasters, protests against government oppression, religious rebellions, separatist rebellions, ethnic rebellions, and banditry... (276)

from Wakeman "Rebellion and Revolution: the study of popular movements in Chinese history", Journal of Asian Studies 1977:

[citing Mark Elvin 1973] ...throughout the later Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, poor peasants were indeed bound as serfs to cultivate Yangtze valley manors of the rich. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, however, serfs and poor tenants began to acquire a more cohesive class identity, due in part to increased social contact between them and the burgeoning market towns. This new consciousness helped provoke serf uprisings in the mid-1600s, in which poorer peasants banded together to attack the villas of their masters, freeing household slaves and destroying tenant contracts... [resulting in] rapid decline of the manorial system and the eventual formation of a new economic basis for gentry rule. Frightened by the ferocity of their serfs' attacks, landlords abandoned their manors to invest in safer enterprises like pawnshops, or purchased more profitable urban real estate in place of farmland. By the middle of the Qing period the economic basis of the gentry had shifted from land to credit. Usury --the control of financial resources-- had become "a more important source of social and economic power in the countryside than ownership of land." (202)

...most Chinese "peasant movements" were led by such outsiders as monks, doctors, and professional criminals, or by petty officials and "sophisticated but disaffected members of the literati class". (204)

[identifies subtypes of popular movements, including]

Sectarian Rebellion... beginning with the sectarian revolt of Song Zixian in 613, many rebel leaders had claimed that they were incarnations of Maitreya, the Buddha of the imminent third kalpa (age) of mankind. By the 1350s, the followers of Maitreya appear to have merged with the White Lotus cult of Pure Land Buddhism... After being banned in the 14th century, the White Lotus sect reappeared toward the end of the Ming, promising its followers that an "eternal and venerable mother" (wusheng lau mu) would give birth to Maitreya and help the faithful survive the calamities accompanying the arrival of the kalpa, This new concept of salvation combined with the prophecy of Maitreya in the call for a popular rebellion against the dark forces of secular government that held back the victory of light... (205-206)

Millenarian Movements ...Great Way of Former Heaven (Xian tian da dao), Eight Trigrams (Bagua), Inaction sect (Wuwei jiao), Heavenly Principle (Tianli), Way of Pervading Unity (Yiguan dao), Residing Principle (Zaili) and the Luo sect (Luojiao) appear to have been "scattered believers in a common religion". Originally rooted in Mahayana Buddhism... by the Qing period this congregational religion was a syncretic creed... (208)

...their leaders, committed to the same kind of eternal return, continuously acted from mixed motives. Perhaps in no other culture's moments of ecstatic rebellion is it so difficult for the historian to distinguish messianic self-conviction from charlatanic self-service. (211)

Free Farmers ...some might even argue that the Chinese agriculturalist was not really a peasant at all; rather, he was a tenant farmer engaged in growing crops that were often intended for regional and even international markets. (212) The spread of market towns in parts of central and south China increased communication between poor peasants, heightening their awareness of themselves as tenants of the rich. (213)

In 1748... the Qianlong emperor ordered that landowners be made to understand that, because of the "interdependence of rich and poor", they should assume the obligation of caring for their tenants' livelihood in bad times. (214)

[Clearly the increasing commercialization that accompanied Treaty Port creation had effects on hinterlands, producing what Friedman characterized as] "a commercialized, urban-oriented, foreign-facing world where the need to earn money too far replaced the need to maintain the traditional village ties..." (216)

Moreover, local powerholders were no longer merely landlords; they were what Chen Han-seng once called "quadrilateral beings" --exploiters who combined rent collection with usury, commerce, and local administration... (216)

[After the fall of the Qing, and during the Republican period,] seeking new allies, the urban elite tried to mobilize popular support against the warlords of the 1920s. The peasant movement that arose "like a hurricane" (Mao 1961) in central China in 1926-1927 was thus partly the creation of this elite, which had sent its own urban organizers into the villages to "lead the peasants in mobilizing their resources for national salvation" (221)

Most scholars agree that the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 set the seal on Communist victory in the civil war that followed... The invasion of North China... drove the gentry from the countryside, leaving a vacuum which the Communists rushed to fill with resistance organizations. The guerilla movement in turn attracted peasants enraged by the brutal counterinsurgency actions of the Japanese. A peasantry unmoved by land reform thus responded enthusiastically to nationalist appeals to defend the homeland. (222)

[of the Communist victory, but equally applicable to other movements:] Needless to say, masses of people cannot be effectively organized without some degree of voluntary commitment. The initial incentives for participation may have appealed to the individual's self-interest, but the organizations so formed eventually flourished because of a growing spirit of self-sacrifice --a collective imperative that was instilled through mass campaigns and that ultimately derived its great power through a new revolutionary self-image of the Chinese people... Mao himself thus "made the past serve the present" (yi gu wei jin yong); and, by invoking the heroic example of peasant rebels jointly committed to class struggle throughout Chinese history, he hoped to inspire men and women to a similar commitment in modern times. The ideal behavior of Chinese peasant rebels is consequently of greater immediate importance than the real historical acts of ambitious office-seekers, opportunistic mystagogues, or professional bandits. Enshrined as a popular legacy, China's traditional rebellions may have acquired their greatest historical influence as mythical signposts toward a revolutionary social consciousness. (225)

The Hung Society: The Model for many later Chinese secret societies including today's tongs and triads. by Peter Huston

Triad Society from Columbia Encyclopedia

Wikipedia on Triad Sciety

Wikipedia on Taiping Rebellion and on Falun Gong