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Alternate Attendance Parades in the Japanese Domain of Satsuma, Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries: Pottery, Power and Foreign Spectacle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

Rebekah Clements*
Affiliation:
Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), and Department of Translation, Interpreting, and East Asian Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Building K, 08193, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain

Abstract

This study examines the practice of ‘alternate attendance’ (sankin kōtai), in which the daimyo lords of Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868) marched with their retainers between their home territories and the shogunal capital of Edo, roughly once a year. Research on alternate attendance has focused on the meaning of daimyo processions outside their domains (han), along Japan's highways and in the city of Edo. Here I argue that, even as daimyo embarked upon a journey to pay obeisance to the shogun, the ambiguous nature of sovereignty in early modern Japan meant that alternate attendance could also be used for a local agenda, ritually stamping the daimyo's territory with signs of his dominance, much like what has been highlighted in the study of royal processions in world history. I focus on the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, providing a case study of visits made by the Shimazu family, lords of Satsuma domain, to a village of Korean potters within their territory, whose antecedents had been brought as captives during the Imjin War of 1592–8. During daimyo visits, a relationship of mutual benefit and fealty between the Shimazu and the villagers was articulated through gift-giving, banqueting, dance and displays of local wares. This in turn was used to consolidate Shimazu power in their region.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Historical Society

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64 ‘Bronze’ and ‘silver coins’ were usually alloys. Japanese money, measures and weights were not standardised during the seventeenth century, and varied between domains. Due to the destruction of official documents in the nineteenth century, little is known of Satsuma's currency history. Here I offer approximate measures based on what is known of currency in other parts of Japan:

  • 1 kan (= 1 kanmon = 1 kanme) = 1,000 mon (or monme) = 3.75 kg

  • 1 mon(me) = 1 sen = 3.75 g

  • 1 kin = 0.16 kan = 160 mon(me) = 16 ryō = 600 g

  • 1 hiki = 10 mon(me)

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