This book is the first full-scale study in English on sankin kōtai 参勤交代, or “alternate attendance”, an institutional cornerstone of Japan's Edo period that had profound influence on politics, culture, and the economy. The system of alternate attendance mandated that daimyo and their entourages periodically travel from their home domain to Edo and remain in residence for about a year. Daimyo also were required, the author reminds us, to keep their wives and most of their adolescent children in permanent residence in Edo, “where they served, in effect, as hostages, acting as guarantees for the daimyo's continued good behavior” (p. 1). The author's discussion of alternate attendance is based first on an engagement with previous Japanese scholarship, and then takes as its chief sources for analysis journals kept by Tosa retainers and those of other domains as they made their way to and from the capital. The focus of the book is less on the mechanism of political control as such, and more on the institution's impact on the lived experience of individuals. The book also considers the influence that alternate attendance exerted on the economy and society of Edo, as well as what role it played in the formation of a national culture.
Chapter 1, “Beginnings,” introduces the origin and legal basis for the system of compulsory movement, patterns of mobility and what preparations were necessary for the trip. It also touches upon the costs of alternate attendance and how these costs related to local economies. The final section of the chapter treats the protocol observed when daimyo processions encountered each other. The chapter also contains information about foreign travelers who encountered alternate attendance processions. Dutch court journeys are regarded as a kind of alternate attendance from the latter half of the eighteenth century, although the participants were little more than merchants. English merchants, however, were not regarded by Japanese as falling within the scope of daimyo protocol, so there is some doubt about the relevance of the case of the Namamugi Incident, as broached by the author. Within the context of the Namamugi Incident, Satsuma daimyo members simply regarded this English group as rude commoners.
Chapter 2, “The Road to Edo (and Back),” is a most interesting treatment of the journey to and from Edo undertaken by retinues from Tosa. There were two route options to take to Osaka from Kōchi, capital of the domain: the Kan-no-ura route, which entailed a brief overland trip to Kan-no-ura on the east coast of Shikoku, and a journey by ship along the Pacific coast up to Osaka; and the northern (Kitayama) route over the mountains, which required only a brief shipboard crossing of the relatively calm Inland Sea. The shift over time from the former to the latter was mainly because the rough waters of the Pacific Ocean caused excessive delays and rises in costs. Once having reached Osaka, there was little variation in the route taken to Edo, with the Tosa retinue usually using the Tōkaidō. The author is quite successful at using primary sources to render vivid descriptions of the experiences of the retinue participants on the road.
A daimyo procession was both a symbol of the authority of the bakufu and daimyo as well as a performance, a piece of theater. Chapter 3, “The Daimyo Procession,” discusses the political and cultural significance of these aspects. How did the parade-like movement demonstrate authority, especially in situations in which daimyo were competitive with one another? How was the parade interpreted and described? The author has gathered together many different pieces to illustrate the complexities of these issues.
Chapters 4 through 7 treat how the daimyo's retainers experienced life in Edo. The sheer space that the author devotes to this topic should be ample indication that he seeks to articulate a holistic view of alternative attendance as a combination of both time on the road and residence in Edo.
Chapter 4, “Assignment: Edo,” addresses the key questions of who went to Edo and why, focusing on the example of Tosa retainers in order to introduce a wide range of responses by retainers to their assignment of alternate attendance. Some were eager to go to Edo in order to brush up their knowledge or military techniques related to their hereditary posts. Others regarded the trip to Edo as a chance to see the world outside of the domain. The author also explains that for many, a yet separate important motivation was the prospect of using an appointment to Edo service as a means to combat financial difficulty. Retainers assigned a tour of duty in Edo were entitled to travel and maintenance allowances during the period of alternate attendance. This expenditure necessitated compulsory loans taken from retainers who did not go to Edo in order to alleviate the domain's financial difficulties. This is a very interesting finding that should be investigated in other domains.
Chapter 5, “Daimyo Compounds: Place and Space,” is a watershed in English-language discussions about Edo urban development in that it introduces the remarkable progress over the past two decades of Japanese archeological studies about Edo daimyo compounds. The chapter examines what the author regards as various expressions of spatial consciousness: space and position, the spatial structure within the compound and the relationships among its multiple residential structures, measures taken against fire, the unique use of underground space, and the relationship between the compound and the outer world. Concerning this last issue, considerable work has been done by Japanese urban studies researchers on the social relationship between the domain compounds and the larger population of Edo. This work deserves to be consulted.Footnote 1
Chapter 6, “Life in the Capital,” draws upon visual and written records to reconstruct some of the experience of daimyo retainers in Edo, their life at work and play. The author emphasizes that by accompanying their lords to Edo, retainers took advantage of their time of residence by engaging in new social and cultural activities, thus expanding their worldview.
Chapter 7, “Carriers of Culture,” focuses on the changes that occurred across the country due to the institution of alternate attendance. By observing other domains through which they passed, participants in alternate attendance-related travel were able to gain a comparative sense of how their localities fit within the larger context of the aggregation of domains and territories known as “Japan”. Also, Edo residence drew these people into a commercial economy, facilitating involvement in material culture via gift-giving and other consumption habits. In investigating this issue, the author extracts and analyzes records of purchases and gifts appearing in journals of Tosa retainers, materials that provide very interesting insights. However, one cannot but harbor some doubt about the ultimate value of these journal excerpts, i.e. whether any given journal-keeper recorded the entirety of his purchases or simply selected the subset of items he judged to be worth writing about.
While acknowledging the importance of Edo as cultural nexus, the author takes issue with what he regards as prior “Edo-centric” characterizations, i.e. those that would describe the impact of alternate attendance as a one-way flow of Edo culture out to the various domains. However, in its very formation, Edo was a network, a site in which people from all over the country encountered each other, and where materials and information from different localities in the country, including Kamigata and Nagasaki, were exchanged. Thus it seems rather strange that the author commits himself to an ostensibly revisionist argument contending that the flow of culture was not, as some have suggested, a one-way process, outward from Edo. Culture in Edo (not “Edo culture”) always was based on an admixture of regional cultures, and Edo was always a city comprised of people who came from other areas. In many ways, it still is.
In the final chapter of the book, the author concludes that alternate attendance created the regular flow of human traffic across political boundaries, and thus was instrumental in producing a population with a high level of shared culture and experience.
I would like to point out a few other issues in hopes of contributing to the development of discussion about alternate attendance. The author seems to be taking pains to avoid a full-on discussion about the political system constituted by the bakufu (shogunate) and han (domains). Yet this relationship is crucial to why the institution of alternate attendance continued for so long without being violated. It seems important to discuss the fundamental concepts of the political system at that time, especially among Japanese and foreign researchers.
Another issue is from the viewpoint of gender. The author recognizes that “this is an overwhelmingly male story”. But he also notes the common comparison of alternate attendance with the contemporary practice of husband-alone transfer. Alternate attendance surely had an impact on many different aspects of the lives of bushi family members left in the domain. At the same time, it seems fairly obvious that the presence of retainers – rendered by their duties temporary bachelors – had a lot to do with the expansion of prostitution, not only in Yoshiwara but more widely, as an acknowledged and popularized social structure of the time. The study of alternate attendance must not be left as simply a “male history”.
This book paints a vivid picture of the Edo life of daimyo retainers. But participants in the procession to Edo and residents in the daimyo compound were not necessarily all “pure” retainers. Rather, a considerable number of them were temporary employees dispatched from agencies. In order to comprehend the social, economic, and cultural impact of alternate attendance, attention must also be given to these peripheral people.
Tour of Duty is a seminal work on alternate attendance not only for English-language researchers but Japanese researchers as well. It is my hope that this book will be widely read in Japan.
