HIRED SWORDS: THE RISE OF PRIVATE WARRIOR POWER IN EARLY JAPAN.

FRIDAY, Karl F.

ISBN 10: 0804719780 / ISBN 13: 9780804719780

Editore: Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1992

Riguardo questo articolo

8vo. Pp: ix, [iv], 265. First edition. Publisher's black boards with silver gilt lettering to spine. White, red, and black dust jacket with white, red, and black lettering and black illustration to front. Some black and white maps, illustrations, and tables throughout. ISBN: 0804719780 Very good in very good plus dust jacket. Previous bookshop's stamp at bottom corner of front pastedown. Very light spotting at bottom edge of text block near tail of spine. Slight shelf wear at head and tail of dust jacket spine with slight creasing at top edge, top corner, and bottom edge of dust jacket rear.

Codice articolo C72928

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: HIRED SWORDS: THE RISE OF PRIVATE WARRIOR POWER IN EARLY JAPAN.
• Editore: Stanford University Press, Stanford
• Data di pubblicazione: 1992
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0804719780
• ISBN 13: 9780804719780
• Rilegatura: Rilegato
• Edizione: prima edizione
• Condizione della sovraccoperta: sovraccoperta

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Tracing the evolution of state military institutions from the seventh through the twelfth centuries, this book challenges much of the received wisdom of Western scholarship on the origins and early development of warriors in Japan. This prelude to the rise of the samurai, who were to become the masters of Japan's medieval and early modern eras, was initiated when the imperial court turned for its police and military protection to hired swords--professional mercenaries largely drawn from the elites of provincial society.
By the middle of the tenth century, this provincial military order had been handed a virtual monopoly of Japan's martial resources. Yet it was not until near the end of the twelfth century that these warriors took the first significant steps toward asserting their independence from imperial court control. Why did they not do so earlier? Why did they remain obedient to a court without any other military sources for nearly 300 years? Why did the court put itself in the potentially (and indeed, ultimately) precarious situation of contracting for its military needs with private warriors? These and related questions are the focus of the author's study.
Most of the few Western treatments see the origins of the samurai in the incompetence and inactivity of the imperial court that forced residents in the provinces to take up arms themselves. According to this view, a warrior class was spontaneously generated just as one had been in Europe a few centuries earlier, and the Japanese court was doomed to eventually perish by the sword because of its failure to live by it. Instead, the author argues that it was largely court activism that put swords in the hands of rural elites, that court military policy, from the very beginning of the imperial state era, followed a long-term pattern of increasing reliance on the martial skills of the gentry. This policy reflected the court's desire for maximum efficiency in its military institutions, and the policy's success is shown by the court retaining to itself for centuries the exclusive right to sanction the use of coercive force.

Dalla quarta di copertina

?A long overdue revision of court-warrior relationships from the seventh through twelfth centuries. . . . Friday s book has significantly altered the way Western scholars will view the history of early Japan. ?Journal of Asian Studies
?Friday raises issues that all teachers and scholars must take into account. ?American Historical Review