So far we have dealt with the most colorful history, the samurai , the highest caste of society. At the other extreme were the peasants. Traditionally, politics and war had been the exclusive domain of the former, while the peasants, also exclusively engaged in farming. This social model was a beautiful symmetry, at least for samurai : they were at the top of society and could prove it by force of arms, which constituted a kind of cosmic endorsement to the system. But over time between different groups began to emerge a gray area. On one side was samurai with few resources, called ji-samurai, who, since not even have money to keep servants, were forced to reconcile war with the personal cultivation of their lands. And, secondly, had more or less wealthy farmers, much more than some of its neighbors ji-samurai, who sometimes engaged in acting as lenders, and soon needed to hire people to arm themselves for protection.
farmers were limited to passively attend to the endless struggles between samurai. They completely ignored them, so that wars were frequent massacres or rapes. What they really feared the peasants were hunger and disease resulting from destruction of crops. That, and the tax collector: During the Ashikaga bakufu, the ranch had no less than 70% of all that the peasants produced. Until the end of XIV century peasants remained perfectly docile, but since then things began to change. Among other things because the impoverished ji-samurai suffered with the same intensity the brunt of the revenue, and its nature was less patient. In the early fifteenth century began to form organizations called Ikki dedicated to making complaints to the rulers when their taxes exceeded any restrictions. Soon, the indifference of the authorities and their growing financial needs, began to explode riots organized by ikki , and in 1441 one of them, motivated by the enactment of certain tax edicts, was extended to Kyoto. Were taken some strategic buildings, and the mob blocked all access to the city until the bakufu was forced to revoke the edict. Simultaneously
ikki revolts the peasants began to find opportunities to improve their situation entering the armies of the shugo daimyo increasingly in need of personnel. These provide a brief military training, and endowed them a shield with the emblem of their lord and light weapons. It also gave them a conical helmet, when not in combat, served them to cook the rice as if it were a wok. They were called ashigaru (literally, light-footed), and its inclusion in the military meant a social revolution because, as we have seen, the samurai saw the war as a matter of exclusive negotiation. However, from a pragmatic point of view, was much faster and cheaper for shugo daimyo form a body of infantry or archers ashigaru, which were also easily replaceable, which samurai.
And these were not the only turmoil within the rigid Japanese society. For example, a ji-samurai decided could progress dramatically depending on its successes warriors. The paradigmatic case is that of Hojo Soun, who in 1491, commanded a shugo daimyo , won the governor of the province of Izu. As a reward was placed in front of her, and from there expanded by conquering adjacent territories. Hojo Soun is considered the first daimyo of the Sengoku era, which we'll talk later.
insurrections of peasants began to sink the capital, laborers making war (and cooked in their shells), upstart ji-samurai who reached the pinnacle of power ... The proud samurai watched the events with the nose in the air and enough concern . And, for lack of anything better, at least invented a word for it: gekokujô , the lower triumphing over the higher. __________
Images 1. Three ashigaru a bullying samurai, he reflects on the gekokujô
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