Expéditions

Expéditions — marelibri

Kawaraban News-Sheets Listing the Lords available for the defence of Japan

1853Best.-Nr. 347481853. Three woodblock-printed sheets on mulberry paper. Mild edge wear old folds. A detailed revealing group of late Tokugawa samurai reference sheets recording the names ranks stipends heraldry standards and service obligations through which the shogunate and Edo public understood military readiness at the moment of Perry's arrival. Commodore Matthew C. Perry anchored off Uraga at the entrance to Edo Bay in July 1853. His arrival made visible the vulnerability of the Tokugawa capital and produced an immediate demand for information about coastal defence domain strength and the lords responsible for guarding the approaches to Edo. Kawaraban and related broadsides answered that demand in compressed visual form combining names crests military symbols income figures and geographical or administrative data. The first printed sheet appears to be an earlier roster of Edo office-holders or guard personnel. Its tabular format with names offices crests and standards records the recognitional system already in place within Tokugawa administration before the Perry crisis sharpened the public appetite for such information. The manuscript sheet is ruled into a large grid with headings formed from the twelve zodiac signs and the four seasons including Rat Ox Tiger Hare and the seasonal headings. The entries appear to record named houses Lords or retainers against recurring seasonal and cyclical categories probably for service attendance or ceremonial obligation. The third sheet is headed "Rekko yushinroku" here translated as "Register of Valiant Retainers of the Lords." It lists major daimyo houses and their principal retainers with domain or house headings names titles stipend figures in koku family crests standards and related insignia. Visible regional or house designations include "Kaga" "Owari" "Kii" "Satsuma" "Higo" and "Tosa." The sheet gives a graphic register of the daimyo world mobilised or imagined as mobilised around the defence of Edo Bay. Together the sheets preserve the administrative and visual language of Tokugawa defence at a moment of acute pressure. They are not formal shogunal orders and the first sheet may predate Perrys arrival but they show how late Edo Japan translated rank obligation military identity and coastal defence into portable tabular form. Their compression the names of Lords and retainers the scale of domains the crests and standards by which armed households could be recognised and the bureaucratic habits of a regime suddenly forced to account for its capacity to defend the country reveals these documents' immediacy and importance. unknown