ABSTRACT
DAVID SPAFFORD
Handed Down in the Family:
The Past and Its Uses in the Kan’ei Genealogies of 1643
Kan’ei shoka keizu den, the Tokugawa shogunate’s unprecedented compilation of 1,400 daimyō and hatamoto genealogies in 1643, celebrated Japan’s elites by showcasing their pedigrees while enshrining the Tokugawa themselves as paramount, both politically and genealogically. The regime’s self-aggrandizing agenda, combined with daimyō and hatamoto submission of materials presenting favorable renditions of their pasts, led to collaboration and even complicity in the production of self-serving fictions, turning the project into more than a simple exercise in Tokugawa coercion. The resulting text, the essay argues, stands as an exceptional testimony to contemporary warrior anxieties during a delicate political transition.
Volume 42, Number 2 (Summer 2016)
© 2016 Society for Japanese Studies