L. Butler
Notes
1 Joyce Ackroyd, tr., Lessons from History: Arai Hakuseki’s Tokushi Yoron. For the Japanese, see Tokushi
yoron, in Arai Hakuseki.
2 Quoted in Kate Wildman Nakai, Shogunal Politics, 337.
3 For an English translation of this text, see H. Paul Varley, A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns: Jinnō Shōtōki
of Kitabatake Chikafusa; and for the Japanese, Jinnō shōtōki, in Jinnō shōtōki, Masukagami.
4 Richard Ponsonby- Fane, The Imperial House of Japan.
5 Ben- Ami Shillony, Enigma of the Emperors, 273.
6 H. Paul Varley, Imperial Restoration in Medieval Japan; Andrew Edmund Goble, Kenmu: Go- Daigo’s
Revolution.
7 The argument that medieval Japan began in the fourteenth century—which is compelling in many but
not all respects—is fleshed out in Jeffrey Mass, The Origins of Japan’s Medieval World.
8 Reinhard Zollner, “The Sun Also Rises.” Also see the reviews by Borgen, Ruttermann, and Steenstrup,
noted in the References list.
9 Imatani Akira, “Not for Lack of Will or Wile,” 48. In Japanese, see Imatani Akira, Muromachi no ōken:
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu no ōken sandatsu keikaku.
10 Amino lays out the case for this in his Chūsei tennōsei to hi- nōgyōmin (“The Medieval Emperor System and
Non- Farming Commoners”).
11 Kondō Shigekazu, “Chūsei ōken,” 20.
12 Imatani’s emphasis upon the singular place of the emperor is reinforced by his use of the term tennōsei,
or “emperor system.” Coined as a pejorative by Japanese communists in the prewar era to describe the
system and ideology that sustained elite rule, the word was used loosely by scholars in the postwar era
as well, regardless of the period they studied. The implication was that the system was brutal and repres-
sive. Imatani’s use of the term clearly dates him, as younger scholars have abandoned it as simplistic and
essentialist.
13 Tateri Munetsugu monjo (1937).
14 Yoshikawa Teijirō, “Nobunaga no kinnō.”
15 Tsuji Zennosuke, Kōshitsu to Nihon seishin.
16 Of course, emperors and courtiers did not function outside the framework of class conflict, as evidenced
by their control of lands within the shōen system. But in concentrating on the rise of the warriors, histo-
rians of the late medieval era in particular tended to give limited space to the Kyoto elite, despite their
continuing significance as estate holders.
17 Takano Toshihiko, Kinsei Nihon no kokka kenryoku to shūkyō, 316.
18 Asao Naohiro, “Shogun and Tennō,” 253.
19 Fujiki Hisashi, “The Political Posture of Oda Nobunaga,” 177.
20 Fukaya Katsumi, “Bakuhansei kokka to tennō”; Fujiki, “Political Posture,” p. 182.
21 Neil McMullin, Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth- Century Japan, 79.
22 Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570–1680, 168–169.
23 Ike Susumu, “Buke to tennō,” 23.
24 Thomas Conlan, From Sovereign to Symbol: An Age of Ritual Determinism in Fourteenth Century Japan, 13.
25 This is the main argument of the book, but there are certainly other problematic issues historians need
to consider: 1) the meaning (and relevance) of “sovereignty”; 2) claims about the “destruction of prec-
edent”; 3) the idea that much about Japan’s fourteenth century (most obviously in terms of the court
and religion) was different from centuries that preceded and followed; 4) the notion of “Shingon
mimesis” to which Conlan ascribes considerable importance, arguing for example that “[Ashikaga]
Yoshimitsu, by behaving ‘as if ’ he were a sovereign (chiten no kimi), had, according to Shingon mimesis,
in fact already become one” (173).
26 The most incisive reviews, each of which analyzes the book from a different vantage point, are those of
Mikael Adolphson, Robert Borgen, Joan Piggott, and Brian Ruppert. See complete references in the
References list.
27 Mikael Adolphson, “Review of Thomas Conlan, From Sovereign to Symbol,” 105.
28 Brian Ruppert, “Review of Thomas Conlan, From Sovereign to Symbol,” 390.
29 Conlan, From Sovereign to Symbol, 17; 15.
30 See Iikura, Nihonshi shōhyakka, kokiroku, for a brief introduction to diaries and related records of the
classical and medieval eras. Iikura includes publication information, where relevant, though the list of
works in print has increased since this book was published in 1998.