The sixteenth centuryRobinson’s work on trade and war may yet yield new perspectives on past research, or even
direct us toward new queries.
Cultural and social history
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Barbara Ruch led a movement to banish the image of the
Sengoku period as a dark age of degeneration and decline. Ruch highlighted the new forms of
literature that emerged during the late Muromachi age, arguing that while scholars of literature
had long dismissed these new genres as degenerative or vulgar—largely because they were pro-
duced for and enjoyed by commoners, as well as elites—historians should instead celebrate them
as new forms of expression in which “themes, heroes and heroines, predicaments ... unique to a
given nation but which at the same time are not the product or property of ... any one level of
society” appeared for the first time in Japan.^31
In their eagerness to explore downtrodden peasants and other hitherto under- examined areas
of society, historians have allowed the imperial court (as distinct from the physical arena of the
capital itself ) to all but disappear from the historiographic dialogue. One notable exception,
however, is Lee Butler, whose Emperor and Aristocracy in Japan, 1467–1680 demonstrated that the
ascendancy of warriors to the height of economic and political prosperity did not eliminate the
soft- power of the Kyoto nobility. Culture as dictated by the elites in the capital, he argued, still
carried cachet in the minds of the rural warriors.^32
In other work, Butler has contributed to the larger trend toward focus on non- elite layers of
society. His 2005 article, “Washing Off the Dust,” for example, discussed the origins of Japan’s
bathing culture. He pays particular attention to documenting the development of baths and the
spread of their popularity from the nobility to warriors and commoners during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries.^33
This theme of the high culture of court aristocrats and elite warriors defusing into the
increasingly turbulent world of society at large has, in fact, become quite popular in the twenty-
first century. Morgan Pitelka, for example, has authored a dozen articles on tea culture and edited
books dealing with both tea and pottery.^34 While Pitelka pays particular attention to politically
powerful tea consumers like Tokugawa Ieyasu, he also describes how elite tastes spread downward
through society. Similarly, Morten Oxenboell’s work on banditry and the turbulence found
within the village offers a lens through which to examine local culture and society.^35
Intellectual history
Scholars specializing in the Sengoku period—particularly those outside Japan—have largely
ignored intellectual history as a field of inquiry. While studies of Tokugawa period ideology,
science, education, and philosophy abound, Anglophone readers interested in late medieval
developments in these subjects have little available to them beyond books aimed at popular audi-
ences, most of which cite an amorphous notion of “Zen” as the key to any problem (one need but
search websites like Amazon for books that include “Zen” in their titles to find multiple exam-
ples). Clearly increased efforts to clarify what beliefs were actually held by warriors and other
elements of society are desperately needed today. The dearth of studies is surprising, as the topic
would certainly be of interest to both the general public and to academia.
Eiko Ikegami’s 1995 study of samurai honor, The Taming of the Samurai, offers some help here.
Although Ikegami’s focus is emphatically on Tokugawa period developments, she does offer the
most comprehensive examination of samurai belief systems to date. Her work crafted a portrait
of warriors focused on honor and individualism, manifesting most conspicuously in the idea of