15 replies to this topic

[desaix]

At one point in my schooling on Japanese culture, history, and language, I knew all of the Japanese titles of nobility. However, the passage of time and a portion of the notes I kept from college being lost in a move have gradually allowed that knowledge to disappear. So, I'm hoping someone here knows the gaps, or at least can figure out how to look them up in a good English-Japanese dictionary, given the imprecise nature of some of these terms. (I've tried my favorites -- the only results I've had didn't give me what I was looking for. Further explanation below. It's possible I'm just not looking them up by the right English word, however)

Emperor is Mikado, I remember that. But what is the term for that power position unique to Japanese history that was the Retired Emperor (who actually held more power as a retiree then he did as Emperor, usually)? The dictionary I was using gave me the word 'joukou,' which is definitely not right. It is a proper way of referring to the Retired Emperor -- I remember that much -- but it isn't the title itself).

Likewise, at one time there was both the Shogun (Military Dictator cum Prime Minister, of sorts) and the Retired Shogun, as well. I couldn't get anything for Retired Shogun.

(Edited to add: I do have one clue about one of the words I want, in that I recall that the particular word I want begins with an 'I'. It's either the Retired Emperor word, the Retired Shogun word, or, um, both. At any rate, the exact word I am MOST trying to remember out of those two begins with an I. Er, not much help, but its something)

Furthermore, there's Daimyo as a higher echelon large-land-owning Nobleman. But what was the name of lower echelon small-land-owning Noblemen? Samurai were noblemen in the service of both the Daimyo and the lower ranked land-owning nobles, but held no land of their own by law.

And then there was a name that arose to popularity when a merchant class arose. A sort of psuedo-nobility title given to what might be called a 'Merchant Prince' in Western culture belonging to those freemen whose business acumen made them wealthy and powerful despite not having any noble blood in them. A term which later disappeared when the fuedal order in Japan was overturned (waves to the Rurouni Kenshin fans).

These are all Titles I used to know, all of which could become very useful in the sequel of Training for the Job and many other fics I'm working on or have planned (not all of them -- in fact, not most of them -- Naruto fanfics, but some of them at least). They're also words I've forgotten over the past several years, which I am unwilling to use the English Equivalents for (Mikado or Emperor, Dictator or Shogun, Retired Emperor or ??, Retired Dictator or ??, Daimyo or Lord Duke, Count\Baron\Earl or Lord ??, Knight or Samurai, Merchant Prince or ??. See the differences, and why I might want to look up the Japanese for most of those cases where I don't already know the Japanese?). Any answers to any part of this would be quite... useful.

[Illjwamh]

I don't know them off the top of my head, but I can ask my professor. If anyone would know, she would.

[Illjwamh]

Okay, the title for a former emperor is sentei. There is no title for a former shogun, since a shogun has to die to be replaced. As for the lesser landholders and stuff, I have no idea.

[desaix]

Hm... sentei doesn't sound right, either. Ah, well.

At least I now know why I was thinking about an 'I.' It's not the title of the position, it's the name of the office of the Retired Emperor's government (like the word 'Senate' refers to the branch of legislature that Senators operate in): the Insei (lit. 'Cloistered Government.') And, apparently, there was sometimes a senior and a junior retired emperor. Gah! My memory of those history classes is so spotty nowadays...

I've now also found the 'lesser lord' name: Shomyo (our shoumyou, as daimyo can also be rewritten as daimyou). This term appears to have been abandoned, later on, for a 'daimyo's fudai,' or (in English) vassal, although it's possible (I could be misreading something) that the term shomyo continued to be used, as well.

I know for a fact there were retired shoguns. The Hojo family did it (or possibly the Go-Hojo... two secondary sources say two different things, and I don't have a primary source I can look up since the ones referred to in the bibliography are untranslated. Bleh), in an attempt to make the shogun appear more like the emperor, since they had no familial connections with the emperor themselves (as a counterbalance to people like the Taira, Minamoto, etc.). I just don't know the titles they were using.

Edited to add: Looked up Insei, and found the word for retired emperor I was looking for, although it actually means SENIOR Retired Emperor: Hon'in. Still haven't found the name for junior retired emperor, but that's not important.

And I'm still looking for the word for Merchant Prince, too. Heh.

[Kevin]

Here is what I can find in The Making of Modern Japan by Marius B. Jansen dealing with rankings. The Making of Modern Japan only discusses Japan since the formation of the Tokugawa Shogunate so I only have infomation about Tokugawa and Meji era ranks.

Discussing the Tokugawa era:
-“a distinction between the traditional Tokugawa house vassals, the fudai daimyo, and the tozama or outside lords.” (p. 38)

-“a daimyo was defined as a feudal lord enfeoffed with an area assessed at the level of 10000 koku (a unit of rice) or higher and directly invested by the shogun.” (p. 38)

-“if it incorporated an entire province the daimyo was a kokushu, or province holder.” (p. 39)

-“many vessels were invested with subfiefs larger than that (10000 kokus), but they remained rear-vassals, baishin, and moved in their daimyo’s orbit.” (p. 38)

-“one additional category of shogunal retainers, hatamoto (bannermen), were of sub-daimyo level but invested separately.” (p. 39)

-the book briefly describes the Imperial Court (page 97-101), but doesn’t give the names of the various ranks or lists any titles.


A list of the Tosa domain is provided on page 104 and 105
“As was true throughout Japan, samurai were divided between ‘upper’ (joshi) and ‘regular’ (hirazamurai) ranks in this pattern:
11 karo, ‘house elders’, granted lands with a tax base of 1500-11000 koku. Headed major military formations, frequently married with daimyo family.
11 churo, with tax base of 45-1500 kuko, ‘hands on’ administrators of the most important functions.
Regular samurai included
800 umamawari, mounted guard with tax base of 100-700 koku, field grade officers who furnished the bulk o fthe administrative personal
koshogumi, with lands producing 70-250 koku, not fixed in number, who staffed most magistracies.
rusigumi, also not fixed in number, with lands producing 50-200 koku, who staffed lesser offices.
Far below these were the ashigaru, foot soldiers, who served as labor battalions and foremen for construction and lumbering.”


The village structure had the honbyakusho (principle farmers) who were identified with fields in the original Tokugawa surveys and participated in the village assemblies, the hyakusho who were the ordinary farmers, and finally the tenants. (p. 113)

The book doesn’t provide a name for wealthy members of the merchant class, only referring to them as merchant princes.


During the Meji Era the various court titles and ranks were redone (July 1884) as follows:

“11 daimyo and 9 court nobles (kuge) were designated Prince (koshaku) or Duke; 24 daimyo and 9 nobles were named Marquis (shishaku); 73 daimyo , 30 kuge, and the inner core government leaders became Count or Marquis (koshaku, written with a different Chinese character); 325 daimyo and 91 nobles were named Viscount (shishaku, again with a different character); and 74 daimyo, but no nobles, were named Baron (danshaku).” (p. 391)

“Princes of the Blood (shinno) were above the throng altogether.” (p. 392)

I hope that this helps.

[Illjwamh]

If you could find the kanji for some of the terms you do know, I might be able to help you out. After all, my area of expertise is the language, not history. Shomyo makes sense, because it means "small name" while daimyo means "great/big name".

[desaix]

Heh... if I had the kanji, I probably could look it up myself. Unfortunately, I don't, so... *shrug*

(And, etymological trivia: daimyo does break into those words, but it actually comes from dai -- big -- and myouden, which literally translates as 'name land' but actually was a term for 'private land.' Source is Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia published by Kodansha, 1st ed seventh printing from 1995. And it was this resource which helped me figure out what I have, once I finally figured out the right words to look up... unfortunately, it's a paper book, and so doesn't have a very usable search engine if I don't know what to look up the word under. I also have a kanji dictionary, but... you need the kanji to know what to look up, and I don't. *sigh*)

[fps_jeremy]

Bushido....bushido is the word for honor.....I guess even samurai could pass.....

[desaix]

Bushido....bushido is the word for honor.....I guess even samurai could pass.....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Er, right. First off, Bushido isn't the word for honor, it's the word for 'Way of the Warrior,' which is a particular code of honor but not the word for honor itself. Second, um, what does that have to do with what I asked? It's not like I'm asking for random Japanese words here. In fact, let's try and not go that route, since this thread would quickly become overwhelmed.

Right now, the questions have been answered except for the words for:

Retired Shogun
Merchant Prince
Junior Retired Emperor (under the Insei system)
Any other possible words for land-owning nobility ranked less then daimyo (so samurai don't count, since they by law could not own any land). So far, the words 'fudai' (vassal), 'baishin' (rear vassals) and 'shomyo' (smaller landholder) have been found.

[Kevin]

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the prohibition on samurai owning land a feature of the Tokugawa era only. Since the edicts of the Tokugawa era wouldn't exist in Naruto's world, any samurai titles should still be useable if you choose.

[desaix]

Well, more like the Tokugawa era codified something that was already happening. It also changed the role of samurai from that of 'any position in a noble's household (which typically imply they are not landholders -- or at least not significant landholders -- themselves)' to 'the landless warrior caste under the daimyo.' The prohibition on owning land changed little, in reality, since most samurai didn't own any land anyway. Most samurai titles prior to the Tokugawa era are more job-related rather then rank-related. (Not all, but most) At any rate, it isn't samurai titles I'm looking for -- if it were, I could look those up easily enough.

[ForgottenExile]

I agree with fps_jeremy...bushido is honor in japanese I think?? Not sure...but I think it is..

[desaix]

Forgotten, I am absolutely positively 100% certain that bushido means 'way of the warrior' and is not the word for honor itself, but rather is the name of a particular code of honor the samurai lived by in the Tokugawa era and later.

[ForgottenExile]

Lol, I'm such a noob. Didn't look at the posts after what fps_jeremy said, just posted right after I saw that. Sorry. Yeah I knew it had something to do with samurai....and samurai are very honorable, right? It's just where I got the idea.

[Nes Mikel]

Right now, the questions have been answered except for the words for:

Retired Shogun

Like Illjwamh said earlier, there really is no title for a former shogun, since a shogun has to die to be replaced. However, if you must, there is the alternative of adding the prefix of moto in front of the word shougun. moto literally means 'ex', so moto-shougun will translate itself into ex-shougun. As far as I know it is a perfectly legitimate Japanese word, albeit it does look kind of... well, unattractive in romaji format.

[desaix]

Right now, the questions have been answered except for the words for:

Retired Shogun

Like Illjwamh said earlier, there really is no title for a former shogun, since a shogun has to die to be replaced. However, if you must, there is the alternative of adding the prefix of moto in front of the word shougun. moto literally means 'ex', so moto-shougun will translate itself into ex-shougun. As far as I know it is a perfectly legitimate Japanese word, albeit it does look kind of... well, unattractive in romaji format.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The thing is, as I've already said, that's not entirely correct. There WERE retired shoguns during a period run by the Hojo (as some later research I did revealed), when they tried to turn the position of Shogun into something resembling that of an Imperial Court with an Insei system. It was instituting this system that lead to a blood fued that wiped out all the Hojo, and very nearly destroyed both the imperial and shogunal systems altogether (see the event known as the Kemmu Restoration), but at the very least there was Hojo Takatoki (r. 1316-26) who (and I'm quoting from a the Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia mentioned above) 'retained control of the shogunate even after he retired' because of this system, as he continued to rule as a retired shogun (while his cousin Moritoki took the title of shogun until the Hojo Clan was destroyed in 1333) until the Emperor Go-Daigo persuaded his (the retired shogun's) closest aides, Ashikaga Takauji (who later founded the Muromachi Shogunate) and Nitta Yoshisada (unfortunately for Go-Daigo, who was later betrayed himself by Ashikaga Takauji, who then supplanted the Emperor by placing a different member of the Imperial line on the throne), to turn on him. Also as a result of this the entire Hojo family line was hunted down and killed, but is often confused with a second clan which took the name Hojo (sometimes Go-Hojo) in 1432, before THAT clan was wiped out by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (*cough* um, Oda Nobunaga's right hand man and later enemy... which made the appearance of both a Nobunaga and a Hojo in the Inu Yasha anime rather amusing... although the Hojo that coexisted with Nobunaga's era was a filler\movie-only character. More's the pity -- might have been fun to see Kagome have to stop them from killing each other).

There is a term for that position, and I've heard it before. It's one of those words which you can't think of on your own, but when you hear it you go 'Oh, I knew that!' It's also a fairly obscure reference outside of that one time period, however, so I'm not holding up much hope of finding it out, but I know it existed at one point. However, Hojo Tokimasa (the first shogun of the Hojo line), Tokiyoru, Masamura, Sadatoki, Mototoki, and finally the aforementioned Takatoki all held the position... which may give someone who has different resources then me a better chance to look it up.

Sorry for the history lesson, but this is the second time this was brought up, and it's just wrong. If I can't find the term, I can work around it (I haven't even started the fic which would need the term, yet), but I would like it anyway.

Added later: In one of the few sets of notes from my Japanese History classes I was able to recover, there's this quote (inexact, because it was shorthand and referencing certain other parts of my notes which I don't have copies to any more) from a lecture one of my teachers gave us:

"It's a good thing for the Mongol's sanity that they were never in the position of having to negotiate with Japan for its surrender. At the time they launched their invasion (not entirely sure which one this is referencing, since I have notes on multiple attempts), there were five people who could be considered the ruler of Japan for the purposes of negotiation in fact, in law, or in tradition: The Emperor (by law and tradition), the senior retired emperor (by law), the junior retired emperor (by tradition -- apparently, one of the few jobs of this otherwise powerless office in the government was that of holding embassy with foriegn powers), the shogun (by law), and the retired shogun (who was, in fact, the person in charge)."

Added later (again): Was trying to find the source of that 'the shogun can only be replaced in death' thing. I couldn't find any specifics of when it came about, but looking through various lines of succession and comparing it to the birth-death date of each shogun, I believe it was another Tokugawa 'reform' of the shogun system, possibly instituted to counteract the situation my professor was talking about above with the Mongols... (although, by the time the Tokugawa came in, the Insei system for the Emperors had died out, and there hadn't been a retired shogun for almost a century)