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Fruits of research
May. 30th, 2006 06:43 pmOkay. So what it's looking like is that, in the late Muromachi period, there were four basic punishments for a misbehaving member of the warrior class: execution, banishment, demotion and fines. I strongly suspect that a certain amount of rough-and-ready punishments that were applied internally among any given castle garrison group, by way of beating the crap out of someone "during training" but if so it was, of course, totally undocumented.
Execution seems to be the most talked about punishment. For buke, it either meant being ordered to commit seppuku or, significantly worse by their lights, being beheaded and possibly even displayed. The thing is, while there are a lot of accounts of lords ordering retainers to kill themselves, when you stack all the accounts up it comes out to this daimyo ordering two people, and that daimyo ordering one person and this other daimyo ordering four people... in other words, it doesn't look like that judgement was actually /handed down/ more than a handful of times in any given lord's tenure.
Later, banishment was about the same thing as execution, because a samurai who got fired had nowhere to go and no prospects but starvation on the roadside. During the Sengoku era, though, there was /always/ employment for rounin somewhere. So I suspect banishment was far less likely to result in seppuku than it was during Tokugawa.
Demotion is a bit likewise. Later, in the more regimented Tokugawa period, it would be a massive shame and a major life-problem. During Sengoku, possibly less so. I suspect that it was actually harshest if lands were not taken away. If lands were gone, the man and his family might simply move to another domain and seek fortune there. If the lands remained, there was a reason to return to them, and endure the shame.
A lot of infractions were probably handled with fines, but since that isn't the kind of thing that appears anywhere but court registers, and court registers were... spotty to say the least, during this period, I can't really say anything specific about that.
And then, of course, there's the issue of seppuku on the battlefield, in face of a loss. More to the point, I suspect, in order to avoid being captured and tortured.
... lightning storm in progress. To be continued.
Execution seems to be the most talked about punishment. For buke, it either meant being ordered to commit seppuku or, significantly worse by their lights, being beheaded and possibly even displayed. The thing is, while there are a lot of accounts of lords ordering retainers to kill themselves, when you stack all the accounts up it comes out to this daimyo ordering two people, and that daimyo ordering one person and this other daimyo ordering four people... in other words, it doesn't look like that judgement was actually /handed down/ more than a handful of times in any given lord's tenure.
Later, banishment was about the same thing as execution, because a samurai who got fired had nowhere to go and no prospects but starvation on the roadside. During the Sengoku era, though, there was /always/ employment for rounin somewhere. So I suspect banishment was far less likely to result in seppuku than it was during Tokugawa.
Demotion is a bit likewise. Later, in the more regimented Tokugawa period, it would be a massive shame and a major life-problem. During Sengoku, possibly less so. I suspect that it was actually harshest if lands were not taken away. If lands were gone, the man and his family might simply move to another domain and seek fortune there. If the lands remained, there was a reason to return to them, and endure the shame.
A lot of infractions were probably handled with fines, but since that isn't the kind of thing that appears anywhere but court registers, and court registers were... spotty to say the least, during this period, I can't really say anything specific about that.
And then, of course, there's the issue of seppuku on the battlefield, in face of a loss. More to the point, I suspect, in order to avoid being captured and tortured.
... lightning storm in progress. To be continued.
