The Moon Glows the Same (Historical Context)

Historical Context

Matsuo Bashō started out his adult life as a samurai, a member of the warrior class, at a time when Japan was starting to acclimate to living in peace after more than a century of constant civil strife. Being soldiers during peacetime gave many samurai the opportunity to turn their attention to intellectual pursuits, such as religion and philosophy. After the end of the Onin War in 1477, more than two hundred years before Bashō wrote this poem, the Japanese social structure was in crisis. The national government had lost its authority to rule, and, as a result, the lords of small provinces across the land fought one another for local control; they built fortresses, amassed armies, and engaged in perpetual warfare. This era, known as the Period of Warring States, continued until the latter part of the 1500s, when, as the rivalries progressed, several leaders rose to national prominence. One was Oda Nobunaga, the leader of a successful clan that, over the course of several generations, built its influence with military victories and alliances. Starting in 1568, Oda Nobunaga tried to establish a central control to rule the whole country, and to a large degree he was successful, but he was assassinated in 1582. He was followed in his attempt for national unification by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had served as a general under Oda. Toyotomi implemented policies that strengthened the federal government, such as land surveys (to help the government organize a tax system) and confiscating weapons from the peasantry (to suppress uprisings). Toyotomi was clearly the most powerful person in the country, but the emperor could not name him as Japan’s military leader, or Shogun, because he came from the lower class. Toyotomi instead ruled as the Imperial Regent, from 1585 until his death in 1598.

In 1603, Tokugawa leyasu accepted the title of Shogun from the Japanese emperor, who, despite his title, held little actual power over the government. This was the beginning of a period of peace and cultural isolation that lasted for more than 250 years. For fifteen generations, the Tokugawa dynasty exercised control over the country, a span of time often referred to as the Edo period of Japanese history (Edo, or present-day Tokyo, was the capital from which the Tokugawa ruled). Tokugawa leyasu had spent thirteen years of his childhood living with his enemies, as a willing hostage to his family’s rivals, the Oda and Imagawa clans. After Oda Nobunaga’s death, leyasu struck a bargain of peace with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and while Hideyoshi was busy trying to impose a rational system of political order on the country, leyasu built his family’s fortune and power. When Hideyoshi was dying, leyasu successfully prevented him from naming his son as his successor, citing the family’s lower-class heritage. Eleven years into his own reign, while he was still powerful, leyasu turned his position of Shogun over to his own son, starting a dynasty that would last until 1867.

Society settled into a more systemized order during the Tokugawa dynasty, in large part because of the stricter laws that were imposed. Peasants were taxed heavily and subjected to prison, torture, or having their land confiscated if they could not or would not pay. Land was redistributed, and those who had shown loyalty to leyasu benefited greatly. Society was divided into four formal classes: samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants. Early in leyasu’s reign, he was a supporter of foreign trade, but as Christian missionaries from Holland and Portugal became successful in converting hundreds of thousands of Japanese, he took steps to curtail religious freedom. In 1614 leyasu expelled all foreign priests from the country. Later, Christianity was outlawed completely, and as a result of the attempts to keep outside religious influences from reaching Japanese citizens, the country became isolated from the rest of the world. Trade and travel abroad were virtually nonexistent throughout the rest of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. There was, however, a flourishing in the arts, especially during the period from 1677 to 1703, which is referred to as the Genroku period. Haiku developed in poetry, kabuki theater emerged, and origami, the art of artistic paper folding, reached the height of its popularity as cheap, mass-produced paper came into existence.

Compare & Contrast

• 1687: Isaac Newton publishes Philosophia naturalis principia mathematica, which introduces his law of gravity and the principle of universal motion.
   
  1916: Albert Einstein presents his theory of relativity, which gives a more accurate explanation of the natural world than had been supplied by Newtonian physics.
   
  Today: Einstein’s theories have been challenged by advances in quantum mechanics. At the quantum (size of atoms or smaller) level, the familiar laws of physics do not apply; instead, events seem to be governed by probabilities, or random choices.
• 1687: The thirteen colonies comprised New England. The American Midwest was being seen by the first Europeans, as an expedition led by French explorer Sieur de La Salle traveled the Mississippi from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.
   
  1849: News of gold discoveries in California brings hundreds of thousands of settlers to the western end of the continent. By the following year, California’s population had increased almost twenty times.
   
  1999: Urban sprawl is a problem for many U.S. cities. In Atlanta, Georgia, for instance, the population has increased by 25 percent since 1990; estimates put the loss of “green space” at 50 acres per day, and the congested city is in violation of clean-air standards.
• 1687: Japan is isolated from the rest of the world, with little trade and restricted social interaction.
   
  1854: American Naval Commander Matthew Perry signs a trade agreement that opens trade relations with Japan.
   
  1998: Japan has the world’s second-largest economy.