Serving Your Master: The Kashindan Retainer Corps and the Socio-Economic Transformation of Warring States Japan

Samurai. Although this term engenders many images, all too often they are constructs or fictions. In this dissertation, analysis of the Warring States era (roughly 1477--1603) kashindan or "retainer corps of the daimyo" will be used as a lens through which to clarify the nature of these figures. To do so, this study confronts the previous historiographic biases including an overemphasis on the Kyoto center and the "Unifiers.";The kashindan has received little attention in the West to date. The author concludes that "non-warriors" such as merchants and magistrates formed a large percentage of this organ of warlord governance, and that those warriors who were members were predominantly of low-rank. Furthermore, many retainers were salaried, thereby suggesting complications in the use of the feudal paradigm when examining medieval Japan.;The study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods when investigating the membership of the retainer corps, including case-studies of individuals like the Hotate, Sako, and Miyauchi, who had aspects of both soldiers and merchants. By examining these "hybrid" retainers, the dissertation reveals the limitations of the term "warrior.";The dissertation concludes by chronicling the process by which the retainer corps was created and the parallels this system of vassal management shared with the ie (household) and the jokamachi (castle town). In so doing, the study demonstrates that social characteristics generally depicted as arising in the early modern Tokugawa period, such as urbanization and the "separation of warrior from farmer" ( heino bunri), had already begun to emerge. However, the differing statuses of members within the warrior "class" and the complicated variations in their occupations suggest that a more nuanced examination of the transition from the medieval to the early modern age---and the "warriors" who helped shepherd the process---is needed.;Keywords: samurai, Sengoku period, retainer, kashindan, warrior class, heino bunri, castle towns...