Uesugi Harunori

• Japanese: 上杉治憲 (Uesugi Harunori)

Uesugi Harunori was a lord of Yonezawa han, perhaps most famous for his economic reforms which dramatically reversed the financial situation of his domain for the better, and for his views on the daimyô's obligations towards his domain and his people.

Life & Career

Childhood

Harunori was born the second son of Akizuki Tanemi, daimyô of Takanabe han, and was adopted into the Uesugi clan in 1760 at age nine. The lord of Yonezawa, Uesugi Shigesada, had three daughters but no sons, and so adopted Harunori to become his heir. Though coming from a different domain & household, Harunori was actually the son of one of Shigesada's cousins, enabling his prominent place as a possible choice for adoption as heir.

Meanwhile, a small cohort of the domain's top officials, frustrated with the lavish spending and (to their minds) oppressive economic policies of Shigesada, began in 1763 to pressure Shigesada to retire in favor of the young Harunori. The group called themselves the Seigasha, and included the domain's supreme magistrate (shissei bugyô) Takenomata Masatsuna, chief secretary (koshô) Nozoki Yoshimasa, chamberlain (osobayaku) Shiga Sukeyoshi, and Warashina Shôhaku, Shigesada's personal physician and an instructor at the domain academy, the Kôjôkan. That same year, Takenomata was one of a number of officials who engineered the assassination of Shigesada's chief economic advisor, Mori Heiemon. Accusing Shigesada of driving the domain to ruin, and enlisting the support of the karô of Owari han, the Seigasha faction continued to pressure Shigesada until, finally, in 1767, he relented, retiring to a retirement villa and leaving Harunori, at seventeen years old, the new lord of Yonezawa.

As Daimyô

Upon becoming daimyô, Harunori, in accordance with the advice of the Seigasha, dramatically reduced his own spending, and that of his household, closing extra villas, reducing the size and lavishness of his sankin kôtai entourage, and implementing austerity policies as to the food, clothing, and the like used in the castle. Further, a number of prominent merchant families who had been favored by Mori Heiemon were dismissed as domainal advisors, and reduced in their investitures.

The heads of several prominent retainer families opposed the austerity measures, and petitioned Harunori to not allow himself to be manipulated by Takenomata's faction. He responded by ordering two of them to commit ritual suicide, and arresting the others. He later pardoned the survivors, but the Seigasha remained in power.

On Kokka

Harunori's views on the "state" (kokka), and the daimyô's role as caretaker of the domain, are seen most famously in a letter he wrote to his heir, Uesugi Norihiro. He wrote, in part, "the lord exists for the sake of the state and the people; the state and the people do not exist for the sake of the lord"; the document speaks further, too, of the domain as part of the patrimony of the daimyô household, something inherited from one's ancestors, and which should therefore be respected, cared for, and maintained, so that it can be passed on to one's heirs. In this sense, Harunori speaks of the state as something separate from, and larger than, the lord, the lord's household, or the domain's government & administration or body of retainers. Harunori draws too upon the writings of Mencius and the Spring and Autumn Annals, implying a connection, or an equivalence, between the obligations of a samurai lord to his domain, and the obligations rulers have to their ancient Chinese kingdoms according to the Chinese classics. Furthermore, Mark Ravina suggests, Harunori's use of the term kokka refers too to a lord's obligations to the shogunate, and/or, perhaps, to the realm ("Japan") as a whole.

Legacy

The influence of Confucian adviser Hosoi Heishû, who believed that a lord's failings must be hidden, and that a lord must be presented as a model of moral virtue, contributed to Uesugi Harunori coming to be regarded as just that, a wise and benevolent lord (名君, meikun). By the end of the Edo period, there were already a number of writings praising him as an example of a virtuous and clever lord who brought his domain from the edge of doom into renewed prosperity. By 1904, he was cited as a moral exemplar in nation-wide standard textbooks.

References

• Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan, Stanford University Press (1999), 87-93.