Sekisho

• Japanese: 関所 (sekisho)

Sekisho, or "barriers," were checkpoints located on major roads, mainly for the purposes of controlling the movement of people and certain goods. At times, these checkpoints served to collect tolls, earning revenue for the Imperial court or for the shogunate.

Sekisho had their start in the Heian period (794-1185), or perhaps even earlier, but in the Edo period (1600-1868) came to be more systematized and integrated into a burgeoning and complex system of domestic trade networks, urbanization, and travel. Towns grew up around the barriers, becoming notable sites of activity themselves.

Early Barriers

The chief sekisho in the Heian period were maintained as defensive points, protecting either the Kinai ("Inner Provinces" surrounding Kyoto), or the outer borders of the control of the Yamato state, from attack. Ataka-no-seki in what is today the city of Komatsu in Ishikawa prefecture, famous as the setting of the Noh play Ataka, and the kabuki Kanjinchô based upon it, is perhaps a good example of this type of site. In the play, based on legends surrounding Minamoto no Yoshitsune, and possibly with a considerable kernel of historical truth, Yoshitsune comes across Ataka no seki while fleeing from the forces of his brother, the shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo. Ataka represents a major obstacle, or the final major obstacle, separating him from relative freedom in the north; passing through the barrier, he escapes into the protection of the Ôshû Fujiwara of Hiraizumi; the Ôshû Fujiwara are often associated with the Emishi, or at least with resisting the control of the Kamakura shogunate and seeking a degree of independence.

Barriers also served as sources of revenue in the Heian through Muromachi periods; sekisho were built in great numbers in these periods, not only by the Imperial court or shogunates, but also by local power holders such as jitô and by temples and the like, which collected tolls from those passing into or through their territory.

The construction of barriers only increased as conflict expanded in the Sengoku period, with many regional leaders (Sengoku daimyô) constructing barriers both for defensive purposes and for revenue. Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi worked to destroy the great majority of these barriers, ostensibly to help the freer flow of trade, and thus economic prosperity, but also to permit the extension of their own political and military power over the archipelago, unhindered by barriers erected by local powerholders. Tokugawa Ieyasu, meanwhile, however, expanded the system of barriers within his own domains, in order to better protect himself against Oda or Toyotomi power.

Edo Period

Fifty-three barriers were maintained along the Gokaidô, the five main highways emanating from Nihonbashi in Edo. Though a powerful presence within the phenomenon of travel in the Edo period, and of conceptions of space and of famous locations (meisho), it has been argued that the chief purpose of the barriers, in terms of official shogunate intentions, was to help enforce the sankin kôtai ("alternate attendance") system, by keeping guns out and women in, a notion often referred to by the Japanese phrase iri-deppô ni de-onna. That the wives and daughters of daimyô were required to stay in Edo, essentially as hostages, was a crucial element of the shogunate's systems for keeping the daimyô from rising up against the shogunate. Preventing daimyô or other actors from transporting weapons into the city served a logical purpose as well within this scheme. That this was seen as the primary purpose of the sekisho is indicated by the fact that the sekisho system was dismantled simultaneously with that of the sankin kôtai system, in the mid-19th century.

Some of these barriers were those already existing before the establishment of the shogunate, but most were built during the reign of Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada (r. 1605-1623), with the last of the 53 sekisho being established in 1686. Many were newly constructed where no formal barrier checkpoint had existed before, but some were built as expansions or reconfigurations of barriers built by local/regional warlords.

References

• Vaporis, Constantine. Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan. Harvard University Press, 1994. pp99-133.