The System Of Alternate Attendance To Daimio's Fief Finance-From Economy Control To Political Dirigisme

During the period of the Tokugawa Shogun, the Tokugawa Regime was the ruling system which was the political ruling with the fief of shogun to daimio and daimio to retainer and samurai to establish centralization and decentralization. Under this system, the relationship between the general and daimio was the master-slaver contract relationship. In order to maintain this relationship, the best measure was to enhance the ruling and controlling power to daimio. And the system of Alternate Attendance was the best one during these consolidates measures.The system of Alternate Attendance firstly appeared in the Laws for the military houses in the year of 1615, and ended the institutionalization in the year of 1635. After that, there were many detailed rules in the system of Alternate Attendance from the attendance content and daimio row-column scale to the alternate time and Edo hostage. The system range extended to the daimio all over the country, which was the foundation system. People inherited it from generation to generation, which was called ancestral code.The system of Alternate Attendance claimed that the daimio should take some certain amount of retainer samurais who accorded with the daimio identity to Edo to work and finish various tasks of the Tokugawa apportion. And these daimios had to do alternative living in Edo. Their wives had to live in Edo daimio residence in long time as the hostages.The content of every system showed the political purpose of the Tokugawa trying to enhance ruling to the daimio. The setting of the daimio alternative living and hostages made these the daimio is under the control of the Tokugawa. And the frequent alternative attendance from the Edo and the collar country also made the daimio far away from the fief administration. Meanwhile, the alternative living made them have big economic burden. According to the general statistical, since the implement of the system of Alternate Attendance, average 60% of every fief economy income was spent on the cost of the system of Alternate Attendance. Therefore, the measure taken by the Tokugawa did not only restricted the expansion of every fief, strengthened the political ruling and control the daimio economy effectively, but also led to the financial difficulty of every fief and blocked the possibility of every fief confrontation against the Tokugawa to a certain extent. Just because of this, during over 200 years of the system of Alternate Attendance implement, though there were load of generals power, the Tokugawa ruling was still stable, and no daimio stood up to against, besides a few wanderers and samurais caused riots.This thesis based on many historical facts and researches of many cases. Through extracting the proportion of the system of Alternate Attendance cost and analyzing the influence of the system of Alternate Attendance to the fief finance, I make a conclusion that the daimio economic strength was weakened by the system of Alternate Attendance, and the weakening of the daimio economic strength helped to materialize the strengthening of political ruling to the daimio.