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Emperor and Aristocracy in Japan, 1467-1680: Resilience and Renewal. By LEE BUTLER. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002. 412 pp. $39.50 (cloth).
The Japanese court retained political and cultural significance during the Warring States era (1467-1568) and the subsequent reunification of Japan. In a monograph sure to be of interest to specialists and students of medieval and early modern political, social, and cultural history, Lee Butler shows how the court adapted to the profound transformations of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Butler is to be commended for straddling the medieval and early modern divide in Japanese history and for explaining how the court shaped enduring patterns of Japanese culture.
Butler's work provides a powerful counterargument to the notion that Japan from 1467 to 1568 consisted of independent warring states. In his first two chapters ("The Struggle to Survive" and "Normality and Its Pretenses"), he reveals that the court remained ceremonially significant in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as daimyo such as the Ouchi, Oda, Uesugi, and Asakura provided funds for palace repairs, poetry anthologies, and varied ceremonies (pp. 63, 71, 84, 100). The court thereupon gained political power during the process of unification ("Court Society...