Study on Retainers' Settlement at the Castle Town in the Age of Civil Wars

Abstract

There were a lot of various cases in which the retainers' settlement in the castle town had been built up in the time of Civil Wars. Among them the undermentioned two have a particularly important meaning.1) Functional group settlement2) Military group settlementUsually special retainers started to settle in at the early stage of the group settlement and then non-regular or common retainers followed. The former established themselves impromptu and brief, the latter periodically and extending over a long period of time. At its commencement initially the aboding sections were occupied by small number of chief retainers, confidential vassal class and servants of lower ranks.The group settlement of retainers in the age of Civil Wars is assorted in two types: Koso type and Himenono type.Dwelling place of Koso type settlement differed from the other for its comparatively closer density, but it was quite dissimilar to the farm village. In the Himenono type settlement the feudal lord's mansion was surrounded with a great many group of retainer's residence. That is really becoming to its appellation “group settlement”. The chief retainers' dweling places, building up the clan group or mass group in form of the coarse agglomerated group settlement (Lockere Dorf), are irregularly distributed here and there.The local differenciation, usually accompanying to the feudal social strata and craftmanship was immature at the retainers' settlement. This locally undifferenciated phenomena and the appearance of the feudal class group or mass group were resulted from the special ruling structure at that time.At the age of Civil Wars, the retainers did not yet live a complete way of the urban consumers' life. Generally speaking, their life was rather tinctured with rural colour. It might be traced to the social condition such as “Heinô mibunri” (warriors class not yet differenciated from that of farmers), which also had restricted the number of retainers in the castre town.Through the latter half of the 16th century, numerous castle towns began to develop on a larger scale; the Koso type settlements were turning into that of Himenono type more and more. Decline of social system of the mediaeval age brought about structural deterioration of the early castle towns and then in the 17th century the modern castle town came out.