Narratives of Peasant Uprisings in Japan

they recounted their version of these disturbances in oral legends and written narratives. They told of the richness of their land, the appearance of villainy, the rectification of evil, and the return of peaceful conditions. These records of past community experiences drew on the power of fiction to recall more than the actual happening for their audience. In the eyes and ears of listeners and readers, they represented the shared memory of a historical reality recaptured through extraordinary prose. During the last centuries of Tokugawa rule, peasants suffered from misgovernment and challenged perceived wrongdoing through petitions to their rulers and riots against wealthy commoners. Their protests followed a ritualized pattern: the crisis was discovered; action was taken to resolve it; and equilibrium was restored. For weeks or even months, signs and portents of unrest filled the air. Meetings were held, and complaints were voiced opposing high taxes, refusal to grant tax exemptions during famines, innovative mercantile policies, the hoarding of rice, or any other activity that threatened the people's ability to survive as they were. ' Sometimes the protest action was nonviolent, as in the g(so, the march of peasants en masse to present their petitions to the authorities, and sometimes violent, as in the uchikotktashi, the destructive riots where commoners vented their rage and punished the unjust by smashing furniture and trampling food in the mud. In either case, it was collective; the participants joined not as individuals, but as members of a community. Protest action never passed unpunished. After the riot, government officials retaliated for disorder by taking action against those involved; leaders were invariably executed. But uprisings were not simply forgotten. They needed to be explained, and the explanation had to be valid. According to Victor Turner, the framework of human relations known as society is constantly being renewed through a continual process of destruction and rebuilding. An important part of this process is the interaction among people as they collectively reach rational explanations for their action. Even though their interpretations may not be logical to outsiders, they make social life a coherent and comprehensible reality for members of the group. Thus, myths and folktales are "convenient mears of ordering collective experience" in the process of cultural becoming (Turner '977:65). Peasant uprising narratives also evoked the recent past in a way that gal P it coherence to its audience. Yet, using the narratives as