earticle

영어

To keep the society in an orderly state, Tokugawa Ieyasu utilized the concept of hierarchy in the Zhu Zi’s philosophy to divide people into four groups systematically and spiritually after his seizure of power, i.e. scholar, farmer, artisan, and merchant. There is an impassable gulf among each hierarchy and each one fulfills his duty within the range and their status would be inherited by their descendants, thus, to ensure the social ability and the stability of Tokugawa Regime. However, the hierarchical order of scholar, farmer, artisan, and merchant was challenged in mid-late Edo period. Every hierarchy was divided and changed internally. The bureaucratized, knowledgeable, pauperized, commercialization and independent trends of samurai, polarization between the rich and the poor of farmers, and affluence of businessmen swayed the hierarchical order, and finally threatened and overthrew the Tokugawa Regime. The samurai class of the ruling class has undergone profound changes.The bureaucratization has caused the samurai to lose its heroic character, thus losing the rationality. Knowledge-basedization has led the samurai class to gradually accept the requirements of the status quo of the reformed abacus system based on the continuous acceptance of Western culture. The samurai's poverty and constant commercialization have caused loyal warriors to deviate from their Lord Jun. The peasant class has changes in the separation of the rich and the poor,and triggering peasant uprisings, threatening the basis of the ruling system.The affluence of municipalities sparked the rise of the anti-abstinence and anti-abstinence ideology of the townspeople, leading to the emergence and development of the idea of opposition to the order of feudalism,and the culture of the people of the towns, resulting in a great deal of arrogance challenge.