In medieval Japan and during the Tokugawa shogunate, alongside the samurai culture—honor, valor, and the cult of death—another Japanese culture of bravery was developing in parallel: machi shū. Paradoxically, it is the values and ethos of this second culture that we often admire in pop culture today as “samurai.” Because these are the values closer to our own—we can identify with them, whereas the ethos of Japanese warriors would be too incomprehensible for us. Samurai culture was extreme, anti-individual, based on the notion of service and death as virtues in and of themselves. It was a world in which emotions were forbidden, private life was a sin, love a joke, and beauty and death were one and the same. Against this rigorous, almost inhuman ethic, the culture of machi shū appears not only as a contrast but also as much closer to the modern understanding of bravery—for it was a path of life, not death.
The ethos of machi shū was born not in the shadow of banners, but in the glow of lanterns hung before the home. Instead of the battlefield—there was the workshop; instead of a knightly death—responsibility for the common good. It was in neighborhoods ravaged by fire, during epidemics, in times of crisis and famine, that the civic courage of everyday life was forged—quiet, practical, yet deeply heroic. Machibikeshi—community firefighters—would climb onto burning houses to dismantle roofs and block the path of the fire; craft guilds would gather rice and firewood for those who lost everything; elderly women would teach orphans how to survive. Ritual, discipline, aesthetics—all of this formed a coherent world of values in which loyalty was horizontal, not vertical: it was directed not toward a lord, but toward a neighbor, and honor was measured not by the sword, but by action. It was machi shū—not the samurai—who were the authors of most of the aesthetic forms of the era: ukiyo-e, kabuki, haikai poetry, urban wabi. They shaped Japanese everyday life—organized, disciplined, full of respect for the beauty of simple things.
Today, their spirit endures, responsible for the fact that crime in Japan is practically nonexistent. Even in the most unexpected places. The yakuza, to whom pop culture attributes samurai origins, is in fact a peripheral continuation of machi shū. Their ethos—though often distorted and entangled in criminality—is based on loyalty to the group, a strict internal code, brotherhood, and communal rituals. There is a code of honor here—but distant from the samurai one—closer instead to machi shū. In place of the district—kumi. In place of the elders—oyabun. It was not the world of the samurai that created these values, but the world of urban chonin, whose culture—marginalized in pop culture narratives about warriors—proved to be more enduring, more human, and more understandable. This text is about them. About the values of bravery, courage, and responsibility in life, not in death.
When we imagine old Japan, our gaze too often lingers on the gleam of a katana and the silhouette of a samurai’s distinctive armor. Yet the samurai made up only 10% of Japan, and in the shadow of the daimyō residences, far from military marches and the bushidō code, another life pulsed—steady, industrious, organized—above all: full of its own rituals and values. It was there, in the dense networks of the street districts of Edo, Kyōto, and Ōsaka, that the culture of machi shū (町衆) was born—not a social class, but a living cultural formation of townspeople, local communities, artisans, and merchants who created an alternative ethos of daily courage, loyalty, and the aesthetics of life. Their honor code, their principles and values, their definition of what it means to be a man were different from the samurai ethos—different values, a different world.
The term machi shū consists of two simple characters:
- 町 (machi) – a district, street, but also the basic unit of urban organization. As early as the Heian period, it referred to a city block, and in medieval Kyōto—to a self-governing community of residents in one part of the city.
- 衆 (shū) – people, group, collective. It appears in ancient Japanese Buddhist and Confucian texts, carrying the meaning not of a mass, but of a community bound by ritual, function, and neighborhood. It does not simply mean “people,” but something closer to a community (though not necessarily in our modern, internet-era sense).
Thus, machi shū means not just “people of the city,” but a deep sense of urban community—organized, conscious, capable of acting in unity. In contrast to peasants (hyakushō), whose lives followed the rhythm of the seasons, and samurai, whose world was based on feudal hierarchy and service, the machi shū were autonomous people, connected not by birth but by district, profession, and shared goals.
The expression machi shū appears in sources as early as the Sengoku period, especially in the context of Kyōto—residents of districts at the time formed grassroots temple municipalities, organized their own guards, and gathered funds for common goals. Though it was not yet a unified formation, from these local communities emerged a culture that would blossom in Edo as a fully-fledged ethos.
Several other terms are connected to machi shū, essential for understanding urban life in the Edo period:
▫ 町人 (chonin) – literally “people of the district”; merchants and artisans who formed the foundation of urban society and from whom members of machi shū were drawn.
▫ 町奉行 (machi bugyō) – bakufu officials responsible for the administration of districts, public order, and civil affairs in the cities.
▫ 五人組 (goningumi) – a system of five-person neighborhood groups, in which each person was responsible for all the others; the cornerstone of social control and local loyalty.
▫ 町年寄 (machi doshiyori) – district elders, chosen from among distinguished townspeople, serving representative, organizational, and mediating functions.
These terms show that machi shū was not a loose gathering of city folk but a consciously built fabric of urban community, governed by its own rules—parallel to the samurai structures, but just as coherent and influential.
The roots of this culture are to be found in the Muromachi period (1336–1573), especially in the late medieval times when Japanese cities—led by Kyōto—began forming municipal governments with their own guards, tax systems, and shared festivals. Townspeople defended their districts from samurai-nobles, organized festivals, established guilds (za), and created what Japanese historians refer to as an “autonomous urban culture.” The machi shū were its voice, its conscience, and its spirit.
But it was not until the Edo period (1603–1868) that this culture truly flourished. During this time, cities exploded in population—Edo became the largest metropolis in the world—and the chonin (町人) community of artisans and merchants gained strength, despite occupying the lowest official rung of the feudal hierarchy. It was they—the chonin—who formed the core and backbone of machi shū. In their workshops, tea pavilions, kabuki theatres, and neighborhood festivals, an alternative code of life was forged—not based on loyalty to a lord, but on solidarity with neighbors, diligence in work, responsibility for the common good, and care for one’s reputation.
It’s important to emphasize: machi shū were not a social class in the European sense—they were not defined by birth, but by function within the urban community. Among them were wealthy traders and poor craftsmen, firefighters, old guild masters, and young apprentices. What united them was an ethos—an ethical and aesthetic community that can be described as “honor without the sword.”
The birth of the machi shū culture was not the result of a decree or the whim of a court—it grew out of chaos, the need to survive, and centuries of urban experience. During the Sengoku period (1467–1600), when Japan was engulfed in a bloody civil war, central authority practically ceased to exist, and the provinces were tossed between famine, fires, and raids by armed bands (more on this period here: The Real Sengoku – What Was Life Like for the Swordless in the Shadow of Samurai Wars?). Cities, left without protection, had to learn to live by their own rules—to defend themselves, organize, maintain order, and celebrate life together, for their very survival depended on it. It was precisely then that the foundations of machi shū appeared as autonomous urban communities capable of acting without help from above.
The earliest and best-documented example lies in the artisan districts of Kyōto, which, after a great fire and the looting of the capital, began to create their own systems of mutual aid and protection. Independent civic guards were established, collective reconstruction funds were gathered, and rotating night watch duties were instituted. Temple districts—especially those associated with Jōdo and Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism—formed quasi-republican structures in which lay residents took part in decisions concerning religious practice and local initiatives. These grassroots forms of organization not only replaced authority but also fostered a sense of community, responsibility, and pride in belonging to one’s machi—the district as a microcosm.
The Edo period (1603–1868) brought not only peace but also an explosion of urbanization, the scale of which cannot be overstated. The city of Edo, which had only tens of thousands of residents in the time of Tokugawa Ieyasu, grew to over a million people by the eighteenth century, becoming one of the largest cities in the world. In this city—organized like a mosaic of neighborhood blocks—samurai lived in official quarters of the daimyō and hatamoto, but it was the artisan and merchant districts that formed the living tissue of daily life, full of trade, bustle, children, festivals, and labor (how did Edo townspeople live? – Machiya: What Were the Townhouses of Edo Like? – The Lives of Ordinary People During the Shogunate).
In these urban spaces, the chonin—merchants, artisans, and small-scale service providers—became the true architects of social life, while many samurai eked out a living on meager stipends, without any real role in the economy. Where the authority of the machi bugyō officials did not reach, communal oversight systems functioned: the goningumi system (five-person mutual responsibility groups), rotating guard duties, and institutions of local elderhood—machi doshiyori, who mediated conflicts, organized events, and upheld the morality of the residents (yes indeed—those were the times).
One of the most important signs of the maturity of machi shū culture was the institutionalization of religious and social associations such as kō (講) and ren (連). Kō were often pilgrimage brotherhoods or communities that cared for a local temple, but also forms of mutual aid in cases of illness, death, or fire. Ren, on the other hand, were artistic associations connected with haikai, ikebana, dance, or poetry. Their existence proves that machi shū was not merely a community of safety—it was also an aesthetic community, one that created and sustained local culture.
It is also impossible to overlook the role of volunteer fire brigades—machibikeshi (町火消し). Their members—often young, strong artisans—risked their lives climbing onto rooftops in burning districts to dismantle parts of the buildings and stop the spread of fire. Their uniforms, rituals, and iconography (such as the great matoi—unit banners) show how deeply civic bravery—not military valor—was inscribed into the urban ethos. Fire was not a catastrophe to them—it was a moment of trial.
Over time, the machi shū culture also developed artistic patronage that defined the aesthetics of the era: ukiyo-e, kabuki theater, fashionable crafts, haikai poetry, and tea ceremonies based on urban wabi. It was not the aristocracy or the samurai who were the primary audience for this culture—but precisely the chonin and their communities, who in Edo created an alternative model of Japanese life—urban, organized, full of discipline, but also deeply sensual.
Thus, from the uncertainties of the Sengoku period to the maturity of the Edo era, the culture of machi shū was born—an informal republic of city people, governed by the honor of community, the aesthetics of simplicity, and the quiet courage of everyday life.
The samurai sword was a symbol of honor… for the samurai. The people of the city, the machi shū, built their own system of values—deeply rooted in the aesthetics of daily life—which needed no weapon to be binding. Their ethos was quiet but firm. It was not based on ritual death for one’s lord, but on persistent life for others—for the district, for the community, for the good that bore no crest but had the face of a neighbor.
The central value was loyalty—but not to authority or feudal overlords. The loyalty of machi shū was directed toward horizontal bonds: to the guild, to the kumi (neighborhood group), to the kō (pilgrimage brotherhood), to the family, which extended beyond blood relatives. A person was part of a greater whole—the machi (district)—and to it they owed duties, and in it they sought protection. This was communal, not individual honor—broken by one, it brought shame upon all. Such a structure of bonds was both morally constructive and practical—the community watched over itself, protected itself, and resolved its own disputes.
In the realities of Edo, where cities built from wood and paper frequently burned, and canals became breeding grounds for epidemics, bravery did not mean fighting an external enemy but facing catastrophe—with a rope in hand, a bucket of water, a stretcher for the sick. Members of the machibikeshi, the fire brigades, climbed onto the roofs of burning houses to manually remove tiles and halt the fire’s progress. Brothers from the guilds organized collections for those who had lost their homes. Women brought rice and medicine to neighbors during cholera outbreaks. The courage of machi shū was daily, practical—unheroic in form, but heroic in essence.
Standing guard over this community was the principle of collective responsibility. The goningumi system—five-person mutual guarantee groups—meant that no one was alone, but also that no one was beyond accountability. If one member of the group broke the law, all five were held responsible. This created a sense of shared fate and a strong pressure toward self-regulation—not from fear of punishment, but from fear of disgracing the others. In a world where reputation (seken) was the most important social currency, the loss of face carried the weight of a sentence. This was a stern morality, but deeply internalized—people kept themselves in check not because someone was watching, but because they wanted to be worthy of trust.
(Do you admire modern Japan for its social discipline and near-zero crime?—if so, what you’re seeing is the echo of these values—still alive in twenty-first-century Japan.)
From this collective responsibility flowed other virtues of machi shū:
▫ Restraint – not in the sense of asceticism, but self-control: in speech, emotion, gesture;
▫ Reliability – the client was to receive exactly what they had ordered, without cheating or exploitation;
▫ Pride in one’s work – not merely as a means of survival, but as a source of identity (read more about shokunin here: An Hour of Complete Focus – What Can We Learn from Traditional Japanese Craftsmen, the Shokunin? and about iemoto here: Iemoto – The Japanese Master-Disciple System That Has Endured Since the Shogunate Era);
▫ Shitsuke (躾) – the discipline of daily habits, upbringing toward order, cleanliness, punctuality, modesty;
▫ Filial piety (kō, 孝) – extended not only to family, but also to the master of one’s craft, to the elder neighbor, to the local temple.
On the contrary—machi shū created their own form of urban wabi, in which beauty lay not in luxury, but in order, proportion, and harmony. A clean courtyard. A small garden with bonsai and a single blade of grass. A carefully tied artisan’s apron. A restored lantern in front of the house. A neighborhood festival where every lamp, every mask, every gesture in the dance carried the aesthetics of collective effort. Kabuki theater funded by the residents of the district, not by the aristocracy. Haikai poetry written by a rickshaw puller or a rice merchant. Craftsmanship in which precision was a moral obligation, not just a form of expression.
「江戸の花は火事と喧嘩」
(Edo no hana wa kaji to kenka)
“The flowers of Edo are fires and fights.”
There was no anonymity in the districts of Edo. Not because someone was watching, but because everyone was a neighbor—in joy and in poverty, during fires and during festivals. The culture of machi shū was not merely a collection of ideas—it was practice, life organized together, every day, with rituals tended as carefully as an artisan’s workshop. It was in these daily actions that the true strength of the community was most vividly expressed.
One of the clearest examples of this urban courage was the volunteer fire brigades—machibikeshi (町火消し). In an era when homes were built of wood and paper, and the sources of light were oil lamps and hearths, fire was not just an element—it was public enemy number one. Fires in Edo were called “the flowers of the city” for good reason. In this reality, machibikeshi became the unofficial heroes of the districts, ready to leap onto burning rooftops with hooks and ropes to dismantle buildings and stop the flames. They wore colorful happi coats emblazoned with their brigade crests and marched in festivals bearing enormous matoi banners, inspiring admiration in children and women. Interestingly—membership in the brigade often passed from father to son, and some families built their entire social standing around this role.
But machi shū was not only about the dramas of fires—it was also about the tedious everyday life organized by chōnaikai (町内会), or local neighborhood associations. Though the term was officially introduced in the Meiji period, their Edo-era equivalents performed the same functions: managing funds, planning repairs, distributing water, enforcing nighttime quiet, organizing festivals, and overseeing the cleanliness of the alleys. In every district, there was a designated schedule for cleaning the communal well, removing trash, repairing lanterns, and also for rotating night watch duties. Heads of households were obligated to regularly attend meetings and submit reports—not as subjects, but as members of a community.
A unique organizational achievement of machi shū was the creation of communal relief funds and care for those in need. When someone’s house burned down, they did not wait for help from the shogunate—it was the neighborhood that gathered rice, firewood, clothing, and money for them. Local support systems for widows and orphans also existed—both formal and informal. Elderly women in the district taught girls how to sew and cook, while boys were apprenticed to trusted artisans. No one was allowed to “fall out” of the community—because anyone who ceased to exist in the eyes of the district was like an empty house with boarded-up doors. Even in the case of mental illness or disability, care mechanisms were often created that—though primitive from our point of view—were full of compassion and practical concern.
In the life of machi shū, guilds of artisans and merchant associations played a major role—organizations that not only regulated professional standards but also functioned as moral and economic unions. Prices, the quality of goods, and the training of apprentices were decided collectively. Disputes among members were resolved by the guild elders, and breaking the rules led to expulsion—a sentence not merely economic, but social. The guilds also cared for the spiritual dimension of the trade—carpenters, for instance, worshipped the gods of their tools, while sculptors formed prayer confraternities (kō) linked to specific temples. Every profession had its own rituals—a ceremony for entry, a thanksgiving for completing a project, an offering from the first earnings. Work was not only a necessity—it was a form of religious presence in the world.
It was precisely machi shū—not the samurai—who became the chief patrons of Edo-period popular culture. Kabuki, ukiyo-e, haikai poetry, even fashion—all of it arose thanks to the money and interests of the chonin. Kabuki theater was not a product of the aristocracy but entertainment for working people—merchants, carpenters, painters, textile traders. Actors were their idols, and performances often contained stories from district life, interwoven with morality tales and street humor. Ukiyo-e woodblock prints were produced in workshops functioning like small editorial offices: one artist, one carver, one printer—all rooted in their districts, known by name and face, supported by local sponsors.
Haikai—a form of poetry combining classical elements with sharp wit—flourished in circles of artisans and shopkeepers, who gathered in the evenings to improvise verses over sake. What we today call “Edo culture” was, to a large extent, the creation of machi shū—their laughter, their labor, their needs, their imagination.
All of this—from the communal well to the carved kabuki stage—formed a mosaic of everyday heroism that required no fanfare. The district was a world. And machi shū—its conscience, its arm, and its heart.
In the Western imagination, feudal Japan is often almost entirely identified with the samurai—the silent, honorable warrior, ready to give his life for his lord. This image, though striking, is fundamentally simplistic and deeply alien to our European experience. The samurai culture was extreme, anti-individual, based on the notion of service and death as the highest virtue. Bushidō—“the way of the warrior”—knew no right to live for oneself. It was a code that required a person to treat their own existence as a temporary tool of loyalty, ready for sacrifice at any moment. A world in which love could not outweigh duty, and in which beauty and death were the same.
Against the backdrop of this rigorous, almost inhuman ethic, the culture of machi shū appears not only as a contrast but as much closer to the modern understanding of bravery. The courage of city dwellers did not lie in the willingness to take their own lives (see: Samurai Seppuku: Ritual Suicide in the Name of Honor, or Bloody Belly Cutting and Hours of Agony?), but in the willingness to endure daily toil: to defend the community, maintain a family, and persist in the face of disaster. The ethos of machi shū was an ethos of life, not death. Responsibility, discipline, civic courage—these were its foundations. Where bushidō idealized solitary death, machi shū idealized collective life.
In the Edo period, paradoxically, the samurai increasingly became shadows of themselves.
Many of them—especially those of lower ranks—lived on meager stipends, disconnected from warfare (during the Tokugawa shogunate, there were practically no wars anymore—with only minor exceptions), and were forced to perform civilian bureaucratic functions. Their reality bore little resemblance to the myth that defined them. More and more often, they looked with envy upon the chonin, the townspeople, who—although formally lower in the hierarchy—enjoyed real independence, cash flow, access to culture, and freedom of lifestyle. The samurai, bound to simplicity and loyalty, saw in the world of machi shū a freedom they themselves had never known.
This led to a quiet yet profound assimilation. Samurai began to adopt elements of chonin style—their clothing, hairstyles, and manner of moving through the city. They went to the same kabuki theaters, read the same books, bought woodblock prints of the same actors. They studied haikai poetry, took part in neighborhood festivals, and worked as teachers of calligraphy or martial arts—not in service of a daimyō, but in service of the urban everyday. The symbolic role reversal was inevitable: the samurai became a functionary, and the chonin—a patron and creator of culture.
This parallel existence of two codes—the warrior and the urban—was not a struggle, but a quiet dialogue, in which the machi shū slowly and imperceptibly took over the role of bearer of social values. For although the samurai had their code, it was not they who organized the everyday life of the city. It was the people of the districts—carpenters, traders, sculptors, doctors, firefighters—who created the practical rules of coexistence, the morality of daily life, and the rituals of mutual existence that lasted far longer than the banners of the samurai.
And this is precisely why machi shū feels so much closer to us Europeans today. Their values—community, diligence, loyalty to neighbors, dignity in a simple life—are understandable without needing to translate them from a different civilizational order. In contrast to the radicalism of bushidō, which may seem beautiful but is in truth wholly alien to us, machi shū reveals a Japanese face of humanity that we can still recognize as—so to speak—our own.
The Meiji period (1868–1912), heralding the modernization of Japan, brought an end to the class system, and with it—the formal existence of machi shū. The status of chonin was abolished, and cities were subjected to centralization and bureaucratization. Where once neighborhoods organized their own affairs, now state officials and police appeared. Communities ceased to be vessels of autonomy and became administrative units. Yet even though the structure collapsed, the spirit remained. The ethos of machi shū—based on loyalty, collective responsibility, ritualized daily life, and a communal sense of existence—did not disappear, but rather shaped modernity itself.
Traces of this culture can be found in the least expected places—for instance, in the structure of the yakuza, which formed at the end of the 19th century among the tekiya (street vendors) and bakuto (gamblers)—more on that here: How the Mighty Yakuza was Tamed in the 21st Century. And What Sumo Tournaments Have to Do with It? and here: Women of the Yakuza – Silently Bearing the Scars on Their Bodies and Hearts. Though organized crime stands on the fringes of society, it is the yakuza’s language, its rituals, the idea of loyalty to the “family,” and its strict internal code that form a peripheral continuation of machi shū ideals. In place of the district—a group. In place of elderhood—oyabun. In place of communal order—a “mafia”-like version of honor (in quotation marks, since whether the yakuza are truly a mafia is a complex topic deserving its own discussion). The values of the yakuza—complicated, often distorted, and frequently mistaken in pop culture for the samurai ethos—stem from the same original models as those of the machi shū. Put simply, though perhaps imprecisely: the yakuza are not related to the world of the samurai, but to the world of urban chonin from the Muromachi and Edo periods.
Far clearer is the legacy of machi shū culture in today’s shopping districts and festive urban communities, especially in Kyōto, Ōsaka, Kanazawa, or the shitamachi neighborhoods of Tokyo. During summer and autumn matsuri, residents organize parades, renovate pavilions, and make joint offerings to local deities—just as in the Edo period. Shops and workshops on a single street pool their money for decorations and food for guests. Elderly residents teach the young how to carry the mikoshi or how to play the taiko drums. The district becomes once again a living organism, built on memory and pride of place. In such moments, the echo of machi shū rings out most clearly.
It’s also hard to miss this legacy in the structure of Japanese family businesses and corporations, which—though modern—often function like miniature Edo neighborhoods. They are hierarchical, based on loyalty, with their own daily rituals. Senior employees possess an almost paternal authority. Novices learn through observation and imitation. There are company shrines, shared office cleanings, morning roll calls, and anniversary celebrations. Even the idea of working “for the good of the team” has its roots in the Japanese machi no ishi—“the spirit of the district.”
That is why, when we look at contemporary Japan—the one made of concrete and neon, vending machines selling coffee and panties, and bullet trains equipped with more sensors than space probes—it is worth knowing that beneath this modern landscape, the heart of Edo still beats. Quiet, rhythmic, communal. The culture of machi shū may not have survived as a formal structure—but it lives on and thrives as something far more important: the values embraced by the Japanese people. In the neatly swept sidewalk. In the lantern hung before a shop. In the careful bow to a neighbor. Wherever daily life becomes a ritual—machi shū still lives.
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未開 ソビエライ
An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)
"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)
未開 ソビエライ
An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)
"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)
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