Sankin kōtai from the inside—barley, dust, and 500 pairs of legs

Japan of the Edo period may today be associated with the silence of gardens, the dance of geisha, or the cool gleam of a katana—and yet its true power often smelled of smoke from a field kitchen and sounded like the thunder of footsteps on the highway and the creak of wooden carrying poles. Travel—this was what set Tokugawa Japan apart, what shaped it—culturally as well as economically. And the apogee of the art of travel were the daimyō processions: sankin kōtai (参勤交代). Named after the system that compelled them—the rules of the daimyō’s “alternate attendance” in Edo—one usually explains them through politics: control, hostages, centralization. But today, let us come down lower—from the level of the palace, from the level of the palanquin, and even from the level of the horse—down to the ground level, where a man wakes before dawn, gulps down barley in haste, ties his waraji sandals, and knows that today he will again walk ten ri—because the “state on wheels” is setting out on the road.

Imagine this procession without romantic filters: not a parade, but a mobile factory. Someone must cook a meal for several hundred people, someone must count the rations, light the charcoal, watch over the barrels of miso. Someone else cleans horses’ hooves, bandages abrasions, presses wet rags to the aching legs of porters and orders them onward, because an exchange waits at the next station. There are scribes who record every expense, and there are people for water, tea, repairs—for patching the world on the run. There is also money—small mon (文) coins, which on such journeys suddenly become razor-sharp: how much a modest meal costs, how much a kitchen helper’s day wage is, how much an evening with a courtesan costs, and how much extra must be paid when there are not enough hands to carry—or how much we lose by waiting for days in the mud until the road becomes passable.

This is Edo’s paradox: a shogunate that created one of the best organized transport systems in the premodern world, and at the same time deliberately hampered its development so as not to lose control. And it was along these roads—in dust, in overseers’ shouted calls, in the smoke rising from pots of barley, in the rhythm of post stations—that sankin kōtai processions moved. Every step was part of a larger order: economic, social, psychological. The road was not merely space; it was an instrument of discipline. Whoever walked remembered that the center was Edo. Whoever stood by the road saw what the entire cross-section of the state’s hierarchy looked like. And today we will try to see the country of Tokugawa Japan anew—through the eyes of those who carried this state on their own shoulders.

SCENE

Night had not yet fully yielded when the camp began to stir impatiently. At first quietly, almost shyly—as if the very earth of the province were reluctant to wake beneath the weight of what was about to set out on the road. A young ashigaru opened his eyes before the first shout of an overseer rang out. He was awakened by a smell: the sweet-and-sour aroma of steaming miso, rising above makeshift hearths set up still in the half-dark. Steam mingled with the cool air of pre-dawn and with the smoke of wet wood that stung the eyes.

He lay still for a moment, listening. Somewhere farther off a horse whinnied—short, nervous—and right after that came the muffled clop of hooves on the packed road. Someone stretched loudly; someone else coughed. The creak of wood gave away that the palanquins were already being pulled out from under their shelters: heavy, lacquered, with poles smoothed by years of carrying. Their sound was distinctive—dry, deep, as if they were complaining about yet another journey.

The ashigaru sat up and quickly rolled up his thin mat. There was no time for slowness. In sankin kōtai everything was done on time—and lateness carried the weight of an offense. He pulled on a simple hakama, adjusted his belt, checked that his spear was still propped where he had left it. The blade was wrapped in cloth; the weapon was to look dignified, but not provocative. The peace of the Edo period was a fragile agreement, even if today no one expected a fight.

— Get up! — the overseer’s voice cut through the camp like a knife. — Get ready!

By the field kitchen, movement was already boiling. Great iron cauldrons, blackened by hundreds of such mornings, were being lifted off the fire. Barley with millet was plain, without additions, but the portion had to last through long hours of marching. Into the bowls went also a little tsukemono—pickled daikon—something that kept the body in check when legs began to tremble. The ashigaru ate quickly, paying no attention to taste, yet feeling warmth spread in his stomach. Around him hundreds of people did the same: lower-ranking samurai, porters, grooms, kitchen boys. Everyone knew where they belonged.

At the edge of the camp, the horses were already ready. Their coats steamed as a stablehand rubbed them with a coarse brush, checking the girths. The animals sensed tension—tossing their heads, snorting, stamping. For them the march meant long stretches between stations: several ri of pulling weight, then unfamiliar hands, a quick inspection of hooves, a change of harness—and again the road. The animals did not know the destination—they knew only the tension of straps and the rhythm of human commands, the changes of harness, new hands. For people—there were still whole weeks of road ahead.

Somewhere nearer the center of the procession, a nearly ceremonial silence prevailed. The daimyō’s palanquin still stood motionless, screened by an ornate curtain. The lord was not visible—and was not meant to be visible. His presence was betrayed only by the increased number of guards and the way everyone else involuntarily straightened their backs when passing by.

Suddenly, the beat of a small drum rang out. Once. A second time. The sound was dry, rhythmic, carrying over rice fields still sunk in the gray of morning. It was the signal. The procession, which until then had been only a cluster of people and things, began to arrange itself into a line. Each unit knew its place: spears in front, then servants, then heavier loads, the kitchen, the rear guard. Everything according to an order approved back in Edo.

The ashigaru took his position in the ranks where other ashigaru from his part of the prefecture stood. He felt under his feet the cool, hard earth. When he lifted his gaze, he saw the first narrow streak of light appear above the horizon. The sun rose slowly, as if thoughtfully, revealing fields, village roofs, and the road that led far—through rivers, mountains, and towns—toward the hard-to-imagine, great Edo.

— Forward — came the command.

The first steps were always the heaviest. Then the body fell into rhythm. The rhythm of sankin kōtai. The rhythm of a state in motion.

What is sankin kōtai?

How the system worked

Sankin kōtai (参勤交代, lit. “to participate in service and rotate in alternation”) was a policy of the Tokugawa shoguns under which daimyō—feudal lords of domains—were obliged to appear regularly in Edo and live there for a set period (usually half a year), and then return to their domain (also, for example, for half a year), after which the cycle repeated. In practice, this meant “alternate attendance” at the center of power: Edo became the place of real control, audiences, ceremonial and administrative duties, and the journey itself was part of the system—a visible proof of subordination.

The most characteristic mechanism of sankin kōtai was that when a daimyō departed Edo for his domain, he had to leave someone close behind in Edo, for example his wife and son—de facto as political “security” for loyalty. At the same time, the daimyō was obliged to maintain two (and often more) costly residences and entire service infrastructures: in the domain and in Edo, with staff, protection, warehouses, and etiquette adequate to rank. This created constant, predictable pressure: emotional (family in Edo), political (continuous proximity to the shogunate), and financial (maintaining two courts and costly journeys).

The third element was the ritual and logistics of movement: great processions (samurai, servants, porters, horses, loads) traveled along the main highways, using a system of stations where horses, porters, and lodging were provided, while the state controlled traffic and crossings. It was precisely this “compulsory mobility” that made sankin kōtai a tool of stabilization: it weakened the capacity for rebellion (through costs and control), and at the same time integrated the country economically, because the needs of the daimyō and their courts drove trade, services, and the flow of money between province and Edo.

Why did Japan need a “hostage system”?

The Sengoku wars taught Japan one thing all too well: loyalty measured by the sword is loyalty of short breath. Today you swear an oath, tomorrow—when the constellation of alliances changes, when the rice granary burns, when a protector dies—the oath loses its weight. The Tokugawa, building peace after 1603, could not afford illusions. In a country where for generations power changed hands on the battlefield, stabilization itself became a political undertaking of the highest risk.

That is why sankin kōtai is so ruthless in its simplicity. It does not rest on lofty rhetoric or romantic “honor,” but on mechanics: on the movement of people, the flow of money, and the psychology of a hostage. In 1635, Tokugawa Iemitsu wrote the duty of alternate residence into the “Buke shohatto,” making it formal law of the era. This was no whim and no ceremonial extravagance—it was centralization in a version that can be counted: in months of road, in the costs of maintaining a procession, in bills for lodgings and food, and above all in what remained in Edo when the lord returned to his domain.

That “what” was family. Wife, children, heir—the most valuable political resource of any house. The obligation to leave one’s loved ones in Edo worked like a soft yet iron hoop: the daimyō could return to his castle, but he never returned fully “to himself.” His home was split in two, and the future of the house—in the literal sense—lay within the shogunate’s reach. That is why sources so often describe sankin kōtai outright as a hostage system, even if wrapped in the language of duty and etiquette. In Tokugawa politics it was a remarkably mature solution: it did not openly humiliate (humiliation breeds desperation, especially in the Japan of samurai), but constantly reminded everyone where the center of gravity lay.

At the same time, sankin kōtai “tied hands” not only emotionally. It tied them economically—and in a subtler way than simply “ruining the daimyō.” The daimyō had to maintain an Edo residence befitting his status, and status in the Edo period was social currency as real as rice in a granary (about rice as currency you can read here: Rice Instead of Gold – The Currency of the Samurai, the Shogun’s Rice Exchange, and the Sacred Ritual of Emperors). He also had to travel in splendor: with escort, with servants, with the whole theater of power that told other houses: “my lord is not a provincial pauper.” This cost enormously—not only in gold, but in the ability to accumulate resources and plan anything independently of Edo. Sources emphasize that maintaining multiple residences and the journeys themselves drained domain finances, strengthening the shogunate’s control.

In this sense, sankin kōtai was a masterpiece of governance through logistics. Instead of sending armies, the Tokugawa sent thousands of legs onto the roads. Instead of fighting without end, they imposed a cyclical, predictable rhythm: moving, reporting, being seen in Edo, remaining under the eye of court and bureaucracy. And Edo-period bureaucracy—contrary to stereotypes—worked exceptionally efficiently and kept track of details, of what was happening where (about how the shogunate worked you can read more here: The shogunate is not a monarchy. How did the precise machinery of samurai administration function?). Control of movement along the five main highways (e.g., Tokkaido—more here: "The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō" by Hiroshige – The Journey Is Not the Destination, but What We Pass Along the Way), post stations prepared to service elites, the system of checkpoints—these are not ornaments. They are political infrastructure, thanks to which “peace” became a daily practice rather than a temporary suspension of arms.

The difference between Sengoku and Edo resonates most strongly here. In Sengoku, loyalty was forged in extremity: under pressure of death, in chaos, in the moral gray of betrayal and necessity. In Edo, loyalty was rewritten into the language of routine—into the language of expenses, roads, etiquette, and time. Psychologically, it is a different kind of subordination: less dramatic on the surface, but deeper in structure. Because if every year or every two years you must set out, if your finances live to the rhythm of travel, if your family is “a guest of the enemy,” then rebellion becomes a distant and highly risky daydream.

And there is also an irony that cannot be omitted: sankin kōtai not only controlled, it also created modernity on the era’s scale. It forced the flow of people, money, and goods, drove the development of services, credit, interregional trade—because to pay for Edo one had to “monetize” the provinces. One can link this system to the development of communication and a commercial economy, even if at the same time it deepened daimyō indebtedness. The Tokugawa “bound” the country not only with the sword of law, but also—and perhaps above all—with the road, on which one could constantly hear the footsteps of marching processions.

The bloodstream of Tokugawa Japan

If sankin kōtai was the heart of the Tokugawa system, then the roads were its bloodstream. Without them, the daimyō’s alternate attendance in Edo would have remained an empty order. That is why the shoguns’ state did not merely control people, but with surgical precision controlled movement: who goes, where, with whom, at what pace, and with whose help. From Edo, the political center of the country, radiated five great highways—Gokaidō—like arteries through which processions of hundreds of thousands of people were regularly pumped. The most important was the Tōkaidō, running along the Pacific coast to Kyoto and Osaka—the busiest, loudest, most expensive. Deeper into the mountains ran the Nakasendō, cooler, longer, harsher, but without sea crossings. Completing them were the Kōshū Kaidō, Nikkō Kaidō, and Ōshū Kaidō, serving strategic and religious regions. These roads were not “public” in the modern sense—they were an instrument of power.

Every few ri (里 – approx. 3.9 km) lay shukuba, post stations: dense logistical nodes in which the state materialized in horses, people, and regulations. On the Tōkaidō itself, each station had to have about one hundred porters and one hundred horses at the ready; on the Nakasendō half that number; on the remaining routes, twenty-five. These were not free entrepreneurs waiting for customers, but a semi-compulsory service system: if the number of people and animals was insufficient, peasants from nearby villages were drawn in, obliged to supply additional hands and animals as part of “corvée.” Each horse and each porter worked only on one segment—the load, palanquin, or person was passed along like a parcel, in a rhythm set by the state. Road dust settled on clothing, sweat mixed with the smell of horses, and the damp wood of shelters, wet with morning mists, creaked as harnesses and carrying poles were changed.

This movement was strictly supervised. Sekisho—checkpoints—guarded crossings, domain borders, and critical points. Their official task was “catching women and weapons”: preventing the illegal movement of daimyō wives and the smuggling of armaments. In practice, sekisho were a barrier more psychological, reminding everyone that every step took place with the authority’s consent. Not by chance was the construction of large bridges forbidden—rivers were to remain obstacles that could be closed, controlled, slowed. Crossings were made by ford or by boat; in the rainy season processions waited for hours, sometimes days, until the water level fell. Sankin kōtai was meant to hurt sometimes precisely in this way: through delay, discomfort, the awareness of dependence on an infrastructure one did not control oneself.

For villages and small towns, this system was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, money: inns, baths, merchants of rice, straw, waraji sandals, medicines, and paper earned on the constant flow. On the other, a burden that grew over years. Peasants pulled away from fields, horses “used up” faster, stores of straw and fodder consumed by чужe processions. Tax exemptions and subsidies rarely balanced the real costs. As a result, many villages sank into debt, and infrastructure—roads, small bridges, warehouses—remained in a state of controlled stagnation: good enough for administration and the military, too weak for modern trade or industry. This is Edo’s paradox: a state that created one of the best organized transport systems in the premodern world, and at the same time deliberately hampered its development so as not to lose control.

And it was along these roads, in this dust, in this creaking of wet wood and the overseers’ shouted calls, that sankin kōtai processions moved. Every step was part of a larger order: economic, social, psychological. The road was not merely space—it was an instrument of discipline. Whoever walked remembered where the center was. Whoever stood by the road saw what the state in motion looked like.

Who was in the procession?

From afar, a daimyō procession looked like a single organism, but up close it broke apart into dozens of roles, statuses, and micro-social worlds, bound together only temporarily by the shared road. Sankin kōtai was not a “unit” or a “caravan” in a simple sense—it was a moving cross-section of Edo-period society, arranged in an order everyone understood without words.

At the head walked the front-line samurai: not elite sword masters of legend, but rather professional functionaries of order. Their yari spears gleamed dully, often older than they themselves; beside them were carried tanegashima—arquebuses introduced long ago by the great Oda Nobunaga, now outdated, but still obligatory as a sign of the house’s military dignity. No one had fired them for generations, but their presence had psychological meaning: it reminded everyone that this procession was not a merchant caravan, but a movement of authority.

Behind them came the layer easiest to overlook, without which the procession would collapse: “people of function.” The moving kitchen was a world of its own—cooks, helpers, carriers of cauldrons and chests of rice, miso, salt, dried fish. Their clothes were practical, often stained, and their hands were burned and rough. Nearby kept to them the “tea boys”—young, quiet, guarding the cleanliness of cups and water for those of higher rank. There was the domain doctor, usually in a simple scholar’s outfit, carrying boxes of herbs, needles, and dressings, and scribes—small, focused, recording departure times, headcounts, expenses, all irregularities. Sankin kōtai produced paper with great zeal.

At the very center was the daimyō’s palanquin—lacquered, curtained, almost always closed. The lord was present through absence: no one saw him, yet everyone oriented themselves in relation to his position. The palanquin bearers—trained, exchanged often, with shoulders hard as rock—moved in a rhythm learned over years. Close by were personal guards, and farther— the rear guard, ensuring no one joined without permission and no one “fell off” the procession. This was not paranoia: thefts, servants’ escapes, minor abuses happened regularly, and sankin kōtai was for many the only opportunity to vanish between the provinces and Edo.

Farther stretched the loads—the true innards of the system. Chests of rice (not only for provisions, but as gift and currency), bolts of silk and cotton, brocaded ceremonial garments, folding screens, armor elements intended for displays, lacquerware, clan seals. Some of these objects were never used; they existed so that everyone would know they existed.

On the edges of the procession moved a less official world, but no less real. Entertainment was not folklore or excess, but an element of prestige and court functioning. Courtesans and performers traveled discreetly, usually not in full company, often hired locally in larger towns or stations. Their presence was not overt, but everyone knew they were there—sankin kōtai was long, exhausting, and lonely, and the domain did not want its men’s frustration to slip out of control. This also says something essential about Edo: morality was managed, not idealized.

Animals completed the picture. Horses—of varying quality—were changed often, because no domain risked exhausting them. There were mules for heavy loads, dogs guarding the camp at night, sometimes—if the daimyō was a falconer (read more here: Samurai and His Falcon – The Noble Tradition of Takagari Hunting)—falcons in special boxes, fed and tended with almost religious care. Animals were not an accessory; they were tools of status and logistics.

This procession was not constant. At each station an exchange took place: some porters left, others joined; horses were returned and new ones taken; the kitchen unfolded and was packed; accounts were recorded and sealed. Each stage required dozens of people and animals just to cover a few more ri. Sankin kōtai worked like a pump: it drew in local resources and pushed them onward, leaving behind fatigue, money, and the memory that power had just passed through the village.

A daimyō procession was a moving social structure of Edo, a temporary concentration of roles that on a daily basis existed separately. Whoever walked in such a procession saw Japan in miniature—hierarchical, organized, exhausted, and yet functioning with a precision that cannot be achieved without long training in obedience and habituation to the road.

The real life of ordinary people in a daimyō procession

If sankin kōtai had a face, it was not the face of the daimyō hidden behind the palanquin’s curtain, but the hands of the people who carried him, protected him, cooked food, washed clothes, cleaned, bandaged, cared for horses. The procession’s everyday life was dense with smells and sounds, far from the ceremonial image known from paintings. The day began with fire. Before dawn the moving kitchen was set up by the road or at the edge of a station: iron cauldrons the size of barrels were hung on tripods, with charcoal and logs soaked in night dew piled beneath, smoking heavily and sweetly. Rice—more often barley with millet—was poured by the bucket. Add miso, daikon, a dried sardine or a piece of kombu seaweed—food was meant to fill and keep the body moving, not to give pleasure.

The kitchen must have been a logistical nightmare. Chests with utensils, knives, ladles, bamboo strainers, sacks of salt and barrels of soy sauce weighed so much that one required two, sometimes three people. Nothing was disposable. Pots were patched with wire, cracks sealed with lacquer, and grain was counted by handfuls, because an error in calculation could mean hunger. Kitchen people always rose first; their clothes soaked up the smell of smoke, which trailed them for the entire road.

Alongside meal preparation ran a second, equally indispensable labor: laundry. At every larger station, servants made for streams and rivers. Hakama and kosode were rinsed in icy water, hands submerged up to the elbows; in winter skin cracked, in summer the water was clouded by road dust. Clothes were hung on lines stretched between trees or behind inns. Amid steam from the kitchen and smoke from the hearths dried dark samurai trousers, sweat-soaked porter shirts, bandages, rags, towels. No one complained—dirt meant illness, and illness on the road was a “luxury” there was no room for.

In parallel went the care of animals. Horses were fed whatever was at hand: chaff, oats, leftover straw. Grooms checked hooves, picked out stones, washed abrasions and wrapped them with strips of cloth. Exhausted animals got a few hours of rest, after which they were often handed over at the post station and replaced—no one risked a horse dropping dead in the middle of a segment. Mules bore the weight of chests, dogs circled the camp at night, warning of strangers. Animals were silent participants in sankin kōtai, as exploited as people.

In the shadow of all this worked the domain doctor. His role was modest, but indispensable: herbs for diarrhea from bad water, ointments for chafing, bandages for wounds from carrying poles and harness. There were no heroic operations—there was a daily struggle against infection, fever, exhaustion. Hygiene was ritual and practical at once: washing hands, rinsing mouths, fumigating rooms with smoke. Health in sankin kōtai was risk management, not its elimination.

This daily effort had an economic dimension, recorded in domain documents without emotion. The annual costs of sankin kōtai often consumed 20~30% of the entire domain budget (not the daimyō’s, but the whole domain’s! One journey, repeated every year, cost 20~30% of the entire “county” budget!): food, transport, equipment repairs, fees for post stations, medicines, exchange of people and animals. These were not extraordinary expenses—this was a permanent line item in the ledgers, predictable as the seasons. For the people walking in the procession it meant one thing: their fatigue was built into the functioning of the state.

Sankin kōtai, from the perspective of ordinary people employed by it, was not a spectacle. It was the continual sustaining of life in motion. In their small, repetitive tasks, the true Japan of Edo shows through best.

As for “earnings” in sankin kōtai, one must distinguish between two completely different things: the samurai’s steady income from the domain (stipend/pay, usually counted in rice, i.e., in koku) and the money paid “on the road”—per diems, allowances, and fees for people hired stage by stage along the routes. A lower-ranking samurai on guard duty did not “earn from the procession” like a laborer—he was simply delegated and might receive a special travel allowance (for food, small expenses, sometimes “representational costs”), while cooks, porters, or horse handlers were often paid like a service: by segments, according to rates set by the station.

In the documents of one of the great domains (Kaga) this can be seen very clearly: in the travel cost estimate, “general expenses” (lodgings, crossings, gifts, etc.) are counted separately, and separately “money paid to people in the procession” as a real component of labor costs.

For “ordinary road people”—ninsoku (人足, porters) and horse services—remuneration took the form of a tariff fee, usually calculated by distance (most often “per kilometer,” more precisely per ri). From surviving urban and regional tables of “set rates” (御定賃銭) one can even see a breakdown of who received how much of that sum: part went to the porter actually working or to the “service horse,” part remained as commission/service at the intermediary point (問屋場), sometimes with small deductions.

In practice this meant that on every segment the procession had to “buy” dozens of hands and hooves—and because official rates were sometimes understated relative to reality, stations and nearby villages bore the weight of the system, often at the cost of growing debts and conflicts over “who they’re taking again today to carry.”

The most telling image is this: a great lord transported authority, but sustained it with cash in small coins. One paid for lodgings (sometimes with exact accounting of “how many people × how many nights”), for crossings, for horses, for people, for speeding things up and for “top-ups” in moments of crisis. In one study by the Bank of Japan, based on period sources, one can even see model calculations of travel costs (e.g., lodging bills counted per head), which shows that sankin kōtai was not only politics—it was a moving service economy, where the innkeeper, the stablehand, the porter, the ferryman, and the intermediary earned, and the domain paid because it had to.

Typical rates

Below are rates for individual participants in the procession; we know them from various and fairly numerous sources; the amounts given here are based on the document 「甲府から江戸まで道中二十七宿 人足六人・本馬一疋 御定賃銭利用」 – “a receipt concerning the use of ‘gosadame chinzen’ on the Kōfu–Edo route”).

(NOTE 1: for comparison: mon is 文 – a copper coin. In 18th-century Japan, for about 12~16 mon one could buy (outside metropolises such as Edo or Osaka) one meal—modest, but filling
NOTE 2: in a day one covered 8–10 ri, i.e. 32~40 km—about 10 hours of actual marching per day).

▷ Porter (ninsoku) – approx. 12 mon / 1 ri
▷ Load horse (honba) – approx. 25 mon / 1 ri
▷ Light horse / “empty horse” (karajiri) – approx. 13 mon / 1 ri
▷ Palanquin/kago (with service) – approx. 24 mon / 1 ri
▷ Official transport rate (dachin) – approximately – approx. 16 mon / 1 ri
▷ Transport “outside the tariff” (private contract, urgent order) – often ~2× the official rate
▷ Porter hired “for a segment” in high-traffic areas (one station–the next) – for example 40–50 mon per segment
▷ Domain cook (料理人) – cooking for the procession, managing rations
→ day wage approx. 200–300 mon
▷ Kitchen helper / kitchen service (台所人足) – carrying cauldrons, fuel, washing dishes
→ day wage approx. 50–100 mon
▷ Doctor on the road (医師) – dressings, herbs, illnesses from exhaustion
→ domain pay + travel allowance, in conversion approx. 400–600 mon per day (here the amounts differ drastically)
▷ Hired local guard / security guide – protection on difficult stretches, crossings
→ day wage approx. 300–500 mon (more in mountains and by rivers)
▷ Artist / courtesan hired for the duration of a stop – entertainment, prestige of the house
→ fee for a day or evening: approx. 500–2000 mon (depending on rank)
▷ Kagokaki in the city of Edo (kago as a “taxi”) – approx. 400 mon / 1 ri
▷ Kago in Edo, ride to the entertainment district (e.g., Nihonbashi → near Yoshiwara) – approx. 800 mon per ride
▷ Groom / horse service at a station (station work, not always calculated per ri) – usually paid as a package together with horse hire + small bonuses/tips with large processions

The burden of splendor

The burden of sankin kōtai did not lie solely in road kilometers or in bills recorded in domain ledgers. Its true burden was the splendor that had to be carried without pause. In the Edo period, status did not exist in a vacuum—it was visible and comparable. The larger the procession, the more spears, palanquins, chests, and horses, the clearer the message: “this house still stands strong.” A daimyō who appeared on the road too modestly risked not only ridicule, but loss of face in the eyes of rival houses, bakufu officials, and his own vassals. It was not about petty malice—by losing respect he could physically lose his lands, influence, people—and that would cause the house to deem him unworthy to be the clan head. And that could end in various ways… The procession was thus not so much a means of transport as a public report on the condition of the domain, displayed for judgment at every post station.

This logic of prestige worked like a trap. Every house knew the cost was enormous, but none could afford a saving visible from the outside. Sankin kōtai became a psychological game of appearances, in which even impoverishing domains pretended wealth, borrowing money from merchants in Osaka or Edo, mortgaging future rice harvests and increasing debt. Over time, it was precisely credit—and not rice—that sustained the roads’ splendor. In late-Edo documents one can already see it clearly: some domains spent on sankin kōtai more than they were truly able to bear, but withdrawing from this theater was tantamount to political suicide.

In this theater, a more tangible drama was also easy to encounter—on the road itself. The highway was not a safe stage. Diseases spread in crowds: diarrhea from bad water, fevers from exhaustion, wound infections from carrying poles and harness. Accidents happened regularly—falls of porters, broken horse legs, overturned palanquins on steep slopes. Bandit attacks were rare, but not impossible, especially on side stretches and in times of crisis; more often, however, the real threat was nature. The lack of bridges meant river crossings on barges or by swimming. After rains, processions got stuck for days, waiting for water to fall, and a one-day delay shattered the precisely planned schedule of station stops.

The greatest tensions, however, arose not on the road, but between the system and the people who had to serve it. Stations competed for resources, shifted obligations onto neighboring villages, and peasants were summoned to compulsory transport duties ever more often the larger the approaching procession. Abuses occurred: inflated bills, extorted “top-ups,” disputes over the number of people and horses a given village “should” provide. Bakufu administration knew this perfectly well, but the system functioned precisely because the friction was dispersed—no one suffered “spectacularly enough” to stop it.

Finally, sankin kōtai was also a system of information and rumor. Every delay, every reduction in escort, every visible saving was noted—by station officials, by merchants, by rival houses. Reports circulated faster than processions: “that daimyō arrived with a smaller retinue,” “that one had to borrow horses,” “half that one’s people are sick.” Sankin kōtai thus became a tool of control not only physical, but of reputation. Whoever could not maintain the appearance of stability on the road revealed weakness—and weakness in Edo was immeasurably dangerous.

Shinkansen and daimyō processions

In the 18th century, the Tokugawa began quietly to admit that this great machine, though functioning, was wearing out too quickly. Reforms of 1722 shortened the time of residence in Edo—rather than full years, shorter cycles appeared—but this was more a correction of pressure than a repair of the system. Costs did not fall in proportion to the shortened time, because splendor still had to look like splendor, residences still had to be maintained, and the provinces still paid so that Edo could remain the center. In the 19th century, to this internal fatigue was added an external factor: Western pressure, a crisis of bakufu authority, a growing sense that the state maintained ritual while the world demanded decisions. In 1862, sankin kōtai was abolished, and in Edo an exodus began—as if someone had opened a valve: people returned to their domains, residences emptied, warehouses were shut, gardens grew over. It is even mentioned that one domain dismantled part of its residence and took it home—a gesture like an epilogue after a long play, in which the scenery returns to storage, and the audience suddenly hears silence.

And yet sankin kōtai did not vanish without a trace. Above all it left behind a culture of travel that in Edo became something more than movement: a rhythm of life, a memory of each post station, inns, maps, guidebooks, stories. It also left a surprising unification of the country—not so much political (that was formal), but practical: words, accents, customs, fashions, and manners began to circulate with people, and Edo became a great melting pot of dialects and mores. Cities grew, services thickened, and infrastructure—though controlled and incomplete—formed a network Japan had not previously had on such a scale.

The most enduring legacy, however, is less visible. Sankin kōtai was proto-modern logistics: planning, scheduling, flow control, cost accounting, coordinating resources and people on the scale of the entire country. That experience did not evaporate with the fall of the shogunate—it passed into administrative habits, organizational culture, and the conviction that order can be maintained not only by force, but by procedure, rhythm, and well-counted movement. And perhaps that is why, when today we think of Japan as a country of efficiency, punctuality, and the ability to act collectively, somewhere in the background—like the distant sound of a little drum on the highway—there still resounds the echo of sankin kōtai.

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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)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

  Mike Soray

   (aka Michał Sobieraj)

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)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

Mike Soray

(aka Michał Sobieraj)

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