Why It Sucks to Be the Shogun's Spy in Edo Japan

You are a secret agent of the shogun of Japan, and on the official personnel records your job title is garden keeper. That is not a code word. There is an actual garden. You take night watch in it, sound wooden clappers if a fire starts, and watch the gardeners and mat-makers going in and out. You cannot resign. When you die, your son will do the job. This is the oniwaban. In 1716 the new shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune, arrived from Kishu as an outsider and brought his own people. Seventeen of them, most of whom had loaded their lord's guns, became hereditary households of agents. In your day they were all graded below the line that allowed a man into the shogun's presence, so when a matter was sensitive enough, the shogun heard the report himself through a closed paper sliding door. The real work was walking. Sent out in pairs, carrying government money and a permit that called them merchants or pilgrims, they wrote down what people were saying about lords, officials and the price of rice. In 1787, when more than five hundred premises in Edo were pulled apart by crowds, the oniwaban were used to tell the shogun what was actually happening in his city. None of them wore black. The black suit comes from the kabuki stage, and the word ninja came into general use only in the late 1950s. And one man from a family of hereditary garden keepers, Muragaki Norimasa, crossed the Pacific as deputy head of the first Japanese embassy to the United States. Episode 7 of EDO LIVES. The real lives behind old Japan. CHAPTERS 00:00 The Job Nobody Applied For 01:39 A Gun Loader Becomes the Shogun's Ear 04:00 Your Official Duty Is the Garden 06:14 What They Paid You 08:09 The Order Through the Paper Door 10:11 Three Hundred Miles on Foot 12:36 The Report That Brought Down a Government 15:01 The Ninja You Are Picturing Was Invented on a Stage 17:40 What Became of You SOURCES Fukai Masaumi, Information Gathering by the Tokugawa Shoguns, lecture on the oniwaban based on the records of the oniwaban families, Joho Kanri vol. 34 no. 3 (1991), J-STAGE https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/... Encyclopedia entries on the oniwaban, their origin in Kishu, their grades and their households, Sekai Daihyakka Jiten and Nihon Daihyakka Zensho, Kotobank https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%BE%A1%E5... Fukai Masaumi, Edo-jo Oniwaban, Yoshikawa Kobunkan, including the reports on the Edo riots of 1787 and the Satsuma investigation diary of 1860 https://www.yoshikawa-k.co.jp/book/b3... Mie University, public lecture by Fukai Masaumi on the oniwaban and their reports https://www.human.mie-u.ac.jp/kenkyu/... Mie University, Yoshimaru Katsuya on how the black costume of the stage ninja began in eighteenth century theater https://www.mie-u.ac.jp/R-navi/column... Mie University International Ninja Research Center, on the throwing blade as an ordinary samurai's weapon https://ninjacenter.rscn.mie-u.ac.jp/... National Diet Library, Book Kaleidoscope, on when the word ninja came into use https://www.ndl.go.jp/kaleido/entry/3... Encyclopedia entries on Muragaki Norimasa, from garden keeper to deputy envoy to the United States, Kotobank https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%9D%91%E5... ABOUT THIS CHANNEL EDO LIVES follows one person through one job, in the Japan of the shoguns. Researched from Japanese language sources and primary records. New episodes every week. This video uses AI narration and AI generated illustration. The research, the script and the editorial choices are human. #japanesehistory #edoperiod #ninja