At the same time, they did not actively defend the existing feudal system because of their pre-existing economic status, or, as some scholars put it, "share the fate of the shogunate and the feudal domains."
In the face of major political issues such as "Sashoku" and "Honoring the King" and "Founding of the Nation" and "Shoiyi" that emerged at the end of the Edo period, the townpeople, who possessed strong monetary capital, did not have a completely identical understanding of these "political issues" due to regional differences, differences between the rich and the poor, and the relationship between interests at the time, but they also showed a general political tendency.For the townren class, the issue of "Sashoku" and "Honoring the King" was first and foremost a question of attitude towards the rule of the shogunate, and the key to the problem of attitude towards the rule of the shogunate was the issue of attitude towards the status system of the Shinongshang.In the history of modern ethical thought.During the Genroku period, Ito Nishisai, Ihara Nishizuru, Nishikawa Rumi and other representatives of the townspeople challenged the identity and morality of the shogunate.After the reform of the Tobo, Ishida Umeiwa, a scholar of the townspeople, put forward the "Theory of Equality of the Duties of the Four Peoples", and the Osaka Huaitokudo School raised the banner of the spirit of equality that "all people are regarded as peers, regardless of whether they are rich or poor."
In the era of chemical administration, the people of Huazheng Town, represented by Shigeti Sanma and Sima Jianghan, showed a strong anti-feudal identity system.All of this reflects the townholders' distinct stance on the shogunate's hierarchical identity system.By the end of the Edo period, this anti-feudal ideology and spirit had developed into not only a contempt for the samurai, but also a contempt for and even insulting the actions of the samurai.Fujiokaya's diary recounts many incidents in which the townspeople despised and insulted the samurai, including those who were ridiculed for entering the restaurant for the small amount of food, those who were insulted for buying clothes and asking for a price reduction, those who were scorned by the townspeople for trembling at the sound of cannons, and those who were beaten to death for their unreasonable violence against the townspeople.It is true that the ideology of the townspeople to despise the samurai was based on the impoverishment of the samurai economy, the cowardice of the samurai's armed forces, the corruption of samurai politics, and the growth of the economic and cultural power of the townspeople.But their spiritual motivation undoubtedly comes from their sense of rebellion against the hierarchical identity system.Parallel to the expansion of this contempt for the samurai, there was also a growing tide of rebellion against the rule of the shogunate by the people of the Makumachi era.By the end of the shogunate, the composition of the town-town class had changed considerably compared to the early days, and even the original city-town townspeople had been polarized over the past 200 years of development, resulting in different classes within the town-town class.As a result, in the struggle against the shogunate in the so-called "urban unity" such as "destruction" and "reincarnation", the attitudes of the wealthy upper and poor lower townspeople could not be completely identical due to the different interests of the time, and sometimes the upper townspeople were even "destroyed" by the lower townspeople.Japan's reform is a very complicated process, and President Moe cannot avoid this hurdle, he must study the contradictions between his opponents and the lower class of the townspeople, after all, they belong to the contradictions within the townpeople class, not the main contradictions in the political society of the end of the Edo period, so there is no fundamental difference in their political attitudes on the major principle of "Samaku" or "respect for the king".In other words, the general political tendency of the townpeople class was to support the so-called "royal government" and oppose the existing shogunate rule.Of course, the unity of the general political goal did not necessarily mean that the form of struggle was the same, and the lack of political participation due to the long-term exclusion of the machito class from political power made most of the machito's struggle against the shogunate revolve around their own vital interests.The impoverished lower-class townspeople rebelled, attacked, and destabilized the shogunate's rule mainly through so-called "urban striking" and "reincarnation".The wealthy upper-class townspeople resisted, disintegrated, and destabilized the shogunate mainly through economic forces and means, and assisted and supported the "revolutionary army" in their "role as economic supporters."
The struggle of the Machito-people class at the end of the shogunate against the rule of the shogunate set off a great tide during the "Tenpo Reform".In the spring of the thirteenth year of Tenbo, the townspeople wrote a sharp criticism of the politics of the shogunate, all kinds of bribery, the popularity of power, the donation of money, the more the merrier, and the townspeople and other towns to buy and sell, can not be accommodated, there are many difficulties, resulting in the store set up yesterday and now withdrawn, everywhere to move is difficult to fix, housewives do not know what to do.It expresses the indignation and criticism of the townspeople against the corrupt behavior of the shogunate rulers and their bad governance.However, it should be said that the shogunate had dealt a powerful blow to the rule of the shogunate, and it should be said that it was the "urban slump" launched again and again, mainly by the lower class townspeople and the urban poor.In the Edo period as a whole, there were far fewer cases of "urban ichiku" campaigns, which were mainly carried out by the lower class townspeople and the urban poor, than "common people's ichiku", which were mainly carried out by peasants.According to the statistics of Koji Aoki and Yohiko Harada, there were also more than 420 times.After the middle of the Edo period, it can be said that the "urban Ichiku" from the eighteenth year of the Edo period to the end of the Edo period became more frequent and intense.The immediate triggers for the outbreak of the "urban rebellion" were the famine, the soaring price of rice, and the strengthening of policies such as the exorbitant collection of "imperial gold" by the shogunate and the feudal domains.This took the form of a rebellion by the citizens of Osaka, led by Heihachiro Oshio, to an uprising by the feudal lords, such as the "Ichitsu" in Fukuchiyama Castle Town, which took place at the end of the Edo period, in which the feudal lords demanded that the feudal lords revoke financial regulations such as the "product association system" and allow the freedom to buy and sell rice grains and reduce taxes.However, most of the "urban ichiya" were spontaneous rebellions by the townspeople for economic purposes, such as the townspeople demanding that the rulers lower the price of rice, provide relief to the poor, and reduce taxes, and most of the targets of the "destruction" were rice shops that hoarded rice and the wealthy merchants who ran "two houses", but there were very few direct attempts to "destroy" the ruling institutions of the shogunate.However, it cannot be said that the spearhead was only the wealthy merchants, not the ruling power of the shogunate.This was because the first was that the political nature of rebellion and criticism of the shogunate rule, such as the demand for lower taxes, the condemnation of the corrupt practices of the "daikan townsmen", and the criticism and demand that the shogunate rulers revise the "monopoly system" and the indiscriminate issuance of feudal clans, was the political nature of rebellion and criticism, and the second was that the fundamental spiritual motivation that drove the destruction of the townspeople was the "consciousness of changing the world" and demanding a change in the way of the world.In particular, the latter's "consciousness of reincarnation" truly represents the class position and political tendencies of the Makumachi people.t1706231537: