This book investigates the significance of material culture and sociability in Japan’s sixteenth century, focusing in particular on the career and afterlife of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate. Using letters, diaries, and historical chronicles, as well as a wide range of visual and material evidence, the book links the extreme violence of this age of civil and international war to the increasing significance of samurai social rituals and cultural practices. It argues that warlords accrued power and reinforced hierarchy both in tea houses and on the battlefield ... More

This book investigates the significance of material culture and sociability in Japan’s sixteenth century, focusing in particular on the career and afterlife of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate. Using letters, diaries, and historical chronicles, as well as a wide range of visual and material evidence, the book links the extreme violence of this age of civil and international war to the increasing significance of samurai social rituals and cultural practices. It argues that warlords accrued power and reinforced hierarchy both in tea houses and on the battlefield, and that the resulting logic of “spectacular accumulation” had a profound effect on the creation and character of Japan’s early modern polity. Moving from the Ashikaga palaces of Kyoto to warlord collections of tea utensils, to the hostage exchanges of internecine military conflicts, to the tea gatherings and gift rituals of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, Spectacular Accumulation traces the growing power of Japan’s military rulers over famous artworks as well as objectified human bodies. This innovative and eloquent history of a transitional age in Japan’s premodern past reframes the relationship between art and politics, between culture and war, in a readable and thoroughly-researched narrative.