The were Japanese

teamster A teamster in American English is a truck driver; a person who drives teams of draft animals; or a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a labor union. In some places, a teamster was called a carter, the name referring to the ...

s or cargo carriers who used horses to transport their shipments. They were chiefly active between the

Heian Period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kammu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means in Japanese. It is a ...

and the

Sengoku Period The was the period in History of Japan, Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or (1493) are generally chosen as th ...

. Images of the bashaku are famously drawn on the

emakimono Illustrated handscrolls, , or is an illustrated horizontal narration system of painted handscrolls that dates back to Nara-period (710–794 CE) Japan. Initially copying their much older Chinese counterparts in style, during the succeeding H ...

depicting the founding of

Ishiyama-dera is a Shingon temple in Ōtsu in Japan's Shiga Prefecture. This temple is the thirteenth of the Kansai Kannon Pilgrimage. History It was constructed around 747 CE, and is said to have been founded by Rōben. The temple contains a number of cu ...

. During the same time period cargo carriers who used oxen instead were known as shashaku.

Transportation methods

The transportation method of the bashaku was to hang the cargo from the back of their horses and then drive them to their destination. In the beginning farmers did this job during their free time on off-seasons but from the

Muromachi Period The , also known as the , is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate ( or ), which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi ...

and onwards it became a full-time occupation. The bashaku lived in groups in towns along major highways and important sites of water to land traffic including Otsu, Sakamoto, and Yodo, and they carried goods brought by boat to areas where consumption was at that time high such as

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

and

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Uprisings

Because of their organizational strength and the ease with which they could get news, and eventually their employment of armed escorts due to poor public security, they also became a source of rebellions during the Muromachi Period. The most famous of these revolts are the Shocho Uprising and the

Kakitsu Uprising The was a peasant uprising demanding debt cancellation that occurred in 1441, the 1st year of Kakitsu, in Kyoto and surrounding areas such as Ōmi Province. Background In August, amidst the political chaos following the assassination in June of ...

. However, when

Mount Hiei is a mountain to the northeast of Kyoto, lying on the border between the Kyoto and Shiga Prefectures, Japan. The temple of Enryaku-ji, the first outpost of the Japanese Tendai (Chin. Tiantai) sect of Buddhism, was founded atop Mount Hiei by ...

’s

Enryaku-ji is a Tendai monastery located on Mount Hiei in Ōtsu, overlooking Kyoto. It was first founded in 788 during the early Heian period (794–1185) by Saichō (767–822), also known as Dengyō Daishi, who introduced the Tendai sect of Mahayana ...

became the target of attacks in the latter uprising, the bashaku of

Omi Province Omi or OMI may refer to: Organisations * Optical Mechanics, Inc., a US telescope company * Ottico Meccanica Italiana, an Italian company * Original Musical Instrument Company, manufacturers of resonator guitars * Open Music Initiative, a digital ...

, who had received the temple's protection seceded from the rebels and the power of the bashaku split. During the Hokke Rebellion of 1532, Enryaku-ji took the lead in suppressing the bashaku. Bashaku members blockaded checkpoints connecting to Kyoto and thus imposed an economic embargo on the city where the power of militant Nichiren Buddhists held sway.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bashaku Sengoku period History of transport in Japan Economic history of Japan