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This volume explores early-modern formations of economic thought and policy in a country widely regarded as having followed a unique, non-Western path to capitalism. In discussing such topics as money and the state, freedom and control, national interest ideology, shogunal politics and networks, case studies of the Saga Domain and Ryukyu Kingdom, Confucian banking, early Meiji entrepreneurship, and relationships between macroeconomic fluctuations and policy, the essays here deepen and revise our understanding of early-modern Japan. They also enlarge and refine the analytical vocabulary for describing early-modern economic thought and policy, thereby raising issues of interest to scholars of world history and economic thought outside of Japan or East Asia.
This book, which deals with the life and ideas of the poet and philosopher Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825), presents insights into gender discourses of the late Tokugawa period (1600-1868), and thereby opens a way to break away from conventional intellectual history.
Although scholars have emphasized the importance of women’s networks for civil society in twentieth-century Japan, Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan is the first book to tackle the subject for the contentious and consequential nineteenth century. The essays traverse the divide when Japan started transforming itself from a decentralized to a centralized government, from legally imposed restrictions on movement to the breakdown of travel barriers, and from ad hoc schooling to compulsory elementary school education. As these essays suggest, such changes had a profound impact on women and their roles in networks. Rather than pursue a common methodology, the authors take diverse ap...
Reveals the rich and lively world of literate women in Japan from 1600 through the early 20th century
Evaluating Evidence is based on the grueling lessons learned by a senior scholar during three decades of tutoring by, and collaboration with, Japanese historians. George Akita persisted in the difficult task of reading documentary sources in Japanese, most written in calligraphic style (sôsho), out of the conviction of their centrality to the historian’s craft and his commitment to a positivist methodology to research and scholarship. He argues forcefully in this volume for an inductive process in which the scholar seeks out facts on a subject and, through observation and examination of an extensive body of data, is able to discern patterns until it is possible to formulate certain propos...
The present volume is a collection of papers originally presented for the concluding conference of the research project The East Asian 'Mediterranean' entitled "The East Asian 'Mediterranean' - Maritime Crossroads of Culture, Commerce and Human Migration" and held at Munich University from November 2-3, 2007. The papers in this volume have been arranged according to thematical sections, that is "Mediterranean Seas - from East Asia to East Africa", "Merchants and merchant networks", "Commodities and transport", and finally "Trade parameters and perceptions" - each section covering a different aspect of trade, diplomacy and perceptions across and within the East Asian and Asian waters. In order to show the variety and the different qualities of interaction and exchange relations we have selected case studies with a main focus lying on Sino-Japanese, Sino-Ryukyuan, and Japanese-Korean relations as well as the involvement of Muslim merchants in the Asian waters. The volume in particular tries to draw the readers' attention to the necessity and the advantages of international cooperation and interaction investigating topics of Asian history.
This book tells the story of a society reversing deeply held worldviews and revolutionizing its demography. In parts of eighteenth-century Japan, couples raised only two or three children. As villages shrank and domain headcounts dwindled, posters of child-murdering she-devils began to appear, and governments offered to pay their subjects to have more children. In these pages, the long conflict over the meaning of infanticide comes to life once again. Those who killed babies saw themselves as responsible parents to their chosen children. Those who opposed infanticide redrew the boundaries of humanity so as to encompass newborn infants and exclude those who would not raise them. In Eastern Ja...
"During the sengoku era--the period of ""warring provinces"" in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Japan--warlords vied for supremacy and sought to expand their influence over the realm. Powerful religious institutions also asserted their military might by calling upon their adherents to do battle against forces that threatened their spiritual and secular interests. The Honganji branch of Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land Sect) Buddhism was one such powerhouse that exercised its military will by fanning violent uprisings of ikko ikki, loosely structured ""leagues of one mind"" made up of mostly commoners who banded together to fight for (or against) any number of causes--usually those advanced by t...
During the eighteenth century, Edo (today’s Tokyo) became the world’s largest city, quickly surpassing London and Paris. Its rapidly expanding population and flourishing economy encouraged the development of a thriving popular culture. Innovative and ambitious young authors and artists soon began to look beyond the established categories of poetry, drama, and prose, banding together to invent completely new literary forms that focused on the fun and charm of Edo. Their writings were sometimes witty, wild, and bawdy, and other times sensitive, wise, and polished. Now some of these high spirited works, celebrating the rapid changes, extraordinary events, and scandalous news of the day, hav...
Helen Hardacre offers for the first time in any language a sweeping, comprehensive history of Shinto, the tradition that is practiced by some 80% of the Japanese people and underlies the institution of the Emperor.