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Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 371

Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2016-02-22
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  • Publisher: Routledge

The majority of studies on the agricultural history of Japan have focused on the public administration of land and production, and rice, the principal source of revenue, has received the most attention. However, while this cereal has clearly played a decisive role in the public economy of the Japanese State, it has not had a predominant place in agricultural production. Far from confining its scope to a study of rice growing for tax purposes, this volume looks at the subsistence economy in the plant kingdom as a whole. This book examines the history of agriculture in premodern Japan from the 8th to the 17th century, dealing with the history of agricultural techniques and food supply of rice,...

The Soybean Through World History
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 267

The Soybean Through World History

This book examines the changing roles and functions of the soybean throughout world history and discusses how this reflects the complex processes of agrofood globalization. The book uses a historical lens to analyze the processes and features that brought us to the current global configuration of the soybean commodity chain. From its origins as a peasant food in ancient China, today the protein-rich soybean is by far the most cultivated biotech crop on Earth; used to make a huge variety of food and industrial products, including animal feed, tofu, cooking oil, soy sauce, biodiesel and soap. While there is a burgeoning amount of literature on how the contemporary global soy web affects large ...

The Aesthetics of Strangeness
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 282

The Aesthetics of Strangeness

Eccentric artists are “the vagaries of humanity” that inhabit the deviant underside of Japanese society: This was the conclusion drawn by pre–World War II commentators on most early modern Japanese artists. Postwar scholarship, as it searched for evidence of Japan’s modern roots, concluded the opposite: The eccentric, mad, and strange are moral exemplars, paragons of virtue, and shining hallmarks of modern consciousness. In recent years, the pendulum has swung again, this time in favor of viewing these oddballs as failures and dropouts without lasting cultural significance. This work corrects the disciplinary (and exclusionary) nature of such interpretations by reconsidering the sudd...

Tandai Sh?shin Roku
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 262

Tandai Sh?shin Roku

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2010-02-06
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  • Publisher: Lulu.com

This is the first complete translation of Tandai shŠshin roku, which provides the best source for an understanding of the eighteenth-century Japanese literary figure Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) – a man of many talents and wide-ranging interests: haikai and waka poet, writer of fiction, commentator on Japanese classical texts, doctor of Confucian medicine, keen student of history and botany, tea connoisseur and amateur potter. In this highly personal work dating from his last year, when he was almost blind and in poor health, Akinari allows his writing brush to wander at will, giving his unvarnished opinions on contemporary and historical people and events, commenting on various social customs, criticizing friend and foe alike, defending the existence of the supernatural and sharing his love of nature. Akinari’s candour, humour, curiosity of mind and impressive erudition make Tandai shŠshin roku an unusual and interesting text that has long deserved to be better known.

The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 673

The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History

Agricultural history has enjoyed a rebirth in recent years, in part because the agricultural enterprise promotes economic and cultural connections in an era that has become ever more globally focused, but also because of agriculture's potential to lead to conflicts over precious resources. The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History reflects this rebirth and examines the wide-reaching implications of agricultural issues, featuring essays that touch on the green revolution, the development of the Atlantic slave plantation, the agricultural impact of the American Civil War, the rise of scientific and corporate agriculture, and modern exploitation of agricultural labor.

The Politics of Chinese Medicine Under Mongol Rule
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 217

The Politics of Chinese Medicine Under Mongol Rule

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2016-02-22
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  • Publisher: Routledge

Under the rule of the descendants of Chinggis Khan (1167-1227), China saw the development of a new culture in which medical practice came to be considered a highly respected occupation for elite men. During this period, further major steps were also taken towards the codification of medical knowledge and promotion of physicians’ social status. This book traces the history of the politics, institutions, and culture of medicine of China under Mongol rule, through the eyes of a successful South Chinese official Yuan Jue (1266-1327). As the first comprehensive monograph on history of medicine in China under the Mongols, it argues that this period was a separate moment in Chinese history, when ...

The Arts of the Microbial World
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 334

The Arts of the Microbial World

"The Arts of the Microbial World explores how Japanese scientists and skilled workers sought to use the microbe's natural processes to create new products, from soy-sauce mold starters to MSG and from vitamins to statins. In traditional brewing houses as well as in the food, fine chemical, and pharmaceutical industries across Japan, they showcased their ability to deal with the enormous sensitivity and variety of the microbial world. Victoria Lee's careful study offers a lush historical example of a society where scientists asked microbes for what they termed "gifts." Lee's story ranges from the microbe's integration into Japan as an imported concept to its precise application in recombinant...

Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 433

Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History

Scholarship on premodern Japan has grown spectacularly over the past four decades, in both sophistication and volume. The new scholarship sees a higher reliance on primary documents, a shift away from the history of elites to broader exploration of social structures, and a reexamination of many of the key tenets which were once the received wisdom. Providing a primarily historiographical review, this handbook highlights the recent innovations and major themes that have developed in the study of premodern Japanese history. Covering Japanese history to 1600, The Routledge Handbook of Japanese History is an essential reference work for any student and researcher on Japanese, Asian and World History.

The Chinese Astronomical Bureau, 1620–1850
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 254

The Chinese Astronomical Bureau, 1620–1850

This book offers a new insight into one of the most interesting and long-lived institutions known to historians of science, the Chinese imperial Astronomical Bureau, which for two millennia observed, recorded, interpreted and predicted the movements of the celestial bodies. Utilising archival material, such as the résumés written for imperial audiences and personnel administration records, the book traces the rise and fall of more than thirty hereditary families serving at the Astronomical Bureau from the late Ming period to the end of the Qing dynasty. The book also presents an in-depth view into the organisation and function of the Bureau and succinctly charts the impacts of historical d...

A Year in Seventeenth-Century Kyoto
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 385

A Year in Seventeenth-Century Kyoto

Before the twentieth century, Japanese religious and cultural life was shaped by a variety of yearly ceremonies, festivals, and customs. These annual events (nenju gyoji) included Shinto festivals in which participants danced through the night to boisterous music and Buddhist temple practices that honored deities, great priests, or temple founders with solemn rituals and prayers—and sometimes, when the Buddha was invoked, raucous dancing. Temples also hosted popular fairs, where holy objects and artwork were displayed to the faithful and curious. Countless other celebrations were held annually at the residences of the nobility and military elite and at commoner domiciles. Kyoto, the imperi...