Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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realm. It was this device that permitted the urbanization of most samurai under the

watchful eye of the daimyo

in his castle town.

Other devices, often designed to limit corruption or prevent samurai from building

local alliances with villagers also inter fered with effective administrative reach of

domain officials; however, these have not yet been explored by English-language

scholarship in any depth. For example, samurai officials were rotated frequently. In

many parts of Japan, lands administered by the sho

gun were exchange d for lands

administered by some daimyo

, or a daimyo

was given villages to oversee on behalf of

the sho

gun. Similar practices were followed in the commoner organizations that

administered groups of villages. There was a great deal of turnover in the composition

of these groups of villages. Changes every ten to fifteen years were not uncommon;

the size of groups generally increased over time. In combination, such shifting of

administrative oversight at both the domain and sub-domain levels made samurai

oversight of villages and village groups a huge challenge and increased the autonomy

of local authorities. This all left open possibilities for villag ers to develop their own

distinctive institutions of corporate control of arable land, for example.

At lower levels, a small handful of scholars have treated district and village case

studies. In addition to Ooms, Hitomi Tonomura has exam ined the transition to the

early modern era in village and district organization. William Kelly has examined

district organization of irrigation networks. Margaret McKean, examining the regu-

lation of common lands (iriai), reminds us that villages, too, made and enforced laws,

sometimes in very sophisticated fashion.

In the urban realm, only McClain has

written a monographic study, Kanazawa, focused on development of the castle town

in the largest independent domain of the time, Kaga.

Law also functioned in a considerably different fashion than what modern

people suppose, at least on a day-to-day basis. Earlier work on the legal system

stressed the role of conciliation and compromise in the premodern eras, but

Constantine Vaporis in particular conveys an impression of flexibi lity in implemen-

tation that one does not expect given the harshness of both the language of the

law and the punishments prescribed. Nam-lin Hur’s work on the efforts to control

activities at a major temple in Edo itself reveal a similarly ineffective effort at

enforcement.

Much of Tokugawa ‘‘law’’ was hortatory, and followed Chinese

patterns of describing an ideal toward which people should strive without regard

to the likelihood of enforcement (sumptuary legislation or edicts describing the

duties of farmers typically fall into this category). Moral suasion was the primary

object, not justicable law in a modern sense. Daniel Botsman’s research focuses

more on cr iminal law than other previous studies.

Missing Links

A number of issues of fundam ental importance remain virtually or completely un-

touched by scholars. In addition to the dearth o f studies of the sho

gun noted above,

we find only one significant treatment of samurai.

While this treats the very

important issue of how this group could simultaneously possess a strong group

identification and a strong sense of individual self, issues such as early modern military

organization, training, weaponry, and the like have gone unexamined. The peculiarly

78 PHILIP C. BROWN

seventeenth-century phenomenon of house disturbances (oie so

) has escaped all but

passing treatment. Since these latter issues often bear directly on another missing

link – study of the process by which daimyo

domains negotiated and adapted to new

roles under the Tokugawa – these subjects are of particular importance. Of less

chronologically restricted import, we have yet to address the nature of ‘‘ordinary’’

samurai interactions with commoners. While mid-century scholars had a clear interest

in issues of samurai–commoner inter marriage, the sale of samurai rank, and so on,

such subjects remain under-treated on the whole.

Despite Hur’s work noted above, only Neil McMullin has devoted substantial

attention to the relationship between religious organizations and the state.

Study

of the changing relationships between religious organizations, the shogunate,

daimyo

, and village administration rem ain untouched. We know religious pilgrimage

flourished from the eighteenth century, but we have little sense of how authorities

dealt with the phenomenon or of the possible links between such policies and the

treatment of millenarian movements (yonaoshi) of the mid nineteenth century that

signaled a broad sense of popular malaise.

Domain administrations’ internal workings likewise remain something of a blank,

despite the fact that this is where key decisions were made that affected many facets of

Tokugawa society. While we have some studies on land taxation, we know little about

domain finances, for example. While we have some studies of village and district

institutions and politics, and some of upper level domain policy-making, study of the

offices that linked the two – even as part of a broader monograph – are rare.

A broad need exists for comparative work in two senses. The first is a need for

comparative study of different regions within Jap an. This is necessitated by the very

deep and widespread regional variation in political practice that characterized much of

the era. Such studies might focus on topics such as the following: Why do some

domains completely urbanize samurai, while others leave samurai in rural communi-

ties or send them back after having moved them into castle towns? In a related vein,

how do samurai adapt to peace, including masterless samurai (ro

nin) in the seven-

teenth century? Do different structures of domain administration make a difference in

degree of daimyo

control over (1) domain officials (corruption, abuse of power), (2)

commoner populations (for example, taxation effectiveness ), and (3) domain fi-

nances? It has been relatively easy to identify in skeletal form the links that brought

an increased sense of connectedness within Japan, but case studies, especially in the

administrative realm, are missing from any current bibliography.

In addition, there is the broad question of the degree to which the history of

early modern Japan might be comparable to those of other parts of the world.

Such comparisons as there are typically are made to Europe, based on both the

apparent similarity of decentral ized political organizations (‘‘feudalism’’) and the

influence of Marxist concepts among historians in Japan. While such comparison

can be valuable, it may make equal or greater sense to compare Japan with its East

Asian neighbors (with which it shares a cultural tradition) or other parts of the

world. Such comparisons might sugge st new ways for us to understand the

unfolding of Japanese history, for example our evaluation of the nature of law in

Tokugawa Japan as noted above.

A broader array of comparative cases can help scholars treat the early modern

period more on its own terms, further freeing our vision from close links to Meiji.

UNIFICATION, CONSOLIDATION, AND TOKUGAWA RULE 79

Simultaneously it would render Japan more comparable to other regional-national

histories and likely make its experience more accessible to the English-speaking

world. One possible approach might be to employ the concept of the ‘‘long eight-

eenth century,’’ with its failed experiments in centralization, efforts to meet the

growing challenge of ‘‘new’’ market forces, and technological developments from

experiences broadly shared with a number of regions throughout the world.

The realm of foreign affairs, broadly conceived, has received increased attention in

recent years, but a number of interesting possible avenues of investigation remain. As

Japan dealt with Perry, it mobilized its coastal defenses, involving villages and towns,

but no one has studied this significant development and its implications for the

creation of non-samurai armies. This subject suggests the potential for examining

the link between foreign affairs and domestic political agendas, a subject that has

considerable potential to improve our understanding of the early seventeenth-century

settlement between daimyo

and sho

gun.

As a rule, post-Restoration foreign affairs are treated de novo, without connection

to Tokugawa ideals, visions, or practice, but a dissertation by Norihito Mizuno

suggests that there may be a significant link.

Cultural and trade links with other

countries remained important, even if those with Europe were not particularly thick.

Given Mizuno and Yonemoto’s work, we now have clear evidence that such issues

deserve more attention. The issues of identity, noted above, might also be effectively

approached by examination of the foreign trading communities within Japan (as well

as study of outcastes).

Two studies on women have b een noted above, but more can be done. While

Japanese documentation from village headmen to population registers reveal an

awareness of the labor contributions of women, exploration of their political role

remains a challenge. This field is growing among Japanese scholars and we can

expect their influence to be felt in the English-language scholarship. Since this

subject is taken up in another essay in this volume, we simply note the need for

work in this field.

In Sum

The preceding discussion reveals an expansion of scholarly interests and shift in the

locus of motive forces that scholars are likely to identify, a shift away from the center

and toward the regional and local, a shift away from elites toward more ordinary folk.

Scholars now present a rather different image of shogunal power than that which

encouraged mid-century scholars to characterize the Tokugawa state as a ‘‘centralized

feudal’’ order. Shoguna l power is now seen as weaker than before. But it has also been

painted as growing in some noticeable ways, for example, the monopolization of the

legitimate use of force and increased involvement in diversity disputes and problems

that crossed domain boundaries. This reappraisal has been furthered by a variety of

case studies, the marshaling of methodologies and concepts taken from an array of

academic approaches that range from the social sciences to critical cultural studies.

Despite growing interest and a burst of studies in the past two decades, much

fundamental work clearly remains for us to explore.

80 PHILIP C. BROWN

NOTES

1 In no small part the reasons for this apparently contradictory image lie in the structure of

the field: like most fields of premodern Japanese studies (literature is something of an

exception), it is considerably underweighted in the ranks of scholars. The (relatively) small

size of the field and the problems in reaching out beyond the community of early modern

historians to entice students into the field as well as to convey the significance of the field

to other historians is partly grounded in issues of language: prior to the mid nineteenth

century, both written and spoken Japanese were considerably more difficult than late

nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japanese, and (as some of the developments described

below indicate) there was no broad country-wide standardization of terminology for

offices, classes, or even biota and fauna. This situation is compounded when people choose

topics that virtually demand the use of hand-written manuscript materials. The result is a

formidable entry barrier, and even when one is successful in breaching that obstacle, the

challenge of translating findings into a language that successfully engages the interest of

students and historians in other fields remains great. The result is the use of language and

terminology in English that retain Japanese terms rather than translating them and/or the

failure to explore English language concepts sufficiently to appropriately adapt their use to

analysis of Japan or to convince scholars of European history (for example) that the author

understands the concepts they employ.

2 Najita, Japan.

3 The first mid-century European contacts introduced hand-held firearms which the Jap-

anese quickly adopted. Their use made it possible to use as soldiers men who had not had a

lifetime of training in the use of the sword, bow, or horse. Fusiliers were typically directly

dependent on the daimyo

which limited their ability to switch sides during a battle – this

being a common feature of battle, ideals of samurai loyalty notwithstanding.

4 This was the closest that Oda, Toyotomi, and the Tokugawa came to implementing a

nationwide tax, but it never became regularized. The standards domains employed to

calculate their value varied significantly and were sometimes manipulated in the most

blatant manner (Brown, Central Authority and Local Autonomy).

5 This growth is even more remarkable given the emergence of a very large urban popula-

tion, one that supported a number of seventeenth-century cities of over 100,000 (Lon-

don, c.1600 had a population less than half that figure). Urban areas, even of much smaller

size, were population sinkholes. Their natural rate of increase was negative, and they grew

only because of immigration from the countryside.

6 Although not explicitly published as an effort to offer Japan as a non-communist model of

rapid economic development and social transformation, studies such as these certainly

were drawn upon for that purpose by Cold Warriors (Hall and Jansen, eds., Studies in the

Institutional History; Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan).

7 Najita and Koschmann, eds., Conflict in Modern Japanese History.

8 Bix, Peasant Protest in Japan; Vlastos, Peasant Protests and Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan.

9 Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery; Pratt, Japan’s Proto-Industrial Elite.

10 Hall, Government and Local Power in Japan.

11 Brown, Central Authority and Local Autonomy; Berry, Hideyoshi.

12 Ravina, Land and Lordship; Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain.

13 Ravina, Land and Lordship; Brown, Central Authority and Local Autonomy; Roberts,

Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain. In Japanese, John Morris has developed an analysis

parallel to Ravina in Kinsei Nihon chigyo

sei no kenkyu

14 McClain, Kanazawa.

15 Birt, ‘‘Samurai in Passage.’’

UNIFICATION, CONSOLIDATION, AND TOKUGAWA RULE 81

16 Kelly, Deference and Defiance; Esenbel, Even the Gods Rebel; Walthall, Social Protest and

Popular Culture; White, Ikki.

17 Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain; Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice; Walthall,

The Weak Body of a Useless Woman.

18 Howell, Capitalism from Within; Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands; Smits, Visions of

Ryu

kyu

19 Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan.

20 Wakabayashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning.

21 Totman, The Green Archipelago; Totman, The Origins of Japan’s Modern Forests.

22 Lamers, Japonius Tyrannus.

23 Butler, Emperor and Aristocracy in Japan.

24 White, ‘‘State Growth and Popular Protest’’; Totman, ‘‘Preindustrial River Conservancy.’’

25 Totman, Tokugawa Ieyasu.

26 Norihito Mizuno, in a dissertation recently completed, argues, however, that Meiji

Japanese attempted to write into the treaty format a number of their premodern concep-

tions of their relationships with China and Korea (Mizuno, ‘‘Japan and Its East Asian

Neighbors’’).

27 Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice.

28 Brown, Central Authority and Local Autonomy.

29 Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice; Tonomura, Community and Commerce; Kelly, Water

Control in Tokugawa Japan; McKean, ‘‘Management of Traditional Common Lands.’’

30 McClain, Kanazawa.

31 Henderson, Conciliation in Japanese Law; Steenstrup, A History of Law in Japan;

Vaporis, Breaking Barriers; Hur, Prayer and Play in Late Tokugawa Japan.

32 Botsman, Punishment and Power.

33 Ikegami, Taming of the Samurai.

34 McMullin, Buddhism and the State.

35 Mizuno, ‘‘Japan and Its East Asian Neighbors.’’

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berry, Mary Elizabeth. Hideyoshi. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard

University Press, 1982.

Berry, Mary Elizabeth. ‘‘Public Peace and Private Attachment: The Goals and Conduct of

Power in Early Modern Japan.’’ Journal of Japanese Studies 12:2 (Summer 1986): 237–71.

Birt, Michael P. ‘‘Samurai in Passage: The Transformation of the Sixteenth-Century Kanto

.’’

Journal of Japanese Studies 11:2 (Summer 1985): 369–99.

Bix, Herbert. Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590–1884. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

Botsman, Daniel. Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2004.

Brown, Philip C. Central Authority and Local Autonomy in the Formation of Early Modern

Japan: The Case of Kaga Domain. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Butler, Lee. Emperor and Aristocracy in Japan, 1467–1680: Resilience and Renewal. Cam-

bridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002.

Esenbel, Selcuk. Even the Gods Rebel: The Peasants of Takaino and the 1871 Nakano Uprising in

Japan. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1998.

Hall John W. Government and Local Power in Japan, 500–1700: A Study based on Bizen

Province. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1966.

Hall, John W., and Jansen, Marius, eds. Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern

Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968.

82 PHILIP C. BROWN

Henderson, Dan. Conciliation in Japanese Law: Tokugawa and Modern, vol. 1. Seattle: Uni-

versity of Washington Press, 1965.

Howell, David L. Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Hur, Nam-lin. Prayer and Play in Late Tokugawa Japan: Asakusa Senso

ji and Edo Society.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000.

Ikegami, Eiko. The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern

Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Innes, Robert Leroy. ‘‘The Door Ajar: Japan’s Foreign Trade in the Seventeenth Century.’’

Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1980.

Kelly, William. Water Control in Tokugawa Japan: Irrigation Organization in a Japanese River

Basin, 1600–1870. Ithaca, NY: Cornell China-Japan Program, 1982.

Kelly, William. Deference and Defiance in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1985.

Lamers, Jeroen. Japonius Tyrannus: The Japanese Warlord Oda Nobunaga Reconsidered. Lei-

den: Hotei Publishing, 2000.

McClain, James. Kanazawa: A Seventeenth-Century Japanese Castle Town. New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1982.

McKean, Margaret. ‘‘Management of Traditional Common Lands (Iriaichi) in Japan.’’ In

Daniel Bromley, ed., Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy. San Francisco:

ICS Press, 1992.

McMullin, Neil. Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1984.

Mizuno, Norihito. ‘‘Japan and Its East Asian Neighbors: Japan’s Perception of China and

Korea and the Making of Foreign Policy from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century.’’

Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004.

Morris, John. Kinsei Nihon chigyo

sei no kenkyu

. Tokyo: Seibundo, 1988.

Najita, Tetsuo. Japan. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1974.

Najita, Tetsuo, and Koschmann, J. Victor, eds. Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The

Neglected Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Nakai, Kate Wildman. Shogunal Politics: Arai Hakuseki and the Premises of Tokugawa Rule.

Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1988.

Ooms, Herman. Tokugawa Village Practice: Class, Status, Power, Law. Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1996.

Pratt, Edward E. Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite: The Economic Foundations of the Go

. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999.

Ravina, Mark. Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University

Press, 1999.

Roberts, Luke. Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Na-

tionalism in 18th-Century Tosa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Smith, Thomas C. The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University

Press, 1959.

Smits, Gregory. Visions of Ryu

kyu

: Identity and Ideology in Early Modern Thought and Politics.

Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999.

Steenstrup, Carl. A History of Law in Japan until 1868. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

Toby, Ronald. State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the

Tokugawa Bakufu. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Tonomura, Hitomi. Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan: The Corporate Villages

of Tokuchin-ho. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992.

Totman, Conrad. Tokugawa Ieyasu: Sho

gun. San Francisco: Heian International, 1983.

UNIFICATION, CONSOLIDATION, AND TOKUGAWA RULE 83

Totman, Conrad. The Origins of Japan’s Modern Forests: The Case of Akita. Honolulu: Univer-

sity of Hawai‘i Press, 1984.

Totman, Conrad. The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan. Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1989.

Totman, Conrad. ‘‘Preindustrial River Conservancy.’’ Monumenta Nipponica 47:1 (Spring

1992): 59–76.

Vaporis, Constantine. Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1994.

Vlastos, Stephen. Peasant Protests and Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan. Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1986.

Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi. Anti-Foreignism and Wester n Learning in Early-Modern Japan: The

New Theses of 1825. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University,

1986.

Walker, Brett L. The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590–

1800. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001.

Walthall, Anne. Social Protest and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Japan. Tuscon:

University of Arizona Press, 1986.

Walthall, Anne. The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration .

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

White, James W. ‘‘State Growth and Popular Protest in Tokugawa Japan.’’ Journal of Japanese

Studies 14:1 (Winter 1988): 1–25.

White, James W. Ikki: Social Conflict and Political Protest in Early Modern Japan. Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1995.

Wigen, Ka

ren. The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920. Berkeley: University of Cali-

fornia Press, 1995.

Yonemoto, Marcia. Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa

Period, 1603–1868. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

FURTHER READING

A number of early works in the field of early modern Japanese studies in the English-

speaking world remain essential reading (one consequence of the relative youth of the

field and its size). In addition to the small handful of such works noted already, the

following are noteworthy: on domains and Tokugawa control mechanisms, Harold

Bolitho, Treasures among Men (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), Toshio

Tsukahira, Feudal Control in Tokugawa Japan: The Sankin Ko

tai System (Cambridge,

Mass.: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1966); on foreign relations,

C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1951), Donald Keene, The Jap anese Discovery of Europe (London:

Routledge, 1952), Masao Miyoshi, As We Saw Them: The First Japanese Embassy to the

United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); on relations between

the state and merchants, William Hauser, Economic Instit utional Chan ge in Toku-

gawa Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), Charles Sheldon, The

Rise of the Merchant Class in Tokugawa Japan (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian

Studies, 1958); on the role of the emperor, David Earl, Emperor and Nation in Japan

(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), Herschel Webb, The Japanese Im-

perial Institution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968); on religion, George

Elison, Deus Destroyed (Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 1973); late

84 PHILIP C. BROWN

eighteenth-century reforms are treated in John W. Hall, Tanuma Okitsugu (Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), and Herman Ooms, Charismat ic

Bureaucrat: A Political Biography of Matsudaira Sadanobu (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1975).

The most comprehensive survey of the era is Conrad Totman, Early Modern Japan

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Extended bibliographic reviews of

recent work on all aspects of early mod ern Japan appeared in Early Modern Japan: An

Interdisciplinary Journal, 10:2 (Fall 2002) to 11:1 (Spring 2003), with extended

essays on foreign relations (10:2) and political-institutional history (11:1). More

recent work of note includes two essay collections edited by James McClain et al.,

Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994)

and Osaka: The Merchants’ Capital (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999) .

In the realm of foreign relations, Grant Goodman has updated his pioneering work

on Dutch relations with Japan in Japan and the Dutch, 1600–1853 (Richmond, UK:

Curzon, 2000). Robert Innes’s doctoral dissertation ‘‘The Door Ajar’’ (University of

Michigan, 1980) is a very influential study of mid-period relations with China.

UNIFICATION, CONSOLIDATION, AND TOKUGAWA RULE 85

CHAPTER FIVE

Social and Economic Change in

Tokugawa Japan

Edward E. Pratt

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. On the one hand, the Tokugawa

period witnessed a remarkable economic transformation, perhaps best evidenced in

the growth of the three major cities of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, not only in terms of

population but in the number and scale of commercial and manufacturing enter-

prises. The transf ormation was no less pronounced in the countryside, where growing

production for the market engendered the rise of a class of wealthy farmers, signifi-

cant interregional trade, and a mushrooming of local and regional markets. On the

other hand, the Tokugawa economy was at times remarkably volatile and unstable.

Fortunes were lost as quickly as they were made, famines interrupte d periods of

growth and devastated the lives of countless farmers, and large numbers of rural

dwellers found themselves forced to sell their lands and to earn their livelihoods

through the sale of their own and their family labor. The Tokugawa economy defies

easy explanation.

The starting point for any examination of the Tokugawa economy is the question

of the extent of Japan’s commercial contacts with the outside world. Historians on

both sides of the Pacific once asserted that the Tokugawa bakufu rigorously pursued a

policy of seclusion. From 1639, when only the Dutch of all the European countries

were allowed to trade with Japan, until 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry

arrived with his gunboats in Edo Bay, Japan had been cut off from all significant

contacts with the outside world. And even the Dutch were restricted in their activ-

ities: they could only trade and live on a small man-m ade island in Nagasaki harbor.

This view concerning Japan’s isolation reinforced the overall assessment of the

Tokugawa economy at the time: that it stagnated under weighty feudal impositions

and recei ved no stimulation from comme rcial contacts with the outside world. It was

only with the coerced termination of the seclusion policy in the 1850s that Japan

entered the ‘‘modern world.’’

With the 1984 publication of Ronald Toby’s State and Diplomacy in Early Modern

Japan, our thinking on Japan’s foreign relations during this period underwent

significant change. The bakufu enacted policies restricting contacts with the outside

world, not out of anti-foreignism or any desire to cut off trade, but due to concern

over legitimacy, especially in terms of not wishing to be a subordinate in the Sino-

centric world order. The bakufu was concerned, too, about national security,

A Companion to Japanese History

Edited by William M. Tsutsui

in particular the very real threat posed by the countries of Western Europe supplying

the Catholic missionaries sent to Japan. It had no wish , however, to see a diminution

in foreign trade. With the banning of the Portuguese from the Japan trade in 1639,

in fact, the bakufu adopted measures to ensure that trade continued as before, even on

a greater scale, and it extracted a promise from the Dutch to supply the Japanese

with the silk that the Portuguese once handled. The Japanese also continued to

trade actively with its Asian neighbors, especially Korea, China, and the Ryu

kyu

Islands.

Although the bakufu did not initially pursue a policy of seclusion, the situation had

radically changed by the end of the eighteenth century, as Bob Wakabayashi cont ends

in his Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan. Bakufu officials

began fending off attempts by Western countries for trade and diplomatic contacts by

asserting that relations were out of the question, and that this policy was based on

hereditary law.

Why the radical shift? Simply put, over the previous century Japan’s contacts

with other countries had greatly declined. Looking at foreign trade alone, the total

volume dropped precipitously beginning around the 1680s. Massive silver exports

from Japan, together with the growing depletion of the country’s silver mines, led

to a domestic shortage and a currency crisis, prompting the bakufu to restrict its

outflow. At the same time, the bakufu encouraged the domestic production of

silk in order to stem the imports paid for in silver. Silk was particularly important,

because it was by far the major import item, and domestic demand seemed to

be growing by leaps and bounds. With growing domestic production of silk,

total trade volume declined. By the first decades of the eighteenth century

Japan’s trade with the outside world, including its Asian neighbors, was negligible.

In sum, we are forced to argue that, in terms of trade alone, Japan was indeed a

closed country, at least from the 1680s. In terms of stimulants to economic

growth, Japan was largely left to its own devices.

It was only with the opening

of the ports in 1 859 that foreign trade again had a major impact on the domestic

economy.

Another striking feature of the Tokugawa economy is the remarkable degree

of urbanization. Much of this urbanization came about, however, not from

the gradual or evolutionary concentration of economic powers in the cities but as a

result of deliberate political choices. The rise of castle towns, in particular,

resulted from a conscious decision on the part of many domain lords to remove

the threat posed by samurai with power bases in the countryside. With their

forced removal to castle towns, beginning in the late sixteenth and continuing

into the seventeenth century, Japan could boast of doz ens of towns with populations

of 10,000 or more, each with large numbers of merchants and artisans catering to

the needs of resident samurai. The metropolis of Edo, too, was a political construct.

With the institution of the alternate attendance system, Edo became a bustling

urban center with a population of over one million by the early eighteenth

century. It relied heavily on imports from Osaka and Kyoto, especially in the

first half of the period, but by the mid to late eighteenth century Edo had

emerged to become a major manufacturing and commercial center in its own

right, taking advantage of increased production for the market in central and eastern

Japan.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE IN TOKUGAWA JAPAN 87