Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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religious orders, and bakufu, a collection historians commonly refer to as the kenmon,

or the ‘‘gates of power and authority.’’

Tonomura’s contextualization of the so

in networks of local and central po-

litical and economic relationships demonstrates how villagers manipulated ‘‘vertical

alliances’’ with the kenmon to defend local interests. This symbiotic relationship

served both center and periphery in slowing expansion of local samurai control

of land and commerce as well as mediating intra-village conflicts. On balance,

however, it may have been more helpful to the central institution s by prolonging

their capacity to regulate land relations and thereby forestalling a decline in their local

authority.

Thomas Keirstead’s work is also concerned with medieval local history, but differs

from Tonomura’s in considering the fate of the central institutions as largely irrele-

vant. In fact, his work tends to reject the conclusions of scholars such as Nagahara

Keiji and Araki Moriaki, who differ in their specific interpretations, but are united in

their overall explanation of the ‘‘decline’’ of the sho

en system.

Keirstead’s stated aim

in studying the medieval myo

, the fundamental field unit for collecting levies and rents

and a subcom ponent of the sho

en system, is to get beyond ‘‘endpoints’’ and the

conventional categorization of medieval Japan and local systems as economic or

political history. In his view, ‘‘to comprehend the estate system one must shift

registers and approach it not on an economic or political level, but more broadly as

a cultural system.’’

This approach is another way of turning the world of medieval

historiography upside down through the use of critical theory. In creating new

interpretations of a medieval ‘‘geography of power,’’ Keirstead relies on discourse

analysis and methods influenced by Raymond Williams, Michel Foucault, and Michel

de Certeau to apprehend but not necessarily explain or generalize. In discourse

analysis, basic assumptions are themselves objects for interrogation, and in adhering

to this methodology Keirstead seems unconcerned with quantitatively or qualitatively

‘‘proving’’ anything. But he is intent on providing ‘‘a different model of how cultural

formations change.’’ According to him, the necessity to do so arises because other

models have removed the historian from history in confor ming to processes where

outcomes are all but foreordained.

The difficulty is deter mining if this approach, heavily dependent on a reading of the

documents (in the deconstructivist sense of ‘‘reading’’), is any better than any other.

The question is not the historian’s ability to see the signs, but in selecting which signs

to interpret. No matter how sensitive Keirstead’s reading, the difficulty of accurately

apprehending meaning from the scant documents and other ‘‘artifacts’’ available

seems an insurmountable task. It is all the more formidable considering that the

inhabitants of the Japanese medieval world, as the Amino school demonstrates, were

obviously a mixed and fluid lot, distant from us not only temporally but perhaps in

unwritten (unsigned?) cultural assumptions. Keirstead’s theoretical approach raises

more questions than it resolves. But this may be the precise point of his chosen

methodology.

While Keirstead is explicitly concerned with critical theory, major sections of his

study of the myo

also show the influence of Amino’s social history approach. This is

particularly evident in chapters titled ‘‘A Wandering State’’ and ‘‘Inventing the

Hyakusho

.’’ Although his general approach rejects the drawing of conclusions,

these chapters, the most accessible in the study, do generalize about the period in

430 MICHAEL LEWIS

depicting a decentered medieval world in flux. In general form, it is a place not unlike

that described by Amino and others.

Early Modern Japan: The Centralizing State

and States on the Periphery

Historians generally agree that the reforms of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi,

and Tokugawa Ieyasu culminated in a political, social, and religious order more

peaceful, united, and stable than that o f the preceding century. Beyond this easy

agreement on the comparative peace and order after the Warring States period,

interpretations differ over the natu re of center–peripheral ties.

Views that emphasize the new strength of the Edo center contend that the early

modern period (c.1570–1868) was one of increasing political centralization that

brought Japan to the verge of nationhood. Advocates of this position, building on

the earlier work of John Whitney Hall, point out the newly created or expanded

powers of the Edo shogunate to enforce national standards at home and to represent

Japan abroad. The emergence of a powerful new polit ical center also compelled

acceptance of uniform social, economic, and religious systems that shaped individual

identities even at the very fringes of the periphery. The centraliz ing changes

are said to be evident locally in tangible things such as commonly accepted measure-

ments for commodities and land, standard cur rency, and definite borders. These

borders, eventually printed in maps and described in texts, recognized internal

divisions, not as frontiers, but increasingly as firm divisions between discrete

political units sanctioned by Edo’s central political authority. In addition to concrete

manifestations like measures and boundary lines, historians who emphasize growing

centralization also point to the transformation of social hierarchies and diplomatic

practices. The former includ ed the imposition and acceptance of fixed statuses or

‘‘estates’’ for all ranks of society (the mibun system) which divided samurai from

commoners. These became instituted through the mandating of countrywide regu-

lations for land assessment and taxation. Centrally created and enforced laws and

sumptuary regulations that carried specific sanctions for different estates helped

cement and maintain a widely recognized division of society betwe en ruling samurai

and subject commoners.

Foreign relations also went through a similar unifying transformation. The bakufu

usually spoke for an entire ‘‘country’’ in conducting diplomacy in Asia and later with

Western nations. Although a few domains at times engaged in ‘‘foreign’’ cont acts

(including ties with Ezo and the Ryu

kyu

s), mainly for trading purposes, this was

usually done with bakufu permission, or at least its sufferance. The fact that regional

Asian and Western states recognized that the bakufu represented ‘‘Japan,’’ and that

domain governments acceded, however passively, to Edo’s right to set ‘‘foreign

policy,’’ further attests to the emergence of a new center of unprecedented political

authority. This view of growing centralizat ion during the early modern period does

not deny that domains still possessed significant autonomy within their own borders,

so much so that they have been characterized as shogunates writ small. Yet domain

autonomy was local and could be trumped by demands from the center when, for

example, the bakufu required additional levies for public works or when local

CENTER AND PERIPHERY 431

violation of central laws called forth intervention. In short, the overarching laws,

social practices, religious beliefs, and cultural production and consumption (endorsed

or enforced) from the Edo center imparted to individuals on the periphery an identity

and membership in an entity that went far beyond the local.

This view modifies the once prevailing idea of ‘‘centralized feudalism’’ by placing

greater emphasis on the central side of the equation. Yet, historians and social

scientists who share this interpretation are careful not to revive earlier notions of

‘‘Tokugawa absolutism.’’ They recognize that the newly centralized system was also

subject to change over time and space. Conformity to status hierarchies obviously

loosened from one generation to the next and in accord with changing economic

realities evident, for example, in the appe arance of impoverished samurai and wealthy

commoners. Likewise, the enforcement of bakufu authority had to adjust to regional

variations among the domains, a problem that at times proved particularly difficult in

dealing with powerful tozama regimes. The shift from personal-martial to more

impersonal-bureaucratic ties between the sho

gun and his subordinates may have

also contributed to diminished central authority, especi ally during the final decades

of the Edo period. Yet, as Eiko Ikegami points out, if the period was not ‘‘absolutist,’’

it was clearly ‘‘centrally integrated.’’

Widespread acceptance of the legitimacy of

central institutions, ideas, and practices helped anchor the system and supported an

enduring symbiotic relationship between bakufu and domains. Over time, centrally

sited integration transformed the once uneasy balance of power inherent in an

incongruent warrior-dominated society into a stable, increasingly uniform, and

largely demilitarized bureaucratic order that possessed remarkable staying powe r.

In contrast to the Edo-centered interpretation of integration and uniformity, two

monographs from the late 1990s present alternative views that emphasize the inde-

pendence and autonomy of domains and their state-like existence. Mark Ravina’s

Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan locates a budding nationalism focused not

on the Edo center or an abstract idea of Japan, but within the ‘‘countries’’ he views as

internally complex parts of a ‘‘compound state.’’ His analysis of the history of three

separate domains demonstrates that local rulers and ruled were preoccupied with

pursuing their own particular internal economic and political interests. In Ravina’s

treatment, the domains of Yonezawa, Hirosaki, and Tokushima emerge as richly

diverse ‘‘states.’’ Yet, although they differed one from another in their local industries

and commerce, economic problems, and relations between samurai and commoners,

they were united in the local use of various ‘‘ideologies’’ that defended their inde-

pendence in negotiating economic and political ties with the Tokugawa regime.

Ravina also sees an emergent nationalism resulting from dom ain leaders’ efforts to

downplay samurai versus commoner status distinctions to increase economic prod-

uctivity. This leveling process helped foster a new common identity as a member of

the ‘‘state,’’ albeit not the one located in distant Edo.

Luke Roberts’s Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of

Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa also finds a major source of local nation-

alism in the domain’s independent economic activities and new bonds between

samurai and merchants. In his careful analysis of the domain government’s attempt

to deal with a fiscal crisis that worsened throughout the eighteenth century, he shows

that commoners urged mercant ilist measures (in one instance recommended through

petition boxes) to achieve kokueki or ‘‘national’’ benefit, in this cas e meaning an

432 MICHAEL LEWIS

outcome beneficial to the domain. Roberts attaches much significance to kokueki as

an indication of the independent identity of Tosa people engaged in ‘‘international’’

ties, economic and political, with other domains. In teasing out the implications of

local nationalism, Roberts suggests that the idea was one that could be expanded to

embrace the idea of membership in the nation-state, and this transference in fact helps

explain the strong nationalism evident in Japan after the Meiji Restoration.

It bears noting that neither of these studies of what might be called ‘‘centers on the

peripheries’’ claims to represen t conditions in domains generally during the early

modern period. Nevertheless, they are part of a growing body of similar works that

explicitly emphasize political, economic, and ideological developments on the mar-

gins. Conrad Totman generalizes this approach in Early Modern Japan. Although his

subject is not just one domain but also a general survey of the entire period, his

approach is one that treads lightly on the development of central political and

economic institutions in favor of exploring the intersection of human and environ-

mental history. He also devotes attention to the problems of local domains, such as

coping with fiscal crisis, to demonstrate that the prov incial leaders confronted diffi-

culties not so different from those faced by the sho

gun’s officials.

Herman Ooms’s work on village practice and Philip Brown’s study of the

domain further demonstrate both the autonomy of local political practice and

rich diversity in solving particular problems. Brown’s study of Kaga and the local

regulation of land assessment and taxation emphasizes the independence and initia-

tive that might be taken in regulating the domain’s own affairs.

In Ooms’s

work, the villages are shown to possess a similar independence in being highly self-

regulated sites for contesting outside authority, even though not every contest

resulted in a victory for local villagers. They are also places where local people

attempted to borrow the domain’s thunder to struggle against village authorities

and putative social betters.

In these studi es, the shogunal regime comes off less as

a centralizing core than as an authority that is at times more pretense than real

power. The limits of its reach suggest that integration was never as complete

as bakufu officials might have intended. In some instances, the same can be said

for domains. Although magistrates nominally controlled villages within their bound-

aries, in many areas of local life, villagers in fact quite effectively managed affairs on

their own.

The Nation-State and Mediated Peripheries

Rather than restore an ancient (and probably imaginary) center–periphery order, the

Meiji Restoration hastened the creation of a new and unambiguously centralized and

modern nation-state. Within a few short decades of the official beginning of the

nation-building project, Tokyo had b ecome the political and economic capital of a

state that replaced semi-autonomous domains with newly created prefectures subor-

dinate to central laws and centrally appointed administrators. Even pre-Restoration

village and shrine boundaries were redrawn according to Tokyo’s fiat. New transpor-

tation and communication systems, subsidized directly and indirectly by the national

treasury, served as centralizing sinews connecting outlying regions to the Tokyo

center.

CENTER AND PERIPHERY 433

Parallel to the centering of power and authority inside Japan, leaders of this new

nation-state struggled to secure a definite place for Japan within a global order. Their

efforts culminated in heretofore ambiguous borders and frontier zones being remade

as clearly drawn boundary lines determined by negotiations, wars, and sometimes

both. By the end of World War I, the premodern emperor had not really been

restored, but Japan had certainly been recreated as a thoroughly modern empire,

one replete with colonies and a population forged into a national ‘‘citizenry.’’

A comparison of Japan’s domestic and international circumstances before 1868

and after 1918 provides a stunning contrast. A ccordingly, historians (as well as

geographers, economists, anthropologists, and literary the orists) generally recognize

the centralizing results of a forced march toward national modernity. Studies con-

cerned with center–periphery relations are accordingly less concerned with the obvi-

ous outcome than the multiple processes that yielded this result. They also engage

questions about the nature of the new order and how people at both center and

periphery dealt with new demands that profoundly changed their lives. Studies have

taken up the remaking of social organizations and transformation of individual values

and identities necessary to conform to new laws, calendars, educational regimes, and a

flood of imported ideas compelled by forces ranging from specific regulations,

general models of worldly success, and the irresistible force of fashion.

Carol Gluck in her study of prewar national ideology in Japan provides one of

the most comprehensive and convincing accounts of how these myriad changes

came to be popularly accepted. Dispensing with the notion of a single all-powerful

‘‘emperor system’’ (tenno

sei) suddenly imposed from the top-down (or center-out-

ward), she has demonstrated the ‘‘congeries of ideologies’’ created in late Meiji

society and widely shared throughout the prewar years. These collectively gave

individuals identity as subjects of Japan but also ‘‘depoliticized’’ politics.

Takashi

Fujitani describes how new incorporating rituals were refashioned or created from

whole cloth to make the refurbished emperor the symbolic and ritual center of a new

national ethos.

Alongside these careful studies of ideology, emperorship, and state-making, other

scholars have investigated the role of enlightened central bureaucrats. Their work

emphasizes the role of Tokyo’s political elites, especially Home Ministry bureaucrats

and party leaders, cooperating with local officials and members of an emerging

middle class in fostering beliefs supportive of national programs and goals. In this

respect, Sheldon Garon’s work stands out in its depiction of the leadership that

moved the pub lic to embrace the nation or, less positively, enabled the idea of nation

to overcome its subjects.

James Huffman views the process of national integration

as proceeding in a far more diffuse way through the development of popul ar culture,

specifically the emergence of a modern commodified and centrally dominated media.

His work demonstrates how the press fostered attitudes that soon enabled Japanese

subjects to embrace a new identity as proud citizens of a powerful state. Modern

newspaper journalism, produced for a national audience, intersected with post-Res-

toration mass education, mass politics, mass culture, mass production, and the mass

market in creating a national public.

Yet, once formed, this modern nati onal hegemony still rested uneasily in the minds

of many. Historians working on events at the periphery find it easy to agree with

Gluck’s observation that ‘‘it is fair to say that the dominant ideology in imperial Japan

434 MICHAEL LEWIS

imagined a nation that was more unified and society that was more stable than those

who lived within them knew to be the case.’’

In my study of the breakdown in civil

order in 1918, a conflict that resulted in martial law and Japanese soldiers shooting

Japanese citizens, I argue that state-making was still a work in progress. The central-

izing policies undertaken since 1868 clearly made Tokyo the dog that wagged the

regional tail. Nevertheless, direct and indirect challenges to the state evident in

popular protests, labor disputes, and tenant strikes repeatedl y raised questions

about the relationship between central authority and local rights. Despite official

rhetoric about the unity inherent in the family state, open defiance, a vote of no

confidence expressed through protests of varying severity, implied doubts about the

rulers’ right to rule.

Explorations of Japanese margins, either peripheries that existed at the time of

Meiji state-building or others created commensurate with the process, tend to

support Gluck’s observation about continuing ideological diversity and disunity

beneath the appearance of unity. They often focus on local protests that belie notions

of nation-building as a simple process achieved with great unanimity. But as Neil

Waters and William Steele have demonstrated in their careful studies of pragmatic

local leaders, it would also be a mistake to construe the process of folding the local

into the national as simply central subjugation of the periphery. Their work delineates

how local interests often found common ground with imperial ambitions and how

local people embraced the nation while continuing to believe in the sanctity of home

districts and the importance of genuine local betterment.

Various local studies take a similar tack in demonstrating a mix of motives that

changed over time and could be seen in the repertoire of local strategies used to

respond to centrally mandated programs. In studying nation-building in Toyama, I

found a gamut of responses among villagers and townspeople targeted to implement

centralizing programs. These ran from passive sabotage and negotiated compliance,

to enthusiastic acceptance, the response depending heavily on perceptions of how

newly mandated policies and programs would help or hurt at the local level. Of

course, the responses were not always uniform even at the periphery. Furthermore,

they were also open to change as interests shifted at the local level or when finally

pressed to impl ement what had previously been supported as an attractive abstrac-

tion. Initial local support for expansion of the overseas empire in Manchuria is a case

in point. Although patriotic rallies and donations for monuments suggest that

imperialism was popularly supported in Toyama, local people strongly resisted official

appeals that they become pioneers in Manchukuo.

Much of the new attention on the periphery is possible only because of the wealth

of historical materials made available through local archives and history compilati on

projects in Japan. Studies written outside Japan have also benefited enormously from

studies by Japanese historians. Works by Ariizumi Sadao, Abe Tsunehisa, and Fur-

umaya Tadao on Niigata and Yamanashi demonstrate the contested process of Jap-

anese state-making in reconsidering local identity as emerging or being revived

through attempts to keep the state at bay or mediate its locally disruptive policies.

Their perspective on how Japan’s modern history was shaped by center–periphery

conflict and mediation focuses primarily on events during and after the onset of the

Meiji transformation and demonstrates the importance of local political awareness

and agency in shaping outcomes.

CENTER AND PERIPHERY 435

Other studies take a longer view in explaining the cr eation of regional marginal-

ization, both economic and political, and how populations were acted upon in

processes that led to the creation of a modern nation-state. Ka

ren Wigen’s work on

the Shimoina valley in Nagano from 1750 to 192 0 demonstrates how a once vital

region could be transformed into a kind of internal colony subservient to Tokyo. In

using approaches influenced by the Annales school and social geog raphy, she inter-

prets the way center–periphery ties were reforged from the mid nineteenth century as

strongly influenced by political, environmental, and economic relations that had

prevailed earlier. Wigen also shows that newly created peripheries in Japan had a

bearing on Japan’s role in the world economy. She observes that ‘‘the development of

the silk industry played a highly contradictory role in regard to Shimoina’s space-

economy: while it turned the valley into a clearly subordinate periphery of the

Japanese state, that very subordination was critical to the contemporary Japanese

state’s ability to escape becoming a periphery of the global capitalist system.’’

As a

sophisticated critique of modernization theory, Wigen’s work calls attention to the

complicated and inadvertent creation of losers and winners resulting from centrally

dominated economic development.

New Visions of Hokkaido

and the Ryu

kyu

Discussing histories of Hokkaido

and the Ryu

kyu

s toward the end of this essay is not

to suggest that they are a coda to what has preceded them. In fact, the place of these

‘‘peripheries’’ is central in the works of many of the historians discussed above.

Studies of Ezo/Hokkaido

and the Ryu

kyu

s, along with other parts of expanding

and contracting ‘‘frontiers,’’ have provided new interpretations of the nature of the

early Japanese state, the formation of ethnic identities, and the effects of centrally

directed industr ialization. If anything, the large number of books and essays that push

the geographical margins to the forefront indicates a lively boom in histories of so-

called Japane se peripheries. These studies are many and vary widely in their use of

theory, specific subjects, and historical coverage. What unites them is their depiction

of Japanese history as a decentered process involving diverse peoples and social

systems.

Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern provides a representative sampling

of essays by anthropologists and archaeologists as well as historians that depict the

shifting place of Hokkaido

and the Ryu

kyu

s in their historical relations with Japan.

One thing that stands out in the relationships, regardless of historical period, is that

they were highly malleable and susceptible to reshaping to meet Japanese ends.

Chapters by Tessa Morris-Suz uki, Richard Pearson, and Hanazaki Ko

hei on ‘‘Centre

and Periphery’’ directly address the place of frontiers and generalizations about Ainu

and Okinawan ethnic differences in creating nationalizing notions of Japanese iden-

tity.

Demonstrating an intellectual debt to Amino Yoshihiko and others who

emphasize the use of frontiers in creating notions of nationhood, Morris-Suzuki

depicts the manipulation of Ainu and Okinawan communities for dom estic and

international ends. She points out that before the nineteenth century, the frontier

zones proved useful for demarcating ‘‘Japanese-ness’’ from the otherness of peoples

at the northern and southern frontier margins. After Japan’s engagement in the

436 MICHAEL LEWIS

international system , however, thes e peoples and their ter ritories had to be folded

into the nation as a means of securing borders and making clear the new nation-

state’s area of autonomous political control.

Morris-Suzuki elaborates on these

themes in her Re-inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation and in journal articles.

Although her focus is not on Japan’s modern colonial empire, her depiction of

attempts to turn Okinawans and A inu into Japanese subjects suggests elements of

the colonial system used in Taiwan, Korea, and elsewhere in Asia.

Other studies of the Ryu

kyu

s and Hokkaido

are less concerned about creating

narratives to explain a Japanese center than they are with describing each place in its

own terms. Gregory Smits’s Visions of Ryu

kyu

: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern

Thought and Politics is a representative work of this type. He observes that although

early modern Ryu

kyu

was obviously not a nation-state, indigenous thinkers ‘‘ad-

vanced visions of Ryu

kyu

in which the kingdom became an imagined political and

cultural community with the potential to subsume all Ryu

kyu

ans within its totalizing

ideology.’’

For Smits, early mod ern Ryu

kyu

ans could never be completely free from

ties to their more powerful Japane se and Chinese neighbors, but they did manage to

exercise a good deal of ‘‘autonomy and agency’’ in negotiating these relationships.

Brett Walker demonstrates that the same was not the case for the Ainu. In his

analysis of the longue dure

e in Ezo/Hokkaido

, from 1590 to 1800, he depicts the

creation of Ainu dependence through the imposition of a system of Japanese trading

posts during the seventeenth century. This not only upset the basis of the pre-existing

local economy but also disr upted the Ainu’s direct and indirect trade ties with Russia

and China. In a manner reminiscent of world system theory in microcosm, Ainu

integration into the dominant trading system introduced by the Japanese led to ever

greater dependence which left the Ainu deracinated and unable to resist ultimate

subjugation.

Works by Morris-Suzuki, Smits, and Walker are just a few of the major studies on

Hokkaido

and Ryu

kyu

an peripheries that demonstrate both autonomy and the

consequences of relations with more powerful regional centers. Together with studies

such as David Howell’s Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a

Japanese Fishery and Michael Weiner’s edited work, Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of

Homogeneity, they create an image of Japanese history that is more a rough mosaic

than something smoothly uniform, seamless, and flat.

Whither the Model?

The simple definition of the center–periphery bond introduced earlier as ‘‘geograph-

ical, economic, social, cultural, and political structures that exist in space in order to

indicate some kind of hierarchical and polarized organization of this space’’ accurately

describes aspects of Japan’s his torical and contemporary political and economic

relations. It can help delineate the political and economic ties between the central

government and the prefectures and help locate the place of Japanese capitalism in a

global economic system. Used in these ways, it is a valua ble tool for depicting

hegemonic structures and relationships that benefit centralized hierarchies or con-

sidering the subtle ways that people on the peripheries manipulate ostensibly subor-

dinate positions for local benefit.

CENTER AND PERIPHERY 437

Yet, the model can also be criticized for leading to conclusions that are overly

general and obvious. This is abetted by a lack of precision resulting from the existence

of entities and structures in temporal and spatial webs that make them both central

and peripheral depending on context. One recent study of an outer island in the

Ryu

kyu

chain, for example, describes the place as ‘‘a periphery on the periphery,’’

which means, of course, that it exists in a subordinate relationship with an oxymoro-

nic ‘‘local center.’’ The multiplicit y and variability of center–peripheral ties leads to

questions about which links in the nexus are most significant or representative. A

somewhat different problem is the essential binary quality inherent in the center–

periphery approach. Using the model makes it easy to slip into a narrative that

suggests a uniform ‘‘we’’ versus an equally uniform ‘‘them.’’ In so doing, conflicts

and cooperation arising from complex relationships based on class, gende r, and

ethnicity within centers and peripheries tend to be minimized. The preoccupation

with differences based on spatial location can obscure alliances based on class interests

or gender that might unite groups regardless of their geographical location. The best

use of the center–periphery approach takes care to show that local interests are not

uniform or unchanging. It also works toward a dry-eyed appreciation of the historical

dynamics of local politics and avoids the airbrushed presentation of local life that is

always virtuous at the grassroots level.

The studies by historians and social scientists described in this essay generally

recognize and avoid the pitfalls that can arise from the loose use of the center–

periphery model. In carefully qualified studies, they have accomplished a decentering

of Japan that breaks free from preordained narratives, whether based on the march of

capitalism or the rise and fall of institutions. Their work also challenges past depic-

tions of Japanese ethnicity and culture as overly homogenous. These ac hievements

demonstrate that the study of center–periphery relationships, particularly the view

from the margins looking inw ard, can provide new and imaginative ways to under-

stand the past.

NOTES

1 Guarini, ‘‘Center and Periphery,’’ p. 75.

2 Shils, Center and Periphery.

3 Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy and The Modern World System.

4 Batten, To the Ends of Japan, pp. 128–30; Hudson, Ruins of Identity, p. 193.

5 Senda, ‘‘Territorial Possession in Ancient Japan,’’ pp. 109–15.

6 Amino, ‘‘Deconstructing ‘Japan’,’’ p. 138.

7 Amino, ‘‘Emperor, Race, and Commoners,’’ p. 236.

8 Ishii, ‘‘Foreword,’’ p. iv.

9 Amino, ‘‘Deconstructing ‘Japan’,’’ pp. 125–7.

10 Amino, ‘‘Commerce and Finance in the Middle Ages,’’ p. 181.

11 Murai, ‘‘The Boundaries of Medieval Japan,’’ pp. 72–87.

12 Batten, To the Ends of Japan, pp. 6–7.

13 Ibid., pp. 11, 121.

14 Ibid., p. 232.

15 Yamamura, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 3.

16 Souryi, The World Turned Upside Down.

17 Tonomura, Community and Commerce,p.3.

438 MICHAEL LEWIS

18 Ibid., pp. 191–2.

19 Keirstead, The Geography of Power, pp. 100–2 .

20 Ibid., p. 105.

21 Ibid., pp. 111–12.

22 Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai, pp. 164–86.

23 For a summary of these arguments see Toby, ‘‘Three Realms/Myriad Countries,’’

pp. 15–45, and Toby, ‘‘Rescuing the Nation,’’ pp. 197–237.

24 Brown, Central Authority and Local Autonomy.

25 Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice.

26 Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths, pp. 5, 16.

27 Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy.

28 Garon, Molding Japanese Minds.

29 Huffman, Creating a Public.

30 Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths, p. 39.

31 Lewis, Rioters and Citizens.

32 Steele, Alter native Narratives ; Waters, Japan’s Local Pragmatists.

33 Lewis, Becoming Apart, pp. 188–243.

34 Abe, Kindai Nihon chiho

seito-shi ron; Ariizumi, Meiji seiji shi no kiso katei; Furumaya,

‘‘ ‘Ura Nihon’ no seiritsu to tenkai,’’ pp. 349–64.

35 Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery, p. 266.

36 Morris-Suzuki, ‘‘A Descent into the Past,’’ pp. 81–94; Pearson, ‘‘The Place of Okinawa,’’

pp. 95–116; Hanazaki, ‘‘Ainu Moshir and Yaponesia,’’ pp. 117–31.

37 Morris-Suzuki, ‘‘A Descent into the Past,’’ pp. 81–92.

38 Smits, Visions of Ryu

kyu

, p. 161.

39 Ibid., p. 155.

40 Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands.

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