scholarly journals PEASANT SOCIETY IN JAPAN'S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: WITH SPECIAL FOCUS ON RURAL LABOUR AND FINANCE MARKETS

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masayuki Tanimoto
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
Agricultural Employment ◽  
Peasant Society ◽  
Peasant Household ◽  
History Of

This study aims to discuss the significant role of “peasant society” in understanding the economic history of both modern and early modern Japan.Independent peasant households proliferated in Japan in the seventeenth century, and from around the turn of the eighteenth century onwards they underwent a transformation into entities calledie,which owned family properties and bore responsibility for conveying these properties to the next generation. Although the development of the market economy also contributed to maintaining and activating the peasant society, the function of the labour market was strongly influenced by the strategy of peasant households to pursue the optimal utilization of slack labour generated by the seasonally fluctuating labour demand from agriculture. Under these constraints, peasant households tended to deliver non-agricultural employment opportunities to their members, forming a kind of barrier against mobilizing family workers outside the household. These barriers were supported by region-based industrial development such as a weaving industry adopting the putting-out system most suitable to the requirements of peasant households. Rural-based capital accumulation together with the workings of the regional financial markets contributed to maintaining particular peasant household behaviours by supporting region-based industrial development, which featured in Japan's path of economic and social development from the early modern to the modern period.

Book Reviews

2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 246-247
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Edo Period ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Japan

Carl Mosk of the University of Victoria reviews “Japan's Industrious Revolution: Economic and Social Transformations in the Early Modern Period”, by Akira Hayami. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores how the economic and social transformations in pre-1600 Japan led to an “industrious revolution” in the early modern period, focusing on the rise of labor-intensive agriculture. Discusses viewpoints and methods in the economic history of Japan; history before the emergence of economic society; the delayed formation process of economic society; the establishment of economic society and the Edo period; the economic and social changes in the Edo period; the rise of industriousness in early modern Japan; economic development in early modern Japan; and historical reflections on Japan's industrialization.”

Tanaka Kinuyo

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
Japanese Woman ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
History Of

This is the first book in English dedicated to the actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo. Praised as amongst the greatest actors in the history of Japanese cinema, Tanaka’s career spanned the industrial development of cinema - from silent to sound, monochrome to colour. Alongside featuring in films by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse and Kurosawa, Tanaka was also the only Japanese woman filmmaker between 1953 and 1962, and her films tackled distinctly feminine topics such as prostitution and breast cancer. Because her career overlaps with a transformative period in Japan, especially for women, this close analysis of her fascinating life and work offers new perspectives into the Japanese history of women and classical era of national cinema. The first half of the book focuses on Tanaka as actress and analyses the elements and meanings associated with her star image, and her powerful embodiment of diverse, at times contradictory, ideological discourses. The second half is dedicated to Tanaka as director and explores her public image as filmmaker and her depiction of gender and sexuality against the national history in order to reflect on her role and style as author. With a special focus on the melodrama genre and on the sociopolitical and economic contexts of film production, the book offers a revision of theories of stardom, authorship, and women’s cinema. In examining Tanaka’s iconic reification of femininities in relation to politics, national identity, and memory, the chapters shed light on the cultural construction of female subjectivity and sexuality in Japanese popular culture.

The Disruptive Presence of the Namban-jin in Early Modern Japan

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 581-602
Author(s):  
Alexandra Curvelo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Visual Display ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
First Time ◽  
Folding Screens

Abstract When the Portuguese arrived in Japan around 1543, it was the first time in the history of the archipelago that Western foreigners had entered the country and settled there. These “barbarians from the south” (namban-jin) were considered strangers and viewed with curiosity and suspicion. In Tokugawa Japan (c. 1615-1868), politically marked by territorial unification and the centralization of power, the image of the Europeans that was created and visually registered on folding screens and lacquer-ware was used as a model to frame this presence by both the Japanese political and economic elites and those considered marginal to the existing social order. Namban art, especially paintings, can be seen as a visual display of Japan’s self-knowledge and its knowledge of distant “neighbours.”

Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan.

1969 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 528
Author(s):  
Charles D. Sheldon ◽  
John W. Hall ◽  
Marius B. Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Japan

How Should We Approach the Economy of ‘Early Modern India’?

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 1606-1656 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHAMI GHOSH
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Endogenous Factors ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Specific Manner ◽  
History Of ◽  
Other World

AbstractTirthankar Roy's recent synthesis on the economic history of early modern India claims to provide a new, overarching narrative placing this period within the broader sweep of the history of what Roy defines as ‘capitalism’ in India in the very long term. This article provides a detailed critique of Roy's monograph, suggesting that it suffers from some serious methodological deficits, arising not least from a future-oriented paradigm that imposes anachronistic concepts on this period, including the very notion of ‘India’. Furthermore, Roy's view of the economy as being fundamentally driven forward by the rise of a coastal polity, expanding inwards from Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, sits awkwardly with his repeated claim that colonialism was of little significance for Indian economic history. Finally, this article suggests that this period might be more fruitfully approached not only by abandoning thetelosof what we know of India's future, but also by adopting both regionally focused and comparative approaches, turning away from long-distance trade as the primary lens through which to view the economy, and instead examining endogenous factors in the economies of individual regions and enriching our understanding of them by reference to studies of other world regions with comparable patterns of development in the same period. More nuanced ways of approaching economic change in the very long run, including the importance of developments in modes of consumption and market- and profit-oriented economic behaviour, are suggested as a better means of understanding both the economies of the late pre-colonial centuries in the Indian subcontinent and the development of capitalism, which should also be understood in a more specific manner than Roy allows.

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