Nightless Cities: Timing the Pleasure Quarters in Early Modern Japan

KronoScope ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-93
Author(s):  
Angelika Koch

This article traces the time practices relevant to Edo-period pleasure-quarter life and business in eighteenth and nineteenth century Japan, discussing two time patterns that appeared in pleasure-quarter directories at the time: more long-term, loosely circumscribed stays based around diurnal rhythms of light and darkness, as well as more short-term transactions centered on units of time measured with incense sticks—two aspects of time that were central to the trade plied in the quarters, as I show. I argue that the sex trade is significant in that it provided a rare example of a service “paid by the hour” in early modern Japan, thus crucially also calling us to (re-)consider larger issues regarding the economic value of time within the early modern Japanese world of work and especially also its relationship to modern time and labor. I demonstrate how the exigencies of a certain trade required the elaboration of a set of time units and, where necessary, a system to measure and co-ordinate them, which ultimately points towards the existence of an abstract notion of time that commanded a certain price in early modern Japan. As such, the present paper serves to qualify narratives that mainly identify the commodification of time with Japan’s industrialization, modernization, and Westernization in the late nineteenth century, as well as with the dissemination of mechanical clock-time

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Moretti

Abstract This article explores an under-researched area of the Japanese early-modern (1603-1867) publishing history, by examining the catalogues called shojaku mokuroku. First, it analyses the publication history, the editorial process and the contents of these catalogues. By doing so, it offers a new definition of shojaku mokuroku, it reflects upon the growth and the variety which characterize the production of Kyoto publishers/booksellers and proves to what extent these publishers constituted a self-conscious, self-promoting, business-driven unified body. Second, by considering the order that was given to books in shojaku mokuroku, it explores what this order reveals about the publishing market in early-modern Japan and shows revealing differences with widely-held views on Japanese early-modern literature. Third, it investigates how these catalogues were used in the Edo period across the country and reflects upon what the circulation of these catalogues tell us about the circulation of books outside urban centres.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 410-431
Author(s):  
James Harry Morris

From 1614 to 1873 Christianity was outlawed in Japan. The Tokugawa Shogunate, which ruled Japan for most of this period, built rigorous and complicated systems of surveillance in order to monitor their population’s religious habits. This paper seeks to describe the evolution of Edo period (1603–1868) anti-Christian religious surveillance. The first two sections of the paper explore the development of surveillance under the first three Tokugawa leaders. The following sections focus on the evolution of these systems (the recruitment of informants, temple registration, the composition of registries, and tests of faith) in subsequent periods and includes some short passages from previously untranslated contemporaneous documents. Finally, the paper offers some thoughts on the efficacy of anti-Christian surveillance, arguing that the toleration of the existence of hidden communities resulted from changes in Christian behaviour that made them harder to discover and a willingness on the part of the authorities to tolerate illegal activity due to economic disincentive and a reduction in the threat that Christianity posed.


1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-390
Author(s):  
T. James Kodera

Debate over indigenization of Christianity continues in earnest even after the waning of the missionary zeal of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, set afire in no small measure by the wave of Great Awakening that swept New England and beyond. The context in which the Gospel of Christ is to be heard anew has ceased to be the God forsaken lands of heathens but is now one in which new challenges have emerged, ranging widely from Marxism and Islam, scientific scepticism and technological revolution, to urbanization and the rise of the ‘Third World’. In a country where since the early seventeenth century the Christians have scarcely numbered more than half of one percent of the population, the Gospel continues to intrigue the inquiring minds and the tired souls of the Japanese, particularly among the educated for many of whom the initial exposure to Christianity was through schooling or personal cultural enrichment. While many have regarded Christianity as a passage to Western culture and civilization when Japan still held the West in awe, worthy of emulation, others have taken upon themselves a more sobering, if troubling to some, task of inquiring whether the teaching of Christ could be the spiritual and social force to redeem and to transform the Japanese without relinquishing, if possible, but rather affirming the integrity of their own heritage. In no other country has a religious tradition exerted influence so far out of pro-portion to its membership as has Christianity in modern Japan.


2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 246-247

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.”


1997 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Elizabeth Berry

In an earlier draft of his essay, Professor Lieberman quoted, with some bemusement, a remark by Edwin O. Reischauer that has flown from the text but stuck in memory. Japan during the Tokugawa era, observed E.O.R., achieved ‘a greater degree of cultural, intellectual, and ideological conformity … than any other country in the world … before the nineteenth century.’ The claim is remarkable—no less for its tone than for its unlikelihood (were we even remotely able to test it). Still, the claim is tantalizing, and versions of it, more hesitant, continue to resonate in the survey literature.


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