Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T02:05:41.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - The Tokugawa Economy

Of Rulers, Producers, and Consumers

from PART II - Economy, Environment, and Technology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2024

By
Komuro Masamichi  and
Bettina Gramlich-Oka
Edited by
David L. Howell
David L. Howell
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

This chapter describes the development of the Tokugawa economy, illustrating how its patterns and shifts were experienced by producers and consumers in a particular place and time. In outlining the framing features of the Tokugawa economic world, we draw attention to how the proportion occupied by manufacturing industries and distribution mechanisms increased steadily in tandem with expansion of the economy’s overall volume. Diverse factors accompanied and further spurred these trends: urbanization (in cities and country towns), greater social mobility, expanding trade and communication networks, rising income, the labor of women as producers for the market, and a popular consciousness increasingly oriented toward ordinary consumption. This economic development can be described in either positive or negative terms. Economic historians in recent decades have pointed more to the positive aspects that raised the standard of living for many, whereas many social historians note the groups who lost out in the commercialization process, such as low-ranking samurai and landless commoners. Evidence can be given for both perspectives, underlining the complexity of what we call economy.

Keywords

kokudaka systemcurrencytrade networksbankingconsumer economyrural manufacturingguildsOsakadebasementeconomic growthconsumption
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Japan , pp. 267 - 295
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aoki, Michiko. “Nanushi-ke no nikki ni miru nōson josei no rōdō to kyūjitsu.” In Josei rōdō no Nihonshi, edited by Sōgō Joseishi Gakkai, 136–49. Bensei Shuppan, 2019.Google Scholar
Aoki, Naomi. Bakumatsu tanshin funin: Kakyū bushi no shoku nikki. Nihon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 2005.Google Scholar
Bassino, Jean-Pascal, Broadberry, Stephen, Fukao, Kyoji, Gupta, Bishnupriya, and Takashima, Masanori. “Japan and the Great Divergence, 730–1874.” Explorations in Economic History 72 (2019): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bitō, Masahide. Edo jidai to wa nani ka: Nihon shijō no kinsei to kindai. Iwanami Shoten, 1992.Google Scholar
Bolitho, Harold. “The Tempō Crisis.” In Jansen, Nineteenth Century, 116–67.Google Scholar
Chaiklin, Martha, ed. Mediated by Gifts: Politics and Society in Japan, 1350–1850. Leiden: Brill, 2016.Google Scholar
Coaldrake, William H. “Edo Architecture and Tokugawa Law.” Monumenta Nipponica 36, no. 3 (1981): 235–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawcour, E. S. “The Development of a Credit System in Seventeenth-Century Japan.” Journal of Economic History 21, no. 3 (1961): 342–60.Google Scholar
Crawcour, E. S. “Economic Change in the Nineteenth Century.” In Jansen, Nineteenth Century, 569–617.Google Scholar
Davison, Kate. “Early Modern Social Networks: Antecedents, Opportunities, and Challenges.” American Historical Review 124, no. 2 (April 2019): 456–82.Google Scholar
Doboku Gakkai, ed. Meiji izen Nihon dobokushi. Doboku Gakkai, 1936. Reprint, Iwanami Shoten, 1973.Google Scholar
Farris, William Wayne. A Bowl for a Coin: A Commodity History of Japanese Tea. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Farris, William Wayne. Japan’s Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, and Warfare in a Transformative Age. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Francks, Penelope. “Inconspicuous Consumption: Sake, Beer, and the Birth of the Consumer in Japan.” Journal of Asian Studies 68, no. 1 (February 2009): 135–64.Google Scholar
Francks, Penelope. The Japanese Consumer: An Alternative Economic History of Modern Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Francks, Penelope. Rural Economic Development in Japan: From the Nineteenth Century to the Pacific War. London: Routledge, 2006.Google Scholar
Francks, Penelope. “Rural Industry, Growth Linkages, and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Japan.” Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 1 (2002): 33–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francks, Penelope, and Hunter, Janet, eds. The Historical Consumer: Consumption and Everyday Life in Japan, 1850–2000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.Google Scholar
Fujiki, Hisashi. “Tōitsu seiken no seiritsu.” In Kinsei 1, edited by Naohiro, Asao, Susumu, Ishii, Mitsusada, Inoue, Kaichirō, ōishi, Masanao, Kano, Toshio, Kuroda, Junnosuke, Sasaki, et al., 33–79. Vol. 9 of Iwanami kōza: Nihon rekishi. Iwanami Shoten, 1975.Google Scholar
Fukuzawa, Yukichi. “Kyūhanjō.” Translated by Blacker, Carmen. Monumenta Nipponica 9, no. 1/2 (1953): 304–29.Google Scholar
Fukuzawa, Yukichi. Tsūkaron. In Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, Vol. 4, edited by Gijuku, Keiō, 537–66. 2nd ed. Iwanami Shoten, 1959.Google Scholar
Garon, Sheldon. Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Gordon, Andrew D. “Consumption, Consumerism, and Japanese Modernity.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, edited by Trentmann, Frank, 485–504. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Gramlich-Oka, Bettina, and Smits, Gregory, eds. Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan. Leiden: Brill, 2010.Google Scholar
Gramlich-Oka, Bettina, Walthall, Anne, Miyazaki, Fumiko, and Sugano, Noriko, eds. Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Hamano, Kiyoshi. “Kinsei no seiritsu to zenkoku shijō no tenkai.” In Nihon keizaishi 1600–2015: Rekishi ni yomu gendai, edited by Hamano, Kiyoshi, Ioku, Shigehiko, Nakamura, Muneyoshi, Kishida, Makoto, Nagae, Masakazu, and Ushijima, Toshiaki, 3–48. Keiō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2017.Google Scholar
Hanley, Susan B. Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture. Berkeley: California University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanley, Susan B., and Yamamura, Kozo. Economic and Demographic Change in Preindustrial Japan, 1600–1868. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Hayami, Akira. Nihon ni okeru keizai shakai no tenkai. Keiō Tsūshin, 1973.Google Scholar
Hayami, Akira and Miyamoto, Matao. “Gaisetsu.” In Keizai shakai no seiritsu, edited by Umemura, Mataji, Hayami, Akira, and Miyamoto, Matao, 1–84. Vol. 1 of Nihon keizaishi. Iwanami Shoten, 1988.Google Scholar
Hayami, Akira, Saitō, Osamu, and Toby, Ronald P., eds. Emergence of Economic Society in Japan, 1600–1859. Vol. 1 of The Economic History of Japan, 1600–1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Howell, David L. Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Howell, David L. “Hard Times in the Kantō: Economic Change and Village Life in Late Tokugawa Japan.” Modern Asian Studies 23, no. 2 (1989): 349–71.Google Scholar
Iwahashi, Masaru. Kinsei Nihon bukkashi no kenkyū: Kinsei beika no kōzō to hendō. ōhara Shinseisha, 1981.Google Scholar
Iwahashi, Masaru. “Tokugawa jidai no kahei sūryō.” In Nihon keizai no hatten: Kinsei kara kindai e, edited by Umemura, Mataji, 241–60. Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 1976.Google Scholar
Jansen, Marius B., ed. The Nineteenth Century. Vol. 5 of The Cambridge History of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Jones, Sumie, and Kern, Adam, with Watanabe, Kenji, eds. A Kamigata Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Metropolitan Centers, 1600–1750. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Jones, Sumie, and Watanabe, Kenji, eds. An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750–1850. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Kalland, Arne. “A Credit Institution in Tokugawa Japan: The Ura-tamegin Fund of Chikuzen Province.” In Europe Interprets Japan, edited by Daniels, Gordon, 3–11. Tenterden, UK: P. Norbury, 1984.Google Scholar
Kanzaka, Jun’ichi. “The Development of Civil Engineering Projects and Village Communities in Seventeenth- to Nineteenth-Century Japan.” In Tanimoto and Wong, Public Goods Provision, 150–71.Google Scholar
Katō, Keiichirō. Kinsei kōki keizai hatten no kōzō: Beikoku kin’yū shijō no tenkai. Osaka: Seibundō, 2001.Google Scholar
Katsu, Kokichi. Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai. Translated by Craig, Teruko. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Kawaguchi, Hiroshi, and Ishii, Sumiyo. A History of Economic Thought in Japan, 1600–1945. Translated by Tanaka, Ayuko and Anno, Tadashi. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.Google Scholar
Kitō, Hiroshi. “Edo-Tōkyō no jinkō hatten: Meiji ishin no mae to ato.” Jōchi keizai ronshū 34, no. 1/2 (1989): 48–69.Google Scholar
Kitō, Hiroshi. Jinkō de miru Nihonshi: Jōmon jidai kara kinmirai shakai made. PHP Kenkyūsho, 2007.Google Scholar
Kitō, Hiroshi. “Meiji izen Nihon no chiiki jinkō.” Jōchi keizai ronshū 41, no. 1/2 (1996): 65–79.Google Scholar
Komuro, Masamichi. “Mito-gaku Fujita-ha nōseiron no ninshiki to shisō.” Special issue, Mita gakkai zasshi 82, no. 2 (1989): 223–40.Google Scholar
Kuroda, Akinobu. A Global History of Money. London: Routledge, 2020.Google Scholar
Kurushima, Hiroshi. “Kinsei kōki no ‘chiiki shakai’ no rekishiteki seikaku ni tsuite.” Rekishi hyōron 499 (1991): 2–28.Google Scholar
Kwon, Grace. State Formation, Property Relations, and the Development of the Tokugawa Economy (1600–1868). London: Routledge, 2002.Google Scholar
Kyokutei, Bakin. Kyokutei Bakin nikki. 5 vols. Edited by Shibata, Mitsuhiko. Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2010.Google Scholar
Leupp, Gary P. Servants, Shophands, and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Shirō. Nihon kinsei toshiron. Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1983.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Shirō. “Shōnin ryūtsū no hatten to ryūtsū kikō no saihensei.” In Kinsei, ge, edited by Toshio, Furushima, 87–131. Vol. 4 of Nihon keizaishi taikei. Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1965.Google Scholar
Metzler, Mark. “Policy Space, Polarities, and Regimes.” In Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan, edited by Gramlich-Oka, Bettina and Smits, Gregory, 217–50. Leiden: Brill, 2010.Google Scholar
Miyamoto, Matao. “Bukka to makuro keizai no hendō.” In Kindai seichō no taidō, edited by Saitō, Osamu and Shinbo, Hiroshi, 67–126. Vol. 2 of Nihon Keizai shi. Iwanami Shoten, 1989.Google Scholar
Miyamoto, Matao. “Management Systems of Edo Period Merchant Houses.” Japanese Yearbook on Business History 13 (1996): 97–142.Google Scholar
Miyamoto, Matao. “Prices and Microeconomic Dynamics.” In Hayami, Saitō, and Toby, Emergence of Economic Society, 119–58.Google Scholar
Miyamoto, Matao. “Quantitative Aspects of Tokugawa Economy.” In Hayami, Saitō, and Toby, Emergence of Economic Society, 36–84.Google Scholar
Moriyama, Takeshi. Crossing Boundaries in Tokugawa Society: Suzuki Bokushi, a Rural Elite Commoner. Leiden: Brill, 2013.Google Scholar
Nakai, Nobuhiko. Bakuhan shakai to shōhin ryūtsū. Hanawa Shobō, 1961.Google Scholar
Nakai, Nobuhiko. “Edo jidai no shijō keitai ni kansuru sobyō.” 3 parts in Nihon rekishi (1958): 115 (76–83), 116 (30–36), 118 (68–74).Google Scholar
Nishiyama, Matsunosuke. Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868. Translated and edited by Groemer, Gerald. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Ōguchi, Yūjirō. “Edo Castle as Consumer: Procuring Fish for the Shogun’s Table.” Monumenta Nipponica 76, no. 2 (2021), 291–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ōguchi, Yūjirō. “Josei no buke hōkō.” In Josei rōdō no Nihonshi, edited by Sōgō Joseishi Gakkai, 181–84. Bensei Shuppan, 2019.Google Scholar
Oka, Mitsuo and Yamazaki, Ryūzō. Nihon keizaishi: Bakuhan taisei no keizai kōzō. Mineruva Shobō, 1983.Google Scholar
Ōoka, Toshiaki. Bakumatsu-ki kakyū bushi no e-nikki. Suiyōsha, 2019.Google Scholar
Ooms, Herman. Charismatic Bureaucrat: A Political Biography of Matsudaira Sadanobu, 1758–1829. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Otsuka, Keijiro, and Sugihara, Kaoru, eds. Paths to the Emerging State in Asia and Africa. Singapore: Springer, 2019.Google Scholar
Platt, Brian. “Elegance, Prosperity, Crisis: Three Generations of Tokugawa Village Elites.” Monumenta Nipponica 55, no. 1 (2000): 45–81.Google Scholar
Pratt, Edward E. Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite: The Economic Foundations of the Gōnō. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999.Google Scholar
Pratt, Edward E. “Social and Economic Change in Tokugawa Japan.” In A Companion to Japanese History, edited by Tsutsui, William M., 86–100. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravina, Mark. Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Roberts, Luke S. Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Saitō, Osamu [Saito, Osamu]. “Daikaikon, jinkō, shōnō keizai.” In Keizai shakai no seiritsu, edited by Umemura, Mataji, Hayami, Akira, and Miyamoto, Matao, 171–215. Vol. 1 of Nihon keizaishi. Iwanami Shoten, 1988.Google Scholar
Saitō, Osamu “The Rural Economy: Commercial Agriculture, By-Employment, and Wage Work.” In Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji, edited by Jansen, Marius B. and Rozman, Gilbert, 400–20. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Jansen, Marius B. “1600-nen no zenkoku jinkō: Jūnana seiki jinkō keizaishi saikōchiku no kokoromi.” Shakai keizai shigaku 84, no. 1 (May 2018): 3–23.Google Scholar
Saito, Osamu, and Takashima, Masanori. “Estimating the Shares of Secondary- and Tertiary-Sector Outputs in the Age of Early Modern Growth: The Case of Japan, 1600–1874.” European Review of Economic History 20 (2016): 368–86.Google Scholar
Saito, Osamu, “Population, Urbanisation and Farm Output in Early Modern Japan, 1600–1874: A Review of Data and Benchmark Estimates.” Hitotsubashi Repository (2015): 17pp.Google Scholar
Sakudō, Yōtarō. Kinsei hōken shakai no kahei kin’yū kōzō. Hanawa Shobō, 1971.Google Scholar
Sakudō, Yōtarō. Nihon kahei kin’yūshi no kenkyū. Miraisha, 1961.Google Scholar
Sakurai, Eiji. “Currency and Credit in Medieval Japan.” International Journal of Asian Studies 5, no. 1 (2008): 53–70.Google Scholar
Shiba, Keiko. “Building Networks on the Fly: The Travails of Travel for Domain Lords’ Women.” Translated by Walthall, Anne. In Gramlich-Oka et al., Women and Networks, 113–42.Google Scholar
Shinbo, Hiroshi. Kindai Nihon keizaishi: Pakkusu Buritanika no naka no Nihon-teki shijō keizai. Sōbunsha, 1995.Google Scholar
Shirane, Haruo, ed. Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Shively, Donald H. “Sumptuary Regulation and Status in Early Tokugawa Japan.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 25 (1964–65): 123–64.Google Scholar
Smith, Thomas C. “Farm Family By-Employments in Preindustrial Japan.” Journal of Economic History 29, no. 4 (1969): 687–715.Google Scholar
Smith, Thomas C. Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750–1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Sugawara, Yukie. “Kikuchi Tamiko nikki.” Edo-ki onna-kō 6 (1995): 133–51.Google Scholar
Takizawa, Michi. Takizawa Michi-jo nikki. 2 vols. Edited by Shibata, Mitsuhiko and Ōkubo, Keiko. Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2012–13.Google Scholar
Tanimoto, Masayuki. “From ‘Feudal’ Lords to Local Notables: The Role of Regional Society in Public Goods Provision from Early Modern to Modern Japan.” In Tanimoto and Wong, Public Goods Provision, 17–37.Google Scholar
Tanimoto, Masayuki. “Peasant Society in Japan’s Economic Development: With Special Focus on Rural Labour and Finance Markets.” International Journal of Asian Studies 15, no. 2 (2018): 229–53.Google Scholar
Tanimoto, Masayuki, and Wong, R. Bin, eds. Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Teeuwen, Mark, and Nakai, Kate Wildman, eds. Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai. Translated by Teeuwen, Mark, Nakai, Kate Wildman, Miyazaki, Fumiko, Walthall, Anne, and Breen, John. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Thaler, Richard H. “Behavioral Economics: Past, Present, and Future.” American Economic Review 106, no. 7 (2016): 1577–1600.Google Scholar
Toby, Ronald P. “Country Bankers.” In Hayami, Saitō, and Toby, Emergence of Economic Society, 301–34.Google Scholar
Trentmann, Frank. Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First. New York: HarperCollins, 2016.Google Scholar
Vaporis, Constantine N. “Samurai and Merchant in Mid-Tokugawa Japan: Tani Tannai’s Record of Daily Necessities (1748–54).” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 60, no. 1 (2000): 205–27.Google Scholar
Vaporis, Constantine N. “Samurai and the World of Goods: The Diaries of the Toyama Family of Hachinohe.” Early Modern Japan 8, no. 1 (2008): 56–67.Google Scholar
von Verschuer, Charlotte. Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan. Translated and edited by Cobcroft, Wendy. London: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Watanabe, Takashi. Kinsei sonraku no tokushitsu to tenkai. Azekura Shobō, 1998.Google Scholar
Wigen, Kären. The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wigmore, John Henry. Law and Justice in Tokugawa Japan: Materials for the History of Japanese Law and Justice under the Tokugawa Shogunate 1603–1867. 20 vols. University of Tokyo Press, 1967–86.Google Scholar
Yabuta, Yutaka. Kokuso to hyakushō ikki no kenkyū. Azekura Shobō, 1992.Google Scholar
Yamakawa, Kikue. Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life. Translated and with an introduction by Nakai, Kate Wildman. University of Tokyo Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Yamazaki, Ryūzō. Kinsei bukkashi kenkyū. Hanawa Shobō, 1983.Google Scholar
Yasukuni, Ryōichi. “Regional versus Standardized Coinage in Early Modern Japan: The Tokugawa Kan’ei Tsūhō.” International Journal of Asian Studies 7, no. 2 (2010): 131–57.Google Scholar
Yokoyama, Yuriko. “Expanding and Multilayering Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan: The Case of the Shin-Yoshiwara Red-Light District.” Translated by Knot, Jeffrey. In Gramlich-Oka et al., Women and Networks, 223–45.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×