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Was Early Modern Japan Culturally Integrated?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Mary Elizabeth Berry
Mary Elizabeth Berry
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

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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Articles
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , July 1997 , pp. 547 - 581
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1 Reischauer, , in Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig, Japan: Tradition and Transformation (Sydney, 1979), p. 86.Google Scholar

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3 Smith, Thomas C. makes this tally in The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, 1959), p. 89.Google ScholarThe manual is the Nōgyō zensho, by Antei, Miyazaki, in Hideo, Hirose et al. (eds), Kinsei kagaku shisō (Tokyo, 1971), Vol. 62, pp. 67–165.Google Scholar

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24 Ravin, Mark a reviews the arguments over this matter and includes a good bibliography in ‘State-Building and Political Economy in Early Modern Japan,’ Journal of Asian Studies 54, 4: 997–1022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 The classic statement on agrarian taxation in English remains Smith, Thomas C., ‘The Land Tax in the Tokugawa Period,’ in Hall, John W. and Jansen, Marius B. (eds), Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan (Princeton, 1968), pp. 283–99.Google ScholarCommerce is explored in Hauser, William B., Economic Institutional Change in Tokugawa Japan (Cambridge, 1974);Google Scholarand Hall, John W., Tanuma Okitsugu (Cambridge, 1955).Google ScholarAlso, see Suzuki, Tessa Morris, A History of Japanese Economic Thought (London, 1989).Google Scholar

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34 Research on such exchange is eloquently called for, and pursued by, Wigen, Karen. See ‘Mapping Early Modernity: Geographical Meditations on a Comparative Concept,’ Early Modern Japan 5, 2: 1–13;Google ScholarThe Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920 (Berkeley, 1995);Google Scholar‘The Geographic Imagination in Early Modern Japanese History,’ Journal of Asian Studies 51, 1: 3–29.Google Scholar

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41 Among the clearest figures are those available for Hideyoshi's first Korean campaign. See Berry, 1982, p. 209.Google Scholar

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46 For a census of premodern maps, Toranosuke, Nishioka, Nihon shōen ezu shūsei, 2 vols (Tokyo, 1976–1977).Google ScholarFor further analysis, Rekishi, KokuritsuHakubutsukan, Minzoku (ed.), Shōen ezu to sono sekai (Tokyo. 1993).Google Scholar

47 Basic surveys with extensive illustrations include Matsutarō, Namba et al. (eds), Nihon no kochizu (Tokyo, 1969);Google ScholarTakejirō, Akioka (ed.), Nihon kochizu shūsei (Tokyo, 1971);Google ScholarKazutaka, Unno et al. (eds), Nihon kochizu taisei (Tokyo, 1972).Google ScholarAlso, see Cortazzi, Hugh, Isles of Gold (Tokyo, 1983);Google ScholarHarley, J. B. and Woodward, David (eds), Historyof Cartography, Vol. 2, pt 2:Google ScholarEast Asia (Chicago, 1994).Google Scholar

48 See, for example, illustration 31 in Unno, 1972. National names (including Honchō, Yamato) tend to appear on the coverings of the maps, rather than on their faces. Ezo, or Hokkaido, rarely appears in national maps before the eighteenth century. The indices list both Asian and European countries, sometimes in Chinese characters, sometimes in a phonetic syllabary.Google Scholar

49 These conventions derive from the shogunal surveys. The most important is the identification of daimyo power with an urban headquarters and a productivity figure, rather than with a bounded territory.Google Scholar

50 I rely on Wood, Denis, The Power of Maps (New York, 1992);Google Scholarand Turnbull, David, Maps are Territories: Science is an Atlas (Deakin, Australia, 1989).Google Scholar

51 ŌshikŌchi's Dōin's surveys of Edo for the shogunate were printed commercially in the 1670s, and atlas versions of the shogunal surveys of the nation were printed by the 1660s. Some official urban surveys, particularly of castle fortifications, remained sensitive and did not circulate. Protection of cartographic secrets (such as Inō Tadataka's coastal surveys) was most pronounced in the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

52 See, for example, illustrations 83 and 84 in Unno, 1972.Google Scholar

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60 Edo sōganoko meisho taizen, literally ‘The Dappled Cloth of Edo: Encyclopedia of Famous Places,’ from Jōkyō 4, in Edo Sōsho Hangyō-kai, 1916, vols. 3–4.Google Scholar