The implementation of a banking system in the provinces of Japan was led by strong central initiatives at the end of 19th century and, for this reason, it is difficult to study its impact only from the perspectives of local history. Such initiatives were pretty hard to resist especially where local trade and industries were still weak, so one might think of this as an origin of present-day ‘financial paternalism’, or a strong link between our government and the financial sector. 02/2013
Historians now see two distinctive paths in the process of Japanese industrialization, namely, the one led by Western technologies in the late 19th century, and the other evolving from the indigenous economy in the late Edo period. This dualism, which would continue to shape the modern Japanese economy, is interesting because the mixture of the old and new has also been identified by historians like Hudson and Berg in the context of early British industrial history. The similarity should not hide major differences though; political and geographical settings were so different between the two countries, not to mention the timing of take-off. 03/2013
We now live in the third largest economy in the world. But how can we ‘qualitatively’ compare the state of our economy with that of other leading economies? This is a type of question one should consider from historical and comparative perspectives, since how we arrived at the condition we are in now explains a lot about the condition itself! Comparative Economic History reminds us how firmly the current state of political and economic institutions depends on history. Examples of these in Great Britain may be found in the history of finance, social welfare, local government, charitable organisations etc. in both British and European contexts. Interestingly, these are also key areas making up the Japanese economy, and they are most definitely the products of our own history. So, one can say that how much we know about our economy depends on how well we study it in historical and comparative settings! 04/2013
Some historians argue that the standard periodization, such as ‘medieval’, ‘early modern’ and ‘modern’, should be revised, following the acknowledgement that there was a precocious market economy in parts of Asia, which seem to have developed separately from the West before the age of industrialization.This is a welcoming intellectual venture, since such a proposition is likely to boost students’ interests in Comparative Economic History. It has been established that commercially prospering Edo Japan deserves to be labeled as an ‘Economic Society’, although it remained largely agricultural and was in theory secluded from the world. One may see a parallel development on the other side of Eurasia; the British commercial economy was also booming in the 17th and 18th centuries. But can we then regard the Edo period as ‘Early Modern’, even though tangible signs of ‘the Enlightenment’, ‘proto-democracy’, or ‘the state formation’ were extremely weak? 05/2013
Our Japanese students’ views on “the Great Divergence” are divided. Some support the claim that the Asian economy had never been outperformed by the West before the age of industrialization. Others stick to the orthodox interpretation; “the first modern society” initially emerged in the early modern Europe. Such split reactions to our past are somewhat predictable, considering the normal state of Japanese society where there has always been the fusion of, and the tension between Western modernism and local traditionalism since the run-up to the Meiji Restoration. Or, the different opinions may be the outcome of students’ searching for their identity, especially in a time of renewed political power struggles in East Asia lately. Whatever the truth, Comparative Economic History helps us understand the way we see the world and our place in it. 06/2013
“I think the author is wrong about the death rate in South East Asia in the 18th century”, remarked one of the international students from Thailand. The author, who is famous for his comparative studies, does not seem to be proficient in the languages spoken in the region, so he probably got the information second-hand. This episode reminds us of an obvious hurdle for studying Comparative Economic History. It is often hard for historians to handle a range of primary sources written in different linguistic traditions from their own. But here, the combination of pertinent local history and a good translation of it may lower the hurdle a bit. We know, for instance, that Japanese scholars, who utilize comparison, often cite examples of the British town and countryside whose histories are based on painstaking local research and are in print in Japanese. In fact, if one takes Comparative Economic History more seriously, both reliable and readable local research becomes more important than ever. 07/2018
The organizational aspect of the Meiji silk trade was well presented in our graduate seminar last week, but personally, I wished to hear more on the effect of growing urban consumerism in this era on the modernization of the domestic silk trade. And most definitely, the history of the textile industry is an interesting subject to explore in comparative perspectives.
We know that the production of Japanese silk textiles was initially concentrated in the commercialized region of Kinai especially near Kyoto in the Edo period, but subsequently it spread in the remote eastern provinces (such as northern Kanto and southern Tohoku) where a much cheaper labour force was available. An indigenous form of domestic industry in Edo Japan was partly transformed into a modern form of small factory industry, following the impact of the world market on the production process in the late 19th century.
The destiny of Japanese silk production can be discussed in the context of much debated themes in the West, such as proto-industry, the “industrious” revolution, the roles of the town and the countryside etc. Recently, the continuity of the conventional form of industry into the age of industrialization has been ‘a hot issue’ in both Japanese and British academic circles; the division between industrial and pre-industrial economies may not have been as clear as we think it is. 11/2013
An urban historian in Tokyo kindly sent me his latest survey on the disaster control measures implemented by the Bakufu (central government) at the time of the devastating floods in eighteenth century Edo. It meticulously shows how officials tried to learn from their experiences and kept records of past rescue operations for future reference. The extent of the procedures put in place is impressive. I was considering what my colleague had told me about rural Japan a week before. According to his reading, the people were very adept at living harmoniously with nature. Thus he believes that pre-modern Japan was much more ‘progressive’ than the West in this respect. In what way did our ancestors deal with the constantly changing natural environment? Was nature something which had to be ‘controlled’ or something which was accepted as a part of the symbiotic system of the universe? We know well from the economic history of Europe that one can write very different histories depending on which perspectives he/she chooses, urban or rural.Perhaps, the same thing can be said about the economic history of Japanre vealing differing attitudes towards nature in the increasingly urbanized Edo period. 12/2013
How different were the ideas of "family" between Japan and Korea in the early 20th century’ was the main topic for discussion at the annual meeting of the Tohoku Socio-Economic History group last week. The historical context for the discussion was given by a new study on the implementation of the Japanese family system by the imperial government to Korea in 1939, known as Soshi Kaimei. The history of Japanese family, or "household" to be more precise, has been widely discussed by historians of preindustrial economic growth in Edo Japan, with significant input from British demographers (mainly based at the University of Cambridge). Thanks to such demographic sources as Shumon Aratame Cho, kept and preserved as "registers of religious faith" in 17th- and 18th-century towns and villages, we now know how the authorities in Edo and local domains collected information about residents, their age, and family relationship in detail. Soshi Kaimei is undoubtedly one of the politically charged policies which would have altered the relationship between Japan and Korea if it had remained fora long time. But it also turns out to be an important case of past governmental efforts which inadvertently left useful information about what the family meant to the Japanese people and their neighbours. 01/2014
