Stagnant economy and society
Secluded and repressive feudal government
Western influence explains modern economic development
Groundwork for modern economic development originated in Tokugawa
What is Gordon's view of the Tokugawa economy?
Reclamation
Irrigation
Tools
Hoe, sickle,
Commercial fertilizer
Oil cakes, dried fish, night soil
Herring meal industry in Hokkaidō, 18th c.
Plowing
Rice Harvest
Going to market
12 million, 1600
32 million, 1730-1860
Limitations on resources
Arable land at maximum
Foreign trade limited
Epidemics, famines
Infanticide
Desire for improved living standard
Late marriage
Infanticide
10% urban population, 1700
15-20% urban population, 1800
Castle vs. market towns
Move to countryside, 18th c.
Lower wages, less govt regulation
Early capitalism or proto-industrialization?
Farming-weaving households
Weaving specialists
Putting-out system
Cotton
Silk
Growing incomes
Market price fluctuations
Concentration of land in villages
2809 peasant disturbances
1590 to 1867 (10/year)
Petitions to government
Early Tokugawa/Periphery
Natural disasters
Intra-village solidarity
Violence against merchants and rich villagers
Late Tokugawa/Core
Market fluctuations and dislocations
Intra-village conflict
Samurai hurt economically
Fixed stipends of rice
Market fluctuations
1. In Chapter 3, “Youth,” Katsu Kokichi is about the age of students at Shippensburg University. How does he live his life as a young samurai?
2. At the end of the “Youth” chapter, he boasts, “I was now ordering the swordsmen in the area as though they were my underlings…Everybody obeyed me. I feared absolutely no one.” (p. 60), If this was the case, why does Katsu run away as a married man with a child at age twenty-one?
3. In his “Youth and “Adult Years,” chapters, how did Katsu make a living without an official position in government?
4. What can we learn about religious practices, based on Musui’s association with various Shinto and Buddhist priests (pp. 74-80)?