The Making Of A Japanese Periphery 1750 1920

Contending that Japan's industrial and imperial revolutions were also geographical revolutions, Kären Wigen's interdisciplinary study analyzes the changing spatial order of the countryside in early modern Japan. Her focus, the Ina Valley, served as a gateway to the mountainous interior of central Japan. Using methods drawn from historical geography and economic development, Wigen maps the valley's changes—from a region of small settlements linked in an autonomous economic zone, to its transformation into a peripheral part of the global silk trade, dependent on the state. Yet the processes that brought these changes—industrial growth and political centralization—were crucial to Japan's rise to imperial power. Wigen's elucidation of this makes her book compelling reading for a broad audience.

Contending that Japan's industrial and imperial revolutions were also geographical revolutions, Kären Wigen's interdisciplinary study analyzes the changing spatial order of the countryside in early modern Japan. Her focus, the Ina Valley, served as a gateway to the mountainous interior of central Japan. Using methods drawn from historical geography and economic development, Wigen maps the valley's changes—from a region of small settlements linked in an autonomous economic zone, to its transformation into a peripheral part of the global silk trade, dependent on the state. Yet the processes that brought these changes—industrial growth and political centralization—were crucial to Japan's rise to imperial power. Wigen's elucidation of this makes her book compelling reading for a broad audience.

“Anyone interested in the history of media and communications should read Beth Berry's extraordinary book. Learned, lucid, and lively, it has much to teach students of premodern societies in Europe and elsewhere.”—Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University “In Japan in Print, Mary Elizabeth Berry crisply condenses a remarkable amount of primary research on difficult and little-known materials, and it interprets those materials in a highly original framework. The scholarship is superb, and the writing is as masterful as the research. Anyone interested in East Asian cultural production will find this compelling reading.”—Kären E. Wigen, author of The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750-1920 “This is a very important book, not only for its insights into a vast body of previously overlooked texts, but also for its methodology. While historians have known that early modern Japan produced maps, for example, no one has heretofore compared them to their medieval predecessors or examined them for what they say about an emerging Japanese cartographic imagination. This is a highly original work, and it will change the field.”—Anne Walthall, author of The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration

A Companion to Japanese History provides an authoritative overview of current debates and approaches within the study of Japan’s history. Composed of 30 chapters written by an international group of scholars Combines traditional perspectives with the most recent scholarly concerns Supplements a chronological survey with targeted thematic analyses Presents stimulating interventions into individual controversies

Japan Emerging provides a comprehensive survey of Japan from prehistory to the nineteenth century. Incorporating the latest scholarship and methodology, leading authorities writing specifically for this volume outline and explore the main developments in Japanese life through ancient, classical, medieval, and early modern periods. Instead of relying solely on lists of dates and prominent names, the authors focus on why and how Japanese political, social, economic, and intellectual life evolved. Each part begins with a timeline and a set of guiding questions and issues to help orient readers and enhance continuity. Engaging, thorough, and accessible, this is an essential text for all students and scholars of Japanese history.

Considering Castles and Tenshu -- Modern Castles on the Margins -- Overview: "from Feudalism to the Edge of Space" -- From Feudalism to Empire -- Castles and the Transition to the Imperial State -- Castles in the Global Early Modern World -- Castles and the Fall of the Tokugawa -- Useless Reminders of the Feudal Past -- Remilitarizing Castles in the Meiji Period -- Considering Heritage in Early Meiji -- Castles and the Imperial House -- The Discovery of Castles, 1877-1912 -- Making Space Public -- Civilian Castles and Daimyo Buyback -- Castles as Sites and Subjects of Exhibitions -- Civil Society and the Organized Preservation of Castles -- Castles, Civil Society, and the Paradoxes of "Taisho Militarism" -- Building an Urban Military -- Castles and Military Hard Power -- Castles as Military Soft Power -- Challenging the Military -- The military and Public in Osaka -- Castles in War and Peace: Celebrating Modernity, Empire, and War -- The Early Development of Castle Studies -- The Arrival of Castle Studies in Wartime -- Castles for town and country -- Castles for the empire -- From feudalism to the edge of space -- Castles in war and peace II: Kokura, Kanazawa, and the Rehabilitation of the -- Nation -- Desolate gravesites of fallen empire: what became of castles -- The imperial castle and the transformation of the center -- Kanazawa castle and the ideals of progressive education -- Losing our traditions: lamenting the fate of japanese heritage -- Kokura castle and the politics of japanese identity -- "Fukko": hiroshima castle rises from the ashes -- Hiroshima castle: from castle road to macarthur boulevard and back -- Prelude to the castle: rebuilding hiroshima gokoku shrine -- Reconstructions: celebrations of recovery in hiroshima -- Between modernity and tradition at the periphery and the world stage -- The weight of Meiji: the imperial general headquarters in hiroshima and the -- Meiji centenary -- Escape from the center: castles and the search for local identity -- Elephants and castles: odawara and the shadow of tokyo -- Victims of history I: Aizu-wakamatsu and the revival of grievances -- Victims of history II: Shimabara castle and the Enshrinement of loss -- Southern Barbarians at the gates: Kokura castle's struggle with authenticity -- Japan's new castle builders: recapturing tradition and culture -- Rebuilding the Meijo: (re)building campaigns in Kumamoto and Nagoya -- No business like castle business: castle architects and construction companies -- Symbols of the people? conflict and accommodation in Kumamoto and Nagoya -- Conclusions.

In Beyond the Metropolis, Louise Young looks at the emergence of urbanism in the interwar period, a global moment when the material and ideological structures that constitute “the city” took their characteristic modern shape. In Japan, as elsewhere, cities became the staging ground for wide ranging social, cultural, economic, and political transformations. The rise of social problems, the formation of a consumer marketplace, the proliferation of streetcars and streetcar suburbs, and the cascade of investments in urban development reinvented the city as both socio-spatial form and set of ideas. Young tells this story through the optic of the provincial city, examining four second-tier cities: Sapporo, Kanazawa, Niigata, and Okayama. As prefectural capitals, these cities constituted centers of their respective regions. All four grew at an enormous rate in the interwar decades, much as the metropolitan giants did. In spite of their commonalities, local conditions meant that policies of national development and the vagaries of the business cycle affected individual cities in diverse ways. As their differences reveal, there is no single master narrative of twentieth century modernization. By engaging urban culture beyond the metropolis, this study shows that Japanese modernity was not made in Tokyo and exported to the provinces, but rather co-constituted through the circulation and exchange of people and ideas throughout the country and beyond.