December 1995
Early Modern Japan
KarenWigen)
Duke University
The aims of this paperare threefold: (I) to considerwhat Westernhistoriansmeanwhen they speakof Early Modern
Japan,(2) to proposethat we reconceivethis period from the perspectiveof world networks history, and (3) to lay
out someof the advantagesI believethis offers for thinking aboutSengokuandTokugawasociety.
The idea that Japan had an early modern period is gradually becoming common in every sector of our field, from institutional
to intellectual history. Yet what that means has rarely been discussed until now, even in the minimal sense of determining its temporal
boundaries: I want to thank David Howell and James Ketelaar for raising the issue in this forum, prompting what I hope will become
an ongoing conversation about our periodization practices.
To my knowledge, the sole attempt in English to trace the intellectual genealogy of this concept is John Hall's introduction to
the fourth volume of the Cambridge History of Japan-a
volume that he chose to title Early Modern Japan. Hall dates this expression
to the 1960s,when "the main concern of Western scholars of the Edo period was directed toward explaining Japan's rapid modernization."
Its ascendancy was heralded by the 1968 publication of Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan, which Hall
co-edited with Marius Jansen. "By declaring that the Tokugawa period should be called Japan's 'early modern' age," he reflects, "this
volume challenged the common practice of assuming that Japan during the Edo period was still fundamentally feudal.") Although Hall
sees the modernization paradigm as having been superseded in later decades, he nonetheless reads the continuing popularity of the
early modern designation as a sign that most Western historians today see the Edo era as "more modern than feudal.',4 This notion is
reiterated in even more pointed terms by Wakita Osamu in the same volume. "One particularly prominent and powerful idea" among
Western historians of Japan, Wakita writes, "has been to use the term 'early modern' to refer to the kinsei period, thus avoiding the
Marxist categories of analysis favored by many Japanese and, at the same time, drawing attention away from the period's feudal
aspects and toward those long-term trends related to the emergence of the modern Japanesestate and economy after 1868.',5
1. Many thanks to the colleagues, students,and friends who have sharedtheir thoughts on the subject of early modernity,
especially Philip Brown, Andrew Gordon, William Hauser, David Howell, Martin Lewis, Henry Smith, Andre Wink, the Early
Modern JapanNetwork, the Early Modern History Workshop at Madison, and the GeographicalPerspectivesin Asian History
seminar.Thanksalso to Kris Troost for sharingher internetexpertiseand for help in trackingdown sources.
2. This standsin stark contrast to the situation in Meiji studies,where the problem of what modernity meansin the Japanese
context,and when it began,have beencentral concernsat least sincemid-century.While the Meiji debatehas importantimplications
for understandingwhat we are here calling early modernity, an analysis of tho'seconnectionslies outside the scopeof the present
essay.
3. Hall 1991:33.
4. Hall 1991:8-9.
5. Wakita 1991: 98.
Early Modern Japan
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Volume 5 Number 2
A glancethroughrecentbibliographiesin the field confirms that the Edo periodas a whole is seldomreferredto anymoreas
FeudalJapan(evenif the political order of the time is still "habitually and haphazardly"characterizedthat way6).It is also interesting
that,in the early 1970s,a few Tokugawascholarswho identified their subjectas"pre-modem"beganto do so in quotationmarks: But
is the growing preferencefor "early modem" best understoodiif'Hall's and Wakita's terms?The evidence is ambiguousat best.
.
Considerthe half-dozen books on Japan published in the last twenty years that feature the words Early Modern in their titles.8
Togetherthey spana wide rangeof topics, from early Tokugawadiplomacy9to late Tokugawaideology,10 from travef I to disease,12
and from a broad but environmentallyanchoredsurveyl3to an anthology on Edo and Paris.14The last volume fits Hall's paradigm
nicely (the editorsexplicitly identifying both cities as "capitals of absolutism"ls),but the other five formulate their problemsin terms
that seemto eschewthe feudal/moderndichotomy altogether.16
And the rangeof casualusageis wider still. When people like Harry
Harootunianand David Howell call the Tokugawa period "early modem",I?can this choice of words meaningfully be read as an
attemptto avoidMarxian categoriesof analysis?
This is not to suggestthat the echoesof 1960sscholarshipthat Hall hearsin the words Early Modem Japanhavefadedaway
entirely. On the contrary, it is precisely for its perceivedassociationswith a Weberianmodel of modernization that the expression
attractsone groupof scholarsl8while provoking resistancefrom another.I was unawareof this resistanceuntil I raisedthe issueon the
Early Modem JapanNetwork this spring. To my surprise,somecolleaguesrespondedthat they find the whole notion distastefully
teleological, hearing in it a sounding of the past for the outlines of a proto-present!9Others objected that it has inescapably
Eurocentricovertones,calling to mind suchWesterndevelopmentsas the rise of the absolutiststate,the spreadof secularthought,the
6..Totman 1993:49, n. 12.
7. Sheldon1971,R. Smith 1972,T. Smith 1973.
8. To my knowledge,the only book to date other than thosediscussedhere that employsthis designationin its title (asidefrom
thosementionedabove[Hall and Jansen1968and Hall 1991])is GeorgeElison's earlier DeusDestroyed:TheImageof Christianity in
Early ModernJapan [1973]. If readersare awareof othersI haveoverlooked,I would be grateful for the correction.
9. RonaldToby's Stateand Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Developmentof the TokugawaBakufu [1984].
10. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi'sAnti-Foreignism and WesternLearning in Early Modern Japan: The New Thesesof 1825
[1986].
11.ConstantineVaporis's Travel and the Statein Early Modern Japan [1994].
12.Ann BowmanJannetta'sEpidemicsand Mortality in Early Modern Japan [1987].
13.ConradTotman'sEarly Modern Japan [1993].
14.JamesL. McClain et at, Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the Statein the Early Modern Era [1994].
15.McClain,Merriman,andUgawa 1994:11.The temporalframeworkof the volumeis specifiedin termsof political developments
as "the period from the 1590s,when the Bourbonsand Tokugawarose to power, until the 1780sand 1790s,when the monarchyfell
and the collapseof the Kansei reforms marked the beginning of severaldifficult decadesthat culminated in the Meiji Restoration"
(xvii).
16.Although I havenot donea comprehensivesearch,the only discussionof feudalismthat I have discoveredin thesebooksis a
footnotein ConradTotman's textbook, noting that he and othershave long preferredto characterizethe polity as neither feudal nor
.
'
absolutIstbut 'federal.' Totman 1993:49,n. 12.Totmanrefers to the periodizationissueonly in passing,noting that the yearsbetween
1568and 1868are "commonly called Japan'searly modernperiod" (1993:xxv).
17.Harootunian1988:1;Howell 1994, 1995:3.
18.See,for instance,Bodart-Bailey 1989;Whit~ 1988.
19. To be sure, researchin the roots-of-modernizationmode is still well representedin the field, as suggestedby the title of
Akira Havami's recentbook,Pre-conditionsto Industrializationin Japan (1986).
I
December 1995
3
Early Modern Japan
growth of cities, the expansionof mercantilecapitalism,and the like:o The searchfor suchrandom parallels,someargue,ignoresthe
distinctivenessof the Japanesecultural milieu:!
Judgingfrom a preliminary survey of current writing in the field, however(as well as from someother suggestivecomments
on the internet), 1 am persuadedthat most of us who use the l~ution Early Modern Japanhave somethingrather different in mind.
While this expressionmight once have suggesteda particular historiographicaltake on Japaneseinstitutions, it no longer necessarily
t
functionsas a code-wordin this way-primarily becausethe debateto which Hall refers is no longer compelling acrossthe broadfield
of Japanesehistorical studies.In most cases,the viable choicefor designatingour temporallocus of interestis not "the feudalperiod,"
but the Sengoku,Tokugawa,or Edo period:2 Given this set of alternatives,the salientfeatureof early modernis its cosmopolitanism.
By locating our work in a chronology that hasrelevanceoutsideJapan,it seems,what we are really doing is staking our intellectual
claims on a wider terrain than that of Japanesestudies.To the extent that this expressionremainsa code word in our field in the 1990s,
what it signalsto me is a desireto transcendparochialboundariesand to engagewith other histories(and other historians).23
Traditionally, the major way to do that has been through referenceto Europeananalogiesor universal models (the latter
usually generalizedfrom Europeanexperience).Comparativework in this vein is often provocative and widely read-despite wary
reactionsfrom "suspiciouspeople" (as Ashin Das Guptacalls his camp).24
The other way to engagewith historiansoutsideone's own
field, of course,is by exploring cross-culturallinkages. But linkage-history has traditionally been the province of thosewho study
diplomacy, trade, migration, missions, and the like-subjects with an obvious international dimension. It is less often considered
relevantfor thosewho work at the nationaland local levels.
The conversationsthat have beenformative for my own thinking aboutearly modernity, however,effectively fuse thesetwo
approaches,situatingcomparisonswithin a highly-developedmap of cross-culturallinkages.This methodhasyieldeda relatively new
sub-disciplinethat might be called "world networks history": "world" to suggesta trans-oceanicreach, "networks" to highlight an
20. It would appearthat the more energeticdebateover early modernity in Chinesestudieshas beenlargely influencedby this
kind of an agenda.According to Antonia Finnane's recent assessment,"the chronology of nationalism and modernity in China
remainsa more or less disputed point. Evidence of commerce,the so-called 'roots of capitalism,' urbanization,increasingliteracy,
voluntary associations,and so on--in brief, the trappingsof a civil society~an all be drawn upon to supportthe notion of an 'early
modernChina' emergingaround the sixteenthto seventeenthcenturies(Rawski 1991;Feuerwerker1992).Parallelargumentscan be
mountedin the sphereof arts and letters, with Elman positing the emergenceof evidential philosophy as the decisiveconjuncturein
late imperial history, and Vinograd's researchon the rise in portrait painting suggestingthe discoveryof the autonomousself (Elman
1990; Vinograd 1992). Related observationson the integration of the Chinese economy and culture can be used to suggestthe
existenceof a nation in China pre-datingthe ageof nationalism(cf. Duara 1993:2-9)." Finnane1994: 1161.
21. JohnHall himself hasrepeatedlyvoiced strong objectionsto the applicationof European-derivedmodelsto Japanesehistory,
but he clearly does not find such models to be implicit in the early modern concept.For instance,the introduction to Japan Before
Tokugawa:Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500 to 1650 (edited by Hall, NagaharaKeiji, and Kozo Yamamura)
assertsflatly that "most of the institutional end productsof the sixteenth-centuryrevolution ... were idiosyncraticto the point that the
useof the Europeananalogyor any generalmodel basedon Europeandata for analytical purposesis more apt to distort than to assist
the historian in his effort to understandtheir meaning" (Hall, Nagahara,and Yamamura 1981: 15-16).The sameessayglossesthe
Japanese
termkinsei as "early modern" (p. 11).
,
22. "Preindustrial"is also sometimesusedin socio-economiccontexts;e.g., llanley and Yamamura1977.
23. In practice, the "other histories" where an early modern period is invoked are limited to western Europe, South Asia,
SoutheastAsia, Japan,and increasingly China (although "late imperial" is more commonly used to identify thesecenturiesin the
Chinesepast). Historians of Africa and the Americas rarely identify an early modern period in thosecontinents' histories,favoring
insteadthe termsprecolonial(or pre-Columbian)andcolonial.
24. DasGupta 1985:485.
Early Modern Japan
4
Volume 5 Number 2
emphasis on patterned interactions, and "history" to underline a concern with the formation and transformation of these socio-spatial
interactions over time:5 Early modernity in this literature is characterized, not in terms of a European paradigm or universal model of
development, but as a particular configuration of global relationships: one brought about by new modes of navigation, finance, and
weaponry in the fifteenth century, and brought to an end by the awearance of still more potent technologies of power at the beginning
of the last century. At the risk of oversimplification,
.
the early modern configuration could be said to have been created by the
gunpowder revolution circa 1450 and superseded by the spread of industrial capitalism and European imperialism after 1800. But this
set of markers is more suggestive than definitive. In practice, the temporal boundaries identified as bracketing the early modern period
vary by as much as a century either way, depending on the domain in question.
The global perspective on early modernity has been most fully articulated in the burgeoning field of Indian Ocean studies:6
Nor is this surprising, since the Indian Ocean-as "the hub of world trade in early modern times,,27-was radically altered by, and
contributed in singular ways to, the formation of the new world networks. But crucial contributions have been made by historians of
other places and topics as well. Among the most important are studies of the gunpowder revolution,28 the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch,
and English commercial empires,29the much-disputed "seventeenth-century crisis,',30the intercontinental exchange of food crops and
diseases,3!the nomadic empires of Central Asia,32the Chinese and other trading diaspora,33and the circulation of precious metals and
other monetary media.34As this (admittedly idiosyncratic) list suggests, world networks historians to date have been largely preoccupied
with technology and political economy, most especially with military and monetary history. Guns and silver were, after all, the leading
edge that sliced through long-standing regional boundaries.35Yet cultural and intellectual developments are being fruitfully reexamined
from a world networks perspective as well.36
25. I prefer this formulation both to the world systems vocabulary of Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), which is rooted in a
mechanistic paradigm, and to Philip Curtin's "comparative world history" (Curtin 1984), which does not convey the centrality of
cross-cultural linkages. Michael Mann's (1986) insistence that socio-spatial networks of power constitute the essential units of
analysis for comparative historical sociology has been formative for my conceptual vocabulary.
26. The sources I have found most stimulating are Chaudhuri 1985; Perlin 1983; Reid 1988, 1993a, 1993b; Subrahmanyam
1990; and Lieberman 1993a-a very modest sampling of a vast literature.
27. Wink 1993:106.
28. Hodgson 1974; McNeill 1982; Parker 1988, 1991; Tilly 1990; Downing 1991. For a useful review of the literature, see Lynn
1991
29. Braudel1979;Parry 1981[1974]; Tracy 1990,1991;Flynn 1991.
30. Again, the literature is vast; of most relevancefor Japanesehistoriansis the Modern Asian Studiesforum on the seventeenthcenturycrisis in Asia (Atwell 1990,Richards1990,Reid 1990,Steensgaard1990).
31. McNeill 1977.;Crosby 1972,1986.
32. Fletcher1985,Abu-Lughod 1989,Barfield 1989.
33. Curtin 1984,Blusse 1986,Wang 1990.Seealso Ownby and Heidhues1993.
34. Perlin 1986;Tashiro 1976,1989;Richards1983.
35. In a longer historical view, the "leading edge" may have beenspices.,,!,olfgang Schivelbuschwrites that "in their cultural
significancespiceswere wholly medieval... [yet] they existedlike foreign bodie; in the medieval world, forerunnersof the loosened
boundariesof moderntimes.The medievalspicetradehad alreadydoneaway with narrow local borders."He goeson to speculatethat
it would be rewarding"to study how long the processof 'reorientation,' so to speak,lasted,whereby [the Spaniards']lust for pepper
wastransformedinto one for preciousmetals."Schivelbusch1993:12.
36. The subjectof the cross-culturalexchangeof ideas is only now being brought into an explicit world-networks framework.
For a surveyof the spreadof world religions to 1500that adoptsthis perspective,seeBentley 1993; for a bold thesislinking national
jI
I
December 1995
Early Modern Japan
5
Taken together,this corpusof work proposesa way to conceiveof early modernity as aglobal phenomenon,acknowledging
Europeans'role without exaggeratingit or making it somehowparadigmatic.Researchon Indian Oceanand China Seastrade, for
instance, has made it clear that Europeansneither created nor quickly dominated exchange networks in that part of the world.
Throughout the easternfour-fifths of Eurasia, the newcomersremained dependentfor many decadeson local traders' capital and
commercialexpertise,and were obliged to accommodatethenTselves
to long-establishedconventionsof exchange.Accordingly, the
fifteenth and sixteenthcenturiesin southernand easternAsia have beenpointedly characterizedas "the ~ge of commerce,.'!7
or "the
age of partnership,.'!8rather than "the age of conquest.,,39.
At the sametime, work on earlier periodshasshownthat the modernworld was not createdde novo by the new technologies
of the fifteenth century. It is now widely acceptedthat both maritime and overland trade links were well establishedin earlier eras,
bridging the whole of what Marshall Hodgsoncalled "the Afro-Eurasianecumene."The conventionalchronologysuggeststhat early
modemintegrationwas in part a revival of contactsthat had lapsedin the wake of the Black Death,and that it representednot the first
but at least the fourth major surge of pan-Eurasianinteraction in historical times.40Likewise, the agricultural, demographic,and
commercialintensificationthat markedthis era is also understoodto havebeenunderway for sometime before 1450.41
In short,world networkshistoriansdo not envisionthe fifteenth century as the sole or evennecessarilythe greatestwatershed
in humanhistory. One gets a senseless of a single "Great Transformation,,42
than of a long, cumulative, and acceleratingseriesof
pulsesof intensification in cross-cultural exchange.Each reconstitution of the network has had its own distinctive contours,yet in
generaleachpeak of interaction has beenhigher than the last, and over time the relationshipshave becomeboth more extensiveand
morecomplex.43
cultural standardizationthroughoutEurasiato the diffusion of fireanns and the creationof centralizedpolities, seeLiebennan1993a.
37. Reid 1988,1993a.
38. Pearsonand King 1979.
39. In SoutheastAsia, the tide had turned by the mid seventeenthcentury, and in SouthAsia by the late eighteenth,but in East
Asia the balanceof power favored indigenousregimesuntil the mid nineteenthcentury. As Peter Klein puts it, "With the arrival of
Vascoda Gama in Calicut on 27 May 1498 ...the Europeaneconomie-mondehad somehowor other succeededin breakingthrough
the spatial limits of its regional confinement. ... But did they really succeedas far as the maritime spaceof the China seasis
concerned?It is my contention that they did not. At least not until after the middle of the nineteenthcentury when conditions had
becomequite different." Klein 1989:64. For relatedviews seeBoxer 1969,Murphey 1977.
40. The previous three high-points of inter-Eurasiantrade coincided with the establishmentof stable,large-scalepolities across
the continent during the era of the Han and Roman empires (2nd c BC
- 2nd c AD),
the early Medieval age (6th
- 11th c), and the brief
period of Mongol unification (ca. 1250-1350AD). See,e.g., Abu-Lughod 1989,Curtin 1988,Bentley 1993 (Frank and Gills [1993]
arguethat similar pulsesof intercontinentalexchangecan be tracedback to the Bronzeage).Whetherthe Indian Oceancircuits shared
in the otherwisewidespreaddecline of the fourteenthcentury in unclear;seeWink 1993.
41. This is suggested,for instance,by the "medieval agricultural revolution" in variousparts of the world, and by evidencethat a
growingdemandfor monetarymediaprecededthe greatflows of Japaneseand Peruviansilver into India and China (on the latter, see
Perlin 1986).I am indebtedto Andre Wink for suggestingthat such developmentsrepresenta generalsecluarrise in the density of
socialandeconomiclife acrossEurasia,the productof patientspadeworkthat beganwell before 1450.
42. cf. Hayami 1986.
,
43. A cognate vision of Chinese history is propoundedby G. William Skinner (1985), whose synthetic vision I admire but
whoseconceptualvocabularyI find uncongenial.For a more extendeddiscussionof Skinner's work on regional systems,seeWigen
1992:15-16.
Early Modem Japan
6
Volume 5 Number 2
If one is justified nonetheless in singling out the fifteenth century as the beginning of the modem world, it is because of two
roughly synchronous and immensely important discontinuities, One was the wholly unprecedented scope of long-distance contact, Not
only did Western Europeans begin to turn up in Gujarat and Malacca, bypassing numerous links in the established chains of exchange;
at roughly the same time, they also stumbled onto the Americas. Only with the "discovery of the sea" in the !ate fifteenth century did
the history of these two old worlds become entangled; only then did the global network begin to assume its nwdern dimensions.44The
other momentous change of this era was the appearance of reliable and powerful firearms. In Victor Lieberman's words, the
fifteenth-century military revolution "rapidly transformed the political equation throughout Eurasia." The new killing tools everywhere
"accelerated centralization by conferring an enormous cumulative advantage on the wealthiest, most innovative powers in each
region--and, conversely, by raising the cost of warfare beyond the means of more local units",45 These two developments, then--a
radical increasein the spatial scope of long-distance interaction, and a comparable leap in the spatial organization of social power-marked
the onset of modernity, setting the stage for both the loosening of boundaries and the "time-space compression" that are the keynotes
of modem life.46
This may be old news for historiansof East Asia. Anyone who has beenfollowing the Asian studiesjournals over the past
two decadeshas been party to much of this conversation,and some of our colleagueshave made important contributions to the
literature.47
Nonetheless,Japanesespecialistsare not yet very well representedin this discussion;it is mostly other Asianistswho are
doing the creativework of fitting Japaninto the emergingpicture of global early modernity.48
Moreover, while our awarenessof this
work may havechangedthe way we talk aboutHideyoshi's world in our surveycourses,thereis lessevidencethat we considerglobal
integrationa relevant backdrop for, say, literature, or genderrelations, or even urbanization.49
For the bulk of the Tokugawa era,
internationalissues(diplomacy, the silver trade) tend to be separatedfrom intra-national developments(everything else) as if there
were an impermeablewall between them.soHow often is the gradual diffusion of the sweet potato mentioned in the context of
Tokugawapopulation trends?) or the 1685 restrictions on silk imports consideredin discussionsof protoindustrialization?52As
44. Di~.coveryof the Seais the title of J.H. Parry's celebratedstudy of navigation,mapping; and ship design in the fifteenth and
sixteenthcenturies(Parry 198] (]974]).
45. Liebennan1993a:527.
46. The notion of time-spacecompressionis elaboratedin Harvey ]989, Part III. In Harvey's view, the dazzling, dismaying
developmentsof financecapital in the] 980s (compoundedin the presentdecadeby capital's forays into cyberspace)are but the latest
roundin this continuingprocess,and might betterbe tennedhyper-modernthanpost-modern.
47. Notably Innes (]980), Toby (]984), Tashiro (]976, ]989), and Yamamuraand Kamiki (]983). Not surprisingly, all of these
contributions discuss Japan's international trade, and several focus on the export of silver and copper-undoubtedly the most
importantlink betweenJapanand the wider world in this era.Japanesesilver is now estimatedto haveconstitutedover 30% of all new
silver put into circulation betweenthe] 570sand the end of the seventeenthcentury; speakingprimarily of the copperthat succeeded
it, Anthony Reid writes that "the privileged accessof the VOC to Japaneseminerals after 1639 through its factory at Deshimawas
critical to the successof the Dutch world-economyin Asia." Reid] 993a:288.
48. Perlin 1986,Parker ]988, F]ynn ]991, Liebennan ]993a, and Reid 1993aall discussJapanat length.
49. TheEdo and Paris volume, for instance,while discoveringa remarkab]e'rangeof parallelsin the two cities, essentiallytreats
themasdisjunct analytical subjects(Henry Smith's discussionof print technologyrepresentingan important exception).The editors'
introductiondoesnot discussthe internationalcontext in which Edo and Paris operated,and eventsthat radically alteredthat context
(suchasthe Tokugawaexclusiondecrees)are not notedin the prefatorytimeline (xix-xxv).
50. The outstandingexception in recent years is China in the TokugawaWorld (Jansen]992). A related study, analyzing the
continuingengagementof Tokugawathinkerswith both Chineseand Westernscience,is Sugimotoand Swain 1989.
51. SusanHan]ey's essayon material culture, in volume 4 of the CambridgeHistory of Japan, notesthat "sweet potatoesmay
December1995
Early Modern Japan
7
valiantly as RonaldInnes,Ron Toby, and othershavetried to keepthe door ajar, not much light seemsto comethroughfrom the other
sidebeforethe 1540sor after the 1630s.
Taking the cosmopolitanperiodizationschemeof world networkshistory seriouslymight openup new questionsfor research.
What might it mean to see the exclusion policies of the 163Q1;
as less a unique Japanesephenomenonthan part of a pan-Eurasian
.
swing away from the tradepeak of the late sixteenthand early seventeenthcenturiesf3 How might the rise"of Neo-Confucianismand
nativist thought be recast in light of evidencethat international linkages in this period everywhere tendedto nurture nationalistic
reactions,promoting "exclusive and isolating" cultural orthodoxiesf4Or, to hit closer to home, how might local historiesbe enriched
if regionaldevelopmentwere viewed as inextricably relatedto the world acrossJapan'sborders?Presumably,it shouldbe possibleto
perceiveechoesof global integrationin the most disparateof social phenomena,at the most local of levels, long after the downscaling
of internationaltrade. My own researchin southernShinanosuggeststhat this is the case.The packhorsetrains and protoindustries
that reshapedcentral Honshu's landscapesin the eighteenthcentury cannotbe fully accountedfor without referenceto the long-term
rhythmsof world networkshistory.55
Similar issuesmight be posedin the Sengokuperiod. To suggestthat Japan'sinvolvement in the early modernworld begins
not in 1568or even 1543but a full century earlier ought to raise new questionsabouteverything from politics to culture in the "late
medieval" period. For a hundredyearsbefore the Portugueselandedin Tanegashima,Japanesetradersand piratesparticipatedin the
"Age of Commerce"heraldedby Zheng He's expeditionsof the early 1400s.To someextent, we know that their exposureto "the
mobile, commercial,competitive order of the early modernperiod/' worked to "loosen the controls" of an earlier age,contributingto
the "entrepreneurial,fragmented,and competitive society" of SengokuJapan.56
But how might such linkages with the wider world
(howevertenuousand fragmented)haveimpingedon, say,the spreadof a cross-class"national culture" (which BarbaraRuchtracesto
this period), or the "culture of lawlessness"in Kyoto (vividly evoked by Beth Berry)f7 How doesit changeour perceptionof these
andother Sengokudevelopmentsto think of the Onin War asan early act in the moderntransformationof Japanf8
Thesequestionsare simply meant to suggestthat a linkage perspectivecould shed light on specific topics in Sengokuand
Tokugawahistory. But engagingseriously with world networkshistory could be of much broadersignificancefor the field as well.
What such an engagementoffers above all is a bracing corrective to the problem of de-contextualizedcomparativeresearch.As
GeoffreyParker,Victor Lieberman,and othershavepersuasivelyshown,trans-nationalrelationshipsexplain manyof the cross-cultural
isomorphismsat the nationallevel that havelong struck historiansof thesecenturies.59
The diffusion of firearmsand the appearance
of
well havebeenan important factor in maintaininga densepopulationin Japanin the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies"(1991:682),
but this is not followed up elsewhere;there is no sustainedanalysisof populationtrendsin the volume. Totmandevoteshalf a pageto
the sweetpotatowhendiscussingthe Kyoho Reform (1993:313),but doesnot mentionit in his treatmentof agriculturalintensification,
demography,or famines.
52. Jansen(1992:39),following Innes,deemsthis "the greatestimport-substitutionprogramof them all."
53. Reid 1993a,ch. 5; but seealso Lieberman1993b,Pombejra1993.
54. Lieberman1993a:531.
55. Wigen 1995.
\
56. Quotationsare from a descriptionof early modernSouthChina in Ownby'and Heidhues1993:5,21.
57. Ruch 1990,Berry 1994.
58. For suggestiveanalysesof how quickly the Europeans'impact could reverberatebeyondthe limited zoneof direct contactin
the AmericasandAfrica, seeWolf 1982, Meinig -1989.
59. Parker1988,1991;Liebermana1993.
~
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Early Modern Japan
Volume 5 Number 2
new forms of mobile wealth created similar problems and potentials for states from one end of Eurasia to the other. It is not
coincidental that Japaneseresponsesto those challenges bore structural resemblancesto responseselsewhere in the Eurasian
rim-territorial integration,fiscal reform, an elaborationof commercialreticula, and the spreadof centrally-definedcultural norms
beingnotableamongthem.60
«
.
At the sametime, a networks perspectivealso helps to illuminate what is peculiarly Japaneseabout Early Modern Japan.
Somelocal differences,of course, were simply the product of distinctive cultural legacies.To quote Victor Lieberman, "we are
dealingwith societieswhoseconvergencesaffected what were arguably superficial features(in somewhatthe sameway perhapsas
fish and dolphins respondedto the same hydrodynamic imperatives with similar body shapeswhile remaining phylogenetically
distinct).,~lYet the societiesthat Lieberman comparesto fish and dolphins did not swim freely about. Rather, they were tied to
specificplaceS-and the environment that shapedthem was not everywhereuniform. Each early modern society experiencedthe
challengesof the agein a different way, dependingnot only on its distinctive cultural legacybut also on suchrelational considerations
as who its neighborswere, whetherit harboredresourcesthat foreign merchantsdesired,its accessibility and defensibility given the
technologicalconditionsof the time, and the like.62A different set of relational issuesdifferentiatedthe experienceof early modernity
from oneplaceto anotherat the sub-nationallevel as well.
In short, military technology and mercantile capital may have createdsimilar imperatives over a broad terrain, but their
operationwas still constrainedby the friction of distanceand by the contoursof physical and social space.A keen senseof Japan's
positionin the global trading world (and not just "Japan's," but Satsuma's,Edo's, Matsumae's,and so on) is thus indispensableif we
would apprehendwhat was unique aboutJapaneseearly modernity without falling into purely culturalist explanations.As TosakaJun
haswritten, "Japaneseness"
itself "should be examinedas a concretelink in the chain of the internationalcontext.,~3
In this way, linkage-history servesnot to displace comparativehistory but to discipline it, by subjecting comparisonsto
thoroughcontextualization.To my mind, this is the single greatestadvantageit offers to the field. Easy analogiesmay misleading,but
to eschewcomparisonaltogetherwould be to adopta policy of defacto scholarly protection-ism,leaving us with no one to talk to but
ourselves.64
Only in dialoguewith historiansof other placescan we fully appreciatewhat was unusualaboutJapan'sexperience-and
graspthe magnitudeof Japan'sown contribution to the early modernworld.
60. For a richly suggestiveessayon the comparability of theseprocessesin WesternEurope, Russia,mainland SoutheastAsia,
and Japan,seeLieberman 1993a,especially pp 521-540. Numerousanalysts of early modern Japanesestate formation have been
struckby the parallelswith Europeanabsolutism;seefor instanceGrossberg1981,Amason 1988,White 1988.
61. Lieberman1993a:525.
62. For instance,historians of insular SoutheastAsia are quick to point out that not all Asian regimes had the option the
Tokugawaexercisedof minimizing and controlling Europeantrade.Sqmewere simply too exposedgeographicallyand too dependent
on the income from exchange,lacking the sort of intensive agriculture and well-developed internal market that would have been
requiredto survive after rebuffing the military-backed Europeantraders (Reid 1993a,ch. 5). Likewise, historians of the Spanish
empirecan help us appreciatehow singular-and significant-it was that the Japanesehad copper to fall back on when their silver
reservesran low (Flynn 1991).
63. TosakaJun 1966[1935]:292(Nihon ideorogi-ron, in Tosakafun zenshu,v~. 2 [Tokyo: Keiso shobo]), cited in Kawamura
1988:8.
64. It would also, I believe, representa betrayal of John Hall's true legacy.While his methodologicalessaysrepeatedlycaution
againstthe dangersof superficialanalogies,thosewarningsgrow out of a long-termengagementwith Europeanconceptsof feudalism.
Likewise, while Hall insists on the uniquenessof Japaneseinstitutions, he managesto describethem in a vocabularythat is readily
accessibleto non-specialists,asattestedby the regularity with which his work is cited in the world networksliterature.
December1995
Early Modern Japan
9
Many people in this room may find a world networks agendalesscompelling than I do. Sengokuand Tokugawahistorians
are a diverselot, and our field is not likely to arrive at a consensusany time soonabout what early modernity means.But consensusis
not necessary;it may not evenbe desirable.In the long run, we would probably be betterservedby a protractedandpassionatedispute
over our periodizationpractices-just asEuropeanhistoriansha"e benefittedfrom the long-runningdispute,over the seventeenth-century
crisis. Although that debatewas never resolved,it serveda useful function: in the words of Niels Steen~gaard,
it "demonstratedthe
interrelations of Europeanhistory and broke the isolation of national studies.Every Europeanistworking on seventeenth-century
national history now is aware that his subject is a variation upon a general European theme and reflects and interrelates with
developmentsin the rest of the continent.,,65
If we are lucky, perhapsthe presentforum will initiate a similar movementin Japanese
studies,
In the meantime,I hope this paper has at least establishedthat the debateover periodization is as much about the spatial
dimensionsof our work asabout its temporalboundaries.What Steensgaard
hassaid of the seventeenth-century
crisis could equallybe
said for early modernity: both conceptspose ''as much a problem of the spaceof history as of the time of history.,ti6The challengeI
perceivein world networksliterature is that of bringing the world back in-and therebyof putting Japanesehistory firmly on the map
of the early modernworld. Whetheror not my colleaguesagreewith this particular agenda,I hope they will at leastconcedewith Das
Guptathat "it is usefulfor suspiciouspeopleto havesomegeneralnotionsto sharpentheir suspicionson, and in the processa measure
of understandingis not unlikely.,,67
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