Introduction and Diffusion: Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Early Modern Industrial Japan.

Abstract

This article explores a key theme in recent scholarship: the impact of the circulation movement of ideas and information by examining, in this case focusing on the spread of weaving techniques across Japanese markets during the Tokugawa (1603-1868) reign. The dissemination of useful knowledge in this period relied on practitioners like artisans and merchants, on wealthy farmers, and family networks in regional communities also influenced this process, as did the conditions inhibiting or encouraging the development, adoption, adaptation, and elaboration of new technologies. Mobility, public culture, and networks played a significant role in the diffusion of knowledge in eighteenth-century Europe, and Japan's weaving in the Tokugawa period provides a non-Western parallel. Thus Japan's case suggests the necessity of further discussion about the "creation" of technological knowledge beyond the "introduction and diffusion" of ideas and information in the context of the Great Divergence debate.