Early Modern Japanese Research Articles

The Geographic Imagination in Early Modern Japanese History: Retrospect and Prospect

For most of the twentieth century, geography has been pushed so far into the background in the English-language corpus on early modern Japan as to be rendered virtually invisible. To the extent that it has been noticed, geography is typically seen precisely as background: the passive (if sometimes predestining) stage on which the historical drama is acted out. While attention is ritually paid to Japan's location and topography, most historians' analyses of Tokugawa development have until recently been couched in essentially aspatial terms.

A Century of Scholarship on Early Modern Japanese Forestry, 1880–1980

A Century of Scholarship on Early Modern Japanese Forestry, 1880–1980

1984年度秋季学術大会シンポジウム 地理思想史における伝播・継承および革新―日本を主にして

This symposium was organised as a first attempt to hold a discussion among Japanese geographers interested in the history of Japanese geographical thought, under the stimulus of world-wide new trends in which the history of geographical thought is studied as a part of intellectual history or the history of science. Here, the term “geographical thought” connotes not only geographical ideas or theories of professional or academic geographers but also ideologies and conceptions concerning the spatial relationships and geographical environments of specialists other than geographers and of the common people. Geographical thought in this broader sense has been expressed not only by means of languages in the narrow sense of the term (langue) but also by other means of expression (langage) such as the pictorial or the cartographical or that of spatial planning. Having specified the fundamental stance as quoted in the above title, the organisers next requested papers for presentation at the symposium, tentatively proposing the following six main topics: 1. Diffusion and successive transmission of indigenous and/or traditional thought in Japan and East Asia and the continuation or non-continuation of this traditional or indigenouse thought into modern Japanese geography after the Meiji period. 2. Diffusion and acceptance of geographical knowledge and geographical thought of Western origin in pre-modern Japan, their articulation with modern geography in Japan and various transformations. 3. Geography and geographical thought in the Meiji period prior to the establishment of academic geography in Japan. 4. Founders of the academic geography of Japan, their successors (orthodox geographers), innovators in academic geography and “outsider” geographers. 5. The sociology of geography as a sociology of science. 6. Relationships (involving acceptance, refutation or influence) of the Japanese national school of geography with foreign geographical schools or foreign geographers. In response, the following papers were contributed: Unno, K. (Osaka University): Conceptions of the Early Modern Japanese regarding their own Nation. Naito, M. (University of Tokyo): Changing conceptions of soil and water (suido) in the agronomical books of the Early Modern Period: from adaptation to the environment to transformation of the environment. Kamozawa, I. (Hosei University): Why there were no successors within the academy to the geographical thought of the Meiji enlightenment thinkers. Ashikaga, K. (Kyoto University): Historical geography of the Early Showa Period. Nishikawa, O. (University of Tokyo): The geographical methodology of Taro Tsujimura (1890_??_1983). Yatsu, E. (Joetsu University of Education): A personal view of geomorphological studies in Japan, especially between 1940_??_65. Ishimitsu, T. (Kobe University): Doctor E. A. Ackerman and Natural Resource Polcies under the Allied Forces Occupation. Tatsuoka, H. (Tokyo Metropolitan University): The acceptance of R. Hartshorne in Japan. Yamada, M. (Osaka Kyoiku University): Diffusion processes of the so-called New Geography in Japan. The paper session and general discussion were presided over by K. Nakamura (Komazawa University), M. Senda (Nara Women's University), Y. Otake (Joetsu University of Education) and H. Nozawa. Unno pointed out that in comparison with the rather pessimistic conception of Japan under the influence of Buddhist cosmology in the Mediaeval period, the conception of Japan in the Early Modern period was characterised by an optimistic view evidenced by the admiration of the Japanese people for their own land. N. Honi (Hiroshima University), in the capacity of commentator on Unno's paper, pointed out the egocentric political intentions of the rulers of Early Modern Japan who had seclusionism as their political target and confucianism as their ideology.

Manifestation of the Physical Characteristics of Japanese Aristrocrats in the Edo era of Japan

The physical characteristics of 14 skeletons including 5 Tokugawa Shoguns and 9 wives, as well as 44 skeletons including 30 feudal lords (Daimyos) and 14 wives were studied.The Shogun's faces are distinguished from those of the common people of the time by the following features : exceptionally high and narrow face with extremely narrow and prominent nose, high and roomy orbit, highly reduced upper and lower jaws. These features of the Shoguns tend to be more pronounced in the later generation, so that the 14th Shogun Iyemochi Tokugawa (1846-1866), the last one in the present study, shows the most pronounced features among the Shoguns studied. These characteristics are also shared by the daughter of the Emperor Ninkou (Princess Seikan-in) and the feudal lords, although the latter are not so pronounced as in the Shoguns. These charaoteristics are therofore regarded as the aristicratic features of the early modern Japanese. The Japanese aristocrats of the Edo era are, except for the Emperor's family, be lieved to have been descended from the common people in the medieval Japan. Therefore, the physical characteristics of the Japanese aristocrats of the Edo era must have been derived from those of the common people most probably by two causative factors, hereditary and environmental, as follows.1) The similarity between the facial types of the Shogun's and Daimyo's wives may indicate the presence of selection of similar facial types among the aristoctats for over 250 years. If, for many generations, women meeting requirements in facial traits are expected to be passed on to the offsprings, including future Shoguns and Daimyos.2) Poorly developed upper and lower jaws of Shoguns with the peculiarity of the teeth (absence of masticatory abrasion even in the old individuals) suggest the peculiar mode of life of the Shoguns, especially of dietary habit. The same factor may also be the case among the Daimyos and their wives.In conclusion, the Shoguns and the Daimyos can be regarded physical anthropologically as the peculiarly cultivated group of human being in the early modern Japan.

Materials for the Study of Local History in Japan: Pre-Meiji Daimyo Records

The history of Japan during the two and a half centuries prior to the opening of the country in 1854 has traditionally been told as a story of the rise and fall of the Tokugawa central government. It is natural, of course, for historians to view a national history in this fashion, that is, in terms of the political and cultural center of affairs. Yet in the case of Tokugawa Japan, this approach has certain serious shortcomings. We have only to follow the course of events which transpired after 1854 and culminated in the downfall of the shogunate to see that they were shaped in large part by forces originating outside of the political center of Japan. The men who emerged to lead the modern Japanese state were, for the most part, products of the daimy5 domains, or han, which existed as semi-independent entities within the Tokugawa system. To gain a balanced picture of the Tokugawa period, therefore, it is imperative that the historian bring into his view the local areas represented by the daimyo domains. The study of Tokugawa local history, especially if concentrated upon the domains, can reveal much that would escape the attention of the historian preoccupied with the problems of the center alone. In a very real sense the han constituted the basic unit of Tokugawa political, social, and economic life. Numbering some two hundred and sixty-five at the conclusion of the Tokugawa period, each was a microcosm, its structure mirroring in miniature the institutions of the national macrocosm. For this reason the daimy6 domain offers to the historian a convenient example of Tokugawa society, small enough to be studied as a complete entity, yet large enough to retain the features of the whole. Despite the importance of the han in early modern Japanese