Tokugawa Shogunate Research Articles

A Comparative Study on the Appreciation and Adoption of Dijian tushuo in China, Korea, Japan, and France

Dijian tushuo (帝鑑圖說; The Emperor's Mirror, Illustrated and Discussed) is a book compiled by Zhang Juzheng (張居正, 1525-1582), a great scholar during the late period of the Ming Dynasty of China. The book was made for the education of Wanli Emperor (萬歷帝, r.1572-1620), who rose to the throne at an early age. It contains 117 stories about the virtuous and evil deeds of previous emperors, complete with illustrations and relevant articles. After its presentation to the emperor in 1572, several editions of the book were produced by the end of the nineteenth century, and copies were distributed to neighboring countries like Korea and Japan and even to France via Jesuit missionaries. There are copies of more than twelve extant woodblock-printed and lithographic editions in East Asia, as well as copies reprinted with copper plates in France. Also, copies of the book with color illustrations remain in China and France. In Korea, colored illustrations of Dijian tushuo are kept under different titles such as Gunwang jwaumyeong (君王左右銘; The King's Motto) and Dohae yeokdae gungam (圖解歷代君鑑; The Mirror of Rulers throughout the Ages, An Illustrated Explanation) at the Gyeonggi Provincial Museum and the Jangseogak, the archive of the Academy of Korean Studies, respectively.<br/>In China, Dijian tushuo formed part of the education of the crown princes during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. More than eight different editions were made by the flourishing commercial publication industry during the two dynasties. In Joseon royal court, the book was recognized as one of the didactic books for the discipline of kingship. As for Japan, the shoguns of the Edo Bakufu used the book to advertise themselves as ideal rulers or to make Chinese royal palace genre paintings as an exotic hobby. Isidore Stanislas Henri Helman (1743~1809), a French engraver, made reprinted copies of the book amid Chinoiseries popularized in eighteenth-century France. The French edition reflects not only the public criticism of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette but also Helman’s implicit intention to receive financial support from Marie Louise Josephin de Savoie and the Count of Provence (later Louis XVIII), first in line to the throne at the time.<br/>Dijian tushuo was adopted in various countries in East Asia and Europe between the end of the sixteenth century and the early twentieth century, although the way it was used differed from country to country depending on their respective political, social, and cultural situations. However, all these countries had one thing in common– they had future rulers read the book. Perhaps, the fact that it was written for the education of the crown princes of China served as the stimulus for leaders and intellectuals alike. Studies on the ways in which books like Dijian tushuo were distributed as an aggregation of knowledge, information, and culture are thought to be significant and useful in identifying certain characteristics shared by diverse countries and in shedding light on differences in their political and social backgrounds and their art history.

Демографические взрывы в Японии периодов Токугава и Мэйдзи и их исторические последствия

Japan has experienced two long-lasting population booms over the past four cen­turies. The first dates from the 17th century, the other – the second half of the Meiji period (1868–1912). Their historical and social consequences turned out to be completely different – due to the fact that these periods had cardinal differ­ences in the picture of the world. During the era of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867), Japan was a closed country, and the mental constructs of this time were not designed for “development”, “progress” and expansion. The ideal was the absence of change in any area of ​​life. All problems were solved exclusively with the help of internal resources. As for the Meiji picture of the world, the idea of “progress” and “development” was embedded in it, and the country's entry to the “world” culture and civilization made it possible and even necessary to find ways to solve problems due to an external factor – migration and expansion.

The State of Women and Women’s Education at the Beginning of Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1651)

This study attempted to draw a more critical analysis of women and their education at the beginning of the Tokugawa period. Tokugawa, or the Edo period in Japan, was a warrior society. It is one of the most studied fields for many scholars as it highlighted the feature of Japanese culture until today. In Japan, women’s studies began in the 1970s, which is considered late than Western. Recently, there is still limited research regarding women’s education activities being conducted under the Tokugawa shogunate. This study engaged historical methods, namely heuristics, criticism, interpretation, and historiography. At the beginning of the Tokugawa era, women’s education was varied based on social status and families’ occupation. The gap of education between men and women and noblewomen and commoners is a mystifying matter as some historical accounts address the contrary facts. Many historical writings indicate that women at the beginning of the Tokugawa period experienced great repression and hierarchical subjugation. However, several accounts addressing the role of women during Tokugawa were relatively better as women received fitted and suitable education during the period. Therefore, it is necessary to identify Tokugawa’s social and political context more closely than making the judgment based on how it used to be since many classical historiographies in the past solely focus on the ruling class. Finally, the time needed for education equality toward women in Japan indicating that education was important for the whole population that would need to be given to all.

Looking out from Goa, 1648: Perspectives on a crisis of the Estado da Índia

AbstractIn 1648, the Portuguese Estado da Índia found itself at a crossroads. After nearly five decades of attacks by a variety of adversaries—the Dutch East India Company, the Safavids, the Mughals, the Tokugawa shoguns, and the rulers of Kandy, among others—and in the context of the ‘Restoration’ of the Braganza dynasty in Portugal in 1640 and the separation of Portugal from Spain, a brief respite was offered. This article looks at how the situation was diagnosed by various contemporary authors, both outsiders and consummate insiders, such as the viceroy Dom Filipe de Mascarenhas. It suggests that the heavy constraints placed on the state by external forces as well as by forces of internal dissension compelled it to reinvent itself, a process that eventually began in the 1660s. However, this reinvention was not about simply imitating its great rival, the Dutch East India Company.

Averting a Great Divergence: State and Economy in Japan, 1868–1937 by Peer Vries

Reviewed by: Averting a Great Divergence: State and Economy in Japan, 1868–1937 by Peer Vries Mark Metzler Averting a Great Divergence: State and Economy in Japan, 1868–1937. By Peer Vries. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 320 pages. ISBN: 9781350121676 (hardcover, also available as softcover and e-book). Peer Vries has written widely on the "Great Divergence" between industrializing Europe and the preindustrial rest of the nineteenth-century world. Averting a Great Divergence, his third book on the subject, focuses—despite the title—less on averting [End Page 390] a divergence and more on closing the gap after it opened. Japan's "catch-up" story has been famous for more than a century, but Vries's comprehensive synthesis of the Western-language literature and his many original framings along the way make this book valuable to both specialists and nonspecialists. Although he gives a start date of 1868 in the book's title, Vries goes into good detail on many aspects of late Tokugawa polity and economy, with each chapter devoting substantial sections to Tokugawa practices and legacies. In the debate sparked by Kenneth Pomeranz's book The Great Divergence, Vries opposes the claims of Pomeranz and others that Britain and China were in similar situations on the eve of the industrial revolution.1 "The world of 'surprising resemblances,' in the famous expression by Kenneth Pomeranz, actually has proved to be a world of fundamental differences" (p. 1). He argues that Japan, on the other hand, as the first Asian country to industrialize, offers much stronger grounds for comparison, a case argued also by Penelope Francks in her own book on Japan and the great divergence.2 To set the stage for considering Vries's most recent book, we can turn to his earlier work for a fuller programmatic statement: In my view, the chances that Qing China would be the first country in the world to industrialise—or even quickly catch up—were negligible to zero whereas for Britain the chances of a take-off were higher than anywhere else on the globe. That, of course, does not mean that Britain's take-off was 'inevitable': it just means that the most likely place where it might happen was Western Europe, and in particular Great Britain. Industrialisation as it took place in Great Britain … can be regarded as a 'logical', or, in any case, quite 'conceivable' continuation of the route that Britain and its economy had already taken earlier on: a route of high wages, [of] capital-intensive and energy-intensive production with ample use of wage labour, of efforts to profit from scale effects in production and exchange, of specialisation and import substitution, of gearing useful and reliable knowledge to production and of openness to innovation…. The Great Divergence was not as Peter Perdue and many others claim "a late, rapid, unexpected outcome of a fortuitous combination of circumstances in the late eighteenth century" but the outcome of "a deep, slow evolution out of centuries of particular conditions unique to early modern Europe", as they explicitly deny.3 That is, Britain's divergence began early, proceeded over centuries, and, given coal, which China also had, was otherwise nonfortuitous. Economically speaking, eighteenth-century Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate looked more like China under the Qing dynasty than it looked like Britain. Japan's own "Great Divergence" from China, Vries writes, agreeing with Janet Hunter, began in the late nineteenth century (p. 22).4 Vries followed this first conclusion with a second one that provides context for understanding the project of the present book: The second lesson would be that when it comes to explaining the Great Divergence, mainstream economic theory with its focus on free markets, fair competition, and market-supporting institutions including a 'minimal' state is fairly irrelevant at best and in most respects downright wrong. Great Britain and all the countries that took off after it, especially in their international economic relations, were not laissez-faire states. Britain's state in any case before and during take-off was not lean and [was] very proactive in the field of economic affairs. It [End Page 391] can best [be] characterised as 'mercantilist' or even 'developmental', as long as...

Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction and the Formation of Atomic Narratives by Chad R. Diehl

Reviewed by: Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction and the Formation of Atomic Narratives by Chad R. Diehl Yamaguchi Hibiki Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction and the Formation of Atomic Narratives. By Chad R. Diehl. Cornell University Press, 2018. 234 pages. Hard-cover, $39.95; softcover, $23.95. Resurrecting Nagasaki is the first scholarly work in English on the history of Nagasaki after the atomic bombing on 9 August 1945. Disappointingly, no equivalent scholarship has been published even in Japanese. Chad Diehl’s book is therefore a welcome first work on the topic, one that can extend the frontiers of our understanding about how people have struggled to deal with the aftermath of unprecedented devastation. Nagasaki’s experience provides a good contrast with that of Hiroshima, the other site of atomic bombing. Unlike in Hiroshima, whose most densely populated area was directly hit by the bomb, the region of Nagasaki that suffered the greatest devastation, Urakami, was on the city’s periphery. Located to the north of the city center, Urakami is known also for the persecution of its Catholic residents by the Tokugawa shogunate, an ordeal that ended in 1868. Further, perhaps because Nagasaki was the second city chronologically to have been bombed by an atomic weapon, it has always played second fiddle to Hiroshima, which has all too often been treated as the icon of atomic devastation. Philosopher Takahashi Shinji even coined the phrase rettō hibaku toshi (“inferior atomic-bomb city,” in Diehl’s translation) to refer to Nagasaki. Diehl’s book is about how these distinct aspects of the city have shaped “the diverse narratives of postatomic Nagasaki” (p. 1). As Diehl writes, “The story of the atomic bombing appeared as part of the city’s long history, not as its primary characteristic. Unlike Hiroshima, addressing the human destruction and suffering caused by the bomb was never a top priority for politicians in Nagasaki” (p. 2). Instead, Nagasaki city officials chose the phrase kokusai bunka toshi (“international cultural city”) to describe their postwar city. The decision was made in 1949 when legislation intended to boost Nagasaki’s reconstruction efforts was named the Nagasaki International Cultural City Construction Law (Nagasaki Kokusai Bunka Toshi Kensetsu Hō). Adopting this characterization was not entirely [End Page 227] by choice, however. Hiroshima had outpaced Nagasaki in its efforts to enact its own reconstruction law, named the Hiroshima Peace Commemoration City Construction Law (Hiroshima Heiwa Kinen Toshi Kensetsu Hō). Hiroshima refused to share the “peace city” (p. 33) image with Nagasaki, and when the National Diet passed the two laws at the same time, the two separate identities were established. The reactions within Nagasaki to the reconstruction law were “mixed” (p. 34). Yet faced with the new designation as an “international cultural city,” various actors took part in the process of determining how to interpret the phrase and how to translate the vague slogan into concrete reconstruction plans. In this context, Diehl identifies four categories of actor who shaped the postatomic city: Nagasaki officials and politicians, the US Occupation personnel, the Catholic community, and the hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors). Following chapter 1, which deals with the first few years of reconstruction by officials and politicians, Diehl turns his attention in chapter 2 to the second groups of actors, the American Occupation forces. The pacification of the Nagasaki populace was its primary concern. To describe the strained process by which that goal was pursued, Diehl offers various instances of cultural exchange between Japan and the United States. A case in point is Winfield P. Niblo, chief education officer of the Nagasaki Military Government Team, and his effort to introduce square dancing. Another example is the first-ever Miss Nagasaki pageant, sponsored by three newspaper companies in 1946. Pacific Stars and Stripes, the US military’s newspaper, dubbed the event Miss Atom Bomb of 1946. The name was given mostly out of the gaze of local residents, who did not read English. This case indicates how Americans used the words atom or atomic “as a marker of pride in American science, which from their perspective had brought victory and peace, indeed something of which to be proud” (p. 58). In chapters 3 and 4, Diehl delves into the role played...

Aristocratic characteristics in the skulls of the Nagai <i>hatamotos</i> of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the Edo period

Aristocratic characteristics in the skulls of the Nagai <i>hatamotos</i> of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the Edo period

The Confusions of Idolatry: Rodrigo Vivero, Japan, and the Hapsburg Monarchy

Scholarly accounts of the European encounter with East Asia tend to emphasize the admiration that Europeans held for Chinese and Japanese culture and society, yet the period also exhibited powerful currents of Sinophobia and Japanophobia. In his account of a 1609 visit to Japan, the Mexican criollo Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco presents an overwhelmingly positive vision of the Japanese that would help support his effort to broker a diplomatic agreement between the Hapsburg Monarchy and the Tokugawa shogunate. A careful reading of the text, nevertheless, reveals the presence of conflicting attitudes toward the Japanese, including a powerful Japanophobic undercurrent probably nurtured by Vivero's prior experience as interim governor of the Philippines. This essay explores how Vivero processes these conflicting attitudes in order to produce, later in life, an image of Japan as an exemplary foil to the Catholic Monarchy in both politics and piety.

Sovereignty on Display: The Tokugawa Bakufu and the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867

Both the Tokugawa bakufu and the domain of Satsuma sent exhibits to the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867. This article asserts that the bakufu prevented Satsuma from mounting a separate exhibit at the exposition and used its presence there to ensure recognition by the French government of its sovereignty over Japan. The essay refutes earlier claims that the bakufu was unable to stop Satsuma from exhibiting as a separate and equal Japanese political entity. Japan's participation in the exposition did not diminish the bakufu's status in the eyes of the French government.

The Representation of Self and Other in a Semi-Colonial Environment: An Analysis of Japan Punch, 1862–87

The Representation of Self and Other in a Semi-Colonial Environment:An Analysis of Japan Punch, 1862–87 Beninio McDonough-Tranza (bio) in 1862, Charles Wirgman, a young correspondent for the Illustrated London News, arrived in Yokohama, a burgeoning multicultural city riven by the contradictions of imperialism. Twenty years had passed since Commodore Perry's display of military strength and technological superiority had forced the Tokugawa Shogunate, like the Qing Empire before it, to negotiate a series of unequal treaties with European powers and the United States, which marked, for the West, the "opening" of Japan. Several Japanese cities, designated as treaty ports, were opened for trade and for foreign residence. Yokohama, the most significant of these treaty ports, had rapidly grown from a small fishing town to a bustling trading centre and had attracted a contingent of foreigners who mostly, like Wirgman, had arrived in Japan to pursue their fortune. Wirgman, a budding artist as well as a journalist, quickly found his niche in the composition of the hugely popular satirical periodical Japan Punch, which, in imitation of the famous London Punch, combined cartoons and written articles and which he solely owned, composed, and edited from 1862 to 1887. Japan Punch, together with the rest of the treaty port press, owed its existence to the most humiliating aspect of the unequal treaties—the system of extraterritoriality, which left foreign residents in the treaty ports subject only to the laws of their native countries, imposed through a system of consular courts, and not to the Japanese state.1 The foreign settlement at Yokohama was an enclave of European imperialism that the Japanese state sought to contain. In China, where the system of exterritoriality had first been developed, the initial concessions led to increasing encroachment by the Western powers and the gradual expansion of the settlements and the privileges they enjoyed. Wirgman, along with many of his fellow expatriates, may have expected to see Japan follow a similar path. However, by 1887, when Wirgman completed the final issue of Japan Punch,Yokohama and Japan had been transformed and the delicate system of thinly veiled semi-colonialism was close to collapse. Wirgman lived through the most transformative and revolutionary period in modern Japanese history, during which Japan would challenge the precepts of European imperialism. The archive of his journalism represents a unique and remarkable source on this encounter. [End Page 45] Among specialists on Meiji Japan, Japan Punch is well known. As James Hoare notes, "few books about the treaty ports … lack one or more of Wirgman's pictures" (162). However, Wirgman's cartoons are generally used only for illustrative purposes in such texts. To the best of my knowledge, with the exception of one chapter in Todd Munson's recent The Periodical Press in Treaty-Port Japan, Jozef Rogala and Hitomi Yamashita's edited collection of Wirgman's cartoons—which "is not meant to be an academic history" but aims only "to extend the fun and frolic of the life and to acquaint the world with the works of Charles Wirgman" (viii)—represents the only study (academic or otherwise) of Japan Punch in English. Studies of Japanese media do occasionally reference Japan Punch since Wirgman exerted a considerable influence on the development of Japanese pictorial satire and also opened the first photography studio and European art school in Japan (the Japanese word for cartoon, punchu, immortalizes his contribution). However, in these studies, Japan Punch is analyzed with reference to the incorporation of European art in Japan rather than as a source on Victorian attitudes to the wider world.2 To some extent, this may be attributed to the generalized academic neglect of cartoons, and periodicals that make significant use of cartoons, as historical sources. As Julie Codell recognizes, the "study of how visual content functions to generate meanings and reader identifications in periodicals" is an extremely "under-utilized" area of research (410). Peter Duss concurs that "historians … have rarely taken [cartoons] seriously as texts" although they represent extremely valuable sources that "provide access to 'everyday' reactions to politics" ("Weapons of the Weak" 995). Indeed, the first volume to examine the various Punch magazines produced by British expatriates in Asia was published...

Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan: Class, Culture and Consumption in the Meiji Period by Taka Oshikiri

Reviewed by: Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan: Class, Culture and Consumption in the Meiji Period by Taka Oshikiri Meghen Jones Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan: Class, Culture and Consumption in the Meiji Period. By Taka Oshikiri. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 208 pages. Hardcover, £95.00/$130.00; softcover, £29.99/$40.95. Why and how did chanoyu, the formalized preparation and consumption of powdered green tea, survive after it lost the patronage of the Tokugawa shogunate? This is the central question of Taka Oshikiri’s Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan: Class, Culture and Consumption in the Meiji Period. Oshikiri acknowledges previous explanations—that by the mid-Meiji era, chanoyu as traditional Japanese culture provided a sense of national unity; that, for women, the state initiated instruction in its practice; and that iemoto (family heads) played key roles in its continuance. In contrast, Oshikiri contends that a rather scattershot array of individuals and groups carried the mantle of chanoyu through the transformative decades of the Meiji era and that the variety of people responsible reflects the fragmentation of Meiji society itself, as well-known tea masters and nonprofessionals alike maneuvered through shifts in class structures and other challenges of the period. Based on a dissertation and article on related topics, her book reveals how chanoyu remained an elite practice while also incorporating a new constellation of actors thriving within modern systems of institutional support.1 Oshikiri’s emphasis is on the social nature of Meiji chanoyu, rather than its ritual-istic or aesthetic aspects. Rejecting the translation of chanoyu as “tea ceremony,” she defines it as “a highly formalized sociocultural activity elaborated from the consumption of powdered green tea (matcha)” and involving a “whole set of customs . . . organizing the space in which to socialize, as well as to wine, dine and drink tea” (p. 1). Assuming readers are aware of chanoyu basics, Oshikiri does not address its somatic aspects or the difference, for example, between the physical engagement expected of a Japanese guest at a gathering of cultural elites in Tokyo and [End Page 198] that expected of an American guest at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Rather, her book mainly concerns the details of events and the motivations of their organizers. A range of well-cited primary sources presents, in Oshikiri’s words, a “montage of various spaces” (p. 11) and documents the activities of middle-class intellectuals and the elite within those varied settings. These individuals and groups represent, as Oshikiri states, “the evolving relationships amongst the state, industrial society and the culture of chanoyu” (p. 16). Chapter 1 focuses on early Meiji government policies for material culture as they related to chanoyu. Oshikiri identifies tensions between policies concerning culture and those concerning industry, as exemplified by the contrast between the Jinshin Survey of 1872 and the Vienna World Exhibition of 1873. In the former, which took place following the 1871 Decree to Conserve Aged Artefacts and Old Objects, officials from several agencies traveled to temples, shrines, and family residences in the Kinki region to identify and document objects worthy of conservation. Oshikiri shows how antiquarian interests drove the survey team’s approach, leading them to highlight chanoyu utensils; in the Vienna World Exhibition, on the other hand, the private interests of government officials did not translate to any particular emphasis on displaying such items. Instead, organizers selected large, eye-catching ceramics to dazzle European audiences; the few chanoyu utensils on display exemplified particular craft mediums or were placed in the agricultural products section. Clearly, early Meiji officials privately valued chanoyu but did not see in it the potential to develop Japan’s export industry, a major aim of the nation’s participation in international expositions. Chapter 2 examines the commercial exhibitions sponsored by the Kyoto Exhibition Association. Starting in 1871, this group of Kyoto merchants coordinated displays of objects from China, Japan, and the West in order to boost the local economy. From the outset attendees could appreciate tea utensils owned by merchants and heads of tea traditions and see staged services that expanded chanoyu away from a limited elite base. From 1875 onward, for example, female entertainers from Gion served tea in the table...

The Anomie Logic of Japanese Shogunate Reform From the Perspective of Historical Institutionalism

During the 14 years of 1854-1867, the Tokugawa Shogunate launched three reforms in succession. In response to the many difficulties faced by the founding of Japan, the Tokugawa Shogunate launched an overall reform response. However, the more the reform was, the more passive it was, and finally the reform failed and the regime changed. From the perspective of historical institutionalism, it is found that there are anomie logics in the end of the curtain reform, such as institutional arrangement and expansion, reform ideas and models, and synchronous evolution of the state and society.

Terms of Government: Early Modern Japanese Concepts of Rulership and Political Geography in Translation.

This article uses the relationship between the central Tokugawa government and its vassal domain of Satsuma as a window into changing notions of government and political geography in the context of early modern Japanese diplomacy. The article argues that a wide range of translation processes that occurred from around 1800-the coinage of new political terms in Japanese, cultural translation from Chinese Confucian classics, and the demands of Euro-American international law-both reflected changing circumstances of governance and foreign policy and contributed to a shift of the intellectual and institutional boundaries between the two.

A STUDY ON THE RESTRICTION OF BUILDINGS (INTERIORS) OF MACHIYA IN 1843 AS SEEN IN SAKATA-SANJÛROKUNIN-GAYÔCHOU

The Tokugawa government announced the restriction of buildings (interiors) in 1843 for Tenpou-no-kaikaku by Mizuno Tadakuni, which was found in Edo, Osaka and Kyo. But it’s not clear sufficiently in local towns.

독도주권과 국제법적 권원의 계보에 관한 연구 -일본의 독도영유권 주장의 권원을 중심으로-

독도주권과 국제법적 권원의 계보에 관한 연구 -일본의 독도영유권 주장의 권원을 중심으로-

The Existence Structure of Temple Loan Business in Premodern Japan

One of the self-help measures to secure the finances of temples in Premodern Japan is the loan project that is protected by the power of the Tokugawa Shogunate, called the “Myoumoku-kin loan . In this paper, based on the records left by the temple named the Myoho-in which was engaged in the loan at the time, it has been set an explanation of the structure of the existence of the loan. The loan agent was not delegated solely by a contract between the employee and the agent. The Myoho-in reported the selected agent to the local government, and a poll was conducted on him by the residents who would borrow the money. This was by no means a meaningless procedure, and only the passed person could be finally approved as the temple s loan agent. In this respect, the existence structure of the Myomoku-kin loan is extremely dependent on others.

Kanda Sōtei: The Shogun’s Sacred Painters and their Realm of Influence

The sacrosanct painting atelier of Kan’eiji was headed throughout the Edo period by successive generations of the holder of the name Kanda Sōtei. Despite its special mandate, it has remained largely disregarded to this day, partly due to its alleged artistic conservatism and the limited number of recognized works. Given that the atelier was affiliated with Kan’eiji, the most powerful Tendai temple during the Edo period and one of the primary temples of the Tokugawa shogunate, a consideration of the religious, and most certainly political, implications behind its establishment is urgently needed. There is evidence that the scope of production and sphere of influence of the Kanda Sōtei lineage by far exceeded what has been previously assumed. Based on newly discovered materials, this article discusses the lineage’s conservatism and classicism in relation to the deification strategy of the Tokugawa shogunate, their consolidation of power based on the introduction of a new school of Shinto and the new deity Tōshō Daigongen, and its influence on the religious visual culture of the Edo period following the financial distress of the regime during the late seventeenth century.

An Analysis of the Activity of the Tokugawa Shogunate attendants in the Nagasaki “Navy” Training

An Analysis of the Activity of the Tokugawa Shogunate attendants in the Nagasaki “Navy” Training

Twenty-first-century ecology lessons from seventeenth-century Japan: climate change, deforestation, and moral regeneration

The article sketches the views on ecology of the seventeenth-century Japanese Confucian scholar Kumazawa Banzan, concentrating on his thinking on forestry and climate change. At the same time his views suggest resonances with our twenty-first century discourse around ecology and moral leadership. Banzan applied Chinese cyclical cosmology and thought on the relation of man to nature to diagnose an ecological crisis in the exploitation of nature in his own world. He diagnosed the threat of imminent climate change and, with that, social and political upheaval. His views on political morality and material consumption were underpinned by a Neo-Confucian emphasis on the primacy of agriculture and concept of man’s position that recognized the ontological interdependence of man and nature. Human activity, particularly that of the ruler, impinged on the natural order. Towards the end of his life, he felt impelled to remonstrate against the misgovernment of the Tokugawa regime. He made radical proposals for the restoration of a materially frugal but culturally rich and politically devolved physiocratic socio-political order. Complementing his proposals for institutional reform was a concern with individual self-cultivation that stressed man’s ontological position in the natural order and the need for moral regeneration at individual and social levels. The text was subsequently published in Japanese translation (McMullen 2011). I am grateful to Professor Komuro Masamichi and Professor Ikeda Yoshihiro, his colleague in the Faculty of Economics and coordinator of the lecture series, for kind permission to publish this revised version. Many themes merely sketched here are discussed in greater detail in my Banzan biography (McMullen 1999).

Gesaku and the renegotiation of ‘civilization and enlightenment’ through illustrated news

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 set in train a major reconfiguration of not only the political structure of government but also the world of letters, affecting not just academic elites but also the demimonde literati and artists who had enjoyed various forms of patronage under the Tokugawa regime. This article examines the initiatives of early Meiji gesakusha who, in collaboration with nishikie artists such as Ochiai Yoshiiku and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, spearheaded the development of distinctive genres of illustrated news. Following the initial success of shinbun nishikie (新聞錦絵) there was the continued adaptation of this collaboration in the minor newspaper format, as seen in the Tokyo Eiri Shinbun (東京絵入新聞) established in 1875. This article explores how these early illustrated newspapers, while exemplifying proclivities with gesaku, nonetheless engaged with the government’s program of ‘civilization and enlightenment’ to provide timely commentary on contemporary social issues, as well as a critical response to the movement. Furthermore, through their serious reportage on events of national significance, they demonstrated a capacity to fulfill in great part the government’s aspirations for the functions of the press in a ‘civilized’ nation.