Tokugawa Shogunate Research Articles

文化期における大坂目付の「遠国御用」 京都在勤時の動向を中心に

文化期における大坂目付の「遠国御用」 京都在勤時の動向を中心に

Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan by Danny Orbach

Reviewed by: Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan by Danny Orbach Antony Best (bio) Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan. By Danny Orbach. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2017. xii, 367 pages. $39.95. The topic of this volume might on the face of it appear to be a relatively familiar one: how to account for the tendency toward insubordination that bedeviled the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1930s. This is of, course, a subject on which we already have useful studies such as Richard Storry's The Double Patriots: A Study of Japanese Nationalism (Chatto & Windus, 1957) and Ben-Ami Shillony's Revolt in Japan (Princeton University Press, 1973). However, Orbach's work is by no means an exercise in repetition, for his purpose is to look more broadly at the issue of radicalism and insubordination as a consistent theme in the history of the Japanese army from its origins until the Pacific War. Orbach begins his study by locating the origins of the problem of radicalism in the shishi (men of purpose) of the 1860s who took up arms against the Tokugawa shogunate and helped to bring about the imperial restoration of 1868. He contends that the fact that insubordination in the name of a higher cause led to the birth of the Meiji regime meant there was from the start a precedent for "righteous rebellion" in modern Japan. Moreover, he argues convincingly that the lifestyle and beliefs of the shishi constituted an intoxicating brew for later generations of young men looking for adventure. In particular, he draws perceptive political and cultural parallels between those who assisted in carrying out the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and those who sought to emulate their achievement with a Showa Restoration in the 1930s. The book then proceeds through a series of well-chosen and well-written case studies, which draw on an astonishing amount of research into difficult primary sources, to present us with a detailed history of the post-1868 evolution of insubordination within the army. Some of these episodes, such as the Satsuma revolt of 1877 and the coup attempts from the 1930s, are already very familiar, but others are less so, most notably the Saga rebellion of 1874 and the army's involvement in the assassination of Queen Min of Korea in [End Page 157] 1895. Moreover, in the case of the Taisho political crisis of 1912–13, Orbach reshapes a familiar episode to allow us to see how it can be construed as an army-led nonviolent coup d'état. Orbach marshals his case studies to illustrate a number of the significant traits that played out over time. For example, he shows how those engaged in the subversion of government policy became increasingly junior in rank as time progressed, and he also maps how the existence of factions meant that, despite its outward strength, the army essentially lacked strong, coherent leadership. In order to frame his argument and explain the phenomenon of insubordination, Orbach postulates that three "bugs" compromised the successful working of civil-military relations, these being the constitutional position of the army, the drive for overseas expansion, and the vagueness of the imperial ideology. The first of these problems is familiar and well explained, for it is clear that the concept of the "Supreme Command," which gave the army general staff a free rein over operational matters, was a grave flaw. However, the latter two factors are left rather undeveloped and needed more assured handling. Also, the use of the word "bugs" rather grates; such usages can become anachronistic. In addition, the book would have benefited from describing in more detail a factor that is mentioned a few times in passing, but which is surely essential to the story—the valorization of the shishi and its consequences for army discipline. Orbach notes on pages 23–24 that from 1875 the souls of those who fought in the Boshin War of 1868–69 were enshrined at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and that this further legitimized the idea of "pure rebellion." However, as actions such as this would later backfire against the government, it would be interesting to know...

To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History by Mark Ravina

Reviewed by: To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History by Mark Ravina Alistair Swale To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History. By Mark Ravina. Oxford University Press, 2017. 328 pages. Hardcover, £21.99/ $29.95. In this expansive analysis of Japan's transformation in the mid-nineteenth century, Mark Ravina departs from more conventional studies grounded in historical, political, and economic perspectives to examine his subject through a wide historical lens. The novelty of his approach to the Meiji Restoration is especially apparent in the initial chapters, whose broad sweep takes in earlier phases of radical change such as the introduction of the Tang model of government in the seventh and eighth centuries and the national transformation initiated by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the latter sixteenth century. Ravina sees these historical precedents as illustrative of Japan's profound capacity to innovate in the face of external stimuli and, moreover, pursue a proactive and beneficial diplomatic strategy with its neighbors. This perspective is noteworthy because the relative stasis and seeming withdrawal of Japan from world affairs under the Tokugawa government belies a deeper capacity for adaptation and international engagement that has in fact been more persistent than is commonly recognized. The Restoration needs, according to the author, to be reconsidered in terms of these deeper and more persistent propensities. In their most general form they reveal themselves as, first, a capacity to innovate while nonetheless maintaining a deep sense of continuity from the past, and, second, a readiness to engage with the world—albeit with the express aim of enshrining the uniqueness of Japanese culture and society. Coining new terms, Ravina refers to these two propensities as, respectively, "radical nostalgia" and "cosmopolitan chauvinism." Though not intuitively a comfortable fit within conventional parlance, academic or otherwise, these phrases suggest an important conceptual modification to the conventional Japanese catchphrases that have most often been applied in this context—ōsei fukko (restoration of imperial rule) and wakon yōsai (Japanese spirit, Western learning). The book under review aims in large part to explicate how the author's new terminology facilitates a more nuanced analysis of Japan's development in the buildup and aftermath of the Restoration of 1868. [End Page 115] One of the great merits of this book is its commentary integrating institutional developments with broader historical and social trends. Chapter 2, on the demise of the Tokugawa shogunate, is a prime example. The discussion is at its most persuasive where it focuses on the inherent tension between the daimyo and the Tokugawa regime based in Edo. Ravina explains that stability was predicated on a degree of delegation by the shogunate to the domains (indicating a loss of direct control) coupled with a system of compulsory attendance by the daimyo in Edo. The latter kept people in their place, but at a cost to all concerned that made contributions in the national interest unattractive. This key relationship evolved through a series of reforms late in the Tokugawa era, and Ravina's explanation of these dynamics provides valuable detail and insight. The encroachment of Western imperial powers exposed the shogunate's lack of bureaucratic, military, or diplomatic means to maintain the status quo. The unraveling of the shogunal system became increasingly apparent, it seems, to astute observers including those within the shogunate, but the solution to the threat lay beyond the shogunate's grasp so long as it adhered to its founding principles. Discussion of the preconditions of the modern "nation-state," a term Ravina uses frequently, also figures prominently in this early part of the book, and indeed it structures the commentary on how figures both within the Tokugawa government and among the anti-Tokugawa forces came to understand the need to create both an integrated state apparatus and a people that could subscribe directly to it. Ravina convincingly articulates how these deeper commonalities of understanding could bring erstwhile opponents together following the Restoration despite their having been mortal enemies during the conflicts preceding and leading up to the Boshin War in 1868. Though Ravina articulates this fundamental theme well, this part of the book...

Diet of Take-hime, the adopted daughter of the Tokugawa Shogunate and her rites for avoidance of bad lack:

Diet of Take-hime, the adopted daughter of the Tokugawa Shogunate and her rites for avoidance of bad lack:

To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History by Mark Ravina

Reviewed by: To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History by Mark Ravina Steven J. Ericson (bio) To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History. By Mark Ravina. Oxford University Press, New York, 2017. xiv, 312 pages. $29.95. This outstanding book fits in with the wave of conferences, workshops, publications, and podcasts commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Meiji [End Page 423] Restoration.1 Mark Ravina has produced a work with strikingly original interpretations of the Restoration, placing it in the broad sweep of Japanese history from the seventh century on as well as in the larger context of global history. Views of the Meiji Restoration at least in the English-language literature continue to show the influence of classic modernization-school studies that portrayed the event as marking the transition from a "traditional" polity to a modern, Western-style nation-state. Ravina, however, argues cogently that understanding the Restoration requires going beyond "a false contrast between 'traditional Japan' and the 'modern Western world'": "It was not a clash between 'modern' and 'traditional' or between 'Western' and 'Japanese' but a struggle to transcend those dichotomies and to create new institutions and practices that could simultaneously evoke both Japanese uniqueness and Western progress" (pp. 4–5). For specialists, some of the arguments the author makes are not new. Several decades ago, historians such as Mark Ericson and Conrad Totman noted a point suggested by Ravina that by the late Tokugawa era the shogunate had become more progressive than its opponents and that the last shogun might well have led Japan into the modern age,2 and others have long acknowledged that the Meiji leaders initially looked to ancient imperial institutions in establishing the new government. The conventional view, however, is that the adoption of such institutions was a temporary expedient as the leaders worked out a more fully Western form of government. By contrast, Ravina convincingly presents the revival of millennium-old patterns as a conscious strategy of invoking past imperial tradition to support revolutionary change in the present, a phenomenon he terms "radical nostalgia." A prime example was the regime's claim that the Westernizing, modern innovation of universal military conscription was not a break with tradition but a return to the Nara-era formation of imperial conscript armies. The author's other major contribution is to show that, when Japanese in the nineteenth century borrowed ideas and practices from the West, they tended to view them not as "foreign" or "Western" but as "universal"—as [End Page 424] imports that could enhance Japan's own distinctive strengths in standing up to the Western powers. In one example of this tendency, which Ravina calls "cosmopolitan chauvinism," the late Tokugawa thinker Satō Nobuhiro could argue that heliocentric European astronomy, which clashed with Christian geocentrism, was more Japanese than European because of its compatibility with Japan's own creation myths and the centrality of the sun goddess Amaterasu (pp. 11, 79–80); statesmen and intellectuals would make similar claims about Japanese borrowings from the West after 1868. While emphasizing "diachronic" continuities in thought and practice between the bakumatsu and Meiji periods, Ravina also highlights "synchronic" processes of "global isomorphism" whereby the Meiji state coopted contemporary Western ideas and technologies while at the same time it drew "asynchronically" on patterns that the ancient imperial state had likewise borrowed from Tang China (pp. 9, 16). To some extent, the author recasts views advanced by Albert Craig and others more than half a century ago that the imperial forces overthrew the shogunate in the name of traditional values and then carried out a revolution in response to the external threat of Western imperialism rather than to long-term processes of internal decay. The tradition that Ravina underscores, however, represented not so much the positive values of the Tokugawa era, which cannot fully explain the revolution that followed the overthrow of the shogunate, as the institutions of the seventh and eighth centuries, when Japan's polity and society similarly underwent a dramatic transformation. Yet, in emphasizing the change in the international environment as the factor that "destroyed the Tokugawa regime" (p...

정한론, 혹은 방편으로서의 ‘조선’ - 幕末期 対馬藩의 경우를 중심으로 -

정한론은 ‘정한’ 그 자체를 목적으로 삼았던 것일까? 메이지 유신을 전후한 시기의 관련 언설들을 분석해 보면, 실제로는 정파별로 전혀 상이한 정략적, 혹은 정책적 목표들을 담아 넣고 있음을 알 수 있다. 그리고 이런 와중에서 정한, 즉 조선이라는 요소는, 오히려 그런 목표들을 위한 ‘방편’으로서 활용되었던 것이다. 그렇다면 왜, 또 어떻게 이런 방편은, 이즈음 일본의 조야에 이토록 폭넓게 자리 잡게 되었을까? 다시 말해 정한이란 잠재적인 사상요소는, 구체적으로 어떤 과정을 거쳐 정략이나 정책상에서의 실제 활용에까지 이르게 된 것일까. 이하에서는, 쓰시마 측이 양국 관계에서 자신들이 점하고 있는 중요성을 부각시키기 위해 어떤 일련의 위기론들을 안출해 냈는지, 그것이 마침내는 “조선의 위기”에 대한 선제적 대응론으로 변용 되었는지를 분석하였다.

幕末維新期 나가사키 ‘해군’ 전습과 幕臣 : 참가자의 행보 분석을 중심으로

幕末維新期 나가사키 ‘해군’ 전습과 幕臣 : 참가자의 행보 분석을 중심으로

Anti-Kirishitan Surveillance in Early Modern Japan

From 1614 to 1873 Christianity was outlawed in Japan. The Tokugawa Shogunate, which ruled Japan for most of this period, built rigorous and complicated systems of surveillance in order to monitor their population’s religious habits. This paper seeks to describe the evolution of Edo period (1603–1868) anti-Christian religious surveillance. The first two sections of the paper explore the development of surveillance under the first three Tokugawa leaders. The following sections focus on the evolution of these systems (the recruitment of informants, temple registration, the composition of registries, and tests of faith) in subsequent periods and includes some short passages from previously untranslated contemporaneous documents. Finally, the paper offers some thoughts on the efficacy of anti-Christian surveillance, arguing that the toleration of the existence of hidden communities resulted from changes in Christian behaviour that made them harder to discover and a willingness on the part of the authorities to tolerate illegal activity due to economic disincentive and a reduction in the threat that Christianity posed.

Philology and Kundoku—the Japanese Reading of Chinese Literature in Edo Period

<p>江戶幕府立朱子學為官學，但在此學術主線發展的同時，也產生許多回應朱子學的其他儒學門派，促使相關領域的興起。同時，漢學作為一種外來學術，歷來皆有轉譯的需求，翻譯過程中除了解義之外也得解音，基於如此背景，江戶時代之「韻學」也呈現極為活躍的狀態。本論文試圖蒐集江戶儒學著作中關於音韻的記事及論述，爬梳漢學家推廣音韻之學的心態與方法，並探究他們如何讓唐音（當時日本人所認知的中國語）與漢文訓讀進行連結，並比較訓讀法與直讀法的差異。</p> <p>根據本論文之考察，即使徂徠學派等學者大力推廣唐音，以求擺脫漢文訓讀時的翻譯困難，然此種大力推廣唐音的心態與江戶漢學逐步日本化的趨勢有所衝突，就結果來看，唐音的推廣並未改變訓讀傳統。但江戶漢學家重視唐音之事實乃不容忽視，文雄甚至將唐音納入《韻鏡》的分析格局，雖促使唐音日本化，但也使唐音更容易被日本人所利用。總言之，江戶的經典詮釋史上，各家學者對音韻所持的態度與方法，可看作是回應儒學需求的一種學術對話。</p> <p> </p><p>Tokugawa shogunate established the neo-Confucianism as the government school, which forced some other schools to argue the way of Chinese literature and Chinese philosophy. In the meantime, these Chinese documents they had reading, needed to be translated or interpreted into Japanese form, not only with the Syntax but the pronunciation, so the philology study was also popular in the Edo period. The most important translating method to the Japanese reading of Chinese literature called kundoku（訓讀，くんどく），which composed many documents for us to observe how scholars in Edo period exhibited their ideas of syntax and pronunciation in the kundoku. Therefore, we can understand how the philology and kundoku methods had been changed in Edo period.</p> <p>There are some evidences which exhibited the to-on（唐音）, a kind of Chinese pronunciation which understand by Edo Japanese people, was once recommended by some scholars. However, the kundoku has still kept its traditional way in the end, which means a Japanese people could read Chinese literatures without needing to know any Chinese syntax and pronunciation.</p> <p> </p>

BRUSH TALK AS THE ‘LINGUA FRANCA’ OF DIPLOMACY IN JAPANESE–KOREAN ENCOUNTERS, c. 1600–1868

AbstractThe study of early modern diplomatic history has in recent decades expanded beyond a bureaucratic, state-centric focus to consider the processes and personal interactions by which international relations were maintained. Scholars have begun to consider, among other factors, the role of diplomatic gifts, diplomatic hospitality, and diplomatic culture. This article contributes to this discussion from an East Asian perspective by considering the role of ‘brush talk’ – written exchanges of classical, literary Chinese – during diplomatic missions from the Korean Chosŏn court to the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Drawing upon official records, personal diaries, and illustrations, I argue that brush talk was not an official part of diplomatic ceremony and that brushed encounters with Korean officials even extended to people of the townsman classes. Brush talk was as much about ritual display, calligraphic art, and drawing upon a shared storehouse of civilized learning as it was about communicating factual content through language. These visual, performative aspects of brush talk in East Asian diplomacy take it beyond the realm of how alingua francais usually conceived, adding to the growing body of scholarship on how this concept applies to non-Western histories.

家近良樹著『西郷隆盛と幕末維新の政局―体調不良問題から見た薩長同盟・征韓論政変―』

家近良樹著『西郷隆盛と幕末維新の政局―体調不良問題から見た薩長同盟・征韓論政変―』

家近良樹著『ある豪農一家の近代─幕末・明治・大正を生きた杉田家─』

家近良樹著『ある豪農一家の近代─幕末・明治・大正を生きた杉田家─』

Jeong Sun-chik’s 􋺷Yukyu Yeoneui􋺸 and Grassroots Education

􋺷육유연의􋺸는 명나라 태조 홍무제가 1388년 민중을 교화하기 위하여 제작ㆍ공포한 칙찬서 『敎民榜文』의 「六諭」에 청나라 학자 范鋐이 각 항목마다 해설을 붙여 간행한 책이다. 이후 이 책은 琉球의 학자이자 정치가인 정순칙에 의해 1708년 유구로 전래되었다. 그는 이 책이 당시 중국에 조공하던 유구인들의 중국어 학습에 유용할 뿐만 아니라, 유구의 풍속을 淳化할 서민교육에도 적합하다고 판단했다. 그러나 『육유연의』는 중국어 학습서 보다는 도덕서로 더 많은 역할을 하게 되었다. 따라서 유구서민들을 교육하고자 했던 정순칙의 애민사상과 노력은 유구인들에게 ‘나고성인’으로 불리며 그 공적을 인정받았다. 한편 『육유연의』는 유구가 사츠마에 헌상하고, 다시 사츠마에서 일본 에도막부 8대장군 도쿠가와 요시무네에게도 헌상되었다. 『육유연의』를 받은 요시무네는 당대의 저명한 학자들에게 간편한 해설판을 만들도록 했다. 그런 과정을 거쳐 『육유연의』는 당시 교육기관인 藩校와 테라꼬야(寺子屋)를 통해 교육서이자 도덕서로 일본 전역에 퍼져 에도막부의 서민교육에도 지대한 영향을 미쳤다.In 1388, the founder and emperor Hongwu of the Ming dynasty published and proclaimed 『Gyomin Bangmun』, a book of rescript style that aimed to enlighten the public. One of the sections of that book is 「Yukyu」. And 『Yukyu Yeoneui』, published by Fan-hung as a scholar of the Ching nation, is a book that provides explanations of all the items of「Yukyu」. In 1708, the explanatory book was introduced to Yugu by Jeong Sun-chik who was the then scholar and politician of the kingdom. He thought 『Yukyu Yeoneui』 would be not only good to teach Chinese to people of Yugu that was a tributary state of China, but also suitable as a means of grassroots education to purify the customs of the kingdom. In Yugu, however, 『Yukyu Yeoneui』 played a role as moral guides more than Chinese language instructions. For his efforts to educate the general public with the guides based on profound affection for people, Jeong Sun-chik was fully recognized by people of Yugu to be called as ‘saint of Nago’. In the meantime, 『Yukyu Yeoneui』 was presented from Yugu to Satsuma and then to Tokugawa Yoshimune, the 8th shogun of the Edo shogunate regime. Youshimune made the then distinguished scholars to create a more brief explanatory version of that book. Following the move, 『Yukyu Yeoneui』 was distributed as a text for education and morals across Japan through its educational establishments like Beongyo and Terakoya, greatly influencing grassroots education by the Edo shogunate regime.

The Tenpō-Era (1830–1844) Map of Matsumae-no-shima and the Institutionalization of Tokugawa Cartography

ABSTRACTJapan’s early modern Tokugawa government (1603−1868) sponsored a series of projects of national mapping. The Matsumae family, ruling what is now Hokkaido, were loosely incorporated into these projects. It was only during the last of these, in the Tenpō era (1830−1848), that their lands were represented in the same manner as the rest of Japan because the central government made the final Matsumae-no-shima map. This article examines the production of this final official map of Japan’s north to argue that the Tokugawa’s institutional mapping made this region part of the nation through its own mapping framework, distinct from the cartographic forms with which national or imperial states are usually associated.

Hostile Natives: Violence in the Histories of American and Japanese Nativism

This article shows how inaccurate the category of nativism—derived from American historiography—is when applied to the Japanese context prevailing when National Learning (Kokugaku) was flourishing. It argues that violence is not a distinctive feature of Kokugaku and suggests that the association between nativism and Kokugaku in Japanese studies is flawed. This is further complicated by examining instances of physical violence directed at foreigners and Japanese alike, which surged during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate, when the slogan “revere the emperor and expel the barbarian” (sonnō-jō’i) resulted in extreme violence and assassinations. Victims of such attacks were not limited to Westerners, since Katsu Kaishū was almost killed by Sakamoto Ryōma. While significant portions of the Japanese elite began to advocate opening the country (kaikoku), many among them remained divided in their attitude toward Western learning and its necessity. This leads to the conclusion that Kokugaku was not an example of Tokugawa nativism, let alone the example of Tokugawa nativism, and that it would be better to develop a hybrid category of nativism applicable to that era. Such category results from combining Ralph Linton’s concept of nativism with John Higham’s characterization of nativism as marked by extreme hostility.

Stabilize the peasant economy: Governance of foreclosure by the shogunate

Regulation of foreclosure in a financial crisis has been a centuries-long conundrum to authorities. Japan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had free financial, land and coercive labor markets. It raised the growth but resulted in recurrent financial crises. Therefore, the Edo shogunate, 1600–1868, banned coercive labor, protected peasants’ property right and regulated the farmland-collateral loans. Seeking an appropriate degree of regulation, the shogunate first banned foreclosure and invited a credit shrink. Then the shogunate introduced legislation to legalize foreclosure of pledged farmland as clarifying the rights of borrowers. The regulation asymmetrically lowered interest rates for timely repayment.

The International Situation in East Asia and the Establishment of a Modern Army and Modern Warfare in Japan: The Memorandum of Takashima Shūhan

Abstract During the Tokugawa bakufu, Japan’s foreign policy was under set conditions, generally known as sakoku, meaning ‘closed country’. However, the existing regime was not fully closed to the outside world. Contact with foreigners in Nagasaki, Tsushima, and Ryūkyū Islands meant that the country was not completely isolated, but rather experienced a situation in which government policy was aimed at achieving strict control over all contact with the outside world, as part of a larger strategy to monopolize all foreign relations. This paper examines the ideas of Takashima Shirōtayu Shūhan (1798–1866), one of the early Japanese reformers, who argued for the modernization of Japan. Beginning in the 1830s, a Nagasaki bakufu official, Takashima Shūhan, began importing flintlock pistols, known as gewehr rifles, from the Netherlands. Additionally, through the Dutch at Dejima, Takashima managed to obtain cannons, field guns, and mortars, in doing so highlighting the importance of the modernization of the artillery forces of the bakufu army. In September 1840, Takashima Shūhan completed his memorandum, which was sent to the bakufu top administers. On 27 June 1841, Takashima was permitted to undertake the first modern Western military demonstration in Tokumarugahara (an area north of the capital city, Edo). He was heavily criticized by many, including bugyō Torii Tadateru, Torii Tadateru 鳥居忠耀 (1796–1873), metsuke 目付 (censor or inspector) and minami machi bugyō 南町奉行 (magistrate of the southern part of Edo) in the bakufu administration, was one of most active figures during the time of the Tenpo reforms, well known for his actions against people who had a strong interest in Western culture and military arts. and was placed under investigation and house arrest on charges of subversion and conspiracy. Takashima’s memorandum requires careful study in order to discover the reasons for the bakufu’s response, which must also include a discussion of the Japanese financial situation at that time.

The Significance of the Meiji Restoration

The year 2018 marks the end of the 260-year rule by the Tokugawa Shogunate and the start of a new government headed by the Emperor. The term “Meiji Restoration” is often used narrowly to refer to the political events of 1868, which is why the 150th anniversary is observed this year. More generally, however, the term often refers to the series of changes that occurred after the new government was established, including Japan’s opening to the world, abolition of feudal domains and the samurai class, establishment of the modern Cabinet system in 1885, and proclamation of the Meiji Constitution in 1889 and the opening of the Parliament in 1890. In this article, the author uses the term in this broader sense.

Editorial Preface

Editorial Preface David L. Howell One of my side projects is editing one volume of a new edition of The Cambridge History of Japan (CHJ). Depending on what one thinks of it and its predecessor, the new edition’s three volumes will supersede, complement, or perhaps just pale in comparison with the six volumes of the original CHJ, published between 1988 and 1999. Reading Pamela Crossley’s review essay of The Cambridge History of China (CHC) in this issue of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies has me thinking about the nature and purpose of the Cambridge histories. I spent my academic adolescence in the shadow of the Cambridge histories of both Japan and China. I did my graduate studies at Princeton University, home to the CHC and its lead editor, Denis Twitchett, as well as many contributors, including Willard Peterson, Twitchett’s de facto successor as head of the project. My PhD adviser, Marius Jansen, was both a general editor of the CHJ and the editor of the volume on the nineteenth century.1 I played a small supporting role in the editing of that volume: I helped to compile the index, caught a major gaffe in the proofs, and voted for “bakufu” 幕府 (over Bakufu or bakufu) to refer to what I now always call the Tokugawa shogunate. I was a compliant adolescent, more inclined to revere the Founding Fathers of Japanese Studies than pull them down off their plinths. Even during my occasional sullen-teenager moments, when I launched into marxisant rants about methods and presumptions, I overlooked omissions that jump out at even my greenest graduate students when they look at CHJ today. And some of the omissions I did notice— the failure to treat gender as a useful category of historical analysis, for example—were just making the transition from niche concern to common sense as the first CHJ volumes appeared.2 Given that the CHJ essays were all commissioned before 1978, I suppose it is no surprise that women wrote only five of the seventy-seven chapters in the [End Page 303] entire CHJ series—none in the volume I worked on. The long gestation period meant, moreover, that many of the essays were stale or even downright outdated at the time of publication, the important perspectives of scholars a generation or two removed from the Founding Fathers’ disregarded entirely. My fellow editors and I hope that our diverse group of current contributors, writing on a tight schedule, will help us avoid some of the problems that plagued the first iteration of the CHJ. I must confess, however, that we continue to wrestle with a question at the core of Crossley’s critique of the CHC: What is the point of a Cambridge history? Is “the primary objective of the present series . . . to put before the English-reading audience as complete a record of Japanese history as possible,” as the general editors of the first CHJ put it?3 I doubt that any of my collaborators would think to put it that way. So what do we as authors and editors hope our readers will get out of the books? Who are our readers, anyway? Many authors of the first CHJ seem to imagine the reader as an outsider to the field in need of a quick (well, not too quick—some of the chapters are close to a hundred pages long!) and intelligent overview of a period or a topic. Their deeply embedded arguments are clearest to those who already know the field well and can read between the lines of their just-the-facts-ma’am prose. I suppose we imagine a similar reader—a colleague in another field or a graduate student trying to contextualize a monograph—but I hope the new CHJ chapters will put their arguments closer to the fore and aim explicitly to point scholarship in new directions, even as they remain as readable and reasonably comprehensive as their predecessors. Footnotes 1. The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 5: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Marius B. Jansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 2. Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91.5 (1986): 1053...

Tracing the Itinerant Path: Jishū Nuns of Medieval Japan by Caitilin J. Griffiths

Reviewed by: Tracing the Itinerant Path: Jishū Nuns of Medieval Japan by Caitilin J. Griffiths Sybil Thornton (bio) Tracing the Itinerant Path: Jishū Nuns of Medieval Japan. By Caitilin J. Griffiths. University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 2016. xvi, 214 pages. $65.00. One of the facts of life is the small size of the research communities in and out of Japan dedicated to the Jishū (時宗, Time Sect) and the concomitant, comparatively small size of the output of research, especially in Western languages. The Jishū had almost been forgotten in scholarship by the 1970s; its first Japanese scholars came from drama (Kanai Kiyomitsu) and the Jōdo sect (Ōhashi Shunnō), and their influence still casts a long shadow. In the West, the work of scholars, apparently all Anglophone, is represented in dissertations available online and in journal articles and book chapters. Their research has included studies of Ippen Chishin (1239–89) and popular religion, the sociohistorical development of the Jishū, the relations of the second patriarch with warrior patrons, and the relationship between the harem of the Tokugawa shoguns and the divorce temple and convent Mantokuji. Now, however, there are not enough active scholars to put together a conference panel: James Foard has retired; Sybil Thornton has retired; Todd Brown has left academe; Diana Wright has died. The publication of Caitilin Griffiths’s revision of her dissertation is the first good news we have had in a long time: it is the first monograph focusing on the Ippen school of Pure Land Buddhism published in English since 1999 and only the third ever. Griffiths’s purpose in writing this book is to recover the history of women in Japanese popular religious movements in order to counter the dominant paradigm of Buddhism and its focus on monasticism, founders, rituals, doctrines, and texts, which tends to represent Buddhism as an almost exclusively male domain. Her topic is very narrow: the role of female jishū (時衆, practitioners of chanting the Name of Amida Buddha) during the fourteenth century. Over an introduction and four chapters, Griffiths [End Page 165] takes the reader through the nenbutsu (invocation of Amida’s name) and hijiri (Buddhist practitioners outside the temples) movements that were the precursors to the Jishū, the gendering of space in Jishū temples, women’s roles in the multiple practice halls (dōjō) in Kyoto, and the changes in the order’s attitude through the Tokugawa period (1603–1867) and after. Although most of her sources come from those held by the Jishū, she makes clear that not all jishū were Jishū or their precursors in the Yugyō school, the main group claiming Ippen as founder and continuing his itinerant and mendicant mission of distributing amulets imprinted with the invocation of Amida’s name. Indeed, not all jishū were of the Ippen school, itinerant, male, or celibate. Griffiths draws direct parallels between the general fluidity of society in the fourteenth century, jishū groups in general, and the activities of women in those groups: the chaos caused by the civil war between the Northern and Southern Courts (Nanbokuchō, 1336–92); the expansion of travel and pilgrimage; the developing use of coins and other, private business transactions; and the development of markets in the provinces. Many mendicant-itinerant groups took to the road to preach the invocation of Amida’s name in the many places large numbers of people were to be found: temples, shrines, markets, and army camps. Since women were found in these places as merchants, pilgrims, temple fundraisers, and entertainers, their participation in itinerant jishū groups was no anomaly. That is, the appearance and activities of female jishū lie at the intersection of several social developments: economic, religious, and even medical. Women were part and parcel of the Ippen-school jishū from the time of Ippen himself. Letters from the heads of the main line of the Ippen school and other documents (death registers, illustrated scrolls, temple architecture) make clear that women lived and practiced together with men and even had specific positions in the organization of the itinerant missions. It is also clear that the documentation provides evidence of early and continuing concerns with socializing jishū to the discipline of accepting the head of...