Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps, tables, and figures
- Acknowledgments
- Dates and units of measurement used in the text
- Maps
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The geography and politics of seventeenth-century Tosa
- 3 Creating a crisis in Tosa, 1680–1787
- 4 The decline and restoration of domain finances
- 5 Voices of dissatisfaction and change: The petition box
- 6 Imagined economies: Merchants and samurai
- 7 Declining service
- 8 Cooking up a country: Sugar, eggs, and gunpowder, 1759–1868
- 9 Conclusion
- Glossary of terms and manuscript document titles used in the text
- Sources for figures and tables
- Works and documents cited
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps, tables, and figures
- Acknowledgments
- Dates and units of measurement used in the text
- Maps
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The geography and politics of seventeenth-century Tosa
- 3 Creating a crisis in Tosa, 1680–1787
- 4 The decline and restoration of domain finances
- 5 Voices of dissatisfaction and change: The petition box
- 6 Imagined economies: Merchants and samurai
- 7 Declining service
- 8 Cooking up a country: Sugar, eggs, and gunpowder, 1759–1868
- 9 Conclusion
- Glossary of terms and manuscript document titles used in the text
- Sources for figures and tables
- Works and documents cited
- Index
Summary
The development of the modern nation-state of Japan is based, in part, upon common belief in and support of a nationally organized political economy. Kokueki thought as developed in Japanese domains in the eighteenth century was the origin of such belief. The word kokueki, meaning “prosperity of the country,” was a neologism in eighteenth-century Japanese – the key term in a newly developing mercantilist economic thought and ideology (kokueki shisō) of many domainal states in Japan of the late Edo period. Because it was a protonational vision of economic organization, kokueki played a highly influential role in the creation and development of the Meiji period (1868–1911) nation-state of Japan, and continues to resonate in modern times.
As this book will demonstrate, kokueki thought played importantly in the latter half of the Edo period, justifying a great proliferation of domainal economic initiatives. Tokushima domain became a famous producer of indigo, Aizu domain of lacquerware, and Matsue domain of ginseng during the eighteenth century, all revealing a high degree of domain government involvement in the development of these industries under the bannerhead “Prosperity of the Country.” A key issue is that the “country” in each case referred to the domainal country (ryōgoku, okuni) and not to the whole of the Japanese archipelago. Japan was undergoing a process of linguistic and cultural unification in the Edo period, but the space of the archipelago included a collection of many states that were individually strengthening their nature as countries in the realm of economic policy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mercantilism in a Japanese DomainThe Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa, pp. 1 - 31Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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