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Changes in Japanese Commerce in the Tokugawa Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

E. S. Crawcour
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Extract

The development of commerce and the rise of a merchant class in Tokugawa Japan have deservedly received considerable attention from both Japanese and Western scholars. In Japan that interest would seem to have been prompted by the problem of the rôle of the pre-Restoration merchant class in the development of the modern capitalist Japanese economy. The study of this problem was characterized by a long controversy in which the Tokugawa merchants were depicted as either “progressive” or “feudalistic,” depending on the historical philosophy of the participants. The argument was conducted at a high level of generality and on both sides within frameworks derived from the leading European (mainly German) schools of economic history. For some time neither side seems to have doubted the applicability of these frameworks to Japan's experience, but the controversy did eventually lead to valuable detailed studies of Tokugawa commerce and to attempts to interpret Japan's economic development in its own terms. Among the first to do this were the members of the so-called “Kyoto School” under Professor E. Honjō.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , August 1963 , pp. 387 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1963

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References

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20 I have excluded loans to other branches of the Kōnoike family which were more in the nature of subscriptions of capital. Conversions from kamme to ryō are at the rate of exchange used in the accounts for the year in question.

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