The Communities that Built Modern Japan The Communities that Built Modern Japan Reconsidering Japan’s economic development since the early modern period through the lens of social capital. In the late Edo period, the townspeople of the castle town of Sendai managed a form of communal property known as higakezeni. Established in 1845 as a reserve fund for times of disaster, poor harvest, and famine, it collected contributions from nearly every household in the twenty-four towns of the former castle town. The amount ranged from 2 to 200 mon per household per day, eventually producing a fund of 8,115 ryō—a considerable sum at the time. The higakezeni fund survived the turmoil of the Meiji Restoration and continued to function as communal property until 1927, helping to support Sendai’s modernization. Sendai was not an isolated case. Across Japan, communal assets that could be called “inheritances of the Edo period” often played a part in the process of modernization during and following the Meiji period. My research begins from the idea that community ties and forms of collective organization—what we now might call social capital—were important conditions for Japan’s economic development and growth. In the transition from the early modern to the modern period, local communal property was one of the major factors that created and strengthened such communities and forms of social capital. I have explored this question in a series of studies, starting with my doctoral dissertation, Fund Finance and the Formation of Regional Economies in 19th-Century Japan: The Organization of Economies through Regional Funds, through which I earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Tokyo in 2018. I later brought together part of this research in the article “The Reorganization of Communal Property and Regional Integration in Japan’s Transition to Modernity: Ownership of Early Modern Legacies and the Problems of Division and Preservation,” which received the 9th Socio-Economic History Society Prize in 2020. One area where these local communal assets seem to have been especially important was the establishment of primary schools. After the promulgation of the school system in 1872, primary schools were founded across Japan as part of a modern educational system. The speed of this expansion is striking even from a comparative historical perspective. My current research examines the economic conditions that made this rapid establishment of primary schools and spread of primary education possible. In particular, I focus on the role of communal assets and of local economic actors such as wealthy farmers, merchants, and property holders, under the theme, “The Economic Role of Local Wealth Holders in the Establishment of Primary Schools and the Spread of Primary Education in Early Meiji Japan.”
From Source-Based History to Interdisciplinary Japanese Economic History My field, economic history, analyzes and interprets historical events on the basis of economic theory. It is a highly interdisciplinary field, and it is precisely that interdisciplinary character that gives it its freedom and room for development. That is what I find so interesting about it. As an undergraduate, I studied in the Department of History at the Faculty of Letters, and my path as a researcher began in the world of historical studies. In history, one starts from the writings left behind by people of the period—that is, from primary sources—and asks, as rigorously as possible, what can be said on the basis of that evidence. If a claim cannot be supported by sources, then no theory can be applied to it. It is a source-oriented, source-first approach, or, in more contemporary terms, a data-driven or evidence-based one. Later, after entering the Graduate School of Economics and coming into contact with the world of economics, I became increasingly aware of the importance of time and long-term perspective. Economic theories are built on various assumptions, but many of those assumptions remain unspoken, even among researchers themselves. In many cases, they rest on the social structures, values, and ways of thinking of the present. If those conditions change in the future, there is no guarantee that the theories based on them will continue to hold. What, then, are the unspoken assumptions behind economic theory today? Will those theories remain valid in the future? I believe historical research has an important role to play in examining such questions. My training in historical studies has taught me to look at the conditions economists often take for granted with a certain degree of skepticism: to question them, test them, and notice what they may conceal. I see this perspective as one of my strengths. With that in mind, I hope to continue my research and teaching in economic history, a field that stands at the boundaries of economics and history even within the Graduate School of Economics.
Perspectives Gained Through International Dialogue When I first learned about the International Graduate Program in Japanese Studies (GPJS), in which researchers from a wide range of fields work together on Japan-related topics, I felt that it had a natural connection with my own work in Japanese economic history. I was especially drawn to the possibility of encountering ideas that would not necessarily emerge within my own discipline alone. At present, I am working with John D’Amico, an assistant professor at the Center for Integrated Japanese Studies, Tohoku University and a historian of Japan from the United States, on a project titled “Digitization and Integrated Research on Early Modern and Modern Japanese Economic History Materials Held by Tohoku University.” What I find especially interesting in Professor D’Amico’s work is his attempt to understand the particular features of Japanese society through comparison with the histories of Britain and the United States. Through our collaboration, I have learned a great deal from seeing what kinds of questions English-speaking researchers bring to Japanese history, what they want to know, and how they frame and discuss the issues. GPJS also provides many opportunities to speak with researchers from overseas. I think one of the real peaks of the program is that these conversations, shaped by different forms of knowledge and different values, often lead to new perspectives. The “international collaboration” in GPJS is also closely connected to another project I am currently pursuing with researchers overseas, “A Comparative Historical Study of Women’s Labor, Real Wages, and Marriage Behavior.” This project estimates women’s real wages and the gender wage gap over roughly three centuries from the Edo period to the Meiji period, and presents the results in a form that allows for international comparison. To do this, we are building a large dataset from the many surviving hōkōnin ukeshō (employment contracts for servants and workers) found throughout Japan, and analyzing them statistically. One point that has become clear through this research is that wage labor itself occupied very different positions in Britain and Japan at the time. This has led me to think that the concept of labor may need to be reconsidered not only from the standpoint of economics, but also with reference to philosophy, sociology, and history. That may be a matter for the future, but I can already see the possibility of new forms of collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. * “Digitization and Integrated Research on Early Modern and Modern Japanese Economic History Materials Held by Tohoku University” This project aims to digitize and make publicly available several important collections held by Tohoku University: microfilms of the Kemuriyama Village Documents and Imai Village Documents, held by the Faculty of Economics and used by the late Professor Emeritus Yoshiharu Nakamura in his studies of village history, and the Kotani Documents, held by the Tohoku University Library and important for understanding the kabu-nakama guild system and distribution networks in the Sendai domain. By making these materials available online, the project seeks to encourage their use by researchers in Japan and abroad, both as teaching materials and as sources for further research.
Toward a New Historical Narrative Incorporating international perspectives in order to think about Japanese history in broader terms. In Japanese-language scholarship on Japanese history, it is often said that the field has struggled to produce broad and compelling historical narratives. Marxist interpretations of history once offered one such large framework, but no comparable narrative has emerged to take its place. As a result, the field may be becoming increasingly compartmentalized, with research moving toward ever more detailed analysis of individual facts. One way to move beyond this situation, I believe, is to bring in international perspectives, rather than looking at Japan only through Japanese assumptions and values. In this respect as well, I see GPJS as a very valuable initiative. Sadako Ogata, the first Japanese person to serve as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote in a book published in 2015 that one of the problems facing contemporary Japanese society may be that “we have not been able to determine what our real challenges truly are” (Kikigaki Ogata Sadako Kaikoroku, Iwanami Shoten). I believe Japanese studies can help us recognize what the real social issues in contemporary Japan are. In that sense, it also has the potential to contribute to changing society for the better. Today, Japanese society is often described as being in decline. If we take the present situation as fixed, it becomes difficult to imagine change or to move forward with any sense of optimism. Perhaps this is because, in an increasingly complex society, it has become harder to see what the essential issues really are. Yet from a long-term perspective, the values and social systems of the present are not absolute. They can change. What matters is to question what we take for granted. Doing so allows us to grasp more clearly the central issues that lie beneath the surface. I believe this habit of questioning what seems self-evident is one of the main values of studying in a field like Japanese studies, which is both interdisciplinary and international. It is also one of the abilities that GPJS seeks to cultivate. I hope many students will develop this capacity, and I hope to continue approaching my own research with the same willingness to question what is taken for granted.
