Organizer and Chair: Constantine N. Vaporis University of Maryland Baltimore County
Discussant: Henry Smith, Columbia University
In the mid 1980's Japanese scholars "rediscovered" the city. In particular they trained their historical eyes on Edo, the largest of the early modern period's urban centers, resulting in what observers dubbed the "Edo boom." While stimulated in part by the attention being focused on the 400th anniversary of Edo as a castle town in 1990, the boom has not ended; a great deal of valuable research continues to be produced. Unfortunately, the boom in Japan was not replicated in North America; nonetheless, a number of young scholars there are now committed to the study of Edo and other cities.
The purpose of this panel is to explore some of the diversity of approaches being taken by scholars on both sides of the Pacific to the study of urban society in Edo now that the boom is a decade old. The panelists are two Japanese scholars (one an archaeologist) and two professors working in North America, one American and one Korean. Tanaka Yuko opens the panel. Her paper, "Urban Lifestyles in Edo as Seen Through Textiles," reflects the growing concern of historians with material culture, and opens new ground by focusing on the image of urban society in Edo as reflected in textiles.
Based on information from Sensoji diaries (Sensoji nikki) that are used for the first time by a foreign scholar, Nam lin Hur's paper, "Kasei Culture and Sensoji Sakariba," explores various dimensions of popular culture that flourished at a religious site of Edo in the late Tokugawa period and assesses its significance in the daily life of Edo residents in an effort to integrate cultural studies into the social history of Edo. The final two papers are both concerned in part with life within the confines of the domainal compounds (yashiki),which comprised some 40% of the urban landscape of Edo. Kobiki Harunobu, an archaeologist with much field experience, introduces to a Western audience for the first time the findings of the archaeological excavations of Tokyo's Edo substructrue since the late 1970s in "Studying the History of Edo: The Contribution of Archaeology." The results of his field work, and that of other archaeologists of Edo, have greatly informed the work of historians (such as Tanaka and Vaporis). In the final paper, "Tour of Duty: Domainal Samurai and the 'Edo Experience,'" Constantine Vaporis employs heretofore little used source materials for urban history, the personal diaries of domainal samurai, to examine the lifestyles (e.g., consumptive patterns, recreational activities, scholarly and cultural pursuits ) of bushi in Edo on a tour of duty with their daimyo lord on the alternate attendance (sankin kotai).
Yuko Tanaka, Hosei University
During the seventeenth century, the spread of cotton and the trade in silk greatly changed the lifestyle of the Japanese people. In 1615, about 200,000 kilograms of raw silk were imported into the country, and in 1630 that figure rose to about 240,000 kilograms. In these years, the raw silk-used in many types of textiles-was woven, dyed, and painted. It was the first period in which the people of every social class became interested in clothing and textiles, and bought them in great quantity.
Mitsui Echigoya handled various kinds of imported textiles and became one of the biggest merchants in Japan. Echigoya changed the way of selling, and people could buy any size of textile with cash, instead of on credit, as had been the custom; busy samurai could get their clothing sewn from chosen fabrics in just a few hours. Textiles, which were an expression of the urban lives of people, also changed the way of paintings. Every variety of clothing was depicted in screen paintings and ukiyoe prints; and very often the producers of these woodblock prints actually made their business as advertisements for clothing, too. At the beginning, the clothing was from foreign countries like China, Korea, India, Indonesia, as well as from Europe. The urban life of cotton and silk began as an exotic item mainly of Southeast Asian origin. The most popular pattern in the Edo period and the most famous symbol of urban chic was stripes, which was called shima in Japanese, meaning the islands of Southeast Asian countries. The great trade of the seventeenth century greatly influenced the lifestyles of people in the big cities, and that is the theme that will be explored in this paper.
Nam lin Hur, University of British Columbia
The paper will explore the ambivalent nature of Sensoji popular culture in the Bunka Bunsei Eras, sacred and profane, on the basis of information mainly from Sensoji diaries, in search of a new direction of the social history of Edo.
The first part of the paper will briefly examine the formation of popular worship, Kannon worship in particular, in connection with the development of a money economy, the social conditions of Edo, and the religious traditions of Japan. The second part will examine the range of popular culture that prospered in the Sensoji area that included street markets, misemono shows, and entertainments that nurtured the daily life of Edo residents. The third part will assess the Sensoji culture that represents a characteristic of Japanese religious culture in general and a historical orientation of late Edo culture in particular, and relate it to the changing paradigm of the late Edo period culture.
By assessing the cultural life of the Edo residents in the context of the changing social structure of Edo in the Kasei Eras, I will suggest that the Sensoji sakariba culture not only met the cultural demand of Edoites but also furthered the advance of social stratification in late Tokugawa Japan.
Harunobu Kobiki, International Christian University, Japan
Until quite recently, archaeology contributed little to the study of the Edo period culture. The long reluctance of archaeologists to become involved with this period can be attributed to the widely held belief that earlier periods-the pre-, proto-, and early historic-were the only proper domains for archaeology. Serious archaeological study of Edo only began about two decades ago, but since then it has gained increased attention, resulting in a soaring number of site reports, research articles, and scholarly meetings. These developments also caught the attention of the mass media, who appropriated archaeological research in their creation of an "Edo boom."
Most of the artifacts from Edo sites consist of utensils abandoned in the course of daily use; some of them were also buried as a result of disasters like fires and floods. Most of these artifacts would not be considered to be of museum quality, but in the sense that they represent decisions about acquisition, use, and disposal, they are encoded with an enormous amount of information about the daily lives of the citizens of the city.
When a sufficient amount of materials are gathered, and research networks between different fields become fully operational, holistic studies of the city of Edo will become possible. Archaeological methods can be used for establishing an objective chronology of material culture, ranging from chopsticks to roof tiles. The evidence can also be utilized to trace the movement of commodities between production and consumption areas.
Constantine N. Vaporis, University of Maryland Baltimore County
The alternate attendance (sankin kotai) system was a political mechanism of elite circulation in early modern Japan. It brought samurai from the two hundred odd domains to the Tokugawa bakufu's administrative center in Edo on a tour of duty to serve their lords (daimyo), who were, depending on their rank, required to alternate residence between their castle towns and Edo every six months or year. A rotation system gave many of the domainal samurai a turn at the experience of traveling to, and living in, Edo, which was the largest urban center in the world for most of the eighteenth century. The lord of a domain such as Tosa brought with him to Edo as many as 2,800 men; these were in addition to the permanent staff dwelling in the various yashiki (domainal compounds).
This paper will examine the lives of domainal samurai in Edo; official responsibilities were rarely time consuming, leaving them with much spare time on their hands. Through the use of the personal diaries-many of them unpublished, in manuscript form-kept by Edo based retainers from Tosa, Wakayama, and Hachinohe domains, the paper will examine the consumptive patterns, recreational activities, as well as the scholarly and cultural pursuits of these samurai on their tours of duty and try to assess the meaning of their experience living in the country's most important urban center. In doing so, the paper seeks to broaden our understanding of samurai life and to explore the ways in which one of the most significant Tokugawa institutions impacted the social and cultural history of the city of Edo.
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