Ordinary Economies in Japan: A Historical Perspective, 1750-1950Tetsuo Najita explores a powerful theme in the economic thought and practice of ordinary citizens in late Tokugawa and early modern Japan. He examines commonersÕ writings on the virtues of commerce, the reconstruction of villages, and groups offering credit and loans, particularly the traditional cooperative, the ko, which citizens created to save one another in times of famine and fiscal emergency without turning to their government. The alternative genealogy of early Japanese capitalism that emerges is based on cooperative action, whose motive for profit was combined with a concern for social well-being. NajitaÕs discussion centers on the relationship of economics, ethics, and the epistemological premise that nature must serve as the first principle of all knowledge, and he illuminates comparative issues of poverty, capitalism, and modernity. |
Contents
Commonsense Knowledge | 20 |
The Ko as Organizational Consciousness | 60 |
Work as Ethical Practice | 104 |
Hotoku and Modernizing the Nation | 141 |
The Mujin Company | 175 |
A Fragmented Discourse | 210 |
Notes | 239 |
| 261 | |
| 273 | |
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Common terms and phrases
agreement agricultural basic Buddhist bundo capital Chonin commerce commoners Confucianism contract cooperative countryside credit-and-loan cultural daimyo democracy deposits domainal economic Ekken emergency ethical famine farmers Fukuzawa Fukuzawa Yukichi fund goshi kaisha Heaven Hirata Hotoku movement household human Ibid idea individual industrial intellectual Japan Japanese Kaibara Ekken Kaiho Seiryo kaisha Kaitokudo kenkyu kumiai kyokai language late Tokugawa mean Meiji era Meiji ishin Meiji period merchants Ministry Miura Baien modern moral Mori Shizuro Morioka moyai mujin companies mutual aid mutual loan Najita nature needs Nihon keizai Ninomiya Sontoku Ogyu Sorai one’s ordinary organized Osaka participants people’s person political practice prefectural principle production profit reform regime regional rice savings savings-and-loan scholars Schulze-Delitzsch Sesshin shakai shiho Shin’yo Shinagawa shiso shisoshi Shomin kin’yu social society sogo ginko Sorai Taga taikei tanomoshi texts tion Tokugawa period Tokyo Tsuzoku keizai bunko University Ushubetsu village virtue Yanagida