Japan was the only non-Western nation to industrialize before 1900 and its leap into the modern era has stimulated vigorous debates among historians and social scientists. In an innovative discussion that posits the importance of physical well-being as a key indicator of living standards, Susan B. Hanley considers daily life in the three centuries leading up to the modern era in Japan. She concludes that people lived much better than has been previously understood--at levels equal or superior to their Western contemporaries. She goes on to illustrate how this high level of physical well-being...
Japan was the only non-Western nation to industrialize before 1900 and its leap into the modern era has stimulated vigorous debates among historians a...
According to the Marxist interpretation still dominant in Japanese studies, the last century and a half of the Tokugawa period was a time of economic and demographic stagnation. Professors Hanley and Yamamura argue that a more satisfactory explanation can be provided within the framework of modem economic theory, and they advance and test three important new hypotheses in this book.
The authors suggest that the Japanese economy grew throughout the Tokugawa period, though slowly by modern standards and unevenly. This growth, they show, tended to exceed the rate of population increase...
According to the Marxist interpretation still dominant in Japanese studies, the last century and a half of the Tokugawa period was a time of econom...
