The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan [Paperback]

Thomas C. Smith (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Univ Microfilms Intl (June 1959)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804705313
• ISBN-13: 978-0804705318
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #398,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Succinct and Literate, June 17, 2008

By 

Lynn Hoffman, author:The Short Course in Beer (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

The Tokugawa Shogunate consolidated its power by making surveys of the land under its control and tieing the peasant population to the land. The surveys also allowed overlords to collect taxes directly and to remove the lower-ranking warriors from the villages and retain them in castle towns.

In one stroke, a major source of political instability was eliminated and the structure of social relations in rural japan set for the next 250 years. When Japan modernized in the nineteenth century, the complex system of family obligations by which land was exploited laid the ground work for the mechanisms of social change that brought the country so quickly into the industrial world.

This is a brilliant and beautifully written description of the role that these agricultural arrangements played in that modernization.

Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG