The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion,1590-1800 First Edition
by
Brett L. Walker
(Author)
| Brett L. Walker (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
ISBN-13: 978-0520248342
ISBN-10: 0520248341
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This model monograph is the first scholarly study to put the Ainu―the native people living in Ezo, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago―at the center of an exploration of Japanese expansion during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the height of the Tokugawa shogunal era. Inspired by "new Western" historians of the United States, Walker positions Ezo not as Japan's northern "frontier" but as a borderland or middle ground. By framing his study between the cultural and ecological worlds of the Ainu before and after two centuries of sustained contact with the Japanese, the author demonstrates with great clarity just how far the Ainu were incorporated into the Japanese political economy and just how much their ceremonial and material life―not to mention disease ecology, medical culture, and their physical environment―had been infiltrated by Japanese cultural artifacts, practices, and epidemiology by the early nineteenth century.
Walker takes a fresh and original approach. Rather than presenting a mere juxtaposition of oppression and resistance, he offers a subtle analysis of how material and ecological changes induced by trade with Japan set in motion a reorientation of the whole northern culture and landscape. Using new and little-known material from archives as well as Ainu oral traditions and archaeology, Walker poses an exciting new set of questions and issues that have yet to be approached in so innovative and thorough a fashion.
Walker takes a fresh and original approach. Rather than presenting a mere juxtaposition of oppression and resistance, he offers a subtle analysis of how material and ecological changes induced by trade with Japan set in motion a reorientation of the whole northern culture and landscape. Using new and little-known material from archives as well as Ainu oral traditions and archaeology, Walker poses an exciting new set of questions and issues that have yet to be approached in so innovative and thorough a fashion.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"One of the book's great strengths is the author's attention to detail, grounded in a mastery of the relevant primary sources, some of them published, but many available only in manuscript form. The writing is a model of clarity and logical exposition, and the text is further enhanced by a large number of maps and illustrations showing different aspects of Ainu life. The book is highly informative and consistently interesting, and will be read with pleasure by all students of Japanese history."--"Monumenta Nipponica
About the Author
Brett L. Walker is Assistant Professor of History at Montana State University, Bozeman.
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Product details
- Publisher : University of California Press; First edition (February 21, 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 344 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0520248341
- ISBN-13 : 978-0520248342
- Item Weight : 1.1 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #506,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #186 in Asian History (Books)
- #487 in Anthropology (Books)
- #868 in Japanese History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2022
Bought this book to write a paper about the wars of Koshamain, Shakushain and the Kunashir islands. The history is very detailed and contains even some accounts that are not in Ainu history books that are written in Japanese. I think this would be a very solid starting point for anyone looking to start researching the Ainu, post-Emishi era.
Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2019
There are not so many books in English about the Ainus and their encounter with the Russian . Chinese and Japanese. This one is well documented and explains in détails the growth of Japan towards the North
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