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Bibliographic Data: Tonomura, Hitomi. Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan: The Corporate Villages of Tokuchin-ho.. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.
Main Argument: Tonomura uses the most complete set of surviving village documents from the medieval period to explore the process of community formation in late medieval Japan, arguing that this process was natural and uncontested by proprietors (unlike in the West) and that village cooperatives provided fundamental patterns on which later Tokugawa social organization, as well as economic prosperity, was laid.
Historiographical Engagement: Tonomura is very well-versed in earlier Japanese historiography of the medieval period, most notably with Ishimoda Shô but reaching back at times into studies from as far back as the 1920s.
( Cooperation and community )
Critical assessment:
On some levels, it is difficult to decide whether Hitomi Tonomura's account of village cooperatives in Ômi Provnice represents a story without a hero or a hero without a story. Only when I reached the end of her study, and was forced to contemplate again its profound differences from more recent scholarship on the Edo and even medieval periods, that I realized that she has accomplished something much subtler if, perhaps, less superficially exciting than mere narrative.
Consider the map of the cosmological spatial order (Fig. 1) in medieval Imabori on page 69. A tour de force of cartography on one level, the map also functions as a diagram of the plan of the book as a whole: Tonomura starts by delineating the inner core of village life, where local and proprietary interests were most heavily concerned, and gradually moves out into less sacralized and correspondingly more contentious (and ambiguously delineated) spaces or zones of interest in which local people interacted with--and in the case of the Honai merchants, instigated disputes with--people from outside their area for commercial and personal gain. The map represents the book, and the book, in that respect, faithfully mirrors the structure of local society in medieval Japan, at least in this particular (not entirely typical) medieval village.
It's instructive to compare Tonomura's evaluation of the characteristics of the Tokugawa social order vis-a-vis the residents of the vanished Tokuchin-ho to the ebullient evaluations of the Edo period as "the age of movement par excellence" (to quote, somewhat unfairly, Laura Nenzi)--for Tonomura, the highwater mark of village autonomy and local empowerment comes sometime in the Warring States period, and the effects of increasing rationalization and centralization of power and authority in Japan on village life read as the aftermath of a golden age. She would, I think, be saddened to know that Yôkaichi merged with several other cities to form Higashi Ômi in 2005. Having read later studies, I cast something of a jaundiced eye on her claims at the end of the book regarding the "rigidity" of the Tokugawa social order. It certainly seems that the Tokugawa world was utterly rigid in terms of status; class and even geographic location, however, were another matter, especially as time went on and continuing economic growth eroded social strictures based on a late medieval economy. Tokugawa laws did not perfectly reflect Tokugawa social reality, which should come as no surprise (Tonomura's specific examples of social rigidity are also drawn from very early in the Edo period, which may be part of the reasoning behind her conclusions).
This is a rich, dense book that manages to make its points without much resort to overt argumentation. Indeed, my primary complaint lies in my wish that, rather than simply quoting other scholars and evaluating whether Tokuchin-ho matched their paradigms, Tonomura had dared to create a paradigm or two of her own. Perhaps, given her sensitive evaluation of her trove of documents, she didn't feel qualified to make such sweeping claims. Regardless, the book does make, and uphold, a series of claims about the experience of medieval social change at the local level that is broadly illuminating.
Further reading: William Wayne Farris, Japan's Medieval Population
Meta notes: Note to self: actually go to Sakamoto the next time you're in Kyoto.
Main Argument: Tonomura uses the most complete set of surviving village documents from the medieval period to explore the process of community formation in late medieval Japan, arguing that this process was natural and uncontested by proprietors (unlike in the West) and that village cooperatives provided fundamental patterns on which later Tokugawa social organization, as well as economic prosperity, was laid.
Historiographical Engagement: Tonomura is very well-versed in earlier Japanese historiography of the medieval period, most notably with Ishimoda Shô but reaching back at times into studies from as far back as the 1920s.
( Cooperation and community )
Critical assessment:
On some levels, it is difficult to decide whether Hitomi Tonomura's account of village cooperatives in Ômi Provnice represents a story without a hero or a hero without a story. Only when I reached the end of her study, and was forced to contemplate again its profound differences from more recent scholarship on the Edo and even medieval periods, that I realized that she has accomplished something much subtler if, perhaps, less superficially exciting than mere narrative.
Consider the map of the cosmological spatial order (Fig. 1) in medieval Imabori on page 69. A tour de force of cartography on one level, the map also functions as a diagram of the plan of the book as a whole: Tonomura starts by delineating the inner core of village life, where local and proprietary interests were most heavily concerned, and gradually moves out into less sacralized and correspondingly more contentious (and ambiguously delineated) spaces or zones of interest in which local people interacted with--and in the case of the Honai merchants, instigated disputes with--people from outside their area for commercial and personal gain. The map represents the book, and the book, in that respect, faithfully mirrors the structure of local society in medieval Japan, at least in this particular (not entirely typical) medieval village.
It's instructive to compare Tonomura's evaluation of the characteristics of the Tokugawa social order vis-a-vis the residents of the vanished Tokuchin-ho to the ebullient evaluations of the Edo period as "the age of movement par excellence" (to quote, somewhat unfairly, Laura Nenzi)--for Tonomura, the highwater mark of village autonomy and local empowerment comes sometime in the Warring States period, and the effects of increasing rationalization and centralization of power and authority in Japan on village life read as the aftermath of a golden age. She would, I think, be saddened to know that Yôkaichi merged with several other cities to form Higashi Ômi in 2005. Having read later studies, I cast something of a jaundiced eye on her claims at the end of the book regarding the "rigidity" of the Tokugawa social order. It certainly seems that the Tokugawa world was utterly rigid in terms of status; class and even geographic location, however, were another matter, especially as time went on and continuing economic growth eroded social strictures based on a late medieval economy. Tokugawa laws did not perfectly reflect Tokugawa social reality, which should come as no surprise (Tonomura's specific examples of social rigidity are also drawn from very early in the Edo period, which may be part of the reasoning behind her conclusions).
This is a rich, dense book that manages to make its points without much resort to overt argumentation. Indeed, my primary complaint lies in my wish that, rather than simply quoting other scholars and evaluating whether Tokuchin-ho matched their paradigms, Tonomura had dared to create a paradigm or two of her own. Perhaps, given her sensitive evaluation of her trove of documents, she didn't feel qualified to make such sweeping claims. Regardless, the book does make, and uphold, a series of claims about the experience of medieval social change at the local level that is broadly illuminating.
Further reading: William Wayne Farris, Japan's Medieval Population
Meta notes: Note to self: actually go to Sakamoto the next time you're in Kyoto.