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Bibliographic Data: Hall, John Whitney. Government and Local Power in Japan, 500 to 1700: A Study Based on Bizen Province. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966.
Main Argument: "In the basic relationships within Japanese society, such as those between government and social classes, between power and wealth, between individual and society, Japanese institutions have shown a remarkable constancy" (5).
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples Hall focuses on "the combination of traditions and techniques by which the Japanese organized power and exercised authority and, second, the connections between the holders of power and the sources of wealth, mainly the land" (5). Anachronistically insisting that the patriarchal family was constant throughout Japanese history, Hall also claims that "in surveying the history of Japanese political institutions it would be hard to say that anything like a real revolution ever took place" (11). As a kicker, Hall notes that "there is no attempt to claim for BIzen, however, a place among Japanse provinces which makes its study typical or particularly significant, and the meticulous student may well question whether generalizations from the case of Bizen are at all representative" (15). [That's not the only thing we can question, John.]
Critical assessment: To quote a response I was forced to write in the "voice" of the author in 2012:
More seriously, it seems somewhat suspicious that in Hall's telling Bizen is Goldilocks--not too big, not too small, but just right. He systematically underplays violence, not to mention qualitative and quantitative historical change (partly by anachronistically reading later realities onto earlier eras), and, all in all, while the book is not terrible as a general outline, many of its details could be questioned or have already been disproven. Hall's blatantly Orientalist framing of the whole book is barely worth criticizing, except for the fact that his Orientalism conditions him to believe that basically nothing has changed in Japanese history. This is not true, and given how many of Hall's fundamental assertions are not fully accurate at best and just wrong in general, it's hard to take the book seriously as a whole.
All that being said, the description of the shôen in general is still really good, although we should remember that Hall projects the full medieval shôen back to the eighth century, when in fact we know from Elizabeth Sato that the early shôen and the medieval shôen were quite different.
Further reading: Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court; Hurst, Insei
Meta notes: I've been there, and Okayama is actually pretty damn boring.
Main Argument: "In the basic relationships within Japanese society, such as those between government and social classes, between power and wealth, between individual and society, Japanese institutions have shown a remarkable constancy" (5).
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples Hall focuses on "the combination of traditions and techniques by which the Japanese organized power and exercised authority and, second, the connections between the holders of power and the sources of wealth, mainly the land" (5). Anachronistically insisting that the patriarchal family was constant throughout Japanese history, Hall also claims that "in surveying the history of Japanese political institutions it would be hard to say that anything like a real revolution ever took place" (11). As a kicker, Hall notes that "there is no attempt to claim for BIzen, however, a place among Japanse provinces which makes its study typical or particularly significant, and the meticulous student may well question whether generalizations from the case of Bizen are at all representative" (15). [That's not the only thing we can question, John.]
Critical assessment: To quote a response I was forced to write in the "voice" of the author in 2012:
While it may in fact say more about the state of the field that a study written fifty-six years ago surveying 1200 years of history from the vantage point of a relatively non-central location largely still holds water than about this particular book, as its author I still have good reason to be satisfied with it.
Not only did I write a convincing and entertaining historical fiction based on the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki, among other sources, for my first two chapters, once my study moves into the realm of verifiable historical records, I succeed as few others have even attempted in telling a coherent and still largely acceptable account of the slow rise and fall of centralized political authority and administration in the Japanese archipelago. I have done the English-speaking world a great service in rendering a diachronic account of the development and features of the shôen system that is both comprehensible and not too bogged down in recondite detail. Furthermore, my obsessive harping on the continuity and endurance of local administrative units over the centuries, and my strong interest in chorography, although not categorized as such in the book, has proven hugely influential on notable later scholars such as Kären Wigen. I accomplished all of this with an appealingly dry and subtle wit that is at times laugh-out-loud hilarious, if readers are paying sufficient attention.
Having paid the metaphorical toll of a certain teleological cast, the rest of my study provides an engrossing account of the evolution of the political economy in the archipelago until, roughly, the height of the early modern period. Although bones could be picked with many of the ways in which I chose to frame my account, the picture it offers is still substantially supportable, and more importantly, the epic sweep of my study and the ways in which I characterized what change I did see over the centuries have been formative in framing later scholarship on almost any of the topics I mention. (I am also quite happy to have augmented my study with interesting and informative maps.)
More seriously, it seems somewhat suspicious that in Hall's telling Bizen is Goldilocks--not too big, not too small, but just right. He systematically underplays violence, not to mention qualitative and quantitative historical change (partly by anachronistically reading later realities onto earlier eras), and, all in all, while the book is not terrible as a general outline, many of its details could be questioned or have already been disproven. Hall's blatantly Orientalist framing of the whole book is barely worth criticizing, except for the fact that his Orientalism conditions him to believe that basically nothing has changed in Japanese history. This is not true, and given how many of Hall's fundamental assertions are not fully accurate at best and just wrong in general, it's hard to take the book seriously as a whole.
All that being said, the description of the shôen in general is still really good, although we should remember that Hall projects the full medieval shôen back to the eighth century, when in fact we know from Elizabeth Sato that the early shôen and the medieval shôen were quite different.
Further reading: Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court; Hurst, Insei
Meta notes: I've been there, and Okayama is actually pretty damn boring.