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Bibliographic Data: Vlastos, Stephen. Peasant Protests and Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Main Argument: In early modern Japan peasant protest was ubiquitous, which is less attributable to the oppressiveness of the Tokugawa order than to the fact that "the internal organization of the peasant class and its position within the Tokugawa polity were highly conducive to collective action," particular the Tokugawa status system and the fact that villages were independent administrative units which were collectively responsible for tax payments (11). Vlastos is, by his own admission, "less interested in what set of conditions 'caused' peasants to protest than in the nature, form, and content of the movements" and in "the structure of conflict and what it can tell us about class relations," since he assumes (correctly) that conflict between lord and peasant was the central tension of the system (5).
( Peasants and protests )
Critical assessment: NB: Vlastos is heavily influenced by the earlier generations' assumptions about "Tokugawa stability," reports of which to my mind have been somewhat exaggerated. I think this book is too short, but the structure is also too long? It does not need eight chapters, and frankly, a lot of these points were covered more perceptively by Mark Ravina 10 years later. (See Further Reading, below.)
Further reading: Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan; Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery
Meta notes: The weapons of the weak are weapons all the same.
Main Argument: In early modern Japan peasant protest was ubiquitous, which is less attributable to the oppressiveness of the Tokugawa order than to the fact that "the internal organization of the peasant class and its position within the Tokugawa polity were highly conducive to collective action," particular the Tokugawa status system and the fact that villages were independent administrative units which were collectively responsible for tax payments (11). Vlastos is, by his own admission, "less interested in what set of conditions 'caused' peasants to protest than in the nature, form, and content of the movements" and in "the structure of conflict and what it can tell us about class relations," since he assumes (correctly) that conflict between lord and peasant was the central tension of the system (5).
( Peasants and protests )
Critical assessment: NB: Vlastos is heavily influenced by the earlier generations' assumptions about "Tokugawa stability," reports of which to my mind have been somewhat exaggerated. I think this book is too short, but the structure is also too long? It does not need eight chapters, and frankly, a lot of these points were covered more perceptively by Mark Ravina 10 years later. (See Further Reading, below.)
Further reading: Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan; Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery
Meta notes: The weapons of the weak are weapons all the same.