Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan

This volume explores early modern formations of economic thought and policy in a country widely regarded as having followed a unique, non-Western path to capitalism. In discussing such topics as money and the state, freedom and control, national interest ideology, shogunal politics and networks, case studies of the Saga Domain and Ryukyu Kingdom, Confucian banking, early Meiji entrepreneurship, and relationships between macroeconomic fluctuations and policy, the essays here deepen and revise our understanding of early modern Japan. They also enlarge and refine the analytical vocabulary for describing early modern economic thought and policy, thereby raising issues of interest to scholars of world history and economic thought outside of Japan or East Asia.

Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Ph.D. (2006) in Japanese Studies, Tubingen University, is Assistant Professor of Japanese History at Sophia University, Tokyo. She has published on shogunal trade regulations and women of the Tokugawa period, including Thinking Like a Man: Tadano Makazu (1763-1825) (Brill, 2006).
Gregory Smits, Ph.D. (1992) in History, University of Southern California, is Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He has published on the 1855 Ansei Edo Earthquake and the early modern Ryukyu Kingdom, including Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics (Hawai'i, 1999).