Provincializing Empire is an outstanding study of Japan’s capitalist development and imperial expansion from the perspective of merchants from the province of Ōmi (present-day Shiga prefecture) between 1700 and the 1940s. It tells the story of how generations of itinerant peddlers and traders developed expertise in cross-border trade and a cosmopolitan outlook as intermediaries between distant domains in the Tokugawa period. From the Meiji era, merchants from Shiga prefecture built upon this experience to expand their trading activities first to Hokkaido and then to Japanese colonies and immigrant communities abroad. Divided into three parts, the book gives us a greater understanding of Tokugawa-era commercial practices that contributed to modern Japanese capitalism and entrepreneurship, the roles of regional actors in the expansion of Japanese trade and empire, and the motivations of settlers in Japan’s colonies and emigrants to North America.
Author Jun Uchida challenges conventional views of modern Japanese economic development...
University of California Press