This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: crises about during the late Edo period. A crisis of samurai identity! Questions around vengeance, honor, and duty! And of course, the most confounding subject of them all: macroeconomics. But hey, I’m sure we can figure this all out as long as no pesky Americans show up to ruin things, right?
Sources
Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan
Bitō, Masahide, “The Akō Incident of 1701-1703.” Translated by Henry D. Smith II. Monumenta Nipponica, 58:2 (Summer 2003), pp. 149-70.
Barshay, Andrew, Willem Boot, Albert Craig, Brett de Bary, Peter Duus, J. S. A. Elisonas, Grant Goodman, et al. “THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR II.” In Sources of Japanese Tradition: Volume 2, 1600 to 2000, edited by Wm. Theodore de Bary, Carol Gluck, and Arthur E. Tiedemann
Walthall, Anne. “Peace Dividend: Agrarian Developments in Tokugawa Japan.” In Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850, Ed. Karl Friday.
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