Episode 301 – Stand Up For Your Rights, Part 1

August 16, 2019

While the Meiji Restoration was going on, where was everybody else? We’ll start trying to answer that question today with a look at an uprising in 1866 in the region of Shindatsu.

Sources

Vlastos, Stephen. Peasant Protests and Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan

Pratt, Edward. Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite: The Economic Foundations of the Gounou

Vanoverbeke, Dimitri. Community and State in the Japanese Farm Village

Images

Itakura Katsusato later in life. He is supposed to have promised relief to the peasants of Shindatsu, but was overruled.
The former site of the Daikansho (bakufu intendant’s office) in Koori, where the Shindatsu rebels eventually made their way.
Shindatsu, sometimes today called the Fukushima basin. You can see how well irrigated it is; perfect for silk.
A map of the region from Stephen Vlastos’s book (see the notes).