Economy in Premodern Japan

General

Amino Yoshihiko. "Rethinking Japanese Society." In Rethinking Japanese History. Translated by Alan S. Christy, 97–121. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2012.

Amino Yoshihiko. "Was Medieval (Premodern ) Japan an Agrarian Society?" In Rethinking Japanese History. Translated by Alan S. Christy, 3–30. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2012.

Farris, William Wayne. "The Building Blocks of Japan, Origins to 600." In Japan to 1600: a social and economic history, 1–26. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009.

Farris, William Wayne. "An End to Growth, 600–800." In Japan to 1600: a social and economic history, 27–52. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009.

Farris, William Wayne. "State and Society in an Age of Depopulation, 800–1050." In Japan to 1600: a social and economic history, 53–80. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009.

Farris, William Wayne. "Rising Social and Political Tensions in an Epoch of Minimal Growth, 1050–1180." In Japan to 1600: a social and economic history, 81–106. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009.

Farris, William Wayne. "Economy and Society in an Age of Want, 1180–1280." In Japan to 1600: a social and economic history, 107–135. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009.

Farris, William Wayne. "The Revival of Growth, 1280–1450." In Japan to 1600: a social and economic history, 136–163. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009.

Farris, William Wayne. "Uneven Expansion in an Age of Endemic Warfare, 1450–1600.” In Japan to 1600: a social and economic history, 164–194. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009.

Toshiya Torao. "Nara Economic and Social Institutions.” Translated by William Wayne Farris. In The Cambridge History of Japan. Vol 1, edited by John W. Hall, Marius Jansen, Madoka Kanai, and Denis Twitchett, 415–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 

Wakita Haruko. "The Medieval Household and Gender Roles within the Imperial Family, Nobility, Merchants, and Commoners," Translated by Gary Leupp. In Women and Class in Japanese History, edited by Hitomi Tonomura, Anne Walthall and Wakita Haruko, 81–98. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 1999. 

Koyama Y. "Recent trends in the study of the social and economic history of medieval Japan." AA 44 (1983): 98–127. 

Shōen and Property

Adolphson, Mikael and J. Mark Ramseyer. "Property Rights in Medieval Japan: The Role of Buddhist Temples and Monasteries." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 71, no. 3 (September 2009): 660–8. 

Amino Yoshihiko. "The World of the Estate and Government Lands." In Rethinking Japanese History. Translated by Alan S. Christy, 65–78. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2012.

Endō Motoo. "Tōdaiji's Estates in Its Documentary Record: Perspectives on Ōbe Estate." In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 81–104. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

Garrett, Philip. "Bad Neighbors and Monastic Influence: Border Disputes in Medieval Kii."  In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 377–402. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

Haruko, Wakita, and Suzanne Gay. "Marriage and Property in Premodern Japan from the Perspective of Women's History." Journal of Japanese Studies 10, no. 1 (January  1984): 73–99.

Hirota Kōji. "Hine Estate in Izumi Province: Archaeology, Landscape Reconstruction, and Village Structures."  In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 105–142. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

Kanda, James. "Methods of Land Transfer in Medieval Japan." Monumenta Nipponica 33, no. 4 (Winter 1978): 379–405.

Kawai, Sachiko. Uncertain Powers: Sen'yōmon-in and Landownership by Royal Women in Early Medieval Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2021.

Keirstead, Thomas. "Fragmented Estates. The Breakup of the Myo and the Decline of the Shoen System." Monumenta Nipponica 40, no. 3 (Autumn 1985): 311–30.

Keirstead, T. The Geography of Power in Medieval Japan. Princeton: Princeton University, 1992.

Kiley, Cornelius J. "Estate and Property in the Late Heian Period." In Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History, edited by John Whitney Hall and Jeffrey P Mass, 109–24. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.

Kuroda Toshio and Suzanne Gay. "Buddhism and Society in the Medieval Estate System." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 23, no. 3/4 (Fall 1996): 287–319. 

Mass, Jeffrey P. Family, Law, and Property in Japan, 1200–1350. Cambridge: Harvard University, 2000.

Mass, Jeffrey P. Lordship and Inheritance in Early Medieval Japan: a study of the Kamakura Soryō system. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. 

Nagahara Keiji. "The Decline of the Shoen System." In The Cambridge History of Japan, edited by Kozo Yamamura, 3 Medieval Japan, 260–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Noda Taizō. "Warriors and Estates in Muromachi-Period Harima."  In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 427–40. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

Oyama Kyohei. "Medieval Shoen." In The Cambridge History of Japan, edited by Kozo Yamamura, 3 Medieval Japan, 89–127. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Piggott, Joan R. "Estates: Their History and Historiography." In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 3–36. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018.

Sato, Elizabeth. "The Early Development of the Shoen." In Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History, edited by John Whitney Hall and Jeffrey P Mass. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.

Segal, Ethan. "The Shoen System." In Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850, edited by Karl Friday, 167–177. New York: Westview Press. 

Sherer, Dan. "The Akutō on Ōbe Estate: Lawsuits, Evidence, and Participation in the Late Kamakura Legal System." In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 403–26. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

Tonomura Hitomi. "Women and Inheritance in Japan's Early Warrior Society." Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 3 (1990): 592–623.

von Verschuer, Charlotte. "The Provinces and the Public: Economy, 700–1100." In Japan Emerging, edited by Karl Friday, 157–166. New York: Westview Press. 

Yamamura Kozo. "Tara in Transition: A Study of a Kamakura Shōen." Journal of Japanese Studies 7, no. 2 (July 1981): 349–391.

Yamamura Kozo. "The Decline of the Ritsuryō System: Hypotheses on Economic and Institutional Change." Journal of Japanese Studies 1, no. 1 (October 1974): 3–37.

Coins and Currency

Amino Yoshihiko. "Commerce, Finance, and Currency." In Rethinking Japanese History. Translated by Alan S. Christy, 145–170. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2012.

Brown, Delmer M. "The Importation of Gold into Japan by the Portuguese during the Sixteenth Century." Pacific Historical Review 16, no. 2 (May 1947), 125–33.

Brown, Delmer M. Money Economy in Medieval Japan: A Study in the Use of Coins, New Haven: Institute of Far Eastern Languages, 1951.

Gin'ya Sasaki and Willian B. Hauser. "Sengoku Daimyo Rule and Commerce." In Japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500 to 1650, edited by John W. Hall, Nagahara Keiji, and Kozo Yamamura, 125–148. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Honda Hiroyuki. "Copper coinage, ruling power and local society in medieval Japan," International Journal of Asian Studies 4, no. 2 (2007): 225–240

Keiji, Nagahara and Kozo Yamamura. "The Sengoku Daimyo and the Kandaka System." In Japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500 to 1650, edited by John W. Hall, Nagahara Keiji, and Kozo Yamamura,  27–62. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Keiji Nagahara, and Kozo Yamamura. "Shaping the Process of Unification: Technological Progress in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan." Journal of Japanese Studies 14, no. 1 (January 1988): 77–109.

Osamu Wakita. "The Kokudaka System: A Device for Unification." Journal of Japanese Studies 1, no. 2 (April 1975): 297–320.

Sakurai Eiji. "Currency and Credit in Medieval Japan." International Journal of Asian Studies 5, no. 1 (January 2008): 53–70.

Sakurai Eiji. "Medieval Japan's Commercial Economy and the Estate System."  In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 37–60. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018.

Segal, Ethan. "The Medieval Economy." In Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850, edited by Karl Friday, 289–98. New York: Westview Press. 

Segal, Ethan. "Awash with Coins: The Spread of Money in Early Medieval Japan." In The Currents of Medieval Japan: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey P. Mass, edited by Gordon Berger, Andrew Goble, Lorraine Harrington, and G. Cameron Hurst, 331–361.  Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2009. 

Segal, Ethan. Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Segal, Ethan. "Money and the state: medieval precursors of the early modern economy." In Economic thought in Early Modern Japan, edited by B. Gramlich-Oka and G. Smits, 21–45. Leiden: Brill.

von Glahn, Richard. "Chinese Coin and Changes in Monetary Preferences in Maritime East Asia in the Fifteenth-Seventeenth Centuries." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57, no. 5 (2014): 629–68. 

Yamamura Kozo. "From Coins to Rice: Hypotheses on the Kandaka and Kokudaka Systems," Journal of Japanese Studies 14, no. 2 (July 1988): 341–67.

Yamamura Kozo and Tetsuo Kamiki. "Silver Mines and Sung Coin: A Monetary History of Medieval and Modern Japan in International Perspective" In Precious metals in the later medieval and early modern worlds, edited by John F. Richards, 330–362. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1983. 

Patronage and Non-agrarian Commoners

Adolphson, M. S. "Enryakuji-an Old Power in a New Era." In The Origins of Japan's Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century, edited by Jeffrey P Mass. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

Amino Yoshihiko. "Bandits, Pirates, Merchants, and Financiers." In Rethinking Japanese History. Translated by Alan S. Christy, 79–96. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2012.

Amino Yoshihiko. "Medieval Japanese Constructions of Peace and Liberty: Muen, Kugai, and Raku." International Journal of Asian Studies 4, no.1 (2007): 3–14.

Amino Yoshihiko. "Medieval Japanese Constructions of Peace and Liberty: Muen, Kugai, and Raku, Supplementary Notes." International Journal of Asian Studies 4, no. 2 (2007): 161–72.

Amino Yoshihiko. "The Title of Emperor and the Name Nihon." In Rethinking Japanese History. Translated by Alan S. Christy, 245–276. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2012.

Butler, Lee. "The Way of Yin and Yang. A Tradition Revived, Sold, Adopted." Monumenta Nipponica 51, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 189–217.

Coaldrake, William H. The Way of the Carpenter: Tools and Japanese Architecture. New York: Weatherhill Inc., 1990.

Curtis, Paula R. "An Entrepreneurial Aristocrat: Matsugi Hisanao and the Forging of Imperial Service in Late Medieval Japan." Monumenta Nipponica 75:2 (2020): 241–279.

Gay, Suzanne Marie. The Moneylenders of Late Medieval Kyoto. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001.

Gay, Suzanne Marie. "The Lamp-Oil Merchants of Iwashimizu Shrine: Transregional Commerce in Medieval Japan." Monumenta Nipponica 64, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 1–51.

Goodwin, Janet R. Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994.

Goodwin, Janet R. Selling songs and smiles: the sex trade in Heian and Kamakura Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007. 

Goodwin, Janet R. "Shadows of Transgression: Heian and Kamakura Constructions of Prostitution." Monumenta Nipponica 55, no. 3 (October 2000): 327–368.

Kierstead, Thomas. "Outcasts Before the Law: Pollution and Purification in Medieval Japan." In The Currents of Medieval Japan: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey P. Mass, edited by Gordon Berger, Andrew Goble, Lorraine Harrington, and G. Cameron Hurst, 67–297.  Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2009. 

Nagahara Keiji. "The Medieval Origins of the Eta-Hinin." Journal of Japanese Studies 5, no. 2 (July 1979): 385–403.

Nelson, Thomas. "Slavery in Medieval Japan." Monumenta Nipponica 59, no. 4 (December 2004): 463–492.

Ruch, Barbara. "The Other Side of Culture in Medieval Japan." In The Cambridge History of Japan, edited by John Whitney Hall, Marius B. Jansen, Madoka Kanai and Denis Twitchett, 500–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Sakurai, Eiji. "Foreword to 'Medieval Japanese Constructions of Peace and Liberty: Muen, Kugai, and Raku.'" International Journal of Asian Studies 4, no. 1 (2007): 1–2.

Shapinsky, Peter D. "Predators, Protectors, and Purveyors: Pirates and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan." Monumenta Nipponica 64, no. 2 (2009): 273–313.

Shapinsky, Peter D. "With the Sea as Their Domain: Pirates and Maritime Lordship in Medieval Japan." In Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges, edited by Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Kären Wigen, 221–238. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007.

Shapinsky, Peter D. Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005. 

Tabata, Yasuko. "Women's Work and Status in the Changing Medieval Economy," Translated by Hitomi Tonomura. In  Women and Class in Japanese History, edited by Hitomi Tonomura, Anne Walthall and Wakita Haruko, 99–118. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999. 

Tonomura, Hitomi. Community and commerce in late medieval Japan: the corporate villages of Tokuchin-ho. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.

Tonomura, Hitomi. "Forging the Past. Medieval Counterfeit Documents." Monumenta Nipponica 40, no. 1 (April 1985): 69–96.

Vollmer, Klaus. "Performing the Craft: Medieval Japanese Craftsmen (Shokunin) – Reality, Image, and Literary Topoi." Asiatische Studien: Etudes Asiatiques 58, no. 3–4 (2004): 645–66.

Markets and Urban Growth

Farris, William Wayne. "Trade, Money, and Merchants in Nara Japan." Monumenta Nipponica 53, no. 3 (October 1998): 303–34.

Goldsmith, Brian. "Amassing economies: The medieval origins of early modern Japan, 1450–1700" PhD diss., Stanford University, 2008.

Haruko Wakita. "Towards a Wider Perspective on Medieval Commerce." Journal of Japanese Studies 1, no. 2 (April 1975): 321–45.

Morris, V. Dixon. "The City of Sakai and Urban Autonomy." In Warlords, Artists, & Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century, edited by George Elison and Bardwell Smith, 23–54. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1981.  

Osamu Wakita and James McClain. "The Commercial and Urban Policies of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi." In Japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500 to 1650, edited by John W. Hall, Nagahara Keiji, and Kozo Yamamura,  224–247.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. 

Yamamura Kozo. "The Development of Za in Medieval Japan." The Business History Review 47, no. 4 (Winter 1973), 438–65.

Yamamura Kozo. "Returns on Unification: Economic Growth in Japan, 1550–1650." In Japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500 to 1650, edited by John W. Hall, Nagahara Keiji, and Kozo Yamamura, 327–372. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Trade

Adolphson, M. S. "Social Change and Contained Transformations: Warriors and Merchants in Japan, 1000–1300." In Eurasian Transformations, Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries: Crystallizations, Divergences, Renaissances, edited by Johann P. Arnason and Björn Wittrock, 309–337. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

Amino Yoshihiko. "The Maritime View of the Japanese Archipelago." In Rethinking Japanese History. Translated by Alan S. Christy, 31–64. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2012.

Batten, Bruce L. "Cross-border Traffic on the Kyushu Coast, 794–1086." In Heian Japan, Centers and Peripheries, edited by Mikael Adolphson, Edwards Kamens and Stacie Matsumoto, 357–383. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007. 

Batten, Bruce L.. To the Ends of Japan: Premodern Frontiers, Boundaries, and Interactions. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003.

Batten, Bruce L. Gateway to Japan: Hakata In War and Peace, 500–1300. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006. 

Brown, Delmer M. "The Japanese Tokusei of 1297." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 12, no. 1/2 (June 1949): 188–206.

Conlan, Thomas. "Instruments of Change: Organizational Technology and the Consolidation of Regional Power in Japan, 1333–1600." In War and State Building in Medieval Japan, edited by John Ferejohn and Frances Rosenbluth, 124–158. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Damian,Michelle M. "A Geographic Analysis of Traders and Trade Goods in Japan's Late Medieval Seto Inland Sea." In Historical Archaeology of Early Modern Colonialism in Asia-Pacific: The Asia-Pacific Region, edited by Cruz Berrocal, María, and Zhenhua Zang, 162–85. Florida: University Press of Florida, 2017.

Damian, Michelle. "As Estates Faded: Late Medieval Maritime Shipping in the Seto Inland Sea."  In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 351–76. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018.

Hazard, Benjamin H. "The Formative Years of The Wakō, 1223–63." Monumenta Nipponica 22, no. 3/4 (January 1967): 260–77.

Hori Kyotsu. "The Economic and Political Effects of the Mongol Wars." In Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History, edited by John W. Hall and Jeffrey Mass. 184–200. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974.  

Kamei-Dyche, Rieko. "Networks of Wealth and Influence: Spatial Power and Estate Strategy of the Saionji Family in Early Medieval Japan."  In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 319–350. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

Kawai Sachiko. "Nyoin Power, Estates, and the Taira Influence: Trading Networks within and beyond the Archipelago." In Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan, edited by Janet R. Goodwin and Joan R. Piggott, 281–318. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

Saeki Kōji. "The Hakata Merchant Sokin and Relations with East Asia in the Muromachi period." Interactions and Transformations: Bulletin of the JSPS 21st Century COE Program 1 (2003): 167–182.

Saeki Kōji. "Chinese Trade Ceramics in Medieval Japan." Translated and adapted by Peter Shapinsky. In Tools of Culture: Japan's Cultural, Intellectual, Medical, and Technological Contacts in East Asia, 1000–1500s, edited by Andrew Goble, Kenneth Robinson, and Haruko Wakabayashi, 163–184. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2009.

Moon, Hyungsub. "The Matsura Pirate-Warriors of Northwestern Kyushu in the Kamakura Age." In The Currents of Medieval Japan: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey P. Mass, edited by Gordon Berger, Andrew Goble, Lorraine Harrington, and G. Cameron Hurst, 363–399. Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2009. 

Robinson, Kenneth. "The Japanese Trade Mission to Choson Korea, 1537–1540: The Sonkai tokai nikki and the Korean Tribute System." In Tools of Culture: Japan's Cultural, Intellectual, Medical, and Technological Contacts in East Asia, 1000–1500s, edited by Andrew Goble, Kenneth Robinson, and Haruko Wakabayashi, 71–104. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2009.

Totman, Conrad. "Japan and the World, 1450–1770: Was Japan a "Closed Country?" Education About Asia 12, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 36–39. 

von Verschuer, Charlotte. Across the perilous sea: Japanese trade with China and Korea from the seventh to the sixteenth centuries. Translated by Kristen Lee Hunter. Ithaca: Cornell University, 2006. 

von Verschuer, Charlotte. "Looking from within and Without: Ancient and Medieval External Relations." Monumenta Nipponica 55, no. 4 (2000): 537–566.

von Verschuer, Charlotte. "Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's Foreign Policy 1398 to 1408 A.D.: A Translation from "ZenrinKokuhōki." Monumenta Nipponica 62, No. 3 (Autumn 2007): 261–297.

von Verschuer, Charlotte. "Japan's Foreign Relations 600 to 1200 A.D.: A Translation from Zenrin Kokuhο̄ki." Monumenta Nipponica 54, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 1–39. 

Yamamura Kozo. "The Growth of Commerce in Medieval Japan." In The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume III: Medieval Japan, edited by Kozo Yamamura, 344–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Notes:

This reading list was generously crowdsourced through the Premodern Japanese Studies (PMJS) community.

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