Robert J. Smith

The origins of Japan's modern forests : the case of Akita

The woodlands of Japan vary substantially from north to south, and the patterns of their use and abuse differed from area to area during the Edo, or early modern, period (1600–1868). Nevertheless, the basic characteristics and rhythms of forest history were common to all of Japan (except the sparsely populated northern island of Hokkaidō). It is possible, therefore, to illuminate the general experience by scrutinizing a section of the whole. The section selected here is Akita, a prefecture of northern Japan whose forests are among the nation’s most famous. Three considerations make this choice attractive. The topic has clearly delineated boundaries, largely because the Akita region was a single coherent political unit during the Edo period; the documentation on the early modern forest situation there is extensive and accessible; finally, and as a consequence of the second factor, Japanese scholars have already published excellent studies on key aspects of Akita forestry. These factors have made this a relatively convenient area to examine and discuss in the short compass of this study.

A Pattern of Japanese Society: Ie Society or Acknowledgment of Interdependence?

In his magisterial reanalysis of all of Japanese history, Murakami has presented us with an argument so complex that it will be some time before all its implications will emerge clearly. I shall leave the task of applying his insights to those more familiar than I with the historical materials he so skillfully weaves into a seamless developmental progression from proto-uji through modern uses of the ie principle. Rather I shall focus on that portion of his article dealing with the modern state (pp. 339-63) and more particularly with his intriguing argument that the ie or mura-type practice was revived for the hard times of the 1930s and the World War II years (pp. 357-58). The argument, I take it, is that following a hiatus of some decades after the Meiji Restoration, the ie (household) or mura (village) has reemerged as a fundamental organizing principle of postwar Japanese society. As a point of departure, let us consider the following passage from a book intended for a general audience that takes a similar position vis-a-vis contemporary Japan, using a somewhat different vocabulary. Urging the reader to see that in Japan industrialization has proceeded in ways quite different from the path it took in the West, Collick writes:

The domestic cycle in selected commoner families in urban Japan: 1757-1858

*Robert J. Smith is Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University, and Chairman of the Department. He is author of Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan (1974) and Kurusu: The Price ofProgress in a Japanese Village, 1951-1975 (1978). At present his research is focused on population and mobility in Tokugawa Japan, and popular religion in twentieth-century Japan. Among the most remarkable sets of data available to the historical demographer are the Japanese household registers of the Tokugawa period (1603-1868). In most parts of the country, from 1665 to 1868, all commoners’ households were enumerated

Aspects of Mobility in Pre-Industrial Japanese Cities

A very great deal of our knowledge of urban life in Tokugawa Japan relates to the “happy society” of Genroku in the early 18th century, to the life of the theater and the gay quarters, and to the activities of the great merchant houses and the more extravagant and colorful of their heads. Extensive coverage is given theories of the state, administrative arrangements, and the discrepancies between the actual and theoretical positions of the classes of Tokugawa society. Ordinarily, mobility is treated in passing, partly because vertical social mobility is rightly presumed to have been a minor feature of that society until at least its closing period, and partly because the materials required are so difficult to unearth and so resistant to rigorous analysis. Bellahs observation that “…mobility was largely within classes rather than between them,” is apt, although Taeuber reminds us that “…movements of surplus youth from the rural areas to the cities were adjustments of population to resources and employment opportunies that ante-dated modern industrialization by some centuries.” Lampard completes the thought with respect to its implications for the transition to industrialism in his remark that “…old commercial-administrative centers [provide] ready markets, some tradition of urban life, and constant pressure to secure a livelihood from non-farming activity.”

Crimes in New York and Tokyo: Sociocultural perspectives

Patterns of major crimes in Tokyo and New York City, based on officiai reports, are compared. Among other findings, the rate of infanticides among the total of murder cases was strikingly higher in Tokyo than in New York City. Intruders in New York City, on the other hand, were found to seek confrontation with victims more actively than their counterparts in Tokyo. Social and cultural factors underlying or contributing to the causes of major crimes are discussed.

Japanese culture and society: A feast of perspectives

Eichiro Ishida. Japanese Culture: A Study of Origins and Characteristics. Translated by Teruko Kachi. An East‐West Center Book. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1974. 156 pp. Appendices, bibliographies, and index.

Walter Goldsmith. Comparative Functionalism: An Essay in Anthropological Theory. Pp. xii, 149. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966.

9.00. Thomas P. Rohlen. For Harmony and Strength: Japanese White‐Collar Organization in Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974. 299 pp. Figures, tables, references, and index.

3.95:

12.50. Takie Sugiyama Lebra and William Lebra, eds. Japanese Culture and Behavior: Selected Readings. An East‐West Center Book. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1974. xi + 459 pp. Tables and figures.

Education in Tokugawa Japan.

5.95 (paper).

The women of Suye Mura

that these achievements are necessarily desirable. On the contrary, the warning is implied that if the motivations and results of development are merely materialistic, more values might be lost than gained. Another major theme is that if development is to be successful in the &dquo;third world,&dquo; it must not be imitative of what happened elsewhere, but rather must follow its own path prescribed by the nature of the society. This lesson must be learned by the leaders of the developing societies as well as by those nations eager to help them. A summary of the book beyond this is unfeasible, for it abounds in ideas, suggestions, hypotheses, and conclusions. They are based on generalizations which do not always apply everywhere and will