Recovering Japan's urban past: Yoshida Nobuyuki, Tsukada Takashi, and the cities of the Tokugawa period

This article offers some personal reflections on important recent work that has been done in the field of Japanese urban social history. It focuses particularly on the contributions of Yoshida Nobuyuki and Tsukada Takashi to our understanding of key aspects of urban society during the “early modern” Tokugawa period. It also aims to provide some initial thoughts about the intellectual milieu in which these two scholars' interest in urban history began to develop in the 1970s. Specifically it considers the role of Yamaguchi Keiji in encouraging the study of Tokugawa period cities, in large part as a response to Hani Gorō's provocative suggestion in 1968 that Japan had no significant urban tradition of its own. The article concludes by suggesting that, in contrast to Japan in recent decades, the assumption that cities were of relatively little importance for the development of Japanese society before 1868 has gone largely unchallenged in the English-language historiography on the period. For this reason, scholars working in English have a great deal to learn from the work that Yoshida, Tsukada and their extensive network of colleagues in Japan, have done over the past three decades.

► The growth of interest in the field of urban history in post-war Japan. ► The role of Professor Yamaguchi Keiji in promoting the study of urban history. ► The contributions of Professor Yoshida Nobuyuki to the development of the field. ► The contributions of Professor Tsukada Takashi to the development of the field. ► Reasons why urban history has remained understudied in English-language scholarship on Tokugawa period Japan.