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  • Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan by Ethan Isaac Segal
  • J. P. Lamers (bio)
Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan. By Ethan Isaac Segal. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass., 2011. xvi, 258 pages. $39.95.

This new book by Ethan Isaac Segal is about the spread of money and the development of markets in early medieval Japan. Segal places these phenomena in the context of a general expansion of the economy in the course of the thirteenth century, a process driven by rising agricultural outputs and an upswing in commerce. In his view, provincial nonelites played a key role in this monetization of the Japanese economy, and its scope extended nationwide. The circulation of copper cash in Japan was closely connected to developments on the East Asian continent. Medieval Japanese predominantly [End Page 484] used Chinese coins, which became available in huge quantities after the fall of the issuing authority, the Northern Song dynasty, to Jurchen invaders in 1127.

Two contentions support Segal’s narrative and argumentative thrust. First, he distinguishes his position from the influential views of Thomas Smith, who traced the origins of modern economic growth to the Tokugawa or Edo period (1600–1868).1 While the attention paid by modern scholarship to Tokugawa economic history may be justifiable, given its intrinsic interest, Segal points out that it has tended to obscure the importance of the monetization and commercialization that occurred in medieval Japan. Moreover, contradicting Delmer Brown,2 Segal argues that the lack of a strong and unified central government in Kamakura (or early medieval) Japan “did not inhibit economic growth” (p. 3). According to Segal, the political instability of the early medieval era created a social dynamic that was conducive to economic prosperity.

Segal maintains a topical focus on money and markets throughout his book, seeing money in particular as “a catalyst for significant social change” (p. 9). The important questions are who contributed positively to this driver for change, and which social groups saw their positions threatened by it. Therefore, as a second and social focus, Segal concentrates on the role played by peripheral figures—or “non-elites”—in trade and the spread of coin usage, concluding that they gained “sufficient economic power to challenge more traditional elite authorities” (p. 19). Third, the chronological focus of Coins, Trade, and the State is on the latter half of the twelfth century to the first half of the fourteenth—hence the stipulation “early medieval” in the subtitle. Preceded by a concise outline of Nara and Heian monetary history, Segal’s argument starts in 1150 with the first documentary reference to Chinese copper cash and advances to the mid-fourteenth century, when the Muromachi shogunate tried to reassert central control over the economy. The final, fifth chapter rounds out the narrative nicely, looking ahead to the importance of money in the late medieval and early modern economy of Japan.

Segal’s book adds to the understanding of the deep historical roots of commercialization and monetization in Japan, and that is its great value. For those, like myself, who have habitually located the antecedents of modern economic growth in the Edo period, his book brings a most welcome change of perspective. Though Segal does not dismiss the traditional “Edo-biased” view radically, he makes a convincing case that the early medieval era was an important, budding period in the economization of Japanese society. [End Page 485] “[M]edieval commercial activities laid the groundwork for—and thereby contributed to—the more complete commercialization that took place in the Edo period” (p. 68).

The set of data available to the economic historian of medieval Japan for drawing conclusions is far from complete. Much of the evidence is anecdotal. For all that, Segal could have made a stronger case—less casual and with a sharper profiling of Japan against other regional economies— for what he calls the “economic boom of the thirteenth century” (p. 146). He relies mainly on the work of other Western historians to reconstruct the broader economic trends in early medieval Japan. With apparent agreement, he quotes for instance Janet Goodwin, who speaks of an “economic...

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