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xiii Names, Dates, and Units Used in the Text Names are written in the Japanese fashion, with family names first and personal names second. Following conventions of Japanese history writing, when one name is used, it is usually the personal name rather than the family name, so the daimyo Yamauchi Tadayoshi is referred to as Tadayoshi rather than Yamauchi. I refer to a daimyo household as a clan or house, and to the territory they ruled as a domain or realm. When I put a “the” in front of the family name, for example “the Yamauchi,” I am referring to the clan. The Yamauchi clan is also known as the Yamanouchi clan in modern times. I use the former reading because it is the way that the Yamauchi call themselves and was the common and official usage in the Tokugawa period. The Yamanouchi reading originated in modern Tokyo. Note that modern libraries and bibliographies romanize both ways but tend toward the Tokyo reading. All translations in the text are my own from the cited sources unless otherwise noted. The early modern Japanese used a different calendar from the modern one. Each year included twelve months of thirty days, and sometimes an inserted intercalary month as well, to make up for slippage in the lunar and solar cycles. An intercalary seventh month, for example, followed the normal seventh month. Each month of the early modern year usually began about one month later than the corresponding month of the modern Western calendar. For example, the second day of the twelfth month of the fifth year of Meiji was the same day as December 31, 1872. The next day, January 1, 1873, the Japanese began using the modern Western calendar. names, dates, and units xiv Years were counted by a succession of eras. The eras were decided, not according to reigns, but by astrological considerations and might change midyear . The shortest era in the early modern period lasted only one year, and the longest lasted twenty years. I have given the Japanese days and months and the most approximate Western calendrical year in the following manner: I write the fourteenth day of the fifth month of the first year of the Tenmei era as 1781/5/14. I have used the Edo-period gold currency unit ryō, which equaled 4 bun. I have used in the text the following early modern units of measurement. Their approximate Western equivalents are as follows: silver weight: 1 kan = 1,000 monme = 3.75 kilograms = 8.25 pounds rice volume: 1 koku = 180 liters = 5.1 bushels One koku was considered to be the volume of rice that one adult male would eat in a year. Although prices fluctuated, one ryō of gold could buy roughly one koku of rice throughout most of the Edo period. ...

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