11 - Commercial change and urban growth in early modern Japan

Summary

AN ERA OF URBAN GROWTH

During the first century and a half of the early modern period, between 1550 and 1700, Japan became one of the most urbanized societies in the world. At the beginning of this era, the ancient imperial capital of Kyoto was the only city with more than 100,000 residents, and a mere handful of other settlements held as many as 10,000 persons. But by the year 1700, four new Japanese communities had exceeded the 100,000 mark, and approximately 5 to 7 percent of all Japanese lived in such large cities. This compared with a figure of 2 percent in Europe, where only fourteen cities had reached the 100,000 level, and only the Netherlands and England–Wales could boast of urban concentrations greater than Japan's. Edo had become the world's largest city by the end of the seventeenth century, and the populations of Osaka and Kyoto approached those of London and Paris, the two largest cities in the West.

The meteoric urban growth that occurred in Japan at the beginning of the early modern period had profound and diverse consequences for Japanese history. First, the cities acted as large magnets, creating energy fields that set in motion large-scale population movements and propelled hundreds of thousands of persons into the cities to fill burgeoning job opportunities. The growing urban centers served as enormous consumption centers as well, and across Japan farmers changed their cropping patterns to meet new demands for vegetables, fruits, and plant materials for clothes. Consequently, regional specialization increasingly became a feature of early modern commerce, and new transportation networks and post towns sprang up everywhere to cater to mobile traders.