Magisterial petitions and dredging festivals: ideas and practices of 'development' in Pre-Meiji Japan

Magisterial petitions and dredging festivals: ideas and practices of 'development' in Pre-Meiji Japan

How did people living in Pre-Meiji Japan imagine 'development' (kaihatsu)? What kinds of ideas and practices were associated with the “opening up” of cities and largescale changes to local environments? This seminar offers a new perspective on the developmental history of Pre-Meiji Japan by focusing on the way the denizens of Osaka and neighbouring villages dealt with water-based issues.

Osaka was built on multiple rivers and waterways; prone to flooding and poor drainage, agricultural and urban expansion during the seventeenth century triggered numerous water-related problems for the city. Extensive logging and soil erosion triggered sedimentary build up in Osaka’s rivers and canals, precipitating state engagement in a range of engineering and riparian works to keep the waterbed levels low and the waterways clear. Eighteenth century state encouragement of agricultural expansion further intensified the problems experienced by Osaka’s residents and nearby villagers.

This seminar introduces two case studies that permit a careful rethinking of pre-Meiji developmental history. The first involves a study of a series of petitions by Osaka denizens and neighbouring villagers who in the 18th century suggested to the Tokugawa authorities a need for a different way to deal with what we would today term serious environmental problems.

The second case study relates to mass popular involvement in a dredging and riparian works initiative that doubled as a category-bending cultural festival. In introducing these two examples, the seminar will show how local Tokugawa knowledge provided a solid basis for critique of early modern state development, as well as how the study of localized practices in Tokugawa Japan has the capacity to force us to rethink what we mean by the very term 'development.'

Speaker

Dr Timothy David Amos is Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney. His research to date has focused on marginality in Japan from the early modern period through to the present. More recently he has commenced research into the problem of developmentalism in Japanese and East Asian history. His recent book publications include the monograph Caste in Early Modern Japan: Danzaemon and the Edo Outcaste Order in Eastern Japan (Routledge, 2020) and the coedited volume Revisiting Japan’s Restoration: New Approaches to the Study of the Meiji Transformation (Routledge, 2022).