Download or read book The Company and the Shogun written by Adam Clulow and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which it possessed no obvious place and was transformed in the process. This study focuses on the company's clashes with Tokugawa Japan over diplomacy, violence, and sovereignty. In each encounter the Dutch were forced to retreat, compelled to abandon their claims to sovereign powers, and to refashion themselves again and again—from subjects of a fictive king to loyal vassals of the shogun, from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from insistent defenders of colonial sovereignty to legal subjects of the Tokugawa state. Within the confines of these conflicts, the terms of the relationship between the company and the shogun first took shape and were subsequently set into what would become their permanent form. The first book to treat the Dutch East India Company in Japan as something more than just a commercial organization, The Company and the Shogun presents new perspective on one of the most important, long-lasting relationships to develop between an Asian state and a European overseas enterprise.

Download or read book The Company and the Shogun written by Adam Clulow and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dutch East India Company was a unique, hybrid organization acting as both company and state, aggressively intervening in Asian political matters in which it had no place. This study focuses on the company’s clashes with Tokugawa Japan in the seventeenth century, particularly in the areas of diplomacy, sovereignty, and violence. In each encounter, the Dutch were forced to abandon claims to sovereign powers and refashion themselves—from subjects of a fictive king to loyal vassals of the shogun, from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from insistent defenders of colonial rule to legal subjects of the Tokugawa state. The first book to treat the Dutch East India Company as more than a commercial enterprise, this text offers unprecedented perspective on one of the most important, long-lasting unions between an Asian state and a European overseas enterprise and the surprisingly limited influence of Europeans operating in early-modern Asia.

Download or read book Shogun Management written by William C. Byham and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1993 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the impact of Japanese management techniques and methodology on North American businesses.

Download or read book Stranger in the Shogun s City written by Amy Stanley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* *Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award* *Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography* A “captivating” (The Washington Post) work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo—the city that would become Tokyo—and a portrait of a city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West. The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces—and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval—she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak. With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate. Tsuneno’s life provides a window into 19th-century Japanese culture—and a rare view of an extraordinary woman who sacrificed her family and her reputation to make a new life for herself, in defiance of social conventions. “A compelling story, traced with meticulous detail and told with exquisite sympathy” (The Wall Street Journal), Stranger in the Shogun’s City is “a vivid, polyphonic portrait of life in 19th-century Japan [that] evokes the Shogun era with panache and insight” (National Review of Books).

Download or read book The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan written by Michael Laver and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Laver examines how the giving of exotic gifts in early modern Japan facilitated Dutch trade by ascribing legitimacy to the shogunal government and by playing into the shogun's desire to create a worldview centered on a Japanese tributary state. The book reveals how formal and informal gift exchange also created a smooth working relationship between the Dutch and the Japanese bureaucracy, allowing the politically charged issue of foreign trade to proceed relatively uninterrupted for over two centuries. Based mainly on Dutch diaries and official Dutch East India Company records, as well as exhaustive secondary research conducted in Dutch, English, and Japanese, this new study fills an important gap in our knowledge of European-Japanese relations. It will also be of great interest to anyone studying the history of material culture and cross-cultural relations in a global context.

Download or read book Defensive Positions written by Noell Wilson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defensive Positions focuses on the role of regional domains in early modern Japan’s coastal defense, shedding new light on this system’s development. This examination, in turn, has significant long-term political implications for the involvement of those domains in Tokugawa state formation. Noell Wilson argues that domainal autonomy in executing maritime defense slowly escalated over the course of the Tokugawa period to the point where the daimyo ultimately challenged Tokugawa authorities as the primary military interface with the outside world. By first exploring localized maritime defense at Nagasaki and then comparing its organization with those of the Yokohama and Hakodate harbors during the treaty port era, Wilson identifies new, core systemic sources for the collapse of the shogunate’s control of the monopoly on violence. Her insightful analysis reveals how the previously unexamined system of domain-managed coastal defense comprised a critical third element—in addition to trade and diplomacy—of Tokugawa external relations. Domainal control of coastal defense exacerbated the shogunate’s inability to respond to important military and political challenges as Japan transitioned from an early modern system of parcelized, local maritime defense to one of centralized, national security as embraced by world powers in the nineteenth century.

Download or read book The Dutch and English East India Companies written by Adam Clulow and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ground-breaking collection of essays that explores the place of the Dutch and English East India Companies in Asia and the nature of their interactions with Asian rulers, officials, merchants, soldiers and brokers.

Download or read book Sho gun written by James Clavell and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic epic novel of feudal Japan that captured the heart of a culture and the imagination of the world, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author and unparalleled master of historical fiction, James Clavell After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen--Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is seventeenth-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and freedom. As internal political strife and a clash of cultures lead to seemingly inevitable conflict, Blackthorne's loyalty and strength of character are tested by both passion and loss, and he is torn between two worlds that will each be forever changed. Powerful and engrossing, capturing both the rich pageantry and stark realities of life in feudal Japan, Shōgun is a critically acclaimed powerhouse of a book. Heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat action melds seamlessly with intricate historical detail and raw human emotion. Endlessly compelling, this sweeping saga captivated the world to become not only one of the best-selling novels of all time but also one of the highest-rated television miniseries, as well as inspiring a nationwide surge of interest in the culture of Japan. Shakespearean in both scope and depth, Shōgun is, as the New York Times put it, "...not only something you read--you live it." Provocative, absorbing, and endlessly fascinating, there is only one: Shōgun.

Download or read book Merchant Cultures written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The way merchants trade, think about business and represent commerce in art forms define merchant culture. The world between 1500 and 1800 encompassed different merchant cultures that stood alone and in contact with others. Culture, power relations and institutions framed similarities and differences and outlined the global outcome of these exchanges.

Download or read book The Last Shogun written by Ryotaro Shiba and published by Vertical Inc. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ryotaro Shiba's account of the life of Japan's last shogun, Perry's arrival off the coast of Japan was merely the spark that ignited the cataclysm in store for the Japanese people and their governments. It came to its real climax with the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, the event which forms the centerpiece of this book. The Meiji Restoration—as history calls it—toppled the shogunate, and brought a seventeen-year-old boy emperor back from the secluded Imperial Palace in Kyoto to preside over what amounted to a political and cultural revolution. With this, Japan's extraordinary self-modernization began in earnest. Coming to power just as the Tokugawa regime was suffering the worst military defeat in its history, Yoshinobu strongly suspected that the rule of the Tokugawas—the third and longest lived of Japan's three warrior governments - was swiftly becoming an anachronism. During a year of frenetic activity, he overhauled the military systems, reorganized the civil administration, promoted industrial development, and expanded foreign intercourse, with the farsighted aim of creating a unified Japan. Alarmed by these reforms, pro-imperial interests moved against him, precipitating the Boshin Civil War and the final defeat of the shogunal armies. To the surprise of his enemies, Yoshinobu capitulated. It was this surrender of authority at a crucial point that made the transfer of sovereignty relatively peaceful. He then retired to Mito and lived quietly for the rest of his life, studying the new art of photography. Ennobled a prince in the new European-style nobility of the Meiji era, he died in 1913.

Download or read book The Dog Shogun written by Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-04-30 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tsunayoshi (1646–1709), the fifth Tokugawa shogun, is one of the most notorious figures in Japanese history. Viewed by many as a tyrant, his policies were deemed eccentric, extreme, and unorthodox. His Laws of Compassion, which made the maltreatment of dogs an offense punishable by death, earned him the nickname Dog Shogun, by which he is still popularly known today. However, Tsunayoshi’s rule coincides with the famed Genroku era, a period of unprecedented cultural growth and prosperity that Japan would not experience again until the mid-twentieth century. It was under Tsunayoshi that for the first time in Japanese history considerable numbers of ordinary townspeople were in a financial position to acquire an education and enjoy many of the amusements previously reserved for the ruling elite. Based on a masterful re-examination of primary sources, this exciting new work by a senior scholar of the Tokugawa period maintains that Tsunayoshi’s notoriety stems largely from the work of samurai historians and officials who saw their privileges challenged by a ruler sympathetic to commoners. Beatrice Bodart-Bailey’s insightful analysis of Tsunayoshi’s background sheds new light on his personality and the policies associated with his shogunate. Tsunayoshi was the fourth son of Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604–1651) and left largely in the care of his mother, the daughter of a greengrocer. Under her influence, Bodart-Bailey argues, the future ruler rebelled against the values of his class. As evidence she cites the fact that, as shogun, Tsunayoshi not only decreed the registration of dogs, which were kept in large numbers by samurai and posed a threat to the populace, but also the registration of pregnant women and young children to prevent infanticide. He decreed, moreover, that officials take on the onerous tasks of finding homes for abandoned children and caring for sick travelers. In the eyes of his detractors, Tsunayoshi’s interest in Confucian and Buddhist studies and his other intellectual pursuits were merely distractions for a dilettante. Bodart-Bailey counters that view by pointing out that one of Japan’s most important political philosophers, Ogyû Sorai, learned his craft under the fifth shogun. Sorai not only praised Tsunayoshi’s government, but his writings constitute the theoretical framework for many of the ruler’s controversial policies. Another salutary aspect of Tsunayoshi’s leadership that Bodart-Bailey brings to light is his role in preventing the famines and riots that would have undoubtedly taken place following the worst earthquake and tsunami as well as the most violent eruption of Mount Fuji in history—all of which occurred during the final years of Tsunayoshi's shogunate. The Dog Shogun is a thoroughly revisionist work of Japanese political history that touches on many social, intellectual, and economic developments as well. As such it promises to become a standard text on late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century Japan.

Download or read book The Shogun s Silver Telescope written by Timon Screech and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The East India Company, founded in London in 1600, was the world's biggest trading organization until the twentieth century. It was originally a spice trading organization, and its existence was precarious in its early years. But its governors soon began to think bigger. A decade after itsfoundation, they started to plan voyages to more fabulous places, notably Japan. Japan had silver, was cold in winter, and had no sheep, so was a perfect market for England's main export, woollen cloth. The Company planned to add to its spice-runs, sailing back and forth to Japan, exchanging woolfor silver. This could be done quickly and easily, over the top of Russia - or so the maps of the day suggested (these same maps also showed Japan twenty times too large, about the size of India).Knowing the Spanish and Portuguese had got there before them, the Company prepared a special present to impress and win over their Japanese hosts. They chose as their first gift a silver telescope. The expedition carrying the telescope departed in 1611, and the Shogun was finally presented with thetelescope in the name of King James I in 1613. It was the first telescope ever to leave Europe, and the first made as a presentation item. Before this voyage had even returned, the Company had dispatched another with an equally stunning cargo: nearly a hundred oil paintings.This is the story of these two extraordinary cargoes: what they meant for the fortunes of the Company, what the choice of them says about the seventeenth century England from which they came, and what effect they had on the quizzical Asian rulers to whom they were given.

Download or read book Samurai William written by Giles Milton and published by John Murray. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1611 an astonishing letter arrived at the East India Trading Company in London after a tortuous seven-year journey. Englishman William Adams was one of only twenty-four survivors of a fleet of ships bound for Asia, and he had washed up in the forbidden land of Japan. The traders were even more amazed to learn that, rather than be horrified by this strange country, Adams had fallen in love with the barbaric splendour of Japan - and decided to settle. He had forged a close friendship with the ruthless Shogun, taken a Japanese wife and sired a new, mixed-race family. Adams' letter fired up the London merchants to plan a new expedition to the Far East, with designs to trade with the Japanese and use Adams' contacts there to forge new commercial links. Samurai William brilliantly illuminates a world whose horizons were rapidly expanding eastwards.

Download or read book Tai Pan written by James Clavell and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 889 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “There can only be one Tai-Pan.” Dirk Struan rose from humble beginnings to build Struan & Company, also known as the Noble House, into the world’s largest Far East trading company. He is now the Tai-Pan—Supreme Leader—of all Tai-Pans in China. Along the way, however, he made a powerful enemy. Tyler Brock, Struan’s rival from their early opium-smuggling days, also heads a large trading fleet, second in size only to Struan’s. But it is not only silks and spices that drive their mutual companies’ wealth—the opium trade is still booming. War between England and China might be over, but the hostilities remain. Struan and Brock come to control much of England’s trade with China yet neither can control their desires or their hatred of each other. Over the years, their two families will cross paths, threatening to rip both apart, with reverberations that will echo across the generations. Struan must fight to save his company and his family, or risk seeing everything he has created destroyed at the hands of his sworn enemy. Ambition, political intrigue, and love and lust weave their way throughout the novel the New York Times called, “grand entertainment...packed with action...with blood and sin, treachery and conspiracy, sex and murder.” East and West come together in an opulent and intricately plotted narrative. A tour-de-force of historical fiction, rich in detail yet eminently readable, Tai-Pan will stay with you long after the final page.

Download or read book The Maker of Modern Japan written by A L Sadler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-16 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tokugawa Ieyasu founded a dynasty of rulers, organized a system of government and set in train the re-orientation of the religion of Japan so that he would take the premier place in it. Calm, capable and entirely fearless, Ieyasu deliberately brought the opposition to a head and crushed in a decisive battle, after which he made himself Shogun, despite not being from the Minamoto clan. He organized the Japanese legal and educational systems and encouraged trade with Europe (playing off the Protestant powers of Holland and England against Catholic Spain and Portugal). This book remains one of the few volumes on Tokugawa Ieyasu which draws on more material from Japanese sources than quotations from the European documents from his era and is therefore much more accurate and thorough in its examination of the life and legacy of one of the greatest Shoguns.

Download or read book The Last Concubine written by Lesley Downer and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan, 1865, the women's palace in the great city of Edo. Bristling with intrigue and erotic rivalries, the palace is home to three thousand women and only one man - the young shogun. Sachi, a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl, is chosen to be his concubine. But Japan is changing, and as civil war erupts, Sachi flees for her life. Rescued by a rebel warrior, she finds unknown feelings stirring within her; but this is a world in which private passions have no place and there is not even a word for 'love'. Before she dare dream of a life with him, Sachi must uncover the secret of her own origins - a secret that encompasses a wrong so terrible that it threatens to destroy her ....

Download or read book American Shogun written by Robert Harvey and published by John Murray. This book was released on 2007-03-22 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the mid-nineteenth century on, America and Japan were caught in an extraordinary political, military and economic duel. This clash was characterised by a cultural incompatibility that was to haunt the negotiations of their two leaders, Emperor Hirohito and General MacArthur. Hirohito was a remarkable man. Diffident, uncharismatic and apparently obtuse, he survived as god-ruler of Japan for six decades through internal strife, war, defeat, occupation and economic victory. But Hirohito met his equal in MacArthur. Brash and domineering, MacArthur merited the honorary Japanese epithet shogun or 'army leader' for his almost single-handed six year rule over Japan. In this absorbing dual biography Robert Harvey traces their tense and complex relationship. His broad scope encompasses two great nations in war and peace - a momentous period of history which provides illuminating insight into American actions across the world today.