ABSTRACT

The second generation of scholarship in early modern Japan has opened up a path into a dual civil society, an official one related to the obligations of the central power, and that of everyday life. In particular peasants everyday lives in the han gained renewed focus of attention. The han became a laboratory for community studies and over the years have offered remarkable insights into proto-industrial patterns of individualisation, the nuclear family, practices of late marriage patterns, abortion and sexual practices. The han were the fiefs of the daimyo in Japan, that were created by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and existed until their abolition in 1871, three years after the Meiji Restoration. The Japanese samurai constructed a culture that was conducive to self-control, as well as an individualistic attitude that encouraged risk-taking. The coming of Europeans, and also of Chinese, Koreans and Ryukyans, was essential for trade but was also part of the Tokugawa propaganda of moral worth.