ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a core commodity in Danzaemon’s early modern outcaste order: leather. Because status and human existence in early modern Japan were so closely tied to particular forms of production, following the goods and services outcastes produced and provided reveals how their activities/actions were constrained by, and helped add shape to, the outcaste order. While much is made of leather production in relation to outcastes, surprisingly little has been written about the mechanics, logistics, and economics of production in relation to the outcaste order in eastern Japan. Through an investigation of the economic aspects of outcaste existence, the chapter demonstrates how economic forces undercut the caste structure in important ways, creating tensions both within and outside the Edo outcaste order and multiple attempts to uphold the old status order. Of particular interest here is examining the ways in which a system built on notions of official duties and privileges as well as occupational monopolies came to be transformed by commerce, market development, and economic enterprise. Such an analysis provides important clues about the nature of early modern caste/outcaste society in early modern Japan and the potential for its modern dissolution.
