ABSTRACT
By the eve of the collapse of the Tokugawa system in the mid-nineteenth century, on the other hand, Japan's economy was in many respects a thriving commercial one, capable of supplying, through regional and national markets, a wide range of agricultural and manufactured goods to consumers in cities, towns and even villages throughout the country. The Japan that Tokugawa Ieyasu took over in 1600 was a country that had become divided, after the collapse of earlier forms of centralised rule, into individual domains, each controlled by a feudal lord and his military retainers. As it describes these goods were for the most part produced in rural areas, through agricultural diversification and the mobilisation of rural labour in manufacturing activities such as spinning and weaving. The growth in the market for clothing textiles from the middle of the Tokugawa period resulted in expanding demand for indigo, and production of it became extremely profitable.
