Specialty Food, Market Culture, and Daily Life in Early Modern Japan

This study is an unique approach to social and cultural history of Japan through the scope of food and food ways. In this book-length study of food markets in the early modern Japanese capital of Edo, Akira Shimizu draws a fascinating picture of early modern Japanese society where specialty foods-seasonal, regional, and hard-to-find delicacies that satisfied the palate of nation's highest political authority, the shogun-served as a powerful nexus that connected different social groups. In the course of their daily lives, peasants, fisherfolks, and merchants, who made specialty food available at the market, were in constant negotiation with powerful wholesalers and government authorities in charge of procuring specialty foods of the highest qualities for the shogun's Edo Castle. Utilizing a number of previously unused archival materials that reveals the lives of those at the bottom of the society, the book traces the production, supply, and handling of specialty foods and shows how ordinary people were empowered to assume control over the distribution of specialty food, eventually affecting their procurement for the shogunal kitchen. In doing so, they disrupted the existing market order on the shogunal requisition, and led to the reconfiguration of market relations.

Akira Shimizu is associate professor at Wilkes University.

List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Market Landscape in the Late Tokugawa Period
2. Deregulating the Market: Wholesalers' associations and Serigai merchants in the Case of Eggs
3. Wholesalers vs. Shosuke: One Man's Attempt to Promote Ezo Kelp
4. In Defense of the Brand: Koshu Grapes and Peasants' Power in the Market
5. Legitimizing with the Past: The Yuisho of Tsukudajima's Shirauo (Japanese Icefish) Fisheryg and the End of Early-Modern Tribute Duties
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author