Edo-centrismo e modernizzazione capitalistica in Giappone

Besides being the seat of the national military government where feudal lords from throughout the country were required to regularly travel to and leave part of their family permanently, Edo emerged as the capital of consumption and a cultural centre, functioning in fact as a modern capital city and becoming one of the world’s largest cities of the time, as well as a diverse metropolis with a variety of people and cultural expressions, orthodox ideas and ethical dilemmas, conventional world and alternative universes. The paper explores the degree to which an Edo-centric perspective can better highlight the economic, demographic, social, cultural, and intellectual dynamism that produced the development of a market economy, a growing interdependence of people and places, and symptoms of modernity in a still-feudal state. It also focuses on how, by emphasising the spatial and temporal continuities across 1868 (when Edo was renamed Tokyo, or the
“eastern capital”), the “Edo-Tokyo Studies” has confuted the assumption of this date as a watershed in the city’s history, as well as “the great divide” between feudal and modern Japan, suggesting the extent to which the conditions of the Edo period, particularly those developed in Edo, shaped the process of Japan’s modernization