S. Gay
Weighing the value of historical developments: commerce and the urban
Determining the topics and developments favored by historians in any age is akin to fixing on a
moving target, but a survey of current Japanese scholarship suggests at least that cities and com-
merce are now regarded as significant to an understanding of medieval Japan. Monographs and
journal articles as well as essays in thematically or chronologically organized collections contain
regular offerings in these subfields.^35 One convenient benchmark for gauging the importance of
commerce and towns in current historiography is the most recent edition of Iwanami’s multi-
volume collection of scholarly essays on broad topics in Japanese history.^36 Urban and commer-
cial history are each allotted one dedicated article, but also figure in essays on status and debt
amnesties.^37 Insofar as cities and trade were relevant to policy, they appear in some of the political
history essays as well. In addition, a useful article on communications and regionalism presents
the late Heian and early Kamakura foundation for later trade routes.^38 All things considered, this
is a healthy, if not heavy, representation of commercial and urban history.
In his article on the medieval city, Takahashi Shin’ichirō tightly links cities to commerce in
the medieval period.^39 He posits that the most essential character of medieval cities, regardless of
size or location, was trade: the exchange of goods, buying and selling.^40 He proposes that medi-
eval cities were primarily nuclei of their local economic zones, but also linked to other cities
through trade networks creating larger, regional economic zones. Kyoto, for instance, was the
center of the capital economic zone, linked to other cities like Sakai, Hyōgo, and Ōtsu. Mean-
while, maritime trade created regional economic zones such as the Inland Sea, with trade occur-
ring between cities, as beads on a string.
Takahashi credits archeology with shedding light on the shape and operations of these smaller
entities both individually and in networks. Finally, he ventures that cityscape is one other aspect
of medieval cities deserving consideration. This includes architecture, such as machiya residences
and shops, street layout, and street life such as buying and selling, movement of people and
animals, etc. Sources like illustrated screens as well as the archeological record are essential to this
reconstruction of a lost scene. In identifying commerce as central to the identity of all medieval
cities, Takahashi’s essay builds upon several decades of scholars’ interdisciplinary research, includ-
ing archeology and regional history.
Chieda Daishi’s essay on late medieval circulation of goods and currency relies on prior schol-
arly work proving a high level of commercial activity throughout medieval Japan.^41 By the fif-
teenth century, the country was comprised of multiple trade zones, and markets and itinerating
merchants had proliferated, supported by landed and maritime transport routes. Chieda posits
that the Kyoto- centric economic zone continued to function and even expanded in the post-
Ōnin period as rulers and would- be rulers situated themselves in the capital city. Nor does he
neglect regional economic zones, focusing on Ise province, where, by the sixteenth century,
merchant guilds had specialized into those operating locally and those carrying goods to outside
areas. He then moves beyond discrete zones, describing near- national circulation and consump-
tion of specialized local goods in the late medieval period, predicated on the durability of trade
routes in a period of some instability. He explicates at length the regional nature of “trust arrange-
ments” whereby goods could be circulated nationally through the widespread use of such devices
as bills of exchange.^42 In a word, he leaves no doubt that in commerce and trade across regions,
late medieval Japan had moved beyond subsistence to the sophistication of an integrated market
system.
Commerce and towns, whether treated separately or together, constitute rich if not dominant
subfields of medieval history in Japan today. Kyoto- centrism is a thing of the past as regional
trade zones are clarified; the ubiquity of urban sites across the land is well documented; the