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I have said this before, but I see some parallels between the modern world and Japan during the early Tokugawa era. Japan had pretty much reached a steady state

• burn_cycle 9y ago
  This sounds pretty interesting, can you recommend any books on Japan about this particular period/topic?
  • lainga 9y ago
    My major source for all this was Marius Jansen's The Making of Modern Japan. It's a sweeping book - 600 pages, I think, and covers everything from 1300 to 2000 - but one of its main focuses is the end of the Sengoku period and the rise of the Tokugawa.
    • burn_cycle 9y ago
      This looks fantastic, thank you.
  • Sangermaine 9y ago
    For a view of what this looked like on the ground, you should check out "Musui's Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai". It's the autobiography of Katsu Kokichi (Musui is another name he was known by), a samurai born in the early 19th century to a very low-ranking family. It's a firsthand account of life at the very lowest fringe of Shogunate society at the very end of that system, and is quite entertaining because Katsu is a lazy good-for-nothing who can't even get one of those pointless bureaucracy jobs and survives by doing "lowly" merchant work. I think it would make a pretty funny TV show because the protagonist is such a hapless loser.
    • krapp 9y ago
      I can't be the only person here who read this comment and thought of Gintama.
    • walshemj 9y ago
      Sounds like Only Fools and Horses :-)
  • clairity 9y ago
    you could also read shogun by james clavell, which is a fictional novel based on tokugawa. i read his whole asian saga series because that first book was so good.
    • walshemj 9y ago
      Oh yes and a bet a large number of readers fell in love with Mariko
• foamflower 9y ago
  When my family lived in Japan years ago, we noticed that when taking the train, approximately three attendants checked our tickets before we boarded a train. At least two of those jobs are "bullshit" in terms of producing wealth, but they are socially beneficial in a culture where the social contract requires near-zero unemployment. (I, apparently like you, can't help but remember this kind of arrangement when listening to "jobs guarantee" rhetoric from various politicians.)
  • bamboozled 9y ago
    Never noticed this, visited Japan a few times myself. Often I had mine checked at the gate and on the train. Are you sure you’re not just exaggerating?
    • 2RTZZSro 9y ago
      Keep an eye out for people guiding traffic in Tokyo. It's much more than in Europe
      • astrange 8y ago
        They’ve fixed it, but Japan used to have a very high pedestrian death rate from being hit by cars.
    • jstanley 9y ago
      I visited Japan recently and although I think the tickets were only actually checked by one person, there did seem to be an awful lot of superfluous staff associated with any sort of transport.
    • chiph 9y ago
      Could it be because you're a foreigner? I almost certainly got picked out on every ride on the Munich S-Bahn by a fare agent for a ticket-check because I was obviously not German. Which I totally get - a tourist is way more likely to make a mistake than a local.
• api 9y ago
  That's really interesting. I've drawn another more superficial Japan comparison: Japanese economic stagnation since the 1980s. I've been predicting for a while that we are headed for "planet Japan": perpetually low interest rates and not much actual growth. What ended the era you describe? Contact with the outside world? I've also thought for a long time that space migration is the only real hope for the human race to avoid permanent stagnation and eventual decline.
  • pesmhey 9y ago
    The Meiji Restoration. It was somewhat of a result of the Japanese being contacted by the outside world and realizing that they were behind. Also the "floating world" period up to that point, so it seems like life was at least decent for people before the outside influence.
  • rangibaby 8y ago
    > Contact with the outside world? Perry (US) sailed a fleet into Tokyo Bay and threatened to destroy the city if the samurai government didn’t open trade with the US (1850s). Fearing domination by western powers (cf. China) the Japanese reformed their society and economy based on western empires (1868) and within 40 years was able to soundly defeat Russia in a war (1905).
• poulsbohemian 9y ago
  This is very similar to the situation that caused the Swiss to become the mercenaries of Europe. If you were the second son, you weren't going to inherit the farm and thus in a resource-poor country like Switzerland of the Middle Ages, your best choice was to go abroad and find some feudal lord putting together an army. Thus you became a "freelance" and hopefully found riches. I've always thought Machiavelli's dislike of mercenaries was poorly placed, as after all they were simply following the economic incentives.
  • blawson 9y ago
    Primogeniture was pretty common in the middle ages in Europe. I've read arguments that it's a big reason why the Normans basically went out conquering England, the Mediterranean, etc.
    • jcranmer 9y ago
      Primogeniture doesn't really set in until the High Middle Ages, and even then, there was still a fair amount of splitting inheritance up among sons (that's why the Holy Roman Empire consisted of so many small states: some of the duchies were given to splitting up to give to second and third sons). The Norse themselves still tended to follow partitioning laws, at least until the Scandinavian kingdoms started to coalesce. The repeated invasions of England between Ethelred the Unready and the final conquest of William the Bastard were not driven by second sons needing kingdoms for themselves, it was driven by England having the best tax base in the North Sea but high political stability, as well as the dying out of family lines. Key point about the latter: when Edward the Confessor died without issue, the claims to the English throne were: * Edward's brother-in-law and most powerful vassal, Harold Godwinson (son of the person who put Edward on the throne in the first place) * William, the bastard son of Edward's maternal cousin. Bolstered by "when he was staying over when he was young, he totally promised me the throne when he died." * Harald Hardrada, whose claim is "Cnut was King of England. He died, so his claim passed to Harthacnut. Harthacnut and Magnus made an agreement that, should one die without issue, the other would inherit his lands. Harthacnut died without issue, so Magnus should have been King of England. Magnus died without issue, so his claim winds its way back to me, his father's half-brother by way of mother."
• grouseway 9y ago
  More recently isn't this how Saudi Arabia is currently run?
• bojo 8y ago
  This reminds me of an entry level Business Japanese class I took many years ago from Peter Firkola at the University of Hokkaido, except as applied to modern day Japan. My memory is a little fuzzy about the specifics, but the following is the main gist of it. Basically the Japanese government funds a large number of "pointless" projects, such as freeways to nowhere, large sea-facing cement walls, or things like subsidizing construction companies and the like (this is why you'll see 6 people standing around a hole in the ground, 3 "bosses" doing absolutely nothing, 2 of them old men flagging traffic, 1 person doing the actual digging). This is how Japan manages to keep their unemployment rate low, and thus keep money moving through the economy - by making sure people are able to obtain a job, even if it's useless or redundant. At the top of it all you have the massive Zaibatsu (big conglomerates) which fund the lower level companies under their umbrella which in turn pay these meager salaries and keep people employed, typically as some kind of tax write off and the side benefits of having all of these various companies at their disposal (concrete, construction, real estate, etc). The bottom of the system is incredibly inefficient, but it helps make sure that a bare minimum quality of life is available for people willing to try to get any old job. Interesting article which sums up big infrastructure projects and their long term drawbacks/benefits better than I can (2009) - https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/asia/06japan.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/asia/06japan.html
  • Vinnl 8y ago
    Isn't that just like benefits, but instead of writing application letters or re-educating yourself or something, you dig holes?
  • dredmorbius 8y ago
    Large sea-facing cement walls suddenly make sense when there's a big wave in the harbour.
  • sorokod 8y ago
    "The bottom of the system is incredibly inefficient, but it helps make sure that a bare minimum quality of life is available for people willing to try to get any old job." Efficiency should be measured against the goal of the system. If the goal is to prevent the society from tearing itself apart then perhaps this is fairly efficient. If the goal is to ma
• dba7dba 8y ago
  The Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98) was largely caused by too many unemployed samurai warriors, who were largely out of jobs as peace spread in Japan. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, de facto ruler of Japan, needed to prevent disturbances by unemployed samurais and result was invasion of Korea. It's not the only reason, but a major one. The scale of the war was massive. Japan alone brought a force of 158,800 in 1st invasion of 1592. In the 2nd invasion of 1597–98, Japan again brought similar number of troops. For comparison in the Long Turkish War or Thirteen Years' War which was between 1593 to 1606, Ottoman Empire had 160,000–180,000 men. Ming Dynasty sent 50,000 men to aid Korea, and some say this started the decline of Ming Dynasty. One really great book I recommend for anyone wanting to learn about this war is "The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China August 12, 2014" by Samuel Hawley. Some interesting tidbits from the book: 1. This war was the first time a large group of Christians (not Western but Japanese Christians) set foot in Korea. Of the 12 (?) forces commanded by different warlords, 2 or 3 had large number of Christians. And these were first Christians to set foot in Korea. 2. Chosun Dynasty court maintained the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty (also known as The True Record of the Joseon Dynasty), annual records of the Joseon Dynasty of Korea. They were kept from 1413 to 1865. The annals, or sillok, comprise 1,893 volumes and are thought to cover the longest continual period of a single dynasty in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritable_Records_of_the_Joseon_Dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritable_Records_of_the_Joseo... Four copies of the records were kept in geographically separate area within Chosun. However during the Imjin War, 3 of the 4 were burned down by Japanese forces. The Imjin War book talks about how the last set of copy was being transported in numerous, lumbering carts pulled by ox to keep it out of marauding Japanese forces. The convoy was in a village when Japanese forces caught up. The convoy had not enough troops to resist. They then faked it to look like the village held more Korean troops than actual, by using extra flags and other camouflage. Japanese forces stayed away and this allowed the last backup of 4 backups to survive. This tidgit was extra interesting to me for following: 1) Faking it till making it. 2) how 4 sets of backup was just barely enough.
  • lainga 8y ago
    The Japanese nearly invaded Korea again in 1873, funnily enough, for the same reason. Saigo Takamori saw it as an opportunity for the thousands of newly-unseated samurai to find honourable work (or death). When the government failed to take Toyotomi's lesson and refused, he revolted instead and found an end for the samurai at Shiroyama.
• doomlaser 8y ago
  I think of FDR's Public Works department, which built my High School, and the Student Union at my undergraduate alma mater, UIUC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
• nabla9 8y ago
  Tokugawa era had lasting peace partly because of these bullshit jobs. It was a way to build institutions that kept 300 regional daimyos and people who trained weapons in check. Japanese developed clever formal court system (Sankin-kotai "alternate attendance") where half of the daimyos were kept hostage in the capital city at all times. Spend year in your own lands surrounded by your own men, one year as hostage in the capital that was under the control of the shogun. If daimio left the capital, his wife and heir were kept as hostages. All these daimios and their close families needed something to do to make their life meaningful. Same applied to their underlings. King Louis XIV had similar system for the same reasons. Nobles had to keep hostage in his palace at Versailles and they needed things to do. The court system developed bullshit jobs for nobles, like helping him into the bed or taking part of the party. Everyone was given a role to play.
  • lainga 8y ago
    Thanks, I forgot to mention sankin-kotai. It was also set up as a way to prevent the daimyos from amassing enough money to build up an army - they were supposed to spend lavishly along the entire route between their residences and Edo.
  • bitwize 8y ago
    I'm reminded of the British royal court post "groom of the stool". The groom of the stool was literally the guy who wiped the King's ass. It was a highly coveted position, as you had private audience with the king during his most intimate moments.