Ebook: Yokohama and the Silk Trade: How Eastern Japan Became the Primary Economic Region of Japan, 1843–1893

This study provides a broad political and economic examination of the impact of the silk trade on nineteenth-century Japan. It analyzes the economic role of Japan’s eastern interior region and that of the port of Yokohama. It argues that the economic development in this period laid the foundations for Japan’s prewar industrial development in the late nineteenth century and was largely responsible for the integration of Japan into the global economy.

Review
Expertly utilizing diaries, letters, and other primary materials, Yasuhiro Makimura unravels here the ways in which Japanese merchants connected the hinterland with Yokohama and, from there, with the world market. By focusing on the critically important Japanese silk industry—on which we surprisingly have no full-length study in English—and by taking a novel regional approach, Makimura provides a significant contribution to our understanding of the start-up phase of Japan’s modern economic development. (Steven Ericson, Dartmouth College)

The bakufu chose Yokohama, a tiny fishing village, as the place to negotiate with Commodore Perry in 1854, and built the port city of Yokohama in 1859. Treaties limited foreign trade to five open port cities, and Yokohama quickly became the pivot for raw silk exports of such high quality that Japanese raw silk came to dominate the global market. In this study, Yasuhiro Makimura vividly examines the drama of nineteenth-century Yokohama from various perspectives, including Japanese domestic politics, foreign policy, export trade, reinvestment, and technological development. (Yuzo Kato, Yokohama City University)

Yokohama and the Silk Trade is a rich and lively account of the political economy of foreign trade in Japan from the opening of the treaty ports to the early 1890s. Yasuhiro Makimura combines wonderful stories with a strong interpretive line in this important work. At its center is a series of lively portraits of entrepreneurs whose careful network building and wild speculations helped to integrate the economy of eastern Japan at a time of rapid and unpredictable change. (David L. Howell, Harvard University)

About the Author
Yasuhiro Makimura is associate professor of history at Iona College.