An Asian Route to Capitalism: Religious Economy and the Origins of Self-Transforming Growth in Japan Author(s): Randall Collins Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 62, No. 6 (Dec., 1997), pp. 843-865 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2657343 Accessed: 02/06/2009 08:24

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Sociological Review.

http://www.jstor.org AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM: RELIGIOUS ECONOMY AND THE ORIGINS OF SELF- TRANSFORMING GROWTH IN JAPAN

Randall Collins University of Pennsylvania

Modern capitalism is a self-transforming dynamic that proliferates market niches, new products, and techniques. The industrial revolution could take place only in the context of preexisting agricultural capitalism, that, in turn, required a breakout from the obstacles constituted by agrarian-coercive so- cieties. Organizational conditions necessary for self-sustaining capitalist growth included markets not only for commodities but for all factors of pro- duction (land, labor, and capital), combined under control of entrepreneurs motivated by an economic ethic of future-oriented calculation and invest- ment. Weber was mistaken in holding that the capitalist breakthrough oc- curred only in Christian Europe. I propose a neo-Weberian model in which the initial breakout from agrarian-coercive obstacles took place within the enclave of religious organizations, with monasteries acting as the first en- trepreneurs. The model is illustrated by the case of Buddhism in late medi- eval Japan. The leading sector of monastic capitalism spread into the sur- rounding economy through religious movements of mass proselytization which narrowed the gap between clergy and laity. Confiscation of Buddhist property at the transition to the Tokugawa period transferred the capitalist dynamic to the secular economy of an agricultural mass market, opening the way for a distinctive Japanese path through the industrial revolution.

hree main types of economic structures traditional economic structure; what those have existed in world history: (1) kin- societies lack is the sustained innovativeness ship-organized networks, which lack a sepa- of modern self-transforming capitalism rate state organization and in which eco- which expands to mass markets and prolifer- nomic exchange is shaped by marital alli- ates market niches and new products. ances and ceremonial gift exchange; (2) Historically, self-transforming capitalism agrarian-coercive societies, in which a spe- has gone through three key phases: cialized military class appropriatesthe land (3a)a small leading sector within agrarian- and coercively extracts most of the surplus coercive societies set the innovative dy- produce; and (3) capitalist market econo- namic in motion; mies, with their dynamic of self-transform- ing growth. Market relations alone are not (3b)the spread of capitalist market structures sufficient to cause major economic change. made agricultural production dynamic; Markets may exist in other types of societ- and ies, but as ancillary and subordinate to the (3c)the industrial revolution of production Direct correspondenceto Randall Collins, by machines harnessed to inanimate en- Departmentof Sociology, Universityof Pennsyl- ergy sources set off the expansion of vania, Philadelphia,PA 19104-6299 (collinsr@ nonagriculturalproduction. sas.upenn.edu).I am indebtedfor commentsand advice to Koya Azumi, StephenKalberg, collo- Our task is to explain how at least some quiumparticipants at InternationalChristian Uni- world regions first passed from agrarian-co- versityand Joetsu University, and a seriesof ASR ercive societies (type 2 above) to type 3a, and reviewers. thence to 3b and 3c. The industrial revolu-

American Sociological Review, 1997, Vol. 62 (December:843-865) 843 844 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW tion (3c) could have occurred only on the ba- many aspects of long-standing Asian culture sis of 3b, a preexisting agricultural market and social structure, even if capitalism was capitalism (Moore 1966; Wallerstein 1974). not initiated in Asia. A stronger claim is that Large-scale industrial technology is eco- in Japan, the cultural, economic, and social nomically useless if it does not occur in the structures of the Tokugawa period signifi- context of institutions supporting a mass cantly prepared the way for industrial capi- market and the mass provision of the factors talism. Stronger yet are argumentsthat Japan of production. Technological innovation- independently developed capitalism before the creation of machines as well as other new European incursion. techniques of production and distribution- These revisionist argumentsare weakened, is not the key, but only the most visible form however, by their failure to examine their par- of this structural dynamism of capitalism. ticular historical causes against a full-scale The most importanttransformation, the topic theoretical model of what is involved in the of this paper, is two steps further back: the transition to capitalism. Particular items of breakout from an agrarian-coercivestructure culture such as Confucian values (suggested in a leading sector (3a) which introduces the in McCormack and Sugimoto 1984; Rozman structuresof self-sustaining growth. 1991) or a religious work ethic (Bellah 1957) Such a leading sector is potentially revolu- are not in themselves sufficient to effect a tionary because it is antithetical to the struc- breakout from agrarian-coercive structures; tural conservatism of agrarian-coerciveorga- nor is the existence of merchants or trade nization. This is not to say that agrarian-co- (stressed by Hamashita 1994; Howe 1996; ercive societies are stagnant in every respect. Kawakatsu 1994; and Sanderson 1994). Only Such societies can undergo geopolitical ex- a general model of the institutional compo- pansion and contraction, population growth nents of capitalist growth and of the obstacles and decline, as well as geographical migra- to these institutions in agrarian-coercive so- tion and concentration. Long-distance trade cieties provides the context in which we can routes may develop as well as atrophy, and assess whether the conditions for the inde- may even constitute what are sometimes pendent development of capitalism were called world systems (Abu-Lughod 1989; present in Japan and elsewhere. Gills and Frank 1991). The key question is We begin, then, with a general institutional whether such changes merely create quanti- model of capitalist development. A previous tative variations within the agrarian-coercive application of this model (Collins 1986, social structure of economic relations. As chap. 3) showed how the Christian monastic long as the dominant structure is a military economy during the High Middle Ages governing class that coerces production for (1050-1300) initiated the earliest phase (3a) its own consumption, wealth concentrates in of capitalist transformation in Europe; the the palaces and spectacular monuments of Protestant Reformation of the 1500s and the the capital cities, and does not circulate back accompanying confiscation of church prop- through investment in a sector where capi- erty marked the full breakout to the secular talist innovation becomes sustained. economy-the second phase (3b) of struc- The transition from 2 to 3a and thence to tural growth. Here I develop the argument in 3b took place in a leading sector composed regard to the economic effects of the main of the material economy of religious institu- popular religion of East Asia, the Buddhism tions inside agrarian-coercivesociety. In this of medieval China and Japan. paper I argue that this occurred in medieval and early modern Japan on the basis of Bud- THE STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS dhist institutions, paralleling the early eco- OF SELF-TRANSFORMING nomic development of Europe under Chris- CAPITALISM tianity. The view that Asian capitalism is an adoption of a Western implant has recently What conditions make it possible to break been challenged by a number of rival inter- out of an agrarian-coercive system to capi- pretations. One argument,focusing on Asian talist growth? The fullest picture of these in- economic growth in the late twentieth cen- stitutional requirements and their corre- tury, holds that capitalism is compatible with sponding obstacles in traditional structures AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 845

Components of Organizational Social Obstacles Ultimate Conditions Self-Transforming Preconditions Capitalist Growth Political/military dominance over Marketsfor goods Systematic law economic relations Bureaucraticstate labor protectingproperty organization capital transactions land _ Citizenshipand corporate rights Universalistic Universalisticchurch Entrepreneurial economic participation Ethnic kin, and status recruitment combinationof factors rankclosure of production

Asceticismand Disciplinedreligious Disciplined,calculating < investment Consumptionfor practices economic ethic status display and communitytradition Figure 1. Chain of Causal Conditions for Self-Transforming Capitalist Growth remains that of Weber. Here we must refer incentives but remains tied to a physical or not merely to Weber's work on the Protes- social location; and as long as capital, both tant Ethic, or even to his comparative studies in the form of financial instruments and of of the economic propensities of the world re- material implements of production, is not ligions, but to his full institutional model. readily bought and sold. Nor, under these Weber surveyed this area most comprehen- conditions, does a competitive process re- sively in his lectures published as "General place inefficient industries with more pro- Economic History" ([1923] 1961); I draw ductive ones. The existence of commodity here on the formal model given in Collins trade alone does not guarantee a competitive (1986). In light of the historical phases of capitalist market, penetrating and transform- capitalist growth listed above, Weber's ing all sectors of society. Modern capitalism theory leaves a good deal unexplained; it is explosive: It tends to dominate the polity does not explain how either capitalist agri- and force all other institutional sectors to ac- culture (3b) or industrial revolution (3c) commodate to itself. It is this explosive char- came about. I suggest that Weber provides acter that is lacking in the commodity mar- the most complete analytical model for 3a: kets of agrarian-coerciveeconomies. the obstacles that a leading sector faced in The second major condition necessary for breaking out from agrarian-coercive struc- capitalist transformationis that control of all tures, and the social institutions that had to the factors of production must be combined be constructed to overcome those obstacles. in the hands of entrepreneurs. Enterprises The following scheme, modified from We- must exist as organizations acquiring land, ber ([1923] 1961) and Schumpeter ([1911] capital, and labor according to needs of pro- 1961), gives three sets of conditions, each duction for the market. This entrepreneurial with its subcomponents (see Figure 1). One organization, as Weber stressed, makes pos- condition or another in isolation is insuffi- sible the calculation of opportunities for cient to undermine agrarian-coercive struc- profit, and hence for the directed flow of in- tures; all the ingredients must come together vestment. Connected with this is the charac- to generate self-sustaining capitalist growth. teristic that is central to Schumpeter's First, there must exist markets for all the ([1911] 1961) definition of capitalism: capi- factors of production: land, labor, and capi- talism as enterprise carried out with bor- tal. It is not enough that markets exist for rowed money; capitalism as a market system commodities, whether luxury goods or even in which banks act as the headquarters, de- bulk trade in the staples of life. The factors ciding among rival claims for capital invest- of production do not move flexibly and rap- ment according to competitive bids for po- idly to areas of greatest returnas long as land tential profit. Banks in this sense may itself is not for sale but is controlled by mili- emerge only gradually; banking itself may tary coercion or political allocation; as long begin as a side activity of entrepreneurs in as labor does not move according to market trade or in the production of agricultural or 846 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW finished goods. The key is that the flow of ethnic groups (who were treated as outsiders investment capital should develop in con- to the host community), and prohibited to junction with enterprises in this sense. other groups. The typical form of organiza- As Schumpeter emphasized, entrepreneurs tion was the patrimonialhousehold, based on make new combinations out of available in- a privileged kin group surrounded by ser- puts of labor, land, and capital. In markets vants and armed guards, a structurethat lim- for well-established products, competition ited market participationof most persons in- drives down profits; hence the greatest prof- side the unit of household production and itability comes in creating new products, and consumption. Also, the hierarchy of social moving to new market niches. This entrepre- statuses, anchored in the power of military neur-drivenmodel has been extended further aristocrats and sometimes of religious ritual- by the network theory (White 1981) of capi- ists, tended to close off strata to hereditary talist markets as mutually monitoring net- status groups whose lifestyle ideals made works of producers, who seek profits by cre- only particularoccupations honorable. ating noncompetitive market niches through This is not to say that individuals and fami- innovation and product differentiation. It is lies were immobile. Aristocrats were killed, this entrepreneurialcompetition that makes or their families died out; others fought their capitalism repeatedly self-transformative: way to power. But this process of replace- The search for profits under the pressures of ment did not so much undermine hierarchi- competition in all of the factor markets (in- cal divisions as reinforce them, above all as cluding the pressures of financial market- a source of social motivation. Merchants places) leads to the proliferation of market were a subordinate group in agrarian-coer- niches, in contrast to the relatively static cive hierarchies, typically dishonored and range of products in the controlled markets kept under tight controls. Where possible, of agrarian-coerciveeconomies. successful merchants attempted to convert A third factor to which Weber gave special their wealth to land- and office-holding, prominence is an economic ethic of disci- thereby becoming members of the aristoc- plined work and calculation of productive racy, rather than reinvesting wealth in inno- gains. Ideally this attitude is shared by both vative production. Lacking safeguards, laborers and entrepreneurs. An economic whenever merchants' wealth grew large, it ethic involves not only the motivation for was threatened with confiscation or its equi- hard work but also a self-controlled orienta- valent through forced loans. Under most cir- tion toward long-term gains. It means re- cumstances, the merchants did not revolu- straining both immediate consumption and tionize production within agrarian-coercive greed for rapid gains throughsharp practices, structures;their trade reinforced the existing and favors accumulating small, regular gains pattern of coercive hierarchy and its prefer- in repeated, reliable business dealings. The ence for traditional social and economic re- Weberianeconomic ethic is a combination of lations.' Thus even highly developed trade self-discipline, ethical self-restraint, and cal- relations in some early periods (stressed by culation of long-run productivity. Abu-Lughod 1989; Chaudhuri 1990; Gills and Frank 1991), in the absence of the social structures of dynamic capitalism, do not im- to Social Obstacles Capitalism ply that a self-sustaining economic transfor- Historically, there have been obstacles to all mation was under way. of these capitalist institutions. Most factors of productionhave not moved on markets;all have been subject to military predators, to I Markets historically grew up around capital arbitraryrestriction and confiscation by state cities and other central places in agrarian-coer- elites, and in general to the dominance of cive empires (Finley 1973; Nishijima 1986). political structuresover economic structures. These markets were based on coerced goods de- livered from the estates of the resident aristoc- Commonly there were barriersto full partici- racy. Sometimes they devolved into independent pation by all sectors of the population in the modes of transportand delivery, together with lo- market economy. Occupations such as mer- cal truckfarming and handcrafts for aristocratic chants may have been confined to particular consumption. AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 847

Entrepreneurial organization, like market ancing factor is necessary, because bureau- relations, was generally inhibited in agrarian- cracy, if left to itself in an economy of coer- coercive societies by the lack of property in- cive extraction, generally wields its formal stitutions protecting market transactions, and regulations not to protect capitalist property by the absence of legal mechanisms by relations but to suppress them; this was the which contracts could be adjudicated and bias of the Confucian bureaucracyin China. damages assessed. On the contrary, law ten- For this reason Weber added that citizenship ded to reinforce the rights and exclusions of rights must emerge among those classes with hierarchical strata. The ruler might claim the greatest interest in capitalism. It is the ownership of all land or distribute it on po- combination of citizenship and bureaucracy, litical conditions to military retainers or tax and the balance between them, that mitigates farmers. Where aristocrats held legal owner- their extremes and makes possible a legal ship of land, they typically monopolized the system favoring expansion of the capitalist right for their status group. Peasants were in- market and entrepreneurship. volved in a variety of land-tenure systems, (2) Weber stressed the role of a universal- but even those that provided nominal owner- istic religion of salvation, above all Chris- ship rarely allowed freedom to transferprop- tianity, that broke through the barriersof eth- erty on an open market. Control over the fac- nicity and kin groups. Such religion had the tors of land, labor, and capital was structur- unintended effect of opening up the realm of ally dispersed ratherthan concentrated in en- economic relationships to a unitary ethical trepreneurialhands. standardand paved the way for universal par- Finally, the disciplined economic ethic was ticipation in capitalist markets for the factors antithetical to the typical form of status cul- of production. ture in aristocratic-hierarchicsocieties. Em- (3) Weber theorized that religion is a phasis on consumption as a form of status source of the economic ethic of ascetic self- display, and as a means of enhancing one's restraint and calculative rationality directed rank if one were rising from below, inhibited toward economic productivity. Weber's most the asceticism and investment habits of the famous argumenthere concerned the Calvin- wealthier classes, while the traditional ritu- ist doctrine of predestination and the psycho- als structuring the rounds of the year regu- logical tensions it produced. In the historical lated both work and consumption for the la- background is the longer sequence through boring classes.2 ancient Judaism and Christianity. In world How were these obstacles overcome? We- perspective, Weber stressed the economic ber sketched a combination of political and importance of a religion oriented toward sal- religious causes flowing to the institutional vation, rather than toward magical manipu- structures of capitalism, represented in the lation for immediate material ends, or toward middle and right-hand side of Figure 1. ceremonially impressive religious ritual that (1) Systematic law had to develop, protect- reinforces rather than breaks through tradi- ing property and facilitating property trans- tional practices and status barriers. Among actions. Further back in the chain of causes, salvation religions, Weber emphasized the systematic law arises in connection with the importance of the variant that ties religious bureaucratization of the state-the replace- standing to ascetic, ethical activity in the ment of arbitrarypersonal authority with an world ratherthan to mystical accommodation administrative structure of written rules. or transcendence. Thus, some degree of bureaucracy is a pre- condition for capitalism. But a counterbal- REINTERPRETING THE WEBERIAN 2 Thompson (1967:57-93) emphasized this lat- MODEL AS AN ECONOMY OF ter obstacle for Europe (for Japan, see Smith RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS of an economic 1988). The Weberian concept The Weberian model was a pioneering effort ethic does not mean simply hard work and fru- gality; poor peasants had to live this way if they in comparative analysis of world economic were to survive, but this was not the same thing and social change. Only partially finished at as a calculating attitude toward investment in Weber's death, it sketches the broad range of long-term growth of production for profit. institutional components that undergirdedthe 848 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW breakthrough to capitalist growth. I will as foils; he thereby obscured their signifi- broaden and reinterpretWeber's argumentin cance in initiating the earlier breakthroughto several respects. economic dynamism within agrarian-coer- Contraryto what Weberhimself argued, we cive societies. Monasteries could play the should not assume that the breakthroughto role of leading sector because they consti- capitalism was made only in Europe. I tuted a substantial material segment of the downplay the emphasis on the content of agrarianeconomy in their own right. Religion Protestantdoctrine, because religiously based initially contributed to capitalism not prima- economic breakthroughshave occurred with rily by inspiring lay people's beliefs and mo- other doctrinal contents: in the Catholic doc- tivations, but through the material expansion trines of activist monastic movements in the of religious organization. Monasteries, European middle ages, and in Buddhist temples, and churches at first formed their movements, both monastic and popular sal- own market and property relations, accumu- vation religions, in medieval China and Ja- lated wealth, and pioneered new economic pan. My argumentis an abstraction and gen- structures. These made up a substantial sec- eralization from Weber's point: Not only tor in medieval economies where religious Christianity but the universalism of all the organization at times held as much as one great world religions breaks down social bar- third of the cultivated land, and perhaps even riers and enforces ethical universalism. more of the portable wealth. Within its own From a sociological viewpoint, how does sector, religious organization broke through this ethical universalism arise? Doctrine is the obstacles to economic growth within tra- never free-floating, but is always embedded ditional societies. In Schumpeter's terms, in social practices. The universalism of a re- monasteries were the first entrepreneurs. ligion is manifested in practice by its prose- All the institutional paths depicted in Fig- lytization of everyone: Christianity, Islam, ure 1 initially were formed not in the agrar- and Buddhism are "world religions" because ian-coercive society at large, but within the they recruit potentially the whole world. In enclave of the religious economy. Catholic an agrarian-coercive society a universalistic Christianity had its own disciplined eco- religion is the one institution that recruits its nomic ethic based on the ascetic and routin- members-priests, monks and devout laity- ized life of the monks. Weber and others from all social strata. Furthermore,if the re- noted the irony that ascetic Protestants, pro- ligion is staffed by celibate priests and hibited by religious scruples from freely monks, its positions must be nonhereditary; spending the rewards of their disciplined la- its organization does not structurally rein- bor, ended up growing rich. The mechanism force the family inheritance of position that is even more evident in the case of the mon- predominates elsewhere in society, but intro- asteries, where the fruits of religious disci- duces individual achievement in religious ca- pline became material capital for investment: reers. In Buddhism as in Christianity, reli- Because celibate monks could not siphon this gious movements for mass proselytization off to family consumption, it was the monas- spread these ethical and motivational struc- tic corporation that grew rich.3 tures widely, and thus they become vehicles In the sequence of breakthroughs from for social transformation. agrarian-coercivestructures described above, It is necessary also to revise Weber's posi- monastic capitalism was the leading sector tion on the significance of monastic religion. (3a). The spillover to a secular economy (3b) From Weber's viewpoint, monasticism si- occurred first through the spread of prosely- phons off religious motivation: It creates as- cetic discipline, but turns it to otherworldly 3 Weber ([1923] 1961:267-69) recognized ends, preventing orientation toward trans- monks as following the first thoroughly disci- forming the ordinaryworld while leaving the plined and rationalized organization of life, cit- nonmonastic laity with a religion of ritualis- ing both medieval Catholicism and Buddhist Ti- bet. But Weber saw the resulting riches of the tic accommodation to circumstances. In dra- monasteries merely as a form of corruption, with- matizing the significance of the Protestant out consequences for economic growth in gen- Reformation, Weber depicted medieval Ca- eral. See especially his dismissal of Chinese Bud- tholicism and the monastic religions of Asia dhism in Weber ([1917] 1958:268-69). AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 849 tizing movements that began in the monastic comparison with other sectors of agrarian- orders. In Europe, China, and Japan alike, coercive society: The monasteries were the there were periods during which burgeoning only organizationsthat were not structuredas movements founded new monasteries, typi- patrimonial households bound by personal cally by reforming orders which tightened relations. For these reasons, the growth of monastic discipline (Cistercians in Europe, universalistic religious organization at the Ch'an in China, Zen in Japan). These move- heart of the status order of agrarian-coercive ments had the effects of geographically ex- societies was uniquely suited to reorienting panding the monastic economy and amass- material goods and social energies to invest ing wealth. Religious organizational growth in new forms of production and exchange. was accompanied or followed by movements I present the theory here in ideal types. led by monastic preachers proselytizing Multiple causes have contributed in varying among the common people (Augustinian, degrees to the structural transformation of Franciscan, and Dominican friars in Euro- agrarian-coercivesocieties. Occasionally cir- pean Christianity; the Pure Land movements cumstances enabled some merchants to over- in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism); hybrid come their traditional limitations as auxilia- forms of quasi-ascetic lay religiosity were ries to military aristocracies and allowed the result. On the material side, these move- some military specialists to move from co- ments spread market relations and disci- erced booty capitalism to innovations in pro- plined economic practices in lay society. Still duction. The brunt of my argument is that later, full-scale transformation to a secular such developments by themselves would economy came about by "reformations,"po- have been swallowed up by the predominant litically based confiscations of the old mo- agrarian-coercive relations if a leading sec- nastic property holdings. Monastic wealth tor, the religious economy, had not unleashed was transferredto secular channels, and reli- the first relatively large-scale innovations in gious motivations for salvation were forced production. As a result, this economy mobi- into worldly channels, including economic lized much larger portions of the subordi- activities. nated classes than did the economic activi- In long-term perspective, the leading sec- ties of traditional merchants or aristocrats. tor in the initial phase of breakout from The religious economy was not the only con- agrarian-coercive structures must have in- tributor to dynamic capitalism, but in the volved religious organization. For reasons breakout from agrarian-coerciverelations, it given above, neither merchants nor military constituted the leading sector. aristocrats were likely to be the leaders in bringing about the first phase of structural THE LONG-TERM PATTERN OF EAST change. Religious organization mobilized re- ASIAN CAPITALISM sources from all social classes as no other institution could. At the top, religious orga- Japanese economic development followed a nization was protected by state rulers, who long-term pattern of economic growth that used it to provide ceremonial legitimation. began in medieval China. Key Japanese po- Religion received an inflow of sons and litical and religious institutions were im- daughters of the aristocracy, who brought ported from China in several waves, setting wealth and prestige as well as energy and Japan on the path toward an expansive mar- ambition to expand the influence of their ket economy. In both China and Japan, the adopted institution. Religious organizations phase of capitalist expansion in the secular received land and other material contribu- economy was preceded by an economic tions, both from rulers and from lower aris- boom within the enclave of religious econ- tocrats bent on sheltering their propertyfrom omy. In Asia, a Buddhist monastic economy state exactions. Religion also provided ca- laid the foundations for growth. The first ex- reers for the middle and even the lower pansion occurred in early medieval China, classes, thereby mobilizing social energies resulting in a breakout to a secular economy that would otherwise have remained very cir- in the Sung dynasty. Again in Japan, im- cumscribed. Religious organizations had an ported Chinese Buddhist institutions spear- advantage for productive accumulation in headed a growing market economy; follow- 850 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW ing a Reformation-like confiscation of Bud- tion but could not regain the mechanism of dhist property on the eve of the Tokugawa qualitatively transformativegrowth. period, secular capitalism took off. In terms Japanese society built on the structural of the general scheme given above for trans- transformation begun in China. Japan gives formation of agrarian-coercive structures, I an approximation of what China would have will concentrate here on the Buddhist reli- become had it continued the trajectoryof the gious economy as the leading sector of capi- T'ang and Sung dynasties. During those peri- talist expansion (3a), and the breakout from ods, Japan imported organized structures of the religious economy to a wider secular state and religion beyond the level of clans. economy of agriculturalcapitalism (3b). Japan broke free from the direct influx of In an earlier work, I applied a neo- Chinese culturejust when China was turning, Weberian model of the institutional condi- institutionally and ideologically, against Bud- tions for dynamic capitalism to explain the dhism. It is medieval China, Buddhist-domi- economic growth of medieval China nated China, that Japan continues. The sti- (Collins 1986:58-72). The Buddhist monas- fling bureaucraticcentralization of the Ming tic economy expanded in the period of mul- (1368-1644) and Ch'ing (1644-1911) dynas- tiple states (ca. 400-600) following the dis- ties became dominant in China after the inde- integration of the Han empire and culmi- pendence of the Chinese monasteries had nated in the T'ang dynasty (618-900). As in been crushed and their propertiesconfiscated; medieval European Christianity, the reli- meanwhile Japan was becoming socially and gious economy spilled over and set off a culturally autonomous. Modern Japanese de- boom in the secular market economy. In velopment is a laboratory for what a society both cases, the monastic economy was tran- built on Buddhist organizational structures scended, outmoded and plundered in "refor- could produce. mations" that reduced the religions to small, While Buddhism was declining in China relatively propertyless organizations purvey- during the Neo-Confucian revival, Japan ac- ing a privatized religiosity. quired the Chinese Buddhist organizations. It is this second-wave market boom that These proliferated throughout Japan from characterized the Sung dynasty (960-1280). 1200 to 1500 in the form of the Pure Land With its massive urbanization, its commod- and Zen movements. The making of the dy- ity production, and its population move- namic marketeconomy dates from these cen- ments, the Sung was the first protomodern turies. The monasteries and the popular Bud- economy (Jones 1988:73-86). With it came dhist movements built up networks of trans- modern economic woes as well: The Sung actions that by the outset of the Tokugawa was the first instance of full-scale price in- unification had placed Japan on at least as flation, the elaboration of superordinate high an economic level as any other part of speculative markets in financial instruments, the world (see Table 1). and governmental party politics based on in- terests and ideologies of the market (Eber- GROWTH OF THE MEDIEVAL hard 1977; Elvin 1973, 1984; Gernet 1962). BUDDHIST ECONOMY IN JAPAN The Sung market economy eventually stag- nated after breaking through to proto- The beginnings of economic growth in me- capitalism. In subsequent dynasties the mar- dieval Japan can be traced through several ket was asphyxiated by governmental regu- waves of religious movements (Collcutt lation and confined to local exchanges that 1981; Dumoulin 1990; Hall, Nagahara, and never regained the dynamic of self-generat- Yamamura 1981; Hall and Toyoda 1977; ing economic growth. The Sung probably Kitagawa 1990, 1987; McMullin 1984; saw the world's first sustained shift in per Yamamura 1990). The original Japanese so- capita productivity (Jones 1988). Such ciety of kin-based clans was organized in the growth ceased in China after this period; sixth and seventh centuries into a centralized Elvin (1973) describes the post-Sung Chi- state, primarily by the establishment of Bud- nese economy as a "high level equilibrium dhism as a state religion. The original Bud- trap" in which productivity supported an dhist temples were modeled on organiza- unprecedentedly large and growing popula- tional lineages imported from China and Ko- AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 851

Table 1. Institutional and Economic Development in Japan

Date Period Political Organization Economic Organization Religion

Before 700 Archaic Warrior clans Kin-based economic Clan cults networks 700-1185 Nara/Heian Chinese-style centralized Agrarian-coercive: Court-centered court administration estates of court ceremonial aristocracy and clergy Buddhism 1185-1333 Kamakura Warfare between Market economy Pure Land and Zen rival courts develops around movements spread- temples ing to hinterlands 1333-1460 Muromachi Feudal decentralization Geographical spread Large Pure Land of market economy and Zen temples 1460-1570 Sengoku Feudal lords; merchant Urban-centered market Struggle among ("Country city-states; Buddhist networks; rapid Buddhist armies at War") temple-states; peasant population growth onto federations 1570-1600 Wars of Victory of Oda Nobunaga Secularization of Delegitimation reunification over temple-centered temple properties of Buddhist coalition dominance 1600-1868 Tokugawa Absolutist court Agricultural capitalism; Religious controlling alliance urban mass consumer secularization of feudal lords markets 1868-1912 Meiji Centralized bureaucracy; Industrial capitalism Religious Restoration parliamentary government secularization rea, just when T'ang-dynasty Buddhism was tral authority. This disintegration coincided at its wealthiest and most powerful. In Japan, with the outburst of two new kinds of Bud- Buddhism grew even more dominant than in dhist movements, the popular Pure Land China because the rival power of Confucian sects, and the more elite Zen. The major Pure bureaucracy,which eventually undercutBud- Land sects and their offshoots (Jodo, dhism in China, failed to develop in Japan. founded in 1175; Jodo Shinshu or Ikko, The great Buddhist temples operated eco- founded by Shinran in 1224; Nichiren-shu, nomically much like the court aristocracy. founded by Nichiren in 1253; Ji, founded Located in or near the capital cities, Nara and 1275), were movements of wandering evan- subsequently Heian (Kyoto), these temples gelists. Whereas the great court monasteries were nodes of the agrarian-coercive recruited primarily from the upper class and economy, delivery points for goods from emphasized elaborate ceremonial, the Pure their landed estates. The main economic dif- Land sects simplified the ritual of salvation ference between the temples and the aristo- down to chanting a few prayers or vows cratic estates was that the temples had more (nembutsu). The economic base of these organizational dynamism: They established movements shifted to alms collected from branches throughout the countryside, some- the common people, and to temples in the times at considerable distances, often by in- small towns as well as in the commercial corporating local Shinto shrines under their quarters of the cities. Encouraging lay par- jurisdiction. The major Buddhist temples be- ticipation, some evangelists (above all the came the leading landholders and the centers Ikko movement) broke down the lifestyle of the largest extractive networks. barrierbetween monks and laity, and allowed Around 1165, the court-centered govern- priests to marry. In effect they created a ment gave way to feudal decentralization: "Protestant" form of Buddhism paralleling initially to a system of rival courts, and later, the break from celibacy in European Chris- around 1330, to full-scale breakdownof cen- tianity following Luther. 852 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Components of Organizational Social Obstacles Ultimate Conditions Self-Transforming Preconditions Capitalist Growth .. Political/military..a Monastic bureaucracy Monastic landowning, Systematic law economic relations and Vinaya(Ritsu) labor employment, protectingproperty regulations capital creation, and transactions financial investment Buddhist armies

Universalistic Universalisticrecruitment Monasteries and economic participation Clan and status rank of monks and lay temples as economic closure members entrepreneurs

Disciplinedwork t ethic Asceticism and Celibacy;Zen spirituality investment Consumptionfor of everydaylife; Pure oFiguresof monksand and laitylaity ~~~~~~~statusdisplay seasonaltradition andLadsltinpeur Ladsltinpeur Figure 2. Religious Capitalism in Buddhist Japan

Zen began by recruiting from a higher self-governing cities, and monastic states. class base, especially the feudal warriors, The Sengoku period was the equivalent of while maintaining contacts with the court ar- the political decentralization of Renaissance istocracy. Zen too reformed court Buddhism, Europe. From the viewpoint of orthodox po- in this case by emphasizing meditation rather litical legitimacy, this might be called a time than ceremonial and magic. In the 1200s and of disorder (Sengoku means literally "the 1300s, one major branch of Zen, the Rinzai country upside down"), but politically it of- lineages, built large monasteries under pa- fered structuralfreedom of action; economi- tronage from both the Kamakurashogun and cally, growth of the market economy first the Kyoto aristocracy. By the late 1300s, the reached a considerable level of wealth. The great Rinzai temples in the two capitals, the nominal authority of emperor and shogun so-called "Five Mountains,"presided over a were almost completely disregarded; the hierarchy of secondary and provincial country comprised some 20 major daimyo temples throughout the country, whose rev- (independent military domains) along with enues contributed to the elite temples. Be- dozens of smaller domains. In the core eco- cause of its influence on elite culture, Rinzai nomic regions of central Japan, effectively Zen is the most famous version of Japanese independent city-states were governed by Buddhism; but other branches of Zen spread merchant councils. Among the most power- more widely around the countryside and ful daimyo were several of the Buddhist probably had more effect on the economic temple headquarters,whose armies rested on practices of everyday life. A rival branch of a large economic base and often defeated the Zen, the Soto lineages, expanded to a differ- secular lords. ent niche: small-scale rural monasteries, Both materially and motivationally, the which made meditation exercises available to Buddhist organizations, and especially their common people. Soto provided the elemen- popular branches, constituted the leading tary education that promoted widespread lit- sector of economic growth.4 Figure 2 repro- eracy of the Japanese population. Soto Zen, like the Pure Land movements, tended to dis- 4 Buddhist organizations were diverse and con- solve the barriers within traditional Bud- tributed unequally to economic dynamism. The dhism between the lifestyles of monks and main distinctions are those among the older cer- lay people. emonial Buddhism of the court-related monaster- Monasteries and religious movements be- ies (especially Shingon and Tendai), the Zen came the dominant Japanese institutions dur- movement, and the Pure Land-type movements. Strictly speaking, Nichiren Buddhism was not a ing the Muromachi era (1333-1460) and es- Pure Land doctrine, but its practices and social pecially the Sengoku era (1460-1570), the relations were similar to those of Pure Land. As period of the "Countryat War."At that time, time went on, the various branches influenced one Japan became de facto a region of multiple another; the chanting of nembutsu prayers was states, consisting of rival military domains, often combined with Zen meditation. Similarly, AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 853 duces the institutional components of self- Kyoto-spread laterally across the Japanese sustaining capitalist growth displayed in Fig- archipelago and became denser in the center. ure 1, substituting the institutional forms de- The geographical expansion and density of veloped within the Buddhist economy. Buddhist temples mirrored the population movement, and both promoted and were fur- ther promoted by it. MARKETS FOR THE FACTORS OF In the early middle ages, temples became PRODUCTION the largest centers of accumulation, and hence the organizations most capable of en- Commodity Markets gaging in foreign trade. Sojourning in China Initially the economic effect of the temples for religious purposes fostered trade rela- was to widen markets for commodities. The tions, as monks financed their voyages by traditional ceremonial temples of the old carrying goods. The Zen monasteries pio- heartland around Nara and Kyoto acquired neered in developing the market for tea in bodies of wandering ascetics (hijiri); these Japan, much as the Ch'an monasteries had were in fact itinerant merchants and artisans developed tea production and distribution in who established a network of regular market T'ang China. These were among the first relations in the countryside (McMullin 1984: mass markets for bulk commodities of every- 44). From the mid-i lO0s onward, the bur- day life. The monasteries were not the only geoning movements of Pure Land and popu- traders;especially in the 1500s, pirates were lar Zen introduced market relations to the important carriers of goods across the East hinterlands. The old organization of rural China Sea. But this illicit trade was merely Japanese society, largely restricted to the the kind of interstitial commerce found in level of the clans, now acquired universalis- agrarian-coercive economies generally. It tic networks of travel and cooperation lacked the potential to transform the eco- through religious participation. nomic system that existed in the monastic All these developments promoted growth. sector, where trade was combined with the Population expanded from 5 million in the other institutional structures of dynamic eleventh century to about 10 million in 1300; capitalism. by 1600 it had reached perhaps 18 to 22 mil- lion, by various estimates. Land under culti- Labor Markets and Social Mobility vation expanded; the biggest growth oc- curred during 1450-1600, in the Sengoku pe- Still greater dynamism was introduced as riod of warring states (Jones 1988:153; Buddhist temples promoted markets for labor McEvedy and Jones 1978:179-81).5 Most and capital. Monks were outside the putative importantly, the area of population settle- fixity of social position. External social ranks ment-originally concentrated in central tended to translateto ranks within the monas- Honshu, the old heartland around Nara and teries, and aristocratsmonopolized the abba- cies of the great monasteries, but Buddhist institutional growth gave farmers, craftsmen, on the material side, all the branches of Buddhism and persons the opportunities to eventually became commercialized. The Pure dispossessed Land sects were instrumental in spreading mar- circulate through lower monastic positions. ket relations among the common people; the In Kyoto during the 1300s, the tonsure was Nichiren sect was associated particularly with the used as a means of freeing oneself from court merchant towns of the late middle ages. By the ranks; such tonseisha priests had no formal Sengoku period, all the Buddhist branches, in- ties with temples and continued a secular cluding the oldest sects, had become part of the lifestyle (Varley 1977:186-89). By decreas- productive religious economy. ing the gap between laity and clergy, such 5 By 1600, Japan was more populous than the individuals tended to delegitimate Buddhist sized territories of Britain and comparably religiosity in the next century by giving France; in ratio of population to land area, Japan was the world's most densely populated country monks the reputation of worldliness. (about 50 percent above the level of second- Viewed from another angle, this weaken- ranked Netherlands; calculated from McEvedy ing in the border between clergy and laity and Jones 1978). opened the gates for a period of unprec- 854 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW edented social fluidity. Religion was not the Formation of Productive Capital only sector in which social mobility became possible. The wars of the Sengoku period The development of productive capital was broke down the dominance of the older court also promoted. The early temples brought aristocracy and the shogunal clans; smaller new lands to cultivation; until the 1600s, daimyo had their moments in the sun, and the monastic evangelists, from the earliest Pure military reorganization to mass armies al- Land movements through the humbler lowed the rise of commoners such as the dic- branches of Zen proselytizers, were associ- tator Hideyoshi. The religious movements ated with road- and bridge-building, well- tended to initiate even these processes.6 The digging, and land-clearing.7 Temples not Sengoku breakdown of central control only created physical capital in the agrarian started with wars among the most powerful economy, but took the lead in organizing in- monasteries, and the trend to mass armies dustries that converted agricultural produce began within the monastic sector. By the late into finished goods. Sengoku period, wealthy merchantsfrom cit- Once we clear our minds of the preconcep- ies such as Sakai were participating in the tion that industrial capitalism should emerge high-status ritual of tea ceremonies on an first in cities, we can observe rural or quasi- equal footing with aristocrats;this is one rea- rural capitalist production emerging in the son why the Tokugawa regime began by at- Japanese monasteries, just as it arose in the tempting to reestablish relations of feudal Cistercian monasteries of medieval Europe. deference that had broken down. The social By the 1330s, the main bulk industries, such fluidity of the pre-Tokugawa period was as sake brewing in the Kyoto area, were caused by an intermingling among wealthy dominated by the Mt. Hiei monasteries over- monasteries, cultivated merchants closely looking the city. Other products (cotton tex- connected with the religious economy, and a tiles, salt) were produced by guilds (za), ini- new style of military adventurer whose re- tiated under the protection of the temples and source base was this burgeoning market borrowing Buddhist organizational forms.8 structure. In the late 1300s, the za shifted from a col- Social mobility at the higher levels of soci- lective service obligation to lords to a con- ety, and the formation of occupations placed tractual relation with a proprietor; a super- ambiguously between aristocrats and com- ordinate circuit of capital was created as moners, are the easiest to document for the members paid fees for the right to enter or premodern period, when common people leave a za (Toyoda and Sugiyama 1977:137- were largely invisible in records. But it is 40). In the Sengoku period (1465-1580), the clear that the opening for occupational mo- za form was used to create self-governing bility that developed within monastic careers city councils of elders; for example, the great also affected peasants and artisans; in the commercial city Sakai began as a za paying lower ranks of the monasteries, and even dues to temple patrons. more so in the popular Buddhist movements, Finance capital also emerged from the most members would have come from these temples. In China, this path had already de- classes. These religious organizations be- veloped in the T'ang dynasty, where monas- came the framework in which labor could tic agents were charged annually with the move to new places and positions where op- mission of investing temple wealth and re- portunities for economic growth were ex- turning a profit (Ch'en 1964). In Japan, panding. The religious economy also over- lapped into the surroundingsecular economy. 7 See Dumoulin (1990) and Kitagawa (1990). Larger labor markets grew up in conjunction Collcutt (1990:632, 637-42) provides a succinct with monasteries in the market towns (jinai- overview of the economic activities of the domi- machi) that formed inside the precincts or nant gozan (Five Mountains) monasteries of Rinzai Zen. around their gates (monzenmachi). 8 Za were also created under the protection of aristocrats. From the relative frequency of refer- 6 The first Japanese commoners to rise to social ences to temple-sponsored za, it would appear prominence were leaders of Buddhist evangelical that this was the most common form (see movements; Nichiren was the son of a fisherman. Yamamura 1990). AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 855 temples received donations from the aristoc- atmosphere of these monasteries was so in- racy, in land, buildings, and precious materi- tense that the iconoclastic Zen master Ikkyu als. These gifts were part of the status dis- described the monks as more like merchants play of the aristocrats, who raised their reli- than Buddhist priests. gious and social status through the most The market for land developed more prominent means of public dramatization slowly than did markets for goods, labor, and available in medieval society. The temples capital. Nevertheless, the temples were the used such materials partly for consumption first levers to pry land loose from military- and display, but also entered them to the pool political appropriation. The acquisition of of accumulated resources. The temples con- temple land by gift, government deed, pro- verted goods extracted by the leisure aristoc- selytization, or reclamation placed land in a racy to capital for wider circulation and pro- sector where formal instruments of account ductive use. and transfer existed. Struggles and schisms Japanese temples accumulatedcash as well among Buddhist sects led to early instances as goods, and engaged in loans. Money-lend- of litigation over land rights, which in turn ing guilds emerged as temples gave patron- began to create a body of doctrine and prac- age to their favored adherents, extending tice regarding civil land transfer. The result their legal rights to them and protecting them was hardly negligible: In the core provinces from political interference. Much of this of central Honshu, the temples held up to 90 lending took the form of consumer finance percent of the estates.10 In the mid- extended to aristocrats and samurai; as a re- Muromachi period, the land incomes of the sult, the landholding class tended to become great Rinzai Zen temples were larger than debtors of the temples, who until late in the those of the imperial family. The regions Sengoku period made up the bulk of the where the Buddhist temples owned the great- creditor class. This was not a productive in- est proportion of land were those where the vestment of capital, but some of the capital market economy had developed most spec- accumulated by the temples was invested in- tacularly by the 1500s (Hall et al. 1981; ternally in their far-flung networks of eco- Hauser 1974). nomic enterprises. As the temples became rich, a super- Monastic ordinate market arose in the sale of offices. Entrepreneurs By the 1380s, abbots and senior monks (es- The temples were the first entrepreneurial pecially those of the far-flung Rinzai Five organizations in Japan: the first to combine Mountains organizations) paid fees for their control of the factors of labor, capital, and appointments. Since they often held office land so as to allocate them for enhancing for less than a year and dispersed gifts and production. Not surprisingly,the monasteries lavish ceremonies at their accession, it is ap- (especially the great centralized orders of the parent that these officials were extracting a Rinzai Five Mountains) were the first insti- great deal of wealth from the monastic econ- tutions to develop rationalized administra- omy. The shogun began to rake off fees from tion, with annual plans and strict accounting certificates of appointments,and in the 1400s practices. By the mid-1400s, we find detailed inflated the turnover of offices to maximize account books whose regulations required income from the monastic sector (see countersigning by supervisory committees Collcutt 1990:604-609, 613).9 The business and heads of subtemples (Akamatsu and Yampolsky 1977:327-28; Collcutt 1990: 621-22). This structural development helps 9 The situation was similar to that in late T'ang and Sung China, when certificates of monastic ordination (for ordinary monks as well as for ab- 10 This figure is for Yamato province (the hin- bots) were sold in official revenue-raising cam- terlands of the old capital Nara) in the late 11OOs. paigns. In the Sung period these certificates cir- The proportion of temple land varied across Ja- culated for private resale. In China, these certifi- pan; according to one overall estimate, temples cates came to be used as a paper currency and owned 60 percent of productive land in the early were items of investment on a speculative market 1200s. A conservative estimate for the medieval (Ch'en 1964:241-44). period is 25 percent (McMullin 1984:22-23, 33). 856 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW explain the considerable expansion of agri- opportunities for meditative practice; reli- cultural production beginning in the mid- gious discipline was thereby extended to eco- 1300s (Yamamura1990:310). nomic activities in a potentially thorough It is reasonable to infer that the monaster- fashion. Accounts of the enlightenment of ies' prosperity and their methods set the lead famous monks included experiences while followed by the regional daimyo during the performing humble tasks such as sweeping; Sengoku period of the 1470s to 1580s. Yama- Soto Zen in particular emphasized that the mura (1981) emphasizes the rational prac- religious ideal is not to escape from the tices of the daimyo in land reclamation, wa- world, but to continue the attitude of concen- ter control and irrigation, and mining. These tration in normal activities, even after en- practices, in combination with double crop- lightenment (Dumoulin 1990). Scholars ping and the introduction of markets for fer- looking for sources of the Japanese work tilizer, led to a large increase in agricultural ethic point to Suzuki Shosan in the early output from 1550 to 1650 and formed the Tokugawa period. Suzuki, a Zen monk inde- foundation for Tokugawa economic wealth. pendent of the main sects, proselytized The daimyo, in contrast to their previous role among the common people, explicitly declar- as mere extractors of feudal rents, now acted ing that all work is Buddhist spiritual prac- as overseers and providers of the factors of tice; he formulated an ethical code for mer- production (Nagahara 1990:342). This role chants that stressed the performance of du- of the overlord as entrepreneurhad only one ties without greed for personal gain (Naka- previous model: the monastic proprietors. mura 1967; Yamamoto 1992). The evangelical sects began even earlier to promote economic development among the Economic Ethic common people. The Nichiren movement An ethic of self-discipline and ascetic re- gave special emphasis to asceticism and dis- straint on consumption, resulting in accumu- cipline. Radically anticeremonial, it pruned lation and investment, originated in internal down ritual and doctrine to reciting the open- reforms in medieval JapaneseBuddhism. The ing of the Lotus sutra. Nichiren-shu was a earliest temples in the Nara and Heian peri- movement of emotional evangelism that ods (ca. 700-1185) had carried out ostenta- called for continuous purification in the tious aristocratic court display, combining midst of everyday life. Like the other Shingon magic and ceremony with the tradi- branches of Pure Land after Shinran's re- tional ritualism of the dominant Japanese forms, the religious emphasis shifted from clans. The Buddhist movements that prolif- the worldly benefits of magic and ritual to erated after 1185 reacted against this domi- ethical concerns with inner sinfulness and nance of ceremonial religion: in one direc- the need for otherworldly salvation. For this tion, by Zen reforms in the monasteries; in reason, Shinran is often described as the another, by the Pure Land movements of Martin Luther of Japan. Opponents some- simplified participation among the common times derided Pure Land as an easy path to people. salvation because it held that one needed Zen introduced disciplined monastic life only to recite the nembutsu chant in order to and attempted to shear away magic and cer- be reborn in Paradise. This position, how- emony. Zen meditation practices were ori- ever, missed the social and psychological re- ented not toward producing deep trance, but ality of Pure Land practice: Pure Land mis- (especially in the zazen of the Soto branch) sionaries preached the tortures of hell await- toward tranquil attentiveness with eyes half- ing human sinners; the religion exerted tre- open. Ch'an monasteries of T' ang China had mendous emotional pressure, not merely to stressed work as part of religious discipline make a first sincere invocation of divine in their shift from reliance on aristocrats' do- Grace, but to continuously reaffirm one's nations to economic self-sufficiency. In Ja- commitment in daily life. pan, Soto broke from aristocratic patronage The Nichiren movement was famous for its more sharply than did Rinzai. In the more vehement attacks on the sinfulness of the ex- extreme forms of Zen, the activities of daily isting social order, especially of aristocrats life-work among them-were regarded as and grand prelates, and for its intransigence AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 857 in the face of religious persecution. In the Japanese Buddhism began to provide system- 1400s, as its monasteries and lay adherents atic law protecting property transactions. In grew in numbers, it became famous for its Europe, Weber ascribed this role to the emer- military contentiousness. Nichren Buddhism gence of state bureaucracy,together with the became an activist religious ethic on par with traditions of Greek citizenship and Roman the crusading orders of medieval Christian- law. In the Confucian institutions imported ity and the Puritan movements of seven- from China, however, there was no indepen- teenth-century Protestantism. It is apt to dent profession of lawyer and no body of law compare the Puritan armies of the English apart from state administrative law, which revolution to the Nichiren Buddhist armies of was decidedly not oriented toward protecting earlier centuries. private propertytransactions. Moreover, even Nichiren-shu spread primarily among the state-bureaucratic aspect of Confucian townspeople and was the main urbanreligion institutions did not take hold in Japan, where just when Japan was transformedfrom a land the government was dominated first by the of rural manors to a network of market court aristocracyand then by the independent towns. The rival Ikko movement built on yet feudal warriors. Tokugawa-era pacification another social base, organizing bands of ad- was not imposed by a centralized state bu- herents among the peasants. Ikko is the most reaucracy, but was a carefully monitored al- spectacular example of a religious network liance and balance of power among locally penetrating the countryside and linking it to armed and administered domains of the urban centers. Following reforms that cen- daimyo. Some bureaucraticelements eventu- tralized the organizational networks during ally appeared as the Tokugawa shogunate, the mid-1400s, local Ikko congregations and regional domains developed internal ad- throughout central Japan regularly sent con- ministration with heavy loads of paperwork, tributions, not to a regional temple or abbot, regulation, and record-keeping (Smith 1988: but directly to the central headquarters 138-39). (Weinstein 1977). This was the great Ishi- The structural problem was that samurai yama Honganji at Osaka bay, which became were subject to codes of behavior toward the largest and most powerful temple, indeed their lords and within their own status group, the most powerful economic and military but no laws regulated their relations with the unit of any kind in Japan during the 1500s. lower social orders. Merchants and farmers The Honganji provides a striking example had no rights under samurai law, and the of the overflow of religiously organized eco- samurai were legally free to act violently to- nomic networks into the secular economy. ward these inferiors, especially in punishing Osaka, the city that by the early Tokugawa affronts in matters of personal deference period had become the storehouse of Japan (Henderson 1968; Ikegami 1995; Katsumata (and soon thereafterbecame the city of great and Collcutt 1981). The bulk of law in the merchant enterprises like Sumitomo and daimyo domains, developed in the Sengoku Mitsui and of self-conscious merchant ideol- period, consisted of house precepts regulat- ogy), originated as a jinaimachi-a market- ing behavior of the warrior-retainers.A sepa- town within the Honganji precincts. The re- rate body of regulations was issued for com- ligious economy at its most effective pro- mon people, but this focused largely on pro- duced the leading center of the secular mar- hibiting criminal behavior and disloyalty and ket in Japan. did little to regulate property transfers. Civil law and its protection for private property transactions scarcely existed, although the THE BUDDHIST CONTRIBUTION TO daimyo sometimes adjudicated disputes BUREAUCRATIC LEGALISM within their domains. AND PROPERTY RIGHTS Throughout the medieval period, as in Let us now ascend the causal chain to the ul- much of Chinese history, governmental poli- timate conditions (see the upper right side of cies implemented by shogun and daimyo Figure 2). I have already discussed the ef- tended to favor periodic debt cancellation to fects of universalistic recruitment and of protect samurai or farmers against the inter- Buddhist spiritual practices. In addition, ests of creditor merchants and temples. Un- 858 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW der these conditions, it is hard to imagine quired rights of adjudication in their own how extensive markets for the factors of pro- spheres. duction could emerge or how entrepreneurial In principle, under medieval law, land investments could flourish. The economi- could be assigned only by a lord; private cally active parts of the population were un- transactions in land were illegal. Neverthe- regulated and unprotected by law, while the less, in self-governing cities such as Sakai, it legally bound and power-holding sector of was possible to buy and sell land. The same samurai were prohibited by their code from legal structures that permitted these transac- economically gainful activity. tions protected property from debt cancella- The conundrum is solved when we put tion. Such propertyprotections also spread to Buddhist organization back into the picture. the feudal domains, as the warring daimyo Buddhism, within its own sphere, had the tried to attract merchants by guaranteeing features of systematic legal regulation that similar property protection in the castle enabled it to expand its own markets for the towns. factors of production, thereby inseminating The fact that Buddhist organization had the surrounding society. Internally, Bud- developed an internal legal system would not dhism had a long-standing legal system, em- in itself generate legal rights in the surround- bodied in the Vinaya regulations (Ritsu), that ing political order. Moreover, Japan had no covered every aspect of monastic life includ- equivalent to the papacy, which in Europe ing monks' personal possessions and use of acted as a governing b6dy and court of ap- collective property. In both the Chinese and peal for property disputes and transactions Japanese monasteries, a full-scale bureau- among the church bodies, and guarded cratic structureexisted. Monks specialized as church property against secular power literate scholars, monastic assisants, atten- (Southern 1970). The papacy gave a special dants, workers, lay brothers, guards, and impetus to European legalism by its devel- other positions. The higher administrationof opment of canon law and the resulting incor- a monastery was divided between the West- poration of law schools into the church-sanc- ern section, in charge of religious training tioned universities (Berman 1983). and practice, and the Eastern section, which There was nothing like this in Japan. But took care of the organization's material and there was a substitute: the power of the great financial activities (Akamatsu and Yampol- monasteries based on their monk-armies. sky 1977:325-28). This section was quite From the times when the monastery guards large in wealthy temples with many branches (sohei) of Mt. Hiei overawed the ruler at and property holdings. Kyoto in the late eleventh century, through The task of administering internal transac- the Sengoku period when armies in the tens tions among parts of a temple's corporate of thousands were mustered by the Pure properties represented a decisive step toward Land sects, Buddhist organizations became far-reaching legal regulation of economic increasingly well-equipped to defend their transactions. In the formative economic pe- rights. The sohei often went into action be- riod of the middle ages, when the temples cause of property claims; many of their mili- were the major holders of shoen estates (ex- tary descents on Kyoto were instigated by traction of rents in kind by officials of the quarrels with rival sects (or sometimes with nobility or the temples), temple law was the secular interests) over properties (e.g., law of their domain, and outside authority McMullin 1984:22). Japanese historians had no legal right of entry (McMullin have always described these incidents in 1984:26, 32; Wakita and Hanley 1981:318- tones of disapprovalof the monks' rowdiness 22). After 1300, temple-gate towns (monzen- and unspirituality. From an analytical view- machi) or precinct towns grew up, in which point, however, they represent the existence temples acted as legal authorities and arbi- of a Buddhist political machinery capable of trated disputes among merchants. These enforcing property rights. towns, especially those under nominal con- Sociologically we are reminded that We- trol of the Ikko and Nichiren sects, tended to ber ([1923] 1961:237-40) pointed to the ori- become self-governing in the Sengoku pe- gins of citizenship in the social organization riod; hence the merchant and artisan za ac- of armed forces, such as the warriorphalanx AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 859 of the Greek city-state and the self-equipped available by the growing capitalist economy knights of feudal Europe. In both cases, citi- could be mustered by the enemies of the zenship rights of joint political participation church. took form as through corporate bodies of armed men. In Japan, these corporate bodies THE originated in the Buddhist orders. The Japa- BREAKOUT TO THE nese Buddhist conception of "citizenship" SECULAR ECONOMY did not stress the rights of the individual In the Muromachi period, secular capitalism monk, but rather the collective rights of the began to be emancipated from temple capi- sangha (the monastic community); the power talism. New guilds arose independent of the of the monastic armies translated this ideal temples; money-lenders and markets in the into rights that were effectively, if grudg- monzenmachi outside the temple gates loos- ingly, recognized in practice. In the Sengoku ened temple control. By the late 1400s, as the era, the corporate form spread outside the Sengoku period of warfare began, the shoen monasteries through the onto, lay confed- system of land tenure had largely disinte- erations promoted by the Pure Land move- grated as local administrators, warriors, or ments. The era of the Buddhist armies coin- peasant villages took possession. Although cided with the transformation of Buddhist the great temples of the traditional orders temples into economic entrepreneurs and were gradually dispossessed, the newer reli- with the rise of indigenous Japanese capital- gious organizations of common people ism. These powers were eliminated by Nobu- played a key role in the property transforma- naga's and Hideyoshi's conquests, but by that tion. The peasant uprisings beginning in the time the capitalist dynamism had been trans- 1470s, that deprived both temples and aris- ferred to the larger society. tocrats of traditional coerced land rents, suc- Religious capitalism in Japan, as else- ceeded mainly when organized as peasant where, made its inroads invisibly. Not that confederations (monto) under the Ikko Pure contemporaries were unaware of monastic Land sect. Economic control shifted from the economic activities; but these were perceived more traditional temples to the most market- as abuses, fallings-away from the religious oriented temples; the Ikko headquarters,the ideal. Criticism of temple money lending, Honganji temple at Osaka bay, led the commercialization, as well as of merchants change to cash contributions. The monto and peasants who did not stay in their places, confederations exercised self-rule over a was abundant from the Muromachi period large territoryin north-centralJapan and paid onward (Collcutt 1990:607). The great no taxes to the secular lords for 100 years. temples were regarded as corrupt;the politi- The final shift to a secular economy came cal independence and wealth of the Ikko and with the wars of unification under Oda Nichiren sects, based on commoners, were Nobunaga and Hideyoshi in the 1570s and seen as outrages to social rank. In the 1500s 1580s. The growth in military organization the visible strength of the Buddhist economy at this time was made possible by the devel- had ideological repercussions. It was widely opment of temple capitalism and its overlap- felt that Buddhist priests were hypocrites un- ping into the secular realm. The organization der cloaks of false religiosity, and "priest" of large-scale Buddhist armies spurred the became a term of abuse (McMullin 1984: shift from feudal levies to the disciplined 268). This development parallels Europeans' mass troops of the late Sengoku period sentiments about the papacy and the Catho- (Kitagawa 1990:122; Sansom 1961:289). lic monastic orders on the eve of the Refor- The Negoroji, a huge Shingon temple that mation. The visible wealth of the church and ranked with the Honganji as the greatest feu- the precedence of wealth over spirituality in dal lord in the economic heartland of central the concerns of the religious helped to Honshu, was a prime producer of muskets delegitimate the institution and prepare the and mortars. Its soldier-monks hired out as way for a military-political purge. By this mercenaries, and these troops allied with time, religious institutions had done their Nobunaga in his early campaigns (Hall et al. work; religious capitalism had inseminated 1981:4; McMullin 1984:43-55, 155, 237). the larger realm, and the resources made Nobunaga's famous innovation in breaking 860 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW with samurai tradition and enlisting armies the temples held at minimum 25 percent of of musket-armed commoners was actually all cultivated land; by the early Tokugawa the adoption of a monastic lead. their holdings had declined to 2.5 percent By 1550 the monto were mobilizing forces (McMullin 1984:251). as large as 20,000, including musket corps. Japan was reunified around 1580 when one TOKUGAWA DEVELOPMENT OF of the daimyo took control of enough com- mercial centers to use their resources for as- MASS MARKET CAPITALISM sembling armies larger than any opponent's. The leading sector of Buddhist capitalism By that time, Nobunaga's forces had grown had catalyzed a secular capitalism that by the to 137,000.11The capacity to mobilize troops 1500s made central Japan a network of mar- depends on logistics; that such huge forces ket towns. Accumulated economic resources could be brought to the field indicates the were now available to be reorganized in mili- extent of the market networks then in exist- tary and political forms. These resources ence. The wars of unification centered on the made possible the new regime of the con- military alliances supporting and opposing quering generals that became the Tokugawa the greatest monasteries. The Hongangi, con- government. Full-fledged agricultural capi- trolling the richest part of central Honshu, talism had begun; commercial relations now was the center of the anti-Nobunaga coali- permeated the countryside, while a new lead- tion. Supplied by water and connecting with ing sector of nonagriculturalgoods and ser- a network of water transportthrough central vices began to move Japan toward yet fur- Japan and even more remote areas, the ther phases of capitalist growth. Hongangi withstood a 10-year siege, and its The Tokugawa was the period of the sec- capitulation was the decisive point of the war. ond-wave economic boom; secular market The unifiers Nobunaga and Hideyoshi car- capitalism (3b) outgrew religious capitalism ried out a policy of monastic property con- (3a), resulting in the familiar traits of urban fiscation similar in many respects to that of wealth of that time. Economic growth in the the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Guild Tokugawa was not all smooth sailing; after privileges were underminedby the establish- about 1720, the further development of capi- ment of free markets; toll barriers (previ- talism was rather mixed. But it was not stag- ously operated by temples as sources of rev- nant. From 1600 onward, Japan's economy enue) were abolished; merchants were al- was well within the scale of western Europe lowed free movement within domains. as a whole. In Europe, too, one national re- Nobunaga enhanced his domains' attractive- gion or another led or lagged for periods of ness to merchants by protecting them from 30 to 100 years (Mann 1993:262-63), but debt cancellation decrees previously promul- these shifts occurred within a largely com- gated by secular lords. Hideyoshi went fur- mon institutional structure and an intercon- ther, abolishing the self-governing towns that nected market economy. If England or the had emerged under the auspices of the United States was ahead in the middle de- temples, abolishing guilds, and exempting cades of the nineteenth century when West- merchants and artisans from land rents in or- ern contact with Japan was resumed, Japan's der to free them from the control of both aris- ups and downs occurred within a range of tocrats and temples. As a result, Buddhist variation similar to other advanced Western capitalism was substantially eliminated. economies in the period after 1700 (e.g., Temples were reduced to tiny, essentially France).12 propertyless units. In the medieval period, 12 By 1800, Japanese workers' standardof liv- I The trend toward massive military force ing was close to that of English workers, which peaked in the early Tokugawa period, when in itself was exceptional within Europe (Hanley 1634 the shogun Iemitsu marched 307,000 troops 1986; Yasuba 1986). Tokugawa Japan also had through Kyoto in a show of force. This army was the world's highest popular literacy rate, and one considerably larger than virtually all European of the earliest and largest commercial markets for armies of that time, which were just beginning to books (Dore 1965; Moriya 1990). (On economic expand in their own military revolution (Mc- growth in the Tokugawa, see Crawcour 1963; Mullin 1984:212; Ooms 1985:54; Parker 1988). 1989; Hanley and Yamamura 1977; Hauser 1974; AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 861

On most major dimensions, Tokugawa Ja- popular handbooks in both places (Smith pan was a substantially modern society; its 1988:173-98). On the Tokaido road between troubles were largely those of a market- Kyoto and Edo, express shipping companies dominated economy, and the political diffi- rationalized their routines between 1650 and culties of the shogunate were those that be- 1800 to reduce the time for delivering mes- set regimes dependent on a highly monetized sages and goods from six days to two-not commercial base. Dominance of a capitalist so different from the stagecoach companies market economy made the government pris- stepping up the speed of communications in oner of its tax base and ruined military aris- England at almost identical dates (Braudel tocrats who depended on the old agrarian-co- [1979] 1984:424-28; Moriya 1990:107-12). ercive system of extraction (Goldstone 1991: Japanese capitalism developed without 402-14). For these reasons, the significance much innovation in industrial technology be- of the Meiji Restoration has been overrated; cause of its particular pattern of market it was a political revolution within a substan- growth. Agricultural production intensified tially modern institutional structure, not a through small enterprises, not large ones, and deus ex machina that initiated the break with textiles ratherthan heavy industry dominated traditionalism and a miraculous leap forward until the 1930s, making labor-intensive tech- to parity with European pacesetters. In this nologies most profitable (Rosovsky 1961; respect, the Meiji revolution resembles the Smith 1988:42-45). It is a mistake to assume series of French revolutions from 1789 to that labor-intensive technology cannot be in- 1871 that swept away the remaining legal in- novative or calculated towardrational exploi- stitutions and aristocratic domination of the tation of market opportunities. One of the old agrarian-coerciveregime. In both Europe earliest markets in the Tokugawa economic and Japan, the institutional structures of a expansion, the silk industry,rationalized pro- capitalist market economy had already pen- duction by selectively breeding silkworms to etrated the traditional shell. improve quality and local varieties; a divi- It is sometimes argued that Tokugawa Ja- sion of labor grew up in markets for produc- pan was not capitalist insofar as it contained ers' goods beyond the traditional consumer little technological innovation, especially in sector (Morris-Suzuki 1994:34-39). Here industrial machinery. In this respect Japan capitalist innovation involved neither labor- contrasts sharply with the popular image of saving machinery nor large firms, but rather an "industrialrevolution" breaking forth with the growth of specialization and exchange the steam engines and factory machinery of among many small units. By the late England around 1770. Nevertheless the insti- Tokugawa period, it is estimated that "indus- tutional core of capitalism, as displayed in trial" output, consisting of nonagricultural Figure 1, does not involve the technology of production and services and making house- mass production per se. As Weber noted hold consumer goods available even to the ([1923] 1961:133-36), industrial technology poorest social levels, contributed 40 to 45 is the result of the impulse to rationalize pro- percent of the national income (Howe 1996: duction, applied specifically to factory pro- 54). In the 1910s and 1920s, after Japan had duction; it is a late component in the causal entered the world market, Japanese enter- chain. Rationalization in Weber's sense prises deliberately simplified technologies means application of the economic ethic of imported from the West to fit Asian export calculation and investment, directed toward markets for cheap goods, as well as Japanese the steady expansion of profits. Rationaliza- patterns of decentralized production and tion of technique need not involve hardware. maximal conservation of limited raw materi- In Europe, as in Japan, this rationalization als (Morris-Suzuki 1994:67, 107-108). was evident by 1700 in systematic methods The Japanese had early-on developed a of increasing agricultural production (e.g., mass-marketeconomy. Following an alterna- experimenting with crop strains, systematic tive to the machine production of standard- rotation, fertilizers, and so on), a subject of ized goods, Japanese capitalism expanded by multiplying niches for a variety of products Nakai and McClain 1991; Nakane and Oishi across a range of quality. This organization 1990; Smith 1959; Toby 1984; Totman 1993.) of productive networks is sometimes mis- 862 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW taken for a "handicraftmode of production," Weber's lead is useful in another respect: believed to be characteristic of feudal or Religious institutions were the most likely premodern markets. It better fits the niche- place within agrarian-coercive societies seeking market expansion theorized by where a leading sector of capitalist institu- White (1981), which has become so promi- tions could first be assembled. I have sug- nent in the specialized consumer markets of gested that the full set of such institutions the late twentieth century (Sabel 1994). Even could be found in the enclaves of religious in the West, our view of the industrial revo- economies in three historical instances: me- lution is too stereotyped by the image of the dieval Christian Europe, medieval Buddhist iron-and-steam revolution of 1760 to 1830, China, and pre-TokugawaBuddhist Japan. In which was followed by the "second indus- each case, the initial breakthroughof the reli- trial revolution" of chemical and electrical gious leading sector was followed by a church products around 1880 to 1940, and by the so- reformation, in which the distance between called "postindustrial" or "postmodern" religious specialists and laity was narrowed economy of electronic communications after and religious property was confiscated. Each 1960. In the scheme presented here, these are reformationresulted in a second wave of self- all phases of industrial revolution (3c). In- transforming capitalist growth-in the secu- stead of regarding Japan merely as a late- lar economy of agriculturalcapitalism. It re- comer to the industrial revolution, we should mains to be explained why some of these de- consider how it illustrates alternative path- velopments moved yet furtherto an industrial ways through the phases of mass market pro- revolution in nonagriculturalproduction, but duction and technological innovation. it seems clear that this revolution could have occurredonly against the backdropof the ear- lier breakout from agrarian-coercive CONCLUSION structures. Capitalism does not expand to a full-fledged The logic of the Weber-Schumpetermodel system, penetrating new market niches and is not Eurocentric, even though Weber's own generating new products and techniques, un- historical application of the model was. In til a composite set of social institutions are broad form, agrarian-coercive structures ex- assembled. Giving the Weberian model a isted worldwide. The breakout through a re- Schumpeterian twist, we may say that all the ligious economy happened in several parts of factors of production (not only commodities the world, and in both Christian and Bud- but also land, labor, and capital) must move dhist forms. Religious capitalism in medi- in response to market opportunities, pack- eval China laid the basis for the Sung aged under the control of entrepreneursmo- dynasty's crucial position in the world trade tivated by an economic ethic of future-ori- system depicted by Abu-Lughod (1989), at ented calculation and investment. The most the same time as religious capitalism in valuable point in Weber's analysis is that the western Europe helped a remote and barba- dominant structures of agrarian-coercive so- rous terminus of the world trading network cieties were severe obstacles to these institu- to begin its aggressive expansion. Religious tions of dynamic capitalism. Merchants, capitalism in late medieval Japan laid the in- monetization, and long-distance trade by stitutional groundwork for a further, secular themselves were compatible with the contin- phase of capitalism. This development in ued dominance of agrarian-coercive struc- turn led the general revival of East Asian tures. Breaking out required a much broader economic dynamism that has surged to such set of structuraltransformations: property re- heights in the world trading system of the lations freeing up all the factors of produc- twentieth century. tion and giving legal protection to their mar- ket transactions,the dissolution of social bar- Randall Collins is Professor of Sociology at the He has com- riers against full participation by individuals University of Pennsylvania. recently pleted a comparative study of the dynamics of in the market, and the circumvention of sta- intellecual innovation based on the analysis of tus hierarchies whose incentives worked long-term networks in China, Japan, India, against long-term calculation, ascetic re- Greece, the Islamic world, and medieval and straint, and investment. modern Europe. AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 863

REFERENCES Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Abu-Lughod, Janet L. 1989. Before European Gills, Barry K. and Andre Gunder Frank. 1991. Hegemony. The WorldSystem A.D. 1250-1350. "The Cumulation of Accumulation: These and New York: Oxford University Press. Research Agenda for 5000 Years of World Sys- Akamatsu, Toshihide and Philip Yampolsky. tem History." Pp. 67-112 in Core/Periphery 1977. "Muromachi Zen and the Gozan Sys- Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, edited by C. tem." Pp. 313-30 in Japan in the Muromachi Chase-Dunn and T. D. Hall. Boulder, CO: Age, edited by J. W. Hall and T. Toyoda. Ber- Westview Press. keley, CA: University of California Press. Goldstone, Jack A. 1991. Revolution and Rebel- Bellah, Robert. 1957. Tokugawa Religion. The lion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley, CA: Cultural Roots of Modern Japan. New York: University of California Press. Free Press. Hall, John Whitney, Keiji Nagahara, and Kozo Berman, Harold. 1983. Law and Revolution. The Yamamura, eds. 1981. Japan before Toku- Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. gawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press. Growth, 1500 to 1650. Princeton, NJ: Prince- Braudel, Fernand. [1979] 1984. Civilization and ton University Press. Capitalism, 1400-1800. New York: Harperand Hall, John Whitney and Takeshi Toyoda, eds. Row. 1977. Japan in the Muromachi Age. Berkeley, Chaudhuri, K. N. 1990. Asia before Europe. CA: University of California Press. Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean Hamashita, Takeshi. 1994. "The Tribute Trade from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge, En- System and Modern Asia." Pp. 91-107 in gland: Cambridge University Press. Japanese Industrialization and the Asian Ch'en, Kenneth. 1964. Buddhism in China. Economy, edited by A. J. H. Latham and H. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kawakatsu. London, England: Routledge. Collcutt, Martin. 1981. Five Mountains: The Hanley, Susan B. and Kozo Yamamura, eds. Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval 1977. Economic and Demographic Change in Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Preindustrial Japan, 1600-1868. Princeton, Press. NJ: Princeton University Press. 1990. "Zen and the gozan." Pp. 583-652 Hanley, Susan B. 1986. "Standard of Living in in The CambridgeHistory of Japan, vol. 3, Me- Nineteenth Century Japan: Reply to Yasuba." dieval Japan, edited by K. Yamamura. Cam- Journal of Economic History 46:225-26. bridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hauser, William B. 1974. Economic Institutional Collins, Randall. 1986. Weberian Sociological Change in Tokugawa Japan: Osaka and the Theory. New York: Cambridge University Kinai Cotton Trade. Cambridge, England: Press. Cambridge University Press. Crawcour, E. Sydney. 1963. "Changes in Japa- Henderson, Dan Fenno. 1968. "The Evolution of nese Commerce in the Tokugawa Period." Tokugawa Law." Pp. 203-30 in Studies in the Journal of Asian Studies 23:387-400. Institutional History of Early Modern Japan, . 1989. "Economic Change in the Nine- edited by J. Hall and M. Jansen. Princeton, NJ: teenth Century." Pp. 569-617 in The Cam- Princeton University Press. bridge History of Japan, vol. 5, edited by M. Howe, Christopher. 1996. The Origins of Japa- B. Jansen. Cambridge, England: Cambridge nese Trade Supremacy. Chicago, IL: Univer- University Press. sity of Chicago Press. Dore, Ronald P. 1965. Education in Tokugawa Ikegami, Eiko. 1995. The Taming of the Samurai. Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Honorific Individualism and the Making of Press. Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUni- Dumoulin, Heinrich. 1990. Zen Buddhism:A His- versity Press. tory. Vol. 2, Japan. New York: Macmillan. Jones, Eric L. 1988. Growth Recurring. Economic Eberhard, Wolfram. 1977. A History of China. Change in World History. New York: Oxford Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. University Press. Elvin, Mark. 1973. The Pattern of the Chinese Katsumata, Shizuo and Martin Collcutt. 1981. Past. London, England: Methuen. "The Development of Sengoku Law." Pp. 101- . 1984. "Why China Failed to Create an 24 in Japan before Tokugawa: Political Con- Endogenous Industrial Capitalism: A Critique solidation and Economic Growth, 1500 to of Max Weber's Model." Theory and Society 1650, edited by J. W. Hall, K. Nagahara, and 13:379-92. K. Yamamura. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni- Finley, M. I. 1973. The Ancient Economy. Berke- versity Press. ley, CA: University of California Press. Kawakatsu, Heita. 1994. "Historical Back- Gernet, Jacques. 1962. Daily Life in China on the ground." Pp. 4-8 in Japanese Industrialization 864 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

and the Asian Economy, edited by A. J. H. Constructs, 1570-1680. Princeton, NJ: Latham and H. Kawakatsu. London, England: Princeton University Press. Routledge. Parker, Geoffrey. 1988. The Military Revolution: Kitagawa, Joseph M. 1987 On Understanding Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, Japanese Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton 1500-1800. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. University Press. 1990. Religion in Japanese History. New Rosovsky, Henry. 1961. Capital Formation in York: Columbia University Press. Japan, 1868-1940. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Mann, Michael. 1993. The Sources of Social Rozman, Gilbert, ed. 1991. The East Asian Re- Power. Vol. 2, The Rise of Classes and Nation- gion. Confucian Heritage and its Modern Ad- States, 1760-1914. Cambridge, England: Cam- aptation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University bridge University Press. Press. McCormack, Gavan and Yoshio Sugimoto, eds. Sabel, Charles F. 1994. "Learningby Monitoring: 1984. The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization the Institutions of Economic Development." Pp. and Bevond. Cambridge, England: Cambridge 37-165 in The Handbook of Economic Sociol- University Press ogy, edited by N. J. Smelser and R. Swedberg. McEvedy, Colin. and Richard Jones. 1978. Atlas Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. of World Population History. Baltimore, MD: Sanderson, Stephen K. 1994. "The Transition Penguin. from Feudalism to Capitalism: The Theoretical McMullin, Neil. 1984. Buddhismand State in Six- Significance of the Japanese Case." Review teenth CenturyJapan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton 13: 15-55. University Press. Sansom, George B. 1961.A History of Japan, Moore, Barrington, Jr. 1966. Social Origins of 1334-1615. Tokyo, Japan: Charles Tuttle. Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston, MA: Schumpeter, Joseph A. [1911] 1961. The Theory Beacon Press. of Economic Development. New York: Oxford Moriya, Katsuhisa. 1990. "Urban Networks and University Press. Information Networks." Pp. 97-123 in Toku- Smith, Thomas C. 1959. Agrarian Origins of gawa Japan: The Social and Economic Ante- Modern Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer- cedents of Modern Japan, edited by C. Nakane sity Press. and S. Oishi. Tokyo, Japan: University of To- Smith, Thomas C. 1988. Native Sources of Japa- kyo Press. nese Industrialization, 1750-1920. Berkeley, Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 1994. The Technological CA: University of California Press. Transformation of Japan: From the Seven- Southern, R. W. 1970. Western Society and the teenth to the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge, Church in the Middle Ages. Baltimore, MD: England: Cambridge University Press. Penguin. Nagahara, Keiji. 1990. "The Medieval Peasant." Thompson, E. P. 1967. "Time, Work Discipline, Pp. 301-42 in The Cambridge History of Ja- and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present pan, vol. 3, Medieval Japan, edited by K. 38:57-93. Yamamura. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Toby, Ronald P. 1984. State and Diplomacy in University Press. Early Modern Japan. Asia in the Development Nakai, Nobuhiko and James L. McClain. 1991. of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Princeton, NJ: "Commercial change and urban growth in early Princeton University Press. modern Japan." Pp. 579-95 in The Cambridge Totman, Conrad. 1993. Early Modern Japan. History of Japan, vol. 4, Early Modern Japan, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. edited by J. W. Hall. Cambridge, England: Toyoda, Takeshi and Hiroshi Sugiyama. 1977. Cambridge University Press. "The Growth of Commerce and Trades." Pp. Nakamura, Hajime. 1967. "Suzuki Shosan and 129-44 in Japan in the Muromachi Age, edited the Spirit of Capitalism in Japanese Bud- by J. W. Hall and T. Toyoda. Berkeley, CA: dhism." Moniimenta Nipponica 22:1-14. University of California Press. Nakane, Chie and Shinzaburo Oishi, eds. 1990. Varley, H. Paul. 1977. "Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and Tokugawa Japan. The Social and Economic the World of Kitayama: Social Change and Antecedents of Modern Japan. Tokyo, Japan: Shogunal Patronage in Early Muromachi." Pp. University of Tokyo Press. 183-204 in Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed- Nishijima, Sadao. 1986. "The Economic and So- ited by J. W. Hall and T. Toyoda. Berkeley, cial History of Former Han." Pp. 545-607 in CA: University of California Press. The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, The Wakita, Haruko and Susan B. Hanley. 1981. "Di- Ch 'in and Han Emipires,edited by D. Twitchett mensions of Development: Cities in Fifteenth- and M. Loewe. Cambridge, England: Cam- and Sixteenth-century Japan." Pp. 295-326 in bridge University Press. Japan before Tokugawa: Political Consolida- Rooms,Herman. 1985. Tokugawa Ideology: Early tion and Economic Growth, 1500 to 1650, ed- AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM 865

ited by J. W. Hall, K. Nagahara, and K. Yama- White, Harrison C. 1981. "Where Do Markets mura. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Come From?" American Journal of Sociology Press. 87:517-47. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern Yamamoto, Shichihei. 1992. The Spirit of Japa- World-System. Capitalist Agriculture and the nese Capitalism. New York: Madison Books. Origins of the European World-Economyin the Yamamura,Kozo. 1981. "Returnson Unification: Sixteenth Century. San Diego, CA: Academic Economic Growth in Japan, 1550-1650." Pp. Press. 327-50 in Japan before Tokygawa, edited by Weber, Max. [1917] 1958. The Religion of India J. Hall, K. Nagahara, and K. Yamamura. (Original title: Die Wirtschaftsethik der Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Weltreligionen. Hinduismus und Buddhismus). . 1990. "The Growth of Commerce in Me- New York: Free Press. . dieval Japan," Pp. 344-95 in The Cambridge [ 1923] 1961. General Economic History. History of Japan, vol. 3, Medieval Japan, ed- New York: Collier-Macmillan. ited by K. Yamamura. Cambridge, England: Weinstein, Stanley. 1977. "Rennyo and the Cambridge University Press. Shinshu Revival." Pp. 331-58 in Japan in the Yasuba, Yasukichi. 1986. "Standardof Living in Muromachi Age, edited by J. W. Hall and T. Japan before Industrialization: From What Toyoda. Berkeley, CA: University of Califor- Level Did Japan Begin?" Journal of Economic nia Press. History 46:217-24.