436 Book Reviews / JESHO 54 (2011) 417-446

Ethan Isaac SEGAL, Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan. Harvard East Asian Monographs 334. Cambridge: Har- vard University Asia Center, 2011. xvi + 274 pp. ISBN: 978-0-674- 06068-5 (hbk.). $39.95.

In Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan, Ethan Segal examines the role of money and trade in the development of the medieval Japanese economy, primarily for the era 1150-1400. Well grounded in both primary and secondary sources, this monograph con- tains a wealth of valuable information. While Coins, Trade, and the State does relatively little to change the conventional picture of economic devel- opment during this period, it does address some new issues and adds sub- stantially to the fund of knowledge about this topic. The thesis of this monograph is that the lack of a strong central govern- ment during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries actually promoted the growth of trade and monetization. Segal contends that the spread of money and markets was due primarily to the actions of local elites, including estate managers, religious leaders, warriors, and wealthy peasants. They led the movement to import Chinese cash, the primary means of exchange, set up markets in rural areas, and helped develop the bill of exchange, an effective means of shipping tax dues over long distances. The capital elites (civil aristo- crats, large temples, warrior chieftains) either did nothing or actually resisted these trends. The thesis is not startling, but probably has much merit. After an Introduction that establishes the major questions to be explored and considers the functions of money, Chapter 1 examines money and markets during the twelfth century. Segal traces the history of money in the Japanese islands prior to 1100 in a welcome section that sums up and updates previous work. While money and markets were more common during the period 650-800, both gradually disappeared during the ninth through eleventh centuries. Segal argues that the reason for the demoneti- zation must have been a lack of copper in Japan. Although this argument may explain the return to barter, it does not really help the reader under- stand why markets also disappeared. Segal then does an excellent job describing and explaining the upswing in economic activity that occurred when Chinese coins from the Song dynasty began to flow into the archi- pelago and promote the establishment of markets. By century’s end, a gal- loping inflation may have been the result. Chapter 2 addresses the spread of money and markets during the 1200s. Segal amasses what evidence there is in an attempt to argue for a growing

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156852011X599297 Book Reviews / JESHO 54 (2011) 417-446 437 monetization of the Japanese economy. While there is little doubt that money and markets diffused to more places in Japan, it is still unclear how far commercial development and the concomitant economic growth actu- ally went. The author highlights traveling merchants, warriors, religious institutions, provincial estate managers, and wealthy peasants for their parts in advancing commercial growth during the 1200s. The author con- cludes the chapter by explaining that the Kamakura shogunate, Japan’s first warrior government established during the 1180s, either did not address the growing commercial developments or did so in an inadequate way. This point may suggest that the degree of monetization was still too mod- est to require much attention from political authorities. In Chapter 3, the author does a superb job in reconsidering the Debt Relief Law (tokusei-rei) of 1297. By this action, the Kamakura government attempted to succor its vassals, many of whom were badly indebted to moneylenders. These debts were so extreme that many vassals had lost their lands and were unable to provide military service to Kamakura. Segal dis- putes the conventional thesis that the debts were contracted as a result of the Mongol invasions of the late 1200s, and argues instead that the mon- etary debts of the Kamakura vassals were just one measure of the growing trade economy. His argument here is convincing. In an especially provoca- tive section, Segal invokes the concept of the ‘gift economy’, and suggests that the growing warrior indebtedness marked the transition from a gift to a profit-oriented economy. This thinking is interesting and one wishes that Segal had pushed the related concepts of gift and profit-oriented economy even further in his analysis. Chapter 4 picks up the arguments about monetization and commercial development again, this time for the 1300s. In this section the author is on much more solid ground, as he describes the motives and results for tax commutation during the fourteenth century when the political elites in the capital of Kyoto began to expect their annual dues to come to them not as commodities but as money, to be exchanged in local markets for the appropriate mix of goods. Once again, the author maintains that this movement took place ‘from the bottom up’, initiated by managers, warri- ors, and peasants at the local level. One question left unaddressed is the role of the endemic warfare of the 1300s in encouraging the commutation of estate taxes. In this chapter, Segal also describes the rise of the bill of exchange during this era. In Chapter 5, Segal examines commercial development during the cen- turies from 1400 to 1700. Here the author discusses the trade between the