The Merchant's Tale by Simon Partner
In a narrative history rich in colorful detail, Simon Partner uses the story of an ordinary merchant farmer as a vantage point onto sweeping social transformation and its unwitting agents. Partner's history of Yokahama as a vibrant meeting place humanizes the story of Japan's revolutionary 1860s and their profound consequences.
To an already lively cast of Restoration characters—rascals and rebels, poets and fighters—The Merchant’s Tale adds a new voice: that of the rural entrepreneurLong on dreams but short on capital, Chūemon decamped early to the treaty port of Yokohama, where he would scramble for years to gain a profitable foothold at the epicenter of Japan’s tumultuous encounter with the modern West. Simon Partner skillfully turns his letters home into a hair-raising romp across the Tokugawa/Meiji divide. A fresh take on a fascinating time.
Simon Partner is professor of history at Duke University. He is the author of Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer (1999); Toshié: A Story of Village Life in Twentieth-Century Japan (2004); and The Mayor of Aihara: A Japanese Villager and His Community, 1865–1925 (2009).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780231182935 |
| ISBN 10 | 0231182937 |
| Title | The Merchant's Tale |
| Author | Simon Partner |
| Series | Asia Perspectives: History Society And Culture |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Columbia University Press |
| Year published | 2020-03-03 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |