Samurai City

One thing that I find interesting about this is that "samurai lived in dignified but extreme poverty" but never really did anything to threaten the state and take its riches for themselves for hundreds of years, despite all of them being crammed together with lots of opportunity to organize an enormous rebellion right in the city where the king lived.

Perhaps they didn't think of it as poverty. Anyway, great read.

> In a way, the Tokugawa system was a success. Japan experienced near-total peace between 1600 and the late nineteenth century, a remarkable achievement for a premodern society and a dramatic contrast to Europe or China, where tens of millions of people died in wars.

> Tokugawa Edo stands as a monument to the power of rent-seekers, producing little and demanding immense resources as a condition of civil peace.

The two dominant political axes. Which of is more repellent to you: a rigid stable social system based around millions of rent seeking parasitic landlords, or frequent social upheaval and conflict and open warfare

There were real geographic and social tradeoffs to having status and power.

A nice article! It really does a great job of describing the hostage nature of keeping the various daimyo in check.

One thing that I think is commonly misstated though, is that this period was one of "peace".

When viewed from the elite perspective, the power struggles between daimyo in the Warring States Era had subsided, but for the common people, the Edo Period was anything but peaceful.

The samurai class could chop up any commoner at any time, for any reason, or no reason. Sometimes just to "test" a new sword, or because their "honor" had been challenged (maybe the person didn't get out of the way and bow fast enough).

Fascinating. Currently imagining a futuristic version of that and mixing it with some cyberpunk happening under the shadow of the big brother.

so interesting to read about the weird gate system for tracking the citizens. insane diagram.