Mark Ravina
Biographic Data
| ID | 521333 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Ravina |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Ravina |
| SIGNATURE | RAVINA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8726-7618 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Review: Music and the Making of Modern Japan: Joining the Global Concert , by Margaret Mehl
The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age, written by Hoyt Long
Algorithmic Maps and the Political Geography of Early-modern Japan
Many of our conventional mapping practices are ill-suited to the complexities and nuances of pre-modern politics, especially in the non-Western world. Choropleth maps suggest that political borders are clear and uniform, but early modern politics was characterized by ill-defined and overlapping political spheres. This study uses interactive maps to explore the case of composite state borders in early modern Japan. Using points, rather than polygo…
Imaginative Mapping: Landscape and Japanese Identity in the Tokugawa and Meiji Eras by Nobuko Toyosawa
Reviewed by: Imaginative Mapping: Landscape and Japanese Identity in the Tokugawa and Meiji Eras by Nobuko Toyosawa Mark Ravina (bio) Imaginative Mapping: Landscape and Japanese Identity in the Tokugawa and Meiji Eras. By Nobuko Toyosawa. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge MA, 2019. xvi, 305 pages. $60.00. This ambitious study is, by turns, intriguing, enlightening, and frustrating. The overall topic is diffuse. While the title suggests a …
To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration in World History
Y ulia F rumer . Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan
Yulia Frumer’s Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan is a superb study that is narrow in focus but broad in its implications. Frumer’s topic is Japan’s adoption of Western timekeeping conventions, most particularly the Western convention of solar days with twenty-four equal-length hours. Japanese practice, by contrast, maintained a constant number of daylight and nighttime hours. Daytime hours were therefore longer in the s…
Samurai to Soldier: Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan by D. Colin Jaundrill
Reviewed by: Samurai to Soldier: Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan by D. Colin Jaundrill Mark Ravina Samurai to Soldier: Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan. By D. Colin Jaundrill. Cornell University Press, 2016. 248 pages. Hardcover, $39.95. No special pleading is needed to establish the importance of the military in nineteenth-century Japanese history. The weakness of samurai armies in the face of Western i…
Japan in the Chinese Tribute System
This chapter examines the Tokugawa shogunate's position in the Ming/Qing tributary system. The Tokugawa were eager to distinguish themselves from Toyotomi Hideyoshi's disastrous foreign adventurism of the 1590s, but not willing to recognize Chinese supremacy. Unlike the Korean monarchs of the Yi dynasty or the Ashikaga shoguns, the Tokugawa shoguns refused to accept direct investiture from a Chinese monarch. This meant that the Tokugawa could not…
Tokugawa, Romanov, and Khmer: The Politics of Trade and Diplomacy in Eighteenth-Century East Asia
Although the “seclusion” paradigm has lost much of its influence, it continues to shape our understanding of Japan. An example is the historiography of Japanese-Russian relations, specifically the Russian Empire’s 1792–1793 mission to Japan to request trade. Ronald Toby sees this as the origins of Tokugawa isolation. We can instead think of Tokugawa policy as a lull between two eras of globalization: Japanese integration into the Chinese diplomat…
The Medieval in the Modern: Command and Consent in Japanese Politics
Modern Japanese political discourse was a syncretic fusion of new Western ideas with medieval and early modern East Asian notions of command and consent. The eleventh-century Chinese concept of ‘blocking roads of remonstrance’, for example, originally meant that elite imperial advisers should not stop their rivals from addressing the throne. That idea was reworked in nineteenth-centuary Japan as a complement to Western concepts such as ‘freedom o…
Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640–1868 (review)
Reviewed by: Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640–1868 Mark Ravina (bio) Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640–1868. By Robert I. Hellyer. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass., 2009. xvi, 281 pages. $39.95. This book is a welcome contribution to the growing literature on trade and diplomacy in early modern East Asia. Hellyer’s research builds on the wellknown work of Arano Yasunori and Ronald Toby from t…
The Apocryphal Suicide of Saigō Takamori: Samurai,Seppuku, and the Politics of Legend
According to standard reference works, the Meiji leader Saigō Takamori committed ritual suicide in 1877. A close reading of primary sources, however, reveals that Saigō could not have killed himself as commonly described; instead, he was crippled by a bullet wound and beheaded by his followers. Saigō's suicide became an established part of Japanese history only in the early 1900s, with the rise ofbushidōas a national ideology. By contrast, in the…
Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period (review)
Reviewed by: Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period Mark Ravina (bio) Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period. By Mary Elizabeth Berry. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006. xvii, 325 pages. $44.95. This is a sweeping, ambitious, elegant, and accomplished book. Berry's topic is nothing less than print culture in Tokugawa Japan, and her sources range from shogunal personnel rosters and…
Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan (review)
Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan. By David L. Howell. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005. x, 261 pages. $55.00
Chapter 3. State-Making in Global Context: Japan in a World of Nation-States
The last samurai: The life and battles of Saigō Takamori
Note Reader. Introduction. 1. Powerfully Sentimental. Siagoa s Early Years in Satsuma. 2. A Man Of Exceptional Fidelity. Siago and National Politics. 3. Bones In Earth. Exile and Ignominy. 4. To Shoulder Burdens Of Realm. Destruction of the Shogunate. 5. To Tear Asunder Clouds. Saigo and the Meiji State. 6. The Burden of Death Is Light. Saigo and the War of the Southwest. Notes. Bibliography. Sources. Index
Japan's Protoindustrial Elite: The Economic Foundation of the Gono (review)
This book is a major contribution to our understanding of early modern social and economic history. Edward Pratt's subject is the gono, literally "wealthy farmers," a class of rural protocapitalists that Pratt dubs Japan's protoindustrial elite. Historians have long been aware of the importance of the gono. They were the landlords, moneylenders, and entrepreneurs of rural Japanese society. They were critical in the spread of commercial relations …
Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan
Rescuing the Nation from History: The State of the State in Early Modern Japan
Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa
Land and Lordship: In Early Modern Japan
Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan
Examining local politics in three Japanese domains (Yonezawa, Tokushima, and Hirosaki), this book shows how warlords (daimyo) and their samurai adapted the theory and practice of warrior rule to the peacetime challenges of demographic change and rapid economic growth in the mid-Tokugawa period. The author has a dual purpose. The first is to examine the impact of shogunate/domain relations on warlord legitimacy. Although the shogunate had supreme …
State-building and Political Economy in Early-modern Japan
Languages] determine the unique, often ambiguous tenor of human consciousness and make the relations of that consciousness to 'reality' creative.... To a greater or lesser degree, every language offers its own reading of life
Central Authority & Local Autonomy in the Formation of Early Modern Japan: The Case of Kaga Domain
Wasan and the Physics that Wasn't. Mathematics in the Tokugawa Period
State-building and Political Economy in Early-modern Japan
Languages] determine the unique, often ambiguous tenor of human consciousness and make the relations of that consciousness to 'reality' creative.... To a greater or lesser degree, every language offers its own reading of life
Rescuing the Nation from History: The State of the State in Early Modern Japan
The Apocryphal Suicide of Saigō Takamori: Samurai,Seppuku, and the Politics of Legend
According to standard reference works, the Meiji leader Saigō Takamori committed ritual suicide in 1877. A close reading of primary sources, however, reveals that Saigō could not have killed himself as commonly described; instead, he was crippled by a bullet wound and beheaded by his followers. Saigō's suicide became an established part of Japanese history only in the early 1900s, with the rise ofbushidōas a national ideology. By contrast, in the…
The Demography of Sociopolitical Conflict in Japan, 1721-1846
Wasan and the Physics that Wasn't. Mathematics in the Tokugawa Period
State-building and Political Economy in Early-modern Japan
Languages] determine the unique, often ambiguous tenor of human consciousness and make the relations of that consciousness to 'reality' creative.... To a greater or lesser degree, every language offers its own reading of life
Central Authority & Local Autonomy in the Formation of Early Modern Japan: The Case of Kaga Domain
Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan
Examining local politics in three Japanese domains (Yonezawa, Tokushima, and Hirosaki), this book shows how warlords (daimyo) and their samurai adapted the theory and practice of warrior rule to the peacetime challenges of demographic change and rapid economic growth in the mid-Tokugawa period. The author has a dual purpose. The first is to examine the impact of shogunate/domain relations on warlord legitimacy. Although the shogunate had supreme …
Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa
Land and Lordship: In Early Modern Japan
Japan's Protoindustrial Elite: The Economic Foundation of the Gono (review)
This book is a major contribution to our understanding of early modern social and economic history. Edward Pratt's subject is the gono, literally "wealthy farmers," a class of rural protocapitalists that Pratt dubs Japan's protoindustrial elite. Historians have long been aware of the importance of the gono. They were the landlords, moneylenders, and entrepreneurs of rural Japanese society. They were critical in the spread of commercial relations …
Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan
Rescuing the Nation from History: The State of the State in Early Modern Japan
Chapter 3. State-Making in Global Context: Japan in a World of Nation-States
The last samurai: The life and battles of Saigō Takamori
Note Reader. Introduction. 1. Powerfully Sentimental. Siagoa s Early Years in Satsuma. 2. A Man Of Exceptional Fidelity. Siago and National Politics. 3. Bones In Earth. Exile and Ignominy. 4. To Shoulder Burdens Of Realm. Destruction of the Shogunate. 5. To Tear Asunder Clouds. Saigo and the Meiji State. 6. The Burden of Death Is Light. Saigo and the War of the Southwest. Notes. Bibliography. Sources. Index
Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan (review)
Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan. By David L. Howell. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005. x, 261 pages. $55.00
Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period (review)
Reviewed by: Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period Mark Ravina (bio) Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period. By Mary Elizabeth Berry. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006. xvii, 325 pages. $44.95. This is a sweeping, ambitious, elegant, and accomplished book. Berry's topic is nothing less than print culture in Tokugawa Japan, and her sources range from shogunal personnel rosters and…
The Apocryphal Suicide of Saigō Takamori: Samurai,Seppuku, and the Politics of Legend
According to standard reference works, the Meiji leader Saigō Takamori committed ritual suicide in 1877. A close reading of primary sources, however, reveals that Saigō could not have killed himself as commonly described; instead, he was crippled by a bullet wound and beheaded by his followers. Saigō's suicide became an established part of Japanese history only in the early 1900s, with the rise ofbushidōas a national ideology. By contrast, in the…
Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640–1868 (review)
Reviewed by: Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640–1868 Mark Ravina (bio) Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640–1868. By Robert I. Hellyer. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass., 2009. xvi, 281 pages. $39.95. This book is a welcome contribution to the growing literature on trade and diplomacy in early modern East Asia. Hellyer’s research builds on the wellknown work of Arano Yasunori and Ronald Toby from t…
Japan in the Chinese Tribute System
This chapter examines the Tokugawa shogunate's position in the Ming/Qing tributary system. The Tokugawa were eager to distinguish themselves from Toyotomi Hideyoshi's disastrous foreign adventurism of the 1590s, but not willing to recognize Chinese supremacy. Unlike the Korean monarchs of the Yi dynasty or the Ashikaga shoguns, the Tokugawa shoguns refused to accept direct investiture from a Chinese monarch. This meant that the Tokugawa could not…
Tokugawa, Romanov, and Khmer: The Politics of Trade and Diplomacy in Eighteenth-Century East Asia
Although the “seclusion” paradigm has lost much of its influence, it continues to shape our understanding of Japan. An example is the historiography of Japanese-Russian relations, specifically the Russian Empire’s 1792–1793 mission to Japan to request trade. Ronald Toby sees this as the origins of Tokugawa isolation. We can instead think of Tokugawa policy as a lull between two eras of globalization: Japanese integration into the Chinese diplomat…
The Medieval in the Modern: Command and Consent in Japanese Politics
Modern Japanese political discourse was a syncretic fusion of new Western ideas with medieval and early modern East Asian notions of command and consent. The eleventh-century Chinese concept of ‘blocking roads of remonstrance’, for example, originally meant that elite imperial advisers should not stop their rivals from addressing the throne. That idea was reworked in nineteenth-centuary Japan as a complement to Western concepts such as ‘freedom o…
To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration in World History
Y ulia F rumer . Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan
Yulia Frumer’s Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan is a superb study that is narrow in focus but broad in its implications. Frumer’s topic is Japan’s adoption of Western timekeeping conventions, most particularly the Western convention of solar days with twenty-four equal-length hours. Japanese practice, by contrast, maintained a constant number of daylight and nighttime hours. Daytime hours were therefore longer in the s…
Samurai to Soldier: Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan by D. Colin Jaundrill
Reviewed by: Samurai to Soldier: Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan by D. Colin Jaundrill Mark Ravina Samurai to Soldier: Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan. By D. Colin Jaundrill. Cornell University Press, 2016. 248 pages. Hardcover, $39.95. No special pleading is needed to establish the importance of the military in nineteenth-century Japanese history. The weakness of samurai armies in the face of Western i…
Imaginative Mapping: Landscape and Japanese Identity in the Tokugawa and Meiji Eras by Nobuko Toyosawa
Reviewed by: Imaginative Mapping: Landscape and Japanese Identity in the Tokugawa and Meiji Eras by Nobuko Toyosawa Mark Ravina (bio) Imaginative Mapping: Landscape and Japanese Identity in the Tokugawa and Meiji Eras. By Nobuko Toyosawa. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge MA, 2019. xvi, 305 pages. $60.00. This ambitious study is, by turns, intriguing, enlightening, and frustrating. The overall topic is diffuse. While the title suggests a …
The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age, written by Hoyt Long
Algorithmic Maps and the Political Geography of Early-modern Japan
Many of our conventional mapping practices are ill-suited to the complexities and nuances of pre-modern politics, especially in the non-Western world. Choropleth maps suggest that political borders are clear and uniform, but early modern politics was characterized by ill-defined and overlapping political spheres. This study uses interactive maps to explore the case of composite state borders in early modern Japan. Using points, rather than polygo…
History (21 works) · Japanese History and Culture (19 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (14 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (12 works) · Ancient history (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Archaeology (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Geography (7 works)