Japanese historians have long struggled to understand how common people experienced the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In this presentation, I will read the drama and disorder of the Restoration years against the weight of the quotidian routines of production and paperwork that characterized life and administration in early modern villages. I will frame my discussion in terms of an economy of fear—the ledger of who feared whom and the resources devoted to addressing that fear—as a way to gain insight into how the competing anxieties of rulers and ruled shaped the course of politics during the Restoration period.

David L. Howell is Professor of Japanese History and Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University and Editor of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. He studies the social and economic history of early modern Japan, with a particular focus on the nineteenth century.