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Agricultural Crises Due to Flood, Drought,
10
and Lack of Sunshine in the East Asian

Monsoon Region: An Environmental History
of Takahama in the Amakusa Islands,

Kyushu, Japan, 1793–1818

Satoshi Murayama Noboru Higashi
Kagawa University, Kyoto Prefectural University,
Japan Japan

Hiroko Nakamura Toru Terao
Kagawa University, Kagawa University,
Japan Japan

© 2024 Satoshi Murayama, Hiroko Nakamura,
Noboru Higashi, and Toru Terao
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-399-9.217-252

A New Horizon in Comparing Economic
and Environmental Histories
The approach of this chapter was originally rooted in Sheilagh Ogilvie’s
institutional studies (Dennison and Ogilvie 2007; Ogilvie 2007, 2010) of
the interrelationship between social capital and power, as well as in gen-
der studies focused on consumer activities, especially those of women,
dating back in part to Jean de Vries’ discussion of the ‘industrious revo-
lution’ (Murayama and Nakamura 2021). However, we present a new area
of discussion: the diversity of economic development in early modern
Japan. We have focused on the environmental system unique to Asian
monsoon regions. For the maintenance of the early modern ‘subsistence
economy’, especially in Japan in East Asia, the sustainability of agricul-
tural production depends primarily on resilience to seasonal disasters.

Murayama, S., Ž. Lazarević, and A. Panjek, eds. 2024. Changing Living
Spaces: Subsistence and Sustenance in Eurasian Economies from Early Modern
Times to the Present. Koper: University of Primorska Press.

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