A01=Simon Partner
administrative village
agriculture
aizawa kikutaro
asia
asian history
Author_Simon Partner
autobiography
biography
Category=NHF
city life
class
diary
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
factory workers
farming
government
hashimoto
history
industrialism
japan
japanese culture
japanese history
mayor
meiji history
memoir
modern japan
modernity
nonfiction
office workers
politics
postwar japan
rural
silk
social change
social history
textiles
tokugawa
village
wealth
wheat
Product details
- ISBN 9780520258594
- Weight: 318g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 13 Jul 2009
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Aizawa Kikutaro (1866-1963) was born into the wealthiest family in Hashimoto, a small agricultural village specializing in wheat and silk. By 1925, the village was undergoing rapid commercial development, residents were commuting to factory and office jobs in cities, and, after serving as mayor for almost twenty years, Aizawa was working as a bank manager. Taking the biography of this leading villager as its central focus and incorporating intimate details of life drawn from Aizawa's diary, The Mayor of Aihara chronicles the extraordinary transformation of Hashimoto against the background of Japan's rapid industrialization. By portraying history as it was actually lived by ordinary people, the book offers a rich and compelling perspective on the modernization of Japan.
Simon Partner, Associate Professor at Duke University, is author of Toshie: A Story of Rural Life in Twentieth Century Japan and Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer (both from UC Press).
