Asian Forum No.174 “A Trajectory of China’s Commercial Institutions: A Brief Survey”

DATE : 2018/1/18 (Thu.)
TIME : 11:30-12:40 (tentative)
PLACE : Diffendorfer Memorial Hall East-Wing Auditorium

Lecturer: Yoshinobu SHIBA, The Toyo Bunko(Oriental Library)

The conventional opinion suggests that China had been an everlasting agrarian state, and that its class structure had been rigidly stratified and its society had been predominated by harmony and order. But so far as we examine the sources carefully, such metaphor looks upon only one side of the reality. Truth is that the traditional Chinese society had been marked by several sequential long-term changes. The Tang-Song Transition(9th -13th centuries) is one of such great changes in Chinese society. The key factors of them, furthermore, existed in the growth in commerce and concomitant market expansion. Since I have discussed the problems of the intensification of social division of labor and concomitant development of market network earlier, I shall concentrate in this lecture on the issues of growth in commercial institutions such as ‘mutual financing association’ , ‘partnership’, and ‘Chinese-style Company’ in Tang, Song through Ming, Qing China. The 2017 Asian Forum open lecture Series will feature ICU graduates concerned with Asia and Japan Studies and offer an opportunity to think about learning at ICU and the historical mission of the university.

Lecture in Japanese

Everyone is welcome!
We are looking forward to your participation