the first reading starts us off with some information about the natural land of japan. it goes into things such as topography and weather and tectonic plates that are highly influential in regards to how the people of japan were able to settle and live. the natural setting is very mountainous overall (due to being a convergence point for several tectonic plates, to my understanding) which limits how much available land there is for agriculture. their location in relation to the tectonic plates also results in relatively frequent earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, and volcanic eruption. and typhoons are an additional natural disaster that poses a threat. as we discussed in class, this constant threat can manifest as a sort of fatalism. i think this focus on the science of the land is very interesting. its not something that immediately springs to mind when i think of a history class, but it is definitely worth studying because understanding the land is key to learning the how and why of people living in that environment.
the next reading asks us to consider what a complex society is. the author claims that while there is such thing as a primitive vs complex society, she isn’t in the business of determining where the line is drawn, only acknowledging that there is a recognizable difference. the author gives a detailed thought experiment involving what would happen if a group got stranded on an island and started to organize a society as a means of survival. she explains how, in a large group, the people would most likely decide that they needed a leader to help organize everyone to keep safe from local threats. in theory it seems reasonable; someone who is leading and organizing doesn’t have the time to do smaller menial tasks, so they would have people working for them, and the people lower down would get the guidance necessary for survival from the top of the chain of command. but no matter your intentions from the start, this results in an imbalance of power. though this system tries to make it so both parties benefit from the arrangement, at the end of the day, if the lower status person decides to no cooperate, the person with higher status can use their position to force them to cooperate, whereas if the person with higher status decides not to help the lower status person, the lower status person has to means of rectifying the situation.
references:
Barnes, Gina. “Japan’s Natural Setting”. In Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850, edited by Karl Friday. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2012.
Crone, Patricia. Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World. London: Oneworld, 2015.