Network Analysis of a Maritime Trade in Medieval Japan

Dimitri Tatoyan (), Aleksandra Kobiljski (), Hiroki Yamashita and Éric Mermet ()
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Dimitri Tatoyan: CRJ-CCJ - Centre de recherches sur le Japon - CCJ - Chine, Corée, Japon - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPCité - Université Paris Cité
Aleksandra Kobiljski: CRJ-CCJ - Centre de recherches sur le Japon - CCJ - Chine, Corée, Japon - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPCité - Université Paris Cité
Hiroki Yamashita: Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris
Éric Mermet: TSE-R - TSE-R Toulouse School of Economics – Recherche - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement

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Abstract: The 1445 Toll Register is the only surviving medieval customs register in Japan. As such, it is a precious window into Japan's medieval commercial revolution. While well studied using traditional methods, this article is the first attempt to submit this source to social network analysis (SNA) methods. It highlights the potential of statistical, spatial and network analysis, producing visualizations which nuance our understanding of the role of commercial agents in the medieval maritime trade. Starting from visualizing the overall network, this article probes into the legwork of a commodity network, much of which passed through the hands of the commercial agents. Our analysis also reveals that a group of 32 actors, who in the register appear to have been principally commercial agents, were in fact also shipmasters. A community detection method allows us to open up new avenues of understanding maritime trade clusters, while geospatial data visualization point to a historically irregular absence which requires further research.

Keywords: medieval studies; 15th century; medieval Japan; maritime trade; commerical agents; shipmasters; commodification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-int and nep-net
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Published in Journal of Historical Network Research, 2024, 10 (1), pp.198-255. ⟨10.25517/jhnr.v10i1.86⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04870442

DOI: 10.25517/jhnr.v10i1.86

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