Kyoto University Economic Review Archives

No. 27 - Kakegawa: Akibayama Fork, from the series The Tôkaidô Road - The Fifty-three Stations, also known as the Reisho Tôkaidô, between 1847 and 1852

How a Rice Economy Toppled the Shogun

The co-existence of economies—one based on rice, the other on money—pushed the Tokugawa government toward financial misery and failure.

Editors' Picks

Science & Technology

Convincing Peasants to Fly in the Soviet Union

With air-minded films, poems, and demonstrations, Soviet leaders sought to lift peasants out of their “backward” lives and into the world of the modern proletariat.

Politics & History

The Trouble with Reentry

Reentry of space junk in the 1970s forced First Nations communities into a reckoning with Cold War geopolitics and a burgeoning envirotechnical disaster.

Politics & History

Iran’s Protest Culture

A succession of authoritarian regimes birthed a strong tradition of collective action.

Arts & Culture

Tyler S. Sprague on the Intersection of Structure and Design

An interview with Tyler S. Sprague, a historian of the built environment whose work depends on multidisciplinarity and a deep knowledge of structure and materials.

Politics & History

How to be a Modern Autocrat

In the twenty-first century, dictators are less likely than their predecessors to use violence to suppress dissent, cultivating instead “informational autocracies.”

How a Rice Economy Toppled the Shogun

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