Kikkoman: Company, Clan, and Community by W. Mark FruinReview by: Hugh PatrickThe American Historical Review, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Oct., 1984), pp. 1137-1138Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1866534 .

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Asia and the East 1137

first Asian initiative in European affairs since the siege of Vienna (in 1683). The story of Gromyko's alleged secret attendance at a Chinese Politburo meeting in September 1958, at a time of great Sino- American tension, is almost certainly pure Soviet disinformation retailed to a few visiting American China specialists in the mid- 1970s in the hope, partly borne out, of making them more sympathetic to the Soviet side of the Sino-Soviet dispute (p. 98).

But these are small things. The China watcher's reaction to this study is likely to resemble Brahms's notation on a score by Johann Strauss-unfortu- nately, not by me. He will also hope not to have to wait another nine years for MacFarquhar's third volume.

HAROLD C. HINTON

George Washington University

SHARON L. SIEVERS. Flowers in Salt: The Beginntings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1983. Pp. xiv, 240. $22.50.

The title of this book leads the reader to believe that it deals with the rise of feminism in modern Japan; it actually concerns itself with the Meiji era (1868- 1912) and is to date the only treatment of feminism this early in Japan. Sharon L. Sievers seeks to cast the rise of feminism in Japan in the same framework as its American and English counterparts. Herein lies the strength and also the weakness of the book. Her search for exact parallels and a "common language" with the West leads her to overlook important differences between the Japanese and the Anglo-American cases and at the same time to ignore similarities between Japanese and other Asian examples.

The author asserts that the early feminist Kishida Toshiko's speeches "attracted a good deal of nation- al attention" (p. 33) and that Kusunose Kitai's com- plaints to prefectural authorities were "picked up by newspapers all over Japan" (p. 29). In view of this nationwide attention one wonders why the famous Bluestockings were later "unaware of the struggles of their feminist predecessors" (p. 164).

The reviewer questions the inclusion of a chapter on textile workers, in particular Sievers's description of a strike by workers at Amamiya, for she cites no authority for it and apparently has not read some other scholarship on these workers, who were im- portant to the female work force more than to the rise of feminist consciousness. Of greater interest to the Western reader are the chapters on the Wom- en's Reform Society, women socialists, and Kanno Suga, the anarchist friend of Kotoku Shfisui who was executed in 1911 for alleged complicity in the plot on the life of the Meiji emperor. The author's

continual endeavor to draw parallels with the An- glo-American feminists is weakened by the fact that Japanese women today are closer to their Asian sisters than to their American and English counter- parts, as we know from international women's con- ferences. American and English women, after all. never had to combat a real parallel to the pervasive Confucian ethic or the samurai code.

The work is flawed by some errors of historical fact. The author, for example, has the Reform Society making petitions to the genro in 1887; this body came into being in 1890. The resignation of Itagaki Taisuke and others from the government in 1873 was precipitated more by the debate over the Korea expedition than over power sharing (p. 24). Inconsistencies are distracting; some titles and names are given in translation, others in romanized form, still others in both. The book would be more useful with a bibliography and glossary. It is en- hanced by an admirable set of photographs of Meiji feminists.

JOYCE C. LEBRA

University of Colorado, Boulder

W. MARK FRUIN. Kikkoman: Company, Clan, and Com- munity. (Harvard Studies in Business History, num- ber 35.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1983. Pp. x, 358. $30.00.

Kikkoman Corporation, the world's largest soy sauce producer, is among Japan's two hundred largest industrial enterprises. It is also the oldest and has been under the control and management of the interrelated Mogi-Takanashi families since they be- gan production in 1661 in the village of Noda, across the bay from the crucial Tokyo market.

The story of the rise of Kikkoman is important and fascinating. More importantly, it catches in microcosm the flavor of the evolution of Japanese economic and business history-technological im- provement and the application of modern science, changes in enterprise organizational and produc- tion structure, evolving patterns of labor recruit- ment and industrial relations, the always great im- portance of distribution and marketing. And Kikkoman (which changed its name from Noda Shoyu Corporation in 1964 to reflect its major brandname product) is of additional historical sig- nificance: it was the protagonist in the substantively and symbolically important Noda strike of 1927-28, in which the union was routed.

W. Mark Fruin has told this story very well. This is the first book-length history of a Japanese company based on company archives to appear in English. The subtitle conveys the main themes. The corpora- tion was established in 1917 essentially by five major

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1138 Reviews of Books

interrelated families, following a thirty-year period of cartel-type cooperation among two dozen soy sauce-producing families in Noda. Most of the book is devoted to the corporation's growth and problems over the past sixty years, including an insightful chapter on the effects of postwar occupation re- forms and pressures for internationalization and diversification, although the author waffles some- what on their relative importance. The clan-alli- ances of main and branch families reinforced by strategic marriages and adoptions-has successfully produced ten generations of owners and top man- agement. The community of Noda evolved from an agricultural village to a company town in the prewar era, to a small postwar city where unions elected socialist politicians and family influence on commu- nity relationships weakened.

Although the author must have had to develop good relationships with the company and family to obtain access to archival materials, the study is objective, unbiased, and nonjudgmental-success, after all, makes a positive tone natural. Both union and management are criticized for the strike of the 1920s. Perhaps the only false note is the author's defense of the company against the postwar rulings of the Fair Trade Commission for price fixing and marketing transgressions.

The book provides an excellent historical over- view. The main criticism, if it is that, is that it leaves the reader wanting to know more: about intraclan relationships; more clearly why Kikkoman rather than others came to achieve dominant market share in an industry that has gradually evolved from thousands of producers and brandnames; about company-community relations; and about the eco- nomics of success (there is no real discussion of revenues, costs, profits, financing-no balance sheets, no profit and loss statements).

I recommend Kikkoman for anyone interested in Japanese history or comparative business history. I hope this excellent book will encourage further research in an important but understudied field.

HUGH PATRICK

Columbia School of Business

MANI KAMERKAR. British Paramountcy: British-Baroda Relations, 1818-1848. Bombay: Popular Prakashan. 1980. Pp. xiv, 253. Rs. 96.

The British raj in India, in its creation and extended survival, owed much to the complex network of collaborative relationships that it evolved with the major feudal princes of the subcontinent. Although this phenomenon has long been recognized, it has been little studied. Mani Kamerkar's scholarly ex- amination of the development of British relations

with the important western Indian state of Baroda during the formative years 1818-48, is the first to deal with this period of the state's evolution. Work- ing closely from documents in the Maharashtra and the Baroda archives, she reveals much valuable data on the way in which British officials systematically used their superior power to transform Baroda from its earlier, relatively autonomous, status into a characteristically compliant state-fully subject to overriding British paramountcy, not merely in ex- ternal affairs but in major domestic matters as well.

The book opens with a brief review of the post-1700 beginnings of Maratha, Gaekwad chief- tainship of Gujarat; its subsequent break with the Maratha Confederacy centered in Poona; and the first and definitive Baroda treaties and agreements concluded with the British in 1802, 1805, and 1817, which brought the state into subordinate alliance with the raj. The study then focuses in great detail on the way in which the British, during the ensuing three decades (coinciding almost exactly with the rule of Gaekwad Sayajirao [1819-47]), unilaterally interpreted these treaties to enhance dramatically their de facto domination over Baroda. Amid the detail, the author emphasizes three main instru- ments utilized by the British to erode Baroda auton- omy. These were the officering and exercise of overriding control of the Gaekwad's 3,000 strong Cavalry contingent; the institutionalizing of long- term or perpetual guarantees of personal security, purses, or other rights to prominent Baroda bank- ers or officials; and, thirdly, the utilization of their right to collect tribute revenues for the Gaekwad from his subfeudatories in order to undermine effective Baroda suzerainty over them. With these powerful instruments at hand, a tough-minded British administration in Bombay, and its frequently imperious executive representatives or Residents in Baroda, steadily reduced Sayajirao to a position of total dependency, even in the domestic affairs of his state. Protests from the Gaekwad that the treaties were being unfairly interpreted, as the author dem- onstrates, usually had no impact on the British rulers. If the Gaekwad became truculent, as he did on several occasions, the British unilaterally seques- tered sections of his territory and utilized its reve- nues for their own purposes in Baroda until he came back into line.

Useful though the study is in elucidating the development of British imperialism vis-a-vis Baro- da, it suffers badly from narrowness of scope. The focu.s is too exclusively political with no attention to the socioeconomic situation in Baroda. Moreover, although the study covers the regency and reign of Gaekwad Sayajirao, he remains an altogether shad- owy figure. There is no real exploration of his character, motives, or of the network of advisers surrounding him. Nor is there any general analysis

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