Tour of Duty by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis

As a result, even those who did not directly participate in alternate attendance experienced a world much larger than their own. In some cases, Edo acted as a nexus for exchange at other times, culture traveled from one area to another without passing through the capital. What is generally known as 'Edo culture' in fact incorporated elements from the localities.

Vaporis argues against the view that cultural change simply emanated from the center (Edo) and reveals more complex patterns of cultural circulation and production taking place between the domains and Edo and among distant parts of Japan. Beyond exploring the nature of travel to and from the capital as well as the period of enforced bachelorhood there, Constantine Vaporis elucidates-for the first time-the significance of alternate attendance as an engine of cultural, intellectual, material, and technological exchange. Based on a prodigious amount of research in both published and archival primary sources, Tour of Duty renders alternate attendance as a lived experience, for not only the daimyo but also the samurai retainers who accompanied them. It required the daimyo to divide their time between their domains and the city of Edo, where they waited upon the Tokugawa shogun. Alternate attendance (sankin kotai) was one of the central institutions of Edo-period (1603-1868) Japan and one of the most unusual examples of a system of enforced elite mobility in world history.

Tour of Duty by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis