In a narrative history rich in colorful detail, Simon Partner uses the story of an ordinary merchant farmer and its Yokohama setting as a vantage point onto sweeping social transformation and its unwitting agents. Partner’s history of a vibrant meeting place humanizes the story of Japan’s revolutionary 1860s and their profound consequences for Japanese society and culture.

Simon Partner is professor of history at Duke University. He is the author of Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer (1999); Toshie: A Story of Rural Life in Twentieth-Century Japan (2004); and The Mayor of Aihara: A Japanese Villager and His Community, 1865-1925 (2009).

Daniel Botsman, Yale University:
Combining his finely honed skills as a storyteller with his deep knowledge of historical context, Partner paints a compellingly human picture of nineteenth-century Japan’s integration into the global economy, helping us understand the excitement and opportunities, as well as the risks and challenges that it opened up for those who decided to seek their fortunes in the bustling treaty port of Yokohama. The remarkable story of Shinohara Chūemon is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the origins of modern Japan.

Andrew Gordon, Harvard University:
Like all Partner’s work, The Merchant's Tale is beautifully written, in an engaging style, with vivid vignettes that bring to life the time and place that is his focus.

Karen E. Wigen, Stanford University:
To an already lively cast of Restoration characters—rascals and rebels, poets and fighters—The Merchant’s Tale adds a new voice: that of the rural entrepreneur. Long on dreams but short on capital, Chūemon decamped early to the treaty port of Yokohama, where he would scramble for years to gain a profitable foothold at the epicenter of Japan’s tumultuous encounter with the modern West. Simon Partner skillfully turns his letters home into a hair-raising romp across the Tokugawa/Meiji divide. A fresh take on a fascinating time.