Spectacular accumulation
Morgan Pitelka, author of the new book Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability, has created an eponymous site to help promote it. What makes this noteworthy is that the site is much better than similar efforts I have seen, especially the blog, "1616", which strikes a fine balance between brevity and depth (and is, as far as I can tell, original material rather than just excerpts from the book).
For example: "The geography of Ieyasu's career":
What is striking is the extent to which this territory of the Tôkaidô—and indeed, as the term would come to signify the highway connecting Edo and Kyoto/Osaka rather than the old administrative unit, that roadway as well—demarcated and mapped Ieyasu's activities. He only ventured out of its confines on two occasions (once to Kyushu in the south and once to Mutsu Province in the north), and never for any significant period of time. Ieyasu and his peers traveled back and forth along this east-west passage, from Okazaki to Hamamatsu, from Sunpu to Kyoto, and from Edo to Osaka, inscribing a history of war, diplomacy, chance, and ritual into the collective memories of its people and locales. Early modern tourists traversing the highway long after Ieyasu’s death could stop in Sunpu or Okazaki, and encounter pacified and in some cases commodified versions of the Tokugawa founder through the genealogy of famous places (meisho).
This geography is key to understanding the rapid shifts in the political fortunes of Ieyasu and his contemporaries. Nobunaga was assassinated in part because he allowed himself to be isolated in Kyoto, with his major generals scattered in campaigns too far from the capital to protect him. [...]
leoboiko:
Ooh, Pitelka! He's a big name in tea ceremony studies, with his Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History, and Practice and Handmade Culture: Raku Potters, Patrons, and Tea Practitioners in Japan. I had no idea that he had another book out as well as a blog, so thanks for the note!