日本における生命保険の歴史

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I have continued to develop my book manuscript on the history of life insurance in Japan. I have become particularly interested in how discourses of mutual assistance or mutual aid functioned within this larger process of commodifying and governing. Life insurance often presents itself as a modern successor to the "ko" of premodern Japan or the kye of premodern Korea. Yet, there are always debates about how and to what degree mutual assistance is supposed to function. In the industries’ early period, for example, there is a significant debate about whether mutual or stock companies represent the best means of protecting consumers. These debates continue in the formation of the state-run postal life insurance system, in the colonies, and during the wartime period.