This monograph is a fascinating exploration of the inner workings of Ōno domain—a domain located in present-day Fukui close to the Japan Sea coast—during the early modern period. It utilizes an investigation of poverty control and relief measures, recorded primarily in the journals of officials in the castle town of Ōno, to enable a detailed reconstruction of the domain's early modern status society. While introducing the reader to two important groups that formed the mendicant core of that society—koshirō (beggar guild) and zatō (guild of the blind)—Give and Take more ambitiously explores the complex interrelations of various groups, including townsmen, peasants, and governing officials, that also comprised the local social status order. Accompanying Maren Ehlers's obvious and impressive commitment to original empirical inquiry in relation to localized social dynamics is her masterly command of Japanese-language secondary scholarship on virtually all aspects of her study, as well as a skillful dedication to building upon the very best insights of work written in English and other European languages to strengthen her study. Through the above combination of commitments, Ehlers has managed to produce a work of rich local history with well-developed regional and national comparative dimensions that permits the reader a better understanding of both the early modern Japanese social order and premodern systems of governance and welfare.

While maintaining a tight focus on a reconstruction of Ōno society through careful analysis of primary source materials, Give and Take also introduces the reader to a rich body of Japanese-language literature on the nature of status, poverty, and governance in early modern Japan. In a way not really done before in Anglophone scholarship on early modern Japan, Ehlers provides the reader with a thoroughly three-dimensional understanding of the workings of the status order by recreating the structures of particular status groups and exploring the interrelationships between these groups within the concrete geographical setting of Ōno through a close reading of primary source materials. Because of the relatively small size and scale of Ōno domain, Ehlers is able to recreate these relationships in such a way that the local status order becomes tangible and dynamic. While the journals Ehlers primarily utilizes in her history limit her analysis to the period of 1750–1870, she also uses a range of other primary and secondary materials to build a convincing case for the need to understand both the complex internal dynamics of individual status groups and the reciprocal relationships between them in order to better understand the early modern social and political order.

Give and Take first introduces the reader to the Ōno beggar guild and demonstrates how mendicancy was treated as an occupation within the early modern status order. Ehlers explains how domain authorities awarded begging privileges to this group in exchange for certain expected duties that included the policing of unofficial beggars and, in this way, facilitated the management of mendicancy. Ehlers next takes the example of the guild of the blind to show how another particular social group with begging privileges also worked within a guild setting to facilitate a high degree of self-reliance and autonomy. She then moves to a discussion of charity during a period of one of early modern Japan's worst famines—the Tenmei famine. She demonstrates how numerous welfare measures operated during this time, including direct domain welfare and town-wide relief, but also shows that essentially the domain continued to rely heavily on preexisting status structures to collect and distribute famine relief, as well as continue to operate according to the logic that the domain lord was (and should continue to be) a benevolent ruler. Ehlers then discusses nineteenth-century developments in Ōno, revealing how prescient domain reforms enacted during the period of 1840–70, rooted in mercantilism, built on previous status structures and poverty management policies while simultaneously developing approaches to regional health care.

Give and Take is a work that is worthy of emulation in numerous respects. In its uncompromising commitment to the reconstruction of local history, it is grounded in a way that very few other Anglophone works can currently claim to parallel. But it is not merely a commitment to writing local history that is notable, it is also Ehlers's mastery of those sources that strikes this reader as just as impressive. Her reading of the sources offers the student of early modern Japanese history clear strategies for understanding the interpretive possibilities and complex layers of those same sources. Ehlers's vast knowledge of the early modern Ōno domain is readily apparent, and she shows adroitness in reading both what is in the sources and what is conspicuously absent. The book also skillfully demonstrates that a thoughtful approach to the reading of sources and careful attention to detail provide us with the ability to recreate the social structures of the early modern past and to understand the ways in which people maintained relationships (including governing relationships) with others. Ehlers's committed engagement with secondary scholarship, particularly Japanese-language literature, makes it easy to recognize her own original contributions and ensures that her work does not resemble a litany of unsubstantiated claims or suffer from overreach.

It is perhaps because of these many great strengths of the book that some readers might also struggle with certain aspects of the text. The attention to detail and the commitment to accuracy and careful unpacking of sources occasionally obscure Ehlers's main, overarching argument to the point that it sometimes becomes sidelined or barely visible. In addition, while Give and Take clearly explicates what it means to be impoverished in early modern Japan and how such poverty was controlled and mitigated, it is fair to say that the importance of the study is often assumed rather than convincingly argued. More focused attention on why such a topic matters, what larger insights can be retrieved from a marginal domain that few have probably heard of, or perhaps even how certain historical methods enable us to understand or do history (Japanese or otherwise) better would have greatly enhanced this important work. Ehlers is definitely engaging when she reverts to a more analytical mode. It is this reviewer's belief that a future expansion of this aspect of her research will mark her arrival as a generational leader in the study of early modern Japanese society.