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Introduction: Melodrama and the Family in Meiji Japan

in An Age of Melodrama: Family, Gender, and Social Hierarchy in the Turn-of-the-Century Japanese Novel

This introductory chapter discusses the depiction of family in Japanese melodramatic fiction of the Meiji era. This volume examines four novels initially serialized in daily newspapers at a time of ... More

This introductory chapter discusses the depiction of family in Japanese melodramatic fiction of the Meiji era. This volume examines four novels initially serialized in daily newspapers at a time of burgeoning circulations. These include Hototogisu, Konjiki yasha, Chikyōdai, and Gubijinsō. This volume explores how these melodramatic fictions responded to the concept of ie-seido and kazoku kokka kan (the family-state concept) and investigates the cultural impact of Meiji melodramatic novels. It also argues for the modernity of Meiji melodramatic fiction because of its specific concerns.Less

Japan: The Tears of Madame Chrysanthème

MATT K. MATSUDA

in Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific

This chapter examines the rise of Japan to global visibility during the Meiji Restoration after 1868, and the ways that the almost simultaneous collapse of the French in the Franco-Prussian war of ... More

This chapter examines the rise of Japan to global visibility during the Meiji Restoration after 1868, and the ways that the almost simultaneous collapse of the French in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871 leads to a re-ordering of civilizations in the late 19th century. Organized around the contract marriage in Pierre Loti's popular story Madame Chrysanthème (similar to Madame Butterfly), the question of whether the Japanese are capable of emotion becomes central to debates about what constitutes an advanced society. French commentaries insisting on Gallic passion are contrasted to Japanese material and political developments that rapidly transform the tea-house vision of Japan into a picture of the imperialist “Yellow Prussians” of Asia, both fascinating and threatening to increasingly uncertain European powers.Less

Early Meiji’s Contentious Natures

Julia Adeney Thomas

in Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology

This chapter examines the contentious conception of nature in Japan during the early Meiji era. It attempts to provide a rough guide to nature's chaotic career in the early Meiji period in order to ... More

This chapter examines the contentious conception of nature in Japan during the early Meiji era. It attempts to provide a rough guide to nature's chaotic career in the early Meiji period in order to underscore how volatile conditions were. The chapter argues that that the contentious efforts to reconstruct the relationship between politics and nature demonstrate how deeply and completely Japan's cosmopolis was being reconfigured during these years. It explains that the variegated concepts of nature during the Tokugawa period were dissolved in the early years of Meiji as Japan expanded physically and intellectually.Less

Promoting Scientific and Technological Change in Tokyo, 1870–1930: Museums, Industrial Exhibitions, and the City

Morris Low

in Urban Modernity: Cultural Innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution

This chapter is organized into four parts. The first examines the reinvention of Tokyo as imperial capital during the Meiji era. The second considers how looking to the past was necessary in order ... More

This chapter is organized into four parts. The first examines the reinvention of Tokyo as imperial capital during the Meiji era. The second considers how looking to the past was necessary in order for Japan to move forward. Museums were important in this process. Participation in international exhibitions and the holding of domestic industrial exhibitions also helped the Japanese to envision a future led by science and technology. The third part focuses on how Japan put itself on display abroad, and on the educational value of showcasing its achievements and foreign know-how at home. The fourth part examines how Gotō Shinpei (1857–1929), mayor of Tokyo and then home minister, sought to rebuild Tokyo according to “scientific” principles after the Great Earthquake of 1923.Less

Meiji Drama Theory before Ibsen

M. Cody Poulton

in A Beggar's Art: Scripting Modernity in Japanese Drama, 1900-1930

This chapter examines the debates surrounding theatre reform in 1880s Japan, which revolved around efforts to recognize the artistic value of the dramatic text and to reform kabuki playscripts ... More

This chapter examines the debates surrounding theatre reform in 1880s Japan, which revolved around efforts to recognize the artistic value of the dramatic text and to reform kabuki playscripts (kyakuhon) in accordance with newly imported Western ideals of dramatic form. In addition to the high social status accorded to theatre in nineteenth-century Europe and America, the importance accorded there to drama as a literary genre exercised some of the best minds of the Meiji era. Moreover, these occurred during a time of modernization, when theatre “reform” (as it was called) was part and parcel of a public effort to create a modern, “civilized” nation.Less

Not Suitable as a Man?: Conscription, Masculinity, and Hermaphroditism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Teresa A. Algoso

in Recreating Japanese Men

Whereas sex and status had been inseparable social identifiers during preindustrial times, reforms and discourses during the Meiji era had created a new “category of woman that cut across all classes ... More

Whereas sex and status had been inseparable social identifiers during preindustrial times, reforms and discourses during the Meiji era had created a new “category of woman that cut across all classes and that was set in opposition to man”. As a system of rights and obligations came into existence in Meiji, it had become important to identify who qualified for which privileges and their attendant responsibilities. Because one of the key determinants is the individual’s sex, medical jurisprudence played a major role, particularly when the individual’s sex was difficult to ascertain. From the Meiji era, medical jurisprudence focused on the new phenomenon, han’in’yō. Han’in’yō referred to those individuals whose sex cannot be easily determined as male or female, or hermaphrodites. This chapter explores how medical jurisprudence discourse on hermaphroditism supported the role of conscription exam in defining the new ideal of masculinity. Because the rights and responsibilities of citizenship were assigned on scientifically measured masculinity, individuals with bodies that did not conform to this new definition of masculinity were legally and socially marginalized.Less

The Topographical Imagination of Tokugawa Politics

Julia Adeney Thomas

in Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology

This chapter examines the political conceptions of nature in Tokugawa, Japan. It analyzes the homologous characteristics that make these different natures comparable and which set them apart from ... More

This chapter examines the political conceptions of nature in Tokugawa, Japan. It analyzes the homologous characteristics that make these different natures comparable and which set them apart from later ideas in the Meiji and Taisho eras. The chapter outlines assumptions common to most Tokugawa views of nature and details the variety of politically meaningful senses of nature. It suggests that a belief shared by almost all these contending positions is that nature provided a sanctioned locale for correct political practice.Less

The Long History of Religion’s Opposites: “The Secular” and “Secularization”

Hans Martin Krämer

in Shimaji Mokurai and the Reconception of Religion and the Secular in Modern Japan

This chapter stresses the historical semantics of secularization, analyzing secularization as a concept used in discursive attempts to understand and structure historical experience rather than as an ... More

This chapter stresses the historical semantics of secularization, analyzing secularization as a concept used in discursive attempts to understand and structure historical experience rather than as an objectified and quantifiable phenomenon. An important prerequisite for the emergence of “secularization” as a conceptual tool in modern Japan was the earlier reconception of “religion:” In this sense, this chapter showcases one of the consequences of the conceptual work performed in the early Meiji years. At the same time, this chapter negotiates an additional premise of that work by highlighting another, older conceptual tradition that was crucial to the evolution of the thought of Shimaji Mokurai.Less

It’s Oscar Time in Asia!

Sangjoon Lee

in Cinema and the Cultural Cold War: US Diplomacy and the Origins of the Asian Cinema Network

This chapter refers to Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) as six member countries to send fifteen feature films to the Southeast Asian Film ... More

This chapter refers to Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) as six member countries to send fifteen feature films to the Southeast Asian Film Festival. It cites that the Indonesian entry After the Curfew was cancelled from the festival at the last minute due to objections of the Indonesian government toward Indonesian–Japanese cooperation. It also describes the magnificent Tokyo Kaikan as the main venue for the festival, which is an opulent building known as one of the architectural symbols of Japan's westernization. The chapter reviews film journals during the 1950s, which noted that the films shown at festivals were reviewed not as individual filmmakers' works of art, but as products of countries. It talks about the film adaptation of The Golden Demon, which is considered one of the most successful and best-received novels of the Meiji Era.Less