"A Paradise of Children": Western Perceptions of Childhood in Meiji Japan (1868–1912)

Abstract

"A Paradise of Children" introduces the storyline of a traveling exhibition developed by the Mori Ogai Memorial Center in Berlin. The exhibition retraces the Western discovery of Japanese childhood since the 1850s and examines the characteristic representation of the Far Eastern country as a paradise for the young in numerous books, photographs, and other visual materials that were popular among the educated public in Europe and North America, far into the twentieth century. It argues that this idyllic image resonated with the turn-of-the-century discussion of an alternative childhood and left meaningful traces in the work of education reformers such as Ellen Key.