Early Meiji Period Research Articles

The Significance of Medical Missionaries in the Early Meiji Period as Clarified by the Case Study of Dr. Palm

The Significance of Medical Missionaries in the Early Meiji Period as Clarified by the Case Study of Dr. Palm

Cross-cultural Exchange Through Horticulture in the Early Meiji Period

Cross-cultural Exchange Through Horticulture in the Early Meiji Period

A Study on the Moral Education in early Meiji Period of Japan

A Study on the Moral Education in early Meiji Period of Japan

明治期東京の河岸地拝借人からみた地域構造の変容に関する研究

The purpose of this research is to review and analyze the transformation of the urban structure of Tokyo resulting from the developmental activities by the kashichi-haisyakunin, who are tenants of the kashichi, which means common riverside spaces, during the early meiji period. In particular, this research targets the regions surrounding the riverbank of the Kanda River, which include Kagura-kashi, Ichibei-kashi, and Iida-kashi. In a previous study on this riverbank, the author remarked that the spatial structures existing in these kashichi had been formed by the kashichi-haisyakunin. That is to say, they were private developers of those riverside spaces and were new tenants of the kashichi since the meiji period. Their activities were associated with the process of transformation of regions surrounding those kashichi. Accordingly, this paper aims to focus on their activities in the surrounding regions as well as the riverbank. In this study, the characteristics of the kashichi-haisyakunin is classified into three types: adjacent, periphery, and distant. The classification is based on the positional relation between the kashichi and their location. Additionally, each type was evaluated for the differences in the behavior of the landowners and the developmental activities at their respective locations in order to confirm the land ledger and kashi register from the meiji period. Through this analysis of the activities of the kashichi-haisyakunin, the following characteristics were revealed. First, in the case of adjacent type of kashichi-haisyakunin, which involved several tenants renting the kagura-kashi and ichibei-kashi, the tenants sought to use the adjacent riverbank and were involved in reconstructing the spatial structures in the surrounding region, such as the Kagurazaka area, while using the waterfront and commercial land integrally. Second, in the case of periphery of the adjacent area, which involved several tenants renting the iida-kashi, the tenants emerged be a newly risen landlord class. Thus, they rented the land of the kashichi and acquired land from the periphery of the town adjacent to kashichi. Consequently, the spatial structures in those areas were transformed and a new relation between the land and water was established in the urban structure. Finally, the distant type of kashichi-haisyakunin, which involved commercial tenants renting kashichi, the tenants tended to be companies, such as a timber and rice merchants, that used the river to transport goods. Furthermore, there is also a stock farm, which was converted from bukechi (a district inhabited by the samurais during the edo period). That is to say, they constructed an intimate relation between the kashichi and the production areas or the supply centers for merchandise, using the structure of a channel in Tokyo. It was then conducive to reconstruct the urban structure resulting from the relation between two distant regions Such interactions between the kashichi-haisyakunin's activity and the transformation of the regions surrounding those kashichi show that the urban structure of Tokyo had been reconstructed during the early meiji period. Therefore, these results suggest that the kashichi-haisyakunin was an independent player in the urban transformation, performing roles such as a developer, a newly risen landlord class, or someone engaged in water transport.

Changes in Meaning of the Term kenkyu and the Establishment of kenkyu-sho in the Early Meiji Period

Changes in Meaning of the Term kenkyu and the Establishment of kenkyu-sho in the Early Meiji Period

Imperial Practice and the Making of Modern Japan's Territory: Towards a Reconsideration of Empire’s Boundaries

A renewed focus on the notion of empire has prompted an interest in questions of modern Japanese imperialism after the Meiji Restoration, both in Japan and abroad. It has also focused attention on the issue of comparing empires across Eurasia during the early modern period, under the rubric of ‘global history’. Japan has not really been incorporated into this latter discussion. This article begins by examining the reasons for this lack of incorporation, before moving on to discuss the value of considering early modern Japan as an imperial formation. The lens it adopts is one of cartography, that quintessentially imperial practice that has featured heavily in discussions of a Eurasian early modernity. The article examines the cartographic incorporation of Japan’s northern region of the Yezo into Japan itself, culminating in the area being newly designated as Hokkaido in the early Meiji period, the newest circuit within Imperial Japan’s administrative map. This political outcome was the result of varied practices that found reflection across the Tokugawa–Meiji divide. Yet this intense variety of practices, constantly shifting in response to contingency, served to form the state-effect, through which the land of Yezo was granted its unity and represented on the map. The territory on the map provided the visual, graphic representation of the demarcation of authority of the state that authorized the practice of its own mapping. In this manner, the state mapped itself into Hokkaido and from this perspective, the division between the early modern and modern eras is far less significant than is frequently assumed.

Takayuki Hioki, Kabuki during the Transitional Period: A History of Kabuki Theater from the Late Edo Period to the Early Meiji Period

Takayuki Hioki, Kabuki <i>during the Transitional Period: A History of Kabuki Theater from the Late Edo Period to the Early Meiji Period</i>

Working Places for People in Kyoto in the Early Meiji Period

Working Places for People in Kyoto in the Early Meiji Period

Translating Technology in Japan's Meiji Enlightenment, 1870–1879

The enthusiasm for translation during the early Meiji period is well documented. However, beyond Fukuzawa Yukichi, the publishing sensation of the era, little is known about those who translated works on technology or their motives for doing so. During the 1870s, the heyday of Japan's Meiji enlightenment, over fifty works on technology were translated from Western languages. Although the government often spearheaded this drive, many translators took advantage of inexpensive printing technologies and an accessible book market to publish their own works on Western technologies. This article examines who translated such works and their motives for doing so. It sheds light on how translators exploited traditional means of asserting their authority to ensure the spread of new, “modern” knowledge.

일본 명치전기(明治前期) 경찰복 연구

The purpose of this study is to examine introduction and establishment of the police uniform during Japan's early Meiji period, in order to get deeper understanding of the introduction of the modern uniform. The research method included a literature review of laws related to police uniform, which were collected and analyzed. The result shows that the uniform stipulated by Keisi-cho Uniform regulation in 1874 included characteristics of Western uniforms that show the rank of the officers using emblems, such as different cap badges and uniform stripes, while maintaining the same form. Later, the modern uniform system came into form with the addition of a national symbol, building system of formal wear, separating uniforms for different classes, and adding additional uniforms. This illustrates the process of introducing and establishing western-style uniform in the East and can serve as a reference for similar studies.

A study on the diplomatic courtesy of Choryang Oeguan from the last day of the Tokugawa Shogunate to the early Meiji period

A study on the diplomatic courtesy of Choryang Oeguan from the last day of the Tokugawa Shogunate to the early Meiji period

Asakusa ‘Newtown’: the transformation of outcaste space in early modern Edo/modern Tokyo

This paper examines the historical transformation of urban outcaste areas into commoner neighbourhoods in early modern/modern Japan. Focusing on Tokyo's largest early modern outcaste community, an Asakusa area referred to as Shinchō (literally ‘Newtown’), the paper argues that a combination of factors, namely the historical processes of urbanization, status group consolidation, labour specialization, capital accumulation, and inter-status group network creation, created an elite stratum of neighbourhood residents who were reasonably well-integrated into the broader social and economic landscape of Edo by the late Tokugawa period. This movement towards desegregation in turn laid important foundations for the later administrative and conceptual incorporation of the Shinchō area into the broader metropolitan area. Wide-ranging entrepreneurial activities by members of this elite class in the early Meiji period further built on and propelled these changes although they also facilitated their eventual exodus from the community. Proto-capitalist development, however, while clearly capable of inducing an emancipatory effect for some key elites figures and while enabling the neighbourhood itself to become more closely identified with an emerging working class Asakusa, also worked to create a substratum of people subjected to a compounded form of discrimination that took place along both traditional status and newly emerging modern capitalistic lines.

Translating and Transforming ‘Race’: Early Meiji Period Textbooks

Although it is an almost established understanding in European and North American literature that race is a social construct, the general academic and social discourses surrounding race in Japan remain outside this model. This can be traced back to school textbooks and geography books in the early Meiji period, after these concepts and words were translated and introduced from Europe and the United States. This article will examine passages related to race in textbooks from the first half of the Meiji period, in order to explore the continuities and discontinuities in the state of knowledge production surrounding race and racial discrimination in contemporary Japan. Investigating the usage of words in educational practice allows us to see how ‘race’ was a term that was located in a position different from that of other words, and how the Japanese transformed their racial position in relation to others.

Government by Mourning: Death and Political Integration in Japan, 1603–1912 by Atsuko Hirai (review)

Reviewed by: Government by Mourning: Death and Political Integration in Japan, 1603–1912 by Atsuko Hirai Mark Teeuwen Government by Mourning: Death and Political Integration in Japan, 1603–1912. By Atsuko Hirai. Harvard University Asia Center, 2014. 464 pages. Hardcover $49.95/£36.95/€45.00. Government by Mourning was published just weeks before its author, Atsuko Hirai (1936–2014), reached the end of what she describes in her very personal acknowledgments as an “interminable medical odyssey.” Finishing any manuscript is hard work; in this case, it must have been a veritable tour de force. If it were not for her disclosure in the acknowledgments, however, one would never guess that this thorough and detailed book was prepared for publication under such adverse circumstances. As a reviewer, I feel it is my duty to the author to express my respect by assessing the book’s strengths and weaknesses to the best of my ability. [End Page 135] Government by Mourning consists of three parts. Part 1 addresses the “mourning edicts” (bukkiryō or bukkirei) of the Edo period, which laid down rules for proper mourning following the death of a relative. Part 2 addresses public mourning of prominent figures like the shogun, the emperor, or a daimyo, focusing on the bans on music and other kinds of noise (in Hirai’s terminology, “sounds suspensions,” narimono chōjirei) that were routinely enforced on such occasions. Finally, part 3 shows that after the Meiji restoration, policies of mourning were harnessed in efforts to educate the people in the national values of the state. Mourning edicts are, at first glance, a less than inspiring topic for a book-length study. Such edicts consist of lists of mourning obligations, organized according to one’s relation to the deceased: so many days of “abstention” and so many days of “mourning” for one’s parents, adoptive parents, stepparents, legal mother, alienated mother, and so on. Such lists were, with minor adjustments, based on the Yōrō code of 718, which laid down rules for the number of days officials affected by a death in their family had to stay away from work so as not to spread ritual pollution. What can be gleaned from such subtle changes, implemented over the centuries, and why are they important? Hirai succeeds in breathing life into this seemingly arid area of legislation by arguing vividly that “mourning rituals shaped politics,” while, at the same time, “politics impinged on the rituals” (p. 89). Mourning obligations were first codified by the shogun Tsunayoshi in 1693; his edict underwent minor revisions under Yoshimune in 1736. The resulting Edict on Mourning and Abstention remained in force even into the early Meiji period. Hirai argues that although Tsunayoshi’s edict was drafted not by him but by Confucian and Shinto experts, it reflected Tsunayoshi’s personal circumstances and interests. Those interests included his devotion to his mother and his predilection for the Confucian classics. More important, however, were two aspects that made the edict politically relevant. First, Tsunayoshi’s mourning edict established a clear hierarchy among relatives. In a context where the succession often passed to sons adopted for that very purpose, mourning offered such heirs the opportunity to perform in their role as sons and, through a public display of filial piety (genuine or otherwise), gain additional legitimacy. Likewise, the edict made it more difficult for daimyo to pick the heir of their choice. It left little opportunity to pass over a son or a brother in favor of, say, a nephew or an uncle, because the edict gave the shogunate a juridical reason to withhold its permission for such anomalous successions. Second, Hirai maintains that while the shogun possessed the authority to reduce mourning obligations, including his own, there were situations when it was convenient to invoke the authority of the emperor as the final arbiter of mourning protocol. In that way, a shogun could cut short his mourning period without appearing unfilial. Hirai adduces “the emperor’s authority to interfere with any shogun’s mourning obligations” as an argument in a larger discussion of the relationship between shogun and emperor (p. 101). She argues that the emperor’s authority in questions of mourning...

Surgery for Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors during the &amp;ldquo;Early Meiji Period&amp;rdquo; in 19&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Century Japan

Surgery for Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors during the &amp;ldquo;Early Meiji Period&amp;rdquo; in 19&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Century Japan

WAKONYOUSAI. Con corazón japonés, al estilo occidental. Objetualidad en el espacio doméstico japonés en el periodo 1850-1880: aprendiendo a convivir con la silla

The most drastic period in the development of the Japanese domestic space is designated with the term wakonyousai –literally, Japanese-spirit/Western-style– and spans from late Edo to the early Meiji Period. The implementation of western spatial structures, political and social doctrines, as well as new routines in everyday life, initiated with the Meiji restoration, becomes during the next years an ideological weapon to create a new “modern Japan”. In reference to the domestic space, the key of “modernization” lies in changing not only a set of household artifacts, but a whole system of behavior –a phenomenon called way ō setch ū ,– by merging two different forms of life, which leads to a multiplicity of spatial and corporeal practices, to a conceptual division of space, and to a split in the identity of the habitat (TEASLEY, 2001). As part of the new system of objects to suddenly colonize the domestic space, the chair is the unquestionable protagonist. Its appearance induced, among others, a change in the corporal habits, in the visual plane of the user, in the sensory and emotional perception of the system of objects, and in the role furniture plays in the overall space configuration.

From Art and Identity : For Whom, For What? The “Present” Upon the “Contemporary”

From Art and Identity:For Whom, For What? The “Present” Upon the “Contemporary” Satō Dōshin (bio) Translated by Sarah Allen (bio) This excerpt is taken from Satō Dōshin’s Art and Identity: For Whom, For What? (Bijutsu no aidentitī: dare no tame ni, nani no tame ni, 2007). Like his earlier discussion of the establishment of the internal economy of art in Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State: The Politics of Beauty (Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu: bi no seiji gaku, 1994; the English translation was published in 2011), this book also focuses on the institutional facilitation of art. But more broadly, Satō turns his attention to developments and discourses that do not necessarily comport with imperatives of the state. He attempts to reconsider four different juxtapositions to examine the history of modern art in Japan: 1) placing the present (genzai) upon the postwar contemporary (gendai) to reconsider art as an implementation of Western notions; 2) considering modern art history as a specific discourse emerging out of modernity; 3) positioning the present in a broader, global condition; 4) examining the present from the perspective of human identity. In the prologue of Art and Identity, Satō aligns himself with Kitazawa, whose work he frequently references, and writes: “The purpose of [the research] was to find out why art exists as it does today and to understand more about the present condition of art.”i However, unlike Kitazawa who traces the historical circumstances that shaped art, Satō’s inquiry here revolves around the more existential role art plays in human society. This philosophical inquisitiveness adds a unique dimension to his research. Why do artists make artworks, and why do people seek art? The age in which art was produced for gods and kings has passed long ago, and the age in which art was made for nations and the national people has also passed. And what about the labyrinth of postmodernism, which contemporary art has wandered into? Has it found a way out? I’m lost among these questions. Even though many discussions have transpired, future prospects seem quite dim–yet the twenty-first century has already begun. What has art become and what will it be?ii [End Page 341] What are the stakes for art when it has lost its cultural legitimacy? What sort of imagination can art continue to help us organize and effectively articulate? Art and Identity is one response to these questions regarding the viability and efficacy of art. Satō attempts to relegitimize art by examining how it has functioned as an intercessory term between self and other, domestic and foreign, known and unknown, the duty for which art has been consistently drafted for centuries: “It appears that humanity has always tried to stabilize itself by establishing its outside or counterpart. Where is the human now, and where is it headed? Like ‘art,’ have we not determined the identity of humanity and the human world merely by locating liminal borders?”iii Even though this study is grounded in careful empirical research, Satō speculates about the challenges that humanity will face as the scope of knowledge inevitably expands into the fields of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and space exploration. Art is still effective, he suggests, because of the problems that these disciplines will necessarily introduce: “The acceleration of artificiality has far surpassed the speed of biology and compromised the borders that define our human existence. And the quickening pace of technological and social transformation will incessantly force us to reassess the identity of humans with every given situation.”iv In other words, the history of art that pictures our humanness is a history of immunization that protects and establishes our basic need for identity. If so, art remains a legitimate vocation as long as there is a category called the human, through which our sense of stability is measured and assured. (Kenichi Yoshida) 1. Shifting Vectors: The Taishō and Prewar Shōwa Periods “Japanese Art” without Japonisme When we view the development of “art” from the Meiji era (1868-1912) to the present as a “system,” two time periods clearly stand out: the early Meiji period and the early postwar period. Together, they mark a major...

일본의 성문화를 통해 본 포르노그래피 애니메이션의 선정성

인류는 본능적 욕구를 해소하기 위한 노력을 통해 발전을 지속해왔다. 인간의 욕구중 성욕은 식욕과 함께 가장 본능적인 것의 하나로 분류되며, 선사시대로부터 현재에 이르기까지 다양한 방식으로 표현되고 있다. 성적인 이미지 표현은 사회적, 윤리적 제약 하에서도 시대의 변화와 매체의 발전을 수용하며 더욱 앞서 진화하고 있다. 20세기 초반 사진기술의 발명으로 인해 포르노그래피 이미지는 매우 극적인 변화를 보였다. 영상은 사진보다 직접적인 이미지를 전달하는 매체로써 이러한 변화를 더욱 촉진하였고, 영상매체 중 하나로서 애니메이션은 장치에 의한 이미지인 실사영상이 가진 재현성의 한계를 넘어 실험을 거듭해왔다. 이 논문에서는 애니메이션에서 성적욕망을 어떻게 표현하고 있는가와 이를 있게 한 사회적 배경으로서의 성문화를 연결하여 논의하고자 하며, 그 분명한 사례로써 일본 포르노그래피 애니메이션을 선정하여 분석하였다. 일본 포르노그래피 애니메이션은 문화와 사회제도적 역사로부터 비롯된 결과물로써 해석되어야 한다. 헤이안시대와 에도시대를 거쳐 메이지시대 초기에 이르기까지 일본의 성문화는 매우 개방적이고 때로 파격적인 상태를 유지하였다. 일본 애니메이션에 자주 등장하는 변신, 변태, 미소년 소녀 성애, 촉수성교, 신체 특정부위의 빈번한 노출 등은 와카슈, 처방혼, 혼숙, 남색 등과 같은 고대 일본의 개방적인 성 풍습을 통해 해석할 수 있다. 이와 같은 일본 특유의 성문화는 세계 어느 곳에서도 찾아보기 쉽지 않은 일본 애니메이션 특유의 성적 표현으로 자리한다. 이러한 상황은 20세기에 이르러 2차 세계 대전의 종결과 함께 외부로부터 강제된 서구 근대화에 의해 제도적으로 단절되었다. 그렇지만 내용적으로는 현재까지도 일정한 방식으로 영향력을 지속하고 있는 것으로 보인다. 이 연구에서는 고대 일본의 자유로운 성문화가 제도에 의해 변화되는 일련의 과정을 살펴봄으로써 포르노그래피 애니메이션 또한 문화현상이라는 틀 안에서 해석되어야 함을 논의하였다. 일본 애니메이션 전반에서 발견되는 선정성은 그들의 역사로부터 비롯되며, 여성에 대한 이분법적 표현은 제도적으로 규정된 성 의식에 의해 굴절된 것으로 이해할 수 있다. 일본의 역사와 문화는 포르노그래피 애니메이션에 성적표현의 자유로움을 부여함과 동시에 타자화 된 여성 신체에 대한 두려움이자 뿌리칠 수 없는 매혹이라는 이분법으로 변형되어 드러나고 있음을 알 수 있다. Human beings have advanced to release instinctive desire. Among the human desires, sexual desire is classed as a basic desire with appetite and has been expressed in many ways from prehistoric times to present. Despite the social and ethical restriction, expression of sexual image has been evolved with change of time and medium's development. Thanks to inventing the photograph technique, Change of pornographic image has showed a dramatic aspect since early 20th century. The video which delivers message more directly than the picture boosted this change, and the animation has experimented the expression methods and techniques numerously exceeding the limit of realistic image which reappeared by the device. In this thesis, I want to discuss how human beings express sexual desire in animation based on society's sex culture, and analyzed Japanese pornographic animation as its obvious cases. Japanese pornographic animation should be interpreted as the result of culture and society system's history. Through Heian, Edo and early Meiji period, Japanese sex culture has been kept very openly and preposterously. Transformation, metamorphosis, pedophilia, tentacle sex and exposure of specific body parts that are frequently appear in Japanese animation can be interpreted by ancient Japanese open sex culture like Wakashu, polygamy, sleeping in mixed sex group and pederasty. These Japanese odd sex culture is hard to find elsewhere and settled as intrinsic sexual expression in Japanese animation. This situation was institutionally severed by European Modernization's force at the end of World War II in 20th century. However, it seems they have been keeping their influence in a proper form until now. In this study, I discussed that pornographic animation should be interpreted in a frame of cultural phenomenon by researching the series of procedure that ancient Japanese open sex culture has been changed by the system. Sexuality which is found in general Japanese animation was started from their history, and the dichotomous expression about women can be understood that it is bent by institutionally regulated sexual opinion. Japanese history and culture can be understood that it is transformed to the dichotomy that are simultaneously according freedom of eroticism to the pornographic animation, and the fear and irresistible temptation about the woman's body as the other.

Shaping the Diet: Competing Architectural Designs for Japan's Diet Building

The design of parliamentary buildings can and do have positive effects on the establishment of constitutionalism and democracy as a part of the institutionalization of governance. But once such legislative chambers are completed, it is hard to alter them physically. Actually, Germany is still succeeding the Reichstag-style chamber, even though there was the replacement and considerable discussion about renovating it into a British-style building. In similar fashion, Japan has also continued to use the same chamber, the National Diet Building (completed 1936), to the present day, in spite of the political regime change in 1945 from constitutional monarchy to parliamentary democracy.Given Japan's status as the first country in Asia to modernize, the question of how Japan chose a design for their parliamentary chamber is an intriguing one. On the surface, the National Diet Building bears a strong resemblance to the German Reichstag, but in fact Japanese decision-makers carefully studied preceding patterns of parliamentary chamber design before adopting the current configuration. The outline of this paper is as follows. Firstly, we will examine the designs and the procedure of the four chambers, Kōgisho, Chihōkan Kaigi, Genrōin and Sūmitsuin, which housed Japan's pre-Diet legislative bodies in the early Meiji period. Secondly, we will analyze why in 1889 the Meiji Government, faced with two competing design proposals, adopted not the British-style chamber, designed by Josiah Conder, but the German-style one for the Diet Building. And thirdly, we will examine how and why that same German-style design of the chamber was maintained in the new Diet Building in 1936 and even after the New Constitution and Diet Act were made after World War II, despite some requests for the adoption of the British style.

A Study on English Perception of Japan in the Early Meiji Period ‒Focused on George Nathaniel Curzon, Arnold Henry Savage Landor, Isabella Bird Bishop‒

메이지(明治) 초기 일본은 경제적인 위기를 대외적인 진출을 통해 해결하려고 한 서양의 제국주의에 직면하게 되었다. 당시 한국과 일본의 양국을 방문한 George Nathaniel Curzon, Arnold Henry Savage Landor, Isabella Bird Bishop 3인의 영국인이 남긴 기록물을 통해 1880년대 후반과 1890년대의 초반 일본의 모습을 체 험적으로 묘사할 수 있다. 또한 한국과의 비교도 심층적으로 알 수 있다. 이 사람들이 방문했던 시기의 일본은 메이지 유신을 통해 근대화를 추진하고 있었기 때문에 교통, 숙 박, 도로, 군대, 정치 등의 측면에서 볼 때 한국과 비교하여 매우 우수한 상황이었다. 그러나 여성의 사회적인 속박과 굴레의 모습과 같은 전근대적 모습도 남아있는 사회였다. 반면 같은 시기 한국은 ‘약하고’ 관료적인 체제가 남아있고 군사체제도 약한 나라였다. 서양인의 눈에 서 본 한국은 ‘근대성’이 거의 없었다. 이 논문에서의 영국인 3인은 오리엔탈리즘에 의해 동양국가를 ‘타자’로 하는 시각에서 완전히 떨어질 수 없을 지도 모르지만, 일본에 대한 다양한 인식을 가지고 있었음을 알 수 있다.