Japan's private spheres : autonomy in Japanese history, 1600-1930

Japan's Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930 traces the shifting nature of autonomy in early modern and modern Japan. In this far-reaching, interdisciplinary study, W. Puck Brecher explores the historical development of the private and its evolving relationship with public authority, a dynamic that evokes stereotypes about an alleged dearth of individual agency in Japanese society. It does so through a montage of case studies. For the early modern era, case studies examine peripheral living spaces, boyhood, and self-interrogation in the arts. For the modern period, they explore strategic deviance, individuality in Meiji education, modern leisure, and body-maintenance. Analysis of these disparate private realms illuminates evolving conceptualizations of the private and its reciprocal yet often-contested relationship to the state.

Acknowledgments Figures and Tables Keywords ( ) Prologue PART 1 Contextualizing the Private Sphere in Japanese History 1 Introduction The Private "Problem" br/> 1 Contexts of Privacy in Modernizing Japan 2 Challenges and Methodologies 2 Public and Private in Pre-Meiji Thought and Society 1 Introduction 2 Public and Private in the Japanese Context 3 Public and Private in the Medieval Period 4 Public and Private in the Edo Period 3 The Private Self and the Meiji-Taisho State 1 The Individual's Relationship to the State 2 Prescribed Private Spheres: Religion, the Home, and Leisure 3 Historiography on Modern Japan's Private Spheres PART 2 The Autonomous Self in the Edo Period (1600-1868) 4 Peripheries as Private Spheres 1 Everything in Its Place: City, Suburb, Countryside 2 Koetsumura 3 Itami 3.1 Itami Sak e 3.2 The Itami Salon 4 Negishi 4.1 Negishi as a Homegrown Living Space 4.2 Resignation and Reclusion 5 Boyhood as an Autonomous Sphere 1 Introduction 2 Practical Childrearing 3 Diaries 4 Role Models and the Moral Authority of the Private 6 "Publicizing" the Private Self-Interrogation and Self-Indulgence in the Arts 1 Human Difference in Early Modern Thought 2 The Self-Interrogation of Hakuin (1685-1768) and Kinkoku (1761-1832) 3 Self and Self-Portraiture 4 Master Depravity and the Self as Spectacle PART 3 Public and Private Selves in Meiji and Taisho (1868-1926) 7 The Deviant in Meiji Society Autonomy, Individuality, and Public Power 1 Meiji's New Normal 2 Loser Literature 3 Anguished Art 4 Ideology and Rupture: Eccentricity and Its Place in Meiji's Cultural Field 8 The Private Individual in Early Meiji Education (1872-1890s) 1 The Individual in Early Meiji Education 2 On the Practice of Keeping Individuality Charts 3 Early Student Charts in the United States 4 Individuality as Control 9 Education and Public Individuality (1890s-1927) 1 Kosei in Public Education 2 Changes in Student Evaluations 3 Kosei as "Public Individuality" PART 4 The Nationalization of Private Leisure (1868-1930s) 10 Vacationing and Moral Authority 1 School Summer Vacations 2 Moral Authority and Vacationing for Adults 3 Ambivalence and Contestation 11 Nationalizing the Body Physical Exercise as a Public Ethic 1 "Civilizing" the Physical Body 2 Western Athletics 3 Public Fitness as Statecraft (1920s~) 12 Conclusion Can Modern Japan's Private Spheres Be Moral? 1 Reconciliations of Self and State Epilogue Bibliography Index