On your way, listen to Meiji at 150 Podcast Episode 75 with Dr. Jonathan Reynolds (Barnard College, Columbia University) for background!
In this episode, Dr. Reynolds reinforces the Meiji foundations of modern Japanese national architectural as mix of Western and traditional forms. We discuss the Meiji origins of institutions of architectural practice including architectural training programs, the mixing of Western and Japanese traditional forms in the training curricula, and the Pan-Asian and hybrid style of Itō Chūta. We then fast forward to the postwar period to talk about continuities between prewar and postwar architecture, the importance of Japanese forms and architects in the global development of Modernist architecture, the National Diet Building and the aesthetics of Tokyo architecture, concluding with the politics of architectural preservation and restoration today. Click here to listen.
Tune in to two new Meiji at 150 Podcasts episodes!
Click here to visit the Meiji at 150 Podcast Page or Episode Guide
In episode 74, Dr. Ayaka Yoshimizu (University of British Columbia) outlines and deconstructs discourses of proper women’s behavior amongst the Japanese-Canadian community in prewar British Columbia through representations of Japanese sex workers, waitresses, and wives in the Tairiku Nippō newspaper. We discuss the history of Japanese prostitution in BC, the importance of vernacular media to the Japanese immigrant community, and how the history of Japanese sex workers in BC is remembered today in both Japan and Canada. Click here to listen.
In episode 73, Dr. Simon Partner (Duke University) retraces the footsteps of Japanese merchant Shinohara Chūemon in treaty-port Yokohama in the 1850-1860s, emphasizing the individual efforts from the bottom-up that made Meiji transformations possible. We discuss what life was like in treaty ports for Japanese residents, how Meiji reforms impacted Japanese residents both in the treaty ports and in rural areas, and the emergence of Japanese national identity in reaction to interaction with foreigners. Click here to listen.
Visit the Meiji at 150 Podcast Page or Episode Guide
👺 Interested in Japanese monsters 👹 or material culture 👘? Tune to the Meijiat150 Podcast 🎧 for two episodes on Japanese folklore!
In episode 71, Dr. Michael Dylan Foster (UC-Davis) guides us into the realm of yōkai, or supernatural spirits and monsters, as an introduction to the study of Japanese folklore. We discuss the popularity of the kokkuri divination game during the Meiji period as evidence for how Japanese were reacting to changes in everyday life, the continuing prominence of yōkai in Japanese pop culture and global imaginations of Japan, and the political context of UNESCO intangible cultural heritage sites and local tourist advertising in Japan. Listen Here.
In episode 72, Dr. Ayako Yoshimura (University of Chicago) weaves kimono into the study of Japanese material culture and folklore from the Meiji Period, noting how kimono fashion and cultural practices changed during the Meiji Period as kimono became Japan’s national garment. We discuss the materiality of folklore studies, Meiji kimono, and practices of kimono wearing today before talking about Dr. Yoshimura’s work on Asian-American grocery stores. Listen here.
Also catch up on recent episodes on Japanese coffee with Dr. Merry White (Boston), Meiji social sciences with Dr. Brian McVeigh, Meiji politics with Dr. Eiko Maruko Siniawer (Williams), Meiji soundscapes with Dr. Kerim Yasar (USC), and Meiji imperial museums with Dr. Noriko Aso (UCSB).
The Centre for Japanese Research and UBC Library at the University of British Columbia are proud to announce the launch of the Meiji at 150 Digital Teaching Resource (DTR). Curated and edited by Tristan Grunow and Naoko Kato, the Meiji at 150 DTR presents open-source scholarly content that will be useful for educators and academics looking for new images and topics to introduce into their classroom teaching, while highlighting the academic research made possible using UBC Library’s digital archives. Along with collating numerous Digital Resources documenting the early modern and modern eras, the Meiji at 150 DTR features over a dozen Visual Essays by prominent scholars of Japanese history, literature, and culture, pairing digital images and analysis to re-visualize cartography, political turmoil, and natural disasters in the late-Tokugawa period; urban change and architecture in Meiji Tokyo; poetry, fashion, and photography; and the history of Japanese overseas migration and the prewar Japanese-Canadian community in Vancouver. These essays are also available in open-source e-textbook form as Digital Meijis: Revisualizing Modern Japanese History at 150 through the BCcampus platform. The Meiji at 150 Digital Teaching Resource is one aspect of the UBC Meiji at 150 Project, comprised of a lecture series, workshop series, and ongoing podcast series. See our website for more details, to access video and audio recordings of past events, or to listen to podcast interviews with leading scholars of Japanese history, literature, art, and culture. See below for the list of contents:
- Naoko Kato, “Re-viewing Meiji via Japanese-Canadian Connections”
- Radu Leca, “Competing Views of the World in Early Modern Japan”
- M. William Steele, “Apocalypse Now: An Alternate View of the Bakumatsu Years”
- Gregory Smits, “The Ansei Edo Earthquake and Catfish Prints”
- Masataka Kanaya, “Reading Edo Urban Space in the Tōkyō Gōshō Sugoroku (Tokyo Rich Merchants Board Game)”
- Tristan R. Grunow, “Ginza Bricktown and the Myth of Meiji Modernization”
- Benjamin Bryce, “J. Cooper Robinson: A Canadian Missionary and Photographer in Japan, 1888-1925”
- Allen Hockley, “John Cooper Robinson and Japanese Commercial Photography”
- Joshua S. Mostow, “The One Hundred Poets in the Meiji Period”
- Miriam Wattles, “Meiji Daughters: Their Stuff and Fancy in Brocade Pictures, 1870s-1880s”
- Ayako Yoshimura, “A Glimpse of Meiji Kimono Fashion”
- Yukari Takai, “Via Hawai‘i: The Transmigration of Japanese”
- Eiji Okawa, “Japanese Culture and Language in the Prewar Canadian ‘Mosaic’”
- Eiji Okawa, “Associational Lives of Women in the Prewar Japanese-Canadian Community”
- Ayaka Yoshimize, “‘Exploring the Devil Caves’: Brothels, Sex Workers, and the Disciplining of Women’s Bodies in the Tairiku Nippō (1908-1920)”
Visit the Meiji at 150 Podcast Page here
Okinawa History Mini-Series on the Meiji at 150 Podcast!
In episode 65, Dr. Marco Tinello traces the origins of “Ryūkyū Shobun” and the Japanese colonization of the Ryūkyū Kingdom in the 1870s to Ryūkyūan embassies sent to Edo during the early modern period. We discuss the political importance of these embassies for the Tokugawa, the Ryūkyūs, and Satsuma, re-position the embassies in the complicated politics of Bakumatsu, and reinsert Ryūkyū into diplomatic negotiations with the Western powers from the 1850s. Listen here.
In episode 64, Dr. Tze Loo recounts the incorporation of the Ryūkyū Kingdom into Japan and the establishment of Okinawa Prefecture in 1879 as one example of Japanese territorial expansion following the Meiji Restoration. We discuss Meiji state policies towards the Ryūkyūs, the reactions of Ryūkyūan elites, local protest movements, comparisons to the colonization of Hokkaidō and Taiwan, and the legacies of this history for Okinawan identity and culture today. Listen here.
In episode 63, Dr. Mark McNally revisits the history of nativism and anti-foreignism during the years leading up to the Meiji Restoration, finding the late-Tokugawa period far more cosmopolitan than expected. We discuss early modern Japanese relations with the Ryukyu kingdom, the conversion of Ryukyu into Okinawa, and the history of Japanese emigration to Hawaii. Listen here.
Click here to visit the Meiji at 150 Podcast Page
Tune in to Four New Podcast Episodes!
In episode 62, Dr. Gennifer Weisenfeld (Duke University) depicts how Japanese avant-garde artists responded to the structures and institutions of modern art constructed during the Meiji Period, as well as their destruction in the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. We discuss artistic reactions to modernity, the visual culture of civil air defense in wartime Japan, ties between visual culture and the nation-state, and the graphic design of Japanese corporate advertising. Listen here.
In episode 61, Dr. Kazuhiro Oharazeki (Setsunan University) details the lives of Ameyuki-san, Japanese women who traveled to North America in the late Meiji period to work as prostitutes. We discuss the reasons these women left Japan and compare them to Karayuki-san who went to China before talking about the conditions these women faced in North America, how local communities responded, and what impact these experiences had on anti-prostitution movements in Japan and the United States. Listen here.
In episode 60, Dr. Louise Young (University of Wisconsin) de-centers Japanese modernization during the Meiji Period by re-orienting our attention to Japan’s peripheral “second cities,” including Niigata, Okayama, Kanazawa, and Sapporo. We discuss uneven power relations between the center and periphery, trace the circulation of ideas of urban life between domestic and colonial cities, and link imperialism to the rise of a culture of popular Japanese fascism in the 1930s before retracing historiographical shifts in scholarship on the Restoration. Listen here.
In episode 59, Dr. Garrett Washington (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) reinserts Christianity into the history of the Meiji Restoration, detailing the activities of early missionaries to proselytize while promoting Japanese modernization. We discuss the illegality of Christianity and the Hidden Christians in Nagasaki in the early Meiji Period, the impact of Christian values on Japanese women, and the hybridized worship spaces constructed by Japanese Christian congregations. Listen here.
Tune in to two new Meiji at 150 Podcast Episodes!
Visit the Meiji at 150 Podcast Page!
In episode 58, Dr. Andrew Gordon (Harvard) compares approaches to studying the Meiji Restoration in Japanese and Anglophone scholarship, tracing recent historiographical shifts in scholarship on modern Japan as seen through editions of his textbook. We discuss Dr. Gordon’s efforts to “de-exoticize” Japan in the classroom, to disseminate historical understandings of Japan to the general public, and to digitally document Japan’s present for future historians before talking about his recent seminar on Dark Tourism in Japan. Click here to listen.
In episode 57, Dr. Timothy Brook (UBC) reviews the Meiji Restoration from the perspective of Chinese history, reconsidering historical narratives comparing Chinese and Japanese responses to Western imperialism and detailing how the Restoration impacted China and Japan’s positions in the region. We discuss how nationalism shaped reactions to the West, the origins of Japanese imperialist expansion in East Asia, and the legacies and lessons of the Meiji Restoration for Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations today. Click here to listen.
In episode 56, Dr. Indra Levy (Stanford University) underlines the importance of translation in Meiji-period transformations in Japanese language, literature, and culture. We discuss the role of literature in the modern nation-state, literary characters as allegories for the nation, and the politics of humour in literature before contrasting the relationship between composition and translation in Japan and the US. Listen below or click here.
In episode 55, Dr. Anne Giblin Gedacht (Seton Hall University) reviews the “Meiji Revolution” from the peripheral Tōhoku region, tracing the formation of regional identity in the Japanese borderlands and tracking the mobility of Japanese migrants to Tōhoku and overseas. We locate Tōhoku in spatial conceptualizations of “Japan” during the Tokugawa period, place Tōhoku within Meiji programs of nation-building, and compare the settlement of Tōhoku to the history of settler colonialism in Hokkaidō and of Japanese overseas immigration. Listen below or click here.
Check out two new Meiji at 150 Podcast Episodes published this week!
In episode 54, Dr. Andrew Bernstein (Lewis & Clark College) charts both the modernization of death practices and the nationalization of Mt. Fuji from the Meiji Period to today. After discussing the invention of Shinto funerals, the Meiji government’s short-lived ban on cremation, and the impact of street traffic on funeral processions, we turn to the emergence of Fuji as a national symbol and then to the development of military training grounds at its base. Dr. Bernstein also briefly describes an interdisciplinary Mt. Fuji study program that he led in 2014 and 2017. Click here to listen.
In episode 53, Dr. Maren Ehlers (UNC-Charlotte) re-examines social relations in rural communities in central Japan in the years leading up to the Meiji Restoration, centering on poverty and poor relief programs for marginalized groups such as beggars and outcastes. We discuss the impacts of severe famine on rural villagers, changing expectations of benevolent government in the Tokugawa moral economy, and the increase of internal unrest and rural upheaval from the 1850s. Click here to listen.
Click Here to Visit the Meiji at 150 Podcast Page
In episode 52, Dr. Frederick Dickinson (Penn) argues for the significance of the Meiji Restoration in global history, challenging narratives of the “rise of the West” and emphasizing the impacts of Japanese-empire building on the 19th century world. We discuss the effects of the Sino-Japanese War on Western imperialism, documentary sources for placing Japan in global history, and the lessons of Meiji Japan for the world today. Click here to listen.
In episode 51, Dr. Alice Tseng (Boston) reconstructs the Western foundations of Meiji period architecture along with government attempts to mediate Japanese modernization in built form. We discuss the politics of building design, representations of Japan at international expositions, and the reactions of foreign visitors to Tokyo before relocating our conversation to the development and urban design of modern Kyoto. Click here to listen.
Faculty of Art