
In Close Association
Local Activist Networks in the Making of Japanese Modernity, 1868-1920
Marnie S. Anderson(Author)
Harvard University Press
Published on 12. July 2022
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-0-674-27825-7 (ISBN)
Description
In Close Association is the first English-language study of the local networks of women and men who built modern Japan in the Meiji period (1868-1912). Marnie Anderson uncovers in vivid detail how a colorful group of Okayama-based activists founded institutions, engaged in the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, promoted social reform, and advocated "civilization and enlightenment" while forging pathbreaking conceptions of self and society. Alongside them were Western Protestant missionaries, making this story at once a local history and a transnational one.
Placing gender analysis at its core, the book offers fresh perspectives on what women did beyond domestic boundaries, while showing men's lives, too, were embedded in home and kin. Writing "history on the diagonal," Anderson documents the gradual differentiation of public activity by gender in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Meiji-era associations became increasingly sex-specific, though networks remained heterosocial until the twentieth century.
Anderson attends to how the archival record shapes what historians can know about individual lives. She argues for the interdependence of women and men and the importance of highlighting connections between people to explain historical change. Above all, the study sheds new light on how local personalities together transformed Japan.
Placing gender analysis at its core, the book offers fresh perspectives on what women did beyond domestic boundaries, while showing men's lives, too, were embedded in home and kin. Writing "history on the diagonal," Anderson documents the gradual differentiation of public activity by gender in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Meiji-era associations became increasingly sex-specific, though networks remained heterosocial until the twentieth century.
Anderson attends to how the archival record shapes what historians can know about individual lives. She argues for the interdependence of women and men and the importance of highlighting connections between people to explain historical change. Above all, the study sheds new light on how local personalities together transformed Japan.
Reviews / Votes
Provides invaluable insights into how diverse groups in Okayama networked in different ways from the 1880s to shape Japanese modernity... The book is significant in that it broadens our understanding of how gender roles functioned in social and political movements. -- Haiying Hou * Monumenta Nipponica *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
3 photos, 1 color photo, 1 color illus.
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-674-27825-7 (9780674278257)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Marnie S. Anderson is Professor of History at Smith College.