Jason G. Karlin - Gender and Nation in Meiji Japan: Modernity, Loss, and the Doing of History

Beginnings are also endings. The path leading to the publication of this book began in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002. As a student of Japanese history, I owe much gratitude to Kevin M. Doak and Ronald P. Toby. They gave generously of their time and energy, and despite the many revisions of this book since, I believe it still reflects their philosophy of history. I also thank David Prochaska and Ramona Curry. David inspired me to think about cultural history as a more self-reflexive and interpretive practice, and Ramona planted the seed of my interests in media and gender studies.

This book (and its author) is a product of public education. Having attended public schools and universities throughout my life, I owe much to the currently challenged belief that the state has an obligation to produce an educated and informed citizenry. The cuts in state education budgets throughout the United States sadden me since I owe so much to the University of Illinois. This research was supported by a federal grant from the Fulbright Foundation to conduct research in Japan in 19981999, and a one-semester fellowship to write from the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999.

During my research in Japan, I received guidance and assistance from Yoshimi Shunya and Mitani Hiroshi at the University of Tokyo. Over eighteen months in Tokyo, I spent countless hours reading through Meiji-period newspapers and magazines in the Faculty of Law Center for Modern Japanese Legal and Political Documents (Meiji Shinbun Zasshi Bunko). Imagining the past as revealed through the discolored pages of old periodicals and forgotten novels, I hoped to understand the experience of history as reflected in media and popular culture. The staff at the Cartoon Art Museum (Manga Kaikan) in Saitama kindly served green tea over stories of Kitazawa Rakuten and helped me to better understand the short-lived culture of political satire in modern Japan. Between trips to the National Diet Library, the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, and the Museum of Modern Japanese Literature, I accrued many debts of gratitude from the staff and researchers at these institutions in Japan.

Through the long process of writing this book, I received advice and assistance from many. E. Taylor Atkins, Richard Torrance, Julia Adeney Thomas, Stefan Tanaka, Sally Hastings, Hiromi Mizuno, Ian Condry, and Vera Mackie commented on sections at various conferences and presentations. Sabine Frhstck, Vera Mackie, and Anne Walthall read and provided constructive feedback on sections. Andrew Barshay, Peter Duus, Robert Hellyer, Hiraishi Naoaki, Simon Partner, Brian W. Platt, and Jordan Sand were generous in sharing their advice. Over the many years, conversations with Shawn Bender, Tim Van Compernolle, Paul Droubie, Nakamura Naofumi, and David Wittner have shaped this work in countless ways. In the final stages of struggling to publish this book, I could not have done it without the encouragement of Shawn Bender.

Stefan Tanaka and one other anonymous reader read the entire manuscript during publication and provided thoughtful comments through a close reading of the text. Since no others had carefully read the final revised manuscript, their valuable advice was indispensable in completing this book. I also want to thank my editor, Patricia Crosby, for providing excellent support throughout the publication process, and Drew Bryan for carefully copy editing the manuscript. I wish to further thank NHK director Honda Satsuki, Oguri Hiromi, and the family of Kobayashi Kiyochika for making possible the reprinting of the sketch in .

My greatest appreciation goes to my wife, Atsuko Fukada, who has supported and encouraged the writing of this book from its beginning. As graduate students living on teaching assistantship stipends to our faculty positions at universities in Tokyo today, she has been my partner in this intellectual journey. I cannot express enough how much she has contributed to my life and the writing of this book.

Parts of this book were published previously before extensive revisions. A short version of was published as The Tricentennial Celebration of Tokyo: Inventing the Modern Memory of Edo, in Image and Identity: Rethinking Japanese Cultural History (2004), edited by Yamaji Hidetoshi and Jeffrey E. Hanes. I gratefully acknowledge the permission of the Society of Japanese Studies and the Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration at Kobe University respectively to reproduce them here.

Endings are also new beginnings. I look forward to no longer being consumed by thoughts of the past.