Organizer and Chair: L. Keith Brown, University of Pittsburgh
Discussants: David W. Plath, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Kazuko S. Smith, Cornell University; Anne Walthall, University of California, Irvine; L. Keith Brown, University of Pittsburgh
In late Meiji, a young bride in the family of a Kyoto pharmacy kept a daily diary. Makiko included extensive comments about her husband, mother-in-law, the shop manager and maids, and significantly her widowed father in her natal home. Using as background this daily account of the life and agency of nineteen-year-old Makiko, and a new documentary video on her life and cultural changes since then, this roundtable will focus on the following questions:
(1) What agency did women, and especially the most junior female member of an ie have in Meiji Japan, and how has this situation been changing to today?
(2) How has the relationship changed between the common people and the state from the early years of intense nation building in Meiji to contemporary times when mass media give the Japanese constant exposure to world situations and events, with the government instituting a program promoting internationalism?
(3) Are the family (ie) and the state to be seen as institutions of oppression of human freedoms since the turn of the century? What has changed since Meiji, if anything?
This multidisciplinary roundtable will provide a reassessment of issues of agency and oppression. Is it possible that the powerful image of the ie and the state as feudal oppressors is a function of our own Orientalism? Or not? These issues are relevant to many disciplines and many aspects of Japanese studies. Therefore the roundtable will be structured to stimulate, encourage, and benefit from extensive audience participation.