Organizer and Chair: Roger H. Brown, Saitama University, Japan

Discussant: Anne Walthall, University of California, Irvine

In recent decades scholars investigating the lives of women in Japan have redefined our understanding of gendered identities and the significance these hold for discerning the political, social, and cultural context of a given age. However, because few researchers have examined concepts of masculinity, we know little of the ideas that have guided Japanese men in thinking about and representing their lives as men, or of the assumptions that have informed their notions of becoming a man. Likewise, despite the importance of concepts of personal cultivation in Japanese history, we possess scant insight into how notions of morality, character, and self-cultivation have shaped the comprehension, experience, and presentation of masculinity since the early Tokugawa period.

By exploring ideas of masculinity and personal cultivation, this panel sheds light on manifestations of what might be termed—for heuristic purposes—the "manly way" (otoko no michi). Luke Roberts introduces Enomoto Yazaemon, using the memoirs of this Edo-period merchant to question the divide between merchant and samurai masculinity. Michele Mason argues that the novel The Secret Politician, which both celebrates and denies male-male relations/sexuality, contested and contributed to the Meiji state’s definitions of the Japanese nation and its subjects. Daniel Botsman examines the late career of Oe Taku, demonstrating how the life-story of this quintessential man of Meiji was re-crafted in the final decade of his life to present him as a "great man" dedicated to alleviating the plight of the Burakumin minority. Finally, Roger Brown considers how the nationalist Yasuoka Masahiro appropriated the legacy of samurai learning in order to advise modern military officers on the imperative of becoming cultivated gentlemen.

Luke S. Roberts, University of California at Santa Barbara

I will analyze the autobiographical memoirs of Enomoto Yazaemon (1625-1686), a successful salt merchant of the castle town Kawagoe. The memoirs were written in 1680 and added on to up to 1684, but were heavily based on diary records he kept from as early as 1636. The memoirs, called Mitsugo yori no Oboe (Memoirs of my life from age three), are fascinating in part because Yazaemon is very self conscious and frequently comments on self-cultivation. I will show that he was well integrated in a merchant society whose ideas of self-cultivation and behavior seem largely quite similar to those often ascribed as special to the samurai.

Yazaemon believes that everyone has a different inborn nature and that self-cultivation begins with discovering one's own inborn nature. The next step is to cultivate the good and restrain the bad, and he writes much about how many of his life's problems arose from unfortunate aspects of his inborn nature. His life course reveals an evolving personality. When young he is concerned with manliness, otoko no michi, which is mostly about defending honor with effective use of violence. Yazaemon studies fighting and swordsmanship, has a mortal enemy for much of his youth, duels and is very proud of his martial skills but never thinks himself a samurai. Although he frequently suffers from severe depression he is a successful businessman. He has a lifelong but increasing concern with self-restraint and avoiding selfishness. Eventually he puts himself in the role of teaching others.

Michele Mason, Stanford University

Various Meiji-period representations of Hokkaido inscribed a romantic masculinity on the island and Japan through portrayals of Japanese settlers bravely protecting the "northern gate" and subjugating Hokkaido’s savage wilderness for the good of the nation. Hara Hoitsuan’s The Secret Politician (Anchu seijika, 1890), one of the last voices of the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement, highlights instead the material and corporeal practices involved in the Meiji state’s attempts to discipline the Japanese population. Serialized in late 1890, this work focuses on the plight of ordinary farmers imprisoned in Hokkaido because of their involvement in the Fukushima Incident (1882), revealing the contestatory nature of Japanese nation building at precisely the moment when the government was celebrating a landmark of national unification, the inauguration of the Japanese Imperial Diet.

Depictions of male-male relations/sexuality in The Secret Politician reflect the varied possibilities in Japanese literature of mid-Meiji. The narrator’s potentially taboo desire for a bishonen (beautiful youth) is defused by the revelation that "he" is actually a girl in drag. Yet, typical forms of samurai love bonds are also valorized. In a dramatic court scene, three men’s testimonies suggest that the state has unjustly "criminalized" a noble brotherhood, presented through tropes of undying loyalty to and love for other men. The Secret Politician simultaneously suppresses traditionally accepted male-male relations and strategically holds up the values associated with them as the antithesis of an indifferent, morally bankrupt government.

Daniel V. Botsman, Harvard University

This paper will use the case of Oe Taku (1847-1921) to explore how the public image of the life of a "great man" was crafted and cultivated in pre-war Japan. From his youth, Oe played a series of bit parts in the major political struggles of his day: A Bakumatsu loyalist from Tosa, he achieved brief prominence after the Restoration as judge in the Maria Luz case, served seven years in prison for plotting to raise an army during the Satsuma Rebellion, was elected to the first Diet as a founding member of the Liberal party, and went on to make his fortune as a railway magnate in colonial Korea. It was, however, only in the final decade of his life, at a point when the Meiji-era establishment had begun to feel besieged by the twin-threat of "social problems" and socialism, that his enduring image as a selfless humanitarian, dedicated to "saving" Japan’s Buraku minority, was established. The paper will focus on the various incidents and strategies that Oe and his official biographer drew on to cultivate this new public self. Particular attention will be paid to the way that long-forgotten aspects of Oe’s early career were resurrected and reutilized, as well as to his 1914 decision to become a Zen (Soto-shu) priest, and to the remarkable purging of feminine elements that accompanied the final chapter of his life and life story.

Roger H. Brown, Saitama University, Japan

In April 1924, the Confucian nationalist Yasuoka Masahiro (1898-1983) began lecturing to career officers at the Naval Staff College on what he termed a "new philosophy of bushido." In order for these members of Japan’s modern military elite to cultivate themselves as "men of character" (jinkakusha), he encouraged them to look to the examples afforded by their samurai predecessors and to learn from the insights to be found, for example, in the shido ("Way of the Warrior") articulated by Yamaga Soko (1622-1685). Relying heavily on his knowledge of the Chinese classics and European idealism, Yasuoka conveyed a message of personal moral cultivation (shuyo/kyoyo) that carried great appeal for certain members of the country’s officer corps. Indeed, Yasuoka’s call for cultivating men of talent who combined the embrace of cultural spirit with commitment to public service appealed to many within both the military and civilian elite, and helped secure him a lifetime role as a behind-the-scenes advisor to numerous members of the nation’s governing class.

This paper examines the manner in which Yasuoka directed his appeal for men combining virtue and ability to those most masculine of modern men, the Emperor’s soldiers and sailors. While it is commonly observed that the early twentieth-century saw concepts of "bushido" employed to bolster nationalism and militarism, there is little research on this phenomenon. This study attempts to redress this condition by shedding light on one idealized version of the "Way of the Warrior" in prewar Japan.